themurphyfella
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Posts by themurphyfella
New brushes on the market
Dec 20th
OK the press release from Back 2 Basics was all about new brushes. Not anythgin for most gamers to get excited about but these are a little interesting.
From the press release -
- Pure Kolinsky Sable Hair bristles.
- Chrome plated Brass ferrule.
- High Grade Aluminium Handle (no swelling as per wooden handles).
- Excellent snap & ample volume hold.
- Extremely light and well balanced for those long painting sessions.
And the really interesting bit -
- The handle itself can be unscrewed from the tip, becoming a cap for the brush. Due to it being threaded, your brush will not come apart when done up. No moisture trapped due to small ventilation hole in the end of the cap/handle.
Storage and transport of brushes is usually a bit of a pain. These brushes sound like they could be a good option and the prices look pretty decent as well
Necron tokens
Dec 9th
For all those necron players about to be tracking resurrection protocol rolls here is an interesting set of counters from Genius factory
A very handy set for how many troops are down in a squad
numbered 1 to 13 to make it really easy
They also do tokens for the characters
Look they have cute little crowns and stuff
I really like these ones for keeping track of which vehicle still has it’s shields up
I'm guessing the broken shield is bad
Portable Warfare- The Sergeant
Feb 5th
I’ve always had to opinion that to do a proper review you need to spend some time using the item.
So when I got this case I figured I should load it up with an army and travel to a con. Not just a put it in the car for the local con level of travel. Nope I was going to go international on this case. Ireland to Australia with a transfer in Heathrow and a refuelling stop in Hong Kong and it wasn’t getting the nice treatment accorded to hand luggage. NOPE this poor sucker was going to have to survive the hold and the dreaded baggage handlers. The only “cheat” was that I packed it in the box that it was shipped in.
I know that a bunch of you are now thinking, he’s gonna bring a “disposable” army of badly painted black Reach orks. Nope, there’s a forgeworld warboss on a bike in the bag along with trukks, boys and even a metal big mek. In the end the bag fit the following models
35 plastic boys
1 Forgeworld warboss
6 bikers, grot orderly
Big mek with KFF
Deffcopter
3 trukks
Perdidta, Seamus and Lady Justice Malifaux crews
As well as an army book, small rulebook, hipflask, tape measure, dice and other miscellaneous wargamer requirements fit easily into the pockets on the bag.
Nice touches – The extra pockets on the bag were very handy for water bottles and snacks and the big pocket at the front made getting the army book out very easy
So for storage- thumbs up
For transport in big flying things – thumbs up, I had 2 minor repairs to do that owed more to my poor foam plucking than the case.
So It was time to take it to an event.
Arcanacon was the weapon of choice a 2 day , 6 game con to give it a bit of a workout. Getting there from the hotel required me to cover some ground with the bag over my shoulder and use some public transport
So for comfort – Thumbs up.
The adjustable shoulder strap put the bag at a very comfortable height for walking and getting on and off trams.
Minor gripe. I would have loved to have a handle on the top of the bag on occasion
So how did it do at the event ?
Getting to dice and tape measures and all the misc stuff was very easy and the zip arrangement made getting the foam in and out a doddle.
With the back of the bag opened all the way it was easy to make 2 stacks of the foam . This made it easy to keep the foam layers with the boys at the top for easy access when they disembarked from the trukks and needed to hit the tables. It was occasionally annoying if I forgot to take stuff out of the back pocket before stacking foamtrays on it.
It was still easy to move the foam or lift the bag to get access.
I still haven’t figured out a use for the small pocket under the top flap and to be fair it bugs me that someone put thought into putting it there and I can’t figure out why.
So how did the army survive being transported around the convnetion? Excellent.
With games and the army display I packed and unpacked the army 7 times and the only damage was when I grabbed a trukk too fast and snapped a wheel. Army damage incurred outside of drunk idiot owner error – Zero.
And how was the Foam quality ?
THe Sergeant comes with a load of Blü foam that is the same dimensions as the foam from my Sabol Army transport.
