From the Front Line - The Good, the Bad and the Cuddly

Well, as I mentioned elsewhere I spotted a new miniature game just before Christmas called a Fistful of Honey. Yes, bad puns aside, this is a 28mm game of teddy bear gunslingers.

Eureka miniatures

The models themselves are great quality. I haven't seen lead-based miniatures for some years since the UK/US rules changed and GW went over to "white metal". The models are therefore slightly softer than I am used to (and need to be handled with more care to avoid bending the gun barrels etc) but it the casting quality is much higher. The detail is clear, and there are very few mould lines to clean up.

The bases could be a little larger, as in play the models tend to fall over easily. They only have a 10mm moulded base - mounting this on a 25mm round base should solve this problem.

Toy Town

The only thing missing was some scenery to represent Toy Town, the scene of the fights. Since gunslinger bears would seem out of place fighting amongst the Gothic ruined city, or the adobe-esque huts of Tallarn, something more appropriate was needed. Good old Google soon gave me the solution - templates of western-style buildings for 28mm games! Ideal.

These were downloaded, then edited in Powerpoint to add my own shop fronts and signs. Printed onto card, these were cut out and assembled. Since I was trying to make these quickly, I added tabs to the pieces so i could just glue them together. They would be more sturdy if the buildings were made from foam board, with the templates glued on to these, but my bad.

An evening gave me a dozen or so buildings, enough to cover a 3' x 3' playing area, or a sparse 4' square one. A few barricades from the 'normal' terrain collection soon made up numbers.

So...what about the game?

I persuaded a friend to try a game with me a couple of nights ago, expecting boredom and the models to be consigned to the bin...I mean display cabinet.

Instead, we spent all evening playing various scenarios, and having a lot of fun.

This stems partly from the game being so damn easy to pick up. All that is needed to play is a deck of cards and some markers (bits of torn paper in our case). My opponent, as a total newcomer to wargaming of any form, picked up the gaming concepts straight away and was more than capable of giving me a run for my money.

With six bears per gang (5 - 10 is recommended), and six longhorn cattle to rustle, even with all the "advanced" rules for lassoing, gunslingers and cattle the games only take 15 minutes or so to play.

Bears are either armed with a revolver (short range), a rifle (long range) or a lasso (special rules apply). Movement is either on foot or on horse back, depending on the model.

Shooting is resolved by naming a suit, then turning the top card over - if the suit is correct, then the target bear is hit and plays dead. If the colour matches (but the suit is wrong) then he is only startled. Much faster than rolling dice to hit then to wound as with WH40K! And trying to guess the suit adds an element to the normal cursing of the Dice Gods.

In almost every game we played, all six cattle were "rustled" with only the loss of one or two bears. Most games were a draw with three each captured. An obvious change would be to get some more cattle so as to make the end game more interesting, and an odd number of cattle would remove a drawn game as an option! Another 5 or so would seem about right.

Next?

Well, I need to paint the bears. Some names would be good for the little fellows, if I can think of any more bad puns to use.

Some additional cattle may be a good idea, as already mentioned, and perhaps (just perhaps) a couple more bears for each gang (probably mounted ones)

Toy Town could benefit from a few more buildings, easy enough to provide, and perhaps some rail fence sections, barrels, carts etc. to add some more cover and obstacles. All easy things to make.


All in all, I'm glad I spotted and got the models - and I haven't even begun painting them yet!

The models, and a pdf file of the rules, can be found at eurekamin.com.au

The image files for the scenery seem to have been removed from the site I used. If they get put back, I'll post the link.

From the Front Line

Well, that went a little better then last week's game.

 

1,500 points versus Grey Knights (with Imperial Guard storm troopers and an Inquisitor supporting them) - those pesky Inquisitors just won't leave us alone, investigating the Horus Heresy and whether or not our forefathers turned traitor.

 

Fluff aside, it was a larger game than normal using the Take and Hold mission (Objective is to get troops within 12" of the centre of the table, marked here by a bunker).

