Turnip on the Docks

Hello!

It's been a muddy, rusty, horribly twisted time for my wargaming recently. It was all about Death Guard recently, and then last weekend I had some Turnip28 fun! I took my 69th Mordby Mudcrabs to the Turnip on the Docks event, and had a very rooty time.

The event was held as a rather cool venue in Grimsby I'd never heard of before - The Great Escape, actually found on the docks themselves. Apparently it's a bit of a community project with help from all sorts of places, which is cool, and there has been a lot of work going on to make this weird old building look, well, weird and old? It's very cool.

Having played a game against Chris, who was somewhat responsible for this event, I kind of knew what I was doing going in. Luckily it seems there's a lot of people who also have lovingly built armies of horrible little turnipmen and also have not played many actual games of it before. In fact it was a very newbie friendly vibe, with very little emphasis on the tournament aspect of things.

In Turnip28 there are no points costs, you just take a number of units of set sizes based on the number of Snobs (officers) you have - each one brings a unit apart from your 'general', the Toff who brings two. You then get to select a 'cult', which is the equivalent of a faction, giving you bonus rules and sometimes special units.

I took the cult of Stranglin' Harry's Wretched Recruits - which feels kind of like the 'default' faction. They get tougher snobs and a bit of a bonus for doing a series of tactically sound things like shooting units that can't shoot back or taking an objective. I took a unit of Brutes (heavy infantry) a unit of Fodder (pretty much what you'd expect) and a pair of units of Chaff (skirmisher/snipers.) With hindsight I think I could have done with an alternative unit than the second Chaff that had a bit more staying power, but that is all I had built.

The gaming itself was made up of five games, roughly an hour each, with a couple of 'basic' scenarios followed by some extra silly ones. I shan't go through too much detail, but once we'd all got a grips on the rules the games really fly by, I was finished early in all five games having been largely wiped out!

Game one was against the cult of the Leech Lovers - they get to heal from killing in melee, and every turn both sides take a load of damage, presumably from all the leeches. It was a monumental failure for my boys, after the Brutes charged a unit of Bastards (heavy cavalry) in the flank and all died to the return attacks.

Game two was against the Uprising of the Louse - they get a huge 'Tall Man' effigy that influences the game in weird ways and can summon a rabble to fight for them. Fortunately for me this had no effect on our game. Unfortunately for me my Toff lost a Toff Off (duel) and a unit of Bastards cleared their way through most of my lines for another loss.

Game three was against some... worm guys? They were using the rules for The Feast of Charybdis - normally a force of crab riding burrowers but here that was represented by a giant mole. This was a special scenario, the Siege of Piss Castle, which may or may not have been inspired by a local landmark. I was able to knock the enemy Toff off his seat on the 'castle', but the rest of my forces struggled to keep on top of the worms and their mole, leading to a third loss.

Game four was against a pig themed March of the Proboscis - normally they get an elephant, instead they had a giant pig. The scenario featured a giant root monster that wanted to kill both players, was super strong and represented a special victory condition - kill the beast to win! I cunningly allowed it to savage the pigs and managed to charge in at the end to finish it off and win a game! During the game my Toff won a duel - part of the rules for this suggest you should put your Toffs on the highest point of the board for a dramatic fight, so they stood on the monster's back!

The final game was against the Slug's Lament, who focus on their heavy infantry and get an extra unit that turns up late and weary. We were fighting over a giant root-whale that had vomit us up, meaning the forces arrived in stages in the middle of the board, meaning the fighting started instantly. Once again my poor lads were out-muscled, but they did manage to kill off all the enemy geese!

So after all that I had won just one game out of five. However I did pick up some bonus points for rooty things like winning a Toff Off or having a Snob fail a dangerous terrain test. This meant I managed a respectable eighth place out of twelve, and (as with everyone) received a little bag with a selection of Napoleonic and 3D printed bits for the next Turnip project. Hurrah!

