Nightstalker DZ Ravager

Test model complete for the NS DZ/Firefight Butchers and Ravagers. There'll be some minor variations on the subsequent models but the overall colour scheme will be the same. Now just a few more to paint and importantly - base!

Hush, don't have nightmares....

Something scary this way comes

After a completely unjustified amount of time thinking about colour schemes I have finally got round to putting paint to plastic for my Nightstalker Deadzone for which in time will fill out for a Firefight force.

Spectres

Scarecrow 

Reaper

Firefight project

 My first dip into Mantic's Sci-Fi universe sees me trying to work out colour schemes for Firefight/Deadzone Nightstalkers - surely it shouldn't be this hard.

I think I'll go with these schemes, give or take, for the Scarecrows and Spectres but there's plenty of room for technical improvements.

I started a Reaper but got completely disillusioned so he(it) is marinating in Dettol so I can start again - #TorturedArtist

Multi-Shambles

As well as getting on with the last of the skeletons for the two hordes I had a productive week both game and painting wise. I added some more reinforcements to the Undead in the shape of a couple of extra mounted chaps, another Necromancer, a Barrow Wight, and a foot character.

The Barrow Wight is Mantic's official resin model from the Vanguard set. It is an interesting unit with it's special ability, large number of attack dice and being Pathfinder. As I said before this is a unit that could really benefit from a mount which would give it an 18" charge range when using the special.

The other foot model is from the Fireforge Kickstarter set and I painted him up to see how the GW contrast Yellow looks over Gold. As with the Orange over Bronze I used on some of the other models it really gives the colour a lift and extra depth so I can see further experimentation of contrasts over metallics being done.

He could also be used as a Zombie Orc if I decide to go heavily down the rout of fielding mass zombies. Having groups of two zombies being led by a zombie Orc would give them all CS(3) on a group assault which would be rather nasty.

Finally some shots of everything I have painted so far for the Vanguard company, which is easily the largest Vanguard force I have. I have bought some movement trays from Warbases so I can field these models as units in Kings of War as well.

 
Talking of Vanguard I met up with John again at the Old Duke for an introductory Vanguard session. John liked the look of the Nightstalkers so I took them along for him to play whilst I gave the Undead a test drive.

We played at 150 points which for the Undead gave me: 1 * Necromancer, 1 * Werewolf, 3 * Skeleton Archers, 2 * Zombies, 2 * Revenants, & 1 * Soul Reaver.

The first game we played was Portal which turned into a mass-brawl near the portal with John taking an early lead despite having two models sucked into the void which I was never able to make up.

In both games I was to suffer the loss of my Necromancer which is very bad news for the Undead as it means the company auto-breaks and as soon a model goes down it dies rather than having a chance to stay alive.

This probably means it is best to try and fit two command models into the list even at low points but that obviously means you miss out on something else. In the case of this list it would probably be the Werewolf.

That would be a big loss as he's an absolute melee beast and if you can get him onto something it will likely be him that walks away from the fight rather than the opponent.

The second game we played was Kill the Bard with the game being pretty tight at the start with us both joining forces to kill the Bard before a melee broke out over the dropped Bards Lute. I was able to come away with the Lute but again lost my Necromancer and then the Lute carrier. Fortunately the Werewolf was able to kill off John's leader (Shade) and then pass the Nerve check not to break and then pickup and hold the Lute.

So two good games in one afternoon and John went away looking to buy some more Nightstalkers (I had already sold him my spares) and a couple more games arranged for December.

On Friday Mick and I played our first proper Blood & Plunder scenario using the Break Points, these are gained for losing certain amounts of troops and not claiming objectives. Most of the piccies did not come out well but the Spanish came away winners after managing to shoot away a fair portion of the British and to keep them from contesting two of the three  objective markers.

On the Deep Blue Sea

This week Mick & I took to the waves in our first naval battle for Blood & Plunder. The rules treat ships as structures that can move, so all the earlier rules we had learnt in the land battle still applied and we 'just' needed to add the ship movement on top. This took a while to explain but once we got playing it actually flowed very well and we got stuck in and had a good game.

For this game I stacked up on the guns for the ships but you could equally build a boarding focused list as the rules include the ability to grapple the opposition.

Mick's early cannon fire proved to be very effective with him scoring multiple lucky hits which left my ship leaking and in need of repair. Fortunately I was able to effect a speedy repair and stopped my ship for sinking below the waves.

At one point my cannons decided to work and I briefly started a fire on Mick's ship but he was able to task some sailors to put that out in short order.

By the end of the evening the casualties where about even but my ship had taken much more damage in the fire-fight. One thing we did find out was that musket fire is still pretty effective even when firing to and from a ship so taking good musket troops is useful in a ship combat game.

