All Quiet On The Martian Front, getting the game to work at last.

Club night again, the last for the year and pizza was provided with the extra funds we build throughout the year.

It was a small night with no 40K but Magic the Gathering made an appearance but I failed to do the photo shoot.

X-Wing 1st edition and Wings of Glory had a run on the table but you will note a nice bit of Christmas cheer on the WOG table.

Clubs a pretty clever in that just because the rules change as the company needs to stay afloat it does not mean there are people that wont play the old edition. X-Wing is a case in point and our club played 5th edition of 40K until the new 8th edition picked up the quality and turned it back to a good game.

Now a game we have had a bash at on 3-4 separate occasions was All Quiet on the Martian Front. This time around the martians from Mars have invaded America in the years just prior to WWI. Some nifty steam tanks and good old US manufacturing technology means that the martians wont have it easy. Or that was the initial story line and hope. But alas when we battled away over separate games with different players we always had the martians winning by a long long way. To play the humans was accepting defeat from the first throw of the dice. tonight it was different. We used the rules properly with ambush ability for the humans, command tokens to keep fleeing units on the table and I saw how wittling away at the Tripods was going to knock them out. So the humans won tonight, a much tighter game. Was it due to two human players versus the one martian or was it actually using the rules properly? I think the latter but it did help having two brains to work on the one task.

We played it at around 1400points and as the game was in 15mm I decided to bring on His Majesties own Royal Gloucester Fusiliers. A purely fictitious force of infantry and advisors that had the core elements and commanders still in it from the first Martian Invasion from the late 1800s. See if you can spot them on the table.

pic time

Evil Martians capable of who knows what?

Setting out the human forces

Small American town with odd British allies assisting.

Mark II tanks, nice paint job but not mush chop, the Mark III are much better.

WOG at Christmas

Yes you see correctly, first exchange of fire and Snoopy and the Red Baron knock each other out of the sky.

Such a fun game and when played on the smaller table it is so fast and furious.

See you in January

The End of November sees the club moving along down the Sci-fi alley.

This blog is a bit of a show and tell of club happenings. I always plan on putting more on the blog to promote the club, alas I get involved in real life and the blog takes a back seat. Next year will be better.............one hopes.

The benefit of a small club is the diversity of opinion and choice. 40K has made a real resurgence so much so that I introduced it to the school I am at, but have not played a game at the club itsself. I had to have a new army of course and the cheap beginners boxed sets started my Death Guard force. Great minis as usual from GW but I have not really been into the rot and gore of this most loathsome of the Chaos gods. The kids at school wanted to play marines so I had to be the bad guy, cool. Soon my pretties will make it to the club soon. (maybe pretties is not the right word)

So Age of Sigmar killed off warhammer fantasy in its old form but our club jumped on to Kings of War and the toys still make it to the table for the regular bout of dice throwing. Some of the chaps do play AoS but again it has not surfaced at the club.

Infinity is still a goer and a great game. We tried a bigger table at the End of November games night. 3 sides with 300 points and used the TACO2 system again with some success. Bigger tables really mean more turns I feel but we ran out of time to really give it a proper run. Maybe back to a 4 foot by 4 foot table and 200 points a side.

Wings of Glory is still a staple as Barry not only loves the game but has enough models for the whole club to play if we wanted to.

So enough blather and a quick picture show.

Kings of War ( a fond replacement for WFB )

Baz and the Wings Game from early November

Infinity from early November, hmmm a few cans of spray paint and this will look beyond awesome.

End of November big Infinity game

Another view of the larger than normal table

My Haqqislam, purchased second hand with a view to repaint until I realised I have only one lifetime to paint and play games with and to be honest they are well painted anyway!

Yu Jing a mix of my minis and second hand painted again but controlled by a friend on the night

Mordheim, a venerable favorite that stands the test of time

Nicely painted Necron walker

Destroyers?? this table looks so good with models on it.

Even unpainted minis look great against this mat and the buildings

My Death Guard begin

More nasties to beat the school kids into submission

Owned this for 25+ years sat 3/4 painted for 3 years and a last done, I love the old Mithril Miniatures.

The reason I am having a go at Haqqislam in Infinity, a lovely Odalisqque from the game with the brilliant spitfire gun. oh I painted this one and was quite chuffed how it turned out.

We have one more games night in December as the other night will be too close to Christmas, so if you are around drop in. There will be Pizza too.

A queit night at the Moruya Marauders Games Club, yet fun was had.

It just goes to show that if the email that is usually sent out does not make it as people are ill then we all seem to forget that it is games night. It is warming up here in Australia and so the winter blues should be fading and yet a mere 4 of us made it to the games night on Tuesday. After the usually set up for 10+ and the obligatory show and tell from club members (more below) we came to realise that only two of us were ready for a game.
I had longed to introduce Infinity to all and sundry and took the chance to suggest a 4 way battle at a lower than usual points tally. 200 points we decides and we had to come in on the corners. Plus I introduced TACO 2.0 to the game.
Infinity is scenario driven and the TACO system is a nice way to use cards to give objectives that can be made turn by turn. Once one is collected you add more to the pile. So each round can be quite a challenge.
I was pretty chuffed at how the game came together and I hope all had fun. It did look pretty good.

