Bellum Aeternum

Hyperios Diorama pt 4

2011-08-28T23:35:00.001+02:00

Hi,

I finished the hyperios missile launcher today:

I really like the old and used look on it. Most of it was achieved by several layers of a dark wash, drybrushing and then one of my favourite techniques: sponging. That looks cool and is, as a side effect, much fun. Most of it was done with charadon granite and a bit boltgun metal. Furthermore I brushed on some black weathering powder/pigments on the exhausts.
Talking about pigments, for the base I used dark mud and russian earth from MIG. I simply sprinkeld some dry powder roughly where I wanted it and then blew some air with my empty airbrush over it to dispense it. You can see that effect expecially in the corners where it went somewhat up the walls.

That's it for today, I hope you like it.

Hyperios Diorama pt 3

2011-08-27T17:26:00.001+02:00

Hi,

another update, I am rather studious the last days. I have completed the washing an drybrushing of the terrain:

I made a mix of devlan mud, ogryn flesh, brown and black ink and gave the diorama several thin layers with my airbrush. After several hours of drying I drybrushed first with tamiya's german grey, dark sea grey and light grey followed by very smal amounts of dheneb stone and a last gentle dry brushing with rotting flesh. The picture does not give it justice, as I took it inside with shitty lighting. It looks much more detailled than on the photo as the flash did its usual job by taking all depths out of it...

So be it. Some words on the sand bags. I gave them a basecoat with scorched brown followed by extensive drybrushing with graveyard earth and kommando khaki.

Looks ok but somewhat dull. So I made a wash out of scorched brown, brown ink, black ink, sunburst yellow and matt varnish. To take yellow into the mixture, I have read in the IA: model masterclass pt I (I highly recommend that book!!! Buy it. Really.)

So after several thin layers of washing, it turned out quite well and the textured surface of the sand bags came out nicely.

That's it for now. I think I will have at least one more update coming this weekend.

Hyperios Diorama pt 2

2011-08-26T15:39:00.000+02:00

Greetings,

a short update on the diorama. I did the first round of base colours. First I primed it chaos black and then airbrushed on several layers of graveyard earth and a mix of graveyard earth and khemri brown on all ground parts. After that I painted the rubble and the ruined building parts with german grey from tamiya and the aegis parts with light grey also from tamiya.

Next I will clean up the messy parts and then wash the whole diorama with devlan mud with an airbrush. And then I think I can start with an actual brush and start painting.

Hyperios Diorama

2011-08-24T16:11:00.001+02:00

Hey all,

back after a quite long hiatus. But no apologies today, I simply had nothing interesting to post.
But now I want to share something. Trotzki and me were starting to build a small diorama with pieces we had lying around. As I had a whirlwind turret in my bits box, which (as a Black Templar player I can't use) I wanted to build some kind of gun emplacement which has been fortified with sandbags and barbed wire and so on.

So here is, what we came up with after some hours of cutting and shaping some spare pieces of styrofoam and glueing bits and pieces on it: (click on the images to enlarge)

To make things clear, this is so to say the unpainted state. The painted parts you see are actually salvaged parts from another piece of terrain and 3 parts of aegis defense lines. The sandbags are made of greenstuff and yellow/grey milliput. The latter one is really nice to do this, as it is cheaper than greenstuff and you get larger amounts.
Next I have to make some more barbed wire parts and then I think it is done. And then comes the painting....
Ah ok, and I want to try out to make camo nettings over the hyperios/whirlwind turret. But I am still not sure if I should do this before painting or afterwards with a seperatly painted camo net. Has anybody experiences with that? I read several articles about it, but I'm still unsure.
So I try to keep this updated.

Old Stuff Day!

2011-03-02T20:09:00.000+01:00

So it's finally here, the Old Stuff Day! You might have heard of the movement Rob from Warhammer39999 came up with. Some love to old posts of the own blog which are too far down in the history and which maybe got not the attention they may deserved. Pretty cool idea in my eyes.

So without further ado, I scrolled a bit through Bellum Aeternums history and thought I post again an old post from 2009 of a project I am still very proud of, namely my Forge World Stormblade:

Stormblade

And i digged through a blog I follow. Opposing Forces has some really nice miniatures and a very cool Planet Strike battle report. So if you like batreps with nice pics, just have look at this.

So I hope you enjoy the old work which are put on several blogs. I am now heading towards the blogs which joined this movement and see what you have in your personal treasure chest!

I am in good spirit that this Old Stuff Day will establish and we see more of nice old posts.

Cheers,

Managarm

Stylehammer...

2011-02-11T12:53:00.000+01:00

...at least a bit. And maybe an argument for true line of sight?

Just wanted to share a picture taken during one of our latest games. More of that coming soon...

Cheers

Black Templar Sword Brethren Terminators

2011-02-04T14:28:00.001+01:00

A squad of Assault Terminators I painted some months ago while I had some time off and no Tyranids to paint.
This squad took me about 2 years from arrival of the forge world stuff to finished minis...

I think this conversion idea is about as old as the BT upgrade sprue and someone has won a Golden Demon Award with such a conversion. I had to copy that. The heads are knight heads from MicroArt Sudios, as well as the bases.

Forgeworld Avatar: new pictures

2011-01-29T14:56:00.000+01:00

Greetings,

As you might remember, Trotzki painted the Avatar from Forgeworld some months ago. And since he wasn't happy with the pictures he made and they truly didn't to justice to his amazing work, he gave him to me to hopefully take some better pictures. And so I did my best.
Here he is again (click on the pictures to enlarge):

The Avatar of Kaela Mensha Khaine

In my eyes he truly did an outstanding job. The contrast between the burning parts and the blue Alaitoc colours springs out really nicely.
So that's it. What do you think?

Hive fleet Nidhoeggr: some pics

2010-11-30T10:38:00.000+01:00

Greetings,
so at last I have some pics of my flyrant and some more of my growing hive fleet. I baptized it Nidhoeggr after the dragon from norse mythology who feeds on the dead and the roots of the world tree.
So first off, the Flyrant:

And a pic from a game against the imperial guard where his enormous wing span becomes apparent: this fellow is really huge, hiding impossible.

And some more photos from from my Trygon and Trygon Prime I haven't shown yet:

The Trygon Prime smashing some tanks:

Venomthropes drawn to the front for the kill:

And finally the Flyrant and some Ymgarl genestealer fighting the elite of the Imperium: Grand Marshal Hermann and his terminator guard:

That's it for the moment. When I have more to show you'll find it here.

We have returned (and some wip pics)

2010-10-18T23:26:00.000+02:00

Hey all!

After taking a rather long break from WH40k and an even longer time from blogging at least I am going to post again here! So without further boring you with why taking a break, I want to share with you my current project!

Building/converting a hive tyrant into a "flyrant" by adding a pair of balrog wings.

As you can see this fellow gets a pretty impressive wing span...

I didn't like the way the original model holds its tail and so I thought it a great idea to re-pose it....and after messing up with modelling a completely new one with green stuff and having cut off the snappy thing at the end of the tail I tried to bent the original tail. To my surpise it didn't break and so Mr Tyrant came to his new tail with the carnifex end-piece.

And while looking around in my bits box I had the idea to use one of the many spare carnifex heads.

So that's it for tonight. As I make progress in converting and painting I will post it here! So hopefully we get back some of our old followers!

Cheers,

Managarm

Finished Avatar of Khaine

2010-04-25T10:24:00.001+02:00

Hi guys,

hereby I proudly present my first ever painted Forgeworld model. It really was a lot more work than I had expected, but I´m pleased with the outcome on the model. The last month (one month since the last post ... wow, time goes by fast) I finished the sword and the tabard. I painted the sword in the same way as the Avatars body with reverse highlighting from yellow to black. For the tabard I applied a blue color starting from Space Wolves Grey, Enchanted Blue and Regal Blue. After one big wash with Asurmen Blue the blue color looked really nice and I did my first try on the Avatar rune - what I really learned then was that my free hand skills are not that special but I start to get better (compared to the much bigger rune on the Autarchs jetbike I all went a lot faster and I hadn´t do that much of corrections after the first coat of yellow paint (thank god for GWs foundation yellow).
So here you see the finished Avatar. I will try to make some better pictures the next days and try my luck at Cool Mini Or Not.
Next up on my ToDo List is the really nice model of PrinceYriel.

The Avatar of Kaela Mensha Khaine

And what really excites me today ..... PICS OF THE NEW FIRE PRISM ! Have to get two of them. They look really different compared to the old one but I kinda like the new look. Gives the cannon more of a "Bright Lance with fancy diamonds" feeling. The new Night Spinner also looks really nice, but I would like to see the rules on this one, before I can make my last judgement on it. Hopefully you can magnetize / pin the two cannons easily and change between the two setups...

FW Avatar of Khaine painting log - Part 2

2010-03-30T18:39:00.001+02:00

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...

A tale of fail: Tau vs. Daemons

2010-03-11T13:52:00.004+01:00

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?

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

2010-03-06T13:11:00.003+01:00

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 ?

Quick and dirty: 6 easy steps to paint gaunts

2010-01-30T13:04:00.002+01:00

Greetings,

I thought I'd share how I paint my gaunts/gants, as I made some pics during I painted my last 3 termagants. As I mentioned before, I wanted to get the huge amounts of gaunts painted as quick as possible but thereby not compromising the quality of the paintjob too much.
So here's how I do it:

1.) Assembly of the model, cleaning of mold lines, obviously. After that I glue on some stones or rubble onto the base and cover it completely with PVA glue. Afterwards I prime with ArmyPainter's "skeleton bone" primer. But you can use a white primer and paint the whole model with bleached bone. But by using bone primer I spare one step.

As a sidenote on primers from ArmyPainter: you have to shake them really well (I mean several minutes!), heat it up a bit by holding it into hot water. And after priming hold the can upside down and spray until no colour comes out to clean the nozzle. I didn't do that with my first cans and the nozzles always got clogged with dried colour before the can was half-empty.

2.) I paint the carapace with knarloc green and the base with khemri brown (foundation colour)

3.) The stones are painted with adeptus battlegrey and some random parts of the brown base are painted with rotting flesh, that shouldn't be done too evenly. While that dries I paint some details like the tongue and the joints with tanned flesh. When the base has dried some drybrushing with dheneb stone brings out the details of the stonerubble.

4.) Afterwards I wash the whole model (not the base) with a lightly thinned mix of devlan mud and water (about 3 parts devlan mud and 1 part water)

5.) Usually I leave that to dry over night, but I think an hour should be enough as well. Then I paint the edges of the carapace with terracotta with uneven brush strokes.

6.) The last step is to glue some static grass onto the base and give the carapace an even coat with 'ardcoat for a glossy finish. Some thinned white on the teeth and the magazine of the weapon give some additional highlights.

That's it. Quick and not too dirty.

Some musings on the new Tyranids and freshly painted Eldar

2010-01-27T20:34:00.004+01:00

Hi guys,

when checking any of the "big" W40k community forums at the moment you can´t really come around big discussion on the pros and cons of the new Tyranid Codex. With most of the rumored rules being known before the Codex has hit the shelfs, there was already a big crowd of long time players seeing the end of the world coming because the almighty Carnifex has fallen in the pit of overcostedness, while many others really anticipated the really "fresh" feeling the new list has in comparison to the 4th edition codex with its focus on Devourer-TMCs.

From the test games I had against the tyranids I also like to add my 10 cents to this discussion: From the point of an Eldar player the codex really feels like a new experience to play against - big horde armies are a real problem for Eldar players and so I really feared to be bogged down by a giant mass of screeching bugs. Interestingly the test game felt quite different - sure a horde list can also be viable, but the list really gives you targets from every category. Not only you have to be aware of small bugs and TMC, but you also need a different appoach to kill big units of multiwound Warriors. Eldar can muster quite a big number of S6 weapons (War Walker, Warp Spiders) and these really are more efficient than one would think when used against Warriors but also against T6 monsters. In the test game a unit of Pathfinders also really suprised me with laying down 4 wounds on an Trygon , due to lucky rolling on my side. The small ones will be the job for units of Dire Avengers but here Eldar players really have to be carefull not to be overrun by big units of Hormaguants, which have a high I (Aspect warriors beware !) and lots of attacks for low points. Together with several possibilities to add some S8 weapons Eldar should be able to at least weaken or kill some of the big beasties before they hit the line.

There I think Eldar will really start to struggle : With one exception (the Reroll-It Seer Council of You-Can´t-Kill-Me) most Eldar units are really fragile and depend on doing a lot of damage before the enemy retaliates. I think lash whips will be the bane of units like Banshees and Harlequins. Damaging monstrous creatures worked quite well, in the test game but mostly through initating multiple combats together with weaker units (Tervigons together with Gaunts for example) - hitting just the little ones really can give the big one more fearless-wounds than he can handle. Here the Seer Council also has the really big advantage of just needing a 2+ to wound even the mightiest of creatures, which will further increase the use of big Warlock units with a Farseer. I wasn´t able to test Harlequins until now but they should also be quite efficient against non-lash whip TMCs but will be overwhelmed by Warriors or Gaunts. The Wraithlord proved to be quite efficient with its 2 S8 weapons and the two flamers when things get personal. His big problem will be the amount of poisonous units in the army - while in the test game he died to a Carnifex, so I can´t really comment on this but I don´t think he will win any combat against Toxin Sac carrying things (almost everything is able to do this in the Codex) .

So much on my opinions on Eldar against the new Tyranid Codex. And because my New Years pledge was to first paint all my Eldar stuff lying around before painting anything new I also started to again take up the banner of proud craftworld Alaitoc and painted some models again. Here you see the first of my squadron of scatter laser War Walkers :

I also painted the limited edition Wraithbone Singer (will be used as Farseer - hopefully GW adds some rules in the next Eldar codex for this guy) I still had lying around :

I really like the dynamic pose of this model and the picture just does it no justice. To finish my Eldar to-do-list I still have to paint 2 War Walker, Prince Yriel and my FW Avatar (yikes). So still a lot to do before new stuff comes to town ....

I will also write some word on my opinion on Chaos Daemons against the new Tyranids the next days.

Meet and greet: Newly spawned Tyranids

2010-01-24T15:55:00.001+01:00

After all of the playtesting and actual playing with the new 'nids, let me return to the hobby part. Over the last weeks I finished some more bugs for my growing, but yet nameless hive fleet (more to all the names flowing around my head later).
First of all, the little critters are now under the unrelenting will of the hive mind, relayed by the powerful hive tyrant:

And of course a Tyrant is such a fragile existence, he needs some company for his protection: One tyrant guard is finished as well

As you can see I equipped him with a set of scything talons instead of the bonesword/lashwhip combo. The one and only reason for it being that I absolutely dislike the way how the bonesword is modelled! I'm not getting warm with the idea, a creature like this wields a real sword, with hilt and pommel... So I gave him the, in my eyes, way more cooler looking talons from the monstrous creature sprue. Rules-wise the other combo is better and so Trotzki mentioned he wouldn't have any objections against it if I fielded him with these biomorphs.

For further control via synapse and for serious anti-tank firepower, one of three zoanthropes is finished:

And as I was lucky to get a box of space hulk, I thought I needed to paint the broodlord. This mini is soo nice compared to the metal one and partly justifies to purchase space hulk just because of this model.

And of course he needs some buddies for the next thrashing in your neighborhood:

Finally I broke of the crushing claws of the carnifex and replaced them with another pair of scything talons. 25 points for d3 attacks more are simply not worth it...

Ok that's it for the moment with new models. Currently I am working on ever more termagants, the second tyrant guard and it itchs me to get started with the trygon I bought last week.

Tyranids: Test-games

2010-01-15T09:13:00.002+01:00

So with the codex hitting the shelves tomorrow, I want to recapitulate the last games I had with the new tyranids and I thought, I'd share my experiences.
The first game was against space wolves and my 1750 points list looked something like this (I lost the paper where I wrote it down so just a mere summary):

Hive Tyrant
- venom cannon
- bonesword and lashwhip
- tactical insight
- 2 guards

2 zoanthropes

2 hive guards

3 warriors
- 2 pairs of scything talons

3 warriors
- rending claws

3 warriors
- deathspitters

2x15 termagaunts, no upgrades

20 hormagaunts
- adrenaline glands

10 genestealers with 1 broodlord

trygon alpha
mawloc

We played with 4 objectives, deployment dawn of war. I deployed the tyrant, all termagaunts and the mawloc, the hormagaunts would outflank (tactical insight) as would the genestealers.
So I won't go into detail of the game, I rather tell you how the units performed.

The Tyrant: I am not sure about him. He isn't particularly good but he isn't bad either. He soaks a bit of firepower and can do something with the venom cannon. But he is slow and in this game he didn't reach close combat.
At this point I considered to take him only with close combat weapons and let him run.

Zoanthropes: Funny, are considered a great thread and therefore are taken down in no-time. But their 3++ save is really annoying for the opponent, it took 4 tl-lascannons and a lot of small arms fire to kill them. I think you need more than two.

Hive Guards: Nice. They didn't do that much in this game, but they aren't too expensive. So next time I'd take more.

Warriors: I really think they should be kept as cheap as possible because they die pretty quickly when they are shot at. But they are needed to keep the synapse (at least in this list). In close combat they aren't too bad but nothing astonishing. Rending claws are disappointing, re-rollable to-hit rolls are better in my eyes. The death spitters aren't bad too. More a choice of taste I think.

Termagaunts: 15 is a good number for them I think, they soak up some fire and stay "functional". In close combat they suck, so I would give them toxin sacs. Great choice for their points.

Hormagaunts: I regretted the adrenal glands. Admittedly they took out a rhino but they got beaten pretty hard by the ensuing close combat with the disembarked space wolves. Next time with toxin sacs. But I have to say I like the greater speed of the hormagaunts compared to their little brothers. Their special rule ("flink" in German) nearly guarantees a 5-6" running distance which makes them really fast. Ok leaping would have been better, but hey, you can't have everything. I know, the so called internet-wisdom will probably come to the conclusion that termagaunts are the better choice, but I think the 2 points more you spent for the hormies are worth it, for you gain 1 attack and re-rollable 1s on the to hit roll. And to be honest I don't think the fleshborer will be used to often on the termas. So more speed is great for the part of the gaunts who want to get into grips with the enemy or charge the enemy's objective. A mix of both will be fine I think.

