Ambush!

My cousin and I played an Ambush Scenario for Warhammer 40K over the weekend. I was Imperial Guard, he used his Flesh Tearers (blood angel sub-chapter) Space Marine army. Small 700pt battle, with the Imperial Guard as the "ambushers".

Ambush Scenario Overview: The "attacker" or "ambusher", splits force into two parts - "active" force, and "reserve" force. Min 30% of points in each partition. Ambusher sets up with hidden setup rules, basically markers face-down, in a horshoe-like deployment zone, concentrating on the short-edge he's defending. "Defender" must setup in a 6-inch wide column, at least 36 inches away from a short table-edge. Game lasts at least 6 turns, with Random extra turns added on a roll of 4+ at end of each turn beginning on 6th. In addition to regular Victory Points, additional VPs are added for the following objectives: Ambusher gets double victory points for any units destroyed. Defender gets victory points for any unit that makes it off the far table edge.

Background story: While out on patrol, a small force of Flesh Tearers had their Chaplain and Death Company fall into an extreme bout of Black Rage. The rest of the patrol immediately began escorting them back into the Ventnour Primarus hive. Upon hearing this, the Local Governor was not inclined to risk the Death Company rampaging through the city and ordered the Planetary Defence Force (PDF) to set up an ambush outside the City's main entrance road.

Some of the pics are a bit blurry as I was in a hurry, but I did the best I could to clean them up.

Deployment:
Overhead


Imperial Guard Defending City Entrance
(This is table-edge the Marines need to escape from)


Behind Marine Column


Turn One Imperial Guard (Ambushers)
The PDF open fire from the hidden deployment in the city's outer ruins. Ratling Snipers lay down some pinning fire. Squad Alpha launches a krak missle at the lead Predator, ripping off the twin-linked Assault Cannon from the main turret.
Turn One Space Marines (Defenders)

Under the unexpected hail of fire, the Marine column advances forward.


The Rhino overcharges its engines and moves up on the right flank, around the center tactical squad.


The Predator fires its remaining armaments and exacts some revenge on Squad Alpha, cutting down half the squad. Squad Alpha's morale is shaken, but some, er, encouraging, words from Senior Officer vonSmeek comes over the vox-set, and they hold firm.

Turn Two Imperial Guard
With a click over the orbital comm-link, Junior Officer Melnus knew that the reserves had arrived. Mounted in his Chimera, Senior Officer vonSmeek and his Command HQ came through the hills, flames bursting out of the heavy flamers mounted on the turret and hull. The command squad disembarked, adding their two flamers to the action. The center tactical squad of marines lost to brothers, scorched within their power armour. Squad Bravo fired a krak missile which homed in on the advancing Predator and hit a weak seam between armor plates.


The Predator exploded in a huge ball of fire, throwing white-hot metal in a wide circle, cutting down two of the nearby Death Company. The Ratlings fired and missed again, distracted from the explosion of the Predator. The autocannon from Officer Melnus' command squad hit the Death Company, but the rounds plinked off their black power armor. The Leman Russ arrived from reserves on the other flank, firing the mighty Battle Cannon on the move, but missing wildly.

Turn Two Space Marines
The wounds from the Predator explosion intensified the Blood Rage gripping the Death Company, and they advanced forward towards the Command HQ. The Rage also caught the Rhino crew again, forcing them to move forward to the buildings holding Squad Alpha.


The tactical squad within quickly disembarked and fired but all missed. The Death Company fired on the newly arrived Command HQ, wiping out all of the guardsmen leaving the PDF's commanding office vonSmeek alone to face the coming assault charge.


The Death Company charged in and exacted their vengeance for their two fallen brothers, killing vonSmeek.

Turn Three Imperial Guard
Squad Bravo resumed firing on the center tactical squad killing another two. The Ratlings finally notched their first victim, killing another marine in the center tactical squad, pinning them down again. The Leman Russ shot the ordnance cannon again, this time on the mark. It wiped out half of the tactical squad near the buildings, pinning them as well. The Rhino lost its pintle bolter in the blast, stunning the crew.

Turn Three Space Marine
With almost all units pinned, there wasn't much movement for the Marines in this turn.

Turn Four Imperial Guard
...to be continued!

Warmaster

UPDATE: the fellas over at the very cool gaming site TheMiniaturesPage.com pointed out a slight bit of confusion in this post concerning the "scale" of Warmaster. I referred to Warmaster as "epic-scale Warhammer". This is in terms of the type of large-scale formation/battalion warfare that Epic 40K rules depict, not the exact same scale of miniature size as epic 40K (although i did point this out in the 2nd paragraph of the original post, expecting a potential misunderstanding). But hey, i'll blame that on GW since none of their figs are actually the size of the scale they're supposed to be!
:endUpdate

These are two armies from the release of the Warmaster game, back around 2000. Warmaster was epic-scale Warhammer using the basic rules of Epic 40K. High Elves and Undead were the armies that came with the boxed set.

After my not-so-satisfying speed-painting of the Space Marine and Ork armies that came with the Epic 40K boxed set, I was determined to do a better job with Warmaster. These figs were not quite 6mm; they're probably closer to 10mm (which is typically the case with GW figs: just a little bigger than the scale they're supposed to be).