Comparing the foams is easy just look at the 2 pictures below. The Blü foam has the Blue base and the noticeable lack of Foam droop
A small gripe is the edge of the tray does have a bit of glue that overlaps the first row of the pluck foam. A bit of powder will take the Tack off it so it’s not a problem
For anyone wondering about how they would transport a larger army – well have a look at the pictures the bag is designed to clip another bag underneath it. So you could easily clip 2 Sergeants together and carry them over your shoulder.
So to sum up the sergeant served me well for travelling and for the tournament I went to. I managed to take an army plus all the various sundry bits that go with playing a wargame neatly.
The build quality makes me believe I’ll be using this bag happily for years to come.
I would have no problem recommending it
EDIT– The URL to go find out more info and order the bag
http://www.portablewarfare.com
Grab da Looot lads
Jan 27th
Arc day 2
EDIT – Missions are available in PDF
Day two started with more cursing than day one. On my part at least. I woke up with a case of gamer knee swollen glands and an ear ache. Not to be deterred I grabbed my army and hobbled for the tram.
Game 4 was on a cityfight table against another 27 army. John-Paul’s “codex of convenience” space wolves. I’d been chatting with JP and Harley the night before so the banter kicked off as soon as the names were on the wall.
The mission is “ENTER SANDMAN” and it’s Annihilation, with Spearhead deployment
The twist is that it could be a Night Fight from Turn 2 on 4+. So with the power chords vibrating in our ears it was time to join battle.
The Game kicked off with JP hiding bravely in the back of his corner or on the top levels of the buildings. Turn one was orks zooming forward and JP trying to blow up his own guy’s with misfiring plasma cannons. The traffic patrol drednaught attempted to ticket the fast moving ork trukkboys. It didn’t end well for the boyz.
Turn 2 came around night fell, whoot but my orks were now so close it wasn’t really gonna make a difference. Most of my orks poured into the centre building. The boss took out the razorback, the boyz charged up to the Rune priest and the tac squad and the boys on the road decided to “dispute” the severity of the speeding ticket . When the smoke cleared there were less wolves and less orks on the table. JP hunkered down and shot. Running total 1 Razorback, 1 Rune priest versus 1 trukk and a Trukkboy mob.
Turn 3 and the game continued with me pushing further into JP’s quarter. The Warboss snagged a predator and got slagged by 2 squads of hunters in return, the poor old deffcopter got jumped by grey hunters and went down swinging. The dread disappeared under the weight of nob bikers and a mek on a boarding plank. The grey hunters in the tower fought clear of the trukkboys. KP running at 4-5 against me
Turn 4 rolled around with everything to play for. The bikers rolled into the fray totalling 2 grey hunters and the mek wagon managed to rip up a razorback. The hummer orks lost their ride along the way. The game ended out of time.
KP- 7-6 to me if I remember it correctly. When we totalled it up I snagged a 20 – 6 win.
Game 5 and it’s time to face an ork army that turned out to be very close to a mirror of my own, except more converted :0
The mission was “HOLIDAY IN CADIA” Capture and Control, with Pitched Battle deployment. Two Gates are on the table; units can embark and disembark through them. Which actually played no part in our game.
The game kicked off with Hairsquig guy seizing the initiative and sending in his copters. I retaliated and cleared out the copters. The game was going pretty badly for me the indicator being the sheer number of “Filibusters” coming from my side of the table. That was right up to the point where my Nobs and warboss got rolling. In two turns they made most of his army die or run away. The dread pirate warsquig and nobs bounced off my biker nobs and ran. Then 30 odd boyz charged the Nobs looking for revenge. The trukkboys bounced and the big mob was wiped out over 2 rounds of HtH. The last trukkboys charged into the back of my nob mob in an effort to drag them away from the fleeing Nobs and trukkboys. The consolidate move meant I was able to keep up with his fleeing units and the deffcopter got a good shot off at the battlewagon wrecking it as t tried to contest my objective. Leaving me with a suprising 20-5 win.
Game 6 —ACE OF SPADES—-MOSHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!
Seize Objectives, with Dawn of War deployment and Arcanacon Strategy Cards.
The strat cards made my head hurt and facing a razorspam BA army made me nervous. Cracking that many hulls is always a tough job for orks.
So the cunning plan for Game 6 was to get the red gits out of the red boxes. I ended up with a set of big charges on turn 2-3 that failed miserably.
