Hive Fleet Tattybojangles and the invasion of Manutia

Hi All,

Angryman here. This weekend Suicide Badger, Col Straken and myself are playing a 5K apocalypse battle. Hive fleet Tattybojangles will be taking on the might of the Imperial Guard allied with the Space Wolves and the Grey Knights. I also wanted to use this opportunity to show off what I have been working on lately.

The hive fleet awakes from dormancy, it has emerged on the edges of a star system. Due to its unusually long period of hibernation it must feed or die of starvation. The fleet makes its approach to what appears to be a world teeming with life.

Upon reaching orbit the swarm gains a better look at the prey world. Manutia is all its glory.

The swarm settles into geosynchronous orbit over the continent of Portsmotia and seeks out a suitable region to land. The chosen area houses the ruins of an old Imperial outpost, partially reclaimed by Mantuia's jungles.

The swarm must conquer and feed quickly so it deploys every bio-creation left in its arsenal in order to achieve its goal.

The Swarm has deployed no less than 3 Hive Tyrants. 1 is winged and armed with 2 twin linked Devourers (with Brain Leech Worms), another is armed with a Bonesword / Lashwhip and a Stranglethorn Cannon and the last is armed with a Bonesword / Lashwhip, a set of Scything Talons and accompanied by 3 Tyrant Guards. There are also 2 Tervigons, an Alpha Warrior and the Parasite of Mortrex.

Here the hive has spawned 3 Lictors, 3 Zonathropes, 3 Hive Guard and the Doom of Malan'tai with a Mysetic Spore. These elite infantry will take a fearsome toll on the defenders of Manutia.

The Hive makes heavy use of Tyranid Warriors to guide and direct the swarm. Here we have a unit of 3 Warriors armed with 2 Deathspitters and a Barbed Strangler. There is a similar but larger unit of 4 Warriors, armed with 3 Deathspitters and a Barbed Strangler. The last unit contain 5 Tyranid Warriors, there is 1 Warrior armed with a Venom Cannon and a set of Scything Talons and the remain 4 Warriors are armed with Bonesword / Lashwhip and a Devourer.

The Hive mind knows that in order to overwhelm the defenders of the Manutia a sheer mass of numbers will be needed to expend the ammunition and destroy the morale of the defenders. Here we have 70 Spinefist Termagants and 62 Fleshborer Termagants.

To spread terror and confusion the hive relies on speed and hit and run tactics. To accomplish this goal it creates Tyranid Shrikes and Raveners. Here are 3 Shrikes with Rending Claws and Scything Talons and 3 Raveners with Scything Talons and Devourers.

In the final waves of attack the hive deploys its heaviest bio-monsters, terror weapons created solely for the destruction of its enemies. Here we have a squadron of 3 Carnifexes all armed with 2 sets of twin linked Devourers (with Brain Leech Worms), a Carnifex with 2 sets of Scything Talons and a Mysetic Spore, a Carnifex with a Heavy Venom Cannon and a twin linked Deathspitter, Old One Eye with Crushing Claws and Scything Talons. There is a Mawloc on the left and last but not least is a Trygon Prime on the right.

Here we have the swarm in all its glory, ready to devourer Manutia and its inhabitants and defenders (please forgive the picture quality).

I've been collecting, painting and modelling my Tyranid army for about 3 years now. Apart from 25 Genestealers and 25 Hormagants (which I hope to complete this week) I've got everything in my army, including objective markers painting up and ardcoated. I went for a variation on Hive Fleet Behemoths for my colour scheme. The bulk of the painting I've gotten finished in this past month ready for this weekends battle. The Hive fleet in the first picture I built using spares from my Tyranid collection. The map of planet Manutia (Suicide Badgers home planet) is my first attempt at painting Planetary Empire tiles.

[Paintlog] Imperial Guard Tank Madness

Afternoon all,

I've been meaning for a bit now to do a Paintlog update with the madness of painting I had last weekend.

