Space Hulk: First Edition - Bank Holiday Gaming

Well over here in sunny old England its the Easter Bank Holiday weekend, which essentially means extra time for gaming!! After a lovely weekend with the other half she kindly agreed to play a few games of 'little men' with me!

Always keen to take up such a kind offer I quickly scurried off to the man-cave to set something up. For a variety of reasons I wasn't really in the mood to set up all the scenery and construct the army lists required for a game of Second Edition 40k and so I looked around for something a bit easier to just 'pick up and play'.

A quick perusal of my shelves yielded this:

The iconic artwork on this box is timeless and still rates among one of the best cover images ever produced by GW. Young Legio spent many an hour gazing adoringly at those bold red terminators slaying the purple and blue 'stealers!

Now 1989 was a very important year in the history of mankind; the Cold War and the associated threat of nuclear apocalypse effectively ended with the shattering of the Berlin Wall and the subsequent demise of the Soviet Union. The first commercial based internet service providers went live heralding a new age of technology and the election of FW DeClerk in South Africa really began the end of apartheid! However despite all these major events most experts agree that one thing above all was of even greater import...

Games Workshop released the first edition of Space Hulk, an absolute master-piece of a wargame/board game hybrid (hybrid - get it??). This extravaganza of retro goodness was penned by Richard Halliwell and involved heavily armed Space Marines clearing an assortment of deserted corridors of vicious-looking, Geiger-esque aliens. Many people said this concept was remarkably similar to a certain 1986 film...but I can't really work out which one...

'Hey Vasquez...Have you ever been mistaken for an Astartes?'

Second Edition 40k - Guard vs Space Marines: Rematch

During my latest set of rest days I was lucky enough to be visited by my best mate and his new born son (my God Son no less); he was very cute (the baby...not the mate) and I did enjoy some face time with the little man. 

Given the importance of the occasion I felt it should be marked by something suitably auspicious and so decided to lay on a special game of Second Edition 40k for my mate in order to find out what had happened to to the insidious mercenary Lieutenant Rock from our previous engagement:

http://classicastartes.blogspot.co.uk/2015/03/second-edition-imperial-guard-vs-space.html

Given that we have played a few games recently and were growing more comfortable with the rules I decided to ramp things up a bit by including all the extra stuff from Dark Millennium. Therefore the assorted troops were laden with all manner of exotic wargear; each side had a handful of 'Strategy Cards' and I finally gave each side an Inquisitor who was a Level 3 Psyker, hopefully the presence of these characters would add another layer of fun to proceedings.

We drew our mission cards, but this time we kept them secret so that the other party would have to guess the opposition's mission. I put an objective in the middle of the table beforehand so that if someone drew 'Take and Hold' they wouldn't have to give their mission away by asking for an objective to be set up.

This time around the missions were kept secret from the enemy.
The Guard drew 'Engage and Destroy' whilst the Space Marines were tasked with 'The Assassins'

Rogue Trader Campaign: Terrain - Gothic Ruins

With my girlfriend's Rogue Trader campaign nearing its impending start date I am frantically painting models in order to expand both sides military forces before kick off! However the campaign will have a strong narrative element to it and so I wanted to prepare some new terrain so as to set the scene for this conflict. Without giving too much of the story away I am aiming for a strong gothic theme to the setting and so I have sourced some appropriate buildings to facilitate this. 

To start with I found a couple of the old Gothic Ruin sets that were produced by GW back in 1998, these were glued to a Warhammer modular movement tray (these are an excellent basing resource for scenery as they are already embossed with a natural tile effect). They were then sparingly scattered with sand & PVA and painted. Personally I think that these are some of the best pieces of terrain that Citadel ever produced...they are simple, basic and fit the old school 40k gothic image perfectly...they are also very reminiscent of the custom terrain that used to appear in set pieces within White Dwarf and assorted Codices in the mid-nineties. 

Rogue Trader Campaign: Genestealer Hybrids

As mentioned previously I am soon about to run an old school retro campaign for my girlfriend which will focus on her alter-ego the noble Inquisitor Athena battling the forces of darkness with the aid of her (ever-expanding) retinue of Storm Troopers and other acolytes.

However a hero always needs a suitable villain to battle ...and personally I feel there is no foe in the Warhammer universe more insidious than the parasitic filth of a Genestealer cult, they are the perfect enemy for an agent of the Inquisitorial Ordos to annihilate!

Those of you who have been reading my blog for some time may remember that about two years ago I expanded my force of 20 purestrain (Space Hulk) Genestealers with a few third generation hybrids and a Magus in the hope of eventually building a full cult force.

http://classicastartes.blogspot.co.uk/2013/11/genestealing-my-time.html

http://classicastartes.blogspot.co.uk/2013/11/purestrain-pleasures.html

Unfortunately since then I have done little to expand this force, and it has been repeatedly relegated in favour of other assorted modelling projects.... However the up and coming narrative campaign has acted as a catalyst for me to reinforce these xenos vermin in order to make them a more viable opposition. 

So I have now acquired and painted two of the original plastic hybrids from the Space Hulk expansion 'Genestealer' (1990), and these will be used to represent a pair of first or second generation hybrids as they are far less human looking than their metal counterparts that I have already painted.

Second Edition: Imperial Guard vs Space Marines

Another one of my best mate's leave days coincided with mine this week and so of course we marked this momentous occasion with a well-deserved game of second edition 40k. He's been working on his rather impressive Imperial Guard army for the best part of a decade and it was finally time to give them a fight in the world of 1993 gaming. Not being used to playing with these retro rules I didn't want to blow his mind by making things too complicated and so I deliberately kept the forces small, coming to a grand total of 850 points per side.

I'm proud to say I own a copy of every Codex from second edition...these are two of my favourite front covers!

Being a generous sort I had already bequeathed him a copy of the 1995 Imperial Guard Codex some time ago so that he could familiarise himself with his force and how they are supposed to work. Whilst I chose my own forces from the original Codex Ultramarines from the same year.