The Victorious Infantry!

o/

My buddy Rob came over for a long overdue game of Battletech this past Friday evening. It was our standard 8k point game, he had a Taurian Concordat medium mech lance backed up by a half dozen vehicles, and I fielded a Draconis Combine heavy mech lance, backed up by a motorized infantry company.

The Scimitar tank died in one volley to this platoon!

At the mention of the infantry he said (quote) 'oh boy'. Lol, that kind of attitude is to be expected as most infantry using the stats in the Total Warfare book, are little more than cannon fodder that do little more than slow the game down. However I was using the Heavy Infantry out of the 3085 The Cutting Edge record sheets book. Contrary to that title, virtually all of the infantry contained therein come from far earlier (some more than a century) eras. The platoon type I was fielding debuted in 3060 for example.

Having an armor divisor of 2 (meaning it halves incoming damage, or to be lazy simply omits the double damage to infantry out in the open), a movement of 2 hexes, a reach out to six hexes, and the potential to inflict up to a 23 point blast of buckshot (in 2-point increments), yeah...they gave a whole new meaning to his 'oh boy' sentiment!

One shot from the Hatchetman's AC10 tore the leg off of that Stinger, killing it, that said, my mech barely escaped the return volley alive! The infantry meanwhile were scaring the wary hovertanks!

Lacking any sort of anti-infantry weaponry (i.e.: MGs, small pulse lasers, flamers, etc.) my platoons proved quite resilient whilst hitting pretty hard in return. One platoon took out a previously untouched Scimitar hovertank in one volley and his light SRM carriers were quickly limping around on flat tires!

It took an awful lot of hits, but after the prior round, there was no way my Hatchetman could survive this crossfire, and that platoon took a beating as well!

Of course mechs (and the AC20s on those infernal Scimitars) were the real damage dealers, and we were putting the hurt on one another quickly. However my infantry (previously always thought of as a circus side show) really kinda turned the tide of battle in my favor. We called the game early as I had to work Saturday and Rob was exhausted from his job of managing an entirely different circus (he owns a Dairy Queen).

I'm calling it a win as he lost a Stinger, all 3 Scimitars, with everything else damaged aside from his Archer which I never even shot at. On my end, one platoon had been gutted, my Hatchetman was a smoldering wreck, and my Ostroc and Awesome were pretty beat up as well. Whereas my Dragon had likewise not been shot at.

It was a fun little game, and we need to play more often, though I wonder how soon it will be before I will have these deadly new platoons coming for me...

The infamous Tacobot.

Hola Amigo! Wanna Taco?

Automated vending machines are nothing unusual on the world of Utaupia, however the failed Intergalactic Taco Corporation's free-roaming 'Tacobots' are the most notorious. Originally used in urban areas Tacobots were programed to have specific territories like any salesman of old. Blaring Mariachi music, they would offer pedestrians and other passers by what was marketed as 'a tasty and authentic Mexican treat!'

After making a purchase, I suggest
visiting a a TUMS vending bot...

With their parent company concerned more with low cost and longevity of the food products carried by the bots than they were with taste, Tacobots were quickly dubbed diarrhea with legs by their detractors (of which there were many), and sales fell sharply. A more aggressive sales software package was installed giving a sharp rise in complaints rather than sales.

Tales of frightened children cornered at community playgrounds, and harried elderly and handicapped citizens (who were too slow to outpace the infernal machines) assailed Intergalactic Taco from around the planet! PR execs complained of malware until an internal whistleblower revealed the truth and the Tacobots were banned from all municipalities by the Utaupian government!

With executives desperate to save their stock portfolios, the Tacobots were fitted with limited sensor suites able to detect machinery, stocked with even longer shelf life (and less appetizing) foods, and deployed around the wilds of Utaupia. A new marketing campaign told of how wayward travelers, and famished frontier peoples would joyously greet these rugged new Tacobots! When their wares were all sold out or expired (according to the holo-vid commercials...), the Tacobot would send out a recall signal and be retrieved by aerial drone for a refit and restock.