Genestealers: Disappointing. Very disappointing. I was able to charge a 10 men squad without any casualties by fire...and they lost close combat after 2 turns. Very sad. They used to be so good but they went the way of the Dodo.... The broodlord is nice with his psychic power where one model in base to base contact cannot strike (the power fist in this case) but he didn't do much too.

Trygon alpha: I think the alpha is not needed. Better save the points or give the basic trygon other upgrades. Otherwise he is nice. Very nice and very destructive. I think he is somewhat a must have now.

Mawloc: Meh. Just meh. To depend on the deviation of his deep striking to use his template weapon is bad (remember that you have to place him like every other unit which deepstrikes, so he has to stay away from enemy units by 1". You cannot deepstrike onto units and use his template!) I always deviated away from units and had to place him instead of the template. And then he simply gets beaten to pulp. I don't think he is worth it. Better take the trygon for a few but well spent points more.

After my first game I was a bit disappointed about the performance of the tyranids in close combat. I lost really every single one. I thought the 'nids are said to be a close combat army. Ok, space wolves are great in hand to hand combat (4 attacks on the charge with re-rolls to hit hurt). But it was my first game, so what do I know of 'nids. Heads up and right into the next game.

With my first experiences made, I designed a new list:

Tyrant
- scything talons
- bonesword and lashwhip
- tactical insight
- 2 guards

2x2 hive guards

3x3 warriors
- see above

16 hormagaunts
- toxin sacs

2x15 termagaunts
- toxin sacs

2 trygons
- adrenalin glands

carnifex
- 2 pairs of scything talons
- adrenaline glands

The idea behind this list was to offer as many as possible juicy targets to the enemy so that he is some kind of overloaded. But each "juicy target" destroyed should not lead to a collapse of the entire list. And I want more close combat than shooting.

Next game was again against the same space puppies. This time my army worked so much better than before. I deployed everything this time except the trygons which would deepstrike.
I won this game with 3 to 1 objectives.
Outstanding were the trygons! They are real beasts, especially when they appear together as few armies are capable to take down 2 TMCs with toughness 6 and 6 wounds in just one round of shooting (and I was able to keep them out of charge range). Ony trygon suffered 4 wounds, the other one none. They wreaked havoc over 3 turns and one survived till the end. 7 attacks on the charge with S7 and re-rolls to hit are pure awesomeness, equals 5 to 6 dead marines. Even Arjak wasn't able to take both of them down.
The toxic gaunts are better too. They put out significantly more damage than without. Take toxin sacs!
The carnifex is ok, but nothing more. But he fills his role in offering another target you cannot ignore on later turns.
Again the hive tyrant is so average that I am not sure about how to use him properly. And I forgot to choose and use his psychic powers...so I can't say anything here.
Overall I was pleased with this list and so I made only light adjustments:

Hive Tyrant again with venom cannon
Warriors all with death spitters

With this list I played against Trotzki's daemons and against Clausewitz who fielded my tau. Against the daemons I managed a draw and I lost against the tau, mainly due to some mistakes I made during deployment and movement and bad luck.
This list performs really well and is quite balanced concerning shooting and close combat and has a nice mix of horde and big bugs.

So this will be quite that what I am going to paint in the next weeks/months. Except that I am going to change the elite section. I ordered 2 more zoanthropes so I am going to try a brood of 3 of them. And three warriors will retain their pair of scything talons as I modelled them this way.

Hopefully I have time at the weekend to take some pics of my bugs I have so far. Currently I am working on the hive tyrant and his guard. Since the last photos I finished 8 stealers, the space hulk broodlord, 8 gaunts and a zoantrope.
That's it for the moment and I can't wait to get my hands on the real codex with hopefully nice fluff and pics.

Test...test...test

2010-01-04T10:48:00.011+01:00

"Im afraid of energy weapons!"

Greetings,

I got some more games in with the new Nid codex and wanted to share my experince with you guys.

I played against Trotzkis Eldar at 2000p and against Orkz at 1750p. I wanted to test some units I havent used to far and try certain ideas.

Against the Eldar I used 2 units of 3 Hiveguard´s, they did their job and put some hurt on the Eldar flyers, Falcon´s are still a pain. If you play against mech alot this unit is really worth their points, 6 str8 shots at bf4 for less then a naked Carnifex....gooood.

I also used 2 Trygons with regeneration, they killed one Serpent sucked up the shooting from the whole Eldar army and then died. Partly because I couldnt make a single saving throw and partly because, Shinning Spear´s kill Trygons! Ok nobody uses them anymore, but they kill Trygons, for real! ;)

Tervigons are still awesome, but keeping the Gaunts in 6" is getting harder if the game gets tougher. I still firmly believe 2 is the magic number. I tried 2 Gaunt units with 15 models each, worked good. Perhaps I scale it down to 10 in the next game and see if it still works.

Carnifex killed some Eldar with his heavy Vennomcannon, killed a Phantomlord and then died to Dire Avengers and Guards in melee, the Hivemind will surely not respawn this one!

In the end i lost with 1:0 objectives, mainly because I got caught in the game and decided not to sit behind a forrest the whole game, was alot of fun though.

Since i know my Ork buddy used the big tanks alot lately, I brought 2 units of 2 Zoantrophes in Capsules. I got played a bit here, the Orkz brought only one big tank and 6 pickups! The Zoantrophes managed to kill 3 pickups, beat a 10man Orkmob in melee and 2 actually survived. But failed to kill the big tank, with 8 friggin str10 ap1 lance hits! :(

For fun and giggles I used 3 Mawloc´s, which turned out to kill the Waaghboss´s ride, the tank and some Orkz. They failed their hit and run check and died to clawz. Mawloc´s dont like str8 energy weapons.

I scaled the Termagaunt´s down to 10 models, still worked. Since it was a Annihilation 15 would have been better, but I was trying to get some points back. Tervigons still rock, nothing to see here.

I wanted to use 2 winged Tyrants, with 2 tl Dev´s and Injector, its so expensive its not even funny anymore, cost more then a frigging Land Raider. While it still works, its just too much points for what it does.

My actual plan was to overload the enemy with ton´s of targets shocking right onto them, it kinda worked. I suffered from some horrible rolls, but I managed to squeeze a draw out in the end, 11:11 killpoints.

So let me recap:

1. Tervigons are great, nothing new here

2. twinlinked Devourer Flyrants still kinda work, but are way too expensive

3. Orkz with claws/Shinning Spears kill Mawlocs/Trygons

4. Zoans in Capsules kill Tank, 2 units of 2 each should be enough

5. Hiveguards rock against mech and they cheap

Were planning to play some more tomorrow and i really want to test some Alpha Warriors and Harpy´s. But since Managarm is also longing for his first test games, I might be playing some Marines or Tau and see how they deal with the new threats from the Nids.
Cheers!

Nids: 2 test games later

2009-12-31T09:53:00.010+01:00

He rocks so much!

Good Morning!
Kinda hurts that Managarm beat me to it, but hey at least i got some info right from the table top!
I managed to lure some of the guys who started to play with me in 2nd and 3rd Edition into the mancave, and get 2 games in with the new Nids codex. Yes i have a copy. No you cant have it. But as always, google is your friend. ;)

So we sat down, each of us made an army and then we faced a randomized opponent. I played Black Templars first and then Space Wolves in the "winners bracket".

I had to face, Land Raiders, Ragnar, Canis and tons of 3+ armor saves and armor.

So heres what i used:
Tyrant

3 Zoantrophes in Capsule

Deathleaper

3 Hiveguard

2 Tervigons

2x20 Termagaunts

3 Warriors

Mawloc

Carnifex in Capsule

With this i had 5 scoring units and the ability to generate even more. Lucky me i had to play loot counters both times....guess its just me. ;) How does it work? Keep everything in reserve, come in on 3+ or 2+ depending if the Liktor has showed up, autoenter on turn 3. Lots of fun. The army lacks focus and i guess i could make a tougher one. But it had most of the units i wanted to try out.

So how did the units do? Well let me first say one thing, Mawlocs rock! They are awesome, if your enemy has foot units on the field, they will cry. Light armor? Still gets hit from behind with st6. And if your opponent shoots at the Mawloc, he does not shoot at anything else. And if you survive you can always charge into something or burrow again. AWESOME! He was absolute devasting in my second game, killed 4 fenris wolves and the wolves ran of the board taking Canis with them! He also killed like 10 or so more Space wolves. He didnt killed a single marine in my first game though, deviated all over the place.

The Tyrant is ok. He costs A LOT but he is worth it, IF you play a army list which makes use of his abilities. If all you want is a cc unit, go with Alpha Warriors. I used him with Insight, which grants me +1 on my reserves. Other then that, lash and sword is nice, heavy venomcannon is ok.

The Zoantrophes, did their job in the first game. They killed the Black Templars Land raider. Died when they got charged and the capsule killed some more marines and then died when it got charged. They failed in the second game, where they just tore off a lascannon. And then got killed by Ragnar and friends. They are good, and i will use at least 1 unit in every army, st10 ap1 lance is just to good to miss.

Deathleaper, he didnt do much. Killed a few marines and immobilized a rhino. Hes in the list for another +1 on reserves and for his funny special rules. W3 malus on a opponents character model is fun, even more if its a psyker. And i mean come on Deathleaper, awesome name! ;) Stelek from www.yesthetruthhurts.com put me onto this one.

The Hiveguards are good, st8 shooting which does not need los is always good. They didnt do much in both games, just walked around and shot stuff. Ill guess that´s what they do.

Termagaunts you need them. They are cheap, they shot, they score and they can kill marines in cc with roids and poison from the Tervigons. Well and for each unit you can take a Tervigon as scoring unit.

The warriors managed to avoid action most of the time. They did shoot a few times, they got shot with lascannons alot and died. Didnt saw cc action, but i reckon they rock if they get there. Energy weapons which can autokill? Yes please!

Tervigons are good, really good. The option on a t6, w6, 3+, fnp, MC which is scoring, is too good to pass. I like them, i will use them, but not more then 2. They are not cheap by any means, but the ability to spawn more Termagaunts, boosting their power and tossing around feel no pain is worth the points to me. One always managed to spend their Termagaunts in one go and the other always spawned tons.

The Fex is still good, although he does get really pricey, really quick. Put him in a capsule, shock him, shoot, hope to survive and then run him into cc. Worked quite good for me.

Ah one last word on the capsules, they are really nice. I always liked the fluff on these and i think that its high time nids get some decent shock options. They can kill stuff with shooting and cc, are autokillable, but cheap. I think over on www.chainfist.com there is a cheap option, how to get some "eggs".

So let me conclude that i like the new Nids, a lot. The codex plays totally different from the last one and i feel it has a lot of options for fiendly games. It might not be the best for tournament players, but i will totally crush foot lists. If your not mounted up, you will die, thats what i learned from my first two games. Hopefully ill get some more in, in the next days.

So with that i wish you all the best in 2010 and a nice new years party. Ill head over to the kitchen and prepare everything for my birthday party!

Cheers

Tyranids: Preliminary list building with codex in hand

2009-12-30T18:03:00.002+01:00

Greetings everyone,

Over the christmas days I had the chance to take a thorough look through the new tyranid codex. And as I had enough time to do so, I can remember most of the points cost pretty well. Usually I don’t put much effort into list building without haven’t seen the codex and estimated costs solely based on guess-work. But now, with a much more solid background, I played around a lot with some ideas I have for my own swarm. On the first look the codex leaves behind a rather good “feeling”, so to say. At a first glimpse, I haven’t seen a unit which seems too overpower/underpowered by itself. But surely it’s too early to say something definite and time will tell what combinations of which units will raise the cries for cheese. Only things I am somewhat disappointed are the new pyrovores, genestealers and carnifices. Those are not bad at all, but in comparison to other units they are a bit weak. But enough of that, here are some ideas for my list I am intending to build and play. Mind that I have seen the German version of the codex, so some names might seem odd.

HQ:
-   Hive Tyrant with lash whip, bonesword and heavy venom cannon, “tactical instinct”, 3 tyrant guards
I think a swarm should be led by a hive tyrant and as he will be footslogging he needs the guards. Expensive, but a hard nut to crack, a beast in close combat and I think some pretty needed anti tank capability.

Elites:
-   3 Zoanthropes
I always liked the models and the idea of bloated brains flying around and causing some serious headaches somehow appeals to me. And strength 10 ap1 lances are even more appealing. Sadly they are a single unit now, you cannot field them independently.

Troops:
-   3 warriors with 2 sets of scything talons each
-   3 warriors with death spitters or scything talons, too. Not sure right now.
It seems necessary to take more warriors now simply to keep the swarm under synapse control. And I like the models. Strength 8 will be the bane for this unit though. Against the Imperial Guard they will die quickly I guess. Maybe these 2 small units are not enough. But we'll see

-   2x20 hormagaunts with toxin sacs
Fast, cheap (with this loadout one gaunt costs the same like one kroot) and they pack some serious punch with wounding everything on 4+. And I think they can be left outside the synapse as you want them charging one way or the other. On the negative side: no chance against vehicles or walkers.

- 2x20 termagaunts with fleshborers
Very cheap , adds to the horde feeling the 'nids should have in my eyes.

- 10 genestealers with 1 additional broodlord
Actually I am not sure about this unit. I always feared the stealers and had prayed Clausewitz never fielded a broodlord in the past. To be honest they got hit with the nerf-stick more than necessary in my eyes. The downgrading of rending did that sufficiently to the stealers and the loss of inhuman strength does not make the broodlord more attractive either. But outflanking stealers are no bad idea at all and the Space Hulk broodlord is too nice to be left in the box. I definitely will give them a try.

Heavy support:
- Trygon Alpha with regeneration
The stats of this pal are just great and with 6 wounds I think the regeneration could actually do something good. And another monstrous synapse creature with shadow in the warp isn't bad either. Expensive creature nonetheless (costs like a land raider with multi-melta).

- Trygon with regeneration
Same like above, even without the synapse thing. And with the +1 on reserves (granted by tactical instinct of the tyrant) those buddies are likely to appear early in the game. Have fun with those two in your line.

And that's it yet at a 2000 point level. The big bugs cost their fair share now. But with more than 100 bugs on the field it's pretty cool I think. One weakness I see is the limited anti tank power I have in this list as nearly the whole troops section can't do anything against vehicles. At the moment it is up to the hive tyrant and the brain bugs. Maybe it is necessary to field hive guards. Fluff-wise they are meant to guard brood nests and spore chimneys and all those strange "buildings" but it seems it could be worthwhile to take them. They are relatively cheap and 2 strength 8 shots whithout the need for line of sight and on a tough ballistic skill 4 creature is nothing to make fun of.

So these are just my initial thoughts and it is far from finished. I would like to add some gargoyles with the special character (parasite of Mortrex?) and some raveners. And a brood of three carnifices as screamer-killers is something I'd like to try out. I could go on and on this way as the codex has soo many nice units which not only look great but seem to have some nice rules.

In summary I think this codex will bring a lot of fun as I dare to say there will be more than just one or two "viable" lists. The new creatures, and by that I don't mean only the so beloved tervigon, seem to be very interesting. Another interesting thing will be to keep everything in synapse range, especially as the warriors are a bit more fragile now.

Currently on the painting table are a hive tyrant, 2 guards and 1 zoanthrope (Santa Clause was nice this year...). The old gaunt box is still unopened. I'll keep you updated on this.

Daemon Prince of Slaanesh

2009-12-11T18:42:00.002+01:00

Hi everyone,

with all the high expectations on the new Tyranids codex (which will be really great I´m sure) I like to just give a very short update on the last finished model of my Chaos Daemons army. I already possess a Daemon Prince of Tzeentch that was build from the original CSM Prince set. For the Slaanesh part of my army I decided to do a completely different approach to add the Prince. Because the original model lucks a little to bulky and not really fitting to the agile but nimble followers of the Prince of Pleasures, I used the Deceiver model as a base. I have seen this several times now and always like the arrogant look and the really nice posing of the model. With few additions (basically the Dark Pegasi wings and an Icon of Slaanesh from the Daemonettes pack) the model was finished quite quickly. So here is the pic :

Daemon Prince of Slaanesh

Prince Fen´ci

Nids....Nids...Nids....

2009-12-08T11:14:00.007+01:00

Hey,

well if you check the net these days you will find the rumours about the new Nids codex is all the rage. The rumours run strife and everyone seems to have a inside intel on what to expect in the new Nids codex. Even Managarm fell in love with the Hive Mind. ;)

Question is, will it REALLY change, that much?

Trying to find out more, I recently visited the german GW headquarter and had a nice chat with the guys there, and while they weren't allowed to tell me hard facts on the codex, they were pretty clear bout a few things.

Nid standards will be able to kill transports, semi reliable
You will still be able to play Nidzilla, most likely it will be even better then before
Warriors will be worth bringing now
Nids might be even more dangerous in CC now
You will get more reliable AT power
More hordish feel, standards will be cheaper

We really talked about alot of other stuff, but these are the points they were allowed to confirm. Except for the Trygon ofc, everyones new favourite monster.

So what do we take home from this?

Nidzilla wont die, some people already screamed doom from the rooftops. Others feared after the statement of a certain GW guy, that Nids will bring even more MC´s. But for non-Apoc games, I feel you wont be able to afford that much more then the usual amount of MC´s. And lets face it 8 MC´s is hard enough, if your army can deal with them your army can deal with 2 more.

The main problem will be the increased amount of standards + better CC + better AT. I reckon most Zilla players will just improve on their standards and get some better AT for their MC´s. When the cheaper standards can kill tansports reliably, mech will be in some problems. We gonna have Nidzilla v2.0.

Depending on the amount of AT on the warriors, we gonna see some warrior heavy armies, but I'm still not sure about this one. Because if they don't get an improved a statline, I look at you 4+ armor save, they still die to anti-infantry fire.

What really floats my boat are the improved standards, if the rumoured point values aren't that much of. Its gonna be a pain painting all of them, but then you can finally play the Nids as they supposed to be played and be competetive.

Unluckily for all us Nid fans the new codex is postponed to the middle of Jan, due to some misprinting issues. So I guess well see how it will work out. Good for you guys, now that Managarm decided to jump on the Nidwaggon, we gonna see some nicely painted bugs. And perhaps I get myself to finish up on my old school 2nd edition models. Then we can have some sort of Darwin battle! Survival of the ugliest and badest bug in town! At least I got some Biovores and Zoans ready, following GW´s normal strategy, they gonna be good in the new codex.

Ah I cant wait, the tension is killing me!

Cheers!

