Warmachine and Dust Bunnies

Hi Kids,  Super B (aka Bryan) and I decided to get some of the lead out last Sunday, and the perfect game for us (due to ease of play, ease of transportation, ease of terrain, and ease of dice) was WARMACHINE!  Yes, they tell us we can't just type Warmachine. Its gotta be all capitals.  And who am I to argue? I don't agree with Check Your Six! either.  Why not just use Check Your Six without the exclamation point?  Go figure. Anyway, turns out we had a free afternoon so I headed over to Wargames West (aka Super B's house) in Elkin NC for some weight lifting. With Khador, it can be a lotta weight!

 I'm the first to admit these pictures suck, they were taken with a ten year old cellphone since I forgot to bring along my camera.  Bummer, huh?  So this is the army I choose; Scorcha (as we pronounce it), a Jugg, a Destroyer, a Demolisher, a Behemoth and a Kovnik. Had to use my gal Scorcha, that mini is the only reason I bought into this freakin' game at all!  (When this game first came out the only way to get her around here was to buy an army starter of her and two jacks. I thought the Khador jacks looked silly, but after six months gave in and had to have Scorcha!  Anyway, the jacks grew on me and I ended up buying about $1000 of PP stuff.  Last thing I bought was a Khador Colossus for $100!) This was the baptism of fire for my Behemoth, it's been sitting in the basement for about 5 years, the last one or two painted.  Yes, I know those are the wrong guns on the Behemoth. He came without them, and PP wanted about $18.00 shipping to replace them, so I just got some guns that were lying around and made do.



Here we have a shot of the final moments of the game, when my opponent's warcaster got body slammed by the Demolisher and about 3 bombard shots.  You can see the Demo's path of destruction through the unit of infantry. Huzzah!!! Remember there are only two rules in life; 1: Never get between a hippo and the river, and 2: Never get within 7.5 inches of a Khador jack!

Here we have a similar shot of the end of the second game, where my opponent's warcaster got crushed by the Jugg.  Cowabunga!!!

Turns out Warmachine (yeah, I'm a rebel, no caps!) wasn't that easy to transport as three of my jacks were broken in transit, and not so easy to play due to some cards I lost.  And as far as ease of dice, I doubt if Super B would agree on that score.  (I already checked, PP wants $9.83 shipping to replace the $1.50 worth of missing cards!  Sheesh!  Wonder what their profit margin might be...)  I'm gonna have to search the Basement of Heaped Minis for the damn things!

Cold Steel at Gamers Armory in Cary North Carolina

Hi Kids, Last weekend was another game day in the RDU NC area.  The RDU lads chose a Saturday at random intervals to get together and play a few games, this time the chosen locale was Gamer's Armory in Cary. About 12 of the lads showed up for the games, while there were about the same number of other guys playing other stuff like 40K, Warmachine, Battletech, Infinity, or Magic.

 The Bitter End for the Illustrious. Massive wings of torpedo bombers send the 50 hit point carrier to a watery grave!  The guys told me this 1/300 carrier had never been sunk in 4 previous games.  All I can tell ya is they must not have had the same overwhelming mix of Axis bombers those other times, cause even though I was rolling hot with my 4 Seafires there were about 25 bombers lined up to blow that boat clean outta the water!  The Illustrious went down so fast half the bombers didn't even have a target!  Rats!

 Some of the kids playing all sorts of fun stuff!

 The other side of the room.  They're setting up a Napoleonics game back there.

Gamer's Armory, a spiffy store in Cary NC.  If you haven't been there yet, go and check it out!  They even offer discounts!  I got $10 as the "gamer who drove the farthest."  (About 95 miles each way, in case you're wondering.)

 The massive air wing waiting to buzz the tower. 1/300 aircraft.  Rules: Black Cross Blue Sky, IIRC.

 Of the 8 defending Seafires, my bud's 4 take on a squadron of Ju-87's.  I think they shot down about 3 of them.

