D korps vs Necrumunda Drooptroopers

This week I had a game of 40k using my Death Korps Assault Brigade facing a Clan Escher oriented Necromunda force using the Elysian rules.

The game started with his whole army in reserve and the table was all to my picking. A very strange and quietly growing concern fell over the troops, were where the enemy ?
The Commander wasted no time and moved the troops to take ground or take firepositions in cover and arranging firing lines.

Grenadiers moves forward. With an Autocannon team and the Commander inside the building and a Mortar team behind ready for first reports on enemy ground troops

And with thundering noise enemy airpower deepstriked from high orbit. Fortunately for me the first aircraft had some problem and entered the table in the wrong place and facing the wrong direction.

With guns blazing on of the enemy vehicles targeted my junior officer and his command squad gunning down all but him and one of his trusty plasmagunners.

Enemy veterans tried to drop ontopp of the Auto cannon held rooftop but instead landed in a pile of rubble, where they tried to take out a small squad of engineers. This totally failed and they where left unharmed.

More aircraft enters the fray and my autocannon teams taking cover in the forest are under heavy fire.
One enemy drooptrooper squad are sent smashing to the grown due to a deep strike miscalculation and another one takes up positions in a ruin but taking two members as casualties because of the uneven ground.

Enemy scout vehicles enters the table.

 My Auto cannon teams are under heavy fire, with one wounded team still alive.

My grenadiers move forward with one Heavy flamer and two regular flamers, there where no survivors in the enemy held ruin.

My last picture from the game.
His last veteran squad taking cover in some rubble they landed on are surrounded with an angry Officer longing for payback, a Engineer squad with acid gas grenades and upgraded with carcass shells for their shotguns and a Death Rider cavalry squadron closing in.
What happened was that the Engineers took out some enemy with the gas grenade but failed horrible with their shotguns that had two casualties of their own because of unstable ammunitions. The Death Riders took one enemy down with their laspistols. This left one enemy still alive and I ordered a full out charge with all I got. The engineers failed to reach and the Cavalry failed to reach this turn so it was up for my Junior Officer to clear out the pile of rubble with his power sword...

With that his last troop choice was dead, one smashed to the ground, one killed of by flamers from my grenadiers and the last veteran squad dispatched by a sword. This meant that he could no longer secure the objectives that were mine for the taking, the best he could do now was to contest or try to kill all my troops. But we choose to end the game here.

Well that did turn out really good, far better then I first thought.
His lack of template or flamers did have a major thing in this as well as his unfurtune with the insertions of his aircraft and troops.
My Autocannon teams that I thought could take down a air plane or two didn´t do much, armour 12 and only hitting aiplanes on 6:s is good.

Im guessing next time I´ll face this force he will be packing some template weaponry and having more anti infantry weapons in general.

Death Korps Assault Brigade: Infantry Platoon

Yes thats right a platoon. Well not a fully manned but still quite impressive. I just got a order from Forgeworld with some more boots on the ground.

By getting the infantry squad pack to the Gorgon transport and a sharp blade and maybe some greenstuff to fill in some damages you are able to make 50 Death Korps of Krieg soldiers out of this kit. http://www.forgeworld.co.uk/Warhammer-40000/Imperial_Guard/Death-Korps-of-Krieg/DEATH_KORPS_OF_KRIEG_INFANTRY_AND_ACCESSORIES/DEATH-KORPS-OF-KRIEG-INFANTRY-SQUADS-FOR-GORGON.html

Their current price is at £53.50 and thats make them cheper then say those horrid Cadians. The down side is the somewhat boring pose of the "at ease" soldiers and the lack of officers and special weapons. But as rank fillers this is perfect as they are also quicker to paint, and lets face it as a Imperial guardsmen officer you are going to need as much soldiers thats even possible.

I also got a Tech Priest Enginseer from Forgeworld as the Assault Brigade are able to get one as a advisor in the command squad. Mostly for fun actually, I dont got that high hopes on him.



