5-Day Challenge- Epilogue

 

Long time readers will know that I have been actively engaging in community building in my local area.  Thanks to other champions in the area, we were able to launch the True Crit Gaming Guild.  This is a gaming group in Northwest Wyoming dedicated to miniature wargaming, role-playing games, board games, and card games.  It is a non-denominational gaming guild!  

Those who have known me for a long time will know that I love campaigns!  I first started getting into wargame design after having such a great experience with the old Eye of Terror and Fall of Medusa 5 campaigns from Games Workshop.  The community stories and creativity unleashed was some of the best I had ever seen.  I wanted to recapture that and started running a variety of online campaigns with smaller, localized forums and online communities.  Almost all of these had little campaign specifics rules and scenarios.  

Well, thanks to the True Crit Gaming Guild, I am going back to the well and trying my hand at a fun Narrative Campaign.  This time, we are keeping it focused to games of Kill Team.  Kill Team is a Guild favorite for a variety of reasons.  

The campaign is a simple warzone control campaign set on a nominally Imperial world on the Eastern Fringe.  It is designed to be an Imperial vs Chaos themed campaign, with other factions being able to act as mercenaries or allies.  The focus is on giving us a setting to theme our games around and give us a good excuse to play games, paint models, and build terrain.  

Of course, you can follow along with the campaign on our True Crit Gaming Guild Facebook page as well.  In addition, I am also going to make the campaign booklet available to you for free as well.  Feel free to launch your own Siege Perilous campaign with your local community as well.  

To prepare for the campaign, I ordered a Blooded Kill Team to be part of the forces of Chaos.  However, it soon became clear it was not going to arrive on time.  I went to the FLGS and picked up a Sister of Battle box and resolved to create, assemble, prime, and paint a Kill Team in 5-business days.  Hence, the 5-day challenge was born!  

That challenge started 5-days ago and I managed to get the Order of St. Augustine Martyred was ready to take the field of battle!  

I packed up the Order as well as my Hand of the Archon along with my DIY terrain for the big day.  I managed to get the Terrain made on our groups Project Social day.  This day was intended for folks to build terrain, get their Kill Teams ready, work on various projects, and be ready for the big day!  I packed up my Hand of the Archon in case their were too many Imperials and I had to fight for the forces of Chaos! 

This was the big day that I had been doing all the work for!  Today would be my first wargaming in 2024.  So, as an epilogue for the 5-day challenge, here are a bunch of photos from the event. I was paired up against an Imperial player, so the Hand of the Archon took to the field instead of the Order of St. Augustine Martyred.  Maybe next time? 

This was my first time using the Hand since I painted them, so I was not 100% sure how they worked.  Thankfully, the Imperial player I was paired against was new to the Veteran Guardsman as well.  We worked together to help each other out, and had a good time playing the Looting scenario.  

You can see we used my DIY terrain for the table I was on.  I was pretty happy with how it looked and played.  The Cigar Box Battles mat really helped to make it POP.  This was also our first time really taking advantage of the Tac Ops deck.  I had no idea what was on them, and randomly drew 3.  This was a close run game all the way down to the final turning point.  

However, my ability to get 3 Dark Eldar in a concealed position to activate Objectives allowed me to pull out a very close win.  In addition, I was able to take advantage of my random Tac Ops to net some final victory points to put me over the top!  A close run thing, but victory for the Hand of the Archon and the first Chaos victory in the campaign! 

Here is the Order of St. Augustine Martyred on the table with some Legionaries.  This was not an actual game, but I promised you guys some shots of the Order on the table.  Here it is!  Hopefully they will get to hit the table soon and bring victory for the Emperor!  

Thanks for all of your comments and well-wishes as I pursued the 5-Day Challenge to the finish.  Perhaps when my Blooded Chaos Guard arrive I will do something similar with them.  This was fun and I recommend doing something like this to help you finish a project too.   

Until next time!  

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On The Painting Desk: The Hand of the Archon - Kill Team

 

As you all know, I have been playing a lot of Kill Team with my local club; True Crit Gaming Guild.  Normally, I play some faction of Eldar as they were my first miniatures and faction.  I have a Craftworld, Harlequin, and Corsair Kill Team all ready.  Therefore, when my FLGS got in the Hand of the Archon box I went ahead and picked it up.  I figured I might as well be "The Space Elf" guy in our group.  

The box has enough for 10 guys, and 8 of the ten seem to have something special about them.  When I made my Corsairs I skipped some of the specialty dudes in favor of some basic guys.  After reading up on the rules, I didn't skip any of the special dudes this time.  I made them all.  

The other big choice was to go helmetless across the board, mix it up, or all helmed.  Normally, I find going without a helmet in the 41st Millennium to be ridiculous, BUT it does make character models or specialists look good.  This force had a lot of specialists.  However, my aversion to painting skin won and I went with all helmet headed dudes.  I was pretty by the book, but a few mistakes forced me to swap around backpacks on a few guys. 

From there, it was time to undercoat.  Thankfully, I had a bought of nice weather and I was able to spray undercoat them outside with Grey Seer.  It was just in the nick of time as it snowed the next day!  That's living in the mountains for you, the weather changes dramatically and at the drop of a hat. 

Of course, I planned on speed painting these guys so a basic Grey Seer undercoat was not going to cut it.  I then gave them a dark grey wash to get into the recesses and cracks.  Once that was set I dry-brushed the models with white.  I have found that this gives really good contrast for speed paints.  This took me about an afternoon of prep work to get ready for painting.  I figured I could probably speed paint these guys over a weekend.  

Next, I started to do the basic block painting of the models using Speed Paints from Army Painter.  I have V1.  Therefore, I had to be a bit careful with overlapping and the like.  However, I had no real plans to do much painting beyond the speed paints.  

I decided on a Blood Red body suit underlay, then Absolution Green Armor, Crusader Skin tabards, Camo Cloak pouches, and Pallid Bone weapons as the predominant scheme.  Perhaps the Blood Red and the Dark Green was not the best choice.... too Holiday themed.... but I am not going back now! 

However, all of my Eldar have some sort of red and green on them.  Anything not covered at this point was probably getting regular painting attention and not speed paints.    

This stage took me an evening. 

Now it was onto some detail work.  For this, I mostly used traditional Army Painter colors with a mix of  cheap big-box store acrylics. The details included weapon blades, knife sheathes, gems, top-knots (would not be GW without a few top knots!), chains, and other details.  These just served to give the models a bit of "Bling!" to the eye and help them look individual and unique.  This stage probably took the most time due to paint switching, brush cleaning, and adding details.  

After that I went and did just basic bases for these guys.  They are meant to be used!  I used Hardened Leather speed paints and then rimmed them in black.  Once that was dry I brush coated them with a protective coating.  Speed paints are prone to wear if not sealed, and these guys were going to see some table time.  

I called them good and put them away to be gamed with.  10 models done for the year! A nice palette cleanser before I moved back to 6mm Hittites.  

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Blood and Spectacles Patreon! 

You can follow Blood and Spectacles Facebook page or Instagram for more fun! 

Check out the latest publications and contact me at our Blood and Spectacles website

Or purchase all out games at the Blood and Spectacles Publishing Wargames Vault Page!