The plan was a dismal failure.

Instead Tacobots were seen to be futilely trying to flag down passenger and cargo trains speeding by at hundreds of kilometers per hour, or doggedly pursuing automated farming equipment. The most comedic report came from a military exercise, in which a Tacobot came upon a mock military battle, with incredulous officers staring dumbfounded from their forward command post as they witnessed their units waging war with a Mariachi soundtrack!

The company quickly folded and the Tacobots were never retrieved. Whilst tales persist of lone Tacobots still plying the wilderness with their long expired foods, most are spotted only as rare and forlorn, rusted figures dotting the roadsides and railways of the Utaupian wilderness.

For the TL;DR crowd sorry no gaming this time, check back Thursday.

Instead this is more my 'auto' biography. I'll skip the piece of shit 1985 Duster (a.k.a.: a K-car) I started with and go on to the good stuff!

What? You don't see these on the road anymore? That's because they're all right where they belong: rotting in a junkyard. This one wasn't mine, but it looks the same, colors and all. 

18', bumper to bumper. I still miss this cast iron beast.

For close to 20 years I've driven 2WD Dodge Ram pickups (I couldn't afford the insurance rates of 4x4's at a young age). The first an '89 long bed dubbed the USS Nimitz due to it's enormous turn radius (I was a master of the 88-point turn!), suffered thru most of my teenage and early twenties fender-benders. Did you know that the front bumper cost $225? I know that as I smashed 4 of them! This poor machine also suffered (seemingly without any ill effect) through my complete lack of understanding in terms of vehicle maintenance:

'Huh, the dipstick is bone dry...well I'll drive it to the auto parts store, put a quart in and we're good! I'll get the oil changed in the next week or two, maybe...'

(True story.)

When talking with old friends, some are still surprised to find I no longer have this truck.

Luckily for my 2nd Ram, I had grown up, and dramatically improved behind the wheel meaning it suffered no accidents in the 15 years I drove it! Buying it with approx. 27k miles on it and I sold it at about the quarter million mile mark to my buddy Rob, after a hailstorm 'totaled' it according to my insurance company. Rob put another 20k miles on it before the frame rusted out. He junked it, but the salvage yard apparently welded the frame as I later passed this venerable beast on the road after it's supposed demise... Rams are great vehicles in all respects aside from gas mileage but hell, aside from the latest engines (which tend to reside in $40-50k+ trucks), that's just the norm.

AWD IS AWESOME! (as is my Wolfy!)

However the past few years I've been riding around in a Chrysler Pacifica. Whilst technically its an SUV I've always thought of it as a station wagon. Again, its a great vehicle especially as I'm 6'6" tall, and FOUR people my size can comfortably ride in it at the same time and still have plenty of room for stuff. It will seat up to six (no room for stuff) though two need to be 'little people'. That said, I've had as many as 7 adults crammed into it (must've been murder way back in that third row seat...).

ugh...this is as uncomfortable to drive as that little K-car was!

Recently however, I've been driving my beloved Wolfy's '99 Ford Escort sedan. Just to recap incase you forgot, I'm 6'6"...in an Escort. Due to health issues, getting into and out of that little car became painful to the point of tear inducing to her on a daily basis. Tired of that I insisted in swopping vehicles aaaaaand guess how that went? Yup, only a few days later my free time was taken up searching KBB.com. autotrader.com (which isn't nearly as helpful as it's TV commercials would have you believe), and cargurus.com.

That last one I'd never heard of, but Wolfy found a few good prospects on it and in fact I bought one, picking it up this past Saturday morning, ta dah! my new 2005 Ram:

My new ride!

Its a 4x4, quad cab and only has 89.5k miles! Using my green Ram as the standard, I'm expecting it to last to the 250k mile mark as well. Whilst there will be few if any frivolous purchases until we adjust to the new payment (and get thru our upcoming wedding), one thing I do need to get for the truck is a set of running boards so my Wolfy won't need a step stool to get up into it, lol.

