Greetings and Happy New Year!! I was able to get a couple games of Aeronautica Imperials in over the holiday break and that really jump started my mojo for painting tiny planes. So the first project in 2023 will be to complete the third and final (so far) box set, Wrath of Angels. The 11 planes in the set can be seen above, six Aeldari planes and five space marine planes. As I typically do, I started off the project by painting the bases.
The first step is separating the bases for air brushing. The bottom halves with the dials are shown above. The bottoms snap into the tops in three places and can be a bit tough to separate, but carefully wedging a small screw driver or similar above the dials can pry them apart.
Here's where I got the tops to so far. Next up will be to paint in the metal accents that call out the firing arcs and add a bit of detail to the bases. They are pretty far along otherwise, and so I'll be soon on to the planes. I'm debating whether to paint the planes in 40K or 30K Dark Angels colors. I'm leaning on 30K colors since they did release a Horus Heresy book for Aeronautica Imperialis. No one I play with is going to care either way. :)
For fun, here's a couple shots from the big 2 on 2 game I took part in over the holidays. Imperial Navy/Astra Militarum vs. Orks and Tau. we went with 300 points a side with each player getting 150 pts to build a force. I supplied all the gaming materials and so it was great fun to have a good portion of my collection on the table at last for a game!
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| Turn 1 following deployment |
I used two sets of thick cardboard boards from expansions to AI...they are much better to play on than the flimsy folding boards that come with the box sets.
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| Turn 2: three casualties already! |
After turn 1, planes start to get stuck in, especially up top where fighting was the thickest.
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| Turn 3: a Vendetta bites the dust |
I forgot to take pictures at the start of turn four, and we ended at turn five with the game called on account of time. By then, the imperial forces had turned the tide and it was going to end in a rout regardless. On the imperial side, we got lucky with maneuvers (a BIG part of the game) and secured more targets than our opponents, followed by a good run of dice rolling. Though I will say the dice were hot and cold on both sides, which does make the game far less predictable. For example, a vendetta has three twin linked lascannon which each fire two shots at medium range...so six dice in total can be rolled. One turn I rolled no hits, next turn I rolled five hits and brought down the Ork Eavy Bommer. I could easily have rolled less (or no) hits and allowed the bommer to wreak more havoc.
Anyway, much fun was had by all. A memorable moment came after the first pair of 1-on-1 games where the players realized after hearing the tales of the other game that they had not been rolling to damage, just to hit. So every hit scored automatic wounds in their game. We all had wondered why they had finished their game so quickly when the other took a fair bit longer. 😂 That was necrons vs. imperium and the necron weight of fire at close range decimated the imperial planes, particularity with the Jink special rule and not having to roll to damage. LOL.
Anyway, this final gaming experience of the year prompted me to continue painting planes this month. Then I'll go back to Horus Heresy for Squaduary and Adeptus Titanicus for Monster March.
Hope your holidays went well.
Cheers and Happy Gaming!
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