Set up

different direction

Show and tell, a great little Slave diorama that was in a build and paint online competition one of our members keenly applies himself too. His last effort was a massive Chaos Dwarf Airship!

Some really great old minis in this lot and one or two I might add to the pile if I can get hold of them.

The huge TAG on its side took most of my orders for a turn and a half to get rid of.

The bear was an Intelligence Operative in the game, brilliant use of CRSPR Cas-9 technology to add bears and intelligence together.

The Avatar TAG behind the flyer would also not die no matter how many players shot at it.

Well lets hope next night is a bit bigger. But then maybe I need to promote us a bit better.

Late August down the club, more 40K, Mordheim, Kings of War and my little Infinity table.

'Twas a good turn up at the end of August for the club night and though a few had the remnants of a flu like cold most brought out their toys and chucked a few dice. I did not, the dreaded lurgy got me and my energy was to low. But sitting in on a game of 40K made me appreciate that the games has some very good strong points to it now. I love the whole object element and the use of tactical objective cards. Reminds me a lot of another Sci-Fi game that uses less minis. 40K does seem to play fast and furious and some elements looked very different from the versions I have played and loved but I will be giving it a go sometime soon. So on with the show.

Mordheim board, I think two games happened sequentially.

I have no idea who built it but this Tavern, gatehouse looks the part, just a little undamaged for the ruins of the once great city of Mordheim.

40K, loved the mat for this game evokes a real sense of impending doom.

Nice Buildings too, must ask who makes them.

OK so this was a bit of inspiration for a fellow gamer. Gold airbrushed on, (or silver for the middle miniature), Minitaire Ghost tint magenta again airbrushed and here is the real bonus, a gold sharpie pen to redo the gold outlining of all the armour panels. Clever, and idea stolen. Really like the red too.

40K game I watched, nasty Chaos Tzeench vs nastier Tyrannids. Close combat is huge now and rather brutal. the nids seem to go down in droves and had very little left but the objectives and tactical objective cards gathered throughout the match meant that the nids won.

Once upon a time I would never leave so many expensive models in an enclosed space like this but the game plays differently now.

Tau vs Tau Civil War!!!!!!!!11

Chaos tainted Primarch taking a hit or 13.

KOW

Battle of the beasts in the Kings of War match, treeman alas was turned to kindling.

The look of despondence as you realise that 30+ Tau face you with shotguns and they work very differently now for the Tau!

Khorne demons

My little board for Infinity. This was played at home with a great friend that popped over. Infinity looks so good when the board has lots of buildings even if most of mine are the paper/card ones from all the different sets.

Looking forward to next club night but not sure what to play should I go for a game of 40K, continue with Mordheim and progress my warband or bring out the Infinity toys again. Who knows.

August Club night Mordheim, Kill Team and Kings of War, what a nice mix of games.

Our usual crowd of 40K gamers and Barry's Wings of Glory game did not make a show tonight. But Games Workshop was still represented with the new version of Kill Team making its debut and the old favourite that has been given the breath of life. Unfortunately the images for these are only at the beginning of the games as I was all consumed with my Kings of War game to take later shots.

Kill Team re imagined

One of the kill teams in the process of building I guess. Always liked this version of Games Workshops skirmish games. I still have some fancy Cadians from when the Kill Team rules were in White Dwarf.

Mordheim board complete with donated Jungle houses..............hmmm, Wyrdstone again

The BLU TAK GANG, the most heinous of all Orcish gangs found in the destroyed city.

Brand New Ostlanders that have seen a ghost....or a can of primer at least. These are built from the bitz box, from Fireforge bodies and old GW/Citadel arms, heads and weapons. 

The Kings of War games was a nice 4 X 1500point battle royal. With the Abyssal Dwarfs and Undead allying against Dwarf and Forces of Nature. I have to admit to liking some of the new Forces of Nature models by Mantic. The joy of Kings of War is the ability to sneak all sorts of models into your forces. See if you can name the DnD monster prominent in white in a couple of the images.

Forces of Nature (Boo Hiss)

3000 points a side

More forces of nature with dwarfs.

Skeletons and nasty Centaurs that are known as....?

Right hand side of the Forces of death and destruction

After a couple of turns the damage is mounting up.

My favourite moment of the battle when the Werewolf horde moves over the rocky ground and eats a unit of dwarfs due to hitting it in the flank. Double the attacks!

Soul Reaver Cavalry this unit hits so hard.

Vampire at the back with a heal spell to take a bit of the damage from the cavalry. They can run away easily enough when the damage builds up.

Notice the DnD beasty yet?