Halo Flashpoint: Master Chief

One bit of painting I have managed over the last couple of weeks is to complete all the models I got for Halo Flashpoint, I now just need to paint up the terrain and objective pieces I got.

These are repeats of models I've already painted so it would allow you to field multiples of the same model and weapon combination, which as we will see could be useful. For these I steered away from the metallic paints and went with the GW contrasts instead.

One model which is different is that of the Master Chief, one of the original Spartans he's normally the hero of any Halo video game I believe.

He has his own special ability which is to be able to use multiple command dice during his activation, normally you can only use one of fire, fight, or move per model each turn. As he gives an extra 3 command dice in addition to the base 2 you could be doing a lot of fighting or shooting each turn with him. Looking at his stats you can see that he's a prime candidate for a ranged weapon pickup during the game and no slouch in melee either with his energy sword.

Whilst he takes up two spaces in your roster you could pair him with two Mk. VII's who each bring 1 extra command dice to give you a potential of 7 command dice each turn. You wouldn't want to be on the receiving end of that I suspect.

Ill Tides: Push

Push / 1500 Points / TK Victory

Arlantrix desperately needed a victory, after a series of humiliating defeats her grip on power had been almost completely eroded. Zor'damos and her famed crew had at first been undefeatable and had threatened to outshine Arlantrix but her fall had also threatened to drag Arlantrix down to the depths along with the Heartseeker. 

Now instead of having to put her faith in the captain and crew of that ship she had instead laboured long and hard to summon forth the most hardy and viscous fighters from within the Void. Creatures that had been bent to her will and would fling themselves against the hated Dwarfs as long as her mental dominance did not waver.

Sycorax and his minions did not seem unduly concerned by the change in the enemies forces and pushed forwards by the arrogance of recent victories advanced steadily towards the Elven lines.

Arlantrix had initially held her forces back to tempt the Dwarves forwards and to try to avoid the worst of the shooting they had to offer but once they had committed themselves forwards her lines swung into action. First to strike where her flying elements with the mighty Goredrake launching itself into the flank of the Dwarven Grotesques. The had rushed forwards and unwisely left their flank open to attack. With a sound like a thunderclap the Goredrake had descended upon them and it's mighty jaws had scattered the feeble Grotesques to the winds. If this wasn't enough bad news for Sycorax then the Phantoms routing half of his Decimators with a single charge was. The once well ordered Dwarven lines now looked very exposed and fragile.

Next to be dispatched where the mighty Golems, these had caused many problems in past battles so Arlantrix was careful to ensure she committed more than one unit to their destruction. They could not stand up to the attentions of both the Impalers and Soulflayers and again a Dwarven unit melted at first contact.  

Now she felt she could not lose this battle as her forces began to rampage through the Dwarven lines.

The Infernox that had proven to be a dangerous foe in the past was at first pinned by the Goredrake and then faithful Khresh on his Soulbane had charged into it's rear to complete the kill.

The Dwarves did still have some fight in them as the Corsairs found to their cost, their charge had failed to scatter the Dwarven foot guards who had in return wiped the skiffs out, but this was of little consequence as the remainder of the Dwarven force was wiped from the battlefield.

And as night fell it was left to a unit of Impalers to inflict the final blow on the Dwarves who they wiped out with a single charge.

 

So, at the end of the fight some prestige had been recovered by Arlantrix and she's gained a much needed victory to turn a worrying trend of losses around. Her decision to side-line Zor'damos had been  vindicated. Now she felt was the time to double down on her advantage and launch a full scale, winner takes all assault. The Heartseeker and her crew would have a chance to redeem themselves and Arlantrix felt confident that she could wipe out Sycorax, his Dwarves, and anyone stupid enough to do a deal with them all in one fell strike.

Next time : 3000 points KoW and 300 points Armada at the same time!

DAK: Platoon Support

Since my last DAK post I've been working on the platoon support elements to back up the infantry and give them some more punch. I'm also rather under the weather at the moment so I'm not entirely sure what is going on with the colouration, it does look rather desert'y' though.

First up we have the scout section with their Kubelwagon, as with all the elements in this post they have a direct counterpart in the Commonwealth list. So we have three chaps packed into the Kubelwagon which is much smaller than the Jeep who are packing an LMG.

