Star Breach: Small Skirmish - 50pts

I enjoyed my first try at Star Breach, but I felt like I kept missing things. Perhaps keeping track of 19 or so troops played a part. So I decided to try a 50 pt game instead.

Using my Warhammer 40K minis again, the rosters turned out like so:

Empire of Man
- Sergeant (Alpha, 6 pts) - armed with sub-bolt gun, power gauntlet, 1 plasma grenade, 1 smoke grenade. Relics: Kevlar vest, service medal. Skills: Natural Leader, Inspiring Presence.
- Corporal (20 pts) - armed with plasma shotgun, bolt pistol, 1 frag grenade. Relics: Opiate pack.
- Engineer (15 pts) - armed with flamethrower, bolt pistol, 2 plasma grenades. Skills: Field Mechanic.
- Private (9 pts) - armed with bolt rifle. Relics: artifact of old Earth

The Hive

- Taskmaster (Alpha, 4pts) - armed with needle gun, acidic claws and teeth. Relics: toxin sac, scales of the fallen. Skills: Ruthless Nature, Stealth 1.
- Warrior Y (17 pts) - armed with spore cannon, acidic talons. Relics: oversize mandible, adrenaline sac.
- Drone X (9 pts)- armed with acidic talons. Relic: toxin sac.
- Drone Y1 (10 pts) - needle rifle. Relics: hyper adaptive scaling.
- Drone Y2 (10 pts) - needle rifle, scales of the fallen

The human scout party approaches from the northwest. Sergeant in the pillbox hat, Corporal in front on your left, Engineer on the right and Private out in front on the right.

The Tyranids have sensed intruders and sent a small force to investigate and enter to the southeast. Front row from left: Taskmaster, Drone-X,  Warrior-Y. Back row: Drone-Y1 and Y2

The set-up. I wised up a bit and kept dice on the sheet to mark each soldier's total Initiative score as it fluctuated.

Turn 1: The first three order dice pulled were Tyranid dice. I assigned them all the Run order to claim the cover behind the ruined walls before the humans could. Decided to split forces with the two Y drones making a flanking move. The humans find themselves unable to advance very far without putting themselves in danger. No shots are fired. I forgot about the Extra Move phase.

Turn 2: Y1 and Y2 come around the corner of the wall on the human right flank firing wildly, Sarge manages to hit Y2 and inflicts 1 damage. Taskmaster attempts Evolve on Warrior-Y (+1 to each of Movement, Initiative, and Armour), but fails, taking 1 damage. Warrior Y and Drone X move to the humans' left flank. Warrior Y misses with spore cannon and Private returns fire causing 2 damage. In the extra moves, Sarge refocuses his aim and does 5 damage to Y3. Warrior Y directs its toxin sac toward the Private, inflicting 4 damage.

Turn 3: Sarge goes first, moving closer to the Engineer to use Natural Leader, assigning the Engineer to go next, and turns around to finish off Y2. Y1 scurries around the back of the wall to join up with the Taskmaster. Engineer throws a plasma grenade to catch Warrior Y and Drone X in its blast radius, but both Tyranids avoid taking any damage. Drone Y1 fires on the Engineer and misses, but the distraction allows the Taskmaster to hit him with a blast from a toxin sac, inflicts 4 damage. Warrior Y initiates cover fire against the Engineer and Private, Engineer is hit for 3 more damage. The Private fumbles to treat his wounds, regains 1 hp, is attacked and killed by Drone X. The troops are in such close quarters, they engage in melee combat: The first two - Corporal vs. Taskmaster, Warrior vs. Engineer - end with combatants pushing each other away. Sarge jumps on Warrior Y, causing 7 damage in the first two blows, but the big Tyranid gets the upper hand in the third blow, also causing 7 damage before they push each other away.

Turn 4: Sarge goes first again, tossing a plasma grenade toward Warrior Y and Drone X. Warrior Y is caught in the blast and killed, Drone X dodges it. Natural Leader is invoked again and the Engineer fires his flamer at the Taskmaster and Y1, but both avoid the flames. Taskmaster successfully evolves Drone Y1. Drone X attacks Corporal, who gives it a belly full of plasma from his shotgun. Drone X dies.

Turn 4 - Extra Moves: Sarge Mends for 5 hp, Engineer mends for 1 hp, Taskmaster Assaults Engineer, who takes the upper hand, causing 6 damage and retreating, not trusting his chances against the Tyranid leader.

Oof, didn't realize how bad this pic was. Oh well. Turn 5: Taskmaster repositions and turns to fire, taking down the Engineer for good. Drone Y1 moves to partial cover and fires at Corporal, misses. Sarge runs at Y1, striking a killer blow with his power gauntlet.

Turn 5 - Extra Moves: Taskmaster Assaults Corporal and kills him. Sarge fires around the partial cover, but his shot can't penetrate Taskmaster's armour.