Overall it was a really fun day, both in playing a lot of this intentionally silly (but surprisingly deep) game and meeting a load of interesting, creative people. I really hope I can do more of these in future - I understand it was well enough received that a sequel is in the works for February 2024, so hopefully you'll be able to read more about it then.

Thanks for reading and stay safe out there!

Death Guard at the Grim Dice Tournament

Hello!

Been a little while since I've updated here, and since last time I wrote about my Death Guard toughing it out in tenth edition, I thought I'd continue with a brief overview of the Grim Dice Tournament, and maybe some bonus Death Guard content at the end!

The event itself was a pretty standard 2k one-dayer with about 12 players. I took a list featuring Mortarion running up the middle and a series of small units to try and play the missions, including three Blight-haulers, three units of mostly melee Plague Marines, two lots of Blightlords, a single Plagueburst Crawler (if I had more I would definitely have taken more), Rhino, Bloat Drone, Tallyman and a load of cultitst and poxwalker chaff. At time of writing the balance update has just come out so this list now would have an extra 250 odd points and a powerful new army rule, so I'm well aware I was playing as the underdogs!

First game was against Tim with Chaos Daemons. It was a high scoring win for the Death Guard, 93-89, only a few points in it. The army did what it was supposed to do, spreading out and hoovering up points, while the Daemons slowly murdered everything, but couldn't quite catch up.

Second game was against Robin and his Orks, started fairly even but Mortarion got beaten up badly by Mozrog Skragbad (which I wasn't too sad about too be honest, that guy should be pretty beefy!) and the game went drastically downhill from there. I think the final result was 93-53 to the Orks. My opponent here was a younger member of the community, and I think it's worth saying in case he reads this, I was impressed with both his tactical ability and his Orky spirit!

Last game was against CJ and his Necrons. This one went downhill pretty quickly, Mortation got stuck on the terrain then died fast, while the rest of my army was unable to compete with the 'crons either in their damage or their defences. This game above the others really highlighted the flaws in the index for me - they just can't deal with heavy firepower or really tough targets. Or at least they couldn't - the balance pass might have given them a big boost there. I don't remember the exact score but it was 90-40 ish.

In the end I managed to get roughly in the middle with the highest score of the one-winners. A little disappointing to have the games get progressively more unbalanced as the day went on, but I was ultimately happy to have won a game here. Looking back now on the day of the balance update it does throw it somewhat starkly into focus, the list I would have taken now would have been significantly larger and dramatically more dangerous. Regardless of results, I still had fun, it's always nice to have a day throwing dice!

And as for that Death Guard bonus content - I had a bit of a desire to have a big stupid tank to go with the collection, so I dipped into the Heresy range for this one:

The Typhon Heavy Siege Tank! Kind of like a big Plagueburst Crawler right? In any case, it was a lot of fun to paint up a big dirty rust bucket of a warmachine, using all the weathering techniques I've picked up over the years.

The Lord of Virulence approves! Now I need to play a game with legends allowed. Luckily most of my opponents seem to be pretty cool. Legends let legends use legends! Anyway, thanks for reading, hope you enjoyed, and stay safe out there!

Skirmish in the North 3 - aka Learning Age of Sigmar Part Four

Hello!

This past weekend I went to the Skirmish in the North 3 event, a 1000 point Age of Sigmar tournament run by Hull's Angels wargaming club (in Hull, obviously). I was not expecting to do well (my last AoS game seems to have been back in April last year) and with five smaller games on the day I was going in looking for a fun and educational time, literally doubling the number of AoS games I have ever played - and one of those was in first edition before they had points costs.

As it happens, that's exactly what I got, coming away with a much better understanding of how the game works and, spoilers, the last place award. I was running the current/old Seraphon book with a fairly basic selection of Koatl's Claw Saurus units and no magic to keep it simple; two units each of Saurus Warriors and Knights, a unit of Skinks to get in the way, led by an Oldblood on Carnosaur, a foot Oldblood and a Sunblood. As usual with these tournament reports, I'm just going to run through a very brief summary of each game and then some final thoughts. Here goes.