Then we have a medium mortar ready to rain down fire on the enemy. In the desert campaign the effects of artillery and mortars where amplified by the hardness of the ground (much of it was a thin layer of sand over rock) and the lack of objects to hide behind.

Whilst the German LMG is better than it's Commonwealth counterpart the MMG version has no such superiority. It still throws out 4D8 a shot though so can't be ignored.

Finally we have a PAK 38 light anti-tank gun. This should be strong enough to worry any armour we deploy onto the table. It was also somewhat easier to put together than the 6PDR the Indians are fielding.

Oh, and some spare crew!

Ill Tides: Icy Waters

 Armada/Icy Waters/ 250 points/ Abyssal Dwarf win

The Dwarves were jubilant.  The Elves were reeling with a bloody nose from Sycorax’s punch and now they had the chance to place their iron heeled boots squarely on the neck of the craven pirates.  

The mean hovels of the port were visible to the anonymous admiral, such a place was of little value even to those wretched scum whose livelihood depended on the water lapping at the shores.  Until now.  With the Elves seemingly in disarray the Squat Menace could compound their misery by slowly throttling them from the sea too…..The Twilight Kin - no fools - were only too aware of the danger and would look to thwart Sycorax’s strategem and damn the hubristic Ironcaster once and for all.  He was getting too big for his ridiculously heeled ‘clogs’ - if that were even possible for one so improbably short!

They were far north and the icy wind stabbed the lungs with every arrested intake of short breath, as if a Snow-Troll were ramming a nailed club down the throat…..This would be far from literal Plain Sailing the admiral smiled to himself, quite proud of his little quip.  These waters appeared relatively still with little swell but were dogged by icebergs which seemingly materialised out of nowhere to rip open the hull of any unsuspecting vessel and doom its crew to frigid oblivion.

The dwarven fleet approached from the south-east - the tried and tested Decimator, Angkor, Arbiter of Pain, Infernox and Katuschan.  The Elves were on an axis West-North-West,  a Butcher, Soulbane, Butcher, Impaler and a Goredrake to buzz the Dwarven ships from the metallic-blue skies.

As is often the way of things the Decimator led the Dwarven line heading for the Butcher at the North-West end of the Elven line despite the Soulbane bearing down on her.  The Dragon-Fire crew clearly fancied their chances against the vaunted ships of the elven fleet.  This foolhardy zeal was bordering on recklessness……However Ariagful’s liquid fire shot forth from the Dragon’s mouth and the Butcher was aflame!  The Decimator had scored a substantial hit as the Butcher was manoeuvring to try and ensnare the plucky Dwarf vessel. 

This would be her last and only action as the Butcher grappled her, a cruel punishment would be meted out for this insolence.  To make certain that Ariagful’s fire would be extinguished for good the Soulbane grappled the hapless Decimator on her port side - they would crush this upstart into matchsticks.  The Decimator’s crew fought valiantly but were overwhelmed by the sheer numbers brought to bear by the behemoths of the Elven fleet.  The Decimator was to have the final laugh, albeit from beyond the Watery Grave.  Having despatched the crew of the floating dwarven flame thrower the Butcher was casting about for her next victim however her crew expended so much effort putting the dwarves to the cutlass they had not seen the fire creeping towards the main magazine before it was too late and the illustrious Butcher was rent asunder as if Halpi’s Rift itself had opened beneath her,  The Soulbane,still grappled to the vanquished Decimator, was blasted with debris and deadly detritus and while it was severely battered it was not destroyed and continued to pose a lethal threat to the dwarven line.  

Meanwhile the Infernox and Arbiter of Pain bore down on the second Butcher.  As she closed the Arbiter of Pain let loose a volley from her prow guns and though damage was not serious the Butcher too found herself ablaze.  This did not deter the Raptor-like vessel harnessing herself to the doughty yet less robust Infernox and an epic struggle ensued.  The strength of the Butcher overcame the crew of the Infernox but not before much slaughter and damage was meted out to both sides.  The Arbiter of Pain sought to skewer the victorious Butcher with ram to her port side which though hit home she was unable to follow up and grapple the fired hulk and found herself passing by the stern of the vessel.  She too used her port side arsenal to good effect combining with the Angkor to whittle away at the Soulbane who was now left alone having witnessed the destruction of the Butcher and Decimator.

