Saturday, November 27, 2010

Ding!!! 1850

Well I added 2 ravagers, a raider and 10 more kabalite warriors over the last few days. This fills out my heavy support for now, and gives me a bit more flying screen in the troop department. While I haven't even broken the shrink wrap on them yet I should have them all up to match the rest of the army by the end of the week. If good 'ol Timmy can get his missions cleaned up I MIGHT go play with them on the 11th. More pics soon!

Monday, November 22, 2010

Made it to 1500!!

Just pointed up what I have. I am at the 1500pt limit now. Is the list viable? not sure. There are a lot of things I want to shuffle and do more testing on. I most certainly need more heavies and more pain for the portal group. Let me explain on a list breakdown here....

HQ, I own three, and really four if you count my conversion of Lelith Hesperax to Lady Malys being used as either or....I can field an Archon and Urien Rakarth. If I use Rakarth as an Ancient Haemonculus that would be 5 possibilities.

For Elite...well no models yet. I WANT to do a four blaster True Born squad, and I will likely convert the Wyches I have into bloodbrides as a retinue for Malys of Lelith to reinforce the portal assault.

I have 3 squads of ten warriors, each with a blaster and darklance. Eventually this will be 2 20 man squads with 2 lances each, and a third in a raider as escort for the archon. I plan on doing about 3x10 wrack squads in raiders as well in order to take over/supplement for the warriors.

I have 2x 6 man reaver squads with maxed caltrops and blasters....I may switch SOME of the blasters for heat lances, but not likely. More likely these guys will grow to 3x10 man squads for full on drive-by pimping.

The heavy support slot is another weak spot for me. Right now I have a basic triple lance ravager. This WILL change as I intend to add on parasite and one talos for the portal bomb.

With the addition of the Talos and Chronos I would be looking at about 1750 total. I think this is a solid core to work with. What say you?

Friday, November 19, 2010

Round 2 is in

Ok, I went to the shop today and picked up Urien Rakarth  a Ravager and the webway portal template to add to my forces. I would have bought all three ravagers, but the store didn't get enough to cover it's holds so I had to settle for a single.

Painting is coming along well. I have settled on my hair and symbol colors with Vallejo Model color Lime green. I have all the hair and tassles painted on the foot models now, so things are beginning to look more like a finished force. I have to do all the metals, and the bone details on the models, then clean them up to finish.

I also picked up witchfate tor, this will actually give me a full table of fantasy terrain, with a few options to spice things up.

*edit: After priming all the pieces of Witchfate Tor I went to look at the directions, and I am missing two wall segments, and have an extra of another.....great.....well I guess I'm on the phone with GW on Monday...

Wednesday, November 17, 2010

Pix if the basics (sort of)

 Well here is a picture of a wych and warrior. This should give you an idea of where I am headed with the paint. Sorry for the crap quality, all I have to work with is my iphone right now....

Keep in mind these are but 2 of 50....all of them are up to this standard, and I have only been at this for two weeks. While it doesn't match up to a hobby fatwa...im still cranking these out as quick as I can.

Tuesday, November 16, 2010

And MORE painting

Ok, I now have 30 Kabalite warriors, 10 Wyches, 2 Raiders with crew, and 12 Jetbikes all base-coated and the first layer of dry-brushed color applied. Progress is slow, but progress it is. I will have a few WIP pictures up tomorrow for you.

Tuesday, November 9, 2010

Update DE: paint

I decided on a scheme for the bases: Winter tundra. It is a little more work with the snow but it looks good and pops for color. Here is an example

I have all of the models for wave one in primer now, and I have started color blocking on the raider. My final color scheme is a medium brown base color for the armor plating. Specifically Vallejo model color mahogany sand. The metals will be Vallejo Model Brassy Brass with a dark wash. I plan on using Citadel foundation Deneb Stone as a second color and a third trim color will be an acid green that I have yet to pick out. More to come as I finish models.

Progress report : DE

Well I am underway. I have my first raider assembled and in primer. I also have 6 reavers built and in primer. I have 10 Wyches built and waiting on primer.

Today I start the slow process of finishing assembly on the last six reaver bikes. These things look awesome, but have a ton of tiny little fiddly bits to them. This week sees the addition of a squad of Kabaklite warriors and the start of a small trueborn unit. Next week I will add more raiders and ravagers to the list.

Friday, November 5, 2010

WOW that's a LOT of Dark Eldar...


This is the stack of incoming Dark Eldar at my local shop.....WOW thats a lot of figs....especially when you consider all but a few of those boxes were already spoken for.....

Then there is my stack....
And Drew's.....
And neither of us has a legal army in these things yet.....WOW....

Now If I can just get GW to make plastic Wrack models.....

Kabal of the Sundered Storm

Well I have the Dark Eldar Codex in my grubby hands. My final list is turning out to be a far cry from where I started.