Shane had planned well and he flamered and charged the snot out of all 3 of my trukkboys mobs while the rest of his army focused on tearing up the Nob bikers. The bikers dished out a fair amount of damage before going down but it wasn’t enough. My Defcopter turned up on cue and charged into the back of the predator only to fall short of blowing it up and to die ?.
This was the game where my dice went cold and the orky tactic of charging failed. Still I snagged 10 points for it getting me 108 out of 120 possible points
A few moments that stand out during the day
The “OH God” moment of realising that end of game 5 isn’t the end and that my knees had to hold up for one more game
The roof ninja’s, of course
The speed and organization of the clean up and put away
Sitting in the courtyard with a burger and a much needed 5 seeds cider.
Being co-opted into the Ringwood club
The word FILIBUSTER
The 2nd hand tables. If I had ANY weight allowance left I’d have been grabbing some of the older game boxes that were on the table.
Realising I’d snagged 108 out of 120 possible points for kicking ass and being very pleased with myself for not sucking all weekend
Before the prize giving I was very curious how comp was going to affect my final standing having managed high scores in painting and Generalship I’d be pretty sure of a high position in any Irish event but if I got hit for being a poor sport with an unbalanced list this was going to SUCK
The prize giving was a bit of an epic event that has stuck with me in flashes of awesome
- Having the audience chanting the position number for Mark to call out the person and the GOLD shout for every 10th player.
- Realising that the Main Mad filibuster was going to call out all 140 player’s names
- The myriad of prizes and certs for just about everything and anything
- The great fez giveaway
- The 5 and 10 year vet certificates
- The effort put in to show to his mum that Mark McLaughlin is remembered with respect by his peers. I have a daughter with a severe heart condition and the standing ovation brought a tear to my eye
- The cake
- Being called a noob
- Realising that I snagged 2nd place.
The full listing of who got what is over here –News
I’m looking forward to collecting an Australia flag on my RHQ profile and I will be mightily amused at having more RHQ points in Australia than in Ireland.
In the days since ARC the gamer knee has returned to normal and I’ve had a few shouts for rematches and I’m enjoying the fact that I now know a bunch of OZ gamers that I can arrange a few games with and know that the games will be friendly and tough.
I finished this report after returning from watching the Australia Day fireworks in Fed square and I can’t stop thinking that what a soundtrack it would be for a 40K game
Sneak peek
Jan 25th
The post man delivered an interesting little sample
I’m looking forward to the chance to put some paint on these and posting more pictures
We came for the waggh down unda
Jan 22nd
So you come to Australia with work. What do you do?
You drag an army along and find a 40K tournament to play in.
I found Arcanacon in Melbourne, signed up paid my 60 bucks and prepared for a weekend of guilt free brownie point nutral gaming.
The day kicked off with heavy metal and the “don’t give a feck, have fun” tone was very well set. The yearly trophy being a full size skull to be added to the rack of 14 from previous years is a nice touch.
Each game has the rule book mission with a slight twist
First game was against a beautiful space Marine army based on the sons of the snake by Dan Abnett on a pretty build up city ruins table.
Half way in we got painting judged and I swung the full 27 points for painting and conversioning 
I played 2 of my 3 games against 27 pts armies as well, Ugo would love the painting level on a lot of the armies down here.
The mission is Killpoints and the twist is that for one unit in one turn you can reroll hits and wounds in shooting and HTH if you shout a race appropriate warcry when you need to do it.
I got ahead on kill points with a copter kill on the razorback and trukkboy ninja kill of an attackbike. I even managed to take out the TH/SS LC terminator squad without gutting my Nobs. I think my opponent was unnerved by the orks speed and lack of give a damn about casualties. His dice sucked as well
I laughed at the brave captain lysander hiding on from my nobs on the 1st floor of a building
Won with an 18 to 5
Missed the point for the commander and the point for reducing them to 25% of Kill points. Fun game against a pretty relaxed opponent
The Parade of armies was fantastic. I could have picked 10 top tier armies for theme conversion and painting. Can’t wait to find out what gets players choice. Watch this space for pictures coming soon
The Lunch BBQ was hosted by the scouts and they were selling bottles of beer and cider in the courtyard with high 20′s heat and the sun shining. Fantastic.
