January Parade Ground Recruits

It's a little late, life's been a bit hectic lately but here's January's additions to The Parade Ground bloglist.

The 512th Cadian

Valhallan 8th Ice Warriors

Essexian 23rd Mecanized

08ak1

Refraint of Sanity

Cadian 77th Expeditionary Force

Von Mullers War Room

From the Skies!

That's it for this month, as always, if you have a guard blog or know of one I've missed, then let me know and I'll get it added.

A little apology, but in a good way!

I want to make a little apology for all those that checkout my blog for updates on my guard. As you may know, I see myself as a long term hobbyist, but recently, I've been thinking about the term 'long term' and the fact that I'm a smoker and perhaps 'long term' maybe isn't as long as I thought it was as I've been a smoker for the past ten years or so.

So, just after the new year, I decided to quit smoking. I'm doing well so far and the family have been supportive and let slide the odd outburst here and there. One of the temporary downsides of quitting smoking is that I've been a bit on edge and unable to settle down to paint. Surfing and blogging been fine, but sitting down for a couple of hours at my paint station just isn't possible at the moment, so there's going to be a slight break in mini's appearing on the blog or at least a slow down. Don't worry, they will be returning shortly. On the plus side, I'll be able to get loads of pages done for my campaign blog and my column on FTW.

Also, I while ago, I promised myself that I wouldn't buy anymore models as the plastic crack mountain was getting silly and so I haven't brought a model since May last year. Well, now, even though I still have quite a bit waiting to be painted, I'm going to be getting some new models.

The reason for this is that the Doctor has said that I need to reward myself for quitting smoking and so, here's my planned rewards .....

2 Weeks Reward

1 Month Reward

 

3 Month Reward

6 Month Reward

PLUS IA6


12 Month Reward for Xmas!

So there you have it gents, I'm exchanging my plastic crack mountain for a resin one. I figure I can get all these and still be quid's in. A quick calculation and I worked out that the titan is going to cost me 50 days worth of fags and so as it's a xmas reward after going six months since the last one, I'm still saving cash and hopefully staying alive long enough to get it painted!

Wish me luck guys and hopefully I'll be sharing my rewards with you once I've got my painting mojo back.

ORDERS - The Colonel gets a posting!

News from the front, the great Ronissah has called and the Colonel has answered. I'll be taking up a position as chief scenery adviser to the From The Warp 40k battlegroup.

In truth, I emailed him about bring my passion for scenery to FTW, and we've had a bit or back and forth figuring out what would be best and so I'll be bringing the community all sorts of scenery related posts to help improve battlegrounds across the blogging community.

Keep your eyes peeled for my intro post coming tomorrow!

 

Image used without permission from www.ww1battlefields.co.uk

They call him Marbo .....

Had a game down the club on Friday night playing against Andy's eldar. Playing Andy is always a pleasure as he plays the game for a laugh and it doesn't matter who's winning or what's happening on the table, we're always laughing. Well, this game was no different, and we were clearly the loudest players in the club with shouts 'YES!', 'NOOOOO!' and numerous quite offensive insults been thrown back and forth, it's just the way we roll.

We were playing capture and control on a spearhead deployment and it was clear by the end of turn two that the best I could do was going to be a draw. My objective was protected by a good chunk of 2nd platoon, around forty models and they'd already dealt with his scorpians, avatar and only had his ten man harlequin coming at my lines which worried me quite a bit as if they got into combat, it'd have been a slaughter. His objective was protected by fire dragons, dire avengers and howling banshees, so I didn't have much chance to getting to it with what I had left. So, all I had to do was deal with this 310pt killing clowns advancing in the clear using veil of tears to stop me shooting them.

Bring in Marbo!

The clowns got pie plated, scoring 9 hits and then failing 8 4+ Inv saves. The remaining two charged Marbo taking one wound whilst he killed one in return, drawn combat. The scene was set for an epic battle between the hardened loner with a single wound left and a 5+ save against the xenos Shadowseer. Attacking on I6, the xenos went first and this is how it played out over the next 3 rounds of combat.

• Shadowseer scored 2 wounds, Marbo saved on 5,6 (1 in 12 chance)
• Marbo scored 1 wound, Shadowseer saved on a 4+ Inv - Drawn combat
• Shadowseer scored another 2 wounds, Marbo saved on 6,6 (1 in 36 chance)
• Marbo scored 3 wounds, Shadowseer saved on a 4+ Inv - Drawn combat
• Shadowseer scored another 2 wounds again, Marbo saved on 6,6 again (1 in 36 chance)
• Marbo scored 2 wounds, Shadowseer died!

The roof went off, an epic battle had been fought and Marbo was victorious! Both me and Andy abandoned the rest of the game and both agreed it was the best game of 40k we'd ever played.When I got home, I worked out the odds of rolling those dice for Marbo's saves - 1 in 15,552!

A so, I make this solemn promise that the Corbanian 1st will never go into combat without him again. I'm also going to keep this post a service record of Marbo's actions in combat. So, without further ado .....

CSgt Marbo (24909925) - 571 Infantry Company 

M20090130 (Gateway sector) - CSgt Marbo ambushed a retinue of xenos harlequins threatening to overrun Imperial lines. CSgt Marbo killed all but the xenos Shadowseer in the initial ambush whilst receiving a serious wound himself. CSgt Marbo then defeated the xenos Shadowseer in a prolonged hand to hand combat where he sustained multiple wounds counting no less than six. For this action, CSgt Marbo was cited in Regimental Orders, and mentioned in Dispatches - END.

