Thursday 20 June 2019

Random Session - Learning

[original draft 2019-06-17]

On the weekend we had a daytime session of Epic in Games Cube Parramatta (thanks GC).

During the week i put out a call and 3 of us were available.  Yhah.
Death Korp of Krieg (DKoK) List (played by K) and Marines List (played by T and myself - 2 separate games).

First game was me DM'ing while the newsters got into it.



The Marines charged up the board, which is always a tempting option.
Below we see the Marines Warhounds and Land Speeders getting swamped by a pack of DKoK Infantry with Marcharius support fire.

Not really an idea scenario for the marines, though to their credit they did whittle down quite a number of the guardsman before getting wiped out.
One of the fun events of the day was the warhound crit'ing and stumbling over some the guardsmen who were too close. fun times.
Big picture however this is just one of the guardsmen blobs, and not destroying it doesn't really accomplish much to his strategic availability.

A fun shot of a Thunderhawk running a ground attack through the terrain. The DKoK had flack available but they were broken for 2:3 of the game so the Thawk had pretty much free reign (not that it's super-shooty or anything). 
So end of turn 3 the Marines were down to 3 units (including the AC) and had little in the way of strategic options.
DKoK win with BreakSpirit and DefendFlag. probably could have wangled a TakeHold too with an extra turn... however the vehicle as pretty slow... combined with the focus being on combat rather than objectives... an issue that experience with resolve soon enough.

Both of the new players are getting suitably familiar with the basic rules and beyond, so was definitely worth the effort all round. 

Second game i reset the same Marine list, same terrain layout and off we went.

Suffice to say i DIDN'T charge up the board with more than i had too. The gorgons fully of guard are a potent assault unit, but slow, so not overly difficult to avoid.
The Earthshakers (artillery) were annoying and niggled away at the already small marine units.
Sacrificed the Predator Annihilators to crunch the DKoK Heavy AA early on, freeing the Thunderhawk to attack the Earthshakers (Light Vehicles - so they really copped some fire there).
Basically it was a game of avoidance and although most of the units were coping fire they were avoiding the heaviest damage and remaining unbroken enough.

The terminators teleported in on turn 3, taking out the last of the Earthshakers before getting swamped by infantry (but not before mauling them a bit). 

Picking away at the small stuff meant that heading toward the end of turn 3 i had a number of speedy units still available, and DKoK had no activation left. There was enough lure in my plan to get them toward my end of the board but without giving them uncontested objectives... in return i was able to scoot my formations down the board to secure the Blitz and TakeHold.  There was no chance (or opportunity) of BreakSpirit, or ShallNotPass or even DefendFlag with the large (virtually) unbreakable infantry blobs.   Going to turn 4 probably would have seen the remaining Marines slaughtered but thinks played out to plan.

Anyway, i guess it demonstrated that you don't just win by killing more units... something some of us take longer to learn than others [raises hand]. That said, it was a learning session and nutting out the mechanics is easier when you plunge in with as many combats as possible, and there was plenty of that going round too.

Hopefully everyone learned enough to make it worthwhile (even if the dice gods were not being overly generous - but tbh that's how Marines dice roll).

Personally i think i'm now at a level where i'm getting a feel for what other peoples armies can do and working toward/around that in a strategic way. Obviously, dice are dice, but knowing when to avoid the enemy is as vital as when to engage them.   Additionally, being able to play against the same army a couple of times helps with the strategy side as well. 

I'll put down as a note that there's a local Chaos Marines player who does this avoidance game brilliantly. He was at CoD at the latest session and we've played a couple of times some time ago. I managed to watch part of his game and it really inspired my approach to this game. 

Until next time...

Thursday 13 June 2019

New Templars - pt2 - Assault Termis

[original post draft 20190613]

So with my learning curve behind me (pffft, hahahahaha) and a long weekend ahead i set out to crush though some formations for the new army...

