We Are Moving!

Well after a 3 year hiatus we are looking to get back into running this blog! With a cumulative 6 years extra experience between us we are hopefully going to be able to make better content and more frequent updates, which should allow us to make a pretty good shot at this.

We have however decided to move the blog to Wordpress, just to allow us more control over the look and feel of our site, and eventually in cooperate more features.

Find us from now on here:   https://aslwargaming.home.blog/

Games Workshop 'School Takeover' Magazine

Those of you who are part of a school war gaming club like Daemon Colin and myself will know about GWs new 'School Takeover' magazine. It's issued electronically every month but, unlike White Dwarf, all of the articles in each edition are written by the members of a particular club. A few weeks ago our group was charged with writing what I think will be the December issue. As mentioned by Daemon Colin, him and myself wrote a couple of articles each and around 6 or 7 other club members contributed too, alongside our teacher who wrote some articles himself.

After submitting all of our articles on the 28th last month, we were sent an email by the team who handle this project at GW HQ. In short they told us that our club's content was some of the best that they had seen over the (somewhat short) time that the program had been running and that we were to expect a delivery of rewards for the club and contributors. This reward arrived on Monday this week in no fewer than 4 fairly large boxes. Included were model kits, scenery, hobby supplies and the boxed game Assassinorum Execution Force, all of which totaled to a value of nearly £1300! Our teacher saw it only fair that everyone who contributed revived a share of the loot and in the end he gave around 2/3 to the club and split the rest equally among those who submitted articles. Here's my cut of the bounty...

Anybody who knows GWs pricing will be able to tot that up to around £50 worth of stuff, all brand new (even the 32mm bases, I split the pack with somebody who needed the ovals and 40mms). The small collection of hobby gear there will simply just be useful whilst the Saurus Guard box is a substantial boost to the Lizardmen army that I'm planning (more on that in another post) and I am extremely grateful to both GW for sending us the stuff and to the coordinator of our school club who was kind enough to share the rewards with the contributors to the magazine who helped to earn it.

As always, Thanks for Reading!

-Commissar Raphel 

Showcase: Crypt Ghouls!

Hi everyone, today I'm going to be showing you the 20 Crypt Ghouls I painted for an event one of my friends and I ran last month at our local Games Workshop. It was called the Last Stand, a mashup of 40k and Age Of Sigmar, based on a zombie survival principle. The rules pack is here, and we wrote it ourselves so any feedback would be much appreciated!

Anyway, onto the ghouls themselves, I'm very happy with how they came out. I used Warboss Tae's approach of a basecoat and lots of washes to give the Ghouls that fiendishly purple and mottled pallor. I started with a basecoat of Rakarth Flesh, with a wash of Reikland over the top. I then moved on to basecoat the scars and bloody bits with Khorne Red and then gave the whole mini a wash of Carroburg Crimson. After that, I base coated the rest of the details and gave the ghouls a final wash of Druchii Violet to bring that nice purple colour in.

The eagle-eyed amongst you will see that there are only 19 in the picture - one is currently on the repair table!

I used some Tamiya Clear Red to add a blood effect to them and I think it came out really well, I will use this again in the future for blood effects.

Anyway, that's another minor goal ticked off my Hobby Progress Challenge so I think I get a stamp! Yay!

Stay Tuned, because I have a lot more hobby stuff to reveal later on this week!

~DaemonColin

P.S. Apparently our schools 'School Takeover' magazine that our club wrote was so good that it was passed on to the White Dwarf team! Both Commissar Raphel and I wrote two articles and linked the blog in several times, so if anybody from GW/WD happens to visit, it would be great if you could drop a comment to let us know what you think of the blog :)

Chat: Battle Brothers Tournament

As Commissar Raphel said in his post very early this morning, today we have both partaken in a Battle Brothers style tournament, run for our school club! This involved us taking a 450 point army and teaming up with someone else to form a medium sized army that we then used to fight other pairs. I teamed up with a really nice guy called Lucas, who was very new to the hobby, and CR teamed with Jo, an experienced Tyranid player from last years finals.

Myself and Lucas managed to win all our games and get a good chunk if hobby points, while we also got a 20 point bonus because I had helped to mentor him through collecting, painting and playing with his first models. We were leading for a long time, however after the nominations we had drawn level with our friend Jake and his battle brother, meaning we had to do a good old RATLING GUN CHALLENGE, to decide who won! In the end Jake's team took out the tournament, yet we still got some great prizes. I personally walked away with 2 DV Space Marine characters, an old Logan Grimnar model, before he got on that stupid fecking sleigh, as well as a dice box and a handful of hobby bits! 

I would like to thank everyone who helped organise this tournament, and congratulate all the players - it was great fun. Special congrats have to go to Jake, Alex and Jo (who placed 3rd just behind me), and my battle brother Lucas. He really excelled himself in terms of painting, but his play and sportsmanship was exemplary. 

Stay Tuned as we have lots to share from our little hiatus, and much more to build, paint and play!

