And on to the next. Adepticon 2015

AND

Ok, we are doing Eldar this year to avoid 5 years in a row of imperials....Bleh boring! So now We need a display. I have some CRAZY ideas that should make for an insane display! I am starting fromt he above art from the Eldar codex (thanks GW) and working toward the actual spaces looking similar to this.

Now I HAVE to twist it into a four army display and throw in my own touch....

The dust settles, and the Knights are still standing!

Boltgun's Battle 7 is over and now that I have had a chance to reflect on the event, my list and the details of the day, I can honestly say it was another awesome tournament!

I went into this year not having any pre conceived notions of what I would face across the tables. 7th edition is so wide open in army creation, but Boltgun's is VERY restrictive. Here are the rules used to streamline and limit the cheddar....

1750 Warhammer 40k 7th ed Tournament
Battle-forged Armies only, 30 players
1 Combined Arms Detachment(Mandatory) + 1 Allied Detachment Allowed(Optional), 40k Dataslate Formations Allowed (Optional)
Must bring 3 tactical objectives
12 Die Warp Charge Cap
3 Rounds 2.5 hours each
Tabling does not equal auto win.

There were 6 test scenarios released in the months leading up to the event, and three of them were chosen, so we knew going in what we might face for missions. I have a bit of an issue here, but I will get to that in a bit. We are limited to 30 players due to venue. The shop we played at Game Table Adventures, only has space for 15 tables, so 30 is the limit. 

I got there about 15 minutes early, and good thing to as parking was hard to get this year. I set up and took a few minutes l\to look around at the armies that were displayed at that point. I remember 3 Necron, 2 Dark Eldar, at least two Tyranid, and a Grey Knights army from that point. Table assignments were put up on Warscore 30 minutes before the round start so my first opponent and I got to our table and got to it. 

Round 1 I played Matt Warren. I have never met Matt, and he says he has only been playing for a few years, but he shows some skill in using the army he had. I didn't get a copy of his list, but he was using the Grey Knights detachment from their codex.  The objectives were set along a diagonal line from lone corner to the other space relatively evenly over the board. The mission used the Vanguard Strike deployment, with all the objectives in no-mans land in between. Matt set up first, so I just spread my knights out to have one in front of each objective and then infiltrated onto oall three objectives with my assassins. Remember I mentioned that I had a issue with the missions? This is it, right here. The objectives were worth two points a piece, and were scored for me at the end of each of my turns.....so when I seized on him, and started shooting.....yeah, I ended the first turn 8 points up, including first blood....all before he could act. It went downhill for him from their. His reserves, worth over half his points refused to show up, more than 1 unit a turn, and I just stood on the objectives for three turns killing each unit as they came on the board. I had him tabled except for his flyer at the top of turn 3, where he conceded. The Points stood at 29 to nil after 2 1/2 turns. 

This wasn't an easy game for Matt. My army was something he was NOT prepared for, and complicated by the scenario allowing me to just run away with the VP, it was a serious trouncing. I really was starting to feel dirty about my list at that point. Win for the Knights, and putting me right to the top of the bracket with near maxed points round 1. 

Joe's Eldar beat up on Jeremy's Wolves

 
.In round 2 I pulled Officer Joe Elverson and his Eldar. I will start right now saying Jow took the overall winner this year, and out game was seriously hard fought. It had the same issues that we had in round 1, but now two objectives, worth 3 each turn.....sigh. Table quarter deployment with objectives outside our home quarter but in our table side meant two markers about 14 inches apart near the center of the table. I was thinking hey, I only have 7 models, so I need to keep this close to have less realestate to cover.....mistake! It was eldar! Now we set up, and Joe was going first. He set up aggressively with three Vaul's wrath batteries just daring me to come to the objective under their nose, and three wave serpents and two units of bikes backed up by warpspiders gunning for my side of the table. I seized on Joe, and managed to drop some damage on him but failed to do serious damage to him thanks to good Jink rolls. This turned into my worst nightmare of a mission as the way the objectives are scored for each player at the end of their player turn meant that Joe could sit on his objective, and send on unit of bikes, or a serpent over and hold my objective through the objective secured rule. This meant that even though I would kill the unit he sent over, he was scoring 6 points a turn plus kills, I was only getting 3 a turn plus kills for 4 turns. Sigh...I lost this one by scenario, but in the end he had about 6 models left on the board. I had one knight and one assassin left, covering both objectives, but too little too late. Joe won 19 me to 35 Joe. If those objectives were worth one each I would have won on number of kills despite losing first blood to him. 