Next weekend there's going to be an Apocalypse game at the club that I've ended up volunteering to use my Imperial Guard for, so I thought it'd kick start me into painting up some of the Imperial Guard tanks I had boxed up. So last Saturday afternoon I went out and sprayed them all up and left them to dry.

I then spent Saturday evening and most of Sunday painting them up using my typical "drybrush everything" approach to the Imperial Guard.

So here goes:

2 Leman Russ Battle Tanks
1 Leman Russ Demolisher
1 Leman Russ Vanquisher
1 Colossus (back right)
2 Hellhounds.

So yeah, 7 tanks in 24 hours. If only I could crank out Infantry at the same speed I can manage with tanks! Unfortunately for the Guard though, until I can afford some spray, this will probably be the last of them that gets touched since I've got a ton of Orks I (foolishly) volunteered to paint up.

They're not the best painted Tanks you will ever see, but I'm proud that I can get them done in such a short period of time and it'll mean Apocalypse games look better when photographed... as opposed to a blob of grey/black plastic.

Peas and Glove,
SB

[Orks] Waaaagh! Nobrot!: Deff Dred

Hey all,

It's been a while since there's been a blog update, and I keep forgetting to take pictures of my recent painting fest, so I thought I'd start working my way through the Nobrot articles, and since he did so well in the last game I played, my looted Deff Dred will take the honours this week.

So here he is in all his hastily painted glory:

He was made about a year ago, before there was even a mention of the (awesome) Plastic Deff Dred being released. I'd seen hundreds of people cobble some scrap onto Space Marine Dreadnaughts and call it a Deff Dred, but that didn't appeal to me. Since one of the regular MAWS players, Angryman, was playing a particularly nasty Tyranid army at the time, chock full of Carnifexes, I thought "Surely the Orks would respect a Fex for being a Stomping and Killing machine" and then had a poke around the Internet and saw a fair few conversions dotted about. Some ranging from the Bog standard fex with some glyphs, to awesomely detailed ones with Cockpits, Mechanical Legs, Resculpted Terminator style faces and whatnot.

Me being me, I went for a quicker approach - If the Orks are going to be able to get hold of a Fex long enough to shove a Remote Control reciever in it's Brain then they're going to have to hack off a few limbs... Which is where his Wrecking Ball arm and Mechanical leg come from. The rider was a bit more for Comic value than to justify anything fluffwise. Since he'd have no chance if the Carnifex went mental.

On the table, I've found the arc of his Claw and Mechanical arm works well as Armour facing. Also at the time, he was a bit bigger than a Metal Kan, so in the world of True LOS I was helping some people out. I've never had anyone have a problem when playing against it and it's pretty clear what everything is...

In The Game
Now, down to how I actually use my Deff Dred...

When looking through the Codex it was clear with his poor Ballistic Skill, the shooting work was best left to his smaller cousins, the Killa Kans. This guy was made for out and out carnage. The one real long range shooting option I would ever consider giving him would be 2 Big Shootas, since with the number of shots, he would actually hit something. By that point however, you've caused yourself issues with target selection and you would probably have just been better running...

I run the Deff Dred with an Extra Close Combat Weapon (his Talon) and a Skorcha (Acid Maw). The extra CCW really helps him in either whomping vehicles or taking down Monstrous Creatures. The Skorcha is there for a guaranteed hit on enemies and helps when dealing with Hordes. Also, it's a pretty cheap upgrade, meaning if this guy gets blown up, it's not a massive deal.

I've found that some people really aim to just kill him, whether it's a bit of "Rabbit in the Headlights" syndrome, "kill that big thing" or "that's a pretty nice mini, if I kill it, maybe he'll get a bit teary eyed". Backed up by Killa Kans for fire support, and a Big Mek to keep him going, used correctly the Deff Dred is absolutely awesome. Just remember to pick your targets well and not to expect miracles from him.

