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The Red Baron

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Everything posted by The Red Baron

  1. The Widow Guard During COVID, Jon ran a couple of virtual CAVCons. The first one was just he and I trying our best to entertain people for 10+ hours a day. We painted a lot, talked about the future of CAV, and played some games. This was also when Jon first released the Cobra and the King Cobra. In the lead up to virtual CAVCon he sent me some 3D printed copies to paint up as part of my force that year. Honestly, the whole convention was kind of a last minute decision and I was rushed getting these models done but they came out ok and I really love the models. I've never really worked out their background, I just know I want them to have a spider motif. I'll expand their story soon.
  2. Critical hit add a D6 to the combat roll, Critical fumble check for 'out of ammo'.
  3. I call this the terrain shadow. If you're within 1"of LoS blocking cover then you CANNOT be damaged by indirect fire whose LoS crosses that cover. Doesn't matter if you drift directly behind the defending model... it cannot be damaged.
  4. 11e Rรฉgiment de Hussards I first discovered CAV at ReaperCon in 2016. Brandon Baker gave me a demo game this, combined with the fantastic looking models, convinced me to pick this game up. Reaper ran a metal trade in table at ReaperCon where you could trade old metal minis in for credit in current metal minis. I took a tour of the Reaper facility and got to go through their stock of metal CAV minis. I took home 8 pounds of CAV minis. ๐Ÿ™‚ It took me a few months to figure out what parts went together and identify them but with the help of the community I got it done. I decided to play Templars in the CAV tournament at ReaperCon in 2017. Which left me with a huge task to do. CAV was in a transition at this time from Metal to Plastic. Shortly, after my 8 pound haul Reaper melted down all of its existing CAV stock. At this time there were few Templar models in plastic. This meant I had to search far and wide for metal CAV models that were sitting on shelves in stores across the country. It was a chore... I finally found enough models to field an all metal Templar force but without much in the way of choice in terms of list construction. I only had just enough models to make a list. I got them painted and showed up at CAVCon just in time to get thoroughly beaten by my soon to be friend Ross Hines. Shock Check anyone...? ๐Ÿ™‚
  5. Michael's Mermaids One of my best friends is David Michael. He has a very insightful sense of humor and a tendency to hate movies with the passion of a thousand fiery suns. He's genuinely a lot of fun to hang out with and will make you regret taking that 'if the dice are with me' chance in any miniature game. CAV piqued his interest in 2019 and we got in enough games that he was ready to buy and paint some minis. Buying isn't his problem... painting well, it might as well be a movie with a bad opening scene. ๐Ÿ™‚ Then of course, Covid hit and we couldn't play CAV anymore... but I had a plan! I decided I'd paint up a small mercenary force for David and gift it to him when we got back to playing. Thus was born Michael's Mermaids. I'm not really sure what their background story is but I can imagine someone yelling into the CO's (David's) office and saying, "...the press want to know what our unit is called." The pure level of snark that came back was so thick it stuck and the unit's been known as Michael's Mermaids ever since. I painted the aircraft during the first virtual CAVCon when Jon and I hung out for the weekend and streamed non-stop CAV stuff - there might be video of that somewhere on Youtube. There is also an attempt at a battle report between Michael's Mermaids and my Templar unit the Royal Blues on the forums.
  6. 117th Bastion Regiment In 2020, I was really struggling with my desire/ability to paint. I just couldn't master any motivation. I'm not the kind of person who paints just to paint. I need a goal - like getting my force ready for an upcoming game. I wasn't playing much of anything during the pandemic and I went months without even going into my painting room. I reached out to my friend Ross Hines and asked him to give me an assignment, to pick a faction for me to paint. My thought was I'd take his 'homework' and do some serious painting over that weekend. Did I mention that Ross is an art teacher...? ๐Ÿ™‚ He's also STUPID talented when it comes to art, designing CAV lists, and kicking my a** on the tabletop battlefield. He assigned me to paint some Malvernis models. I'd watched some tutorials from an awesome Twitch streamer - Next Level Painting about how to paint star fields. And here we are... Painting these models got me out of my doldrums and back into painting as something I enjoy. I need to make an actual playable force out of these models. I must own at least a dozen more Banshees. That's probably not enough. ๐Ÿ™‚ CavBoss liked my paint scheme enough he assigned it to the 117th Bastion Regiment - a fine compliment indeed.
  7. Also, Banshees might be the best looking models in the game. ๐Ÿ™‚
  8. I love the shadows on this picture, very well done! J--
  9. I started with the Templar models as I know them best. I don't know what next year's CAVCon rules will be but in previous years we often played at 5000 points. This list uses 6 models you don't have. The Mamba's you can order from Talon Games, the Rapier and the Stilettos you'll need to kit-bash. This gives you two potent attack squads each with their own Spartan to supply EST or ECM as needed. You want the attack squads to move and shoot while the Spartan's supply the target locks. AT001 has your heavy hitters. They are looking to roll crits and smash everything they point their MACs at. AT002 is a little more finesse. The Duelists allow you to customize their shots to the target in front of them. If it is high armor or hard to hit due to range/cover/double time then you can SALVO fire the light MACs for a +5 to hit. If the target has armor in the 6 and under range then you'll want to make all 6 attacks fishing for crits and just ripping holes in the smaller targets. SP001 is really just there to score objectives and harass the foe. Sometime players will shoot at them rather than your valuable stuff and that is a win for you. RE001 is your Recon squad it doesn't have much in the way of firepower. It should move into positions where it's ECM/APA can impact the fight for your attack squads and stay out of harms way. They can pick on severely wounded units but honestly earn their money mostly by not firing and manipulating the initiative deck.