Last week along with visiting Mantic HQ for their open weekend we also played out the final game of our KoW v2 campaign. Having won the majority of the big battles I was the attacker and Stu brought along his castle which his Salamanders occupied.

I won't repeat the details of the battle which can be found over here but I committed a reasonable strong force to attack the castle with a view to taking down the front wall with my massed artillery and then put everything else opposite the forces outside the castle.

The Salamanders had a lot of points inside the castle so I was able to outnumber those on the outside and made good inroads into killing them off.

I was also lucky with the artillery and managed to take the wall down but I lacked the strength to clear the courtyard against the massed defenders.
The game ended in a draw with neither side looking likely to be able to gain a victory, a good way to end a keenly contested campaign and see off the old armies in style.

With the Herd being the old army that means work has been continuing on the new one!
I'm into the home run with the Undead and have been busy getting the Skeleton Hordes painted up. At 30 models a unit these take a fair old bit of painting but I have managed 1 1/3 Hordes so far.

The infantry are all Mantic models and they have a lot of character especially considering how cheap they are, so it hasn't been a drag to paint them so far.

The plan is to glue them into place and then level things off with some polyfilla & paint before applying the cracked earth effect.

A Tale of Two Forts: Capture the Giant

The final KoW: Vanguard game of the campaign saw both sides trying to subdue a Giant ready to use in the siege game which will round off the campaign. The board was pretty much setup from the night before when Mick and I played our first Blood & Plunder game so had a tropical feel.

Three victory points are awarded each turn to the side which scores the most wounds on the giant with one VP being awarded for killing support/command/spellcaster models on the opposing side. The giant makes a random move each turn after the first can cause damage to anyone in it's path.

The first turn saw my faster troops get uncontested attacks on the Giant so I got a quick 3 VP's.

But disaster then struck as it rampaged through almost all my army knocking down some of my troops and causing six wounds, this was a sign of a rough battle to come. I did however manage to score the most wounds again.

The Giant then reversed it's course and rampaged through my forces again this time killing a Phantom and causing more havoc.

I also started to lose models as my damaged forces got picked off by the untouched Basileans, once you start getting outnumbered in Vanguard then you tend to die pretty quickly.

So in turn three the Basileans got the most wounds and also killed a couple of support models so the scores where 6-5 to the Nightstalkers but with the NS severely weakened.

The next turn saw even more Nightstalkers killed and the Basileans again scored the most hits so with no hope of rescuing a draw or victory I conceded defeat.

Not a great last outing for the Nightstalkers who had previously proved very hard to kill but this time I lost over half the Warband, luckily it was the last game so I didn't need to do all those rolls on the inter-game wound table.

A Tale of Two Forts: Pillage

The fourth big battle in the ongoing campaign was Pillage which sees 4 + D3 objectives being placed on the table and then one victory point being awarded for each uncontested objective being held at the end of the game.
The Salamanders had changed their army up again with some shooty chaff making way for melee chaff and the Horde of Primes being replaced by Ancients on foot.
Both sides equipped a caster with Blizzard with the aim of getting some long range wounds on the enemy.

With a concentration of objectives in the centre of the board both sides setup with the heavy hitters front and centre and their faster troops on the same table edge. With the Salamanders taking the first turn to edge up a little the Herd made sure they had gotten into charge range across most of the front.

The open table edge saw a more cautious approach though the Salamander caster with Blizzard managed an impressive 10 hits with its first cast.

The second turn saw the Salamanders take out the Herd chaff and also shoot the Giant Eagles off the board scoring 11 hits with the second Blizzard cast. In turn the Herd got some good charges in and wiped out both of the dangerous mounted Ancients regiments but fail to route anything else. The Nightstalker Doppelgangers finally managed to get a charge in against something tasty and wiped out on regiment on their own.

Both lines had pretty much closed at this point so it settled down into a bit of a grind. I was also feeling rather unwell so didn't really concentrate enough on taking pictures.

The Salamanders had the edge on the grind in the centre but both sides rolled low on nerve tests so it probably went on for a turn longer that required, especially with the Herd rolling two sets of snake eyes in one round.

But whilst that was going on the Herd had cleared their left flank and started to move back into the middle of the table looking to seize control of enough objectives to gain a victory.

As the grind pretty much came to a close with wounds mounting up on both sides the Salamanders held three objectives but the Herd where closing in.

The last turn saw the Herd holding two objectives to the Salamanders one with two being contested so victory went to the Herd.

This means that the Herd lead 3 v 1 in the big battle stakes so we agreed to move straight onto the final Siege game as the next battle. The Herd will be on the offensive so I need to have a look at the best way to knock walls down with the troops I have available. That will probably be the last Kings of War v2 game I get played before v3 hits.