The dark pirates were having greater success out to the West.  The Goredrake, with complete control of the skies, swooped and dived first against the Katuschan and combing expertly with the Impaler soon made short work of the irritating flee of a ship at the end of the dwarven line.  He then turned his attention to the Infernox and gave much needed support to the Butcher to see off a more sturdy challenger.  The skies were indubitably under the control of the elves; the seas…..well less so.

The Butcher was not to remain victorious for long and the Arbiter of Pain put her out of her lingering agony as she and the Angkor expertly navigated the by now numerous icebergs which were seemingly multiplying on the approaches to the harbour.  The dwarves were able to make for the harbour and secure the all important port while the remainder of the elvish fleet was rueing grievous misfortune and seeking a sheltered cove to regroup & repair.

Next time : KoW/1500 points/ Push

Embracing Tomorrow

3D printing has slowly been building in popularity in the wargames community as the technology has become easier to use and cheaper over the last few years. The power to produce your own miniatures or terrain has seduced many to dip their toes into what essentially a whole new hobby.

This last week I had a rush of blood to the head (and wallet) and joined the ranks of the 3D printing community. As we already have a resin printer in the family I opted to get a filament printer instead, these are more suited to  making terrain or other large pieces rather than the finer prints produced by resin printers. The printer I opted for is the well regarded Bambu Lab A1 which happened to be on sale and was delivered the next day after ordering on a Sunday. The only small issue was the filament itself which came via a separate delivery a couple of days later. This gave me ample time to put the printer together, a process which took around 45 minutes and was extremely straight forwards.

With it working by heating up a long string of plastic the A1 doesn't have the toxic materials associated with resin printing, but you still want the window open whilst the print jobs are going on.

The reviews I read all pointed out how the A1 was pretty much a plug and play printer with the software working out everything for you so the first things I printed where a tray to catch the waste filament (grey tray on the left of the printer) and then some rocks for our desert campaign.

I left the rocks on the default height setting which lead to some noticeable layering on the top which I've covered with some sand effect paste. If I wanted I could have gone back and reprinted them with a lower layer height, this just adds time onto the print job as it builds the piece up. But as it's unlikely you will be spending much time studying the rock formations (unless the battle is going very badly) I doubt I will. You don't need to do any prep before painting so I stuck them on a base and hit them with the various yellows I've been using so far.

Whilst waiting for the filament I'd also picked up some designs for dirt road sections so I printed out one of the straight sections so see how that looked. This section (and the rocks) needed resizing and again this was very simple to perform in the printer software. 

Now I know this works ok I'll need to print out a load more to create a proper road network. The files include a little clip to join the sections together so they don't get easily knocked apart.

One feature of the A1 bundle I purchased (and it's software) was the ability to load multiple filament spools onto it's holder system and then swap between them as the layers go down. Whilst waiting I also picked up some files for terrain designed to fit in the 3" cubes of a Deadzone / Halo table and thought I'd give this feature a try as well. With the way the filament layers go down it's much better to have a horizontal line of colour than a vertical one as it only has one nozzle and needs to extrude waste filament between changing colours. 

I did have one failure during the print process but fortunately it was almost complete so I still had a useable item. The A1 comes with a built in camera so you can watch (and cancel/pause) your printing from your PC or smartphone. Very handy for keeping an eye on things.

It also come with built in layer settings, with the standard layer height (on the left below) being 0.20mm. You can go down to 0.12mm (on the right) and even 0.08mm, and up to 0.28mm for the fastest and roughest prints.

As things had been going so well I thought I'd throw something hard at it and grabbed a free Stuka file which I scaled up and used the auto-angle and auto-supports buttons to let the software work it all out and then hit print. Five hours later I had a perfectly respectable Stuka to put out on the table to be blown up by the SAS.

All in all I've been very impressed with how easy this has all been. I have more roads to print off and another Stuka or two and then I want to start thinking about a special project to work towards. I've had in my mind for a while a Stalingrad game based on the Deadzone rules, the issue has always been getting the terrain, until now that is.