Incoming: Tyranids

2009-12-06T13:21:00.009+01:00

Greetings,

I was considering to start a new army for a while now and as I have two more or less shooty armies with Marines and Tau I wanted an army for close combat. My initial thoughts went in the direction of Khorne Daemons with the possibility to add World Eater Marines later for a mixed chaos army. But that would mean to paint marines again and after having painted about 6000 points worth of loyalist marines I wasn't too eager about that. And a not too unimportant point was to start a more organic army with some kind of monstrous creatures (daemons would fit those criteria as well) where I could use techniques as washing and dry brushing to get some nice results quickly. To make long things short (actually I am thinking about that since early summer) I decided to start Tyranids. And as the rumours got more solid that the bugs would get a new codex in 2010 I was definetely signed in.
So lately I got myself the last battle force at my FLGS and the last box of gaunts on top of it. And so after the tournament was over I started painting. But oh my, what colour scheme would be nice? After a long process of trying different things with old gaunts Clausewitz left at my site years ago and playing around with the army painter in DoW II, I decided to do something similar to the colouration done in Imperial Army IV: The Anphelion Project. It's a grey-ish, boney body with green or brown carapace. So take a look at my version of it:

Hormagaunts

Warriors

Carnifex

The "swarm"

As you can see I have nothing shooty yet. And that's the way I want to go, a close combat heavy army with lots of bugs. As I want to play a horde-style army, I had to find a colour scheme which is easy and quick to paint. The base colour is bleached bone, the carapax is painted with knarloc green. Then everything gets a wash with thinned devlan mud, then again bleached bone dry-brushed over the body. The red edges are done with terracotta. Finally the carapax gets a coat of gloss varnish. I think they get a more organic feeling that way. That's it for the little critters, the bigger bugs get a bit more attention and so the green parts get more washing steps with ogryn flesh/devlan mud mix and thraka green. And I highlighted the terracotta parts with uneven brush strokes of blood red.

So that's it for the moment. Left on the painting table are 8 gaunts with fleshborers and 4 genestealers (assembled), 8 gaunts of both kinds and the remaining 4 stealers left in the box. After those are done, I think it's time for a hive tyrant and some tyrant guards. And I am really curious on the new plastic raveners and gargoyles.

Daemons vs Imperial Guard - Battle Reports from the 9. SiG - TrotzkiHatesMe Round 3

2009-11-23T09:38:00.004+01:00

After having received some serious pain in the last game, I was disturbed hearing that my next opponent was playing Space Wolves. I had seen several lists on the tourney that really gave me a headache (full of Thunder Wolves and Rune Priests). The last game was played with 5 objectives with long table edges as deployment zone, with my special objective being to keep one HQ and one troop choice alive. When he handed me his list I was kind of relieved that his list was quite “usual” with 3 Rhinos full of Grey Hunters (one with a Rune Priest inside) and a Drop pod loaded up with 4 Wolf Guard (combi melters). But most of his 1650 points were seated in his Land Raider Crusader that carried Ragnar Blackmane and a Killy Unit o´Doom of Wolf Guard (kitted out with everything) that really gave me a the shivers.

I won the roll to choose sides and allowed him to go first. He set up everything in one big wall of tanks and awaited my arrival. The Chaos Gods again decided to leave me with my second wave and I deepstruck them in serious distance to his units. My Soul Grinder deviated greatly taking him far into the open ready to be blown away by his melter drop pods. With almost shooting in this turn (with the exception to my flamers flaming his Rhinos destroying one Storm Bolter – whoot !) I awaited his counter strike. In his turn he drop podded the Wolf Guard next to my Soul Grinder and drove two of his Rhinos onto the objectives on his side of the table, while his Land Raider and the last Rhino speeded directly into my lines. He then started his shooting phase and went on a bad dice streak I haven´t seen like that for a long time. Of the 4 melters in the Wolf Guard unit only one hit the Soul Grinder, rolling snake eyes for penetration.

His Land Raider opened fire on my Chariot of Slaanesh dealing him only two wounds with hurricane bolters and assault cannon fire, while the two storm bolters on the Rhinos failed to even deal one wound to the flamers. In my turn everything I had in reserves arrived giving me a lot of confidence to take the upper hand in this game. I was able to destroy one of the Rhinos (housing the Rune Priest and 9 Grey Hunters) through shooting and my flamers started to chase one of his Rhinos across the map for 3 turns blowing of its storm bolter. In my assault phase the Fiends of Slaanesh nearly obliterated the Grey Hunters that left the Rhino with only one wound taken in return.

The Soul Grinder annihilated the 4 Wolf Guard next to the drop pod. So this was a real bad turn for him and this trend continued for the rest of the game. Ragnar Blackmane died in a two round combat against the Lord of Change without dealing a single wound and the big bad Wolf Guard unit inside the Land Raider proved to be two killy for its own good.
They destroyed the whole units of Fiends and stranded in the open ready to be blast away by all the shooty goodness I had. When the dust settled only two Wolf Guard had survived. His Land Raider was unable to destroy my Soul Grinder until it was to late and he was catched in assault, destroying the mighty tank. At the end all he had left was a single squad of 2 Grey Hunters, hiding behind the wreck of their Rhino. Had the game taken one more round I would have tabled him, not through good gaming, but due to his real bad luck. So I left the game with 16 tourney points and waited for the final scores.

Concluding Remarks

I left the game taking place 14 out of 27 with two wins and one loss. My goal was to win at least one game and I´m quite happy with the outcome. The Daemons proved to by better than I thought and was surprised how well they kept their ground against the armies in game 1 and 3 (I never want to talk about game 2 again…). Even though I only got my first wave in one of the games and my deepstriking results were quite unfortunate, I never had the feeling of this "completly random" - feeling thats often criticized about Daemons. There wasn´t a real "Model of the Tourney" but the Soul Grinder really suprised me in a positive way by taking an incredible amount of punsihment in all games (in contrast to many of our normal games, where he just was destroyed in the first turn after deep striking).
As real positive suprise my Daemons also won me the "Best Painted" award at the end of the day, making the whole tourney a really pleasing experience that I like to repeat in the future.

Daemons vs Imperial Guard - Battle Reports from the 9. SiG - TrotzkiHatesMe Round 2

2009-11-23T09:03:00.005+01:00

With the first game being a very narrow win, I was in a good mood for my second game. The second game was holding table quarters and my special objective was killing the enemy’s most expensive elite unit. My opponent played space marines and has he handed me his list, I was starting to feel a sort of panic. 10 Terminators with a Null Zone Librarian (most expensive elite unit … ouch), a Land Raider Crusader (full of Assault Terminators and a Thunderfire Cannon. The list was completed by two Rhinos with Space Marines and a small five man squad of scouts.

Game started quite bad with me loosing the role to go first. My opponent handed me the first turn and to add insult to injury my second wave decided to come first, leaving me with no shooting to destroy his Thunderfire Cannon of Doom. It all went downhill from there with me learning that a +5 invulnerable save that’s rerolled due to Null Zone doesn’t allow much room for soaking a turn of firepower from any unit. The Thunderfire Cannon destroyed one unit of Demonettes and the Horrors in its first two turns of shooting with me not even denting it.

After 4 turns all I had left, were 15 Demonettes hiding behind a building on the far side of the battle field, hoping to at least keep me one quarter. Of course the game went on until round 7 allowing my opponent to also wipe my last unit and thus giving him a solid massacre with 20 tourney points for him and a uncomforting 0 for me. All my kills in this game counted up to a whooping 4 scouts and a immobilised Rhino. Well at least I learned why Fatecrusher lists are so abundant in tourney environments…

Daemons vs Imperial Guard - Battle Reports from the 9. SiG - TrotzkiHatesMe Round 1

2009-11-23T08:51:00.018+01:00

This being the first game on my first tourney I was really nervous about the army my Daemons will meet. When the games were called I was partly relieved partly terrified to hear that I´m going to have to take on the Imperial Guard. I´ve played Guard before so I knew some of their tricks but I also knew, that they have a lot of evil tricks upon their sleeve that can hurt Daemons badly (I´m looking at you, Officer of the Fleet). Big blocks of chimeras also really scare me, because they really take a lot of firepower to get to their juicy inside and that´s exactly what my Daemons can´t dish out.

My opponents list consisted of 3 Leman russ,a basilisk, a Thunderer (basically a Imperial Guard Vindicator sourced from FW´s Imperial Armour), a Command Squad in a Chimera (kitted out with Master of Ordnance, bodyguards and Officer of the Fleet [here we go - 5+ for reserves]) and loads of footslogging infantry.

We played Capture and Control (One objective in each deployment zone) with Dawn of War setup. My special objective for this mission was to get one troop choice into one of the terrain features in his deployment zone – quite a good one for Daemons because that´s exactly where I´m going. Terrain featured a big AV14 bunker on one side and several ruined buildings on the other with some craters and trenches in between. I won the roll to go first and let him go first. He chose the side with the bunker and deployed everything he had during his turn. In my turn I got lucky and my first wave struck all over the place. I won´t go into turn by turn details but the game was very close with a lot of loses (my Demon Prince and the Lord of Change soaked many, many shots but where both sent back to the warp) for me in first turns against the overwhelming firepower of the Imperial Guard. I slowly munched through his right flank and the Officer of the Fleet proved to be more of bonus then a hindrance. Most of my unit deepstruck in later turns directly into his right flank where the bunker shielded me from much of his firepower, while my horrors held my own objective against a hell lot of fire. I was able to contest his objective with my Soul Grinder, who proved to be the absolute Monster of the Match by killing the Leman Russ squadron and absorbing 2 turns of incredible amounts of firepower without a scratch.

So I won with 1 objective to 0 but hadn´t it been for the additional victory points I collected for holding one terrain feature in his deployment zone, I would have lost by about 200 victory points in the secondary. With the 300 points for the special objective I luckily left the game with around +100 victory points (draw) and 14 tourney points for the one objective I was in the lead.

Tau vs. Imperial Guard - Battle Reports from the 9. SiG - Managarm Round 3

2009-11-19T12:39:00.011+01:00

So the Tau got tabled in Round 1, almost tabled their opponent in Round 2. And went into the 3rd Round game with mixed feeling, who would it be? Funny enough it was the same guy that the demons had to face in Round 1.

3^rd game: Imperial Guard

Pitched battle, seize ground (5 objectives)

I cant’t remember the exact list as I am not familiar with guard lists. I remember:

Command squad with master of ordnance and master of the fleet

A lot of infantry with missile launchers, lascannons and plasma rifles (nice conversions with WWII style rifle grenades!)

1 chimera (with to me unknown content)

Heavy weapons team with 2 missile launcher and 1 lascannon

Leman Russ squadron (3 with heavy bolter in the hull)

Thunderer siege tank

Basilisk

2 scout sentinels with autocannon

Again this was a very funny and exciting game with a nice opponent.

Again I lost the roll to decide whether to go first or second and he decided to start. I would have done the same. He deployed everything evenly stretched over his table half with the basilisk, heavy weapons team and leman russ squadron on the flank to my left and the thunderer on the other side. The sentinels would be outflanking. As it turned out I missed that he said that and completely forgot about them.

I was a bit unsure of what to deploy and what to put into reserves. As it was an objective based mission I held my troop choices back of course, the kroot would make a flank march. I decided to place the broadsides in the highest ruin in my deployment zone with one model in each storey so that his numerous pie-plates wouldn’t do so much harm with one hit. The hammerhead was placed on the other side on my right flank behind some cover. But as every ruin in my zone was too small to hide a tank it would be targetable from at least one lascannon/missile launcher and of course from my big concern the basilisk. As the hits on side armour with strength 9 would bring me into serious trouble, I placed the death rains next to the broadsides out of line of sight so that they could jump-shoot-jump and hopefully kill the artillery tank and maybe could target the heavy weapons team later on. The ionhead would be pretty much useless this game so I decided to use it as kind of a bait or flying cover and placed it in the middle of my deployment zone. I didn’t really know what to do with my fire knives so I placed them there too, to take some shots at the heavy weapons. My command squad would be deep striking.

So I can’t remember how each turn went on in detail. First turn of his shooting made my fire knife team lose their morale seeing one of their precious shield drones destroyed so they decided to cut and run. Cowards. Another shield drone of the broadsides was destroyed but they bravely held their ground.
On my turn I destroyed the basilisk as planned but just managed to stun one of the leman russ and destroy the battle cannon of the same. Very short turn.

And then my luck turned on me. The remaining gun drone of the broadsides was destroyed and I rolled double 6s for the morale check and again double 6s for the retreating distance so my broadsides fled from the battlefield. In addition the railgun on the hammerhead was smashed. So stripped of any kind of anti-tank capability I faced a forlorn battle as I couldn’t do much against armour 14.

So in the remaining turns my kroot outflanked and killed the heavy weapons team and another 10 men squad before being killed by an overwhelming number of guardsmen.

I risked deep striking my commander and retinue behind the thunderer and was awarded by its destruction.

The sentinels I forgot appeared behind my incapacitated hammerhead and immobilized it before being destroyed by the ionhead and deathrains.

I charged my command squad into the two squads on the right flank and tried to kill at least one of it and thereby pulling them from the objective they held until then but failing a lot of armour saves and rolling high for morale and then low for the initiative test didn’t help much. The commander and his remaining bodyguard were overrun. In the end I managed to kill enough of this squad with smart missiles of the crashed railhead so that they had to fall back and couldn’t claim that obejective. My firewarriors never disembarked and their transports armours couldn’t be penetrated by a lot of shelling so I held one of my own objective and contested the other one which was in turn contested by the leman russ’es. I lost 1 to 2 and a lot of victory points. My secret objective was to brake one of his squads in close combat so that that squad would run away from the table. Ridiculously hard to achieve with tau. But funnily my opponent didn’t achieve his objective too. He had to destroy my most expensive tank, the railhead, which was immobilized and stripped of all weapons but not destroyed! Yeehaw ;-)

So coming to the end I want to thank my opponents for mostly very nice and smooth games and of course to all who made this tournament possible.

Conclusion:

So what do I think of my army performing in a tournament. Considering that I didn’t face only tournament-streamlined armies I am very happy with the overall performance. Against the Chaos list there isn’t much I could have done. I am not sure if a list like this could be beaten with tau, at least not with my army composition and experience. My second opponent’s list wasn’t really a challenge and marines in the open are no match against 5 plasma rifles, an ion cannon and a lot of strength 5 shots. And my last game was more a case of bad luck than of anything else. I think that I could have got at least a draw when all my railguns wouldn’t have been destroyed so early.

I think it was the right choice to take the ion cannon armed hammerhead instead of the skyray and I’ll be fielding it again in future games, at least at these point levels. At more points I might consider taking a second railhead. Another option of course is to take 3 broadsides and both hammerhead variants. I have to try this some day. And I have to emphasize the kroot. They are so great I really really recommend taking them. They give such a great versatility either by being just a cheap meat shield or by outflanking and thereby offering the opportunity to threaten the enemy’s flank. And of course they are the only choice which has something like close combat abilities. And they are scoring.

One thing which was of a concern is that a unit consisting of 2 suits and 2 shield drones have to take a morale check when one drone goes down. And that is really annoying when your precious unit flees the field of battle just because their silly drone is a smoking wreck and they are. I thought, that’s the purpose of the shield drones. A unit of 3 suits and 2 drones should be better as it would take 2 destroyed drones to force the morale check. So that’s something I am going to change.

Tau vs. Dark Angels - Battle Reports from the 9. SiG - Managarm Round 2

2009-11-19T12:26:00.007+01:00

Well Round 1 was a bit of a let down for the Tau, so good for us there was a break. So we went to get some food and talk it over.

After some nice hot dogs we were ready for Rouns 2, and i think this was a much more enjoyable experience, but enough of me talking!

2^nd game: Dark Angels

Spearhead, table quarters (at least one scoring unit and no enemy unit in one quarter)

Army List:

Interrogator Chaplain in terminator armour with combi-flamer

5 terminators (2 with shield and hammer, 2 with twin lightning claws, 1 with heavy flamer)

2x 10 marines with melta and heavy bolter/plasma cannon

5 marines with melta

10 devastors with 2 lascannons, 2 plasma cannons

Land raider crusader with multi melta

Vindicator

Land speeder with multi melta

This game was in every way the opposite of the first game and the guy I played against was very nice and a good sport.

I faced a more or less foot slogging marine army with a lot of bodies and every single unit could hold one table quarter as everything was scoring. He chose to deploy and go first and set up everything close to the middle so that his units could walk into every quarter first turn with the land raider, vindicator and land speeder coming to my quarter.

I was a bit impressed by so many marines so I decided to build a castle in my quarter with the broadsides standing on some kind of fortification with tanks and crisis suits behind that more or less out of line of sight.

As I only had 3 scoring units I decided to keep my fire warriors and the kroot in reserve with the latter outflanking. My bonus mission objective was to have more points of HQ on the table in the end so my commander would be in reserve as well.

First turn was as expected. He boosted the land speeder 24” towards my homebase and drove 12” with the land raider and vindicator, popping smoke. All marine units (all combat squadded) except the 2 lascannon dev-squad walked into the adjacent table quarters. The lascannons were the only ones able to shoot so they opened fire on my broadsides, killing one shield drone.
On my turn I jumped out of cover and opened fire. I thought my death rains could down the land speeder but I only managed to stun it. The hammerhead and the broadsides opened fire on the land raider but as the dark angels smoke launcher reduced every hit to glancing I only managed to shake it and destroy the assault cannon. The ionhead killed one or two marines of the lascannon dev-squad. In the end all suits jumped back behind the fortification.

In his second turn he continued to drive his tanks towards my little castle and his troops marched again. I don’t know why he did that, so he couldn’t fire one more turn and he even did not walk into cover (which was rare, admittedly), only the lascannons held their position. He fired the demolisher cannon at my broadsides but scattered a bit so I suffered only one wound which was saved by the shield drone. The railhead suffered one hit from a lascannon but the disruption pod negated any harm.
All railguns fired on the land raider and shook the crew, no immobilization, damn. The deathrains immobilized the speeder and destroyed the multimelta. But it still would contest my table quarter so it would take one more turn of fire to bring it down. I decided to start the push into another table quarter, so I jumped my fire knives not behind the fortification but towards the so far unclaimed quarter.

Third turn’s movement saw the land raider and vindicator continuing the push to my deployment zone and at last shooting from the marines. The demolisher shell scattered yet again and caused no damage. A few heavy bolter shells pinged off the armour of the broadsides and the lascannon weren’t able to damage the skimmers.

