Stardate: 1001.2356 Location: Surface of Putney Prime Corporal
Grove could almost taste that the Combat Burger now! All he had to do now was
get off this hell planet and back to the space station and he was going
straight to the burger shack for a meal....
***NOTE: Most Pictures Converted back to Color from B&W...I think its better...you?***
Here is a quick break from the Terrain building marathon I've been on...
...today my son talked me into a quick RT-lite game...honestly, it didn't take much convincing.
I let him pick out five figures to be his bad-ass squad (he Chose Chaos Bobba Fett and some Ork boyz with big guns!) and I pulled together some Battle Systems Terrain and an Imperial force to attempt to halt Fett and his minions.
The following bat rep is a...will fill you in on the rest...In a Comic-fied retelling of the harrowing deeds of the day...
After many failed attempts my local gaming crew was finally able to get together to play a game of Rogue Trader 40K last weekend...and we had a ton of fun. I had four players and acted as GM myself and it was about the perfect sized group for the game I had in mind.
For a scenario I fell back on the one that Dustin and I played at OHNW 2015 which was a blast to participate in and turned out to be just as much fun to GM.
Lets get into it!
Background
After several months of fighting aboard the large Space Station (Excon Valderz) that orbits the planet Putney Prime in the Outer Rim Territories, Imperial Forces were finally able to force Ork Radiers led by Narblaz the Nasty to retreat to the planet surface. Here Narblaz regrouped and attempted to salvage something out of his failed mission by exerting control over the planets surface. However, Imperial forces followed him planetside in hopes of eliminating this Ork scourge once and for all.
As you have seen by the flurry of other blog posts and FB posts the Oldhammer in the New World event is done and dusted. It was an epic weekend full of laughs, hard fought battles, bleary eyed warriors...and yes...last minute paint jobs.
But I digress...lets start from the beginning.
If you will recall from my last post...I spent Thursday night enjoying life with my wife and children at the local fair. It was perfect night with lots of fun, and unhealthy food, for all.
Upon returning home around 10pm I set about filling my miniatures case and packing my books and all the sundry things needed for a weekend of dice rolling and miniature talk. It took way longer than expected and I didn't lay my weary head down to rest until well after midnight.
...this made the 6:30am alarm very unwelcome...but this turned out to be one of the better nights sleep that I would have for the whole weekend.
I was out the door and on the road by 8:30am heading south to Pennsylvania. The first leg of my trip took me down familiar roads toward Albany NY, passing along the southern reaches of Lake Champlain, Lake George and the upper portions of the Hudson River. Around Albany I picked up a college radio station that was playing a long uninterrupted set of Grateful Dead tunes and as I listened gleefully to "Sugar Magnolia" and "Box of Rain" I finally started to relax into what was bound to be an epic weekend.
As my journey carried me down along the Lower Hudson River the Grateful Dead started to break up and I switched my listening to my favorite Pandora Station: Cream! With the thumping bass of Jack Bruce and the driving drums of Ginger Baker Blasting through my exceptionally hot car I cruised down past the Big Apple and into New Jersey. At this point I turned my car westward and entered Pennsylvania itself.
A constant stream of encouraging texts and messages from the crew that was already in Allentown propelled me forward and as I drew closer my excitement level continued to build. As I exited the highway and began to pick my way through the bustling metropolis of Allentown...one of my all time favorite (and seemingly appropriate) classic rock and roll tunes helped me push through the heavy traffic and finally arrive at the event venue.
After a quick stop to relieve the incredible pressure in my bladder I strolled casually into the Magnolia Ball room (flash back to Grateful Dead tune) and found the lucky few that had arrived early already rolling dice and having fun. The Advance team had done a superb job of setting up the space and getting things kicked off as soon as possible.
In fact I found most folks engaged in the first play through of Brian's amazing Bretonnian Frog Hunt Game. There was much laughter and many terrible jokes to flow out of this incredible game.
Watch out for that MASSIVE crab!!!
After meeting and greeting everyone who was in attendance Dustin and I quickly pulled together an RT 40k game...something we had been discussing for months...obviously neither of us could wait. We took over half of Rusty's amazing table that he had provided and Dustin dressed it up with some scatter terrain that he had brought. This game found my imperials facing off against Dustin's Orks in a struggle to recover the Transport Homing beacon that had been recently eaten (along with its owner) by a rampaging T-rex and unceremoniously "deposited" (some hours later) somewhere on an inhospitable planet. And to make things even more interesting the T-rex was still in the neighborhood and protecting his "turf."