Things could have gone a lot better. lots of really bad misprints... either the tension on the vat membrane was lose... or the new resin wasn't happy.... or the temperature or humidity was off or... something.    it was a pretty miserable start to the weekend - foggy, bleak and shitful saturday and most of sunday. 

i did get some stuff done though... mainly on friday evening...

Two formations of Assault Terminators, each with an appropriately beweaponed Chaplain (No, they're not being lead by Termi-pandas; Chaplains are meant to have a skull themed helmet, which is... challenging to pull off in 6mm).



Finished painting them last night.

Not perfect but definitely table-worthy. 

After several failed prints (basically everything that i tried on sunday) due to lift etc i decided to replace the vat membrane just to see if it was that.

with filament you can gauge after a smaller percentage if there's something awry, and then abort the job if required;   with resin you technically can pause the print, which raises the build plate for inspection or add resin etc, but everything's covered in goop and you can only really guess... yes or no, that there's something accumulating on the plate. bit frustrating, especially when you have to wait 1 1/2 hours for the print to complete.

Anyway so i'd fixed the membrane (something new and interesting) and decided on tuesday (long weekend) night to run a quick print and see how it performed.   and received a new an exciting error... yhay.

Turns out this is a known thing; there are posts, vids and recommendations. Cleaned things up and called it a night. Not overly happy but peacefully resigned that this project was going to be as annoying as it damn well wanted to be.
The usb stick that they recommended replacing was the one they supplied and it has barely been used. Hopefully just a software glitch rather than a popped capacitor or similar.
Downloaded some firmware stuff and left it there. 

So last night i ran the firmware command and after a failed attempt and a few restarts it printed a fricken perfect run... just to spite me.
So i'm thinking i'll keep running jobs until midnight while it still works.
Started the second job and that ran through as well, but it ran out of resin with 9% to go so unusable... i swore a lot (especially since i topped up the tank after starting the job). Cleaned things up and called it a night.

So that's that. a potential solution to the software glitch and hopefully it will print some more stuff next session.

A tip which was helpful for the memory thing was to 'dry run' the job; basically start the print program running for as long as required but without the vat and resin and so on.  Saves resin.
The memory failures were happening mainly before the 4% mark (though on the vids i think i saw 11% or 16%). 

Can't say i'm really enjoying the experience. I do lots of problem solving for my day job and having to do more in my hobby time is a bit [meh]. Tinkering with gizmos and gadgets isn't the fun part for me... the creating side is - not the playing with the tools side.
Anyway, it is what it is.

Until next time...

Tuesday 4 June 2019

New Templars - pt1 - Tactical, Command and Tanks

[original post draft 20190603]

This does, very directly, follow on from the previous post.

While i am still testing and printing and learning, paint has been spread, intent has been realised and the new Templars are now a thing...

So that's one squad of Tactical Marines with Rhino transports, and one squad of Predator Destructor tanks done. Also done are the Emperor's Champion and Marshal (supreme commander) character stands.

As planned i clipped the banner off the old Marshal stand and added it to the new fella. In the old one it was just stuck straight into the ground but this time around had a dedicated flag bearer'er.

And only a whole bunch more to go. This is the first of... 6 tactical squads, and another squad of destructors is to be done - then onto other models and vehicles.

Thought i'd get these ones done as a proof of concept batch to see how the paint work was going to go down etc.
Additionally as it's going to take more time to produce the models i'm probably going to end up with smaller batches like these between print sessions. May as well get them underway as they're available. Waiting until everything is done is a waste of time.

Thoughts: the models still have a tinge of 'cartoony' which i still like well enough. i saw some fine detail 6mm which were amazing and really highlight the difference, but i still like these guys. The swords are a bit beefy but those kind of aspects are going to make the models a little more resilient to dropping or rough handling. so still happy. 

The only thing i might do is drop a dollop of paint on top of the bolters as there's a tiny bit of striation on that surface that's somewhat ugly and difficult to sand cos it's so small. very minor. 

Until next time...