Month: October 2022

Death Guard vs Salamanders (650 points) – Battle Report

On By Plague GardenerIn Battle Report2 Comments

List Theory

This game was happening on the 5th Anniversary of my return to tabletop 40k. Well, to be very precise, it was exactly five years to the day that I opened up the Dark Imperium box set after buying it the night before. So to celebrate this I wanted to play the Death Guard that came with the box, albeit with some changes to bring them up to date a bit. This also fitted in with my plans to play units that I normally wouldn’t as I don’t recall the last time I used the Noxious Blight Bringer (actually I’ve just checked, it was my last game of 8th Edition when I used the same list as I knew 9th was about to arrive).

The juggling that was done to the list was:

  • The Poxwalkers had to be taken as one big block of 20 as I was only taking one unit of Bubonic Astartes Core Infantry, I would have preferred to have had them as two groups of 10.
  • The Plague Marines had their weapons update to take into consideration that weapons upgrades are now free for them.
  • The Bloat Drone was armed with the mower as that just seems like the better choice and it would help me to tie down the enemy in close combat buying time for the rest of the list to get stuff done.

I was a bit under the 650 point limit for the army, but I don’t think that’s a big problem. My opponent was tinkering with a 650 point army they were taking to an event, so this game could have gone very badly if they turned up with a totally tuned and optimised 650 point killing machine.

The Game

This was a Tempest of War Game and we drew the following cards.

  • Primary: Take and Hold – Score points for holding objectives
  • Mission Rule: Scrambler Fields – This stops deep striking and other such shenanigans into the range of an objective.

Setup

Death Guard Deployment
Dawn of War
Salamander Deployment
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35 Years of Warhammer 40k

On By Plague GardenerIn Painting & Modelling, Thoughts3 Comments

35 years ago this weekend a friend and I travelled into London and attended our first Games Workshop Games Day. Apparently the event ran for three days, so I’ve no idea which day I actually attended. This was I believe the event that Warhammer 40k was released at. A few weeks previously my friend had shown me the preview feature in White Dwarf 93 and I had just loved the picture of the kit bashed Land Raider with the lined up Marines in front of it. I went home excitedly clutching a box of 30 Plastic Beaky Marines and a metal Dreadnought.

At home I rapidly build the miniatures, I was used to building plastic model planes and these were less fiddly than they were. The Dreadnought was tougher, I think I borrowed my Dad’s two part epoxy glue and got the job done.

Then it was painting. I cracked open that box of paints that was used for painting the model aircraft and my eyes fell on a bright orange. I think my brother had bought it to paint the ladder of an F-16 model he had built. So I created my own Chapter, orange with black tiger stripes and got to work. I’m not sure that I ever finished any of the models completely and over time they were all lost. But I’m sure the paint was traditionally thick and pasted on and the free hand stripes poorly applied. But I’d started my way into the hobby.

The next 35 years so my connection to Warhammer 40k wax and wane. I never played much of the original tabletop game until I got back into 8th Edition five years ago. However an awful lot of Adeptus Titanicus and Space Hulk were played and the Dark Heresy RPG got me back into gaming in the universe when it came out nearly 20 years ago.

So as my little part in celebrating this anniversary weekend I painted up a Primaris Marine in the colour scheme that teenage me decided upon. I did use “modern” (by my definition) techniques and so washes and dry brushing were applied. And this is the result, and I’m quite pleased with it :). I even had a pot of Goblin Green that may go back a decade or more that I managed to get working for the base. I’m quite pleased with the eye lenses and the orange armour, but my freehand still sucks and I couldn’t get a Primaris squad transfer to wrap nicely on the shoulder.

This is the right colour for bases!