Angry Griffin's Oldhammer

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  • Paint Day 5

    Miss Griffin now has some easy to build Stormcast Eternals. She’s settled on an (almost) less out there colour scheme for them and they’re well on their way to being built.

    Unfortunately, we don’t have any other Age of Sigmar miniatures to play with but I’m sure that will change over time. At this point, she’s enjoying pairing her Gryph-hounds with the assortment of dolls and dollhouse furniture that she has. I’m not sure Gryph-hounds in suburbia was ever part of GW’s plan but it really seems to work.

    Master Griffin is still working away at his Space Wolves but after playing a few games with them he’s discovered that he doesn’t really enjoy close quarters combat. He’s thinking of starting again as Imperial Fists or designing his own but essentially wants to use all of his points on only the biggest long-range attack options.

  • Paint Day 4

    Yesterday, we went with playing Dragonwood and assembled some creative commons low-poly models that Mr Griffin had 3d printed. FDM printing certainly doesn’t have the fine detail of resin but it’s keeping us amused and it doesn’t break the bank. Having something with less detail seems to be a good option for days when they’re having more trouble staying on one project.

    Home school and waning motivation is proving to be a challenge. Board games have been a blessing, though. Dragonwood is great fun; easy to learn and play quickly, the games don’t go for hours and even with the age gap between Miss and Master Griffin they both remain interested.

    On our last paint shopping trip (online) we also picked up Quarto which has been really fun. On the surface it seems quite simple to play but strategically it can be quite challenging.

    Hopefully, we’ll get to more painting in the next week.

  • Paint Day 3

    Weather’s a bit cold for my liking at the moment. Not cold/wet enough to warrant keeping the little ones inside day but certainly windy and chilly enough that I’d rather not venture out myself.

    Our first set of Gryph-hounds have been declared complete and they are, by anyone’s estimation, pretty good lookin’ fellows. Miss Griffin is very happy with her first efforts painting and particularly given her age and previous level of interest in painting, I have to say I’m definitely impressed.

    Master Griffin is learning to be ok with learning – and he’s doing a better job at that than me! Perfectionism and a competitive nature are definitely familial traits (on both sides, mind you!) and we’re all coming to terms with just how easy it isn’t, to paint well. Mr Griffin disagrees, but with several years head start I’m not sure it’s a fair comparison.

    We’ve been back on the Frontline Hobbies website perusing the colours as Mr Griffin tells us that we need to be using different paints and our paints differently. Master Griffin tells me that we need an spray gun instead. Perhaps a can of black spray paint would do?

    I think the summary is that we’re not very good but using the right tool for the right job would be a good start.

    Ordering more paints and then it’s lunch time!

    Citadel Base: Night Lords Blue
    Citadel Layer: Hoeth Blue
    Citadel Shade: Drakenhof Nightshade

  • Paint Day 2: Headway was made!

    Glueing is done. Oh boy, is it done. Let’s just say that we made it and no one is glued to anyone else, or any furniture. I’m calling this a win.

    Paints have arrived but after hour glueing expedition we’re going to play a game instead and wait for the glue to dry and our collective blood pressures to normalise.

  • Battle Report: Kill Team 2020-04-27

    Battle Report: Kill Team 2020-04-27

    Today’s Kill Team battle consisted of Master Griffin’s Khorne Bersekers fighting Raven Guard Primaris units.

     

    Angry Griffin Battle Report Photo - 2020-04-27

     

    The Khorne side had a bit of bad luck with the dice rolls and largely failed to get into close combat before being fired upon by the RG team. The Raven Guard did suffer from their own bad luck, though, and in one shooting phase every single model except the Eliminator managed to spectacularly miss. The Eliminator did somewhat make up for that by managing a spectacular shot that took out the Khorne Aspiring Champion with a mortal wound scored from an Executioner round.

     

    We introduced command points for this battle and they were well received – tactical reroll in particular was popular. Raven Guard came out on top points-wise, though it would probably have been a different story had the Berserkers managed to close like they intended.

     

    Terrain thoughts: Need more light cover for close combat Kill Teams to utilise en-route to their opponents.

