Away Days

I got out of the house!

First time away in a while, travelling to a family wedding the UK. Priorities, though, so I managed an overnight drop-in at Kasfunatu's place on the way. 

There's a couple of gamers in our circle who I've played with and against on several occasions, but never actually met. That's been partially remedied now - generals Rapid, B1llybob and StrangerComeKnocking were all there in the flesh. Good to meet you!

And games - first up was a doubles 40K game. Pootle and Leofa taking Tyranids and Chaos Knights respectively against a tag team of Space Marines (Crypt Angels on loan) and General Al's very nice irradiated Mechanicus. 

Homebrew rules - six objectives, each worth d3 VPs to whoever held them at the end of the match, plus d3 for Slay the Warlord. 

The Baddies went first, romping forward across the line whilst still keeping enough back to drop-proof their deployment zone. Not much died, they were mostly out of range, but stray fire was already eating into the ATVs and bikes I'd taken. Our first turn wasn't as bloodless - a variety of neutron lasers, graviton weapons, Vindicator cannons and HK-missiles managed to take down the biggest threat on the other team, the Knight Lancer romping gleefully towards us. Served it right for turning up unpainted!

You can't hide, you're too tall

After that, it was four turns of merciless bloodshed. The Imperium generally took the worst of it, too - I fed my bikes and Aggressors into an incoming wall of Carnifexes, led by Old One Eye and backed up by a Knight Annihilator. And various infiltrating swarm organisms assaulted the AdMech castle in the back corner, stripping away their lesser units and leaving the meaty cannons exposed. 

Tasty exposed flanks

House guest

You eat my passengers? I eat you!

I definitely bit off more than I could chew in the middle, here

And possible over here too

Not quite touching the cannons, though, and by the end game, they'd removed most of the biggest enemy pieces. I'd also lost my army bar a heroic Vindicator and a drop pod full of flamer marines, who'd taken the enemy deployment zone. As the last dice rolled and the final models dropped, the enemy had certainly killed more and taken the middle ground, but the Imperium had claimed both enemy warlords and nicked the two deployment zones. Strategic shooting had also taken the enemy off one of their midzone objectives, which meant we ended up rolling four d3 each to work out who'd won. 

Drop Pod objective claiming 101

We did! Go Imperium. A good knockabout game, and the first 40K I'd played in a few months. 

Necromunda came next, a demo-style game. Genestealer Cults vs Corpse Grinders vs Van Saar vs Orlocks, with Pootle's dreaded Flumps rearing their vile heads once more over a lovely old school table. 

I've missed the cardboard towers of yesteryear. Lovely. 

We were playing with 500 points each, gangers or juves only and a max of one specialist weapon. Nothing too wild, really. The game was a hunt-the-loot match, with a secret cache hidden in each table quarter. Fighters could opt to spend their entire turn hunting for a chance to locate one, and the winner would be whoever dragged enough home without dying too much. 

Al brought proper vintage Van Saar. Crackers. 

Leofa was piloting the Corpse Grinders, and I'd bigged up their combat prowess. Typically, this led to an utter whitewash of a game for them. Plenty of falling off ladders, whiffing combat and hiding in their own poorly aimed smoke grenades, though. Leofa was amused, but not impressed. 

Elsewhere, the Van Saar potshotted a single Orlock, ran out of plasma and then left, whereas I got stuck between pushing cultists off ladders and being sniped by the Flumps. 

Who, in fact, romped to an easy victory when everyone else bottled it and went home early! Curse you, Flumps, one day your reign of terror will come to an end, this much I swear. 

They cast a long shadow, those Flumps

Otherwise it was generally a lovely hobby meet. Lots of chat, lots of resin and plastic exchanging hands, lots of painting commissions completed and then immediately renewed. There was another big game of 40K on in the next room during the Necromunda, too, with some utterly epic armies going head-to-head. Rapid's Tyranids, Kasfunatu's Daemons, Stranger's incredible Space Wolf conversions and B1llybob's Ork Koptas all on one table. Lovely!

I've come home with some utterly corking bits for Necromunda and enough miniatures to keep my brushes busy until Christmas. Or, well, the end of August if I keep to my usual speed. Roll on the next one!