Round three sees me back at the middle tables playing Ryan Lafferty and his Blood Angels. He has been playing for a few months due to real life conflicts, and his list shows that. It is a very 6th edition style list with two assault squads in rhinos, some termies in a landraider and camo cloak scouts. Hammer and anvil deployment with only a single objective dead center of the table....in a ruin....Now he had multiple chances to stilt this in his favor right from the start, but didn't take the chances...he infiltrated his scouts, but not onto the objective, and didn't take the chance to deepstrike his landraider right onto it either. Now this objective is worth 6 points a turn now...I infiltrate one assassin into the ruin, right onto the objective. Two others were lined up out of LOS right around the corner, and the 4th was on top of my voidshield generator with a commanding view over the roof-line of the building. The knights started in cover behind the building ready to push up. I failed to seize for the first time all day, but it didn't matter. He grabbed first-blood from the assassin on the objective, but failed to get onto it himself. On my half of the turn, the culexus moved up to grab the objective marker while the knight moved up and dropped two transports and one of his units. The rest was just him grinding to dust against the knights. I managed to kill the land raider way over in his backfield so the terminators had to walk into my guns. End of hammer worries....This was another mission where I felt really badly for my opponent. He had the tools to handle me if  he played aggressively to the mission, but he forgot the Objective secured rule....I ended this round at 31-2. 

Yeah the objective is in that ruin behind the knights....

So I ended the day with three great games, and a couple of new friends. We all went to get dinner afterwords and close down the local city barbecue restaurant. I ended 8th over all with some really good scores. Losing to Joe really was the match of the day, as had I won, even in a tight game, I could have taken the over all from him!

Place	Name	Army	Paint	Sports	Battle	Total
1	Joe Elverson	Eldar	22	33	37	92
2	Jesse Mellett	Eldar	14	39	35	88
3	David Semons	Necrons	12	36	38	86
4	Orion Barrett	Tyrannids	22	36	27	85
5	Jeremy McClung	Space Wolves	22	39	23	84
6	D.J. Kinzelman	Dark Angels	22	33	29	84
7	Austin Stewart	Eldar	16	33	34	83
8	Larry Curtiss	Imperial Knights	22	30	31	83
9	Sean Armstrong	Dark Eldar	18	30	30	78
10	Nick Mills	Dark Angels	20	36	21	77
11	James Clifford	Orks	18	36	22	76
12	Zach Musselman		16	33	27	76
13	Marcus Baxley	Astra Militarum	22	33	21	76
14	John Blowers	Grey Knights	14	30	32	76
15	Doug Culver	Space Wolf	16	30	30	76
16	Aaron Schaefer	Tau	18	30	28	76
17	Ken Summers	Astra Militarum	16	33	23	72
18	Steve Parello (Ringer)	Daemons	12	30	29	71
19	John Cocumelli	Militarum Tempestus	22	33	15	70
20	Nathan Montgomery	Khorne Berzerkers	14	30	23	67
21	Matt Warren	Grey Knights	6	36	23	65
22	John Wolf	Astra Militarum	14	33	17	64
23	Ryan Lafferty	Blood Angels	4	36	23	63
24	Gabe Lawrence	Dark Angels	2	30	28	60
25	Nate Kline	Astra Militarum	8	30	22	60
26	Chris O'Reilly	Necrons	8	33	17	58
27	Joseph Milligan	Salamanders	0	30	28	58
27	Nate Good	Blood Angels	0	30	28	58
29	Berkley Norman	Astra Militarum	0	33	16	49
30	Jason Garner	Daemons	0	33	15	48

Paint scores maxed at 22, Battle at 39, and Sports at 39. As you can see the guys I beat weren't happy about how badly it went down. Allan's sports system is set up on what amounts to a 1, 2, 3 system, where you only get a single maxed score to hand out, but you can give the others a 2. Looks like I wasn't nice enough letting them redo moves and pointing out mistakes letting them put models in other places. I guess people are still salty about the knights in general being so good. As you can see, our local Meta game is NOT aligning with what the internet would have you believe are top armies. 

To sum up this wall of text, it was a good day, but the top players saw the flaws in the scoring system before they ever showed up and built armies to capitalize on speed over durability. Those armies were able to "alpha strike" on the objectives and continue to feed expendable or very durable fast moving units onto them to keep them secured. This allowed them to push up a significant lead in the first few turns to the point it was almost impossible to catchup if you weren't starting first. Good day, a few lessons learned, awesome games and a good time yet again with Boltgun's battle 7.

Boltgun's Battle 42 hours and counting!

Here they are, all painted and displayed. I am EXCITED to get back to Boltgun's this year. ALWAYS the best company and a hell of a day!

