By which I mean, Brian and Robert seem to have taken “terrain making” pills and gone on a creative bender.

Here is Brian’s Youtube video of his scratchbuilt video ad-hoarding, for use as scatter terrain:

And then Robert made this, which is only a freakin’ monorail:

My non-club-based gaming buddies have just decided to get into Infinity allinarush! So, being awesome and talented and stuff, they have started making terrain, including LED-lit streetlamps and holographich billboards, and rusted shipping containers, all scratchbuilt in about two days!

If one of them, as he has threatened, buys some of the Walkways from Sarissa, we might have a heck of a table in very short order.

Next step, maybe buy some models

More to come.

In my last post I mentioned Robert’s terrain. I reckon it is worth a post of its own (at the very least).

What Robert has done is take various materials (greyboard mainly), and make flat-pack Wild West buildings out of them. Early ones had Whitewash City PDF textures on the outside, while with the later ones Robert has been using scored balsa wood and painting it with his airbrush, before adding pigments for weathering.

His innovation (Rabtab™) is to make interlocking plasticard tabs in the inside. Once these buildings are assembled they are very sturdy indeed, but can be quickly packed away into a shoebox.

I will let the pics do the rest of the talking.

The annual Partick Crucible 1000pt 40k tournament is coming up, probably in April, although the exact date has yet to be decided.

Here is my report from the last one.

Last year I took Tau, and this year I will most likely do the same. There is a chance a new Tau codex will appear between now and then, but if I didn’t have that kind of eternal optimism what kind of Tau player would I be?

Taking my love of Crisis Suits to an obvious and extreme conclusion makes this year’s list a fairly easy one:-
• HQ: Shas’el with Plasma Rifle, Fusion Blaster and Multitracker
• Bodyguard of 2 Crisis Suits with TL Missile Pods and Targeting Arrays
• HQ: Shas’el with Plasma Rifle, Fusion Blaster and Multitracker
• Bodyguard of 2 Crisis Suits with TL Missile Pods and Targeting Arrays
• Elites: 2 Crisis Suits. One is a Team Leader with Plasma Rifle, Fusion Blaster and Targeting Array, with a HW Multitracker and the other has TL Missile Pods and a Targeting Array
• Elites: 2 Crisis Suits with TL Missile Pods and a Targeting Array
• Elites: 2 Crisis Suits with TL Missile Pods and a Targeting Array
• Troops: 6 Firewarriors
• Troops: 10 Kroot
• Heavy Support: 1 Broadside Team Leader with a Targeting Array, Smart Missile System, a Gun Drone and a Black Sun Filter

It has a theme – that theme is Crisis Suits. An elite Strike Force of them, backed up by a few ground-pounders and with some lumbering heavy support in the back.

It makes for 12 Crisis Suits in all, which is not bad for 1000pts! I split the Crisis Suits with Plasma Rifle/ Fusion Blaster up among three different squads. I don’t usually mix and match armaments like that, but it does make it much harder for the enemy to wipe out the most deadly weapons, and make it more likely those suits will be around on later Turns – which is when suitable targets are most likely going to be in range.

Everything is hitting on a 3+, with all the Missile Pods as well as the Railgun also being Twin Linked. That gives me 18 S7 shots across five units, which should take care of MCs and transports. Mathhammer tells us 16 of those shots will hit a Turn

I only have one Railgun. If they shoot it, there’s a chance it will run away to a dead drone, but I usually only need it on Turn 1 anyway. It will be useless in Dawn of War as it cannot move on and shoot, but I would rather give it a 3+ to hit. There is a fair chance I can deploy it where only a few lascannons/ dark lances can shoot at it, rather than a whole army’s-worth. Need to see what the mission pack looks like.

The weak link is Troops, of course. Best I can do is keep them in reserve and try not to get them killed. Come on, go to ground, and try and wipe out the opponent with shooting.

One of the concerns about Terraclips my mates have is how long it takes to build a playable set. With just one build under my belt, and therefore still a Terraclips noob, I decided to find out.

I picked this fantastic build over at the World Works Games forum as my template. Turns out that having a design to work to really speeds things up.

