Tuesday, June 29, 2010

New paint pots spotted in GW store



So I was strolling about the shopping arcade today and decided to stop in the local Games Workshop store. After meeting with one of the new team members (since the previous ones where all sacked) and chatting about using camouflage with guard, and the merits of using a simple design palate, I decided to wonder around the shop to see if there was anything worth picking up. As usual there was not (thanks to WCC and their awesome selection) However I did notice a familiar fat little paint pot sitting in amongst its hexagonal brothers. While the new pots where only available for the gloss and clear coat this dose confirm that the new design will be implemented, and possibly sooner then we suspected. I also picked up a hot tip that Dark Eldar are slotted for September with demons soon to follow, but more on that later.

Cheers

Scott
BH Senior Editor.

Monday, June 28, 2010

Clash of the Titans: Good version

So yet again D and myself (and another innocent bystander) found ourselves bashing the crap out of each other in what can only be described as a masculine bought of violence and dice infused rage. On a related note we also got to play a 5k point Apocalypse game. So read on to find out how it went.

So turn one see's my shadowsword blown off the table, and a manticore obliterated by a stray psy-cannon blast. The rest of D's turn was taken up by taking pot shots at my Baneblade and attempting to take chunks out of Dan's Reaver. Not shown above is the chimera holding my Kasrkin and my two Medusa's standing in for earth shakers.

So as you might imagine this game came down to the super heavies slugging it out in what can only be described as a viscous stand off. The bottom of turn one and the imperials launched a wave of sentinels equipped with auto cannons, the first volley met with little success. Next the Reaver opened up on D's phantom, and thanks to that damn Warlock fortuning everything in sight, wound up doing jack all that turn. The Baneblade opened up and didn't fare much better then the Reaver. The Russ squad also met with failure. Turn ends with the imperium down one super heavy and no objectives taken.

Skipping ahead to the bottom of turn two, we find that yet again the Imperium has suffered the loss of more armor at the hands of the Eldar war engines. Again Dan and I attempt another armored push only to find our shots being shrugged aside by that damn fortune rule.

So here is where things start to get interesting. Again skipping ahead to the bottom of the next turn (D spent the top half of turn three stripping the void shields off of the Reaver) The Baneblade has managed to kneecap the phantom, getting one weapon destroyed result, Dan followed that up by causing some structural damage.

The victory is short lived. The eldar titans manage to cripple the lone Reaver, taking out a weapon arm and stripping its void shields away. The Warlock also went on to destroy a squad of Kasrkin and the phantom tore up a few sentinels. What is not shown here is the healed Phantom, D actually managed to regenerate a weapon but my Lascannon teams managed to blow it off again (yes a single heavy weapons team decapitated a phantom) The Russ squad also managed to knock a regenerated structure point back off of the Phantom.

So turn five and the Baneblade is wreked, my Russ squad is destroyed and one third of all of Dans sentinals are wiped out. But a brief glimmer of hope as my forces (previously in reserve and forgoten untill t5) make a run for an objective. The game ends with neither side holding an objective and thus ending again in a tie.

So what has this game taught us, well for one D and myself enjoy beating the crap out of each other more then we like attempting to make mad dashes for objectives. I also learned to take more artillery and not to bother with HQ choices for titan brawls. Also Easter egg, that Reaver is going to pop back up on the blog over the next few weeks.

Cheers

Scott
BH Senior Editor

Wednesday, June 23, 2010

Battle for One Tree Hill: revisited

Alright so today D and myself finally threw down against each other over at Legends in cupertino. The mood was light and the game was fun, and above all else we made it to turn five. The deployment type was spearhead, with three objectives on a 4x8 table.






Turn one see's me seizing the initiative and choosing to go first. I move my tanks from their deployment position out into the open where they can range the Eldar which at this point are hugging the hill vary tightly. My Medusa is not ranged and must be moved out of cover. The IG start off strong launching a barrage against the entrenched Dire Avengers which where attempting to contest the objective on the hill.


Above is the results of the top of turn one. Both the Earth shaker and the Russ Battle cannon being backed up by my Eradicator laid down a punishing barrage of fire and basically wiping out a full third of D's Avengers and taking the Eldar out of the objective point putting me in the lead. The bottom of turn one consisted mostly of D moving his Dire Avengers (off screen) into cover and moving what was left of his guardians up towards the objective.