One devilfish and my commander arrived and I placed them to shoot at the marines in the table quarter to my right, the commander and bodyguards being able to jump behind cover in the assault phase. I destroyed the land raider with the hammerhead so the broadsides, the two fire knives and the ionhead fired on the disembarked death wing terminators, killing only one lightning claw armed one. The combined fire of the command squad and the devilfish killed 9(!) marines.

In his fourth turn he shot another gloriously scattering demolisher shell at my fire knives, killing none and the few bolter and heavy bolter rounds didn’t do anything as well. His terminators destroyed the shield drone of the death rains but weren’t out of assault range. I really started to feel sorry for him at this point.

On my fourth turn all remaining reserves arrived and the outflanking kroot showed up on my right hand side in charge range to the plasma cannon dev-squad. The ionhead fired at the side armour of the vindicator and destroyed it, while the fire knives killed the 5 men-squad in this table quarter. My commander used his target lock to kill the last remaining marine in front of the team and his bodyguards killed one of the devastators. The death wing terminators and the interrogator chaplain threatened my home base, so I fired everything I had at them, even the firewarriors disembarked to fire and the deathrains used their flamer. I killed everyone but one lightning claw terminator. I don’t know why he put a wound from a railgun on his chaplain. Maybe he thought the rosaries would save him. But it didn’t and the solid slug killed him instantly. The kroot charged the remaining four devastators and killed 2, losing 2 of their own. The death rains jumped in front of the firewarriors to protect them from getting charged by the last terminator.

In the remaining turns I killed the marines in his corner and all other marines on the table, wiping him out completely. In the end I only lost 3 shield drones and the death rains and 5 kroot.

I have to thank my opponent for a really kind and funny game, never losing his humour even when facing a massacre. And that made me feel a bit bad about tabling him in the end. But I think his list isn’t very suitable for a tournament environment. He mentioned he usually plays the double wing and I think that would be far better.

Tau vs. Double Lash - Battle Reports from the 9. SiG - Managarm Round 1

2009-11-19T12:08:00.012+01:00

Hey,

so i finally got around to post the battle reports the guys wrote up and put in some pictures. I promise I gonna get you the full army lists for each game as my stupid "online codex" program isn't working as it should!

So without further talking lets start with Managarm´s Report for his Round 1 game!

Managarm here, tuning in to report of my three games during the local tournament.

1st game: Chaos Space Marines

Dawn of War, capture and control

Army List:

2x Daemon prince with wings and lash,

3 chaos terminators

2x5 chaos marines with melta in rhino

5 chaos marines with melta in land raider with daemonic possession

3x3 obliterator

The standard “dual-lash-9-obliterator-I-win” list. Boring to play (in my oppinion) and boring to play against. And that was exactly how it turned out. I was a bit disappointed that I had to play my first tournament game against one of the hardest list one can field, but okay, let’s take it.

The guy I played knew what he was doing and had played a lot of tournaments so far. He won the roll to go first and did so. He placed one rhino with the side exactly at the middle line with daemon prince behind it (actually no daemon prince but a conversion from bits of the possessed and chaos spawns…so not the usual size for a monstrous creature...) and the other rhino behind some ruins in his deployment zone. I deployed nothing and kept the fire knife team in reserve to deepstrike later on, so he moved everything else on the board and the rhino and daemon prince further to my deployment zone.

I don’t want to go into too much detail as the game was not much fun to play. I made one mistake that I didn’t shoot at the daemon prince in my first turn. I don’t know why I did that. The remaining 5 turns consisted of jumping to me, lashing the suits to the daemon princes, killing them in my turn so I couldn’t shoot them and blasting the tanks to pieces with the obliterators. Rinse and repeat until no tau is left on the field. In combination with that this guy wasn’t very polite (re-measuring every second move I did is not something which makes me comfortable) and I made a mistake in close combat (I hit his prince on 4+ instead on 5+) which seemed to piss him off more than necessary I was glad when the game was over.

Of course I got no tournament points by getting tabled.

Family Photos of Tau and Daemons

2009-11-07T00:03:00.000+01:00

Good evening,

As promised I made family photos today of Trotzki's and my army:

Chaos Daemons of Tzeentch and Slaanesh

Tau Hunter Cadre

So just a qick one this evening. Just wanted to show the finished armies. Everything is packed up and ready for tomorrow and besides I am tired right now from playing, eating and drinking wine an whisky I am more than excited how my very first tournament is going to be.

More pictures and tournament reports will follow next week.

A never ending cycle of painting tau battlesuits

2009-11-03T13:42:00.001+01:00

Hi guys,

I am very busy with getting everything painted until saturday. Currently I am working on the last crisis suit and the ion cannon for the hammerhead.
Just wanted to show you the latest additions, another fireknife suit and my second broadside:

Fireknife XV8

Broadside XV88 MkI

Nothing too specatacular, but I hope that the converted heads and the little re-posing of the arms and legs of the fireknife gives a bit more dynamic to this model.

The great conversion idea for the head can be found here at warhammer tau. Thanks to Adam again for nice ideas and inspiration.

Pictures of the 3 other suits I painted over the last weeks are due to follow and of course a family picture of the complete tournament army will be online at friday, so stay tuned!

Tournament this, tournament that, the tournament is everywhere!

2009-11-02T07:27:00.004+01:00

Good Morning,

sitting at work since 550am and nothing to do, i thought i start talking a bit bout the coming tournament and the plans we got.

As the tournament day draws closer, Trotzki and Managarm put the last finishing touches on their armies, id thought that this will be a show i dont wanna miss. So i decided to take the coming friday off and travel down. This will give us the opportunity to have a 3rd person doing all the coverage. The guys have time to focus more on playing and getting their asses kicked....and i will focus on doing the rest. Mainly waking them up in time for the event on saturday and get a constant supply on coffee going, cause the plan is to get terrible drunk on friday!

So I hope to get you the full coverage of the event! Pictures, Army Lists, Interviews! Althought Trotzki allready said "If you put a picture of me on the net im gonna skin your ass!", we will see how tough he is when I stand before him. ;)

We will put some last test games in on friday, mainly focusing on the missions for the tournament and getting into the right mindset.

So lets start my rumbling on the tournament with a quick look at the setting and then i will talk about the missions, the guys will have to play on saturday.
There are 3 missions, point limit is 1650 and they got 2h15mins time for each one. I think that will work quite well. There will be 28 people playing, having 14 games played simultaneously, i hope i find the time to get more infos on the other people playing.
The armies being played by the people attending are:

Space Marines: 5
Imperial Army: 4
Chaos Space Marines: 3
Chaosdemons: 2
Dark Angels: 2
Orks: 2
Space Wolves: 2
Tau: 2
Nids: 2
Black Templars: 1
Dark Eldar: 1
Eldar: 1
Hagashîn´s: 1

So we have 13 MEQ´s that gives the guys a good chance of playing MEQ´s , which would be their favourite enemy.
2 Dark Eldar players, im really excited to see them, will they bring the infamous skimmer army of doom? I had a friend once who played DE when they just came out, we hated to play him back then. I would hate to play DE right now. Imo they just "break" the game, playing a different edition then anybody else.
The 2 Space Wolves guys, i dont know. Did they have the time to bring the new toys, aka Thunderwolves? If so people are in for a hell of a game. If not they just Marines to me.
3 CSM players, well i guess its a good guess that at least one will bring the "normal" CSM list, aka 2 lash´s, 3 plagues marines in rhinos and the rest of the points in kyborgs. The second highest rating player is playing chaos, im eager to have a chat with him, see how he feels about CSM in 5th edition.
Nids, while i feel that nids are currently in need of a new codex, the guys playing Nids at the tourney are supposed to be "good", at least if you believe in their tournament rating. So maybe i see some great armies, which will motivate me for the new nid codex. If so, I will bring out the old 2nd edition models i got for a new spin!
And we have 4 bandwagoneers, errr Imperial Guard players, will they bring "fluffy" armies, or will they bring the mech armies that the guards a infamous for atm? I just hope they spam melters and bounce off Trotzki´s invul save. Although he wont be able to do much against mech spam.
In the end i just hope to see lots of really well painted armies and meet a fun bunch of people.

You can get a total of 20 points per mission, 14 for the primary and 6 for the secondary. You can get another 8 points total for having a well painted army and fully based army with lots of conversions. 2 points are given for submiting a correct army list until the dead line. This nets us a total of 70 points. I honestly believe the guys should at least get 7 points for their armies. But well see how the judges feel about that.

All missions have a primary and a secondary, which depends on good old victory points. As a nice twist, each player gets a secret tertiary objective, which adds a amount of victory points.
First off is a "Headquarters" mission with "Dawn of War" unit placement, oh how i hate thee!
Second along comes another old friend, table quarters! With "Spearhead" placement.
Last is a 5 objective mission with placement along the long table edges.

So how do i think the missions will play out for our guys?
Im not sure they can hold, their own base while making a substantial attack on their opponents one in the first mission. So we prolly gonna see some draws here.
The second one will prolly see the Tau holding their own turf with, Kroot, Broadsides, Crisis and skimming around the edges with the other tanks. The Demons will drop all over the show, having to deal with an completely deep striking army is quite a pain for the enemy.
The third one, well i would place 2 objectives together on my side, hold em and contest the rest. Really depends on the enemy.

So in conclussion i think, the demons will do better. Although i believe the Tau list is more solid, most people are just not used to play against demons. Happens to me all the time, when i play Trotzki, "What can this unit do? Fleet d6", charge 12" hit me with 7 rending attacks with str 5?" Funny stuff. If i would have to make a wild guess, id say our guys will both get 1 win and 2 draws. Managarm would prolly place better with his Marines but i understand that playing MEQ against MEQ all day is quite boring.

So stay tuned for more on the tournament soon.

Ready for the tournament ...

2009-10-30T18:45:00.007+01:00

Hi guys,

with just one week up to the local tourney I finally finished the last of the models needed for the games. I still had to paint four Fiends of Slaanesh and build and paint my Herald on Chariot (not that much, but you really learn how much time it takes to proper paint a model, when you have a fixed date it has to be finished on), when I decieded to register.
The four Fiends of Slaanesh where quick to paint, because they already where assembled (not really fun). I used the same paint scheme, I used for all of the daemons.

So here is the pic :

Fiends of Slaanesh

Test games have really proven the worth of this fine unit, that is fast, hits hard and should not be ignored by your enemies units. In some games they died without doing much, but even when they just act as bullet magnet they have their worth. In some way they seem to be comparable with the Flamers of Tzeentch, with the big distinction that flamers do their damage when they deepstrike, with not much after that (they can but I just can´t remember when the last time was they really survived the next enemy turn without being bashed or shot). Fiends do no damage the turn they arrive but really whip units in the turns afterwards, with more resilence (you can deepstrike a lot more freely due to the large charge range) and more hitting power in later turns.

For the Herald I had to first reassemle the model. Parts used are mainly from the High Elf Chariot and the Daemonette Box, with the heads of the two draft animals originating from the Chaos Spawn Box (Great kit, useless models - hooray !). Painting was done part by part with an assembly of the finished chariot, rider and oxen at the end.

Here is he / she / it:

Herald of Slaanesh on Chariot

In all test games the chariot mostly showed its worth as a sort of Search & Destroy missile, that deepstruck, charged and .... well sometimes really messed up a unit and sometimes died an horrible death in - Slaanesh pleasing - agony. I still think it is a very useful unit (killed Njal in SW proxy test game) but its true worth is its ability to take a out small squads like marine combat squads or guardsmen units. Tough targets really break his neck quickly - even with 5 wounds and +4 armour save. Still the main thing that really make the Chariot of Slaaensh outstanding is its low cost, that allows you to field a quick mini-monstrous creature with Hit & Run for around 100 points.

Skyray or not?

2009-10-26T15:59:00.000+01:00

Greetings,

silence dropped onto Bellum Aeternum for the last weeks due to too much work in real life. But now I have holidays and I spend my time with painting and considering army lists as the tournament is in less than two weeks. I have to paint 4 crisis suits and 1 broadside, 2 crisis are done and the broadside will be finished today.
Trotzki and me had some test games for training the last weeks and it seems I will have a hard time with my tau army at the tournament. I played the list I have posted earlier and it was a bit boring with 3 hammerheads, so I changed the heavy support choices for 2 broadsides, 1 hammerhead with railgun and a skyray. I had to drop 4 kroot for freeing points, so list is as follows:

Commander Shas'El, XV84-fireknife variant, targeting array, stimulant injector, 2 shield drones
bodyguard fireknife

3 Fireknives, 'Vre with targeting array

2 deathrains (TL missile pod, flamer, multitracker)

2x6 fire warriors in warfish (SMS, multitracker, tageting array, disruption pods, flechette dischargers)

16 kroot

2 broadside, targeting arrays, 2 shield drones

hammerhead, railgun, SMS, target lock, disruption pod, flechette discharger

skyray, SMS, targeting array, disruption pod, flechette discharger

1647 points

We just managed to play two games. Sorry, no pictures as my camera does not work with empty batteries (who would have thought) and I had to proxy a few minis and that looks terrible.

The first game was against Trotzki's semi-mech eldar (exarch with jump generator, warp spiders, 2x10 guardians, 10 dire avenger in serpent, 6 harlequins in serpent, 6 fire dragons in falcon, wraithlord).
Very sad, very sad. We played with two objectives in the own deployment zone. Trotzki had everything in reserve, I kept everything in reserve but the broadsides and their kroot screen on my objective. On turn two nearly everything became available for the eldar and the tanks zoomed towards my deployment zone and the dice gods failed me yet again (or preferred Trotzki, as you wish) I managed to do absolutely nothing, not even a shaken result (2 hits, with immobilized and weapon destroyed on a serpent with cover save reduced to 6+ by markerlights. Passed.) To make long things short, I got outmanoeuvred and shot down and killed in close combat. I abandoned my home objective and tried to run for Trotzki's but I got smashed there too. I made a few mistakes to be honest. I placed my hammerhead next to the broadsides as it became available from reserve and that stripped me of my whole anti-tank capability after two turns. I won't do that again, lesson learned. But it's impossible to win against such a fast force like eldar when you are not able to bring their tanks down quickly. You get outmanoeuvred and wiped out by highly specialised units. And bad dice rolling does not help either.

Second game was against a more or less fun list of marines:
Librarian in terminator armour with vortex of doom and gate of infinity,
5 terminators with assault cannon,
dreadnought with multi melta and heavy flamer,
2x10 tactical marines with missile launcher and melta in drop pod,
10 assault marines with fist sergeant, 2 flamer,
land speeder with multi melta and heavy flamer,
land raider with extra armour,
predator annihilator with lascannon sponsons, extra armour

That was a close and funny game. It started very bad for me as I seem to be unable to have luck with dices, but that bad luck turned around and "lady average" showed up in the second part of the game. We played the same mission with the same deployment and I placed the broadsides and the kroot on my objective, the broadsides on the second level of a building and the fireknife unit behind that ruin. I split my force into two parts, one consisting of the deathrains, the hammerhead and one fish trying to get to his objective and the other part defending my home objective as I saw a chance to hold it. I kept the skyray in the middle of my table edge to lend marker light support where needed. I made one mistake as not knowing the rules properly. I charged two combat squads with my kroot and one of those with my command team, thinking I would kill the smaller combat squad with the commander and his bodyguard so that he is free again on my next turn. But as the rule for multiple combat resolutions says, they have to stay in contact with the other ongoing close combat. I really thought that would be the game deciding moment as the terminators were due to charge. But luck was on my side this time and I could win this fight and managed to bring the two remaining kroot between the terminators and my command team and on top of this one kroot survived the shooting by going to ground and never failing a morale check. So I could gun down the terminators and all 20 tactical marines. The force designated to capture Trotzki's objective was taken down by assault marines and the land speeder. After the dust had settled, one lone (and pinned) fire warrior hold my objective and I had won this game.

So having played a few games with my former list and two games with this list, I will be fielding broadsides with kroot as screening unit. A railhead will definitely be in it too. Yesterday I thought about the skyray and its role in this army. Not much dakka for the spent points, that's obvious. But are the two, in most cases the one markerlight hit worth it? In the first games against eldar it was useless, completely. In the second game the markerlights boosted the ballistic skill of the fireknife squad so that the terminators suffered more plasma and missile hits. In this case it was well worth it. As I won't be able to play a game this week I have to "theorycraft" another idea. I am considering a hammerhead with ioncannon. The list would be something like that:

Unnamed1650 Pts -   Tau Army

1 Commander Shas'el (XV 84 Variant) (HQ)
     Target Lock; Markerlight; Missile Pod; Plasma Rifle; Targeting Array
     Hard-wired drone controller
     Stimulant Injector
     Bonding Knife
     1 Shield Drone
     1 Shield Drone
     1 Bodyguard Shas'vre
          Missile Pod; Plasma Rifle; Targeting Array
          Hard-wired multi-tracker
     1 Bodyguard Shas'vre
          Missile Pod; Plasma Rifle; Targeting Array
          Hard-wired multi-tracker

1 Crisis Battlesuit Team Leader (Elites)
     Missile Pod; Plasma Rifle; Targeting Array
     Hard-wired multi-tracker
     Bonding Knife
     Hard-wired drone controller
     1 Shield Drone
     1 Shield Drone
     1 Crisis Battlesuit
          Missile Pod; Plasma Rifle; Multi-Tracker

1 Crisis Battlesuit Team Leader (Elites)
     Flamer; TL Missile Pod
     Hard-wired drone controller
     Bonding Knife
     1 Shield Drone
     1 Crisis Battlesuit
          Flamer; TL Missile Pod

6 FireWarrior Team (Troops)
     Pulse Rifle (x6)
     1 Devilfish
          Smart Missile System
          Disruption Pod
          Targetting Array
          Flechette Discharger
          Multi-tracker

6 FireWarrior Team (Troops)
     Pulse Rifle (x6)
     1 Devilfish
          Smart Missile System
          Disruption Pod
          Targetting Array
          Flechette Discharger
          Multi-tracker

16 Kroot Carnivore Squad (Troops)
     Kroot Rifle

1 Broadside Battlesuit Team Leader (Heavy Support)
     Smart Missile System; TL Railgun; Targeting Array
     Hard-wired drone controller
     Bonding Knife
     1 Shield Drone
     1 Shield Drone
     1 Broadside Battlesuit
          Smart Missile System; TL Railgun; Targeting Array

1 Hammerhead Gunship (Heavy Support)
     Railgun; Smart Missile System
     #Targetting Array
     Flechette Discharger
     Multi-tracker
     Target Lock
     Disruption Pod

1 Hammerhead Gunship (Heavy Support)
     Ion Cannon; Smart Missile System
     #Targetting Array
     Disruption Pod
     Target Lock
     Flechette Discharger
     Multi-tracker

Models in Army: 48
Total Army Cost: 1646

By taking the cheaper Ionhead I now can take another bodyguard for the commander thereby getting another BS4 fireknife. So the need for markerlights becomes somewhat redundant. And I have a bit more dakka. I think that 3 str. 7 shots should help against monstrous creatures, light transports and of course against power armour.
The point is, I haven't much time left to playtest this list and I know that the ionhead does not appear in any list you find in forums or on blogs, the so called internet-wisdom seems to despise this version of the hammerhead. Maybe it is really so bad but I don't know, on paper it looks ok. Does someone have experience with it? What list would you prefer? (I know the first list is pretty mich the same as the one Adam from Warhammer Tau fields).