 

I deployed the Deathwing and Librarian in the centre, supported on either side by a Tactical squad with fire lanes down either side of the bunker. The left flank was held by the Assault squad and Predator, whilst the Dreadnought provided heavy support on the right flank. The Land Speeders were both on the right where they could make best use of the cover to harass that side.  The plan was that the centre would advance in or behind cover without engaging so that they would be intact on the last coupe of turns. Meanwhile, the Fast Assault and Support units would provide covering fire to reduce the number of enemy advancing, and removing the Imperial Guard "screen" of weak troops.

 

The Grey Knights deployment was pretty much as expected, with the storm troopers being deployed opposite my right flank as a shield to one of the Grey Knight squads and Dreadnought. The other Tactical squad was opposite my left flank, whilst the Terminators were held in reserve to teleport in later.

 

Turn 1

 

I lost the roll for first turn, so advanced to make use of cover where possible. The Land Speeders moved forward, with the Assault Cannon one positioning itself to fire at one of the storm trooper squads skulking in a wood, and managed to kill 2. The only other shooting was from the Dreadnought, who managed to snipe at a storm trooper.

 

The Grey Knights then advanced, bringing the dreadnought out of cover to fire at my own, which survived unscathed. Fairly uneventful.

 

Turn 2

 

I continued the advance on turn two, moving both Land Speeders to finish off the Storm trooper squad on the right. Despite firing everything they had, I only managed to kill three more of them. The Predator, with one of the fired at the other Storm trooper squad, and wiped out two of them. Meanwhile my other heavy weapons fire was not especially noteworthy - i.e. they missed.

 

The Grey knight Terminators arrived on turn two, a little early for my opponent, but ideal for me - if I know where they are I can kill them!  Since he was teleporting in to a homer beacon, they ended up back within the enemy lines behind the Storm trooper shield. Firing was at my exposed vehicles, shooting down the HF/MM Land Speeder and destroying the Lascannon on the Dreadnought.

 

Turn 3

 

On the right, meanwhile, I pulled the remaining Land Speeder back out of range of the Storm troopers, and used it to engage the Dreadnought, which it destroyed without any problem. The Predator took out another three of the Storm troopers who were daft enough to still be in the open.

 

Firing from my tactical squad on the left took out a couple more of the Storm troopers (leaving only the sergeant), which opened up a line of sight from one of my Deathwing to the enemy terminators. Fortunately, I had seen this coming and had ensured that this guy was one with an assault cannon. The hail of bullets tore through one of the Grey Knights, and even the heavy Terminator armour wasn't enough to save him.

 

In return, the Predator was destroyed by a psycannon shot from the troops opposite my left flank. The surviving storm trooper sergeant meanwhile passed his "Last Man Standing" check, and coolly ran towards the bunker objective, firing a shot off at the Terminators as he went.

 

Turn 4

 

Advancing towards the objective, the Deathwing calmly opened fire at their Terminator counterparts, but only managed to kill one more. the Librarian's psychic attack was also nullified.

 

On the other side of the field, my Tactical squad and Dreadnought were able to kill a couple of Grey Knights advancing towards the objective.

 

Back on the left flank I took a gamble and my Chaplain led his squad into the charge against the Grey knight tactical squad. I wasn't sure how this would go, as I was outnumbered 10 to 6, with several of them having close combat weapons. The Chaplain had clearly not eaten his weetabix that morning (too busy chanting, I suspect) and only killed one opponent on the charge. His squad faired a little better, killing one more - but I lost two in return, drawing the combat.

 

A slight tactical error on my part meant I had left my Deathwing in charge range of the Grey knight terminators. I lost two of the squad to shooting, then three more in the ensuing combat, but the Librarian was able to kill the two remaining Grey knights, leaving just the Inquisitor lord. This left me with the Librarian and one assault cannon Terminator.

 

The Lone Heroic Sergeant again passed his Last Man Standing check (could this be "Lucky Jim", that legendary trooper?) and advanced into the centre of the bunker. Whilst shouting that ancient war cry of "My spot!" he fired at the nearest Tactical squad. In my opponents turn, I lost another assault marine in the continued combat whilst the Chaplain failed to even hit an enemy. I also lost the Dreadnought to meltagun fire from the remaining storm troopers.

 

Turn 5

 

The Assault squad managed to kill two more opponents, but lost the last two troopers in return, leaving the Chaplain on his own.