The top of turn two finds my short range artillery coming into range and the IG infantry moving up into the narrow corridor between the imperial ruins effectively setting up a firing lane for any of the eldar that might try and assault the IG dug in to the objective in the ruins. After a short movement phase the artillery opens up again this time obliterating a good chunk of guardians (actually they where all killed down to a single man) As you can see above a good deal of fire dragons also took some of the heat. After the artillery finished the IG opened up again with Lascannon fire and successfully penning and blowing up one of the Falcons and taking half its compliment of fire dragons along with it, effectively limiting the anti armor capability's of the Eldar.



Skipping ahead to turn three we find D making a stand and losing another Falcon for his trouble, this time falling to a combination of tank fire and Lascannon's while artillery pound the remainder of his Dire Avengers and Fire Dragons. Having cast fortune prior to the Falcon blowing up, the Seer and his Warlocks survived the explosion and deployed in front of my tank squad and threw a few well placed singing spears into my Storm Troopers, and managing to pick off one trooper before turning their attention on my tanks.

The Warlock assault hits home and obliterates my Eradicator. Now at the top of turn four we find the Warlocks caught between two very angry tanks and a squad of storm troopers sporting a heavy flamer and a grenade launcher. You can see above the end result, and while D's warlocks made a bold and selfless move and managed to raise my heart rate for a moment, all where brutally slaughtered under the fusillade of Las fire and punisher rounds.



So turn five saw D's seer blown apart (if you couldn't see that one coming) and a lone Dire Avenger struggling to the objective point, some how making it through two artillery barrages and tank fire. The IG did their best to keep the Eldar away from the second objective, but alas this lone bad ass managed to climb up the hill and tie up the game in the bottom of turn five.

So that's it. The game was fast and intense and on more then one occasion the balance of power changed hands, only to be brutally snatched back by the other side. Over all a great game and I cant wait till our 2000 point game on Friday, so until then happy gaming all.

Cheers

Scott
BH Senior Editor

Tuesday, June 22, 2010

Stall in the Hall: Apoc Battle Report (In HD)

So D and myself where joined by a few of the usual suspects for a pick up 20,000 point game over at Legends, then Ian showed up and I found myself pulling out some guard pieces for another IG player that showed up and as the following pictures and commentary will show, things quickly spiraled out of control from there. So read on for a tail of suspense and poor planning, as well as some super cool pics.


Alright so here we are at turn one, The imperials are fielding roughly 5000 pts each. Ian's blood angels are all in reserve minus the armor above. D's fielded a number of super heavies including his new Revenant and the tempests. And our ork war boss has as usual tabled to hoard, things are indeed looking bleak for the imperial forces.

The top half of turn one See's the orks making a mad dash into no mans land, a move that ultimately ended in several ork buggies turbo boosting into each other and generally causing a few good natured laughs about the event. Ork forces move up to support the forward push which consisted mainly of Boyz and trukks. The Imperial forces counter with heavy artillery, pounding the Orks mob of Kan's while Ian's blood angels make a valiant if not short sighted armored thrust into the oncoming hoard. The Land Raider crusader laid down some impressive fire sending more then a few Boyz to the side table while the IGs Shadow Sword bored into the Revenant, narrowly shaving off a structure point and effectively limping the nimble titan. D's Eldar didn't really do much in turn one, mostly just maneuvered into a support position flanking the orks.

Turn two saw Ian gone (as in literally) and I found myself in charge of a list and an army which I knew vary little about and left facing an angry mess of fists and guns. As the above picture shows (and if you where a observant lad) that the land raider was forcibly moved a fair distance away from its starting location. The ork stompa scored a direct hit with its lifta droppa arm and casually tossed that thing around like a soda can in a hurricane. The initial idea was that the falling land raider would be used to wipe out the Furioso Dreadnought sitting there, alas that was the one part of the story that ended well, the LR was disabled but the Dred survived the Dorthy treatment. Other shots from the ork Flash gitz rained down on the IG's tanks but again we got a lucky break from the dice gods and survived the hail of super accelerated grotz. The Eldar got in the game with flinging a few wild shots towards the imperial lines, which again mercifully fell short.



The bottom of turn two saw some very angry moves by Imperial forces. Starting with IG Hellhounds out flanking a dug in lot of Ork Lobbas, the crater above was full of them prior to the arrival of said hellhounds. Again IG artillery pummels the forward Ork lines and (in my mind anyways) rending apart flesh and bone and sending up showers of orky goodness, but to little effect, the orks just consolidate and the surge pushes forward into the waiting guns of the guard.