Game 2 was against a really nicely painted and converted Nurgle deamon army on an ork themed board. that has a forgeworld megadread as part of the terrain as well as a wrecked stompa, very, very pretty. My first game against Nurgle deamons I wasn’t sure exactly to do so I knocked back a shot of Glayva from the hip flask and did what orks do best. Charged everything
Mission was the good old capture and control with Dawn of war.
Special rule – Vortex template sized singularity in the centre of the board. It moves randomly d6 each game turn. If it hits you you roll on the deepstrike mishap table. If you are put in reserve you walk on when you return from reserve.
I got turn one so I deployed my 3 trukks outflanked the copta and reserved the boss and bikes.
My turn one my trukks went and sat on his objective
He turned up and I picked him apart.
On the left flank I charged 3 squads of orks into a deamon prince and a soulgrinder and walked away with the squads over 50% even after the grinder exploded with a 5″ boom. Thank Gork for KFF’s
He had 2 plague bearer squads try and drop on my deceptively empty objective. The nobs arrived from reserve on cue and ate both squads without slowing down.
They then killed the named GUO in HtH thanks to him being softened up with shooting. Yea orks shooting weird I know.
2 of the trukkboys mobs from the left flank hacked their way through nurglings and screamers to meet the nobs on his objective and team up against a squad of plague bearers and the palanquin of nurgle while the last trukkboy mob went and sat on my objective.
I came away from the game with a 20 – 5 victory
Being the only international visitor to an event that likes to rip the piss has some minor drawbacks.
The main one being having to go up on the stage to receive my award for funkiest accent. Lots of people in Melbourne now know what pog mo Thon means and I discovered that the rule book is wrong it should be ” in the grim dark future there is only bloody war, Mate”
3rd game was on another ork themed table against Chaos.
Quarters deployment but the special rule is to roll a scatter dice and that line gets 5 objectives. 1 centre 2 at 12″ and 2 at 24″ from the centre. You had to pick the quarters without objectives. He had prince with warptime wings and stuff. defiler with +2 HtH weapons 1 oblit, Serkers in a rhino, Nurgles in a rhino and slanesshi marines on foot.
Another slug from the hip flask and a quick alcoholic top up of my can of coke and it was time to come up with a cunning plan.
The bikers zoomed up the middle of the table aimed straight at his Zerker rhino and the trukks flanked on my right to start working through his units.
The nobs survived being charged by the deamon prince and the Zerkers to win the combat and kill the prince with fearless saves.
The boys ripped the legs of the big chaos spider
The deffcopter snuck up on an oblit who was hiding in the watch tower but flubbed the HtH.
Then it was a case of rolling down the line and cleaning out his units. Ork shooting ninja pinged the lone gunner oblit and the bikers chased down the last squad. Played to the end to give him a chance to try and bag some points for killing my warboss
20 – 6
Round out the evening with more BBQ, Glayva laced coke and cold cider to the background of flagrant nerdatry and the gentle pitter patter of dice on the table.
In case it’s not obvious I had a blast and met a bunch of really “good blokes” and even a gamer Shiela or 2
I’m looking forward to day 2 and seeing how I did on sportsmanship and army balance
International travel tip
Jan 21st
Just a quick post to give people a little travel tip for travelling with their armies.
THis is NOT my Box
If you get a soft case for your army keep the cardboard box it came in.
Why?
Well I got a new case for my orks before Christmas.
A Sergeant Carrying Case from Portable Warfare, if anyone is wondering.
As luck would have it the box it came in was put aside for “storing stuff”.
So when I needed to take an army to Australia I packed the army in the case. Stuck the case in the cardboard box it had been shipped in for extra protection. The Box fitted into my luggage and was further protected by unimportant stuff like clothes for hand over to the tender mercies of the dreaded “ground staff”.
End result is the army travelled from Cork, through Heathrow and Hong Kong to Melbourne and suffered not an iota of damage.
DIY in-game tokens
Oct 22nd
At Brocon I noticed Mike Tangley using a pretty handy set of counters.
I asked him aboutt hem and found out the originator is ]-[arlequin from the Warheads.