The key thing with Deff Dreds is know your limitations. Remember the amount of attacks and the initiative. If you charge a Monstrous Creature that is attacking before you, expect to get smashed. Also, if you charge Thunder Hammer terminators, you will only maybe kill 2 or 3 and you'll be getting the remaining attacks smashed back at you....

What do you guys do with Deff Dreds, and Non-Ork players, how do you feel about playing against Deff Dreds?

Peace,
SB.

Music for war

Hi All,

Angryman here with a question. If you could have a soundtrack for your battles what would it be?

I recently completed Dawn Of War II and that got me thinking about the music of 40K. I love the gothic and dark music the game plays but surly there must be better music to listen to while you punish your opponents army!!

There is the traditional rock and metal music. I love ACDC and their music has done wonders for the Ironman films. You could go all twisted and get some Danny Elfman music (the guy who did the sounds tracks for Batman, Batman Returns, Sleepy Hollow etc, you get the picture). You could even go army themed, for example

• Space wolves - Scandinavian music
• Vanilla Marines - eye of the tiger (Rocky)
• Tyranids - Aliens soundtrack
• Blood Angels - Operatic music
• Eldar - Lord Of The Rings soundtrack
• Orks - I'm struggling with this one
• Dark Eldar - anything by Chesney Hawks (pure evil)
• Tau - for some reason German music is coming to mind (efficieny????)
• Imperial Guard - any music associated with Vietnam

So what music would / do you listen to when gaming and what music do you think would best suit each race?

[News] GW Clarify Daemonhunters and Witchhunters PDF

Morning all,

Seems like a busy 48 hours for GW dealing with mess ups. They've cleared up the whole missing Allies situation from the Witchhunter Daemonhunter PDFs.

This comes straight from the GW blog on their website:

We recently made the Witch Hunters and Daemonhunters codexes available to download as PDFs. Since then, we've received a spate of emails asking questions about the difference between the PDFs and the original, printed copies. Rather than reply to you all individually, I thought I'd try to answer your questions here. Firstly, the rules for allied Space Marines and Inducted Imperial Guard were originally written to reference books that have since gone out of print, so we streamlined the rules required to allow players to collect an army of Daemonhunters or Witch Hunters. The Daemonhunters army list uses the Standard Force Organisation chart, which you'll find on page 87 of the Warhammer 40,000 rulebook. The other point that seems to be causing the most confusion is whether or not the PDF versions supersede the printed versions. They don't: you should feel free to continue to use whatever resources you have available to play your games with; the PDF does not overrule or invalidate the printed Codex book. Yes, this may mean that you and your opponent are using what are essentially different army lists for the same army but not every Inquisition force will comprise of the same elements (highly specialised and secretive forces that they are). And if you'd rather use the same one as your opponent, why not simply decide which version you collectively want to use and share the rules between one another? As for tournaments and gaming events, it's entirely up to the organisers to decide which version to use; it is after all their event. Now that we've cleared that up, you can get on with downloading the Blood Angel FAQ and Tyranid FAQ.

You can check it out here: GW "What's New Today"

So yeah no more "DH can't take allies now" grumbling. They can, assuming you have the proper Codex or can borrow it.... and that practically ruins the entire MAWS FAQ page!

Happy allying DH and WH players, and look forward to the internetz complaining about Mystic / Tarot spam and Vulkan's Sisters of Battle melta-flamer fun.

SB

[News] Tyranid and Blood Angels FAQs

So, GW finally get around to sorting these out, and I think they've addressed most of the annoying Internet rules bashy ones, and done a good job of covering some of the other situational ones.

Tyranids: DOWNLOAD HERE

Blood Angels: DOWNLOAD HERE

I'd like to think the "MAWS FAQ" page had a hand in making them sort it out quicker ;)

Happy now Nid players?

SB

[Orks] Road To Britcon 2010 - Game 1

Morning all,

It's that busy time of year again where everyone starts to rush around thinking about Britcon - what to take, which characters to use, how to play a mission and where will all our beer money come from?