For the blood angels turn I simply used the ancient chess strategy, take your most powerful piece and beat the other player with it until things start to die (I was in a state that I would say is the closest a conscious person can come to being in a waking coma) so my tactics at that point involved abusing Ian's poor sanguinary guard. And abuse them I did, they smashed apart the straggled remains of a fragmented squad of mek boyz and shredded D's striking scorpions (and where promptly taken from behind by the Wraithguard) but as frustrated and short sighted moves go this was one of my more successful ones. By this point the titans at both sides had been taking pot shots at each other and neither really doing much other then harassing the infantry.


This is at about 6 pm and all of us are quite hot and bothered by now due to a mixture of getting off to a late start and the game basically dragging along. In a final act of destruction the Stompa blasted apart all 30 of Ian's death company and several assault marines. The IG also took some hits loosing a chunk of infantry to ork guns. The game essentially ended in a stalemate, with no declared objectives and neither side really having lost enough units to call an even victory,

So that pretty much sums things up, what follows are some other pictures of cool stuff which I grabbed early on during the battle.

(This I thought was rather nifty)

Well that's about it for now. Hope you enjoy the ample pics and commentary.

Happy Gaming

Scott
BH Senior Editor

Friday, June 18, 2010

Bay Hammer Radio Live tonight

Don't forget to tune in to our live show tonight at 6pm PST on our ustream page listed at the bottom of this post.

Topics included in tonight's show:
-News
-New paints
-Warhammer Fantasy 8th ed
-Local events
-Whats in the workshop

tonight's show is going to be fairly casual and we invite you to sign in, ask the hard questions or just simply join the fun for tonight's open.

http://www.ustream.tv/channel/bay-hammer



Cheers

Scott

Wednesday, June 16, 2010

New Citadel Paint pots: Confirmed


Sources at GW have indicated that the new clear plastic resealable paint pots will be released. Now we can look forward to an era of GW paints that are not going to dry out after 6 months (or pots that are designed to let paints dry out after said period) The picture above has made the rounds before, but up until now it was any ones guess as to their validity, but now after some comments from a GW rep who will remain anonymous its becoming more likely that those are the real thing.

Now for some bad news. Games Workshop already has paint, a lot of paint. So until the current inventory of older style pots are liquidated the new product wont be hitting the racks. As a matter of fact the only way to get the new style pots will be in the GW basic paint set (currently unavailable while they make the switch) So until the current inventory runs out, we will be stuck buying up the rest of the old style pots until GW feels its safe enough to release the new ones.

This is of course based solely off of observations and comments and is in no way 100% accurate so leave some room for speculation, but keep an eye out, its possible we could see the new pots out by as early as September if not sooner.

Cheers

Scott
BH Senior Editor

Tuesday, June 15, 2010

E3 Explosion


This year E3 has brought us some stunning announcements. THQ's Dark Millennium is topping the charts on the blog circuit and Space Marine for the 360 is making the rounds yet again, but there is so much more. Nintendo steals the show with the latest flavor of their popular handheld series with the 3DS, the first handheld device to have active 3D rendering without the need for those dorky glasses.

Not only are we seeing new hardware this year, but we where also shown a slew of new titles and the next line up for some familiar faces (I cant wait for the new red faction) So after your done drooling over Dark Millennium (and crying yourself to sleep after you see the release date) check out some of the other titles, some will be out as early as this September, while others linger on the distant horizon. All in all its been a good season for game announcements, this coupled with the pre release of 8th edition is making for quite an exciting weekend.


Cheers

Scott
BH Senior Editor

P.S.
Don't forget to tune in to Bay Hammer Radios live show on ustream this Friday night at 6pm PST

http://www.ustream.tv/channel/bay-hammer

Monday, June 14, 2010

Bay Hammer Gets 8th Edition


More details to come this week as the guys back at the bunker pick apart the copy we got our hands on yesterday. While I have yet to browse our advance copy I assure you that we will be covering our findings on this weeks show on Friday night, so make sure to tune in this week for some of the juicy details (within the legal limits of course)

That's all from me for today, expect this to be covered up by D's awesome Apocalypse pics of his entire army.


Cheers

Scott
BH Senior Editor

Sunday, June 13, 2010

Storm Wardens Project: For a good cause



I know so many others have posted about the Storm Wardens project and charity being spearheaded by the guys over at Santa Cruz Warhammer, but it is a project I feel should get as much attention as possible. There are a number of blogs contributing the to project, Miks Minis and Dave Tailor Miniatures to name a few. If you don't know what the Storm Wardens Project is go check out the details at the link listed below, or click on the banner at the top right hand side of the page.

