The Spawn of Tiamat

We played more 36AP HOTT last night. Until Peter arrived the only armies available were mine, so Geoff decided to take the Weird Reich, whilst I used my Sumerian mythological Spawn of Tiamat, with allied elements from Asag and the Stone Allies (hence all of the rocks).

Tiamat attacked - she's the big dragon in the middle, although she's classed as a Magician.

The strike-force in the centre - bull-centaurs, scorpion-men and Tiamat's consort, Qingu in his battle-cart.

A desperate fight ensued all along the line. On my right the various chaos creatures and rocks (Beasts) rolled over the Nazi robots and Death's Head troops, leaving Adolph to move over and defend the flank pretty much on his own.

This he did in style. Seeing off a number of potentially fatal attacks before Tiamat's inability to effectively command that flank, due to distance, became an issue.

In the centre was a battle of the Behemoths - giant robot vs giant boulders.

Tiamat kept a close eye on the proceedings. Too close; at one stage she was in danger of being squashed by the recoil of her allied boulders.

She moved, closer to her consort.

Slowly Tiamat's forces whittled down the Nazis, and the defeat of their battle-robot was enough to break their army.

Meanwhile Peter and Dave played a game using Peter's Greek historical/mythological armies.

I then found myself facing Peter's Greek two-point terror; a mix of Spears, Shooters, Warband and Knights, with one Flyer. No 'special' elements at all.

The battle-lines didn't manage to stay straight for very long.

The bull-centaurs attacked some Greek hoplites, sweeping them away, then attacked the Greek general.

Meanwhile Tiamat's spawn - Hordes - prepared to defend a hill against the Greek left. Tiamat's left (not pictured) found itself stymied against a wall of hoplites after spending far too long trying to defeat their supporting archers.

Tiamat found herself fighting the Greek general.

The spawn were swept off the hill. But Tiamat killed the Greek general to take the game.

The Spawn of Tiamat proved to be an interesting army at 36AP, with loads of Beasts and some nice support. It's not a solid army, and is fairly impetuous, but was entertaining to use.

Ralph and JohnG played Battlegroup Kursk, using 20mm tanks on a very open table - Russian T34s and T70s against Tigers in a village. I'm sure Ralph will be providing his own write-up at some stage though.

And he DID!

The First Bike

I have started painting some of my Ramshackle resin bikes this week (in parallel with bits for a HOTT army, which is why nothing is progressing fast; trying to do two projects at once). Anyway, after a couple of initial steps - white drybrush undercoat on the dark grey resin, followed by a brown undercoat, then a base colour for the bike - I decided to fast-track one of the bikes and see how they'd finish up.

Here it is:

I'll be giving it a dry-brush with some browns to add dust and dirt - how much I do will depend on my mood; it's always a balance between the thing looking weathered and covering up detail and colour.

I also have to decide what to do about the base.

Here's the bike with a car. As Catherine pointed out, the figure is in scale, but the bike itself seems a bit small - the others are on much the same scale. The base does help increase the bike's presence next to the vehicle, however.

Ant-Man

We went to see 'Ant-Man' last weekend, and all enjoyed it. It was nice to see a minor Marvel character on the big-screen and in a film which felt like one of the old 'Marvel Premiere' comics rather than the more mainstream titles. The problem with the 'Iron Man' or 'Avengers' films is that they are based on titles which have long continuous runs with many stories, but in a film you can really only get one, Hence you lose one of, to me, the important aspects of the comics themselves. It's like only seeing the special double-sized 100th or 200th or whatever issue of the comic, rather than getting the whole continuity.

Anyway, whilst not a perfect film it did capture the essence of a smaller-scale (no pun intended) character without their own comic, and even the fact that the hero had a history before the film started.

Inevitable I decided that a Supercrew write-up was in order. It has some minor spoilers, but I'm assuming that anyone interested has probably been to see the film now.

Ant-Man (Scott Lang)

1 - Ant Control
2 - Shrinking
3 - The Pym Particles

Reroll (Pym Particles) - Go sub-atomic
Change roll to '5' (Ant Control) - Fly, Anthony!
Effect 2 (Shrinking) - Rapid size-changes

The Ant-Control covers all of the things he can do with individual ants or swarms. The Anthony trick covers their use as transport (in Supercrew a trick can only be used to get the bonus once per game, but can always be used as part of a narration - so Ant-Man can always fly on the back of Anthony, but only gets a bonus for it once). Shrinking is the main ability, with the trick being rapid changes in size - growing into a punch or jumping through a keyhole and landing at full-size. Finally the Pym Particles ability represents the extra gadgets Ant-Man has in the film, which are used in emergencies, plus his own skills as an engineer being used to modify the suit and push its capabilities.

Action At Sidi Rezegh

We played Blitzkrieg Commander last night; a small game set in the Western Desert in late 1941.

Ralph and I took the German attackers. Mostly Pz IIIs, with a few Pz IVs, some AT guns and some infantry

Bryan and John were the British. Most of their force had to enter the table, although did so from the start. Their main force consisted of Crusader tanks.

The British also had a force dug in around an airfield - infantry and 2pdr AT guns, supported by a few A13 tanks.

Terrain was minimal, and both sides took advantage of the ridge-lines.

It made for easy photography though.

Ralph used our AT guns very aggressively, leaving the British having to attack them equally aggressively with the A13s in order to draw fire away from the main force of Crusaders.

The Crusader advance stalled, however, and was outflanked by the German armour.

More German armour came in from the front, and the Crusaders burned.