This year is the first year I've decided I don't want to be painting anything before the tournament and I want to know my rules inside out, as opposed to in previous years where I've played new armies, new units and new configurations for the tournament.

One of the more notorious armies at Britcon has always been the Tyranids. They won in 2008 and have come pretty highly consistently. Now with 5th edition, people will moan and complain about "Meta-games" and "Nerfing" but I still think 5th Ed Nids are ace and a very dangerous army to face on the table.

So I've got my same army I took last year, knowing it pretty well and isolating the one silly weakness that cost me a game in the tournament - giving a Mek a Burna instead of a Power Klaw, along with a pointless Ammo Runt upgrade on the Warboss on a bike, he's now got a Kombi Skorcha to allow the bikes to deal with Hordes.

We played a Pitched Battle deployment in an Objectives mission. 2 being set up in my deployment zone, 1 being set up in the Tyranid deployment, 1 slightly further out.

I deployed with my 2 big Boyz mobs in the middle of the table, flanking a Burna Battlewagon with KFF Mek. The left boyz Mob supported by the Deff Dred, the right supported by Killa Kans. I set up a unit of 15 Shoota Boyz on my left objective, 17 Grotz on the right. I then kept my Warboss and Nob Bikers on the far right hand flank, able to utilise their Turbo Boosting and fast speed.

The idea was to be that my foot sloggers could hold the middle and go for a Tyranid objective each, with their respective support units and the Mek and Burnas for support where needed.

I didn't take notes, so I thought I'd just cover the major points of the game and give a conclusion in terms of the list and preparation for Britcon.

The Burna Boyz were, like last year, immense. They wiped out a unit of Tyranid Warriors, Alpha Warrior, Hive Tyrant and Tyrant Guard, Tervigon and Mycetic Spore, along with the help of their friendly Big Mek.

The Nob Bikers have a good showing despite getting thinned out pretty early on. They took down a Dakka Fex, Trygon Prime and the Warboss went after a unit of Hive Guard and wiped them out.

The Slugga Boyz as usual were steadfast. They killed when needed to and held firm most of the other times. The sheer amount of attacks they can put out is still horrible to any opponent.

The Shoota Boyz didn't do much at all, when faced with a unit of Gaunts they fled and continued to run off the board.

The Grotz... well, they set up and did nothing all game. Which means they had a good game!

The Deff Dred managed to destroy a Tervigon in close combat, thin out the Tyranid warrior unit and also destroy a unit of Gaunts via Skorcha attacks causing them to flee and destroy them by attempting to assault. Then clearing the Gaunts off the objective they were camping in, meaning a possible draw turned into a guarenteed win.

The Battlewagon showed BS2 isn't always so bad, taking out a Mycetic spore in a single shot, but it didn't manage to do much else aside from deliver the Burnas to the fight.

The Killa Kans managed to hammer the Doom of Malan'tai, but not without taking 2 casualties in return along with providing extremely valuable support fire for the rest of the army.

Conclusion

Overall it was a good 2 - Nil victory. I had a plan, stuck with it and the dice went my way. I crowded the park where it was necessary and played to the mission.

I just feel I need to work on my manouverability a bit more with the Boyz and try to keep them alive. In a 32 - 0 scoring scale, all the troops are important if I'm trying to aim for the top.

Peace,
SB

MAWS 40k's House Rules FAQ

Afternoon all,

After some discussion, this should have been done a loooooong while ago. I've wrote up a quick FAQ on some issues we've faced over the weeks at the club, which has been sped up by the fact there's been debate over the WH/DH "Can they ally anymore?" issue with the PDF.

So have at it: http://maws40k.wikispaces.com/faq

It's currently a work in progress, so the more questions that get asked - the more answers we can provide on here. You can also find a link on the right hand side of the page, in our handy "MAWS Links" section.

Peace,
SB.