GET TO DA CHOPPAS!!!

Man do I like getting free stuff from the internet and no, I'm not referring to malware, spyware or internet viruses...

Kromlech, maker of many Orky related bitz, minis, and other goodies always previews their new wares on their FB page, and often accompanies that with a 'like & comment on this post for a chance to win'...whatever they're previewing. I've done this many a time, but always it seems the winner is one comment above, or below mine. Not yesterday however! Nope, I got the 'You're a winner' reply and won some new Ork choppas!

I'm gonna need some more Orks to wield these goodies...

When showing the FB notification to my beloved Wolfy the following conversation ensued:

 'OOOH! Are they going to be painted like that too?'

No, they won't be painted.

Oh, well that sucks...no offense to your painting.

...sigh...

Speaking of free stuff, Monday my free Fallout Hobbies decals and vinyl airbrush stencil arrived from their Santa's Slay competition that I participated in back in December!

So yeah...so far its been a pretty good week for me as a geek!

GHARRRR!!!

o/

Well I suppose you could call this my first foray into Beyond the Gates of Antares. I've not read the rules, and in various online reviews it naturally has gotten mixed results because not every game is for everybody...is it for me? Who the hell knows and in all honesty I'm in no hurry to find out. A few of the guys here locally have the rulebook and/or minis, so I suppose I can sit in on a few games at some point and see.

To be honest the majority of the game's range of minis don't appeal to me. The Freeborn faction is an easy choice as humanity has diverged into a myriad of subspecies, and as always my beloved Grymn could easily fit into that description. Especially as thus far the mini range for humans is a bit generic.

That said, of the actual BtGoA miniatures, the Ghar are the most appealing I think. Their battle suits are...I dunno kinda different. Whereas the Outcasts, yeah I like em but they apparently are little more than cannon fodder (typical, I always like the garbage troop-types it seems). And then there is the Ghar command crawler, which looks awesome! Though I do have one serious complaint with that model: why in the fuck do miniature companies still release models as resin/pewter hybrid kits?!?! Those are always a royal pain in the ass to assemble!

Anyways, Warlord games had a Free shipping promotion on all orders recently, and so I ordered a single Ghar outcast just for shits and giggles. I ordered it from the US site figuring it would ship from a US distributor, but no...it came from the UK. A $5 order, with free shipping from the UK...yeah I'm betting somebody at Warlord games had a few choice words for me, lol.

Its a cool looking mini and like so many others, I've added it to my painting queue. As you can see its base is now adorned with a bunch of rocks to hide the pewter base on the model itself. Makes me wonder why Warlord didn't just opt for the good ol' slotta base like so many other companies have.

WAAAAAAUGH!!!

o/

ere we go! ere we go! ere we go...

Well, it finally happened...yep, I played a game of 40k. This was the previously postponed game of Orks vs. Orks (old codex vs. new) with Neverness. 1000 points, 'Tau deployment', Bonzai charge (kill points) scenario rather than waste any good n' propa Orkiness on some sort of actual strategery...

My deployment.

Oi, did anyone check to see iv dat door opens?

Da Eleet Grot Mountin Duvishun complete with Da Grot Spee and a pair of wartrakks took up my right flank.

Neverness' Warboss had burna boyz stacked beneath him as cushion apparently...

The rest of his deployment.

Stealing da initiative, Da Long Wayz Dezert Groop advances...kinda slowly.

With a trukk in visual range, rokkits are fired enmass, but of course it was outta range...

Despite all of my shooting, it was a typical Ork shooting phase, with only about 4 casualties inflicted (Note the big mek with a shokk attack gun in the tower, I think this was my only pic of it).

My looted Crimson Fists rhino was 1st blood? WTF?!? What's more fluffy than that model?!?! Neverness clearly hates fluff...

