Two Days at Games Workshop Highgate

With Gottacon fast approaching I have been trying to get at least two games in per week against different lists and opponents to test out the resilience of my Blood Angels and the best place to do this is at the local Games Workshop store where I could paint, game and generally chat tactics and rules with various staff and fellow gamers. My work shifts the last 12 months mean I can no longer make the later nights at my FLGS so it's been daytime gaming further from home but well worth the trip for a fun day out with a few more full size tables and different opponents than I usually play.

Here you can see my fearless Imperial Knight getting up close and personal with some Tau Hammerheads in a request game against a Tau gun-line, and in a complete reversal of fortune he also killed a Necron Transcendent C'tan the following day, with the ensuing explosion wiping out the victorious Knight and the rest of my army! An apparent rare event for the Necron player but a suitably epic loss against a tough opponent and great learning experience for me.

The other side of spending two days at the games store was helping my mate Harry paint up his Tyranids. With the assistance of staff we managed to finish all the little bugs to a tabletop standard (in less than an hour!) for a campaign at our local FLGS which prefers painted models. You can see more of these great looking bugs in a photo battle report I posted last year. I look forward to some more in game photos once I finish my Blood Angels. He has also been working on his Tau using his new airbrush, and now has a pair of great completed and work in progress Riptides. These guys look great on the tabletop, I'm sure we will be batch painting some Fire-warriors in the future!

All this painting inspired me to work on my Blood Angels, and after the great progress assembling, converting, basing and undercoating I had stalled at the critical base coat stage. All my previous Blood Angels were far too bright, and I had hoped to make a return to "grim-dark" with more gold elements to reinforce the ornate and historical armour idea which the new codex focuses on, rather than the gaudy 2nd Edition paint schemes. After about six hours in between games I had the base colours down with a few hints from the staff, such as mixing brown into the gold for a more even single coat prior to washing/shading.

The helmets are yet to be painted yellow and the highlighting started, but after a few hours at home shading and drybrushing I am very pleased with the progress. I am also re-basing my Knight this week to match the rest of the army, and will be using the angles of the base elements as guides for facing of the Ion Shield which was difficult to gauge at times from across the table. With a few clarifications to the "Look out Sir!" rules and many many notes on improving my game I can't wait to do the same all over again next weekend!

If you need any convincing at all regarding the value in play-testing an army before any sort of competition, here is a list of mistakes and notes I made over only the last three games:

- forgot to deploy my Attack Bike,
- forgot to use my Captain's relic to make Fear tests in combat,
- forgot to move/shoot/charge after my dreadnought survived turn one (see above for the result!),
- allowed my Captain to be swarmed by a horde with no backup,
- forgot to move my Knight into charge range of two Leman Russ tanks,
- forgot to move on to an objective in turn five,
- decided against using Hatred as I thought I wouldn't make a charge,
- lost a game due to lack of Objective Secured when using the "Baal Strike Force" Detachment.