So far so good, that's it for the moment. I have to paint some battlesuits! Pics are to follow later this week.

New forgeworld tau battlesuit on the horizon

2009-09-24T16:43:00.002+02:00

Look what's coming to us soon!

The new XV-9 battlesuit! I am absolutely amazed by this model. Again forgeworld is doing such a great job at designing shiny tau battlesuits. Further pics here.

Have a look at the proposed rules here. I only say toughness 5... vectored retro thrusters.... and fast attack choice!

I have to place order....now!

Revised Tau Tournament List

2009-09-14T18:17:00.001+02:00

Hey everybody,

I revised my Tau list that I am going to take to a tournament in november. I took the advices I got here into consideration and came up with this list now.

Tau 1650 points v2:

1 Commander Shas'el (XV 84 Variant)
     Target Lock; Markerlight; Missile Pod; Plasma Rifle; Targeting Array
     Bonding Knife; Hardwired multi-tracker; Stimulant Injector;
     Hard-wired drone controller
     1 Shield Drone
     1 Shield Drone
     1 Bodyguard Shas'vre
        Missile Pod; Plasma Rifle; Targeting Array
        Hard-wired multi-tracker

1 Crisis Battlesuit Team Shas'vre
     Missile Pod; Plasma Rifle; Targeting Array
     Hard-wired multi-tracker
     Bonding Knife
     Hard-wired drone controller
     1 Shield Drone
     1 Shield Drone
     1 Crisis Battlesuit
          Missile Pod; Plasma Rifle; Multi-Tracker
     1 Crisis Battlesuit
          Missile Pod; Plasma Rifle; Multi-Tracker

1 Crisis Battlesuit Team Leader
     Flamer; TL Missile Pod
     Hard-wired drone controller
     1 Shield Drone
     1 Crisis Battlesuit
          Flamer; TL Missile Pod

6 FireWarrior Team
     Pulse Rifle (x6)
     1 Devilfish
          Smart Missile System
          Disruption Pod
          Targetting Array
          Multi-tracker
          Sensor Spines

6 FireWarrior Team
     Pulse Rifle (x6)
     1 Devilfish
          Smart Missile System
          Disruption Pod
          Targetting Array
          Multi-tracker
          Sensor Spines

20 Kroot Carnivore Squad
     Kroot Rifle

1 Hammerhead Gunship
     Railgun; Smart Missile System
     #Targetting Array
     Disruption Pod
     Target Lock
     Multi-tracker

1 Hammerhead Gunship
     Railgun; Smart Missile System
     #Targetting Array
     Disruption Pod
     Target Lock
     Multi-tracker

1 Hammerhead Gunship
     Railgun; Smart Missile System
     #Targetting Array
     Disruption Pod
     Target Lock
     Multi-tracker

Models in army: 49
Points: 1649

So I kicked out the stealth team, stripped all tanks off the flechette dischargers and degraded the Shas'O to Shas'El and most important I added more fireknives to the list for better anti-MEQ capability. At the moment I run 3 railheads for I think I definitaly need them for anti-tank.
I had 2 games with this list last weekend. First game was against Trotzki's daemon list where we played annihilation. That ended as a draw. The railheads seemed to miss anything with their guns and Trotzki's soulgrinder moved around unharmed for a while and ate one flank for breakfast. Everything else performed averagely. I think I would have won if the game lasted longer than 5 turns. It was a solid game and we both were rather content with our lists.

Next game was against my marines which proxied a Vulcan list with 2 land raiders (1 redeemer, 1 normal), 2 squads of TH/SS terminators, 2 tac-squads with multi-melta and melta in drop pod and a land speeder with HF/MM. Again annihilation and dawn of war deployment where we both kept everything in reserve. That game was disastrous. I rolled abysmally for about anything. The dearly needed fireknives showed up on turn 5 and missed pretty well. The hammerheads again weren't able to harm anything (even drop pods!!! *argh*) and I don't need to talk about the little crappy guys called firewarriors. Admittedly Clausewitz who played my marines rolled more than above average (for example 17 shots with bolters against 3 crisis suits, 17 hits, 14 wounds....you can imagine the rest). The game ended 6 to 3 killpoints in the marine's favour.

Ok, I won't complain about failing dice rolls. That happens, it's unnerving but it happens.

Conclusion: This list should work I think. Bad luck away, I should have won the second game or got at least a draw. 3 railheads should suffice to cope with the land raiders and the missile pods should crack the drop pods. And as long as I can stay out of 12" range of the meltas I should be fine. The fireknives are really needed for anti-MEQ firepower.
One thing I lack are markerlights. But at the moment I see no way in getting them into this list. The 3 railheads are definitely needed, so there sadly is no place for the skyray. And I do not own pathfinders and the time is too short to paint a few of them. So I think I have to live with that.
The kroot are great as always. The firewarriors suck but are kept at a minimum at the moment. Taking only one mounted squad would let me down in objective based missions, so I think I have to live with them for the time being.
One thing I am thinking about is to change the heavy support choices. The alternative would be dropping one hammerhead and taking 2 broadsides with ASS and 2 shield drones. That would grant me with one more railgun. But the downside with this would be the impaired mobility and I think I would need at least 10 kroot to screen them from turn 2 attacks. Tau aren't that mobile though and having this static element would further decrease the mobility so I am not so fond of that.
Speaking of mobility, the sensor spines saved me more than one time. Staying away from the enemy as far as possible is key and this wargear lets you fly around more freely. I will take these, but I am not sure where to put them. Either on the hammerheads to grant them more flexibility or on the fishes for grabbing objectives. That needs to be tested.

As always, your comments are very welcome and helpful!

My first tournament ...

2009-09-03T15:43:00.009+02:00

Hi folks,

as Managarm wrote in his last post we are taking part in a local tournament in the beginning of november. My first thought was playing my Eldar, but after taking a look at the participation list I decided to give my Chaos Daemons a try. I know they may be the harder army for competitive play, but there is only one additional Daemon player while there are a lot of Eldar and Marine player.

Coming to my list : I basically want to try my Slaanesh-Tzeentch list, with the addition of a Slaanesh Herold on Chariot and 4 fiends. Hopefully this, together with the few bolts on my Tzeentch stuff, gives my enough power to beat fast moving armies (which are really the bane on Daemon armies).
So here is my list :

1 Lord of Change (HQ)
Soul Devourer; Daemonic Gaze; Bolt of Tzeentch; Daemonic Flight

1 Chariot of Tzeentch (HQ)
Daemonic Gaze; Master of Sorcery; We Are Legion; Bolt of Tzeentch;
Jetbike; Furious Charge

1 Chariot of Slaanesh (HQ)
Rending Claws; Aura of Acquiescence; Unholy Might; Soporific Musk;
Cavalry; Furious Charge

3 Flamers of Tzeentch (Elites)
Breath of Chaos; Warpfire

4 Fiends of Slaanesh (Elites)
Soporific Musk; Rending Claws; Unholy Might

13 Daemonettes of Slaanesh (Troops)
Aura of Acquiescence; Rending Claws; Chaos Icon

13 Daemonettes of Slaanesh (Troops)
Aura of Acquiescence; Rending Claws; Chaos Icon

7 Pink Horrors of Tzeentch (Troops)
Warpfire; Bolt of Tzeentch; Chaos Icon
1 The Changeling

1 Soul Grinder of Chaos (Heavy Support)
Front Armour: 13; Side Armour: 13; Rear Armour: 11; Harvester; Mawcannon -
Phlegm, Vomit

1 Daemon Prince of Chaos (Heavy Support)
Daemonic Flight; Iron Hide; Unholy Might; Mark of Tzeentch

Models in Army: 46

I know that this loadout is really not able to take a lot of incoming firepower and lacks resilance. In the next weeks some playtesting has to take place to see what still needs to be tweaked to at least dampen this problem.

Hopfully there are some fellow Daemon players that have some comments suggestions on my list - I´d be thankful for any advice.

Taking the Tau to a tournament

2009-09-02T15:09:00.006+02:00

Greetings,

as the title tells, Trotzki and me are going to participate in a local tournament and I will play with my Tau.

The tournament will be at the first weekend of november, so there is still pretty much time left, but I will need a bit time to finish the army and get everything painted in the first place and secondly I will have to practice a lot.

1650 points will be played with normal FOC, forge world stuff is allowed too and there will be some special rules which are still to be announced.

I have considered something like this list:

1650P Tau Army list:

Shas'O
XV84 suit, plasma rifle, missile pod, shield generator, hardwired multitracker, stimulant injector, hard wired drone controller with 2 shield drones
bodyguard with plasma rifle, missile pod, targetting array, hard wired multitracker

XV8 team (3) with TL missile pod, flamer, team leader with bonding knife

Stealth team (3), all with targetting array and burst cannon

(2x) 6 fire warriors
Devilfish, smart missile system, targetting array, multi tracker, disruption pod, flechette dischargers, sensor spines

20 kroot

(2x) Hammerhead with railgun, smart missile system, multi tracker, disruption pod, flechette dischargers, target lock, sensor spines

Sky ray with smart missile system, targetting array, multi tracker, disruption pod, flechette dischargers

These are my first thoughts, so there is a lot of space for changes. One thin is the sky ray, actually I am not sure if he is that valuable. The marker lights are nice though. But Another hammerhead could be nice too, be it a railhead or an ionhead.
I could kick all sensor spines out as well, thereby freeing 50 points.
And considering that more then half of all players seem to play MEQ, I think I will need a bit more punch against power armour.

My list needs me buying (and painting) at least 2 more crisis suits at the moment and if I take a third hammerhead I will have to paint the gun and turret. And the hammerhead with the green camo is at the painting table again to match it up with the rest of the army.

So tweaking of this list and of course painting more tau miniatures is on the schedule for the next weeks.

And of course I'd be glad, if someone leaves a comment on the list.

Some afterthoughts on our planetstrike game

2009-08-22T15:53:00.003+02:00

Hi guys,

I´d also like to take the opportunity to give some comments on our first game on the awesome new planetstrike terrain. First I´d like to thank Managarm for this really funny and exciting game.
I have to admit I was a little biased on the planetstrike rules when I first had a look into the rules section of the book. The attacker seemed way overpowered to me, with little room to react for the defender to an overwhelming amount of firepwer in the first round. So when we talked about choosing sides before the battle, I trusted in my Eldar (of which I still think as one of the most offensive armies in WH40K) to have quite an easy match against Managarms Marines. The first suprise was his all infantry list, which allowed him to spread around the whole base and saturate my units with to much targets. I was a lot more used to his drop pod/land raider army that gave me had a headache the last games. For my list I took some units I stopped using in regular games like the Shining Spears and my Guardian Defenders.

So after the dust of turn ones firestorm had settled had settled and my units had boosted on the field I still felt really in a stronger position. But at the start of turn two I really saw what equals out the attackers advance of turn one :
With defenders reserves arriving from you back and sides you really stop being the attacker and have to struggle to keep your units alive long enough to contest the objectives at the end of the game. This is where my Eldar really started to struggle - with two fronts available my units quickly were separated and cut down. This is where resilant units really start to shine. My Avatar, the wraithlord and especially the Seer Council where the units that matched this type of game a lot better then for example the banshees or the guardians that just lack the resilance. A unit of 10 Wraithguard with warlock should really be a major pain for any defender to remove. Resilance is king in Planetstrike not only for the defender, but also the attacker.
So as a summary I think planetstrike is a really new way of playing 40k and I´m really excited to test my Deamons (Seem waaaaaay overpowered to me) in action against the Marines, Tau or Imperial Guard. And of course my Eldar are always in for a revanche !

Defence of Strongpoint 00/19

2009-08-21T09:24:00.027+02:00

As announced, we played our first game of planetstrike. We decided on 2500 points on each side, Trotzki attacking with eldar, me defending with marines. We placed 4 objectives thus giving us 4 points for stratagem selection.

Eldar stratagems:
Webway assault
Supply drop.

Space Marine stratagems:
Void shield (middle bastion)
Escape hatch (middle bastion)
Krak attacks

Additionally we decided that the long table edge where I based the bastions was a denied drop zone. I think we house rule this for most of our games, as we don’t want to play planetstrike competitively and 3 stratagem points is rather expensive to spent on this stratagem. Another change we made is that the guns on the bastions have the intercept special rule as well as the guns on the ground (why should a gun on a raised position not be able to shoot on incoming attackers but the one on the ground can?).

Space Marines:

Grand Marshal Hermann (counts as Lysander)
10 terminators with assault cannon, heavy flamer, 2 chainfists
5 sternguard all with combi-meltas, sergeant with single lightning claw
Dreadnought with assault cannon, heavy flamer, extra armour
3x 10 tac marines with powerfist, flamer (1 plasma gun), lascannon, locator beacon
2x 6 devastators with 3 heavy bolters, 1 plasma cannon
6 devastators with 3 missile launchers
Whirlwind, extra armour
10 assault marines with 2 flamers, power fist
Land speeder with multi melta, heavy flamer

Eldar:

Avatar of Khaine
Farseer with fortune, doom, runes of witnessing (with warlocks in falcon)
5 Warlocks with embolden, enhance
Autarch on jetbike with laser lance, mandiblaster
5 shining spears with exarch, skilled rider, withdraw
10 howling banshees with exarch, warshout in wave serpent with TL bright lance, shuriken catapults, star engines, spirit stones, vectored engines
6 fire dragons with exarch, fire pike
10 dire avengers with exarch, bladestorm, defend in wave serpent with TL bright lance, shuriken catapults, star engines, spirit stones, vectored engines
2x 10 guardian defender squads with missile launcher, warlock with singing spear, destructor
10 warp spiders with exarch, withdraw
Wraith lord with eldar missile launcher, bright lance, 2 flamer
Falcon with holo-fields, spirit stones, shuriken cannon, scatter laser, pulse laser

I positioned the 3 bastions at the long table edge with the relay station in the middle surrounded by aegis defence lines and placed some craters and two ruins on the remaining space of the board. With Lysander’s special rule I fortified the barricade in front of the base. The attacker’s drop zone would be on the right hand side.

Hermann and the sternguard were positioned in the void shielded middle bastion, the devastators with plasma cannons and heavy bolters manned the outer bastions and the remaining devastators with missile launchers were placed on the fortified barricade. I combat squad’ed the tactical marines and placed the the Las/Plas squads around the comms relay. The remaining combat squads were positioned behind the aegis lines, lascannons in the back and on the barricade, flamers and power fists at the first rank. The whirlwind prepared to let loose barrages of vengeance missiles in the back of the strongpoint. The terminators, dreadnought and land speeder were put into reserves.
So the stage is set and the onslaught of the eldar force on the imperial strongpoint is inbound.

Eldar Turn 1:

Trotzki rolled a 4 for the preliminary bombardment and thus got formidable 8 firestorms to drop onto the marines. The opening firestorm then destroyed 2 quad cannons, shook the whirlwind and killed 3 tactical marines, the squad at the comms realy took cover and the other 2 squads failed their pinning test and wouldn’t do anything in my turn.

Everything but the footslogging guardians became available from reserves. The Avatar deep struck next to the right bastion and was attacked by krak grenades and lost one wound. The wraith lord impacted next to the left bastion and the warp spiders appeared behind the devastators on the barricade. The fire dragons materialized between the middle and right bastion, eager to melt one into oblivion but they landed in sight of the one remaining quad cannon and one aspect warrior was blasted to pulp by a stream of grenades.

The tanks moved on the field and used their star engines to get close to the defense lines, the falcon actually flew directly into the base. Cunning eldar! One of the icarus lascannons on the bastions intercepted the wave serpent transporting the banshees and blew the bright lance off the tank. The shining spears raced towards the marine squad manning the foremost defense line. By supply drops for the eldar the seer council, warp spiders and shining spears acquired all kinds of grenades. Shooting saw the the left bastions melted to a burning pile of rubble by the fire dragons after the avatar of war missed with his melta. But the devastators inside were unharmed by the collapse. The anti tank devastators on the barricades were not that fortunate and were obliterated by the warp spiders. The shining spears assaulted the marine squad and slaughtered them to a man before they could do anything.

Marines Turn 1:

So after having lost the first bastion, a devastator squad, a combat squad and three further squads pinned I was desperately praying to the Emperor to send help against the vile xeno threat. The Emperor protects, all reserves became available and arrived all in the eldar deployment zone! So ten terminators, a full squad of assault marines, a dreadnought and the land speeder were in striking range of the eldar force. Things were getting to look way better than minutes before.

The terminators opened fire on the avatar and I rolled so badly that he wasn’t wounded. Hermann’s sternguard squad targeted Khaines incarnation as well and five hellfire rounds hit home, wounding him once. The two assault marines carrying a flamer jumped to the front and bathed the eldar jet bikes in burning promethium killing the hole squad but the autarch. The warp spiders where killed by a signum assisted plasma cannon shot followed by a rain of heavy bolter shells from the left bastion. The same fate awaited the fire dragons as the devastators paid back the destruction of their bastion. And the land speeder did what he does best: failing to hit with the multi melta so the wave serpent carrying the banshees was not harmed. Assault was horrible, the assault marines managed to do nothing against the autarch on jetbike.