~DaemonColin 

Update: Imperial Fists!

So last night my brain decided that sleep wasn't a priority but rather than sit around and waste the time I set about working on some of my Heresy Imperial Fists. I had 5 marines in MKIV armor already built and airbrushed with Averland Sunset so it was simply a case of finishing the yellows and then detailing. After about 6 hours, here's what I came up with:

Whilst 5 guys isn't enough for a unit in Horus Heresy games, I will be using these as a combat squad in a local battle brothers tournament later on today which will be the first time in a year that my BaC models will have properly hit the table. Once I've built up this army somewhat to a standard that is suitable for 30K though, I will most likely be using 2 or 3 of these guys as Sgt.s rather than standard marines due to the wargear that I've given them.

Marine with power sword and bolt pistol

This guy will be the Sgt. in today's games, armed with a power fist and bolt pistol

3rd marine who has the possibility of being a Sgt. the boltgun would allow for him to just be an adventurous standard marine though

Alongside the 3 shown above there are also two fairly uninteresting bolter marines to allow the group to be fielded as a combat squad in 40K.

Well it might have been a while since we last made a post on here but things have been pretty busy recently. We are currently trying to get one of our other wargamer friends to join us in this humble endeavor so hopefully we shall see him, along with some more content from myself and Daemon Colin, fairly soon. As always, thanks for reading,

-Commissar Raphel

Chat: My Day at Combat Patrol!

So, today I will share with you my day at Warhammer World, where I attended the Combat Patrol Bank Holiday Monday event! I went with one of my good friends Jake, who plays Grey Knights, and I of course took my Chaos Space Marines. This is my Patrol - 5 Chosen, 5 Raptors and 20 Cultists.

My whole patrol together!

Combat Patrol consisted of 5 400 point games throughout the day. The first game I played Deathwatch, and the guy, who was called Matt quite clearly wanted to win, but was friendly enough. Holy moley the Deathwatch rules are pretty strong! They can fire special ammunition which has 3 different modes - ignores cover, ap4 or ap3 with gets hot, but considering the Deathwatch reroll 1's most of the time anyway that doesn't really matter. His list consisted of 5 veterans, 3 bikes and 3 vanguard veterans. Long story short, he tabled me, and I didn't get a single victory point!

Getting the first game underway

Matt's army

Close up of the veterans

Bikes and Vanguard Vets

My second game was against a father son duo, whose names I can't remember - sorry guys! They were great opponents and I was quite impressed with the 8 year old boy who knew most of the rules! However, they had a Khorne Daemonkin list with a very scary Skulltaker and some Khorne Berzerkers. I lost narrowly, but managed to pick up my first 3 victory points of the day.

The third game was against a Tau player called Drew, who later went on to win the event overall. He ran a filthy list of 5 Pirahnas, a squad of Fire Warriors and 2 Crisis Suits. However, he was a great guy, and I gave him my Favourite Game Vote, even though he thrashed me 9-0! Unfortunately, I didn't get any pictures of his force.
My fourth game was against a Night Lords (CSM) player called Ray who had a beautifully painted army (won best painted). It contained a squad of Chosen, a lord on a (quad) bike and two Rapier Weapons Batteries (IA13) with Quad Heavy Bolters. This was a really effective choice and I will definitely get some to add to my Chaos force in the future! He also tabled me so, I'm still on a grand total of 3 VPs!

Ray's best painted Night Lords, note the Lord on the converted quad bike!

My final game was against another Tau player, called Russell. With my bad experience with Tau earlier in the day, I was very cautious when playing this game. The Fire Warriors and Breachers that he had laid down withering hails of fire, and there was one point in the game where I thought I was going to get tabled again! However, due to me taking out the Commander quite early on and making some lucky saves when charging, I managed to win that game 5 to 3.

So I finished the day having won 8 VP's and fully expecting to come last. However, to get the final score game VP's were multiplied by favourite game votes, meaning in order to get a final score you had to get a favourite game vote. I got 1 where about half of the people didn't so I placed 36th - thank you to whoever gave me that vote, you made my day! Congratulations to my friend Jake though, who at his first GW run external event (not Schools League), placed 4th, getting a whopping 3 favourite game votes!

Anyway it was a great day, and I came back full of hobby inspiration and new ideas and a new project, which will be revealed soon!

Stay Tuned

~DaemonColin

Showcase: Chaos Chosen

So for the Combat Patrol event I attended yesterday (full look back on that event coming tomorrow!), I had to paint 5 Chaos Chosen, which were the sculpts from Dark Vengeance. As with the rest of my Chaos Space Marines, I painted these in a Black Legion colour scheme, with Balthasar Gold and Khorne Red some of the main features on the models.

I'm quite happy with how these guys turned out, and by painting these lot, I have completed another minor goal in my Hobby Progress Challenge! Yay!

Anyway, thanks for reading, sorry it is only a quick one today, but stay tuned for more posts about Combat Patrol and some of the tactics and interesting ideas that I picked up when I went yesterday.

~DaemonColin