 

On the right, the Tactical squad killed the remaining storm troopers that were in front of them, whilst the Landspeeder poured a hail of fire into the Grey Knights squad, killing a couple.

 

The Tactical squad on the left charged into the combat in front of them to support their Librarian and comrade. Not as suicidal as first thought, since the Lord would only be able to attack one of the three targets (Librarian, Deathwing or Tactical squad) and so could not kill everyone! As it was, their support was not needed as the Librarian succeeded in a psychic attack in combat, sucking the Lord's soul into the warp.  In the follow up move, he and the lone trooper moved to engage the Grey Knights in the bunker, and the tactical squad moved into cover as well (but did not engage anyone in combat)

 

The Chaplain, meanwhile, finally lost due to sheer weight of numbers and was killed.

 

Turn 6

 

Last turn! Since I had engaged the Grey Knights in the bunker with the Librarian and Deathwing, I wasn't able to shoot at that squad. So the Land Speeder and both Tactical squads levelled their guns at the Sergeant Lucky Jim and opened fire. Yelling defiantly to the last, Not-So Lucky Jim earned eternal respect in the roll of honour.

 

The Librarian and Deathwing killed a couple of Grey Knights in combat, reducing the squad to below half strength (so was no longer a scoring unit).

 

The remaining Grey Knights charged my Tactical squad, and killed four - not enough to reduce them to half strength.

 

So, the final score was 3 to me (Landspeeder and two Tactical squads within 12" of the objective) to 0.

 

A well-fought battle that was very close to the last turn.

 

The resulting victory points put me up on to the second tier from the top, and into the top 10 or so players. I might drop back down again from other people's games, but that would be the last one I play in the competition.

 

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Not what I intended

Well, that could have gone better.

GW are running a league through January, and despite not being around for a couple of weeks, it's still feasible to do well in it given the way the points are being given out.

So I figured a couple of games tonight, one against an 'easy' opponent which I should win, and one against a higher-ranked player which I would lose, but gain some points (bonus points for playing people in ranks above, see?)

Anyway, the first game of Search and Destroy ended up in no decisive win, with me having only the Chaplain and part of the Assault Squad left, against a squad of scouts and one marine. So it went to the points count...which was a dead heat - 236 points each. Highly unlikely in the best of circumstances, but okay. So only two points for the draw, one for a painted army, but none for a tier difference. Phooey.

I found another opponent, who was one tier above me. Anyway, I've played him before and won, so it should have been an easy game. Oops.

Everything was going okay until turn three, when my assault squad was preparing to charge his Grey Hunters pack (yep, I was playing against the Space Pups). On the other flank a squad of Bloodclaws had been caught out in the open when they failed to make a charge against my Tactical squad. This left them in front of not only the Tac squad, but also the combined fire power of the Predator and the Dreadnought - more than enough to take them to pieces.

We got caught up trying to work out the effect of "Counter Attack" on the chaplain's "Litanies of Hate". With no-one able to decide for sure, we agreed that I would still get the re-rolls as I was technically still charging (and we would discuss it later when we had more time). We then resolved the combat, which didn't go too well for me.

The problem was that I had managed to miss my entire shooting phase.

Yep.

Which allowed the Bloodclaws to charge the Tac squad, with predictable results.

The only saving grace was that the staff wanted to close the store, so ruled that the two army commanders would decide the game in single gladitorail close combat - mano e mano.

Alas, I lost (although it was a close run thing.

So another 2 points (1 for the tier difference and 1 for a painted army).

Ah well, maybe next time.


In other news, I've added a second Assault Cannon to my first Terminator squad, and was hoping to field them with a Librarian in a 1500 point game tonight. Unfortunately, no one had enough points to go against them, so they'll have to wait until next week.

I'm toying with the idea of having the Termies led by a Chaplain (which I don't have a model of) instead of the Librarian (which I do). The Chaplain gives better close combat bonuses if the squad charges, but the Librarian has better ranged attacks through the Psychic powers, and from what I saw tonight is pretty potent in close combat. I think I'll field the Librarian first and see how they fair.

One shall stand...

New trailer!