Da Pain Train - Panzy Panza Update (Orks' Eldar Looted Wagon/Locomotive)

Hi everyone,

It's been a while since we've worked on Da Pain Train - Da Panzy Panza.  And, with everyone in the house under the weather today, rather than head down to Bay Area Open 2015 (which was our plan) did some work on looting instead....

 Here is the Da Pain Train so far....

Our progress so far....

Side view of the Panzy Panza

- Picked out a donor Lionel locomotive.  This time, using the GE 44-Tonner as our base.

- Found a first batch of Eldar parts.  On eBay, found an Eldar Falcon (?? we think ??) which was in pieces.  Turned out it had been hot-glued together -- so easy to disassemble and reassemble.

- After some thinking decided it looked fun upside-down on top of the  44-Tonner.  This is cool because we can have the landing ramp instead act as a hatch for a Grot of Ork Boy to shoot out of.

 The landing hatch of the Falcon set up to swing open so that Grots or Boyz can shoot out the back

- Took some carving, but got magnets mounted in the original turret -- and also the "bottom" (now the top) of the Falcon.

It was a bit tricky to carve a spot for the magnet on both parts - but we managed to get it done -- and reasonably centered, too

 Turret works - and the Eldar weapons swing up and down still as well....

- And, got the two epoxied together....

- Next order of business was putting an Ork into the cockpit of the turret.  Easier said than done.  Orks have much bigger and bulkier legs than Eldar. 

We had to do some "surgery" on the Ork gunner's legs to get them to fit into the cockpit.  Main problem was that the ankles weren't really set up in any sort of reclining position.

Here he is -- just barely fitting in there....

Decided that this was a good time to use one of our Fantasy Orc heads we were planning to use (great helmets).  And, had to move the little control viewer to make room for the Ork. 

 Our Ork gunner :)  You can see our repositioning of the display/control panel....

So now, we're ready to add Dakka.  Going to need to think of more ideas, but here is what we are thinking so far....

- Maybe some kind of spar-pole with a bomb-squig on the end at the front?

- Going to mount the skewered Eldar pilot somewhere (maybe also on the front)....

- Thinking of mounting some machine guns (big shootas) in an underslung fashion to the "wings" of the falcon

- Need to figure out more places for buzz-saw type weapons

- And, also planning to mount some engines inside the engine compartment -- and then run hose-cable assemblies up to the falcon -- to make it more fun to think about how Ork Meks have gotten this whole thing running

 Side view of Da Pain Train....  Took quite a while to cut (with our Xacto saw) through the side to open up the "doors" on the locomotive.  But, that's going to be key to run our cables and hoses from the engine in the engine compartment up to the falcon.  Whether the Falcon is sending power to the locomotive -- or the locomotive is sending power to the Falcon is something only the Mek knows.  (Maybe it's both!!)

- The "cabin" of this locomotive is actually quite filled up with the motor of the model train.  So, we may put grots in there instead of Ork Boyz for drivin'.

Paint wise -- this one is going to be the yellow color scheme of Supreme Warboss Fork (not the pink of Supreme Warboss Spork)

Links to other blog posts:
- Our looted steam engine - the Dakka Chugga
- Earlier Pain Train post

Warhammer 40K in the Park -- Playing a Game Outside!

Hi everyone,

Just played a very fun game of 40K with our friend Mr. Z!

 Playing 40K (Outside!) (In a Park!) -- Orks vs. Eldar

Both Mr. Z and we have had very busy days the past few weeks -- and we were struggling to figure out a time to play which we could both manage.  Overlaying those challenges with the times when our local game stores were open -- and we were really in trouble.

So, we decided to break with convention and try for an early morning game.  And, to make it easy, we figured we would play at a big park with lots of grass and paved areas -- right by a skate park....

Set-up:

We searched, searched and searched, and could not find a "card table" which was 4 feet by 6 feet.  6 feet long was not an issue -- but they were all something like 30 inches wide!!

Then, digging in the garage, we came across one of our old train table boards.  We had cut 3 sections which were 8 feet long and 3 feet wide.  Took a few minutes of staring (and for mental cobwebs to come off) to realize that if we cut this in half, we'd have two sections 4 feet long and 3 feet wide -- AND, IF WE PUT THESE SIDE BY SIDE -- it would be 4 feet by 6 feet :)

So, that's what we did!

