Check Your Six with the Catawba Gamers: Yamamoto in the Crosshairs

Hi Kids,  Just for kicks a few of us decided to go off the rails and have some fun on a Wednesday afternoon.  We scheduled some PTO or just disappeared from work at noon and headed on over to Parker, Banner, Kent and Wayne for some post-work mayhem!  To really get blood in the water fast nothing beats an aviation game: easy to transport, a snap to set-up, and you can be blasting the Huns out of the sun in no time at all!  One of the lads volunteered to set up a game of Check Your Six of the Yamamoto interception.  Here we have the two Bettys carrying The Admiral and his sidekick.  All the planes are 1:144.

 Half of the escort of six Zeros.

 Two of the 4 P-38's.

 The other two P-38's.

 Starting set-up.  As per usual, the Japanese escorts are behind the bombers.  They did that all through the war, not sure why.

 The four P-38's sweep in towards the Bettys, which have no defense fire since the gunners were replaced with passengers.

 No, the green Betty has not engaged its cloaking device, its turned itself into a submarine with the help of a couple pounds of 50 caliber lead.  The Zeros arrive to voice their displeasure.  No, no strongly worded memo from the UN for these guys!

 The trailing three Zeros (they're the ones stylish banked right) finally manage to catch up with the fight, the P-38's set up a turn to pursuit the remaining Betty.

 It's time for some Split-S's as the Zeros show up their amazing maneuverability.

 The P-38's get mobbed by swarms of Zeros, some of which run out of cannon ammo.  One silver P-38 has already been shot down by this time.

As Yamamoto's plane disappears over the horizon the Zeros continue to swarm the few surviving P-38's.  The game master had decided before the game which Betty was Yamamoto's, and he happened to escape.  Since he survived, it was rung up as a Japanese victory!  Banzai!!!!

Painted Iron Warrior autocannon conversions

After the game they turned a loss into a draw, I decided to put them in the front of the painting queue. Now they are finished.

The champion of the squad. He is built from a 3rd edition chaos marine torso and legs, the metal champion pointing arm from the oop Havoc box set and an old style chaos bolter.

Chaos Autocannon (Drink!) conversion. All four conversions were built from some plastic chaos marine legs, a metal Iron warriors torso, a chaos biker right arm, an old style chaos marine left arm, a converted Imperial Guard autocannon (Drink!), and for different style chaos marine heads.

Conversion number two.

Conversion number three. He breaks from the red horn pattern but I like the studded skull head and wanted to use one in the squad.

Conversion number four.

They have seen the table a couple more times and added a Necron Annihilation barge, a space marine rhino and a few Space wolves to their kill count.

ColKG

PS, Chuckaroobob has a new drinking game, every time I type autocannon (Drink!) you have to take a drink, So everybody reading this needs to down three drinks of your preferred alcoholic beverage.

That is All.

Armorcast Superheavies from the era before Forge World

Hi Kids, So I had intended to paint today, but I've been dropping things all day.  As I went down the basement stairs I tripped and fell down, knocking over a pile of stuff in the process.  And as soon as I went to my painting table I knocked 5 boxes off the shelves.  So I decided to call it a wasted effort and gave up on painting before I knocked out some teeth with a 3 O brush....

Instead I decided to look around for the Armorcast Superheavy Cannon I bought many moons ago.  Naturally enough, it remains undiscovered.  But I did find one other object of interest: an Armorcast Shadowsword!  It was one the bottom of a pile of 4 armorcast boxes, the top three being empty.  But I kept digging and uncovered this beast still in the box.

 Ah, smell the resin!  Of course, you can try to nullify that smell by using a blow dryer on it. Or some heavy primer.

 

 Nearby in the closet were another few items, not sure where the exterior hull of the right Baneblade might be, it might be part of a Shadowsword/Baneblade combo set.  Then again, its probably banging around the basement someplace.  Yeah, that the Shadowsword in the box in the back.  Everybody has been crying about GW prices again, I'd like to take this opportunity to point out that one superheavy from Armorcast was a whopping $50 when they were in production.  I still prefer these since they only have about a dozen parts.  I want to play with the damn things, not spend half my life building them.  Of course, that's just me.  And no, don't ask me about the last time I played GW.

These are the two shelves I was searching.  I also found a Tyranid superheavy bug I had forgotten about.  It started with an "H" and had big claw arms.  Then again, what tyranid doesn't have big claw arms?  Yeah, that's another Warhound in the red box, a Stomper, and a 25mm Despot Tank from Reaper's CAV (made by John Bear Ross IIRC).  Yes, the magic marker has definitely made my life easier.  There's a 25mm Bauhaus Grizzly in there someplace, too.  Just to be different, there are a bunch of The Assault Group 25mm moderns and some Copplestone figs in the smaller boxes.  It's not all GW after all!

Battletech Mech inventory and Battle Plan

All of Chuckaroobobs talk of Japanese fighting robots and Battletech mechs finally made me dig my battle tech miniatures out of the "Closet of Doom". I mostly picked them up hit or miss and haven't had them on the table in years.

