Man at work...

Just a little post to show I am still about....

*ahem*

A quick update, I have not been very active recently for various reasons.  The foremost is because the bulb in my light blew, and I am waiting a replacement to arrive; so no painting.  My current painting project is Mannfred Von Carstien, the older version.  This guy:

Where does it go...?

Well, I am sure you'll all have noticed that I have not posted much, this last week I have not had any internet access; a slight problem with our connection.  This has now been finished, as you might have gathered.  What have I been up to?

I now have a job, finally.  Working in a warehouse making plastic items, it isn't a bad job.  I have shift work though, so for this week I am on earlies (6am-2pm) and next week I will switch to lates (2pm-10pm) and then back again etc.  This does mean that I will only be able to get a game in ever other week, which sucks but is better than nothing.  For some reason the guys at the group believes me to be a 'rules guru', and keep asking me questions.  It is odd considering that I have probably played less games than they have. But is quite cool still. =D  Life down in the south is quite cool.  It is a nice place, I have been to Canterbury a couple of times, it is pretty and the local area matches it.  I am yet to make many friends down here but I am working on it.  Other than this I am getting on with painting, along with playing on the X-Box some.  I have recently finally picked up Red Dead Redemption and Final Fantasy XIII.  I am yet to play RDR but I will do.  It looks fun.  I am not a huge fan of the GTA series but this is different.  It's COWBOYS.  I am loving FF13 so far, but the combat system is getting some use to. 

Well.  Painting wise I have finished my 16 warriors, hopefully getting pictures up tomorrow or later today.  I will discuss these more in detail there.  I have now also undercoated my cannon and crew, these will be going on a base of some kind.  I have also planned out small lists for various projects I want to do.  One of these is to touch up my orks, mainly add some detail work to them.  The problem is that when the squads gets close it can be rather hard to spot who is with who if they are all similarly armed - ie 2 slugga or shoota squads next to one another.  So, my plan is to go back and add some form of squad identifier to them.  Something like different coloured dags or checks on shoulders or cloth etc.  Something obvious that can be spotted in the confusion of melee and so forth. 

Almost...

And talking of orks.  I got an actual game with them yesterday.  Yes.  A game!  My first one at this gaming group and first since the beginning of August.  This was Capture and Control against a Chaos Marine force.  He had; 2 squads of berzerkers, one had Kharn leading it.  A small squad of plague marines.All mounted in rhinos  Two obliterators, a vindicator and a daemon prince with.... yes.  Lash.  In return I flooded the board with green.  This was pretty much all I have painted.  2x 20 shootas. 2x 12 sluggas in trukks, 8 nobs and a warboss, 2x rokkit trakks. And 13 lootas.

His objective was pretty much centre of his deployment, mine was kept back and aptly was placed in an ork village.  I won't go blow by blow, but it was very close.  Some highlights were my nob squad and his kharn led 'zerkers battering each to hell before kharn got smooshed.  His daemon prince charging my 20 boy squad alone, killing a few before getting charged by the warboss and remaining nob.  Who then caused only a few wounds with their claws before the weight of 20+ boyz attacks pounded him into mangled flesh.  The game stood on a knife edge as to whether I could contest his objective or not.  Mine was safe.  He was left with only a obliterator and a handful of plague marines to defend it.  I struggled to find units big enough to weather the storm and in the end we had a trukk and a trakk sat on it.  He JUST managed to take out both and stop a small squad of boys (at this point about four left) from sneaking onto it in the final turn.  It was great fun and very close.

Looking at it, I have learnt that the orks are OK in combat.  They win by virtue of weight of attacks, not hard hitting ones.  And they HAVE to assault to do damage.  I2 and S3 is not the best combination in tandem with a 6+ save.  The nobz are pretty good, they hit hard and have lots of attacks.  I need to be a bit more thrifty with the wargear options for them to make the most out of wound allocation.  The warboss performed OK, fluffed a fair few of his attacks though.  The lootas performed well as usual, getting some nice shots off and making the daemon prince keep his head down.  I also need to be more careful with the placement of my transports.  Two out of the three - including the nobz trukk - got taken care of quite quickly.  The last, I should have really tried to keep it hidden so I could have gone for a last turn boost for their objective.  Otherwise, I think it went OK.  I need more practice, but it was rather enjoyable.  I am considering next time, dropping three lootas and taking a single suicidal deffkotta with rokkits for outflanking and pot shots at vehicles. 

Finally, I think I might need to get a new carry case.  the one I have at the moment is good - A figures in Comfort case - but is rather soft and I fear the layers get knocked about a bit and in turn I have many orcs with broken arms or have come off the bases.  This will depend on money and so forth, but hopefully in the future I can see about this. 

A quick update

Right so, since the last update I have moved half the length of England and now am living in the seaside town of Broadstairs in Kent.  It's not bad.  We are yet to get the internet connected, however there are a bunch of networks that we can connect to and use (and more are legally done!).  I still lack most of my stuff, that arrives a week on saturday, so no painting just yet.  However, I have assembled a number of dwarfs, namely - 16 warriors with hand weapons, 16 thunderers and a cannon (all kindly donated by PapaJJ in a very gentlemanly give away  he had on his blog).  Some of these have been very slightly converted.  Like the warriors all have axes - started off accidentally but looks good - some of which are converted from great weapons and some small changes to the command and such.  The thunderers are just a normal unit, much like the cannon.  So I have stuff to paint when it all arrives. 

I also went to the local gaming group, just to see what it was like.  It's small, but there seem to be a nice bunch there.  Hopefully I can make some friends with these guys and get some actual gaming done!  In addition to this, I am trying to add or write my dwarf fluff to give it character.  So far it is not that good, but I am just trying to get down the basic structure and build a better one on top of that.