What We Do in the Shadow War

I had been getting really excited about Shadow War, and was a bit nervous that the actual experience would disappoint. It did not. Got in a couple of Games on Saturday, and even tho they both ended up being fairly straightforward, we could see how much possibility there is here. I remembered to take pics for one, so here's a mini-BatRep:

Kharvash the Reaver leads the Culties on the offensive. He learns to drive them before him in the future

Gunner Urthgu attempts to take out a couple of Immortals as they move into his field of fire, but misses badly, leaving Kharvash to get gunned down by Gauss fire

Before he can extract vengeance, Urthgu has problems of his own, as a Deathmark teleports in right by him and snipes down a Cultist

Despite being encumbered by his Autocannon, Urthgu Charges down to confront the interloper...

...Only to be downed by the Xenos assassin, who doesn't even need to turn to look to drop his prey!

Tivzitch, the last standing CSM, decides that it's time to take the remaining Culties and GTFO

Sorry about the pic quality. I just had my phone, not my real camera.

I think we need to mix up the Terrain a bit better in the future. There were too many solid buildings, combined with high stuff that didn't really break up LoS too much, so the one really good approach across the Board was also too good of a fire lane. On top of that, I forgot about the requirement to shoot the nearest guy, and put my Leader out in front of the Culties, cinematically leading them on. Gonna make them go first to soak up some fire in the future.

The other Game probably would have made a better BatRep, but I forgot to take any pics at all. Ended up being a total charlie foxtrot of a Raid, with my Opponent putting the Objective over near a board edge, which of course ended up being the edge I rolled for my Deployment Zone. But I realised too late that I didn't have any Krak Grenades or anything, because I had only considered other Fighters as targets, so it devolved into a mess of close firefights and HtH, with both of us starting to take Bottle Tests very quickly. My opponent failed his first (reasonable, as I had inflicted heavy casualties, and only lost one of my four Raiders), giving me the win this time.

We also discussed a number of House Rules. The main one we're implementing is letting people save Points from their initial build and Resupply actions, rather than having to spend them all in one go. For a number of the additional Factions, spending Points only in 100 Point blocks gets really awkward, and it's near crippling for Tyranid Warriors in particular. We'll see if it ends up letting Teams grow too fast, and if so, will look into some way of reducing how many Points are awarded each Mission.

Squaduary: Weather Delay

I have discovered an issue with the Squaduary concept, as opposed to Dreadtober, at least here in the PNW: In October, we can usually rely on at least a couple of days of dry weather each week. February, on the other hand, is pretty reliably rainy, or at least extremely damp and humid, which makes terrible conditions for spray priming. Today is at least sunny and clear, and the humidity is supposed to dip to the lowest it's been for a while in a couple of hours here, so I'm going to hope I can get a decent coat on.

That said, the modeling part went well. I got three Squads of 5 "Scouts" done, one each with Bolters, BP/CCW, and Sniper Rifles. The rest of this is basically just a picdump:

The intensive training the Alpha Legion uses for these operatives takes long enough that they often begin to be warped by the association with Chaos

The Combat Drugs they're pumped up on contribute further to the incidence of mutation in the ranks

The Squad Leaders get the fanciest cloaks

Another consequence of the Combat Drugs is that few of the operatives will survive more than a mission or two, even if they don't die in combat

Only one way to deal with a stealth trooper who won't shut up ;)

The Sniper Sarge calls out targets

The Snipers are the most heavily augmented

The overall effect comes out a bit more kitbashed than I was hoping, rather than mutated, but I'm still pretty happy with them. Hopefully the paint jobs will tie them all together better. Until next time, y'all have a good one, y'hear!

Squaduary

Following on from the idea of Dreadtober, ThousandEyes over at Stepping Between Games has introduced the Squaduary event. Same basic idea as Dreadtober: Build and paint something in a month. The difference is that this one is about Squads of Infantry and such instead of Dreads and other big 'uns.

Before the Legions supplement came out, I had been planning on running my Alpha Legion as Raven Guard Counts-As with the Talon Strike Force. To that end, I'd pulled together a bunch of bits for some heavily armed and trained and boosted Culties to represent Scouts. Despite the awesomeness of the Alpha Legion Rules in the supplement, I kind of feel like I still want to do this, just for the lulz. So here I've got a mix of SM Scout, Tempestus Scion, Catachan, Flagellant, and Chaos Marauder parts, ready to mix and match for some sneaky evilness.

Hopefully I'll have build pics up sometime early next week, and until then, y'all have a good one, y'hear!