Likewise, his big mek with the shock attack gun was jealous of Da Grot Spee being the prettiest model on the table, and it went BOOM (taking many grots with it)!

While da Matilda missed, da Tankbustas effectively destroyed da Warboss' trukk

Also getting blown up on turn 1 was my buggy w/skorcha. Here we see the burnaboyz roasting my Ard boyz in the background...

This bunch charged, and the subsequent challenge between his Nob and my big mek turned into a multi-turn, anti-climatic tar pit.

The Warboss polished my nob...

There was an awful lot of this crap. More a case of never bothering to read the 7th ed rules, rather than learning and then forgetting them to begin with...

However, I won the 1st round of combat (barely), and the following turn a bazillion shoota boyz joined the fray...

This soon reached its inevitable conclusion.

His shoota boyz advance to get Fix-a-Flat, my big mek and warlord.

Trying to quicken the inevitable defeat, da tankbustas leapt from da Matilda, opened fire (killing 3 shoota boyz), and then charged the mob! 4 of the 9 fell to overwatch fire, yet they still somehow not only made it to combat, but won the round!

...and then died the next turn. My Big Mek also won, but failed to run down da fleeing boyz. They rallied, but the hour was late and I had to be at work at OMG o'clock the following morning, so we called it. 

Welp...in case you missed it, I got my ass kicked. In terms of KPs, I think I got 2: the Burna boyz and the trukk (though technically it still had a single hull point left). Neverness: He got lots! (I say that as Orks can't count very high) About the only mistake I can think I made was not moving my wartrakks which resulted in their destruction (that crater in the background of the last photo), that and trying to drive Da Matilda thru an apparently very stout wall.

My army's MVP was Da Matilda which, while it was incapable of hitting anything with it's gunz, it absorbed an inordinate amount of fire whilst taking no damage. The Tankbustas get an honorable mention for surviving a hellova lot of overwatch fire, and then winning a round of close combat vs. seemingly dozens of shoota boyz!

Neverness' MVP had to be the friggin' big mek w/shock attack gun! Will that 30ish year old, half assembled mini that looks like it's never seen a lick of paint be rewarded with a full assembly and paint?

I doubt it...but it certainly deserves it. 

Hasslefree Miniatures is an awesome company!

Go buy from them NOW! Here's their link if ya have some extra $$$ burning a hole in your pocket...

Anyone who's read this blog knows that I have a love of their Grymn, and not too long ago I bought two more in Power Armor when they had a sale. Being a small company, the sudden influx of orders left them behind the eight-ball and it took awhile for my order to be processed. Unlike most purchases where I want some instant-gratification, this was a good thing.

These two bring me up to a squad of five.

Ya see, if they run a bit late, the compensate for their untimeliness with a freebee mini of some sort. Usually something related to your order. Another thing is when ordering, they have a suggestion box, where you can comment on what you'd like to see them make. For quite sometime now, and on my past several orders its been 'When are you going to release the Grymn Spec Ops mini in metal?'

Strangly, the backpack is optional but personally I think they look incomplete without the pack. I only had to buy one for these guys though, as I had gotten one as a freebee on a prior order.

Its my favorite Grymn by far (although it doesn't fit aesthetically with my Grymn army at all). As its a resin master, it costs 10 British pounds, or about $15ish dollars (plus shipping) for a tiny little (although really fucking cool) Grymn. Yeah-no. As much as I love that mini, I simply couldn't justify it. Especially as if it was released in metal it's cost would be anywhere from half, to one third of the resin cost.

Thus on my recent order, I once again asked for it to be released in metal, and once again they fell behind on a timely shipping dispatch, and ya know what? They sent me a FREE Grymn Spec Ops mini!!! My order was a smidge over $20 US, so they almost doubled it with this freebee! How fucking cool is that? Hell, that little Grymn was more than I've ever gotten for free from GW after 20+ years of buying their minis and paints.

