This week's activities

I played the game with my son I mentioned last post. I didn't have the time to rework IHMN/ItEN as I had planned. Instead I grabbed the Movie Marines rules (from an old White Dwarf), selected the Sergeant as my son's character and chose a corresponding amout of point's worth of Orks.
I then used whatever of the 40K rules I could remember... ;-P

Here is the set up:

Our brave Space Marine started on the little grey square on the left (right below the red cup).
His mission was to reach the large square with the checkers and Imperial Aquila, where he would be extracted by allied Imperial assets. In his way were two small squads of Orks, each led by a Nob.
They were in dispersed formation as they were searching the area for him...

Pretty soon he ran into the first Nob:

Who proved to be a fairly minor delay (Movie Marines are absolute monsters!)

Shortly after, the Orks had set up a firing line in ambush:

My son did the proper Space Marine thing, and charged right into the nearest Orks.
By charging from one gaggle to the other, he managed to systematically dismember the various greenskins.
He was nearing the extraction point, he only needed to get past the last two Orks and the second Nob. That second Nob however, had a Power Claw. This would be interesting.

The final combat was tense and fairly close fought over two or three turns. The Nob managed to knock a single wound off the Marine, before perishing himself. (Did I mention Movie Marines are very, very tough?)
Injured but undeterred the brave Marine stepped onto the landing pad for extraction.
My son won. But more importantly, we both had a lot of fun!

I've also been painting every moment I could, trying to get the Meganobs out of refurbishment for the game tomorrow. I didn't manage to get paint on the newly built ones, but I did get the three older ones finished:

Sadly I forgot to take pics of them pre-refurbishment for contrast...
But before upgrades they still had old-fashioned Goblin Green with green woodflock basing, they lacked banner poles (or in the case of the rightmost one: a trophy pile), and they were a lot less yellow. In fact, you had to look closely to see they were Bad Moons at all! The only yellow they had was on their shoulders plates, and maybe a stray armour plate elsewhere. They also only had a single shoulderpad each. Plus, during rebasing I've put 1mm plasticard shims under their feet to make them match a bit more, size-wise, to the new plastic Meganobs.
They were clearly the result of the 40K 3rd edition image of Orks, when they were mostly bare-metal scrapheap dwellers in appearance.
Since them I've come to appreciate a more colourful Ork, largely due to my growing appreciation of the old Rogue Trader and second edition Ork background and worldview. I still find the current all-yellow Meganobs, as shown in the most recent Codex, too gaudy though.
It makes them look too toylike, takes out the menace. Plus, it just seems like lazy painting to me ("Oh, Bad Moons? Just paint everything yellow, slap some black flames on.") I believe Ork models deserve a bit more thought and realism (and less uniformity!) than that.
Hence a large part of my Meganobs remains bare, dirty metal and I tried to make sure each had different armour plates picked out in yellow.
Additionally, by not going all yellow, I retain the option to make, say, my Warboss or a MegaMek stand out by using more yellow still.

Oh, and one thing I really miss on GW's recent paintjobs is the use of Orky Glyphs, apart from picking out the random ones that are molded in. I always try to add a few on each model, that express how that particular Ork sees the world or himself. For example, the middle one has the glyphs "Unki" and "Dur" on his shoulder, meaning "strong or big" and (in this context) "armour". Clearly this Ork revels in the size, power and resilience of his armour.
In contrast the rightmost one has his upper arm plate marked with the runes "Rukk" (attack. charge) and "Nar"(command, crew). He clearly values his elite shocktrooper status and elevated position in the chain of command.
Finally the leftmost one has a "Mor"( wild, feral, ancient) glyph as a banner, showing his pride in his veteran status and his viciousness. He has seen the need to paint a "Flash" (flag, banner) glyph on it, to show he is one of the Warlord's bannermen, his inner circle.
Now, who said Orks are thoughtless, uncomplicated creatures? ;-D

Here are a few more views:

So, now to sit down and finish reading the new edition of the rules for tomorrows game...