As I got a Infantry platoon Command squad left in my drawer from my previous order. This latest purchase gives me after some special weapons and officer conversions.

A Infantry platoon with:
Command squad
5x Infantry platoons.

But the question now is how to equip them?
 As a Death korps player I only get 2 special weapons in the command squad and 1 in the regular platoons and with no heavy weapons this leaves a lot of work for the lasguns or bayonets.

Looking at my special weapons I got the regular ones as a standard guardsmen.
Grenade launders, I consider this one the worst of them all. I might be wrong here but I really dont see much point in getting these.
Flamers. Always nice with auto hits when you got BS3. And with rapid fire from the lasguns maybe they could take out a enemy unit. Its a special weapon that adds to the same target as the squad instead of like the meltagun which are meant to deal with another type of enemy.
Plasmaguns, for taking out heavy infantry or wounding large monsters. In the command squad this could be nice as I got two of them and could then theoretical deal a lot of damage, but is it worth it in the standard platoons ? To just have one special weapon?
Meltagun. For taking out vehicles. Always nice to have a good chance to take them out. The down side is the limited range and the fact that my guardsmen comes standard equipped with krak grenades, do I really need that extra bit of short range anti tank power?

My plan at the moment is to give the Command squad 2 plasma guns and the Platoon Commander a plasma pistol.
The regular platoons are to be given a mix of say.. 2 flamers. 2 melta and 1 plasma guns.

But maybe Im thinking wrong here, maybe the command squad should be given 2 flamers and have more plasma guns given to the platoons?

When leaving the special weapons aside I got more options.
First Standard bearers in the platoon, it count as having the unit dealt one more wounds then it actually have in close combat, but with the added cost is it really worth it ?
Vox casters gives me better chance of giving orders but to equip all your platoons with it ads to cost of the army. Same here, is it really worth it ?

Im considering giving the Platoon Commander a power fist, not that he is by any means a combat monster and will probably die horrible at the tiniest enemy but still... its a nice surprise to give some strength 6 hit back.
I can give the Veteran Sergeants (called Wachtmaster in a D Korps army) power swords but that ads a lot of points to give to the whole army. Maybe give some of them power swords just to have a small chance to deal some damage?
I could even give them plasma pistols, but with bs3 thats a lot of points for a slim chance of doing something with the short range.

More desert ruins

I finished two more sets of Lotr ruins last night and went home and managed to take some pictures during my lunch brake.

These are intended to be used in my crusade project but I guess they could really be used for about anything.


I glued them together in different arrangements and added some extra bits, to have greater variety.

 Extra pieces makes the terrain much more alive.

The problem with almost all ruin terrain is, where is all the pieces that are missing from the building?
This is nowhere near the amount of stone or timber that are missing from a complete building but atleast its something.

Death korps of Krieg, inventory

I needed to do an inventory of my Death Korps of Krieg, Assault brigade.
The inventory is needed for a coming mega battle and I find it easier to just put all the miniatures on the floor and take a picture of it and then later look at the picture and start counting when I have the time.

 The man himself, the man to led them all.

Avenger, ground attack airplain.
Super heavy troop transport
Death Rider platoon.

My artillery sisters, Helga, Heidi und Irma

Even through I have bought much of it second hand or on ebay I dont want to know what this have costed. But considering how much money Ive spent on this hobby over the years I think its worth to have an army you really appreciate and thinks look good or have a special style.


The plan now is to count them, glue some of my unassembled miniatures and paint it all in the waiting for more reinforcements...
  
So in short prepare them as good as I can to the coming mega battles planed for this spring and summer.

Turcomans

I painted up some more Turcomans, Im guessing Im going to need plenty of these for my Saracen army...

They are a mix, some Perry Miniatures and some Gripping Beast. And to make these blend even better with others I have switched the horses so they are riding each others horses.

The horn blower had his bow broken so I glued it back in place and reinforced the joint by giving him a spear. He isn´t actually holding the spear but I dont think that will be noticed unless you know what to look after. Maybe it was a bad idea to mention it here then....