Eldar Turn 2:

The guardians arrived from reserve and took aim at the terminators and the land speeder. The fortuned seer council disembarked and the falcon raced on towards the middle bastion. With a howling scream the banshees jumped out of the serpent transport and ran towards the doomed assault marines which were still engaged in close combat with the autarch. The other wave serpent flew directly in front of the barricades unloading the dire avengers who bladestormed the marine squad. Trotzki rolled miserably and just killed two. The land speeder was stripped of all weapons and immobilized by the fire of the civilians at arms. The other guardian squad was as successful and killed two terminators. In a shower of sparks the middle bastion lost its void shield leaving it nearly defenceless at the bright lance attack of the wave serpent. The lance beam punched right through the enforced permacrete and the bastion collapsed in a cloud of dust and smoke. In the ensuing assault the banshees charged the assault marines and wiped them from the board before they knew what hit them. The avatar charged into the ruin of the left bastion and killed two devastators but the marines hold their ground stubbornly. Both combat squads behind the aegis lines were attacked by the seer council and both squads lost one marine to the assault and they didn’t manage to hurt the fortuned eldar. On the far right the guardians charged into the waiting power fists of the terminators and the dreadnought and suffered dearly. Four guardians were smashed and their morale broke so they ran off the board. But not before the guardian warlock immobilized the dreadnought with the singing spear. On the other side of the battlefield, the monstrous wraithlord hammered into the last remaining bastion and destroyed it in a huge explosion which consumed one marine.

Guardians in the open, dire avengers bunched up after disembarking and howling banshees not locked in close combat with a heavy flamer standing ready and a whirlwind loading vengeance missiles. Things would get ugly next round…

Marines Turn 2:

The whirlwind swiveled its turret towards the dire avengers to let loose a devastating barrage. The missiles killed seven dire avengers and two more were killed by the decimated marine squad on the barricade by bolter fire. Just before the bright lance of the wave serpent led to the collapse of the bastion, Hermann and his squad of sternguard escaped through tunnels beneath the strongpoint and appeared unharmed next to the falcon through the escape hatch of the middle bastion (my third stratagem). The veteran space marines used their one-shot melta guns and wrecked the falcon with a well aimed shot through the engine of the sophisticated tank, the holofields all but useless on such short a distance. In the back the plasmagunner of the squad defending the comms relay shot a bright hot plasma bolt on the autarch on jetbike, killing him instantly. In the ruins of the right bastion the devastators lost no time and a searing plasma blast found its mark on the wraithlord and wounded it once. The immobilized dreadnought brought his assault cannon to bear on the last guardians and killed two, even the heavy flamer was in range and roasted another one. The terminators marched in the direction of the howling banshees and bathed them in a gout of promethium and a hail of storm bolter and assault cannon fire. Three terminators charged the remaining two aspect warriors while the other five stood back. One terminator was cut down before his brothers avenged him and made short work with the fragile but nonetheless deadly eldar women. Meanwhile one marine was killed by the seer council.

Eldar Turn 3:

To avenge the slaughtered banshees the remaining guardians pushed under fire towards the terminators and unleashed a torrent of shurikens against the astartes, killing one. The still unharmed wave serpent moved away from the barricades and targeted the whirlwind with its bright lance which destroyed the missile tank. Three marines fell to the flamers of the wraithlord and another one was smashed when the monstrosity charged into the ruin. The avatar continued his rampage at the backfield and charged the combat squad at the comms relay making short work in close combat and killed 3 marines getting no wound in return. The marines passed their leadership test and the fight would go on. The last standing dire avenger gathered his wits and charged into the ongoing close combat between the seer council and the two marine squads. Two marines lost their lives to the witch blades. The guardians attacked the last terminator and killed him

Marines Turn 3:

The wraithlord had to go, so Hermann left his squad and ran towards it but couldn’t reach it and by doing this, he took one wound when he stumbled into the ruin of the bastion (yes, I rolled three 1s in a row!). The sternguard jumped over the wrecked falcon, losing one veteran, ready to charge into the melee with the seer council. On the left flank the terminators continued their march and fried the guardians with heavy flamer fire and a few stormbolter rounds. During close combat the wraithlord killed one marine and the avatar wiped out the squad at the comms relay. The sternguard charged the seer council and killed two.

Eldar Turn 4:

As everything was locked up in close combat this round was rather short. The avatar charged the last tactical combat squad and killed 2, of course getting no wound in return. The seer council killed one sternguard veteran.

Marines Turn 4:

I moved the terminators in base contact with the right ruined bastion to capture it. Hermann’s luck didn’t return and he wasn’t able to wound the wraithlord (I required 3s to hit, I rolled three 1s and one 2, rerolled one, hit and rolled another 1 to wound…). Following the same concept the whole sternguard squad was killed by the seer council and the remaining lascannon marine failed his leadership test and broke from combat. The three tactical marines from the barricade weren’t able to do anything harmful as well. In the back the avatar got rid of the last marines and the comms relay was now under eldar control.

Eldar Turn 5:

The wave serpent fired its engines and flew over into the strongpoint next to the collapsed right bastion, capturing it. The fleeing marine was melted by the avatars wailing doom. Hermann at last hammered the wraithlord into a pile of wraithbone and consolidated towards the avatar. In the never-ending fight in the middle one marine died under the witchblades.

Marines Turn 5:

Another marine was killed by the warlocks, but the squad hold its ground. The terminators moved around the crater and fired at the avatar to no effect. Hermann charged the avatar. Running under a stream of heavy bolter shells fired in his back by the surviving devastator he crashed into the towering incarnation of a wargod, sparks raining from the protective energy field of his shield as the giant sword of the avatar awaited him. One strike slipped through his defense and cut easily through his ancient tactical dreadnought armour and bit deep into the marshals flesh. But he had suffered worse and wielded his hammer in a devastating back-hand strike into the abdomen of his enemy. In an explosion of sparks, pieces of lava and half-molten rocks the thunder hammer unloaded its energy, sending the avatar reeling back. Stunned by such a tremendous blow Hermann took the advantage and another mighty blow of the mastercrafted weapon hit home and the avatar was down to one knee. With a last, all-destroying overhead strike khaines avatar was destroyed and the comms relay was back in imperial hands.

We rolled if the game would go into another round but it ended here.

Defender: 2 objectives.
Attacker: 1 objective.
Victory Space Marines.

Afterthoughts:

Phew, that was close and it was a really tense and hard fought battle. During almost the whole game I thought that I wouldn’t be able stop the eldar from taking all objectives. Planetstrike brings everything directly into contact and close combat starts at the very first turn and that’s something marines really don’t shine at. But having some heavy hitters in reserve really can turn the tide. And I was lucky that all came on the field at the same time (comms relay helps on that part), all from the same direction at the attackers drop zone. So I could charge eliminate some serious threats very early. The shining spears would have done havoc to the defenders and by having so much force in his back, Trotzki was forced to divert his army. I am honestly surprised now that I could win with my army in the role as defender. As I said in the announcement I had the impression the attacker has the advantage simply by having the possibility to blow things up with the firestorm and then attack in the first turn what is left. And not having the need to wipe out any defender at an objective but simply being in base contact with it is sufficient to hold it and on top of that, a tie is actually a win for the attacker led me to this opinion. But of course all that was based only on theory, only having read the codex and not having played an actual game. I stand somewhat corrected now. Hard hitting reserves seems to be the way to victory for the defender.

Ok, that leads me to a little rant about planetstrike and armies in general. On bell of lost souls there was a poll, which army would be the best at defending. The great majority voted for imperial guard. Admittedly I haven’t seen them playing planetstrike (we will do this in the coming weeks) but I doubt that they will be such a great defending force. Of course, they can field so many heavy weapons, one might think that they will blow every attacker out of the skies and they have heavy tanks coming from reserves to shoot the remaining forces to pulp. Hmm sounds great, but what happens when the bastions are destroyed at turn one and the squads inside are charged by dedicated assault units and “everything” is in close combat? The tanks cannot shoot. To make long things short, the attacker kills everything in the base and then goes to ground and awaits the end of the game, maybe firing some shots at the tanks. Attacker wins. I am not saying the imperial guard has no chance here, but I can imagine way better armies, both at defending and attacking. The one great choice for both roles is simple, at least in my humble opinion. Who has heavy hitters with serious staying power? Right, Death Guard. At the moment I see no easy way to get rid of plague marines sitting on an objective (this problem isn’t new, I know). As defender, a lot of plague marines should do the work by just charging everything getting too close to the objectives and thereby creating long lasting close combats. And as attacker they just have to get to an objective and stay there. And that’s what they excel at. But that’s again just my few cents. I really would like to see how Tau and Tyranids fare in planetstrike as I just have no idea how I would use them. Or what would you guys out there think?
End of rant.

Coming to the conclusion. I thank Trotzki for a really nice and exciting game and I think we both had fun. I always like close games and for my part I had no idea how the game would end during the most time.
Concerning my army choice I was rather happy as everything performed well and I think the list is rather solid. When I use that list again I still have about 100 points I could free as the locator beacons, the extra armour on the whirlwind and maybe all the powerfists in the tactical squads aren't really necessary. Maybe I could take another hq choice. And Lysander really is a beast and making the whole army stubborn is awesome for defenders. I would have lost the combat against the seer council many times but with stubborn I could hold and thus negating the council a consolidation into the middle bastion/ruin.
Planetstrike is really a nice addition to warhammer 40k and makes up for funny and enthralling games. But you have to keep it in a friendly environment and not try to play it in a competitive manner. It is really more like apocalypse where careful planning and maybe some narrative aspects pay off in the end. What I somewhat disliked is that your lovingly created strongpoint with its bastions and carefully erected defense lines and overlapping fields of fire of the quad cannons and whatnot is overrun in the very first turn. When I initially thought of planetstrike, I imagined there would be hard fought battles to get into such vital strongpoints with the attacker suffering horrendous losses by charging a well fortified position. This aspect comes a bit short for my taste and I think it would be cooler when the bastions would last a little bit longer than turn two. Maybe we have to think about changing the rules a little bit that there are bubbles the attacker cannot deepstrike into so that he has to walk/fly/whatever to the bastions. Of course that will be a disadvantage for the attacker but I think, permitting the attacker more points will solve such problems. And that would bring the image of a stronghold more in line with reality when the outnumbered defenders hold off wave after wave of onrushing attackers.

This brings me to the end of this battle report, I hope you all enjoyed it as much as we did.

Planetstrike: Bastions and defence lines

2009-08-16T12:18:00.004+02:00

Good morning!

Today we're going to have our first planetstrike game!
Trotzki and me bought the Imperial Strongpoint set and two additional bastions. So we now have 4 bastions and 3 aegis lines. In addition we also bought some craters and barricades from amera terrain. Over the last two weeks we were busy with assembling and painting the terrain before playing the actual first game, as we wanted to play on a completely painted board. So here's what we have right now.

Airbrushing really helps to get the bastions painted rather quickly. We used field grey from tamiya as base colour and then a wash of thinned badab black, followed by drybruhsing with codex grey and a bit of bleached bone.

So today we play a 2500 point game of space marines vs. eldar. I will defend the stronpoint with my marines and Trotzki assaults with his eldar. I am really curious how that will turn out as at the moment I am feeling the defender is a bit in a disadvantage. But we will see.

I will take pictures and a battle report will be written, so stay tuned.

And it burns, burns, burns ...

2009-08-11T18:13:00.008+02:00

Hi guys,

i hope I can draw some attention from Managarms shiny (and perfectly done) Stormblade to my Fire Dragons I painted the last weeks. I bought the Falcon-friendly squad of six and magnetized the exarchs shoulder and weapons so he can switch between the fancy "my melter is longer than yours"-pike to itch some tanks and the Dragons Breath flamer to roast the small stuff.
So here´s the squad :

The shoulder magnet (first time I´ve done this - so I am a little proud) :

Now onwards to the FW Avatar ....

Armour Painting: Stormblade Pt. IV

2009-08-10T21:48:00.005+02:00

Greetings!

I "finished" the Stormblade a few weeks ago. "Finished", because I find something from time to time I want to repaint or try to make it a little bit better, so it is not 100% done...but almost.
It took me a while to make presentable photos, since the camera flash blurred out the details. But I made something around of 150 photos this evening to get the best my camera is able to produce.
But enough of that, here are the pics!

The weathering was not that difficult. I learned not to use too much of weathering powders while I painted the leman russ and so I built up several layers of thinned weathering powders. I used different mixtures of dark mud, russian earth and african earth from mig and thinned that with thinner for washes. When that was dry it turned out to be somewhat too bright and "brownish". Another layer of dark mud/russian earth darkened that down a bit. I concentrated the weathering with the powders on the lower parts of the tank and only put a little bit on the upper parts where dust would collect.
For leaking fuel and oil I aibrushed more thinned brown ink on the fuel drums and surroundings and on some of the rivets (see lower pic).
I made the mud from acrylic resin, sand and different weathering powders thinned with a little bit of water. Mainly I flicked it on from a brush by hand (gloves come in handy!) and some spots I made by airbushing on the brush. That flicks on some really nice and naturally looking spots (lower pic as well).
For the exhaust shroudings I added some more details by using thinned baal red wash, leviathan purple wash and a bit of asurmen blue wash (all from GW) on the lower parts and some very thin layers of a selfmade yellow wash (sunburst yellow thinned with water and matt varnish) on the upper part. The lowest part of the exhausts were weathered with rust coloured weathering powders.
The heavy stubber on the pintle was simply drybrushed with pencil lead/graphite with my finger. (Simple and effective, that's really a cool hint in the imperial armour model masterclass).
The chipped paint effects where done by sponging on charadon granite (GW foundation paint). That colour is very nice and sponging is fun. You really have to pay attention that you don't go over top with it and chip the whole tank. As sponge I used the small "sponge" in the GW blister packs.
One thing I have I learned now as the tank is 99% done: On the next (super heavy) tank (whenever that might be) I will paint the tracks before I glue them on! That would make painting the running gear and the tracks themselves a lot easier. Actually that took me long hours and I couldn't reach all parts.

So that brings me to the end of this small painting log and I have to say, I enjoyed it really much and I learned a lot. And that is definitely not the last super heavy I will paint!

Armour Painting: Stormblade Pt. III

2009-07-11T09:17:00.007+02:00

Good morning!

I had some kind of paint flash last night and began with the detail painting. The Imperial Armour: Model Masterclass was my guide yesterday and I tried out several tips and tricks there. I began with adding some rust effects, therefore I created a mix of burnt umber oil paint, a rust coloured weathering powder and thinner for washes and flicked that on the model with an old brush. But I took a lot of care that I didn't flick too much on it, as armour steel usually doesn't rust. I thought a lot about this, if I really wanted to do this, but as I think it looks cool I tried it. After I flicked the mixture on, I airbrushed thinner of the rust spots to blend them into the surrounding. That reads very easy in the IA book but turnt out to be not that easy. It diffused the spots very much.
You can see some of the spots here:

I am not that happy with the outcome at the moment and I will try to do that again or blend the spots a bit more with a brush.
Next thing I wanted to try out was how to paint the exhausts. And I generally did what I was told in the Model Masterclass. First I drybrushed the exhaust shrouds with boltgun metal and mithril silver and the exhausts with a mix of scorched brown and rust weathering powder. That looks very odd at the beginning but after a wash with burnt umber oil paint and further addition of weathering powders it turnt out to be very nice:

I painted the shrine some weeks ago. Nothing special here, just a simple paint job with metallics.
After everything was dry I aibrushed thinned chaos black on top of the exhausts to represent smoke and soot. The photo below doesn't really show this and it looks way cooler in reality but it gives an idea:

To represent leaking fuel I aibrushed thinned brown ink around the hose and the surrounding parts like the fuel drums and the hatches on the engine deck. Following that I painted a mix of brown and black ink with gloss varnish around the hose and into the recesses. The glossy finish of the inks really gives the impression of leaking oil and fuel. That really works out well.
And after I had done that I realised I made a silly mistake. As you might see the tank is glossy due to the airbrushed on clear which you need for the washing and addition of oil colours and weathering powders. In the end I will have to apply purity seal or some other kind of matt varnish. And exactly that matt varnish will destroy the glossy look of the inks around the hose and fuel drums... I really should have done that later! But I was too eager to try this. My bad.
I think I will have to repaint that at least with gloss varnish to make it glossy again.

Today I am going to paint the lenses and more of the details and maybe I have time to begin with the weathering for dust and dirt effects.
I try to keep you up to date with some pics.

Armour Painting: Stormblade Pt. II

2009-07-08T21:48:00.004+02:00

Hi,

just recently I continued with the Big One, the Stormblade. I just finished the first washing steps with oil paints (at first only black oil paint thinned with white spirit and after that with a mixture of thinned burnt umber and black). After the washing I drybrushed the whole tank with codex grey.

It is really astonishing how many rivets are on this tank! The washing takes a lot of time but I hope it pays off in the end.
Next step is a lot of detail work and the sponsons.

New painted stuff: Sternguard and Tau Broadside

2009-07-05T19:12:00.006+02:00

Hey everybody,

just a quick one this evening. I just want to show the new minis I have painted over the last weeks.
First off, I started to paint my self-made sternguard. I plundered my bitsbox and found a lot of useful stuff and I tried to make combi-meltas from bolters and meltas and that worked out so well that I assembled 4, so that I can equip all 5 sternguards with them.
Here are the first 3 including the sergeant with lightning claw:

And for the greater good I finished the first broadside to pack more punsh against the mighty tanks of the imperial guard (and land raiders of course). For the lack of shield drones I just took the upper side of gundrones. That has to suffice for the moment:

It's pretty obvious what's coming up next: the last 2 sternguards and a second broadside. But I am a little bit short of time at the moment. The usual excuses, I know...

Fire Dragons

2009-06-07T18:59:00.006+02:00

Last week I started some work on my much needed firedragons. With my FW Avatar in mind I tried two different approaches for painting heat/lava effects. On the body I started with a dark red colour (scab red) and from there in used brighter colours (red gore, blazing orange, golden yellow, sunburst yellow - all in different mixtures). On the helmet I used the opposite approach and started with sunburst yellow and darked it to rear.

Front

Rear

The effect on the helmet looks more smooth (I think the photo is not doing it justice), but painting the whole Avatar yellow will be a pain.

