Star Wars: Battle of Hoth

I didn't even try to resist this Commands & Colors ruleset for the Battle of Hoth, with little toy AT-ATs and snowspeeders. Speedpaints always help with these, and the bases are just sand, painted blue-grey and drybrushed white. The infantry are ~20mm.

The game comes with two branching campaigns of four games each, which is a great way to tie it all together. A game takes under 30 minutes, so a full campaign can be knocked out in an evening!

I threw everything I had at this unstoppable AT-AT,
but it lumbered through my lines and took out the orbital cannon.

40K Red Corsairs Havocs

Havocs are the Chaos Space Marine heavy weapons teams. They've got great sculpts and suitably imposing weapons. They're bulky, on 40mm bases.

Red Corsairs Havocs

Reaper Chaincannon

Autocannon

Lascannons

The Squad Leader is a great model, and I've kitbashed him with a new head and backpack to be the leader of my entire warband.

Mementos of past victories.

Skull-o-meter™: 28

I've been slowly making my way through my Red Corsairs. There comes a tipping point where the progress snowballs, the onerous grind is past, and they race to completion. So, more to come. I'm afraid I've got to touch up a few of my earlier marines to match my current standard and style...

40K Red Corsairs Obliterators

Also making their debut in my last game, Obliterators are weapon-obsessed marines infused with warp energies that give them the ability to spawn weapons and ammunition from their bodies. They are melded with their armour and grown to grotesque size.

After painting the Possessed, I thought I would torture myself more with these complex sculpts.

Skull-o-meter™: 10

40K Chaos Venomcrawler

A star of my recent battle was the Venomcrawler. This is an unholy melding of daemon and machine in spider form. This wasn't too tricky to paint, and I'm pretty happy with the base.

Skull-o-meter™: 10

Grimdark Future: Chaos vs. Marines

They do not know why they are here- all they know is they must fight.

My Red Corsairs face off against the Dextra Manus Marines again. We fought in June but it was a very one-sided affair, with my cultists being swept off the board and I didn't take photos. But I've been selling my soul for dark gifts, and my Legionaries are reinforced with some stronger hitting power... We played a 2000 point game of Grimdark Future, jostling for possession of the objectives marked with corpses.

The foes face off again.

The Dextra Manus have come with strong armoured support in the form of a Redemptor Dreadnought and a Gladiator Lancer hovertank.

The Gladiator attacks my Havoc heavy weapon
specialists, its main threat.

The lascannons return fire, but the tank soaks up the hits.

I, too, have armoured support:

Venomcrawler!

The Venomcrawler daemon engine scuttles forwards on my left...

... but is overtaken by the terrifying Possessed marines.

Behind the loyalists, the warp rips open
and Obliterators teleport into action!

Obliterators!

Their weapons tear the marines apart.

The Possessed rip apart a squad of assault marines
and their captain.

In turn, they fall to the cyberwolf cavalry...

... who are trampled beneath the metal legs of the Venomcrawler.

The Gladiator and the Havocs exchange fire.

The Havocs succumb to the armoured might of the tank.

My Commander uses his psychic might to finally silence the tank.

The sole survivor, the Dreadnought,
impotently fires at the Venomcrawler and withdraws.

A 4-3 victory to the ruinous powers. I had some lucky dice rolls, and it was a characteristically fast and brutal game.

I'll be showing off my latest recruits over the next few weeks.

More Grimdark Future

We played another game of Grimdark Future, Marines (Dextra Manus) vs Chaos Marines (Red Corsairs). We rolled up a random setup and mission, which gave us only one objective- to be the last man standing in the centre! Clearly vital intelligence was on the body in the crater.

Red Corsairs approach the objective, but there are
lurking loyalists...

Both sides hastened to the objective, abandoning some degree of caution in the rush. I knew that the Dextra Manus Invictor Warsuit would be a tough nut to crack, and had craftily added a lascannon to my traitor squad with a clear view over the battlefield.

Mutual exchange of fire between marines...

Lascannon keeps trying to blast the Invictor Warsuit

What I hadn't expected was... cyberwolves!

No-one expects cyberwolves.

After they tore up one mob of cultists, the lascannon accurately blasted a hole in one. My Sorcerer flamed a second, and the third gloriously charged my daemonically possessed marines. After a tough fight, they took the wolf down.

Lascannon kills one wolf.

Sorcerer kills another

The last wolf has a glorious charge into the Possessed.

I then kept missing with the lascannon, and my possessed were gunned down by the Warsuit. Victory to the loyalists.

Deja vu as the Invictor guns down the Possessed.

I will need to build up a reliable anti-armour capability for this campaign, and maybe look into some mobility.

The wolves have to be shot; fighting them in hand-to-hand is a losing proposition.