 Looping in behind the Huns!  Engine critical damage shown by yellow pipe cleaner.  Take that Jerry!

Some captured Beauforts serve Il Duce!



My lads close in for the kill at wavetop height! Critical hits-a-go-go as I smack 'em down with a fuel tank hit which blows up a plane and a cockpit hit on another! Too bad it couldn't last!

3rd, 4th, 5th groups of bad guys jockey for position to get in the killing blow! Sm79's, Ju-88's, oh dear!  My four Seafires have already been crushed by the defensive firepower of the torpedo bombers and the 15 or so escorting fighters. And I did manage to shoot down about 4 or so attacking planes! Those Stuka's were too slow to make it to the party.

Still a damn fun game though!

 A nearby ancients game, 25mm Teutonic Knights vs. Pre-Commies.

 Unwashed masses?

Or Knights Templar?  It's just like a salad bar, take what you like and leave the rest!

 After all that WW2 naval action, lets set the WayBack Machine for the 12th Century!  Time for some Cogs!  Nothing can maneuver like a Cog!  No worries about tide, wind, currents, any of that crap!  These boats are just too powerful to worry about that stuff!  Here's my Bengal Tigers boat!

 Jockeying for stern rakes?  Why bother, we don't have any cannon!  Just get closer and smack em with a sword!

 Closer, I said!

My poor Cog was the first to get boarded, and my crew promptly forgot how to swing a sword.  Bummer!  Although my team attempts to save me, its too late!  Is that a storm on the horizon?  Or just some gamer moving too fast to be seen?  Maybe that's why his rolls were so hot...

 Let's finish up with some shots of the store.  They play Advanced Squad Leader every Monday night, boardgames, every Wednesday night.  I forget what happens every Tuesday, but it was fun!

 ASL?  Oh yes!  More than I realized existed!

 Flames of War?  Got that!  I picked up Barbarosa for $18.00!  SCORE!!!! They had about 4 racks of this stuff, including Fate of a Nation and Vietnam!

 Don't have a copy yourself?  Loaner games!  WOW!

 Holy Cow, a game of Carnage and Glory Napoleonics!

 Store terrain!   Remember what I said about the salad bar?

 Don't know what this thing is, but its pretty honkin big!  Warmachine Colossus!

Old School Battletech!

Stores like the Gamer's Armory remind me how lucky those stiffs in Raleigh truly are!  Here in the Black Hole of Culture 95 miles away we don't have anything like this!

Company B 1:56 T-28

Hi Kids,  And the Chuckster's painting again!  Who would believe it?  Here's a shot of my recently painted Russian T-28 (the tank, not the plane) from Company B in 1/56.  I've never been a huge fan of KV-1 Green so I thought I'd dress this one up with a little camo.  After building it I found out there was a version with one of the MG turrets upgraded to a 45mm AT gun!  If I had know that I probably would have fitted the bigger gun, cause more firepower is usually a good thing.  I'm kinda disappointed that the picture came out so lousy, I can't get the entire vehicle into focus?  How pathetic is that? Gonna have to play with the depth of field selection again....

Also in the month of January I painted up two Tau Stealth suits (the old metal ones) in my Mars camo pattern.  Now they have joined up with the Tau forces hanging out on the shelves with all the other 40K and Fantasy stuff.  One of these days I'm going to find a Sci-Fi ruleset and start using all that stuff again.

I'm thinking of making a Chieftain Tank t shirt.  I think this shot would look good on the back.  What's everyone think? Gotta dig that 120mm rifled gun!

 And here's a picture of one of my favorite planes, the Curtiss AT-9 (or maybe its the AT-9A?)  I just think it's a neat little plane.  A trainer for high performance twins like the P-38 or B-26.  Some pilots joked that it was so difficult to fly that the P-38 should've been a trainer for the AT-9!

 And while we're on the subject of pictures, here's one of Sophia in the movie "Boy on a Dolphin."  All I can tell you is until you've seen that movie you just haven't lived.  Netflix is your friend.