• We bought a low cost 4 feet by 6 feet folding table (fits in the car easily)
• And, [taking care to be quiet] we used a hand-saw to cut the plywood in half [at 5:30am this morning]....

Our portable 4' x 6' Warhammer 40K table!

 Sure enough, we could fit the portable table into the car....

Our Army:

We were playing this battle as part of the campaign we've been playing -- and the scenario was that Mr. Z's Eldar were attacking our HQ.  We were out-gunned -- some 1100 points of Orks defense against 2500 points of Eldar attack....

So, we had worked to set up 600 points of fortifications -- and 525 points of Ork army.  Everyone had agreed that an unbound list made sense for a cobbled together HQ defense.

Problem was -- other than the big cannon, we didn't really have much for fortifications.  And, we had been planning to do some camping just before we played this battle (which was part of the busy schedule)....

Coaching from friends on Dakka Dakka encouraged us to use models like a Landing Pad, Pain Boy, Lootas, Mek-Guns, and Vengance Weapons batteries.  We had also managed to get our hands on a Plasma Obliterator.

Reading up on the Landing Pad, that seemed like a key to keep things alive.  But, how to find one?  We tried every single one of our usual game stores -- and nobody had one.   It was a special order item for everyone!

Finally, we found one at Apokalypse Games in San Jose.  A bit of a drive, but we managed to pick one up!!

And, while there, we got to see their terrific fortification terrain (what we really needed against the Eldar!)

The very cool terrain at Apokalypse Games :)

40K While Car Camping:

So, we did some 40K model building on the camping trip to get ready.  [We stopped short of playing 40K this camping trip - maybe next one....]  We packed up our model glue, snippers and file -- along with the 40K kits to build -- and we were in business.

Here is our Landing Pad assembly area (while camping)

Working on the Vengance Weapons Batteries

The Battle:

The all-stars of the battle were -- no question -- the Mek Guns.  Wish we had had even more of those.  Since we had an unbound list, we used them as single units -- and they couldn't really fail morale against the oncoming Eldar attack.

Also -- the "D-1" flamer weapons the Eldar wield were pretty tough!

Some good lessons:

- Although the Plasma Obliterator was fun to build and fun to play, it would have worked better to spread our points out and use more of the Vengance Weapon Batteries.

- We should have put our Weapon Batteries on the edges of the table -- not in the center where the Eldar could use them against us as screens from the other weapons.

- Need to do a better of knowing the range of each of our units.  In the first round we were thinking that the Lootas had a range of 36" -- not the actual range of 48"!!!

Found a Turbo Laser Turret - Looking forward to another session of X-Wing with our Death Star Trench!

Hi everyone,

We were browsing in the scenery section at Game Kastle on Friday night and stumbled across something we had been searching for -- a Death Star Turbo Laser Turret!!

In our most recent post about the X-Wing Death Star Trench model we had made a first attempt at building Turbo Laser Turrets using pink foam.  Several issues:  They were too small; they weren't nicely symetric; they were super light and jiggled around easily.  Bottom line -- it's not easy to build a Turbo Laser Turret!

[Here's a link to our earlier posting.  <-- We have notes here on playing X-Wing with a Death Star Trench as a cooperative game.]

Here's our first attempt at a pink foam Turbo Laser Turret.  Pretty humble.  It got a little bit better with nails poked in to create the barrels of the turbo lasers.

Here you can see our first-pass Turbo Laser Turrets at work.  Not much to look at....  Also a bit small compared to the models.

So, this is a very exciting discovery.

The box with the picture :)

The TLTs come from JR Miniatures (JRMINI) here in the Silicon Valley area.

The box -- in case anyone would like to see the details!

Here's a link to the product page for the Turbo Laser Turret

And, here's a quick look at our model.

Here is our first Turbo Laser Turret :)

Game Kastle had one left over from a holiday X-Wing session they had run.  So, we bought that one -- and ordered more (for a fully populated trench)....

Here is the Turbo Laser Turret next to an FFG X-Wing.  Great scale -- just what we were hoping for!

We'll post more as soon as we get some paint on our turrets and try the Death Star Trench Cooperative Game once more :)