Not-Rep: Imperial Guard vs. Tau

2009-05-14T20:58:00.006+02:00

Hey folks,

the weekend two weeks ago was imperial guard's weekend, so we bought the codex and started playing. The new codex is great on the first look and it brings the humble guardsmen back to their deserved glory.
Before we start, I discovered some mistakes we made with the new rules, first off we forgot the distance limitation for orders and we chose leman russ squadrons and didn't hold them in formation. These are the major mistakes we made but I think both weren't really unbalancing the game too much.
Ok so let's dive right into it. First game we played was capture three objectives while deploying on the long table edges.
The Guardsmen could bring a good mixture of menpower and tanks. I don't have the exact army composition in my mind, but basically there was a company command squad with medic and vox caster, 2 troop choices with two teams and platoon command squad each (autocannons, lascannon and heavy bolter as heavy weapons) and some special weapon teams with flamers and grenade launchers, 10 deep striking kasrkin with flamer and grenade launcher, 2 lemand russes with heavy bolter sponsons and lascannon, one lemand russ exterminator with heavy bolter sponsons and one basilisk.
I played my usual tau list with XV84 Shas'O commander with melta and burst cannon, two shield drones and bodyguard with melta and plasmarifle, both deepstriking, one XV8 with twin missilepod and flamer, also deepstriking, 3 infiltratin stealths with burst cannons, 2x6 firewarriors in warfish, 16 outflanking kroot, 2 hammerheads with railgun and a skyray.

So here are some pics to give an idea what happened.

The Imperial Guardsmen deploy on their whole table edge, the company command squad in the middle, the tanks are somewhat more to the right flank.

Since the Tau deploy secondly they are bunched up in the right corner of their deployment zone, a little bit spread out to avoid the pie plate(s) especially from the basilisk.

The guardsmen advance to the objective at the containers covered by a leman russ.

But the treacherous carnivores were hidden behind and in the containers and charge a platoon and wipe them out completely in close combat. When the last guardsman falls the second platoon opens fire on the kroot: First rank FIRE! Second rank FIRE! 9 kroot die in the lasgun fire, the remaining two run away, never to be seen again.

The Tau skimmers advance to their nearest objective when suddenly heavily armoured guardsmen fall from the skies, realising that they can't do anything to harm the skimmers. In return they blaze away with smart missiles and burst cannon fire.
When the dust settled, whe kasrkin where gone.

The final push on the objective in the mechanicum building, held by the imperials. Yet. The crater in the back is all what remained of a leman russ after a solid slug of a railgun smashed through the thick front armour. It took 4 slugs to achieve that!

Two fire warriors survived the explosion of a HE round of the leman russ but the objective in sight they didn't lose their wits and ran to capture it for their commander!
They did this to honour him post mortem. He died unheroically when deep striking right on top of the leman russ. No glory to claim with such actions!

The game ended after six turns, the tau holding two and the guardsmen 1 objective.

We played a second game that day. I will write about that soon and I will add concluding thoughts on both armies.

Back in Black

2009-04-23T14:33:00.007+02:00

Hey,

Im back at last, well at least kind of. My PhD still don’t leaves me time to play/paint. So im really looking forward to my soon to come vacation where I can beat some heads in and see how much the guys have learned while I was gone. ;)

After taking a long sabbatical from blogging i though i drop back by and talk about a topic that has always been of special interest for me, volume of fire.
Since I first started to use Havoc´s with 4 heavy bolters in city fights, I was quite amazed how efficient those guys could be against all kinds of infantry.
I initially used them because I was low on high AP fire power, except for melters. Therefore I used my heavy support choices to suppress the enemy infantry, while my Chaos Marine and Choosen squads moved in with the melters and power fits to kill of the enemy heavy armor.

So I used, unaware of the coming changes, already an army composition a lot of people seem to use nowadays. If you look around you see melters everywhere and the days of double plasma teams seem to be almost over. This of course hasn’t come with out a reason, I think the two most prominent are the ever present cover saves and the raise of the Landraiders in 5th Edition.
So one could say, with the introduction of 5th Edition a lot of people have come aware of the power of volume of fire. Just to give you some numbers, all point costs set aside, imagine I would use my Havoc´s with either 4 heavy bolter of 4 lascannons.

Havoc´s against Space Marines in cover

with heavy bolters
Shots 12
Hits 8
Wounds 5,333333333
Kills 1,777777778

with lascannons
Shots 4
Hits 2,666666667
Wounds 2,222222222
Kills 1,111111111

and against Imperisl Soldiers in cover

with heavy bolters
Shots 12
Hits 8
Wounds 6,666666667
Kills 3,333333333

with lascannons
Shots 4
Hits 2,666666667
Wounds 2,222222222
Kills 1,111111111

I believe it becomes quite obvious that heavy bolters, and high volume of fire weapons per se, are the weapon of choice when confronted with infantry in cover.
The heavy bolters are more then 60% more efficient in killing MEQ´s and 300% as efficient in killing GEQ´s.
This of course assumes that the MEQ´s and GEQ´s are in cover. But come on, who is not in cover these days?

I think that covers my initial thoughts on volume of fire. Ill be back with more, when I get the time to theorycraft for my glorious return!
“For the laughing stock of the 40k Universe!”….err I mean “FOR THE WARMASTER”!

Cheers.

Armour Painting: Stormblade

2009-04-18T21:22:00.004+02:00

Good evening!

Today I started painting the Stormblade.
Base colour is again Dark Sea Grey from Tamiya, camouflage pattern is done with German Grey.
And that's how it turned out:

I have to admit I'm somewhat in love. This tank is so cool, I can't take my eyes off it...
Ahem ok, enough of my nerdy feelings!

No, I am really happy how it turned out. I have to do a bit more German grey parts on the left flank as I think that looks a bit strange. The lighter grey part in the middle is too much I think, but that is fixable with ease. Tomorrow I will do that and clean up some parts where the masking tape didn't mask well enough.
I'll keep you up to date!

Space Marines vs. Tau: How to purge Xenos

2009-04-17T18:40:00.009+02:00

Hey,

Trotzki and me had a game this week which was...pretty interesting to say the least. I wanted to see, how my Tau fare against my Marines. So Trotzki played Marines and I Tau. And that turned out on how to table Tau in 4 turns.
We played following lists:

Marines:
Librarian in Terminator Armour, Curse of the Machine Spirit, Gate of Infinity
5 Terminators, 1 assault cannon (Librarian is with them)
5 Terminators, 1 cyclone
Dreadnought, multi melta, heavy flamer, extra armour, drop pod, deathwind system, beacon
10 Marines, melta, missile launcher, drop pod, deathwind system, beacon
10 Marines, melta, missile launcher, drop pod, deathwind system, beacon
10 Marines, melta, missile launcher
Land Speeder, multi melta, heavy flamer

1500 points

Tau:
Shas'O, XV84 suit, plasma rifle, missile pod, multi tracker, stim injector, 2 shield drones
Crisis suit bodyguard, plasma rifle, missile pod, hard wired multitracker, targetting array
Crisis suit, twin linked missile pod, flamer
3 XV25 suits, burst cannons, targetting arrays
6 fire warriors, devil fish, targetting array, multitracker, smart missiles, disruption pod
6 fire warriors, devil fish, targetting array, multitracker, smart missiles, disruption pod
6 fire warriors
16 kroot
Hammerhead, rail gun, mutlitracker, target lock, smart missiles, sensor spines
Hammerhead, rail gun, mutlitracker, target lock, smart missiles, sensor spines
Sky Ray, targetting array, multi tracker, smart missiles

1498 points

The Marines would hold much in reserve, only deploying the ten lone marines. The Tau would deep strike the crisis and stealth suits, the kroot would outflank.

We rolled for 3 objectives and deploying in table quarters. The Marines have the first turn.

This is when the carnage began... and I won't go into too much detail. Just let me tell how the Tau got wiped out in a few turns.
I bunched up the tanks in my corner, the fire warriors in the ruin and forming a line in front of the tanks.

The Marines dropped 2 pods right in front of them, ten marines and the dreadnought jumped out and opened fire, destroying the first hammerhead and killing 1 fire warrior.
I then moved all my tanks 12" so that they would only be hit on sixes. I shot the two markerlights of the sky ray on the dreadnought, hitting with one. A seeker missiles shot against the thick armour of the walker and exploded harmlessly. The railgun of the hammerhead missed, of course. All smart missile systems fired at the combat squad with the missile launcher carrying marine, killing four. Great. The fire warriors shot their pulse rifles at the 5 marines with the melta, killing none. (Fire warriors suck in every single game I have played with Tau!).

Next round no reinforcements arrived. The multi melta of the cybot shot the second hammerhead into a burning wreck and the marines wiped out the fire warriors. That was the point, I realised that I couldn't win this game any more (after round two!). No real possibility of harming the dreadnought and the drop pods (they contest) and with 10 terminators inbound are not for the greater good.
The game proceeded as foreseen. The terminators with the cyclone teleported next the third drop pod in the middle of the table where the marines would capture the objective in the mechanicum building, the others with the librarian teleported next to the objective in the quarter where the ten lone marines hold their own objective to fight against the deep striking crisis and stealth suits and later on the outflanking kroot.
A few impressions:

I lost a devilfish to the multi melta of the dreadnought, the disembarked fire warriors would be useless in this position.

The Kroot walk onto the table and rapid fire at the marines, combined with plasma fire and missiles from the commander and his bodyguard the are able to kill 2 (in words: two) marines. The Kroot are then rapid fired which killed 5.

Stealth and crisis suits arrive for assistance, managing to kill 4, then the kroot charged the remaining marines, losing 2 of their number and killing one marine in return. They lost combat, didn't pass their morale check and fled.
In the background the terminators where under fire from the commander with his bodyguard, losing 3 to plasma fire. In return the didn't manage to do any harm to the Tau elites.
In the following assaults the fleeing kroot where caught up and wiped out, the same happened to the stealth suits. So I had no troops at this objective any more.

The core of the Tau hunting cadre is at the brink of destruction. Terminators teleported in to take out the remaining tanks, marines advancing to kill everything that survived the destruction of the skimmers.

So after all tanks where destroyed after round four and me having left only the crisis suits I called the game.
To be honest, this was the best game the Marines ever fought. Following their fluff, they deep struck in the heart of the enemy force and killed everything with ease. That's what I expect of Marines on a mission to purge a Xenos infestation... ;-)

Now let's come to a few thoughts in the aftermath of the battle: I think it would have been better to hold everything in reserve. In this way one would evade the inevitable first turn drop pod attack (the meltas hurt like hell) and should have, when the dice gods are not so cruel, get a round of fire. But that depends on the dices and what arrives in the second turn from reserves. When you are lucky, you get everything or nothing. I think it would be best to get nothing, so you have a higher chance that more of your army arrives together in one turn offering the chance to dictate the battle to yout gusto.
Another thought of mine was, that you deploy everything and use the kroot as shield so that at least the meltas have problems to get into half range. The kroot would be cannonfodder here, but that's what they are for. Trotzki and me will test this in time.
Another word on the Tau. Fire warriors really suck. They miss more than they hit (the NEED markerlights to do anything) and the run when shot at. Maybe a Shas'ui would help against the latter...maybe. I had 12 fire warriors as firebase in earlier games, but that was completely disappointing in regard of shooting. I think they only work with a lot of marker lights.
A different thing is that Tau have in my experience great problems in killing well armoured troops. It took 20 strengt five shots with ballistic skill 4 to kill 4 marines. That's somewhat sparse in my opinion. Wounding on threes is good, that's for sure, but good armour saves negate a lot of wounds. In my experience with Marines I always lost the most to volume of fire or in close combat and the latter is no place for Tau. So remains a high output of fire to bring power armour troops down. At that brings me back to the thoughts on how to deploy against a deep striking army like drop podding marines. When everything is bunched up in one corner and mostly kroot are lost to the first volley of fire, I think Tau would fare a lot better. But in this special case, the threat of the terminators is still imminent. I don't think This list could bring them down and jump/fly out of assault range and so out of harms way.

So I am a little bit helpless now in how to counter that kind of enemy. Hopefully Trotzki has the time to fight again soon so that I or better we can see what could be done against "Drop pod imba marines!"

But at the same time I am happy that Marines aren't that bad after all.
They will get two more drop pods in not so far future and at least two of the announced iron clad dreadnoughts will find their way to me.

Armour Painting: Leman Russ pt. II

2009-04-13T11:06:00.006+02:00

Good morning!

I managed to finish my Leman Russ at last!
As I told you I coated everything with clear to fix the oily washes. To get a better surface for drybrushing I decided it would be better to have it matt and another layer of purity seal was applied. Then I drybrushed the whole tank with codex grey.
And then it was time for the pigments. Pigments is actually something like a dry paint and you can use it straight out of the box. Another way is to use it with thinner for washes (Mig). And as you can see on the pic below, you can go WAY OVER THE TOP with pigments.

The problem is, it looks great when the thinner is still wet but as soon as it is dry, you see what you actually have done to your model. So lesser is more. And if it is too less, it's really no problem to do another layer. As pigment colours I used Dark Mud (dark), Russian Earth (very dark) and African Earth (quite bright) and I mixed them randomly on the tank. Maybe the darker colours on the lower parts and a brighter mix for the top parts. But again be careful with the amount of pigments.
As this was obviously too much, I needed to get rid of most of it now. That is easier said than done. At first I tried to brush it off but that didn't work out well as it just dispensed the pigments more evenly over the model. Then I tried pure thinner and that was better but it didn't wash off the pigments too. Ok, then, I tried a more aggressive approach and went to the bathroom and "cleaned" the whole tank under running water using an old toothbrush. And that seemed to work out pretty well. The pigments are not water soluble and so I didn't wash off all of it and it remained a thin layer in the recesses and only small amounts on the flat surfaces reproducing a rather realistic look.

Pleased with that I applied more brighter pigments again to resemble dried mud and dust. But as I have learned the hard way, I used really small amounts (when you think you just apply thinner and as good as no pigments, you are going the right way!) And as a side note: a hairdryer works wonders in shortening the drying time to under a minute. that is great for impatient people like me.
So let's take the next step and start with the mud. My tank should fight in an environment pretty much like it is described in Siege of Vraks, a war torn wasteland, shelled for decades, every landmark or vegetation is blown to dust and pulp and when it rains the rain is oily and full of grime and ash. So nothing and no one would stay clean for long especially not when driving through such a quagmire.
There is a wonderful way of making mud: liquid resin (as you might guess again from Mig). You can mix this liquid resin with the pigments for getting the colour you want and it is recommendable to also mix it with sand or something similar to get texture. And you can use plaster for more volume. It is dilutable with water so you can make a mix in any consistency you want. Again I used different amounts of the three pigment colours to get different tones of mud and I used the sand mix I usually use for the bases of my other models. When you are satisfied with your self-made mud simply brush it on with an old brush where mud would naturally collect. (When you are too unsure where this would be, I heard a great advice: go to a construction site and look at the caterpillars and the other machines one can find there as one might guess the least people have active tanks in their surrounding neighborhood.).
So here it is how it turned out with my Leman Russ.

And the finished model, with Death Korps tank commander (actually it's the driver from my stormblade which I won't use).

Now I think I am ready to paint the stormblade. This baby is already assembled and base-coated. So stay tuned.

Armour Painting: Leman Russ

2009-04-02T18:57:00.007+02:00

Hey folks,

I finally have started with the Leman Russ/Tank painting project. Last week I began with the first steps after the assembly.
I'm going to make pictures from every step and write down a little paint log and I try to keep you up to date.

After a lot of reading in different armour painting forums and a few logs and stuff for how to paint tanks more or less realistically and after watching the Mig F.A.Q. DVD of how to use pigments and weathering powders I took my spray gun and started painting.

Priming the tank with white primer was the first step. I used Army Painter White Primer (first time I used another primer than GWs and I must say GW does a better job, as the Vallejo one seems to have the habit of tightening when drying and that lead to some ugly cracks in some places. But maybe I was too impatient and should have primed a few times more often with thinner layers). After priming I airbrushed Tamiya Dark Sea Grey on the whole tank as the base colour. When the colour had completely dried I masked the parts I wanted to stay dark sea grey with masking tape for the camouflage. I decided that I would paint this tank in the “two tone block disruption pattern” camo. (You can find it in Imperial Armour Vol.5: The Siege of Vraks part I page 187). I used German Grey for the darker grey again from Tamiya.

In the next step I airbrushed several thin layers of clear (Tamiya) for applying the decals and as preparation for the washing and weathering.

I used markings for the Tiger I from Bison Decals and decals from the Forge World Krieg decal sheet. My tanks should definitely be from the Death Korps of Krieg and the German crosses are regarded as unit symbol or something like that. I haven’t come up with the background as this is in a very early state and more thought of as training exercise in painting. But I will think about it.

Back to the decals. A gloss varnish underground is the best basis for applying decals. And I used Microscale solutions as well (this is a two component system of a setting solution Micro Set and a solution for softening the decal, Micro Sol). This offers a quick and easy way to blend the decal into the painting and it really looks like painted on.

After the application of the decals I sprayed two to three thin layers of clear on the whole tank to protect the decals.

Then I pin washed thinned black oil paint around all rivets and in all recesses. Pin washing means you use a small brush and paint only around the details, you do not wash the whole model/tank. I diluted the oil paint with MIGs Thinner for Washes and repeated the washing two times.

After the black I made I mixture of black and burnt umber oil paint, diluted with thinner for washes. I painted this wash more freely around the details and let it dry for a few hours. If you want to proceed faster you can use a hairdryer, this reduces the drying time to minutes.

When everything was dry I cleaned it a little bit with pure thinner for washes. When I was happy with the washing I airbrushed clear again over the whole tank to fix the wash.

Next steps will be dry brushing and application of pigments to give a muddy and dirty appearance.
That's it so far, I think I will have time on the weekend to proceed.

Tau Sky Ray

2009-03-10T18:26:00.004+01:00

Hey folks,

the third battle tank for my expanding tau army has just left the assembly yard, this time it's a sky ray missile gunship.
But see for yourselves:

I think it fits well with the hammerhead I painted earlier. Only thing is the light blue camouflage is a little bit lighter than on the hammerhead since I had to re-do my 4-colour-mix for that and must have missed the exact ratio.

With that I can field about 1650 points of Tau goodness. So, at last, I am ready to play!

Next week I am back at university and that will put an end to this extensive painting over the last weeks.
But I will start the big project of painting tanks a little bit more realistic: a leman russ is the dummy where I try some new techniques I read about and I'm going to teach myself (e.g. airbrushing, weathering, washing, layering, blending...) and then I will finally begin with the stormblade!
You can expect pics!

Tau Stealth Marker Team and Kroot

2009-03-02T20:57:00.002+01:00

Greetings,

just a little update on what I did last week. I finished 6 Kroot and a 3 men/tau stealth marker team.

XV25 Stealth Suits

Kroot carnivore squad

The Kroot were painted quickly with foundation colours and washes, it took me about 6 hours from sprue to finished. That's really awesome and the result is ok in my eyes.

