I guess it's all my own fault, but my hope that 2023 would be a big wargaming year has pretty much turned out to be a false hope.
Nevertheless, a couple of weeks back we got the chance to play our first proper wargames of the year.
Up first were two games of the new 40K 10th edition, which were released for free a little while back in the form of basic rulebook and indexes.
In the first game, Gareth got to pull out his own models for the first time, as he's been collecting some Space Wolves. He went up against Scoob's new Tyranids that came from the Leviathan starter set.
There was no use of point values, and two armies that looked roughly equal were chosen. There was also no worrying about proper scenarios or objectives or any of that stuff. We all agreed that we just wanted to see the basic rules in action, to allow the two generals to get into the shooting, chopping and munching as quickly as possible.
At the end of the day, most of the basic troops on both sides had been dealt with, but Gareth conceded that he had little left to deal with the two bigger bugs after losing his Dreadnoughts, so it seemed the Nids had won this first little skirmish.

Nids pile into the forest to take on the Wolves
The day after, I challenged Scoob's Nids with my own Hive Fleet Odium bugs. Though we used the same board, this time we added objectives, and decided we would count up points at the end of each turn depending on how many objectives we held. Then we both promptly ignored this and charged headlong at each other. It just didn't seem right for Nidz to sit there holding objectives.
After just a few turns, I barely had anything left on the board. If I remember right, it was just a single Ravener and a few Termagants. Yeah, it was clear Scoob had taken this one.

The Parasite Of Mortrex gatecrashes the fight between purple and red Termagants
A few days after our first foray into 40K 10th territory, it was the turn of the game I was most looking forward to getting back to, in the form of Epic-S.
It's hard to believe that it had been a whole year since we last played this, so its time was certainly due.
Scoob and I had loads of options to try out. The Eldar and Squats had now got full rules, while the Nidz had been buffed after last time, and the Androids were now fully painted and very much ready for the tabletop.
In the end we decided to try an Eldar vs Nidz showdown. With Scoob on a Nid kick at the minute, he went for the forces of the Hive Mind, while I took command of the pointy ears.
Unfortunately for the bugs, they seemed a little doomed to fail from fairly early on. Even though their psychic powers had been buffed, we continually forgot the psychic phase, denying them this resource.
In addition, this was without any shadow of doubt, the best game I can remember ever having in terms of dice rolling. After an embarrassing first turn shooting attempt from the Phantom Titan, that saw it hit just one of ten 5+ attacks, my luck completely changed. Case in point, on the second turn, the Titan's next attack saw it hit eight of those same attacks, which caused massive damage to the Hierophant Titan scuttling towards it.
From this point on, Scoob had poor to average rolls, while mine were nearly all ridiculously good.
The 6000pt game ended after three turns, with the score 4212 to 2649 in my favour.

The Eldar counter the Tyranid aggression amongst the trees

A tale of two dice rolls
Though it seems the Tyranids are still underpowered, it's hard to take any real data from this battle considering what happened throughout.
So, well over a year since I started renovating my old "Hilly Rocks", I've actually taken another slight step towards their completion.
While all of the terrain was out for our recent games, I managed to get around to drybrushing all of the rock walls. They will need another round of washing and drybrushing to get the look I want, but at least a little bit has been done.
While I was doing this, I noticed one of the pieces had warped, and the edge section was bending up off of the tabletop. Sigh. Something else that I will need to fix, I guess.

The hilly rocks finally get drybrushed

Neither hills, rocks, or hilly rocks, are supposed to levitate