Space Hulk Mission 2: Exterminate

The wife and I pulled out the Space Hulk box for another game the other night. Now, the first time, I kinda went easy on her a bit. I didn't want her first try at the board game to be met with frustration and a sense of futility.

For those of you who remember the battle report between me and her, you'll know she doesn't really like it when I pull the punches (came up in the comments). ;)

So, this time it's FOR REAL! We're going all out. If she wins, then it is a victory earned, not given.

Setup:
We took turns placing her squad models into separate rooms, per the rules. You can tell the two models that I placed (they're both standing in a corner away from the action). No freebies.

Looking at the map above, you can see the purple arrows where the genestealers enter the map. I will be referring to the map in two sections, the Western quadrant and the Eastern quadrant as the action in this game gets split up between the two.

The objectives here are simple. I get two "blips" to place per turn and my goal is to kill all of her terminators. She can win in two ways, either kill all of the genestealers (there is a max amount that can come) or block off all possible entry points (genestealers cannot enter the board from an arrow if a marine is within 6 squares of it.)

Here's Brother Leon standing in the corner relieving himself upon mission start.

Above, in the Eastern Quadrant, Sergeant Gideon and Brother Noctis are poised to cover the corridors to the south.

Above, Brother Omnio is positioned to hold off the western corridors until Brother Leon and Brother Valencio stop messing around in the corners of nearby rooms.

Wifey's plan is an aggressive one. In the Eastern Quadrant, Sergeant Gideon and Brother Noctis will advance south and attempt to seal off that entry-way. In the Western Quadrant, Brother Omnio will hold the corridor until Brother Valencio and Brother Leon converge on his location, where they will advance west and attempt to seal off that entry-way. She wants a complete and utter win, probably in order to gain considerable bragging rights in addition to the obligatory spoils (loser makes the winner a cup of tea).

Turn 1:
Brother Noctis opens his door and advances south, opening another door. He attempts to shoot the door further south, but fails to destroy it. Sergeant Gideon makes his way through the corridors. In my following turn, I've allocated a blip to the Eastern Quadrant and moved it to lurk behind the door south of Gideon.

++Courage and Faith, Brothers! We take this threat by the throat!++

In the Western Quadrant, Brother Omnio opens his door and sets up position (and Overwatch) covering the north-west corridor.
The blip for this quadrant scurries down the south-west corridor and lurks in a hole in the wall.

++Brother Omnio in position. Sensorium detects hostile in parallel corridor.++
++Acknowledged. Brother Leon en route. Emperor protect.++
++Brother Valencio- I'm on my way. I'm east of your position.++

Turn 2:
Brother Noctis advances, firing upon the southern door, but it holds. Sergeant Gideon moves a few steps south, slowing so Brother Noctis can catch up. I allocate another blip to the Eastern Quadrant, and move it up behind the door south of Brother Noctis. My first blip opens a door and waits behind a corner, ready to pounce on the Sergeant.

++More contacts approach. Steady, Brothers, retribution approches.++

In order to keep my blip in check, Brother Omnio re-positions himself in the south-western corridor, effectively stale-mating my blip. I respond by moving the newly allocated blip up the north-western corridor. Brother Leon and Brother Valencio hurry to intercept.

Turn 3:
Brother Noctis finally destroys the door to the south, revealing a lone genestealer, but fails to kill it and sets Overwatch. Sergeant Gideon advances a step and sets Guard.

Just in time to rescue Brother Omnio from being over-whelmed from two sides, Brother Valencio opens a door to the east and has a clear shot at the genestealers in the north-western corridor. He sets Overwatch. Brother Leon continues to close on their location. I reveal both of my re-inforcement blips and move them along the north-western corridor behind the discovered genestealers (using them as cover). The front genestealers make a move towards Brother Valencio, but he destroys them. I decide to think better of the situation, and the other genestealers hold.

++Brother Valencio engaging the enemy in the northwest corridor. By Sanguinius we will cleanse this place.++

Turn 4:
In a frightening display of bad luck and fragility, Brother Noctis fails to kill the genestealer in front of him, and jams his Storm Bolter in the following Overwatch. The genestealer makes short work of him, and another blip moves up behind the successful genestealer. Sergeant Gideon gives pause and sets Guard again.

++They are upon me! For the Emperor, I --fzzzt - tchk-Aaagh.. ++
++Brother Noctis!++
++He met his end in the Emperor's duty, may we all be as fortunate.++
++We finish this, that Brother Noctis will be avenged.++

Meanwhile, in the Western Quadrant, another blip lurks down the corridor. I will not simply throw them to the fate of the other genestealers already caught in the north-west corridor. Brother Leon continues forward.