The British tanks n the right of the picture managed to inflict casualties on their German counterparts out in the open, but the other German armoured wing worked its way into their rear (albeit slowly) and knocked them out.

We called the game at that point, with the airfield defenders now unsupported and likely to withdraw.

Another run of this scenario a few months ago had seen the attacking Germans stall and get cut to ribbons by the advancing British armour, so it was interesting to see a complete reversal of fortune in this game. Every game of BKC we play end up with a discussion about the randomness of the command rules, and I think we'll discuss the balance between being able to do what you want and having some uncertainty for as long as we continue to game.

Bikes Galore

Nearly three months ago I ordered some post-apocalypse motorcycles from Ramshackle Miniatures. Their website did warn me that, owing to the figures being cast on demand and the use of cheaper postage rates (free to Australia from the UK - how good is that?) the delivery time could be slow, but after nearly two months I began to think something might be wrong, so I chased up the order. It appears that there had been an administrative oversight and my order hadn't been processed, but it was dealt with very nicely, sent and today it arrived.

I ordered their '15 Random Bikes' deal which seemed good value; they do 11 different bikes and I wasn't too fussed about what I got. What I actually got, by way of compensation for the delay, were two complete sets of 11 bikes - 22 vehicles in total. So thanks very much Ramshackle!

I took a few very quick pictures:

There's a mixture of bikes and trikes in there, most with one rider, but a few with pillion or sidecar passengers. Weaponry seems to range from the odd pistol through to pintle-mounted MGs.

The car's for size comparison. They are slightly smaller than I thought they'd be - a large 15mm - but I think they'll look OK once they're painted and based.

HOTT On Barsoom

It was a quiet night for the Gong Garage Gamers this week, with just a couple of games of HOTT on the go. And I failed to take any pictures of one of them

This was me using the Red Martians of Helium against a Green Martian horde commanded by Ralph. We both ended up inconvenienced by the terrain.

We both managed some small successes in the centre, which put our respective generals into close proximity.

John Carter directed some of Helium's aerial navy to support him, slew the Green Martian jeddak and from then on the game was pretty much up for the Green Martians.

The other game saw Peter and John using Greeks against some kind of Numidian/Carthaginian mashup. The Greeks lost when their general was killed as well, although a Carthaginian elephant came close to squashing a significant chunk of its own army.

Nazis On Skaro

Once the Weird Nazis invented an inter-dimensional portal, the whole universe was at their mercy

"Skaro. That looks like a good place to invade", said Hitler one day (except that he would have said it in German with English subtitles. Or would have been dubbed.)

So an invasion force was assembled, and Skaro was invaded.

You can't go wrong with decent air-support.

Ah! Local inhabitants. How dangerous can they be?

They have air-support too. In fact the big saucer is the relay for ...

... their command centre!

The stage is set for a battle between the evil Nazis and the peace-loving inhabitants of Skaro. Scouts report that the inhabitants refer to themselves as 'Daleks'.

"Sounds Slavic," says Adolf. In German.

The Daleks have mercenaries, who move to occupy some rubble.

Meanwhile the Nazi air-force moves in on the Dalek right flank.

An aerial battle ensues. A Valkyrie holds off the Dalek anti-gravity platforms ...

... until the Flying Saucer comes in to assist, downing one of the Daleks.

The Valkyrie falls to the other Dalek, however, and the aerial battle continues. The Daleks had artillery support as well, but it's not pictured since it actually had no material effect on the battle.

Things got desperate for the Dalek's air units, but they held off the invaders.

Meanwhile on the other flank a Nazi Werewolf Battalion moved to attack the mercenaries. They were driven off.

The Dalek's Command Saucer entered the fight, outclassing the smaller Nazi saucer. Its shields were even proof against the dark sorcery of the Fuhrer himself.

An overview of the battle. The aerial engagement still dominated the centre. The Nazi airship played little part in the engagement.

The Nazis committed one of their Death's Head Battalions to the support the fight, but the Dalek's Command Saucer saw it off.

More casualties for the Nazis, as the Dalek's mercenaries finished off the werewolves.

The Nazi saucer was also shot down.

The Fuhrer sacrificed another virgin in order to power a magical assault on the Command Saucer, but still couldn't breach its defences.

A Nazi success - the horrific Demon Panzer clawed its way through some of the mercenaries, feeding on body and soul. Yum!

Unfortunately the Fuhrer was now surrounded and exterminated.

The main Dalek line was not engaged, and its only action was a small advance in order to pin Nazi troops and prevent them coming to the aid of their commander.

Skaro was saved from the rules of evil. The Daleks were free to live in peace.

I can't believe I hadn't fought a 'Hordes of the Things' battle between my Weird WWII Germans and the Daleks before. So this was it. The Nazis had a few chances at gaining an advantage early on, and Hitler's sorcery was dangerous enough to threaten the Dalek's command saucer a couple of times. So the battle could have gone either way - in the end the Daleks got the upper hand and the Nazis couldn't hold them.

Update:

Here are the army lists:

Weird WWII Germans

1 x Magician General (Hitler)
1 x Behemoth (Demon Panzer)
1 x Airboat (Airship)
2 x Flyers (Valkyrie and Flying Saucer)
2 x Warband (Death's Head Legion)
2 x Beasts (Werewolf Battalion)
1 x Lurker (Summoned Nasties)

Daleks

1 x Airboat General (Command Saucer)
2 x Flyers (Daleks on Flying Disks)
2 x Shooters (Humanoid Mercenaries)
5 x Blades (Daleks)
1 x Artillery (Special Weapons Dalek)