I’ve posted them here with his permission because they’re pretty handy for tournaments.
counters V3
I don’t think I’d use these much in a single game, but at a tournament they’re a life saver. After 3 games it can be tough to remember your name let alone which one of the 13 dark eldar skimmers is immobilised and which is weapon destroyed etc.
Inspired by the counters for the ETC I did up a set of markers for explosions on my Ork vehicles. It was very handy to be able to put down somethign that can act as a crater after teh trukk blows up and kills everyone 
New bag company launches
Sep 24th
US company Portable Warfare are launching the Sergeant line of bags.
The case comes in Army Green, Gun Metal Gray and Chaos Pink.
Pink huh?
It also looks like having several options on the foam layout you get with it.
Stay tuned for a more detailed review when we get our hands on one of these bags.
More info on their website
Rolla 101
Aug 27th
Rolla 101
Ok the deathrolla’s been around for a while.
The FAQ clarifying the ramming has been around for a while.
But I only started playing with them in my army recently.
Set in my ways? me? nah.
Since starting to use ‘em I’ve discovered that they do kinda strain some of the 40K base rules and more importantly it’s easy to mis-use them. The sections of rules that they are working from are generally sideline. Lots of players will play for months, never carry out a ram attack or a tankshock.
So I figure a quick 101 might be useful.
Before going any further grab your rules and read the tankshock and ramming section. Yes RTFM. It’s the best way to learn. Think yourself lucky you’ve got a rulebook, in my day you had a rulebook and 20 White Dwarf updates. <grumble>
So all ready?
STEP 1
Lets have a squint at the deathroller in basic mode.
Tank shock or ram a unit and in addition to the normal rules, there are D6 str 10 hits.
Things to remember
- The units hit still get armour saves
- Str 10 instakills lots of stuff
- Low Ld armies do not like having to take Ld tests
STEP 2
Slightly more complicated mode.
The unit decides to death or glory.
Things to remember
- Take your Ld test before declaring your death or glory
- Only models that were rolled can elect to death or glory
- The unit takes 2D6 Str 10 hits, even if it stops the battlewagon
- The Gloryhog has to stop the battlewagon moving or die. There is a reason tankers call infantry “squishies”
Only models being rolled getting the glory option is why Ork players tend to try and snipe a model that doesn’t have any nasty meltabombs or stuff like that.
There’s a bit of debate on how the instakill and the 2D6 work. As far as I’ve been able to figure it’s all simultaneous.
This means you have to use wound allocation.
1 SQUISH on the Gloryhog( if it fails)
2D6 str 10 on the unit
So depending on the unit size and number of hits the wounds can wrap around.
“Why do I care it’s all instakill ?” Well if you’ve an IC in the unit you’re probably going to want to try and keep them alive or limit the wounds they take.
STEP 3
Ram a vehicle
Things to remember
- Hits are against the facing of the target you’re ramming.
- You have to blow the rammed vehicle up or you stop moving.
- If you pop a transport you’ll get to roll over the contents as well.
“What cheese is this Murphy!?!” I hear you ask.
The reason you get to squish the contents as well as the can are as follows.
Exploded vehicles drop their transported unit where the vehicle was.
Unless you’re just clipping the vehicle or your opponent gets lucky they will not be able to put the squad in that footprint without getting tankshocked.
The tankshock rule states that all units get hit, you don’t have to target them.
STEP 4
Things to remember
Walkers are different ( of course)
- Treated as infantry with Ld except if you hit ‘em from behind it can’t death or glory
- If it fails a death or glory it gets it in the rear armour
Imagine, 20 boys in a battle wagon trying to sneak around the back of a dreadnought going “Shush, I don’t think he’s seen us. Get ready…. ready….. floor it!!”
General tips
- I recommend pivoting the ramming vehicle, and then measuring but not actually moving anything until you work out all the effects.
- Remember to take your difficult terrain checks going over debris.
- Only the models that would be under the rammer/tankshocker at the END of the move must be moved out of the way. 1″ from enemy units, shortest distance and preserve coherency.
- Remember that technically you cannot even move other models in the affected squad as that can make a big difference to where the displaced models can go.
I have no idea what to do if you tankshock in such a way that you might break a squad coherency. It hasn’t happened so far for me so I’ll cross my fingers.
That’s it folks the quick guide to Rolla’s
So what did I miss? Reply below————–