Turn 5:
In the Eastern Quadrant, Sergeant Gideon destroys the blip around the corner and attempts to make a run to block the entry-way. Both of my blips are allocated here, and they swarm north, past Sergeant Gideon. Some make their way towards the Western Quadrant, others circle around , closing on Sergeant Gideon. The blips nearby wait for the noose to close tighter before they spring their trap.

++Contacts surrounding my location. Cannot hold the quadrant alone. Watch your six, Brothers! Eastern Quadrant is compromised!++
++Brother Valencio moving in to assist, Sergeant.++

With Brother Leon having finally arrived to cover the Northwest corridor (on Overwatch, even), Brother Valencio turns his attention eastward, moving to assist the Sergeant.

Turn 6:
Sergeant Gideon tires of these xeno games, and charges the genestealers! he decimates a small handfull, but unfortunately for the Imperium, he cannot take them all, and they over-whelm him.

++These foul xenos fight like babes from Calthis IV! I would have expected more... ++
++Sergeant, behind you!++
++...Clever girl. I -chhht. tzzz- Nay!++
++Sergeant!++

Brother Valencio positions himself at a key corridor joining the two quadrants.

++In Gideon's name, no xenos will pass me while I still draw breath!++

Brother Leon advances, and clears the northwest corridor with the ridiculously awesome Assault Cannon. He and Brother Omnio look to be making a move to seal this entry off. I focus my blip reinforcements here to hold them off.

Turn 7:
Brother Valencio holds the Eastern Quadrant from his vantage point in the north room. The genestealers bunch up to swarm him.

Brother Omnio, long standing in stalemate with the blip hiding in the hole in the wall, advances and lays it to waste with his Storm Bolter. He holds the corridor from his advanced position. Brother Leon advances two steps and sets Overwatch as well.

Turn 8:

++None shall pass!++

Both Brother Omnio and Brother Leon advance two steps and set Overwatch. By now, Brother Omnio is close enough that he is denying me the southern two entry points. I throw both reinforcement blips in from the north to stall their approach.

Turn 9:
Brother Valencio's Storm Bolter jams! The swarm makes a go for it!

Alas, Brother Omnio's Storm Bolter also jams, and he does not survive the flood of genestealers.

++I die, Brothers. Avenge me! tchht. tzzzzzz...-++
++Reloading. Brother Valencio, what is your status? Western Quadrant soon to be compromised.++
++Holding off the Eastern Quadrant, Brother. ETA unknown.++

Turn 10:
Brother Valencio's Storm Bolter starts rolling like it was possessed of his fallen brethren. As if to make up for lost time, he cuts down half of the incoming genestealers. There are only 3 genestealers left in the Eastern Quadrant, and all within sight!

Brother Leon lets rip with his Assault Cannon, and his accuracy is suffering under the pressure. With the northwest corridor cleared he assesses his situation.

++Sensorium detects 5 contacts in corridor south of me.++
++3 Contacts remaining in Eastern Quadrant, Brother.++
++You may survive us all, Brother Valencio, for I only have 4 remaining salvos of ammunition. The odds are not in my favor.++

Turn 11:
Brother Leon moves towards Brother Valencio's position. The genestealers in the southwest corridor split up, in order to surround Brother Leon, and cut him off from Valencio.

Valencio destroys all 3 of his contacts during his Overwatch! Can he still come to Leon's defense?

++Contacts cleared. Brother Valencio moving to assist!++

Turn 12:
I would like to point out that up until now our cat (Mr. Mewlies) had been faithfully sitting in the chair alongside my wife, offering her his full support in this matter. You can see him in the top of the picture above. The tension is too much for him, and he has turned his back. He liked Brother Leon, you see, and cannot bear to witness his demise.

Brother Valencio moves a step south, turns to the west and sets Overwatch, he has line of sight down the corridor to Brother Leon!

The three genestealers burst from the adjoining corridor, with Brother Leon's death their goal. Brother Valencio kills two, while Brother Leon shoots the other, given Valencio's miss.

Turn 13:
Mr. Mewlies still cannot bear to watch. His fostor-monkeys are making quite the excited chatter, and he is convinced Brother Leon is no more.