  • Paint Day 1

    So, I may have miscalculated the financial impact that paint day would have. Miss Griffin is fixated on painting everything varying shades of pink without regard for faction or fashion and Master Griffin is keen on Space Wolves. Not much cross over here. With Mr Griffin already heavily invested in Raven Guard I feel like we’re heading down a dangerous path full of storage issues in our already cramped house.

    Luckily (?) for us our local Frontline Hobbies sells an inordinately large number of paints and despite some issues with shipping from overseas (thanks COVID-19) they still seem to have most of them available. Drawn to the high fantasy elements of Age of Sigmar Miss Griffin had picked out some Gryph-hounds a few weeks ago and under her watchful eye we’ve picked out some bright pinks and blues to start her painting journey. Master Griffin has reviewed Chapter colours and is intent on reproducing them as faithfully as possible.

    In the cart they go!

    Note to self: Miss Griffin does not care about mould lines and will not have a bar of removing them.

  • Battle Report: Kill Team 2020-04-22

    Today’s Kill Team showdown was between a Raven Guard Primaris force and some Chaos Space Marines. The scenario was Objective Ultima. For something different we decided to use a Chaos Berserker Dreadnought as the central objective, and four computer consoles to “control” it as the secondaries.

    From the Raven Guard perspective the Reiver Sergeants are a little underwhelming – four attacks in close combat is nice, but AP0 isn’t great. The dice rolls weren’t going in the sergeant’s favour today either:

    Regardless, the Primaris came out on top – the Eliminator Sergeant drew a lot of fire and managed to avoid being struck once, though he too had cursed dice rolls and failed to injure anybody through the whole battle.

    Theme-wise it was a good bit of fun pitting a team of Primaris against CSM who were trying to re-activate a dormant death machine!

  • Battle Report: KT 2020-04-21

    The Mini Griffins played Thousand Suns vs. Chaos Space Marines in a matched play mission (Recover Intelligence). As an experiment, we set up a bunch of shipping crates to make one long corridor between the deployment zones with the central objective marker inside.

    The corridor proved to be hotly contested for most of the five-round battle:

    The Thousand Sons Aspiring Champion got taken out in a stream of plasma early on but the generic CSM Aspiring Champion suffered a more ignominious fate, going down to a vanilla CSM in melee while succeeding in only inflicting a flesh wound on his opponent.

    The more open nature of the surrounding battlefield made for less interesting gameplay, though, as it devolved into a back-and-forth of repetitive bolter fire. In the end the Thousand Sons came out on top with victory points and an equal number of casualties.

    MVP went to the CSM gunner wielding a plasma gun who managed to take out the TS leader and inflict several flesh wounds to boot.

    Biggest Fail went to the CSM gunner wielding a heavy bolter, who managed to fire every round of the battle and succeeded in wounding absolutely nobody.

    Terrain thoughts: A 2×2 corridor with 2″ high walls on either side is not the most convenient way to play. As much as we have pined for proper walls in Necromunda or Kill Team: Arena I think that 1″ high walls may be more practical – both are probably worth trying, the claustrophobic nature of the higher walls may work well for the feel of some games.

  • Battle Report: KT 2020-04-20

    Thousand Sons v. Space Wolf Terminators today in regular Kill Team. We took some inspiration from the LVO 2020 championship terrain layout and designed/printed some shipping container-esque terrain pieces, using four on the regular Kill Team board.

    While the Mini Griffins are really enjoying playing harder-to-kill models it seems that in at least some of the scenarios it’s hard to score victory points with so few models. The battle ended with Thousand Sons coming out with more casualties but also more victory points.

    Where to from here? Need some more variation in scatter terrain and perhaps some ramps for putting between some shipping containers to get a quick and easy second level.

  • Battle Report – KTA 2020-04-17

    Played our first game of Killteam Arena today – Grey Knights vs. Khorne Berserkers. The claustrophobic board was a little reminiscent of oldschool Space Hulk, which I rather enjoyed. Both Master and Miss Griffin enjoyed the door mechanic and the walled board.


    The mission was Forgotten Data, and while the Grey Knight Terminators did not suffer even so much as a flesh wound throughout the entire battle they failed to come out ahead on points.

    Terrain thoughts from the session – the computer terminals were a nice fit, along with some barrels down the corridors. The doors did fall over regularly when the mini Griffins bumped the table, which was somewhat annoying.