EVILution of a warlord....

Now in Castigstor form!!

Paint in progress of course! That said look out Boltgun players, he's list approved and incoming!

Boltgun's Battle incoming 9.20.14

So I have been watching the facebook page for Boltgun's tournament coming up on the 20th. The guys I mentioned below are starting a kind of grudge match hobby challenge over there. Here are the latest pics....

From Jeremy McClung:

*** Breaking News***

“Eldar Flee to Safety of the Webway as the Vlka Fenryka Make Planetfall”

In other news:
• Planetary Governor expresses gratitude, orders parade in capital

• Craftworld council members issue surprise ruling demanding Farseer Elvr’son choose a new Path after failing to see events coming

• Farseer cites 'Runic' interference, appeals verdict claiming situation can still be salvaged

Full news at end of cycle.

And in response from Joe Elverson:

Well I have one for BOTH of ya!

Hell Talon, just a quick update

I have had a bit of time over the last couple of days to rough in the fixes for the bad gap and alignment issues on the Hell Talon and start on the color base for the paint. The paint is rather ambitious, and I'm not sure how the final product will come out, but in theory it should look really nice.For now this thing is VERY work in progress.

Here is the gap under the fuselage, near the engines. I have it roughed in now, and I will clean it up with liquid greenstuff before I go into detail paint. I got the main shape in place and then decided to test the paint idea I had before I got it boxed in. I still need to add rivets and clean up the vertical edge.

I ordered a custom flight stand from Dragonforge to help support this behemoth. It isn't all that heavy but the stock GW flight stand does not inspire confidence on a model this size. That will require a round 1/2" hole cut into the bottom of the cowling at the top of the picture above.  Since I still have to do damage to the bottom of the model before I can add much in the way of detail to this area of the model, I am am not in huge rush with this.

Next I can't decide which way to go with the topside engine intakes. On one hand there are the fleshy tendrils or muscle striations you see people do a lot on Nurgle based models, and on the other hand I can box off the openings to hide the gap by matching lines. I THINK the tendrils are the way to go as the gaps are not even, and trying to match the lines will throw off an already visually unbalanced model even more.

So the last thing is the paint scheme. I had the crazy idea of mixing the two Thousand Sons schemes on the same model. I am working for a fade from Midnight Blue to red base color, with the raised lines fading from Metallic Gold at the nacel tips to bright White at the back of the plane. If it works out it will be cool, but I have to reserve judgement. At this point the fade is in place, but there are tens of hours of brushwork left to solidify the scheme and get it detailed. Wish me luck!!

Hell Talon SLOW WIP....and I mean SLLOOOWWW

The Hell Talon is coming along, and it is really a beast of a kit. I have had some bad Forgeworld kits before, but this one is bad combined with being an old mold. The wear is really obvious, and the kit design is such that the pieces just sit up against one another. There are quite a few flaws even after HOURS of hot water re-shaping and clamping.

First up, this is a BIG kit. I know that tape is hard to see but this thing is 14-15 inches long. It is HUGE. That in itself, when combined with the long flat front nacels should raise alarm flags for anyone who has worked with Forgeworld resin before. Those long flat pieces seem to always be warped. These weren't bad at a glance, but the resin is JUST thick enough to make straightening them a total bear. After 4 hours on these alone they look like this....

Obviously not optimal....

Then there is the central hull assembly. The two wings glue to either side of a central core that houses the cockpit. You then add the top fuselage and wing, then flip it over and do the underside details including the engines and bombs. This is a lot like a plastic model airplane unless your joints look like this after you clean them up....

Now this stuff can be cleaned up with green stuff....a lot of green stuff....but still. I mean look at that line above the engines.....At least it is hidden by the engines and retrieval hook! The worst offender IMHO is the engine intake pods that sit on top of the wings. These are meant to tie the wing parts to the fuselage behind the cockpit and solidify that joint. But as you can see they are more joint than solid.

Again, several hours of repeated hot water and clamping and this is the best I can get. I can cover SOME of that with green stuff, but either I go Nurgle and add muscle and tissue strings to make it look intentional or they will end up out of balance. Now I have two of the Hellblade fighters, and they had the same issues with their intakes. The shape of that smaller model allowed me to clamp them down with glue, and that fixed them....I don't own a clamp large enough to reach these. Might be time for a trip to the hardware store for bigger clamps!

All the assembly gripes aside this is a gorgeous kit that has one hell of an intimidating profile. This thing most certainly will work on an opponents nerves!

I hope to have primer on it in the next few days, and MAYBE paint after I decide on what direction to go with the putty on those intakes and engine exhaust!