The last two genestealers on the board are behind Brother Leon! Brother Valencio has no line of sight! Leon wheels around and fires; he misses! Spending 2 command points, Brother Leon sets Overwatch, and recites a quick prayer to his Assault Cannon's machine spirit to guide his shots, for this is his last chance.

The genestealers make a desperate leap for Brother Leon...
...and are torn asunder by the white hot fusilade from the cannon. The cannon's spinning barrels slow down, whirring to a halt. Brother Leon glances at his sensorium. No contacts. A familiar beeping registers in his hearing, and his monitors report that he is out of ammunition.


What luck! The Space Marines win!

But at what cost?

To the victor goes the spoils, and I resigned to my task of making her a cup of tea. Chamomile and hibiscus tea. No sugar. Yes, dear.

Painted Broodlord

I just recently finished painting my Broodlord as another HQ unit for my ever-growing Tyranid horde. And, in celebration of being the first model painted on the new workspace, I'll take you through the painting process of this model (lovingly referred to by the online community as "Pavarotti") step by step.


Step One: Spray coat of black primer

Step 2: Basecoat consisting of a 2:1 mix of Warlock Purple : Dheneb Stone

"Why am I so pink!?!"

He looks quite bright, but the idea is to give a dark wash enough brightness to really get a good range of color for an organic effect. Don't worry, after the wash he won't look like an Emperor's Children wannabe anymore. ;)

Step 3: Leviathan Purple wash (heavy):
Much better. Typically with organic effects like skin, I will only do 2 steps; basecoat and wash. With other effects (bone, armor, etc) I will add additional washes and highlight steps to bring out the contrast, but this is where I like skin effects to be. Too much contrast in a skin effect starts to look very cartoony for my taste.

Step 4: Drybrush of Codex Grey on black carapace:
Carapace and bone effects do wonders with drybrushing. Drybrushing will typically leave a grainy like appearance which I find ideal for bone and chitin.

Step 5: Dheneb Stone basecoat of all bone:

Step 6: Devlan Mud wash(heavy) of all bone except teeth:
As mentioned above, if this were skin I would stop here, but I want more contrast out of the bone, so on to the drybrushes...

Step 7: Heavy drybrush of Bleached Bone:
Not enough contrast. One more drybrush to really bring it out...

Step 8: Light drybrush of Skull White:
Awesome. Now the dark areas (Devlan Mud) are right and the brights are right, all that's left to bring this together is a little strategic application of a mid-tone wash to blend this in...

Step 9: Strategic wash of Gryphonne Sepia:
By "strategic wash," I mean laying it on only in specific areas, as opposed to covering all of the bone. keep it heavier towards the base of the scythes/claws, where the Devlan Mud has made it darker, and don't touch the white highlights; you want to blend the mid-tones, not the brights.

Also, above I have tossed in a step, which is touching the eyes with Skull White.

Step 10: Bad Moon Yellow on the eyes:
After having already hit the eyes with white, we can go over them with Bad Moon Yellow and have them come out nice and bright. Normally, Bad Moon Yellow is a tremendously weak paint, and will take you forever to bring up from a dark. Because of this, I will always paint whatever I want to be bright yellow first with Skull White.

Step 11: The tongue:
I've applied a little Baal Red Wash to the base of the tongue, and after it dried, followed it up with 'Ardcoat, since it's a wet surface.

When I painted my Hive Tyrant, I took you all through the evolution of my Tyranids' colour-scheme. The picture above is what my Tyranids' first incarnation looked like. Purple and black. The claws and bone stuff stood out wonderfully, but the rest of them just blended together in a way I didn't find satisfying.

Step 12: Blood Red on the face:
At some point, I had played with a flash of colour about the face, and settled on red. The effect was glorious; the most vicious features of the Tyranids came out in their contorted and bestial faces. The red also made them look absolutely savage. The above incarnation is where my Tyranids stayed for a while, though the carapace always did look less than satisfactory to me...

Step 13: Fiery Orange carapace highlights:
It wasn't until my friend Aernout started painting Tyranids (in a great teal and turquoise scheme) and incorporated a bright yellow pattern on his turquoise carapace that it struck me to do this. You find this kind of thing in nature on poisonous and tropical insects, so it wasn't out of the question to integrate this into my hive's carapace scheme... to this day, I still love the effect.

Step 14: The basing:
Ok, ok, the basing is actually a couple steps in itself... I'm just being lazy.