This meant there was a higher-level of detail and I needed to come up with a better method to paint two entire armies in under 3 weeks, but with enough detail to do the model some justice.

I undercoated everything with black spray paint and for the High Elves, I let that do most of the work. I picked out the major details with color, being careful to leave black as a trim-line. This was much easier with the Warmaster figs than with Epic40K figs (although I got much better at it with practice, and when I returned to Epic figs was able to use the technique successfully).



The Warmaster demo release was much more time compressed than Epic 40K (and that was no picnic). I really only had time for one level of detail, which was why I tried the black trim-line approach. Paint the main colors, pick out the small details, move onto the next stand. There wasn't enough time to apply any further shading for the Elves. But looking back at the figs, and the pics, it really wasn't necessary. Looking at small-scale figs bunched very close together on stands allllll the way down on a gaming table, the black/major-color technique works just fine. And it's definitely "good enough to play".



As usual, The Undead were another matter altogether. Skeletons are the easiest figures to paint. Period. And for Warmaster scale, easy is the name of the game. Again, I spray painted the fig with a black undercoat. Then I rapidly dry-brushed some sort of bone-color right over the entire fig.



After the first dry-brush, I repeated it again with white, trying to focus on the edges of the model. I don't even remember the specific colors used on the bones for these figs, I just remember cranking 'em out in about 2 days.



I picked out the other details when the bones were finished. The Warmaster armies were also the first figs that I employed the sandy-dirt color and green flock basing technique. I was very pleased with how it turned out.



Below is a zoom in on the skeleton archers.



After I took these pictures I found the two "leader" models for the High Elves and Undead in the back of my miniature display case. I was never really happy with how they turned out, so I'll spare The Internets from their bandwidth.

Bommerz!

UPDATED:
re-cropped the pix below.

Bommerz Over Da Sulpher River was a small Games Workshop game that allowed you to play Imperial Guard fighters vs Ork Bommerz. The game scenario based around a river with vital bridges and gun emplacements. The Ork Bommerz would streak down the river and attempt to take them out, while the Imperial Guard player had to defend. The game was fast-paced, wouldn't take more than 30 mins, and was great fun. They were epic-scale fighter planes that you could eventually use in Epic Armageddon (I think you could use them in Epic 40k, but I don't remember for sure).

Here's the Ork Bommerz that I got about 90% complete.




I painted the IG Thunderboltz, but they're only about half-finished.

Space Wolves

UPDATED:
re-cropped the pix below.

While rummaging around my basement I found some of my other Epic 40K figs that I had painted up a number of years ago.



This was back when I had to paint two full armies of Space Marines and Orks for the early demonstration games I ran at various conventions for the Epic 40K release. We typically received the boxed set about a month before it was released (sometimes only two weeks), and had to paint both armies in the box and master the rules within this time-frame.



As you can imagine, speed was the name of the game, not quality painting. After that, run lots of demos at various stores and answer everyone's questions about the new ruleset.



Originally, I tried painting a mostly white and very light-blue custom Chapter, but I just didn't like it. I switched to Space Wolves about halfway through, which was much easier to paint quickly. They have just enough detail to show off the models, and I was pretty pleased considering the short window I had to paint two armies. Pleased enough to put them on the Internet, I guess.

Great?

Hardly.

Good-enough?

Yep.



The Librarian was the only figure I spent any actual time picking out detail. The model was very detailed for 6mm epic scale, and I figured it was worth a little effort to make him stand out.

Having played a number of games using Epic 40K rules, I'm anxious to try out the Epic Armageddon rules.

My rummaging also uncovered some Warmaster armies that I had painted up when I was running demos for that game's release. High Elves and Undead. I'll include pics of those in a later post.

Cadian Infantry

UPDATED:
re-cropped the pix below.

Had a chance to take some additional pics. Hopefully better lighting this time. Completed first half of a Cadian Infantry Company. These figs are old, out of production Imperial Guard Epic Space Marine line, circa 1990. They might actually be Cadians which would be great luck for me. My plan is to field a Cadian IG army painted in the same color scheme as my current 40K Cadian IG army. We'll be playing using the most recent Epic Armageddon rules, including errata and updates.

Again, these are fairly high resolution pics, so you can click on the pic for a close up. These figs aren't painted up to my normal standards, but since that "standard" usually equals "never finished", I opted for "good enough" just to get 'em on the battlefield.



Had some trouble selecting a suitable color for the bases. The 40K army has light "Desert Yellow" bases, but at the epic scale the color is too similar to the khaki camos; not enough contrast.



After some consultation with Le Coq Fou, I experimented to different shades of gray and light drybrushing. I settled on the combination in the pics.

Once I finish the other 6 infantry stands, I'll have a complete infantry formation (minus the command stand). Then I'll move onto some Leman Russ tanks.

epic imperial guard

a few early pics of new epic armageddon army: imperial guard.



still learning how to take better pics.


the resolution is actually pretty good, so if you click it, you can zoom in for a close up.

more pics to come.