First game was Morgan, who had Magotkin of Nurgle. Some cultist types, a couple of characters and a big blob of Blightkings. Nurgle does nurgle stuff, so I was expecting tough units and a sprinkling of mortal wounds, which is what I got.

I had a good go at killing off the various units and scoring some points, but ultimately I had no answer to the Blightkings, after the Carnosaur killed three of them, then got easily cut down in return. 26-15 to Nurgle.

Second game was against Ryan and his Gloomspite Gits. Lots of squigs and lots of Trolls.

Unfortunately the Gits had some fun mushrooms that meant a unit of squigs charged and ate my general in turn one, which was not an ideal start. Elsewhere I found out that Troggoths hit hard and are really tough, so the rest of my forces struggled to make a dent. Particular disappointment were the Saurus Warriors who charged the Cave Squigs and only managed to kill two of them, and then obviously got slaughtered in return. 28-8 to the Squgs.

Game three was against Rob and his cool alternative Idoneth Deepkin. A couple of blobs of thralls plus two units of angler fish-eels and a big boss riding a rather scary eel. Wasn't sure what to expect from these guys other than fast and elf stuff.

This felt like a close game with a lot of back and forth action on a central objective that then split into two. However I was foiled by consistently failing to kill stuff. Saurus Warriors with character support failed to finish off a unit of Thralls, Carnosaur failed to finish off some eels, and finally the two generals met and did about one wound between them. Close until it wasn't - 24-9 to the fish elves.

Game four was a lizard-off against Lee and his also Koatl's Claw Seraphon. He didn't have a big dinosaur, but he did have two reinforced blocks of Saurus Warriors and magic Skinks to buff them. He also had, amusingly, brought the Sunblood to get some use out of it having unique rules before the new book turns it into a generic Oldblood.

The main story of this game was the Carnosaur getting taken out by Skinks. A little unit of ten got buffed to dish out mortal wounds on sixes and between that and some awful saves they took 6 wounds off the dinosaur in melee! Much reduced it struggled to eat them and finally got taken out by the lizard wizard on the pyramid. Ouch. My foot heroes did a lot better, each taking a beating before they finally fell, (and my Sunblood was winning the duel until he got swarmed by Saurus Warriors instead) but I didn't really have an answer for those big blobs. 28-12 to the blue Seraphon.

Final game was against Conner and his Gloomspite Gits. Having faced them before I was wary of the damage squig units could put out and the survivability of the Troggoths. Luckily he didn't take a Cave Squig missile, instead opting for a big unit of gobbos to hold his home objective.

This game was a real close one with a lot of back and forth, and the general finally got to do proper big dinosaur things as he chomped through a load of squigs and trolls through the game. Conner was a few points ahead of me all game, pulled away a little at the end, but thanks to having last turn I was able to stop his grand strategy (have something in my territory at the end) and complete mine (no enemies in my territory) which left the game agonisingly close, but wasn't quite enough to grab one win from the event. 23-21 to the Gits.

So with that, I went 0-5, and into last place, but I did pick up the favourite player award, which is nice. I do genuinely try to make my games enjoyable for my opponent, as it tends to mean the game is more enjoyable for me as well, so it is appreciated that apparently I wasn't seen as a salty loser or anything. And importantly I did have fun - four of the five games felt like I was at least in with a shout, and I feel like I got most of my rules correct once I'd gotten going. 

I'm starting to understand now a little better how you are 'supposed' to play AoS - how to work around the various rules that differ from 40k, such as the 3 inch engagement range, the double turn, and chargers not auto-striking first. I've also learned that some of these old Seraphon units are massively outperformed by equivalents in other armies. If only they had an up to date Battletome...

Anyway, thanks for reading, I hope you enjoyed, and stay safe out there!