A model a month - The Red Knight

As some of you might remember, back at the start of the year, I set out some aims that I wanted to achieve this year. One of those was to paint one non-guard model a month to improve my painting ability, as the problem with guard is that they're uniform and so although painting my guard has improved my precision as a painter and taught me a lot about paint consistency, they haven't given me a chance to try more advanced painting techniques or to work with different colour schemes.

With my lovely wife getting me both Heroquest and Advanced Heroquest for xmas, I now have a stack of models that I can use to improve my painting. Last night, I finished the first of these, The Red Knight, and I can honestly say that this is the best model I have ever painted, the pictures just don't do it justice.

I really have pushed myself with this model, the face was done following a GW faces masterclass pdf, and although initially, I wasn't that happy with it due to the highlights. Once I realised that trying to compare it to GW modern faces, I became I lot happier. I'm not blaming my tools so to speak, but the latest GW painting techniques work really well on detailed faces, whereas this model was cast over a decade ago. It's also the first time I've done teeth or lips, eye's are still a challenge to be met one day.

The red clothe and shield were done with layering and washes, basically mechrite red, then black wash in the recesses, then reapply mechrite red, then scab red, then scab/blood red, then blood red, then blood red/blazing orange, then pure blazing orange and finally a red wash to tie all the layers back together. Now that was an experience, but produced a great look.

The armour was more a simple working of a base of boltgun metal, followed by various washes and boltgun highlights. Quite simple really, but very effective.

Finally, his boots and gloves, which started like the red clothe with a base colour and a black wash in the recesses, but instead of using different colours, I simply got my base colour calthan brown and my highlight colour bronzed flesh and mixed them up as I painted, and then used a devlan mud wash to blend the highlights back together. It's the first time I've ever mixed paints on the fly, and once I sort out a wet palette, it's something I'm going to be doing a lot more of, it's so much quick and produces and much smoother look than different colour layering.

So there you have it, my first model a month and in my humble opinion, an outstanding one at that. The other thing I've noticed is how much I've enjoyed painting him up. My guard are normally batch painted to get them on the table but this guy was just a pleasure to paint. I'd highly recommend doing something like this yourself if you've been batch painting an army for a while.

Don't worry, more guard stuff coming soon but keep your eyes peeled for another Heroquester at the end of next month, although I'm not sure if it's going to be a elf, wizard or dwarf as of yet, only time and inspiration will tell.

Sportsmanship????

I'm a little worried about sportsmanship, as you're probably aware, I'm planning to go to the UKGT at the end of the year and I've been reading up on tournaments in general and reading up on the rules in preparation.

Now, from what I can see, quite a lot of players don't know the rules or pretend like they don't, and I'm getting a little concerned that if I start pointing out the 'correct rules' here and there, then I'm going to get shafted on my sportsmanship scores.

So, I was thinking. Isn't it a shame that tournaments don't run a system where if you have to call over a TO/Judge to make a rules decision, then the correct player automatically gets full sportsmanship scores and the incorrect one get none. I think that not only would this stop people using the sportsmanship scores to 'get at' a player who proved them wrong but also, it'd encourage players to sort out their problems themselves without calling over a TO/Judge for fear of being in the wrong and getting zero for sportsmanship that game.

That way, the only time they'd call a judge over would be if both players are adamant that they are right, and then it's down to the judge as normal. Now the only downside I can see to this is if someone gets a negative decision very early on in a game and so they've got nothing to lose, so keeps arguing over the rules. Perhaps a negative score for continued 'asshattery'?

What do you reckon guys?

What's your opinion on the allocation of multiple gets hot wounds?

After my last blog and a couple of posts on others, I thought I'd post this and get the communities opinions on the allocation of multiple 'Gets hot' wounds. Now I want to make clear from the start that is is simply a call out for your opinions, it's not a discussion, it's not a debate. As far as I'm concerned, unless you're Alessio Cavatore or one of the other authors of the rulebook, then you're opinion carries no more weight than anyone else's.

So, on that basis, everyone gets one chance to post in the comments their opinion. There's going to be no back and forth, no trying to disprove someone else's opinion and the only commenting on other peoples opinions I'm going to allow is simply along the lines of 'I agree with .......' to simply save you having to type out the same thing that someone else has already posted. Any posts that don't comply to this rule will be removed. We all left that  s*** behind us on the forums and I'm damned if I'm going to bring it onto my blog.

Right, back to the subject matter .....

For the purpose of this exercise, we'll work on the example of an Imperial Guard command squad with four plasma gunners in it, firing rapid fire and rolling two 1's to hit and therefore taking 2 Get's hot wounds.

Now, in previous comments and posts, I heard quite a few different ways of allocating these wounds, from lumping them all on one guy, to distributing them evenly, to rolling each guy separately.

Now my opinion is ...........

That you have to roll each guy separately so that any 1's are applied to that specific model. I base this opinion of the following. Page 31 of rulebook states "For each result of a 1 rolled on it's to hit rolls, the firing model suffers a wound.".

For me, then sentence is a singular one, it doesn't say unit, so they can't be passed on to non plasma guys in the unit. It doesn't say 'models', so it can't be passed between plasma gunners or all lumped on one guy. It says 'model', and so in my opinion, that means that you have to roll separately for each plasma gunner, so that you can determine if that model firing has rolled a 1 and suffers a wound.

Well, that my opinion guys, I can't wait to hear yours, just remember the rules. Get commenting guys!