Lady Malys
Urien Rakarth

6 trueborn in a raider with flicker fields and night shields 3 blasters and 2 dark lances

9 Wyches in a raider with flicker fields and nightshields

10 Kabalite Warriors with a blaster and Darklance

10 Wracks with a liquifer gun
10 Wracks with a liquifer gun
10 Wracks with a liqufer gun

2x 6 Reaver Jetbikes with 2 blasters and 2 cluster caltrops

Ravager with flickerfields and night shields

2x Chronos Parasite engines with spirit vortex

That is it at 1850, but for 1500 point games I lose Lady Malys and one unit of Wracks. The list uses shock tactics to keep people off my pain engines until turn two and screen the Kabalite warriors that will camp the home objective in cover. The Wracks all move up through cover to get to the forward objectives, supported by the Chronos engines. They will then hunker down and make you come and get them. The Bikes are harrassers and can kill transports in a pinch. Really The list focuses on pain tokens. Rakarth lets d3 units start with them and I intend for two of those to be the wytches and warriors. The wracks start with them, and the pain engines generate more to add to the surrounding units. Lady Malys allows me to redploy d3 units at the beginning of the game. Tricksey and unforgiving but fun to play.

Thursday, November 4, 2010

Volscani 4th Vs Blood Angels Battle Report

I managed to get a rare mid week game in last night against my good friend ElPee, Parker and his blood angels. We decided that since we had painted armies and terrain (and we haven't done one in eons) that we should do a battle report on our game. Now Parker and I are usually up for some oddball stuff to make the game interesting. Since most of the terrain on hand was city ruins, I dug out "Ye Olde Cities O' Death" from the books and we played a 5th edition city fight.

 Right Flank
Center
LeftFlank


The mission was to hold as many ruins as we could. In the original game this would have been any unit, but since we are in a 5th edition world only our "troops" could hold. We had 10 buildings and the bridge out for a total of 11 possible scoring points.  We decided on stratagems as follows, then deployed.

Shadowvast: Booby traps, munitions cache, and siege shells
ElPee: Combat Engineers, tank traps(grrr), and a demolition charge

I took a fairly straightforward 2000 point guard army as follows:

Regimental command, autocannon, Meltagun plasmagun, chimera
10 man psyker battle squad in chimera
3x Scout Sentinels with Autocannons
Vendetta
2x 10man Veteran squad with 3 plasma in chimera
10 man veteran squad with 3 meltas in chimera
2x Leman Russ Demolishers
2x Medusa with Cammo netting (which I forgot)
Manticore

ElPee's Blood Angels looked like this
Epistolary Librarian, Jump Pack, using shield and lance
10 man assault squad with 2 melta guns an infernus pistol and powerfist
10 man assault squad with flamer, infernis pistol and powerfist
10 man tactical with flamer and rocket launcher in a rhino
2x annihilator predators
3x typhoon landspeeders
10 terminators with cyclone missile launcher

So with me deployed and stratagems placed, the board looked like this:
Those markers are my booby traps
So after ElPee decides to reserve everything I roll out to start taking a few buildings....but wait he has a surprise for me....
See those stone barricades? Yeah, those are tank traps, and they are impassible terrain to vehicles.....yeah good times....he basically locked me into my deployment and forced me to split through difficult terrain on my flanks with my vehicles...cagey buddy, cagey....

So after two turns of slogging through the ruins parker decided to show up and fight. He got about half his army, and deployed on my right flank, here:
Things would get crazy from here. My psyker battle squad immobilized itself blocking my exit on the left flank, and forcing me to just push into the marines on the right....can you see why that cammo netting I forgot about would have been handy here?

I moved up in the middle to get my command squad into the tower in front of me and move some troops into buildings. ElPee moved up on that single flank while he waited for those reserves and his HQ to join the fight. His tactical squad stayed in the rhino for now, content to snipe at my Medusas with their rocket launcher. That rocket launcher and those predators would prove fatal to the twin medusas , but that opened a path for my tansports to make a run through the building and take up positions to defend it.
This also allows a really good view of the blasted tank traps I was talking about....grrrrr! I moved my men out on foot to start taking ruins for end game results at this point. The squad on the ground behind the tower was moving to the left towards the manufactorum to the left of the picture. Right about turn 4 things got interesting though.....
The blood angels command joined the party, and downed a demolisher and the vendetta over the next two turns. I had hit them with my psyker battle squad's weaken resolve power to make them leadership 2 when they showed up, but I could not inflict that last wound I needed to force a test on them, so this was the result.

The right flank was a firestorm the whole game with my chimeras making a wall to stop the terminators getting too far into the terrain. I was hoping to knock the storage tanks down on their heads but failed to make that happen twice, and I didn't get the third chance. Elpee played his trump cards on turn 4. In the picture above you can see the crater from him dropping a building down (fortunately I wasn't in it) and then making craters out of my medusas over on the right. He was pressing in HARD on that right flank with the remains of his central assault squad. I used every gun left on that flank and finally killed the powerfist sergeant, but that left those terminators all but ignored until now....uh oh!
As you can see that sergeant about gave me a heart attack! Those terminators were really in my grill on turn 5. After 6 turns of blasting at each other the game ended with Elpee holding the storage tanks, bridge and processing plant, and me holding one manufactorum tower and a cathedral and contesting the second manufatorum. End result 2-2 tie. Awesome game against an awesome opponent. Having painted armies and terrain really made me feel like I was down in the action, looking through windows and doors for fire lanes and cover.

I cannot say enough how much good looking terrain and armies can enhance a great game. All in all we played this game for nearly 4 hours. It got bogged down for rules from cities of death converting to 5th edition, and pictures, but that didn't slow down our good time. Battles like this don't come along every day....just every time I play a game with a good friend like ElPee! And I want a rematch on this one!!