Nothing much to report

Interesting how my Nid style has subtly changed over the years (or maybe the paints have faded?).  Left Hive Guard is newly painted.  The one on the right is about 3 years old.

I've been playing Doom instead of hobbying.  Finished the game on 'I'm too young to die' and collected most of the secrets, then cursed myself for a wimp and restarted on 'Hurt me Plenty'.  I got up to the Cyberdemon boss again before realising that I'm too old and slow for this shit.  I am also completely desensitised to exploding zombies.  Those glory kill animations are something else.  Thankfully neither of my sons have the urge to play a game "thats like, from the 80's isn't it?" They are too busy being intelligent and thoughtful gamers, playing Undertale.  Bloody kids. In my day we only dreamed about graphically stunning first person shooters and 8 bit gaming was shite.  What is this backwards, topsy-turvy world we live in? I might go back to Doom anyway but 'No Man's Sky' is looming over the horizon and I feel the urge to explore the universe again after a rather mundane spell in 'Elite: Dangerous'.

In between demonic infestations, I did manage to paint one obsolete Hive Guard who has been sitting on the shelf for a few years.

I used him in a game (as part of a horde of Butchers) the other week against Pete Dunn.  There was a battle report in the offing but Pete beat me to it (here) so I never got round to finishing.  I lost the game before it started anyway.  People keep telling me that deployment is key in war gaming but I was too busy admiring Pete's gorgeous Ratkin/Skaven army to pay much attention at the time.  The one graphic I have produced (above), taken at the bottom of turn 1 illustrates the point clearly.  A textbook example of how not to deploy and what happens when you do it badly.

That squashed goblin on the Doomwheel is just genius.  I forgot to ask whether it was a conversion or comes as standard.

The game was 'Loot' (the 3 loot counters are shown as red stars).  I have outlined Pete's Ratkin forces in pink and my own Nightstalkers in blue.   You can see that Pete has won first turn and grabbed all 3 loot counters.  Fast little buggers, those ratmen.  His core troops are nestled comfortably between two pieces of impassable terrain (dotted patterned blocks) and protected from flanking attacks.  His fast, shock troops and shooting on the left are poised to smash through my vanguard.  All he needs to do now is back away slowly towards his own board edge and the game is in the bag.

Beastly Demonspawn

I, on the other hand have blocked most of my line of site to the loot counters by deploying behind impassable terrain.  I was able to fly over it but my battle line is now ragged, full of holes and vulnerable as a chew toy in Cujo's kennel.  I have to stick my neck out even further and attack those troops holding the loot counters or all is lost.

The Reapers didn't disgrace themselves.  Grossly outnumbered here though.

However, the most idiotic thing I did was to deploy my super nashwan elite, smashy unit (Bloodworms) on the far right flank, hampered by terrain, bottlenecked, countering no threats and miles away from the loot counters where the real action is.  They eventually got into combat in turn 5 and managed to wrestle a loot counter away from Pete, thus salvaging some pride, but it was a pretty poor showing from their general.

Carnage