Boltgun's Battle coming September 20, what to take?

Normally I go into this one blind, intentionally letting my own selections play out. This tournament is a HUGE event locally. It is a hobby based tournament that regularly draws the best of the best in the mid-west. Locally Jeremy McClung has taken top honors every year with his armies...they are truly works of art, and everyone essentially gives up the best army award when he walks in the door. His army for this year is the wolves. We have seen bits and pieces of this one for a couple of years now. I'll let this speak for itself after reminding you that this is ALL truescale....

Then there is relative newcomer to Boltgun Joe Elverson and his Eldar. Joe and I have a running grudge every year at Buckeye Battles. His armies are all beautifully airbrushed and done. This is a WIP (!) picture of a couple of his wave serpents.

Look at these closely and you can see the level of competition at Boltgun's Battle every year. These two are just 2 of 30 that play and most of the armies at this tournament show up like this.  Sportsmanship is the most coveted prize and it is not an easy one to win when everyone at the event is having such a good time.



I'm pretty happy with my knights, but I wanted to take my necrons. I need a couple of units to fill the list, but they are not gonna happen in time, so it's likely knights again. I have a list im pretty satisfied with, but at 1750pts i'm pretty limited with them. I'm still looking for ideas to pair with the knights in about 250 points as a rapid objective holder unit, so we'll see where I land.

The Slaughter is over

Summer Slaughter was today (ALL day) and it went really smoothly. Hobby Central is a good 45 minute drive for me, and I haven't visited there before, but it is a really nice place to game and get your hobby on. Super friendly staff and a clean environment win every time.

I went 2-1, with the two wins being tables...total wipe out wins. The loss in round three was to the eventual best general winner. His tau with 4 riptides combined with the mission rules allowing him to recycle most of the units I killed helped him out BIG.

I noticed a few things from my first real competitive experience with an all knight army....people do NOT know what to do when faced with 5 super heavy walkers....they panic. Even my last opponent who should have known better was making mistakes. I cannot emphasize enough how important it is to get in your opponents head. If you can force them to make mistakes, even little ones, it is that much easier to win from the start.

Also, NOT taking the Adamantine lance formation is just dumb. If you are fielding at least 3 knights, take this thing, its that simple. re-rolling saves and extra Hammer of Wrath is incredible. Throw in void shields FTW.

Round one I played Dark Eldar, something like 14 lances....and a cobra destroyer. By all rights his lances should have eaten me, but he scattered his shooting around, sandpapering instead of killing. In the end his paper airplane skimmers just fell apart to all the high strength shots and templates. 

Round two I played Dark Angels. His army was almost all infantry, and with two devastator squads holding 8 rockets, plus a twin lascannon dred I should have been hiding....but he just locked up and didnt think, once again sandpapering me. It didn't help him that his 470pt command squad deepstrike mis-happed and destroyed itself.....OUCH.

Aaron and I discuss the way the cards are falling

Round 3 was as mentioned 4 riptide Tau....He must have had 30 marker lights and knew how to use them. Aaron and I have played before, he is an exceptional list builder and a deadly opponent....but 5 knights got in his head.....again sandpaper for the first few turns. I have to say this was the BEST game of 40k I think I have ever played, and i've been playing 20+ years. EVERY MOVE and action was a nailbiter for both of us. Both of us were hanging on every die roll  and save. We were really into it and having a ball laughing all the way through. Now the mission here allowed all but super heavy and tanks to respawn and auto arrive from reserve the turn after they are killed. So I had 4 riptides and 30 kroot and 20 fire warriors and almost 20 pods and....it all came back if I killed it. So how do you score when half the objectives are just re-occupied the turn after you blow units off of them? The mission might not have hurt as bad if there weren't 4 riptides I didn't want to kill shooting at me with all those marker lights....

On Parade after round one for Judging

In the end I took best overall. The scores are not yet up on Warscore, so I don't know the details yet, but I HAD to do something right in there somewhere. My list was up about 2-3 posts back, so you can find it there.

Now, on to Boltgun's Battle on September 20th. What to take, what to take....


*Edit results are up now...apparently people liked my army despite how much trash talk I took over it! 

Summer Slaughter 48 hours and counting!

Ok, so Summer Slaughter is in 2 days...the army is essentially done. I could do a bajillion more hours in detail on all the models, but I'm happy with them where they are. I am reading the 7th edition rules more thoroughly and making sure I have everything straight. This is my version of Gerantius, The green Knight (less the $20 decal sheet), before final clean ups.

Gerantius, The Green Knight