It took me 25 mins to make the first 2′x2′ section (my son turned up to help) and about 35 mins to make the second storey. Having made it once now, I think I could build the whole thing again in under 45 mins. You can watch it all here (and apologies for my attire – just finished decorating!):

My son got quite a lot of Halo Mega Bloks for Crimble. Fortunately, he also had a Dad with silly amounts of wargaming terrain in the garage, so he wound up playing with this set-up for a few days post-Santa. Fun times

I will put up a post with my initial thoughts later, but here are some pics for now.

This used less than half of one box!  I still have (from 2 boxes) 21 of the large ground tiles and 40 of the smaller ones.  I have included a pic of the leftovers, all neatly packed away.  The doors and tokens are in those plastic boxes.

A weekend of playing with construction sets beckons

I got my second game with the Viktorias last night, at G3 against Graham. He brought his Cult of December crew.

It was a good game, and this is not a batrep, just some thoughts on the crew I played and the models in it.

We agreed on 35ss, and since my opponent had a few Constructs I decided to drop the totem and Misaki and try out Von Schill. This would prove to be a Good Move:

Gun Vik
Sword Vik
Von Schill (9)
Taelor (8)
Convict Gunslinger (5)
Ronin (5)

That left me with a starting cache of 8.

Graham took:

Rasputina
Snowstorm
3 x Ice Gamin
Essence of Power
Silent One

He had a starting cache of 8 as well.

We got some steampunk terrain and decided it was an Arcanist pumping station, because it was. I got the Deliver A Message Strategy, and declared Exterminate and Steal Relic as Schemes. Not only have I never tried either of those Schemes before, but since I would be getting up close (2″) to Rasputina to deliver the message, I might as well try and nick her watch as well with Steal Relic. I reckoned the Viks would be a dab hand at Exterminate, which required me to kill all the Constructs in Graham’s crew (the three Ice Gamin).

Graham got the Contain Power Strategy, and declared Frame For Murder and Reflections of December. Contain Power meant he had to kill both Viktorias. Frame For Murder meant if I killed one member of his crew (secretly chosen by him) he got 2VP and Reflections gave him VP if he killed my models using a particular spell.

Rasputina deployed behind some terrain in the table corner, and Graham declared his intention to force me to come to him, as I would need to do in order to get my Strategy and Schemes. This was a sound and sensible idea, and my plan was therefore to approach in a pincer fashion, behind cover, and then use the Viks’ and Von Schill’s movement abilities to jump across and overwhelm one flank, then roll up the other one while keeping Raspy alive long enough to hand over the message and take her pocketwatch.

It was odd, then, when Rasputina decided to come out and play in the middle of the table with all her minions, so I threw caution to the wind and lobbed Von Schill right into the middle of them! Really, I just wanted to see what would happen

What happened next turned the game. Snowstorm (an 11ss monster) charged Von Schill and, even with the Red Joker cheated into the damage flip, failed to kill him. With Rasputina’s beatstick now exposed from behind his line of protective Ice Gamin, I was now free to countercharge with Taelor, and she killed Snowstorm, also with the Red Joker! The resulting explosion caused serious harm to Raspy’s remaining minions, but Von Schill was safe due to his armour.

After that, Raspy tried to kill Von Schill and Taelor with her go-to spell December’s Curse, but Von Schill stuck it out, with the aid of Soulstones and Slow To Die. Taelor took a hurting from blast damage, but refused to die.

After that, my whole crew closed in on Raspy, and on Turn 4 she was surrounded with no other minions left alive. I delivered the message and stole the relic (with the +4Wp aura from Von Schill being the deciding factor here) and the game ended 8VP to 2VP.

Although it looked totally one-sided at the end, four of my six models were on one Wound, another had just three left and only the Convict Gunslinger remained untouched. With slightly different luck, I could have been left with only a couple of models on the table vs Rasputina, which is not a good place to be.

What sets the Viks apart from crews like the Showgirls is that they are a crew of solos. They generally do not buff or enhance one another, nor have any real synergy with one another, and are content to run around bashing, stabbing and shooting, relying on their own abilities to protect them and kill their enemies. Von Shill is almost the ultimate Henchman solo, so he feels right at home among these loners, misfits and cold-blooded killers

I think for my next game I would like to try Killjoy, although I need to think of some cheap and suitable model to sacrifice to bring him out. Looks like I will be proxying a Desperate Mercenary for that game.