We had a great time with this game...it was quick and dirty with may feats of bravery and plenty of silliness as well....lets just say that the T-rex ate at least 30% of my forces...
As the afternoon turned into the evening we took a quick break for dinner and then returned to get Bulldog Lopez's RT Demo Game kicked off. I merely observed this one as I was still frantically trying to get some painting done on my Bret Knights but suffice to say to was a well run and impressive looking 4-way game that continued until well after midnight.
At this point you may be thinking: "well...that sounds like a full day! I'm sure that was enough for day 1!"
Well...you'd be WRONG!
After much convincing and cajoling I was pressed into a late night round of the frog hunt game...and I'm glad of it. Once again the constant frog leg jokes and attacks by random, and vicious, wandering monsters made this game a real joy to play.
My warband performed admirably...though I ended up losing by a single frog.
Bleary eyed and sore from laughing we all shuffled off to bed a little after 3am and collapsed onto our beds to dream of the excitement to come on Day 2!!!
Just a quick post to show you the basic setup I've put together of my Battle Systems Sci-Fi terrain. I've had this stuff for months now and have just not had the opportunity to put it together and start enjoying it. This week I forced myself to spend several evening focused on producing at least a basic board to play on. With the help of a couple of committed friends we produced this set up.
I will try to get a few more room items put together before things kick off but either way this will be a fun little set to get some experience adapting the RT rules to interior spaces. I see running a number of quick scenarios tonight...snatch and grab, meeting engagement, sabotage the reactor, Get to the Chopper!, etc. With only 2 1/2 squads of figures painted up they will obviously be limited in scale but should allow for fairly fast games that we will learn a lot from.
Here are some more pics of some of my troops trying out the terrain. Please forgive the iPhone pics.
hmm...looks like I need to adjust those Struts in the background!
I'll post up some pics and breakdown of the nights events over the weekend!
Sunday found me up and ready to go by 830...despite a running battle with the rabid bacon thieves who were raiding my hotels breakfast bar all morning...ggggrrrr friggin kids!!!
Anyway...I arrived at DropZone shortly after 9am and found things just getting rolling. About a half a dozen folks were already there...including a much refreshed Blake after a good nights sleep.
After having kind of floated around chatting and what not for day one I was ready to dive right into a game...luckily for me Tom was obliging and we quickly pulled together a moderate sized pick up battle (2k-ish points) that we set up on one end of Rusty's warband table. Tom brought out his very impressive chaos army and I was finally able to get my dwarfs on table!
So I don't want to spill all the beans on the battle itself as I'm sure there will be future posts in which to tell that story. Suffice to say that Tom and I had a blast and I was overjoyed to get my lads on the table against such a well painted and led opponent. There were laughs... there were tears... and the dice gods were fickle at times but ...thats Oldhammer for ya!
I loved every minute of it!
Here are a couple of teaser pics...you'll have to wait for the rest.
Time for another update about the ongoing LPL. Voting for Round 3 has wrapped up and Round 4 is now underway so I can share with you my Round 3 Entry.
I returned to my Muster Troops from Alternative Armies for another team...this time including the Squad Leader and another heavy weapon. Here is my entry Photo.
Following on the heels of my test paint scheme for the Retained Knights I took the opportunity to do the same for "Imperial Guard" figures. As stated before I'll be using Alternative Armies Muster Troops as my standard Imperial infantry figures. Once again I've gone for a fairly "realistic" paint job on these guys. Though I will be using them mostly for Boarding Raids and other shipboard actions I wanted them to stand out from the grey terrain I will be using them so I've opted for a more natural woodland style camo for the cloth portions and a very dark gray/black for the armor and helmet.
One of the projects that I hope to accomplish this year is to get some painted units together to play Rogue Trader 40K on the Battle Systems Terrain that I recently supported via Kickstarter. The forces to be employed will consist of a platoon of Imperial Guard and a couple of Squads of Space Marines, on the side of "good" and some Chaos Space Marines and perhaps a few Orks on the side of "bad."
As I can't possibly take on the task of collecting yet more vintage citadel figures at this juncture I plan to use figures from outside the Citadel catalog for the Imperial Guard and Space Marines...figures from Alternative Armies Ion Age range in particular. This also fits well with a recent challenge put out by Whiskey Priest on hisBlog to shows the adaptability of the Oldhammer Movement by painting up and gaming with a unit of non-GW figures.