The Stealths got some more attention but I tried to paint them a little bit faster than I usually do. In this case I painted the whole miniature in shadow grey and applied my self-made black wash in the recesses and armour joints with a fine detail brush. You save a little bit time with that as you do not need to be very precise when adding the grey. I did the same with the hammerhead by the way.

Happy Birthday...

2009-02-28T17:49:00.002+01:00

...dear Trotzki!
May the guidance of the farseer fortune all your ways and slaanesh fulfill your dreams! ;-)
Cheers and happy Birthday!
Managarm

Chariot of Slaanesh

2009-02-28T09:59:00.005+01:00

While painting daemonettes I started a little sideproject and tried to build a Chariot of Slaanesh. Just from there stats and abilities these little buggers seem like true powerhouses. For this little fellow here I used bits from a High Elves Chariot, Chaos Spawns and the Daemonette box. I will do some more updates when the model is painted.

Front

Side

Heavy Fire Support: Tau Hammerhead

2009-02-22T12:30:00.005+01:00

Good morning!

I finally finished my second Hammerhead yesterday and here it is!
I put a lot of effort into it, especially the highlights along the armour segments are a little bit exhausting, but overall I think it paid off.
I am particularly happy with the decals as they aren't glossy (the trick with gloss varnish as undercoat then the decal and matt varnish as cover really works out well)

Mind the blue glowing power unit :-)

Sa'cea Hammerhead

That brings the army at about 1250 points. Next on the schedule are 6 more Kroot and a 3 men stealth marker team.

The Masque of Slaanesh

2009-02-11T18:39:00.008+01:00

What would a host of daemonettes be without their proper leader. Here you can see my try on the Masque of Slaanesh. I´m still not sure if I will ever use her in games but the model is really nice and as a hell lot of detail for being very small and fimble. In game I think the model is mostly hurt by being no Independent Character wich allows all fire being direct at her. Even with her really nice Invulnaerable save her low toughness and wounds won´t make her last for long. Playtesting will show if she is worthy of leading the dance of my daemonettes.

The Masque of Slaanesh

Cursed Eternal Dancer

Daemonettes of Slaanesh

2009-02-09T19:26:00.008+01:00

Somewhere on my shelf my poor Eldar lament my deep fall into the evil works of chaos .... but who cares about these whiny space elves - no just kidding. But I really don´t think they would welcome my effort to buy shiny new models of there dead enemy Slaanesh, the Dark Prince, She Who Thirsts and all the other names he/she/it is called. To add some number to my mainly shooty Tzeentch force I did some majot investment in 30 fancy space bitches on crack of wich I already painted 20. I´m sorry for the blurry pictures but my cameras macro is a little overstrained with pictures of more than one model.

Daemonettes of Slaanesh
The Parade of Excess

To add some speed and really hard hitting power to my list I decided to treat myself with my first cavalary unit - the Fiends of Slaanesh. I glued them together just yesterday and there is still alot of work to be done on them. I´m a little disappointed with lack of poseson the model that gives the unit a very similar look. With the green stuff dried I now can start to to some corrections on joints and hopefully the model will not just fall apart when I start to scrap it with my carpet cutter.

Expect to see a pic of the first painted one after I finished the last 10 demonettes.

Tau XV84 Commander

2009-02-09T16:44:00.005+01:00

Here we go, my latest addition to my expanding Tau army: the XV84 Crisis suit with marker light.

Yeah, Forge World miniatures....that's something special....you get addicted to it once you have your first models.
I think these suits look way better than the ones from GW, much more hulking and somewhat threatening and you can pose them more freely. I thought a lot about which pose I wanted to have him and I decided to let him jump away from the enemy and blasting away with his burst cannon. (I was a little bit inspired by the Tau commander in DoW, when he makes this kind of jump).
The weapons are both magnetized so I can switch between all loadouts I want.

...and here is why I have so much time for painting at the moment:

Shas'El in command

2009-02-06T16:53:00.003+01:00

Hey all,

as promised here is my new addition to my Tau army: A Shas'El commander in XV8 crisis suit, armed with cyclic ion blaster and missile pod.

The base he is standing on is from Micro Art Studio; they have a great line of all different kind of bases. You can find their shop right here.

At last back to war

2009-02-01T19:57:00.008+01:00

Hi guys!

After a long slumber deep in the chapter vaults, I have awoken once again....
No ok, the thing between war games called life hold me off posting here for far too long, but now I am back with some new W40k goodness. The exchange rates from British pounds to Euro were so great recently that I couldn't help myself and ordered something really big. Just have a look at what's coming up soon (well, not that soon I have to admit).

If you see this coming.... You better go and find some cover!

The Death Korps of Krieg Arkurion pattern Stormblade!
As you can see here, it is not yet fully assembled and a few parts are not glued in place for simplifying the painting. I am planning to use my new airbrush for the camouflage (mostly grey colours) and I am going to try some of the imo great tips and tricks from the Imperial Armour Model Masterclass book.

Sadly this baby needs to be pushed a little bit back on the schedule since I don't have my airbrush here with me.
At the moment I am working on two Tau battlesuits (one Forge World XV84 and an ordinary XV8 commander). Pics to follow.

Two hours of painting: Kroot

2008-09-19T10:20:00.003+02:00

Hi guys,

Only two words: Foundation. Washes.
Those colours are absolutely amazing and are a great and easy way of getting your miniatures painted quickly with a nice outcome. I never saw a possibility for using the washes with my marines or the fire warriors as I think the best way to use is with more organic structures like Trotzki had that with his daemons. And at the moment I don't want to start a completely new army and so I decided to get myself some kroot mercenaries for the Tau and I wanted to paint something really quickly and get the finished models as soon as possible without compromising the quality of the paintjob.

I used Knarloc green as base colour, graveyard earth for the "clothes", snakebite leather, scorched brown and bleached bone for the other brown parts and of course boltgun metal for the gun. I painted all that first and then washed the green and brown parts with devlan mud und the metal parts with badab black. And thats it. Nice methinks.

Land Raider WIP....finished

2008-09-17T13:17:00.002+02:00

Here it is, my 2nd Land Raider. Not much to say about it except that I am pleased with it and the forge world doors are really great.
Let's see when the 3rd one will arrive....the doors are already here ;-)

Foul xenos, heretics and mutants beware!

Tons of Bits ... (WIP Jetbike Autarch)

2008-09-16T19:32:00.005+02:00

Hi guys,

after doing a little check list on all my Eldar bits lying around, I stumbled over an old Jetbike I didn´t use for my Spears Of Khaine (GW´s only selling those in three-bike boxes with a maximum squad size of the being 5... nice thing is you also get the whole equipment for 3 Guardian Jetbikes). First idea was a jetbike farseer but those really need a seer council of expensiveness to be any effective, so I decieded to add a second autarch to my army. In addition to the bike I used bits from several boxes : Head and torso are both from a Dire Avenger exarch ( I especially like the head from this box more than the "omg-screaming"-one from GW´s autarch on bike box), while legs and arms are from the shining spears exarch (with the niffty one-hand control I didn´t use for my Spears because I had already glued the bike handles ...). The pseudomandiblasters at the side of the autarchs head are the spiky tops of the "flag mast" that was supposed to be added to the backward part of the Guardian Jetbikes. The two banners at the bikes backside are the alternative backpack for the Warpjump-Autarch. First coloring of the model is now finished but still needs a little trimming, especially at the bike, and a fitting base...

Land Raider WIP

2008-09-13T00:31:00.004+02:00

Good evening,

I found some time to continue my Land Raider this evening and just finished painting the doors and glued the lascannon turrets in place. Here's how it turned out:

It is still work to do here. Painting accents, details, lights and so on. And I think I am going to make some banners and the like from the Black Templar upgrade sprue on it.
So that's it for tonight.

Family Photo

2008-08-27T19:14:00.002+02:00

With the first batch of demons painted I think its time for a little family photo ...

The finished Soul Grinder

2008-08-27T18:19:00.004+02:00

Hi folks,

just want to post some pics of the finished soul grinder. Hard to take nice photos of such a big model - it looks a lot darker in reality ... anyway - have a look :

Front

Back

Size Comparison

Soulgrinder WIP

2008-08-22T16:39:00.006+02:00

Hi folks,

so here is the first little upgrade on my unfinished Tzeentch-Soulgrinder. Starting with the boring part : the legs. Not much of special interest here. I mainly used Boltgun Metal with Brazen Brass for the legs, while the body is drybrushed with Boltgun Metal and Codex Grey. What still needs to be done is some further darkening down the boltgun metal (still a little to shiny) and I still have no idea for the leg armor plates on the last pairs. First idea was some Tzeentch-Symbol... but due to the ultimate lack of any freehand painting skill I´m still stuck with black plates. As I said otherwise there is not much special here...

Now the more interesting upper part: Here you have the very detailed and organic part of the Grinder. Starting with thin layer of Mordian blue I painted the whole skinny partof the model. Next another thin layer of Space Wolves Grey + Mordian Blue was added. At last pure Space Wolves Grey was used as on the GW studio model. To give it a tzeentchy blue-purple look I now first washed the model with Asurmen Blue and after drying with Baal Red. As you can see this lead to some nice blending effects with wich I´m really pleased. I also started with the details on the model but this is still almost 99% work in progress.

You just have to love this model .... I really think this is one of the best GW has ever done ....

Land Raider, a work in progress

2008-08-21T21:07:00.002+02:00

With the new Codex: Space Marines lurking behind the next corner, I decided to start painting a new Land Raider for my Marines. Obviously.
Alright, that's the best moment to start a little WIP report and I try to capture the most steps with my camera. I will give a few explanations on which colours I use, which technique and so on.
So let's dive right into it.
After I cleaned everything up, primed all interior parts and painted said interior, I assembled most of the tank. Sadly I didn't make pictures of the inside. But as I think no one will take a too good look into the tank, this is only done superficially. I painted it with a dark grey, darker than cold grey (Vallejo Game Color), then drybrushed it with a lighter tone of grey and painted the screens of the monitors and cogitators with mostly red and blue (scab red from vallejo with parts in blood red from GW, enchanted blue with parts in ice blue, both GW). The mechanical parts in the back I simply drybrushed with boltgun metal and brazen brass (sadly GW took that color out of the program, I don't know why, but that color was great)

Ok, now to the parts you can actually see. The first thing I did was painting the tracks with boltgun metal. After that I used my ink mix of chaos black with a huge portion of water and the Vallejo Color Thinner. I think that comes next to the new washes from GW.
The next step was cleaning up the mess I did with the boltgun metal, so I overpainted the parts I wanted black with, you can imagine, chaos black.
After that I drybrushed the whole tank with a mix of chaos black and cold grey. That's the colour mix I use for all accents on my marines.
I drybrushed it again with bestial brown, but only on the lower parts. Followed by another drybrushing step with snakebite leather. But beware this colour is very bright and so I just used it on a few parts and only a little bit.
Last step was drybrushing with cold grey for a more dusty look and to soften up the brown.

The picture shows everything very bright but in reality it is a bit darker. But I wanted the impression of a tank rolling through a war torn environment, through ruined cities and the like and I guess there is a lot of dust and dirt...
A few sprinkles of boltgun metal for little damages and I think I am done with the first round of wheathering for now.

Next I am going to paint the doors. I am still undecided whether to paint it in NMM style or not. At the moment I am tending to metallics.
Ok that's it for this time.
To be continued soon.

Tau Devilfish: Straight from the painting table...

2008-08-19T20:30:00.005+02:00

Just a little update from my Tau. The second Devilfish for my slowly expanding Tau army just left the production halls...ahem my painting table.
More (and nicer) pics are due to follow when I am done with the passengers. Just two to go.
That's it. Hope they see some action soon.

Something small from poland

2008-08-12T18:02:00.012+02:00

Hi guys,

anyone ever noticed the small company Micro Art Studios ? They are making gorgeous resin bases for Warhammer and Warhammer 40k.

www.microartstudio.com/en/

With my shiny new Avatar en route, I decieded to base him on one of their temple line.

As you can see the two 60mm temple bases are really detailled and one of them will make a great addition to the big Forgeworld model. I also added two 40mm skull bases. One of them will serve as base for the humble skulltaker while the other one may serve as a Khorne demon prince resting place. With this shipment I also ordered some ruined building bases for Managarm. Check them out :

Here you can see the really nice wanna be terminator 40mm bases. Six of them were in the order and none of them looks like another. I think this is quite remarking as other bought bases quickly work against the uniquness of the models.

The detail on the big 60mm base is also remarkable and will make great ground for a dreadnought.

...of things to come...

2008-08-12T15:59:00.004+02:00

Hey folks,

I wanted to give a short preview of those things to come in near future. Trotzki and I ordered a few things from Forge World to "embellish" our armies.
This stuff is really really awesome and even with the neat price it is worth the money. Especially with the strong Euro at the moment :-) it is more affordable.
So here we go:
The Eldar Avatar of Kaela Mensha Khaine.
Absolutely amazing! As you can imagine, definitely no comparison to the GW model. This guy is an appropriate representation of his rules! The wip firewarrior is for size comparison...

As promised some time ago the FW pimped Terminators are going to hit my shelf and hopefully the battlefield. And with the rumoured new rules for storm shields that´s going to be a viable unit. Let´s see if I can do it this year. But that´s definitely getting a WIP paint log! The shields are really great and finely detailled and in addition with the shoulder pads I am looking forward to painting this terminator assault squad.

And last but not least two sets of Land Raider doors. As I am planning to paint at least two more Land Raiders I thought it would be great to get those nice doors to make them look even better. At the moment I am planning doing a Land Raider after I completed my first chunk of the Tau army. Maybe I will make a paint log as well.

Something big is coming ...

2008-08-06T18:56:00.007+02:00

A little update on my painted models. This week I finished my 3 Screamers of Tzeentch or as many people call them "Flying Meltabombs". I was a little disappointed with the lack of detail on the models so I tried some new techniques with blending colours into each other. It may not be perfect but I´m pleased with the outcome. Gamewise I´m still not really convinced of their usefulness. They may cost not much but killing 3 T4 models isn´t that much of a task. I really think they can bring down any slow moving tank with one warp powered bite, but getting them near the tank will prove complicated. In the only 5th Ed. testgame I had until now (vs. Eldar) they really had problems catching Serpents and even if they managed they where outmanouvered (cursed 6s to hit).

Screamers of Tzeentch
Warpborne Tankwreckers

With my Screamers finished I now feel free to start the "big guy" of any well organized chaos demon army. My sweet little soul grinder is ready to be started and after 2 hours of cleaning the parts up, I started to glue together the first bits. You really have to be impressed with the size of this thing.... poor little guardian... The upper body won´t be glued to the legs, because the modles parts fit really well (shiny new GW models) and it will be easy to take the body up and leave the legs as wrecked Soul Grinder. More pics while I´m painting ....

One bad day for a whiny little space elf ...

Take cover !

2008-07-20T17:56:00.004+02:00

With the 5th edition take off the GW craters are back in the stores. For only 15€ you can get yourself a whole lot of terrain. Check the pictures below for some size comparison. You can easily fit whole squads inside and they are pretty detailed for the price. After priming and some drybrushing they will really make nice and detailed terrain.

More Warpstuff...

2008-07-20T16:06:00.013+02:00

Hi guys,

after some technical problem with my digicam I´m back to post the arrivals in my demon army now. As I told you my army is supposed to be mainly focused on Tzeentch-shooty-goodness. So I decieded to treat myself with the ultimate shooty chicken - the Greater Demon of Tzeentch. This unit comes with an really hefty price tag and it will explode to over 300 points when gifted with We Are Legion, Master of Sorcery and Breath of Chaos. The first testgames will show if these little upgrades are really necessary. With build in Demonic Gaze, Bolt of Tzeentch, Wings and an uber-invulnerable save this should be a flexible Jack-of-all-trades that can shoot the hell out of everything and then mop it up after charging. I know that most people favour the cheaper herolds but if not only for fluff reasons a greater demon should be part of any demonic army.

Lord of Change
Xitzu´Bitantzel

On the lower picture you can see my first tries with the new GW-washes. The chickens tabard was just painted with one thin layer of space wolves grey and then washed with Asurmen Blue. I think the soft shading is really impressing and I am looking forward to paint more models with them.

As a true follower of Tzeentch I also got myself some horrors. 2x5 with bolt is really a lot of firepower for such a small unit. I also equipped one unit with an icon because knowing exactly where you deep strike is really something when you are dealling with flamers (the Tzeentchy ones). 10 more and will be pleased with my troop selection.

The Pinkmob
Giggeling minions of Tzeentch

If it comes to suicide units the flamers really are one hell of a "deepstrike and flame away" unit. Aggressive deppstriking is the way to go with those and in the first games it worked quiet well. And 3 are inexpensive enough to don´t really care about the lose. On the picture below you can also see my model for the changeling (of course he is normally with his horrors) which I also used as a herold of Tzeentch in some games.

The Changeling and Flamers
Cohorts of Tzeentch

The last point is a little heretical act against my master Tzeentch... because I like the model and a little more headbashing competence for my army would be great. I aquired myself the Skulltaker of Khorne. He hasn´t seen any games until now, because he is missing his bloodletter company. Hopefully he can lend the poor minions of Tzeentch a hand when they are getting there tentacles bashed in melee.

Uzul the Skulltaker

Herold of Khorne

ARMY SHOWCASE: Sons of Sigismund

2008-07-16T17:34:00.005+02:00

Master of Sanctity Torvald

Torvald is the spiritual leader of the Sons. His undying dedication to his office and his martial prowess is always a great inspiration for all battle brothers as he crushes the Emperors and mankinds foes mercilessly under his mastercrafted thunderhammer. His relentless faith and iron will let him survive against the vilest enemies the Sons encountered and he survived badly wounded a desperate fight against the Avatar of Kaela Mensha Khaine.

Ok, so much to the fluff for him...
That is one of my favorite models in the range of citadel miniatures. I just replaced the storm bolter with a thunder hammer from the assault terminator sprue and gave him a shoulder pad from forgeworld.
This model is my second approach to non-metallic-metal (golden parts and chains, not the crozius and the hammer) and I am very pleased with it. It takes a little bit more time to paint it that way, but the outcome justifies the effort.
I am not always a fan of NMM as it often looks very much like comic-style but I wanted to try it out and so far I like it with this model. The models I painted after this were painted with metallics (e.g. Hermann) but it is likely I will do NMM again.