I tried to make these not as colourful as say the Mamluks but still having some colours to make them more interesting then only brown.

Mamluks

This is what all the colour testing with the infantry was for. To get the colours right for my heavy cavalry, the Mamluks...

The plan is to later get lots and lots of these... The Ayyabid dynasty Egyptian armylist in Hail Caesar states that atleast half of the units should be cavalry and of these half of the cavalry should be Heavy cavalry, and that could mean Mamluks...
They are equipped with spears and bows and I think it will be interesting to see what heavy cavalry equipped with bows can do, its a type of unit Im not familiar with.

Looking at the pictures now I think the reins on the horses looks a little bland and that could be a thing to remember on the next batch I will paint.
But its always a very difficult balance of time spent versus quantity. Some times its better to skip a little on the details to be able to paint some more miniatures in stead.
Its a strange thing but even thou I paint a lot of miniatures all the time the numbers of unpainted miniatures always seems to grow. 


The miniatures are from Gripping Beast.

Crusader battle report

Yesterday I brought my miniatures to the club and press-ganged a friend to throw some dices in an Crusader game of Hail Caesar.

The armies is composed of what I got painted but are roughly based on the Crusader list and the Ayyabid list from the book "Hail Caesar Army Lists - Late Antiquity to early Medieval" but we played with small units instead of standard sized ones and skipped the whole procentage ratio of troops. We just gamed with what was available.

Im sure the gaming balance with close combat and ranged combat as well as the balance with unit types is somewhat altered with just using small units but it works.

I used my Saracens and my friend Johan took command of the Frankish Crusaders.

I nice set of ruins that would make for a defensive position.

My right flank, skirmishers and Turcoman horse archers.

The Crusader army, an rather straight battle line with cavalry in rear to fill in on any gap or if an opportunity reveal it self.

My right flank is sent forward in an atempt to outflank him. Sending the light horses in an big circling move.

Crusaders swing their line to counter the coming threat.

His archers fled taking casualties in the stamped. The order to counter one unit of my skirmishers on the left flank resulted in an blunder on both the archer units. 

The forces close in on each others.

 The crusaders tries to assault the skirmishers but they fail to catch them as they fall back.

Spears and arrows are exchanged but to no real effect.

Seeing one of the enemy units flanks exposed the Saracens take advantage of this and manages to wipe it out.

The Franks fall back and form a new line.

The Saracens try to swarm the Franks and winning by sheer numbers.

And a all out attack is sounded. My Egyptian mob is able to attack one of the Frankish unit in the flank. The centre unit didn't look as promising but I thought that I couldnt leave them free so I engaged them with a skirmish unit in an lose hope of the added bonus for the charge and some luck would be enough.
This did of-course not happen and the centre got smashed, my right flank was shattered but at least the added bonus of the mob was enough for the left flank.

My opponent finally manages to move his cavalry and my Egyptian mob was shattered. The cavalry pushes forward and attacks a small unit of skirmishers that tried to find shelter behind a fence. Attacked in the flank and in front these guys was in big trouble.

My skirmishers didn´t stand long but I did manage to take out one of the Frankish foot units with my spearmen.

The enemy cavalry uses it superior movement and attacks my flank while Im still stuck with an Frankish foot unit.

Somehow I managed to survive an flank charge of cavalry and this meant that my Turcomans that have been playing hide and seek with some enemy archers the whole game and a skirmish unit could make a jointly attack on one of the crusading units that resulted in that they could follow up their attack onto the next unit.

End moment. My spearmen unit was finally broken but in the same round of combat the crusader lost a unit of footmen.
The loss of both units meant that both armies where broken and resulting in a very tight draw.
Intense game that was lots of fun.


Im sure we did all kinds of things wrong, both tactically and  rule wise but it was a really fun game non the less.

Charging enemy units in the front with skirmishers is not recommended...