Final Turn: It's one on one and Taskmaster gets first move and charges Sarge. The melee rolls come up with a tie and they separate. Sarge fires twice with his sub-bolter and the first shot goes wild, but the second... well, I included the most amazing attack roll and dodge counter-roll combination I've seen all game, with or without adding Initiative, the Taskmaster has no chance. Sarge reports back to base alone, living testimony of the horrors that his crew encountered.

I think I did better with remembering rules and potential actions this time around. I created some pretty evenly matched teams, based on how "down to the wire" this game felt as I played it out. The rules suggest using teams made up of 120 - 150 points. But even 50 point teams play well. The blind order dice draw really lends itself well to playing solo and I felt I had some tough calls on each side with who I played first.

Brown Tyranids

That game of Star Breach was really fun, even playing it solo. As I said in my last post, I am aiming to play again. However, an astute observer of the images I posted there might notice that a number of the tyranid figures were not painted and playing made me really want to get some of that done before lining them up again. Now, I mentioned having painted some before and that they don't really look all that great. I wanted the next batch to look better, so I did some googling on painting tyranids. I found some really inspiring painting advice from a YouTuber calling himself CatgutPainting (vidlink). The general advice was to use real world animal colour schemes to inspire your own.

I decided I wanted to use brown and yellow, so I then googled an image search of brown and yellow insects. While I did not choose a specific pattern to use, looking at the images really helped to plan how I generally wanted the figures to look. I think it really helped. Thanks CatgutPainting!

Process: Models were already primed black by whoever owned them before me. Airbrushed with Pactra Tan acrylic. Applied a homemade wash (Pledge Floor Care, a couple drops each of Craftsmart red, DecoArt Cranberry Splash, brown-orange paint-by-numbers leftover). Brush painted carapace and hooves with Craftsmart brown base, Craftsmart black, and paint-by-numbers leftover bright yellow. Finished with a final clear coat all over with the Pledge.

Here's a guy with some kind of gun!

Looking dangerous!

The three unbroken large models I got.

Everything painted in this pattern so far.

So much better looking than my first attempt at painting these guys, don't ya think?

Putting 40k to Use

Some time ago, I acquired a bag of 40-something Warhammer 40k soldiers. Cadian Imperial Guards, as I would discover. Got them at Value Village. While they were (and still are) in various stages of (dis)repair, all were painted, with some chipping.

More recently, but still two or more years ago, I acquired two bags of minis from the same store: Tyranids this time. Some primed, some not, three or four partially painted. Some broken, most in good condition. About six months ago, I chose ten or so to try painting. Not the best paint job I've ever done. But hey! They're giant space bugs! They can look ugly!

I've been wanting to get the two factions together in some kind of skirmish for a while and two or three weeks ago I went on a rules hunt. I downloaded a few free sets and started skimming through them to see which seemed most interesting to me. I settled on Star Breach and went to work on creating the team rosters. What's nice about Star Breach is that while it is designed to be a "use-your-own-miniatures" game, they have stats for army types that fit the description of popular sci-fi wargaming factions: 40k, Star Wars, Star Craft maybe, etc. So it was pretty easy to put together a couple of 100 point bands.

Somewhere between getting the Cadians and getting the Tyranids, I downloaded a battle map from Wargamevault.com called Idn Kar Wastes: Ruined Base. I printed it meaning to use it when I got some Epic Duels stuff done up. The battle map has been sitting up on a shelf... until now. It's gridded, so I used the squares instead of using a tape, but I treated line of sight normally.

So here is the initial set-up. I placed the Cadians (on the left) with a bit of purpose: Engineer with rocket launcher, a Corporal, Rifleman, and Scout in the background; Sergeant, Engineer with flame thrower, and 2 Rifleman in the foreground; Medic in the middle. For the Tyranids I had their side divided into 6 sectors and rolled for each figure to see where to put them. The tyranid force is made up of the Taskmaster (kind of in the middle, alone), a Warrior with a spore cannon, 4 Drone-X, and 5 Drone-Y.

Turn 1: The two sides close. Only shots fired are by the Cadian Scout and the Warrior at each other. The Warrior scored a hit.

Turn 2: They meet and attacks are made, the tyranids score hits hits on many of the Cadians, some quite devastating, and the Scout is first to fall. The Cadians only score a few hits and they are not very effective.

Turn 3: Cadians lose a Rifleman, but the Flamer group manages to down two Drone-X tyranids.

Turn 4: The tide turns as the Cadians take out the Taskmaster, resulting in the reduction of initiative for all tyranids to 1. However, they lost the rocket Engineer.

Turn 5: The remaining Drone-X and the Warrior take down the Medic before being blasted. The Flamer takes out a Drone-Y. The remaining Drones flee the battle.

So there it is. Short on detail because I did not keep track of who did what and I didn't get around to writing this until over a week later, so I don't remember any details. I liked the game though, it seemed simple enough after the first couple of turns, though I know I missed some of the specials on one or the other side that might have made a difference. I'm already aiming to play again, but with 50 point squads instead of 100 points so I can hopefully get a better handle on rules and special abilities.