March 30, 2010

FW Avatar of Khaine painting log - Part 2

Hi guys,

slow but steady I start to make progress on the Avatar. Last week I finished the lava parts on the models body and started to paint its head and armour parts. To stay true to my Alaitoc Eldar I tried to keep the armour parts in blue tones with Regal Blue as the main color and with light accents of Enchanted Blue. For his fancy headgear I set for a stronger contrast and used mixes of Space Wolves Grey and Regal Blue. They still look quite empty to me, but really have no clue what to add on them to make them look less flat.


At the moment I´m painting his armoured hand with the biiiigg sword and I started the painfull work of finishing is thousand gems.
For the other two missing part I really am looking desperatly for some major inspiration - I don´t think my free hand skills will allow me to paint a nice Eldar rune on his tabard and for his 70s hair no distinct colour scheme comes to my mind.
I´d be very thankful for any comments or suggestons on these two parts...

March 11, 2010

A tale of fail: Tau vs. Daemons

Greetings,
initially Trotzki and me just had in mind to play one of our usual weekly games. We met after work, Trotzki had his daemons and I was up playing tau again, as my tyranids are not ready for more than "test-games". We decided to play cities of death again (imo the best addition to 40k so far). We set up a board with an abandoned fortification in the center consisting of our three bastions and aegis lines, surrounded by some buildings and containers and a street. The mission would be to secure the own building and attack the one the enemy had declared to be his own (I never can recall how the missions are called correctly). In hindsight we chose absolutely pointless stratagems. I fortified my home building and would get feel no pain additionally. Trotzki had the two stratagems where he would get a 5+ cover save in the open due to smoke grenades (amazing when you have a 5+ invul save as well...) and wrecking gear to tear down buildings.
I lost the first roll.off and had to set up first. I placed my broadsides and the kroot in the fortified building the railhead and the two deathrains and the stealth suits behind him next to the street. The ionhead and two fireknives on the other side. I wanted to create some kind of two-pronged assault on his building on the opposite site of the board. I kept both my warfishes and the command fireknife team in reserve.



On my first turn I just moved towards his objective and as no daemons were on the field yet, no shooting occured. Trotzki was lucky to get his designated first wave and so a greater daemon of tzeentch, 15 daemonettes, a tzeentch herald and a daemon prince dedicated to tzeentch as well materialized in real-space. But the warp was treacherous and the daemon prince mishapped to the other end of the board. Maybe a sign of things to come.
Things like the greater daemon of tzeentch "el poldo diablo" shooting on my fireknives.


Nothing spectacular, the bolt of tzeentch just roasted one shield drone leaving the suits unharmed. But who would have thought that this particular shield drone was the shas'ui's heirloom which he favoured more than his XV8 suit? Every evening he spent his free time with lovingly cleaning and optimizing it while his buddies went out to meet the girls or getting involved in a good old brawl in the local tavern. And now that. A warp-spawned monstrosity hurled a shiny bolt at him and in a desperate hover-jump his drone finally fulfilled its duty and saved him (and his squad-mate) from being turned to slimey goo. That was too much for one day. With a cry of desparation on his lips the shas'ui jumped for the burning remains of his once beloved drone, grabbed them under his battle suits arms and turned tail, running home!
That seemed to be the signal for a game of mutual abysmal dice rolling.
On Trotzki's second turn no reserves arrived, not a single unit. Oh lucky me. Don't blame me that I don't remember every normal detail of that game, I just want to share the highlights. On my turn the command team of three fire knives showed up and under the combined firepower of them, the ionhead and 6 firewarriors and the warfish el poldo diablo was sent back to the warp. Can you imagine what happened on Trotzki's turn with the command team? I guess you know what this is all about. Right, the shield drones were destroyed. And what do elite firewarriors do when that happens? Right again. They cut and run, turn tail, flee. To make long things short, the deathrains lost their single drone as well, failed their morale check and fled. But hey! I learned from the other two squads and I had moved them more to the center of the board. So when they fled 8" to my table edge they ended their run merely 1" from it! And as exceptions some kind of proof the rules, they passed their morale check to regroup. Hah!
Next remarkable thing was the soulgrinder. He didn't do much damage the round he appeared. And I was of good spirit as he materialized right infront of two BS4 twin-linked railguns and railhead lurking on his side.


The broadsides hit but didn't penetrate and the railhead missed with a 1. Over the remaining course of the game I just managed to immobilize him and destroy his mawcannon. It's not too spectacular but it matched the feeling of the game.


Trotzki had bad luck with his last daemonettes which didn't show up until turn 5, where they mishapped and were sent back to warp. On turn 6 they appeared again, scattered, mishapped and were claimed by the warp.
In the end I didn't manage to get anything to Trotzki's building, the last surviving deathrain was annihilated by the daemon prince, who later smashed the railhead.


Trotzki had the damaged soulgrinder with one foot/claw in my building and nothing to claim his home base. So the only acceptable outcame was a draw.

I am definitely not complaining about this poor dice rolling as it was bad luck on both sides and wasn't one-sided, what would have caused a rather disappointing if not annoying game for one of us. So sometimes it was that ridiculous it even was starting to get funny again.

I want to end with a citation from the "Imperial Infantrymen's uplifting Primer" concerning cowardly battlesuits:

"There are several types of tau 'Battlesuits' (as they
are laughably known), all equally ineffective. Battlesuits
are given to warriors who are even more
cowardly than their compatriots, and who refuse to
enter combat without maximum protection.
Feckless cowards! The tau encased in the cumbersome,
brittle arnour are usually inexperienced and
untrained.
Battlesuits are such easy targets that they
might as well have a bull's eye painted on them.
But it should be put on the back because they will,
in all likelihood, run away at the first sighting of a
well-armed and determined Imperial Guardsman!
"

Did you experience something similar or have you had games like this where all and everything seems to fail?

March 6, 2010

Finished War Walker squadron and start of my FW Avatar of Khaine painting log

Hi guys,

as you might remember from my last post I started painting my Alaitoc War Walkers and finally was able to finish them this week. Two are equipped with scatter lasers and one with missile launchers. I still have two scatter lasers lying around to equip them all the same, but I first like to try some mixing - some test games will show if 24 shots with the scatter lasers win over the higher utility you get through the added krak and plasma missiles. So here are the pics of the finished squadron :

Alaitoc Scout Squadron  Shadowspear

After finshing my War Walkers I made the oath to my Space Elves to finally paint the FW Avatar of Khaine that has been lying around my painting desk for over 18 months now - taunting me with his details and frightening me with spoiling this beautiful model with the strokes of my brushes. About a year ago I already did start painting him, but quickly found out that its hard to do such a model justice. I primed him black and started highlighting the model with brighter colors starting from a 1:1 mixture of scab red  with chaos black and ending at a 1:1 mixture of sunburst yellow with skull wite. Unfortunatly the resulting painted leg looked very dull and dark to me and didn´t really met the picture I had in mind for the Avatar (Sadly I didn´t take any pictures of it). 
Some months ago I painted a squad of Fire Dragons with reverse highlighting. There I primed the models white and painted them in ever darker tones of red. I really was pleased with the outcome on these models, so I tried the same approach on the same leg of the Avatar after priming him white again. I started with the whole leg painted in golden yellow and after that started highlighting with darker shades of blazing orange, blood red, red gore, scab red and at the end chaos black. This time I´m really pleased with the brightness of the colors and I will try to finsish the Avatars lava parts with this technique. So here is the pic of my second try on his leg :  

 

So what do you think - anyone also had similar  bad experiences with highlighting from black to brighter colors ?