Overpriced miniatures

Somewhere in the void (or upstairs at Battlefront Games, depending on your level of imagination), the outskirts of a Relthozan patrol fleet and a Terran one encounter each other. Both sides called for the rest of their respective fleets and tried to stay alive until they arrived. The mission was Escalating Engagement, which I had never played before. It's a corner deployment, with basic "kill everything" rules, except that at least 1/3 of your points must be in outflank reserve, including all Tier 1 models. Since my Relthoza patrol fleets tend to run kind of top heavy, that was a bit of a concern. For this engagement, I went with maximum Short Ranged Spacecraft (SRS), where every squadron was carrying at least three. My admiral was my classic battleship, upgraded with extra SRS wings (six bombers), two extra point defense, increased assault points, and corrosive primary weapons. I also had a carrier with corrosive, five bombers, and three interceptors. Tier two consis...

I got to play this game a couple of times last night. While we're still not up to pulling out all the stops, I got a few turns in of an 850 point game that included terrain,wings / SRS, and the battle log. TAC cards and actually having time to finish the game are next! Things I learned: Massed Corrosive is effective, although it's still possible for an enemy cruiser to make all three 4+ repair rolls when it by all rights should have died! Stealth fields and cloaks make parking at the board edge an effective way of staying alive, if a rather boring one. Also, there's no point in hiding behind Impeding terrain while you do this. Don't spread out the cruisers so much that the two on the edges can't link PD with each other. I found a rules ambiguity that the forums were unable to answer definitively. A squadron in reserve can enter via "Flanking Maneouvre" (blasted British spelling!), but it's not clear whether it gets to activate the turn it arr...

My rulebook (and free battlestation) arrived recently for Firestorm Armada 2.0. I have not had the opportunity to play a game of it yet, but I've spent some quality time with the rulebook. A few things have been taken out, or at least removed as a default rule for all ships, but the majority of the changes have been for greater depth and complexity. Here are some of the more noteworthy changes. More weapon types. This is the big one, as a lot has changed. Previously, all weapons had 8 inch range bands, and they were either torpedoes or not. Now, you have Primary (no bonuses), Beam (reroll ones at close range), Scatter (no penalty for firing at small targets), Kinetic (two choices on the critical hit table), and Nuclear (damages nearby ships if a critical it is scored on the target). Range band increments are 8, 10, or 12 inches, depending on the weapon type. And that's just the direct weapons! Indirect weapons include Torpedoes (basically unchanged), Mines (can now link fi...

As usual I didn't take notes at the time, but I had a good game of 40k last Friday at Battlefront. The mission was Big Guns Never Tire on the diagonal deployment. My opponent had a fairly well-rounded list of one Maulerfiend, one ranged version of the Maulerfiend (whatever that's called), one Helldrake, a Land Raider filled with Possessed Space Marines, a champion of some kind with the Black Mace and some truly nasty close combat abilities, and a couple of squads of Noise Marines. His warlord was basically the Chaos version of the Techmarine. My list included two foot-slogging squads of fire warriors, a third one in a devilfish, my old friend Longstrike in an ionhead, a Skyray, a sniper team of one marksman and 5 drones, Aun'Shi the Ethereal, and a Sunshark bomber. Crisis suits and markerlights consisted of two squads: an HQ with missile pods, and burst cannons, and an Elite squad of plasma rifles and fusion blasters. Both of them had 4 marker drones and 2 shield drones. ...

Shortly after 6th Edition rules were released, I saw a way to fix what I saw as one of the Tau's primary weaknesses: a lack of resilient scoring units. Since they are Battle Brothers with Eldar (and, might as well admit it, I like the Eldar), I decided to try for the scoring Wraithguard blob for an ally. Since I've never been thrilled with the official Wraithguard model, and I was even less excited about what the blasted things cost, I decided to build my own. I still haven't quite finished them, but the effect is recognizable. I'll have pictures eventually, but basically I took Bloodletter legs and put the torso on them backwards (which required a fair amount of Green Stuff and cutting off the part of  it that keys into the legs) so they're standing erect rather than hunched over like a standard Bloodletter. Arms are mostly Kroot with the blades cut off the guns and the barrel shortened, then whatever cone-shaped bitz I could find attached to the end. The head is t...

Nicely run tournament this weekend at Grandiosity in Norton Shores. I particularly liked the bit where each round one extra unit from a different force org slot was made a scoring unit. Lessons learned from dusting off my green and silver Tau: Commander Longstrike is even nastier with an ion cannon than with a rail gun. I wish I could have 4 of him! The skyray markerlights are pretty underwhelming without Fast. I can park it in cover somewhere, but if it's just a seeker missile carrier I can get those elsewhere. Sniper drones have a lesser version of the skyray's problem. You have these nice jetpack gun platforms, but they have to stay in unit coherency with their heavy-weapon infantry spotters, meaning you have to put them in the right place at deployment. I almost wish there was a reliable way to kill off the spotter and pass the drones to a drone-controller commander! And yes, it IS possible to have too many markerlights! The commander-blob is very effective, but t...

After painting my Winter Argus from Privateer Press's Hordes game and being surprised at how well it turned out, I decided to duplicate the scheme on two more models, but document it this time. The models in question are Laris, the companion of Kaya the Moonhunter (Epic Kaya), and the pewter  white-metal version of the Pureblood Warpwolf. The Pureblood is now available as part of a resin kit that can make any of the Warpwolves, but it's nowhere near as distinctive as the older sculpt. For the record, this is the only known case where I prefer a metal model to a plastic or resin one! Had I realized that they are supposed to be white, I might have chosen a different primer than black, but with a lot of patience it can be done. The first step after the priming was to paint everything but the deepest shadows in Testors Model Master Gunship Gray, as shown here. According to my notes, the next thing I did was to paint white over the gray, but I don't believe them. I think...