  10. 5th Knights Assault Regiment :: 11th Tactical Air Wing In 2019, Todd Farnholtz aka Mastergunz announced that he was going to organize and run a non-traditional tournament based on the WarMaster tournament described in the CAV:SO rulebook. I can't recall the exact rules but it was something like 6 models max, aircraft and upgrades allowed. I thought about this list a lot during that summer and came up with the idea of playing an all aircraft list. An all aircraft list had several advantages as it was immediately immune to all Indirect Fire weapons (Rockets) and anything with the SA: Strike (MACs). This cut out a sizeable chunk of the weapons you might see on the battlefield. Additionally, the Aircraft were relatively cheap and I was able to afford upgrades for my entire Air Wing. I chose external armor and picked the type that worked against non-energy weapons. This made me more vulnerable to energy weapons but I guessed that the trade off was worth the risk. I was also able to afford upgraded pilots for all of my models. In practice, I found that the aircraft had an 8-12 inch sweet spot where they out-ranged most of the weapons they were vulnerable to. I practiced the list several times that summer against my play test partner and bounced the idea off of my friend Ross Hines - who couldn't play in the WarMaster tournament. Otherwise, I kept the list very secret as surprise was perhaps my biggest advantage. I won the WarMaster tournament... As for the unit, CavBoss already had the 5th Knights Assault Regiment and he made my unit part of it as the 11th Tactical Air Wing. All of the details on the models are hand painted by me and dedicated to my wife. She loves Dragons and her birthday is 5/11.
  11. Looks kind of tall and narrow, like its made to be transported more easily? Obviously, there is nothing to judge its scale by. Curious to learn more.
  12. Looking great as always. Do you paint dark to light, light to dark, or something else?
  13. You can find all of the available cards here. https://www.talon-games.com/downloads/ Share you story with us! Where did you find them? What are you going to do with them? ๐Ÿ™‚
  14. Michael's Mermaids Royal Blues Free Company Turn 0 (pre-game) We made a ton of mistakes in this game. We got a few rules wrong and we completely messed up David's army list. We miscommunicated about who was supposed to bring it and then had to try and construct it from memory - which we failed at. I won't bother with all the ways we got the list wrong but instead of proxying the Wardens as Nomads we made them Hounds instead - which meant they had no weapons which could harm my models. Additionally, we put all of the Hounds in one squad and all the CAVs in the other -mistakes were made. ?? Never the less, I decided to make a battle report more for the experience in formatting it than in the hope it might be useful. Normally, CAV is played the length of the table so that forces start out far enough away from each other that there is little Turn 1 shooting. David and I decided to play across the short side table in order to force early and violent combat. The store closed at 10pm which left us about 3 hours to play but we're old friends and like to chat about random stuff so we needed to cut a few corners. Turn 1 I didn't know I was going to make a battle report when I we started this game so I didn't really get turn by turn pictures. I'll do better next time. David deployed his forces centrally in the open space between 2 hills on his side of the board. I deployed my forces a little wider than him so that each of my squads could move up and take advantage of the 2 larger hills which flanked the center of the board. We both double moved all of our units. David moved his Hounds to flood the board with APA2 and positioned his CAVs centrally to take advantage of a little piece of woods and some buildings. While I took positions on the backsides of both central hills. Turn 2 The image shows part of our setup just before the shooting began. David targeted the open ground between the tanks in the image at right with the Revenant's 2x Rocket 15s. I really thought I'd screwed up and was about to get heavy damage on 4 or possibly 5 tanks. However, he just missed his strike point roll and the resulting drift meant that only the Spatha got hit by the rockets. LUCKY ME! The rest of the round saw minor damage spread amongst a few Scimitars that David could get line of sight to. I managed to bloody the nose of the Firedrake you can see in the image. Turn 3 This turn saw a lot of normally long ranged weapons booming away at medium to short range and then David snuck his Kestral with Particle Bolt Guns (PBGs) onto the hill and started murdering stuff - overdrive can casually cause 4 damage. ?? The fate of this Kestral would prove to be the most interesting part of the game. I managed to get 4 points of damage onto this turn but it then refused to die. On the other side of the board I managed to remove that centrally located Firedrake just as the Revenant got LoS with its Heavy MACs and punched holes through Scimitars. Turn 4 I went first on turn 4 and decided that 2 undamaged Scimitars could remove the heavily damaged Kestral and declared my Target Lock from the Black Mamba would go against the Revenant instead. Overconfident much...? Needless to say the Kestral survived and went on to Overdrive his PBGs into my poor little tanks again this turn. On the other side of the board, the Revenant kept punching Heavy MAC sized holes into my tanks but the numbers were taking their toll. Reinforced 2 meant that only the Spatha using 4 Salvo fired MACs had any chance to do more than 1 point of damage to the armor 9 Revenant. That said, I managed to get 4 points of damage through this turn - 1 from 4 separate tanks. Turn 5 By Turn 5 the store was close to closing so we called the game after the shooting was done. The Revenant was an angry giant swarmed by pesky little tanks. He crushed one a turn but they were close to wearing him down. The Kestral was wrecking havoc amongst my tanks Overdriving its PBGs to good effect. The Black Mamba spent the entire game using EST to hand out Target Locks and staying out of trouble. I can just imagine its crew listening on squad comms as the Scimitars and the Spatha frantically try and kill this bezerk Kestral pilot. When much to their surprise the Kestral walks directly in front of them and their 2 light RACs (strength 2 vs Hard targets). I can see them all looking at each other the same question in their eyes... Do we shoot? They did and we called the game. ??
  15. Even better, looking forward to seeing what you do with your figures. Be sure to share your progress!
  16. Happy to have a new CAV player! Be sure to share what you're working on with us. ๐Ÿ™‚
  17. Here is a recent snippet from the CAV Discord about scale.
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