We got the new Epic rules back to the tabletop recently in a good weekend of dice rollin' action. Up first Gareth took control of the Imperials against Scoob, who was using the android army I put together from Dark Realm Miniatures many years ago. This was the first time these two armies had been used in these new rules, and it came right down to the wire.

After a few hours of exchanging laser blasts and missiles, and the clashing of blades on armour, the androids won the day by just 43 pts. In a 6000pt game, 43pts is basically nothing.

The day after, it was my turn to take control of the Imperial forces, as Scoob brought the Nidz into the game for the first time, leaving only the Eldar and Squats in need of introduction.

In another 6000pt game, volleys of battlecannon and lascannon fire tore into the Nidz. They pulled it back somewhat once they got closer in, but I managed a 3452-2884 win. It definitely seemed like the Nidz psychic powers need buffing, and some of their units need a little combat boost, so I'll make that happen for their next Epic-S adventure.

<Old Stuff>

It's about time some stuff from my old website returned from the pits of obscurity.

And what could be more obscure than my first ever battle report, using a long forgotten homebrew ruleset, with miniatures from my first ever Games Workshop purchase all the way back in the early 90s?

Now I can not lie. I never actually played Warhammer. Well, that is, other than one demo game in a Games Workshop after the release of fourth edition, during which Scooby's goblins beat my high elves, drawing gasps of shock from the red shirts, as goblins never won the demo game.
Yep, that's my wargaming skill in action right there.

Still, in my very early wargaming years it seemed like I was going to get more into fantasy than sci-fi, something that I assume changed when I fell in love with the look of Epic Space Marine.

In the early 90s, I collected quite a few fantasy models. Indeed, the first GW purchase I ever made was the "Warhammer Fantasy Regiments" box, which had ten each of wood elves, dwarves, goblins, orcs, skaven and dark elves. I think what I wanted to do, even as a young teenager, was create my own rules. But other than a few little attempts nothing much came of them, especially as other games took hold of me.

Of these attempts, records of just one remained, and from these historical documents, I created a battle report for my old site back in January 2015. That report is now resurrected here.

Show / hide battle report

Just recently went to a wargaming market for the first time, where sellers were peddling all kinds of goods. Mostly it was second hand 40K stuff as well as lots of historical miniatures. But there were some other interesting things as well.

After somehow resisting the urge to buy a 40K Stormlord for £30 (I really wanted it, but have not really used my other 2 super heavy tanks yet), I only came away with some new MDF bridges.

It's not taken long to get these pieces finished, but they needed some modifications to make them usable. Firstly, I noticed the side panels protruded beneath the lower surface of the bridges. I guessed these panels could potentially dig in to my polystyrene hills and damage them. It was also very evident that the bridges were not very strong.

So to fix both issues, I added support and thickness to the underside of the bridges, using coffee stirrers and thick card.

After that, it was an easy task to add some paint and textures.

I've managed a few other little things these last couple of weeks, after finally varnishing my last lot of completed terrain, and starting the work needed to finish my Eldar MDF terrain. The power generators are going to need the most work. I really didn't like the look of the gaps in the wooden crystals, so I've started building up some filler, so that I can try and sand them down and make them more crystal-ish. Thinking about it now, there's probably 101 better ways of doing this. But whatever.

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I've not painted any miniatures since way back in June some time. As I assumed, the hot weather forced me away, and I have not yet found the motivation to go back now the weather is cooler again.

So much for making this a huge painting year.

Still, I'm looking to get back into it now, and have varnished the Epic Orks that needed it.

In addition, I'd not lined up all my 40K Imperial Guard for many years. So have done that as well.

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It's been a long time coming, but we finally managed to have a little refresher battle of our new Epic rules recently.

In this one, Gareth dipped his toes into the game for the first time, and took control of the Orks against my Chaos.

It was a short, close and bloody battle which ended with Gareth picking up the win. Even though I had more units at the end, I just didn't have enough left to trouble the two Stompas.

What an absolute ballache I've had trying to put together all the rest of my TTCombat MDF terrain from last year.

As I stated a while back on this blog, the Eldar pieces simply hadn't been cut out properly by the laser. So it took forever to work my way through all those tiny little pieces and trim them out with a blade.

Nevertheless, I got the stargates assembled, but I had an issue with the barricades that came with them. I didn't like how the laser etching was only on one side. So I glued two of them back to back and trimmed down the supports to allow this.

However, when I got to the end of this process, I still had two barricades left that I couldn't use, as one of the barricades was missing its two supports. Sure, I broke one of the other supports while I was trimming them down to glue the others together, so probably couldn't have made the last double-sided barricade anyway. But that's not the point. It became very apparent that someone at TTCombat can't count, when I assembled the generators, and found there were three little wooden "pins" that were also missing. I had to glue in some spare bits of wood, then trim them down when they were fully secured in place.

But the worst was yet to come, when I started to assemble Compund Chakwas. Now this kit was from their 10mm range, but I thought it could be used as some kind of silo station in both 6mm and 28mm. That's the entire reason I bought it.

So imagine how hard I sighed when I opened the packaging to find completely the wrong kit inside, even though Compund Chakwas was clearly on the label.

I'm guessing I bought it far too long ago to return it, so I decided to just go ahead and make whatever it was and hope it was usable. It turned out to be a kit called Compound Drack. I wasn't too unhappy with this, as it reminds me of the Hadley's Hope colony from Aliens. And though it's a little big for 6mm games, it will probably just about still work. There's no way I can use it in 28mm games though, that's for sure. Unless it's a base for Snotlings or something.

I haven't fully glued it all together yet, as I may incorporate it into a large 6mm android factory I've been thinking of making for ages.

But to continue the trend, there's also a piece missing from this kit as well, as one of the doors is not there. I guess I'll just have to make my own. Not the hardest thing to do, but still a pain.

Let's just say I won't be using TTCombat for this stuff ever again.