Go to the official page here


Every donation to the project enters you into a raffle, prizes vary but the ultimate prize is a complete custom Storm Wardens Space Marine army. But more to the point, every donation goes to the Doctors without borders foundation, an organization that sends doctors and volunteers to 3rd world countries and other parts of the world where either they do not have medical facility's or do not have access to general care physicians and other medical personnel or services. I salute the guys over at SC warhammer for organizing all of this and wish them the best of luck.

Cheers

Scott
BH Senior Editor

Thursday, June 10, 2010

Short supplies and cold feet at GW

For the second week in a row Games Workshop has been out of chimera kits all the way up to the production level. I can only guess how this is affecting retailers, but every thing seems to be business as usual. So first off why bring this up, well for one its been awhile since GW has been back ordered on a current kit, not to mention a new kit. The current shortage leads me to believe that in a cautious and shortsighted act by marketing GW tried to play it safe in a fluctuating market and in the end came up short when the global economic tides started to settle. Or they just didn't predict how popular the new kits would be and just ran out.

The new fire prism/Night Spinner kit has yet to be bumped up to its new price of $57.50. Could this mean that GW got cold feet on the price increase? It is possible that someone saw the potential to (mind the pun) alienate its customer base by providing a vehicle kit with less options then any other kit currently in the gw product line (if you doubt me look at any IG or SM vehicle kits and count the options vs the price) $60 for a land raider or $50 for a russ that comes with all manner of turrets is more approachable then a kit with only two variants on what is essentially the same frame as its predecessor. But only time will tell weather or not the price recension is permanent, I for one hope so, it would be a shame to scare away the younger crowd of eldar players.

Friday, June 4, 2010

BH Radio first show: Done

Well it was brutal and there where a number of slips and pitfalls but we managed to come out of it alive(actually I am being overly dramatic every thing actually turned out rather well) . And more to the point, nothing broke and we did not all die of heat stroke. But seriously Episode one:On to Victory! is up on our ustream page now if you missed the live show so stop by and check it out. Best to play it in the background while your painting.

Few things to point out:
-mics still need fine tuning
-webcam I brought in did not want to work

Cheers

Scott
BH Senior Editor.

Bay Hammer Radio going live

Simple we are going to be on air at 6:10 PM PST tonight. So if you havent started heading over to our ustream page for the live show come check it out.

http://www.ustream.tv/channel/bay-hammer

Cheers

Scott

Thursday, June 3, 2010

Bay Hammer Radio Countdown



Less then 24 hours to go before BH radio goes live and my anxiety could not be higher. But small problems aside things are shaping up. The mixer is working perfectly, our Ustream page is set up and the comfy chairs in the studio have been assembled.

There are a few things I would like to point out before you tune in. First off as I have yet to get wind screens for the mics there is a soft hum, this will only effect the live broadcast and will be edited out of the podcast version.

Other then that (and only having two working mics) things are looking well for BH radios first show. Remember to sign in to ustream a few minutes early to make sure you are set up to use the live chat function.

Again the show starts at 6pm PST and can be viewed at our ustream page here.
http://www.ustream.tv/channel/bay-hammer

Hope to see you there

Scott
BH Senior Editor

Wednesday, June 2, 2010

Death company Stormlord!

Hey there! I decided to buy myself a Stormlord and make it my own by having it taken by death company. when i modeled it i took the I.G tank commander off and put on a death company marine with a jetpack (just to make it interesting) i thought it was quite funny.


I also have 15 more death company to put together, and using the stormlord as a transport is amazing, plus since the Stormlord counts as open topped, I can charge too, This will get me the most out of my assault when I do my armored rush since they gain those extra attacks when assaulting.


Also I am looking forward to Friday for our first broadcast of Bay Hammer radio at 6pm pst on ustream. Tune in to hear myself, Scott and D navigate their way through the airwaves.

Here is our link to ustream: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/bay-hammer

we look forward to seeing you guys tune in, see you then!

Tuesday, June 1, 2010

Bay Hammer Radio: Schedule change


Just a simple update on when BH radio goes live. We will be broadcasting live on our ustream page on Friday June 4th at 6pm PST. We hope to see a lot of new faces stop by. The subject line up includes:
-Spearhead
-The New tank and eldar kits
-Brawl in the Hall
-whats on the workbench
-Possible black box releases for September
-Price hikes
-New codex talk
and more.

So remember to tune in at 6pm PST this Friday June 4th. We have the gear, we have the hosts, now all we need is you!

Link to our youstream page is as follows.
http://www.ustream.tv/channel/bay-hammer

Cheers

Scott
BH Senior Editor