First, I basecoated the top of the base Bestial Brown.
Next, I glued down some basing sand (I used the GW stuff).
Then I added a layer of diluted PVA glue (Elmer's) over the sand to keep it from coming off.
Now, a heavy coat of Devlan Mud to bring the color down closer to the Bestial Brown basecoat.
Lastly, a drybrush of Graveyard Earth (if you want more contrast, try Bubonic Brown).




Well? What do you guys think?

Do you find the step-by step useful? If so, I can start incorporating my future posts with the same.

Opening up the Space Hulk

The box came Tuesday, and I spent all night pouring over the books and assembling the models. I delighted over the details of the models and the compelling story-line and missions to play. With the exception of one oddly nagging inconsistency I found between fluff and gameplay, I must say I was quite pleased!

Tonight, the wife and I decided to give the game a go. As I had spent the previous night pouring over the rules, I played the part of the genestealers, while my wife played the zealous marines.

Though things got a little hairy there towards the end of the first mission, the Emperor praised her dice when she needed it, and not a single marine fell to the vicious bugs! Squad Lorenzo was victorious, and the savior pod manual override control room was destroyed. These genestealers weren't going anywhere; their fate was now inexorably linked with that of The Sin of Damnation.

The game was very fun, and we both enjoyed the forced timing keeping things moving. All in all, this was a glorious success, and she's looking forward to Captain Raphael's next orders in the second mission.

... as far as that inconsistency I mentioned earlier, it involves Brother Valencio. His unique heraldry has shoe-horned him as the chain-fist model. Valencio is part of Lorenzo's squad, and several times makes reference to the debt he owes Lorenzo. Yet in the mission set-ups, Lorenzo's squad doesn't have a chainfist... Gideon's squad does (none of Gideon's squad's models come with a chainfist). Small oversight on their part, but easily forgivable. I simply swap Valencio's model with Scipio's for the missions.

New Workspace - continued

The desk you've seen already may look a little under the weather, but this bad-boy is sturdy as hell. There are a few reasons I'm using this as opposed to, say, a drafting table (as suggested by John from Santa Cruz Warhammer). First, it was hand built by my father-in-law. He built it in shop class specifically for his hobby (model cars). It's ridiculously strong, taller than a normal desk so you don't stoop over it, and it's already painted on! It's made for this stuff (and he seems over-joyed that someone is using it for what it was intended).

John's suggestions are great if you are looking to set up your own workspace:
one of the reasons I like the drafting table is the hight, and the other is the work top size.

be sure you keep the stuff you use close, so you don't have to get up for anything, might think of a light from above, under the shelf or even a paper towel roll, if you want music while you work, keep that close as well, it would be great to be able to keep paints on the wall right in front of you some sort of hanging rack.

I also use a 12 inch white tile I bought at Home depot to mix paint/ work on, keeps me from mixing on the table top.

It is great to have a dedicated place to work. (John from Santa Cruz Warhammer)

The workspace has evolved some, you may notice some of the differences already. I got a white-light lamp and a shelf from Home Depot.

The shelf rules, though it caused me its fair share of troubles. The box instructions tell me to drill holes in the wall 23 1/4" apart for the screw-mounts (the holding bracket is on the backside of those supports underneath the shelf, which are themselves attached to the shelf by wooden pegs). I did so, and put in the screw anchors, followed by the screws, assembled the shelf, only to find out when I tried to mount it that the supports (and thus the holding brackets) were a full 24" apart. I was off by 3/4" and it wasn't my fault!

... so back to Home Depot. I liked the shelf, and didn't mind keeping it, but one of the screw anchors was decimated when I pulled it out of the wall, and needed a replacement. I brought the shelf, and the box to show them that the measurement error was not my fault, expecting to have to do battle with the help desk. Turns out, I had prepared for naught. The lady at the desk was super helpful, and told me that it would just be easier on everyone's part if I just left the shelf there with them, and picked up a brand new one from the aisle in exchange. Done.

... I return home, drill a new hole at 24", insert the screw anchor, then the screw, assemble the shelf and prepare to mount it ... only to find out that THIS shelf's supports are at the correct 23 1/4" apart. Luckily the spackle wasn't fully dry in the first hole and I had spare parts from the exchange... so it all worked out in the end, but whew!


Another thing I've been meaning to do forever. Tackleboxes. I've hit all of my plastic sprues, and organized all my bitz. Most of the Space Marine bitz can fit in one tray (Termie and SM vehicles take a second tray)!


The tacklebox fits an awesome 4 trays! And they fit in the open shelves in the desk!

So naturally, I bought 4 tackleboxes.