First the Clan Mechs. I wasn't a big fan of the introduction of the Clan Invasion to the Battletech Universe, at first. When the new mechs started coming out I refused to use then and just play with the earlier mechs. As it happens my army gaming buddies adopted the Clan invasion whole hearted and left me the odd man out. It finally came down to play using the new mech or not play at all, so I joined in the fun. we eventually started combining the Mechwarrior role playing game with the Battletech games and really added a new dimension to our games. Later after I left the army, I ran another Mechwarrior/Battletech campaign and it ended up being some of the most enjoyable and memorable gaming I have done to date. That is when I started picking up some mechs but never really had the ones that the players were using.

These are actually Reaper Cav heavy Infantry models but I plan to use them as Points of Clan Elementals. Mixing these in with the other clan Mechs will give me a Star of Clan troops to game with.

The first batch of Inner sphere mechs is from the Catalyst Game Lab Battletech box set. I picked this one up years ago and wish I would have bought two. The thing I like best about this set was it included a Panther mech and a Vindicator mech, two of my favorites to play. I found one of the box set on Evilbay but they wanted $220 for it, to rich for my blood.

The rest of the Inner sphere mechs, including the only primed one, the first Mech I ever bought a Vindicator. Their are better mechs but I just like the Vindicator design and is many variants.

Doing the numbers I could field a slightly over strength Clan Trinary against an Inner sphere Battalion. I think it would be an ugly battle and would put the advantage on the Clan Trinary. I would play the Inner sphere Battalion. They have two to one on numbers and eight or ten assault mechs but depending on the combat loads of the clan Assaults they could reduce an inner sphere assault mech to scrap in a couple turns. I think It would be a challenging game but fun to play.
ColkG

Iron Warrior Havoc Autocannon squad progress

After pulling a Draw from a Loss battling against the Eldar I decided these lads needed some more paint. After a bit of work I have them to a good base coat.

I still need to give them an ink/future wash, then go back and highlight all the metals. Then the Horns, bone,tassels and leather need to be finished. Finally a touch up to the bases, then finished.

ColKG

Oop Chaos Iron Warrior Havoc Missile Launcher squad

I have been list building for my Chaos space marine league army and thinking about using different units from my chaos collection. One thing about the league players is a bunch of flyers and I don't really have anything to go after them with. I have a plan to scratch build some Heldrakes but that is probably too long term to rely on for the current league. I do have some chaos missile launchers. Some people say the flakk missile upgrade is too expensive but that is what i have so they are going on the table.

This is the only Havoc missile launcher I have painted. I painted him up for my original Iron warriors army back in third edition 40k. My weapon of choice back then was the las cannon so only one missile launcher was added to the army.

A raid into my generic terracotta marines revealed this oop havoc missile launcher. For years my painting standard was three colors and a painted base. I have come to a different opinion now so I went back and removed all the mold lines I had left and replaced the poorly converted bolt pistol arm with a newer arm and better attached pistol.

I took another terracotta bolter armed model and removed the arms and head. I had a couple regular space marine missile launcher that i had won in an ebay auction. The auction was a bunch of poorly converted space marines, but they had a pile of Adeptus Mechanicus bits on them and I won them for a couple dollars. Once I received the models I broke them apart for the  bits. The missile launchers both had a big bead glued on the end and after breaking them off left the end messed up. Into the bits box they went until now. I leveled the end of the launcher and glued on a gargoyle head. It looked good so I did the second one.

The second Havoc missile launcher conversion. I built this one from different bits I had traded for over the years. I am not a big fan of the tasseled helmets but since the oop metal models both had them I went ahead and added the tasseled helmet heads to the new conversions so they will be similar.

The new Havoc missile launcher squad ready to get some primer. I will add one of my already painted Iron warrior champions when I put them on the table.

ColKG

Oop Chaos Raptor Meltacide squad

I have just started playing the 40k league games for the 1250 point round, but I am working on mt 1500 point list for the next points level. My 1k point army was very static and its only real mobility was deep strike and rhinos. Deep strike works but the rhinos only gave my opponent an easy first blood in most games. the 1250 point list I dropped the rhinos and added chaos space marine bikers. The bikers are better than the rhinos because it takes at least three hits to kill them where it only took one good hit to destroy a rhino, and the biker get a jink cover save.
I was lucky in my first week 1250 point game by getting the Master of Deception warlord trait, that allowed me to infiltrate d3 infantry units. Outflanking my big unit of Khorne chaos space marines allowed me to get a extra victory point that I doubt I would have received if they would have had to run into all of the enemy guns for several turns. I started bouncing around some ideas and digging into the chaos collection and came up with some Chaos Raptors from way back in the day.

Once upon a time there was a rumor that GW was going to release a list for a chaos Nightlord army that could take Raptors as troops. So I collected up enough Raptors for a several squads and the list never appeared. I did field a squad in my old chaos army but had them equipped with max plasma pistols for that anti space marine punch. I had a few of the special weapon models but they rarely saw the table.
Now it is time for a new plan. I had converted a champion with a bolter combi weapon back in the day and found it in the search. This gave me the idea to use him as a combi melta, and add two meltaguns in the squad. The one special weapon trooper with the unpainted meltagun originally had a flamer but I managed to find an old raptor meltagun to swap it out. If they do well in the league games I will paint them in Iron Warrior colors.

ColKG