As such, I posted a pic with a big thank you post on their FB page! Free minis, sales, listening to their customers (though in all honesty I never expected this response) and is it any wonder why Hasslefree is my favorite mini company?

****

Oh, and for anyone looking for an Ork vs. Ork Battle Report, sorry but I haven't waded thru all of the photos from Friday yet. Check back on Thursday.

YT-1300 Conversion and repaint WIP

o/

ooh...I might have to build one of these for myself!

Project #2 during my week of near death was to work on an extra Millenium Falcon that my buddy Billy had. Previously, I had simply repainted another of his extra Millenium Falcons (how many does he have anyways?) resulting in the YT-1300 I dubbed 'Ol Ironsides' (Billy's father's nickname).

The Ol' Ironsides.

This time however Billy wanted a conversion of some sort, well...specifically the Oota Goota. Sorry pal, but that's a bit above my pay grade. Besides, with a name like that all I could think of is that it would crewed by a bunch of Oompa Loompas, lol!

Why not? There were E.T.s in the prequels...

But come on...how implausible is that? I mean Lando had Nien Nunb by his side and seriously how far off is he from an oompa?

Anyways...back on topic, my only previous YT-1300 conversion was my own, my beloved Scarlet Harlot:

The Scarlet Harlot.

Starting off, I cut out the corridor to the cockpit (and the cockpit as well). As I was half dead, I forgot to take WIP pics of that, or pics of cutting off the front of the ship to reposition the cockpit there. It looks pretty good thus far though to be honest I apparently should have had a sharper blade, as my cuts were a bit rough.

No more nasty port-side blind spot! Now there's all sorts of blind spots!

Doesn't look so bad here, but...

Oh well, it'll have to do I suppose. Below you can see its been primed black and has its first layer of gray drybrushed on. Several more layers are coming and...some sort of color scheme after that. Dunno what exactly, but I'll figure it out eventually.

...the first layer of dry-brushing makes it look kinda...ugly. Sad face.

A Wet Willie and a rant...

As it turns out, it was a good thing that my game with Neverness had already been postponed, because I was yet again struck down by illness this past week resulting in a fairly unpleasant 4-day weekend. My beloved Wolfy and I have been sick more or less for the ENTIRE month of January it seems and we're all too happy to be done with this infernal month!

That said, stuck at home and all on my own on Thursday and Friday, I got a fair bit of hobbying in...well, in between the frequent 2ish hour naps, and all of the coughing, snotting and general malaise. Bereft of games to talk about this week due to the aforementioned illness, instead this week's 2 posts will be about what I did as I staved off death...

For the first project I finished was my Khurasan APC for my (as yet still unused) Gruntz army: The Buffet Assault Group. Armed only with a medium grenade launcher in the turret, this is really just an APC rather than an IFV. Still, it painted up nicely and I'm quite happy with it. With this model's completion, all I have left to paint for Gruntz is my Commander's mech, a mortar team, and the in-progress vending bot.

Sorry for the wicked glare. 

*****

Ah yes, their adoring fan base...

Also, whilst half dead, I made my weekly stop by the BoLS to see if they had anything of interest. As usual I was disappointed, but still I had to comment on their 3rd, carbon copy post in about 24 hours about the new Karate-Kid Wulfen. Seriously, it had nothing new at all offer over what the prior two near identical posts had! Its such a shame that what was once the premiere 40k/mini gaming blog is now just a 'click-bait' website.

Speaking of, how does one unfollow Spikey Bits's blog? When I log into blogger, my blog update feed shows:

Spikey Bits
Spikey Bits
Spikey Bits
Spikey Bits
Spikey Bits
Spikey Bits
Somebody actually has a post then more of:
Spikey Bits
Spikey Bits
Spikey Bits
Spikey Bits

Yes, it seems that not content to spam the living shit out of BoLS with his mindless garbage, his own page is even worse! (with the exception of Sundays it seems, I guess he's at church...) Yet looking on the page, I see the followers listed nowhere, keeping me from unfollowing the accursed thing!