Dark Eldar - First game back for a while.

Morning all.

Thought I'd chuck a quick one out this morning, since I forgot yesterday, after my game on Monday night.

There's a team tournament coming up that I'm unsure whether I'll be needed to play in so I whipped up a 1600pt Dark Eldar list for it, since I've been using them pretty exclusively since 6th came out.

I tried to add in some of the stuff I've painted this month like my Razorwing and 3rd Raider as well as less focus on the Wych units and more on Kabalites and shooting.

So here's the list I took:

HQ:

• Archon - huskblade; splinter pistol; Kabalite armour; plasma grenades; combat drugs; soul-trap; shadow field.
• Haemonculus - venom blade; splinter pistol; shattershard.

Elites:

• 4 Incubi - Klaivex w/ Demi-Klaives. Raider w/ Disintegrator Cannon, Night Shields and Aethersails.
• 3 Trueborn - 2 Dark Lances. Venom w/ 2nd Splinter Cannon and Night Shields.

Troops:

• 10 Kabalite Warriors - Splinter Cannon, Blaster, Sybarite w/ Venom Blade. Raider w/ Dark Lance, Splinter Racks, Aethersails and Night Shields.
• 10 Kabalite Warriors - Splinter Cannon, Blaster, Sybarite w/ Venom Blade. Raider w/ Dark Lance, Splinter Racks, Aethersails and Night Shields.
• 4 Wracks - Venom w/ 2nd Splinter Cannon and Night Shields.

Fast Attack:

• 6 Scourges - 2 Haywire Blasters, Solarite w/ Venom Blade

Heavy Support:

• Ravager - 3 Dark Lances, Night Shields
• Razorwing Jet Fighter - 2 Wing Dark Lances, Splinter Cannon, 4 Monoscythe Missiles, Night Shields

It's a list I enjoyed the look of, had a lot of shooting in there as well as a nice little combat unit with the Incubi. Normally I take them in a unit of 9 with the Archon but I wanted some extra units or upgrades.

The game we played was Kill Points in the diagonal deployment (forget it's name) and I had to set up on the defensive to try and stop my paper planes getting popped too easily. We managed 3(ish) turns before calling time and I lost 10 - 6 on points. My warlord was killed and the Marines / Eldar took Linebreaker, I got first blood and the rest was units destroyed.

Night Shields
Not sure how everyone feels about them, but personally I love them. For the first 2 turns it meant Whirlwinds couldn't reach most of my stuff thanks to the diagonal deployment. As most of my blokes were in transports, it kept them safe. As soon as the transports were gone, the Whirlinds were a menace.

Razorwing
I need to investigate the missiles properly as when I built my list, I kept the default missiles. However, I felt this did pretty well popping up in Turn 2 (with some help) and managed to wipe out a Terminator squad on it's own due to weight of fire and Lances being AP2. Think this will stay in my list from now on.

Kill Points
Kill points are hard for me as Dark Eldar and as a player. I prefer the objective based games and find I play better in them, Kill Points missions I tend to get sidetracked and can't finish off units or lose them too easily by playing too risky.

Shattershard
This is one of my favourite upgrades and I always give it my Haemonculus and since it annoys everyone, I'm going to keep a tally going at the side of the blog for how many kills it gets through this year. The total currently stands at 2 Warp Spiders.

Not so Defensive
I didn't utilise one of the Dark Eldar's biggest strengths, their speed, because I was too busy worrying about hiding my paper planes for a few turns and ended up stuck in my own deployment zone. This meant the Marines and Eldar coming in were getting Linebreaker pretty easily, and worse, I didn't get it myself.

Trueborn
Last one, the jury is out on these guys. They were taken as an excuse to get another Venom in on the cheap and I gave them the Dark Lances as I had the models. I was hoping I can use them as a mini Devastator squad, but they didn't really do much in the game and I think they're a bit of an easy target for first blood.

So that's all for now. Thought I'd put my list up and see what people thought and also some stuff from my head about what units did nicely on Monday night.

Cheers,
SB

January Painting Pledge - Raider and Razorwing Completed!

Morning all,

After having a pretty lazy January aside from my Hellions, I managed to get in a furious few days of painting and hobbying.

Razorwing
First up, on Thursday night I decided I wanted to kick myself into gear and get as much as I could of the remaining January list completed. As well as that, I'd been itching to paint my Dark Eldar flyer for ages and always left it as a "just get this other unit done first..." carrot on a stick.


The Razorwing is a really nice model to paint, it's thin and sleek with a few very large plates. I enjoyed painting it up, especially good to ease me back in after a chunk of infantry.

Either way, I managed to plough through that in an evening whilst watching some films, so now it's ready to go on the tabletop!


Spraying Dark Vengeance
On Saturday afternoon, despite the heavy snow we had in Manchester the night before, I managed to clear a path in the garden, put some bin bags down to protect my gear and table and get some spraying done.

One of my aims this month was to get Dark Vengeance sprayed up, which I managed to juuuuust have enough black spray to do it.

Note to self, don't spend an hour outside in the snow spraying plastic men in future. My hands were raw afterwards. But bright side is, they're sprayed up and ready to go next month!

Raider
Ploughing on from the progress with the Razorwing and having a free night on Saturday, I went and got my final Raider to paint up.

Again, I made really good time on this, even though I had to stop after every step to compare with my older Raiders and make sure I got the colour areas correct. When I bought this one, the Dark Lance end was snapped off, so I had to convert it into a Disintegrator, so the plan is for this to be the Incubi wagon.

So with that Raider complete, that's my Dark Eldar army completely painted (until I buy more stuff on a whim) and also my January painting pledge completed!

To Spray:
- Dark Vengeance

To Paint:
- 10 Hellions
- 1 Raider
- 1 Razorwing

Over the next couple of days I'm hoping to make a start on February's pledge or maybe get some miscellaneous tasks out of the way that have been lingering for a while. Expect some updates soon!

Cheers,
SB

January Painting Pledge - Hellions Completed!

Brief update on my January painting pledge, now with 1 week left to run.

Over the weekend I tried to kick myself into gear and get the Hellions completed, rather than leave them and let them over-run into next month AGAIN.

Terrible picture taken in a rush... sorry!

Apologies for the terrible picture, but I can assure you, the painting is even worse than the picture. It's kinda made me regret my quick batch-painting approach, but at the end of the day I've got too much plastic crack lying around and not enough time to paint as well as I used to.

Either way, they're done. So chalk 'em off that list!

To Spray:
- Dark Vengeance

To Paint:
- 10 Hellions
- 1 Raider
- 1 Razorwing

I'm hoping to get an hour free where it's not raining or deciding to snow, so I can get Dark Vengeance sprayed up and worked on.

And in the mean time, I've got the Razorwing on my paint desk ready to be started, I just have absolutely zero motivation.

As for the Raider, I highly doubt that'll be this month. It'll probably slip into my February plans... But who knows, maybe I'll go on a painting bender this weekend?

SB

Army composition

Hi All,

Angryman here.  I'd like to ask the question of whether to Swarmlord or not to Swarmlord. 

Since the change to 6th edition one unit has really stood out for me in the Tyranid codex, that is the Swarmlord.  In 5th edition he was too overpriced to really justify, with the way I run him in my 2K lists he plus the guard and lashwhips comes in at a whopping 475 points.  That gives me 11 T6 wounds, 3+sv, 4 rolls on for psychic powers but can only cast 2 a turn (personally I prefer the biomancy table), an increase to my reserve rolls, the ability to re-roll outflank results, I can give units either preferred enemy or furious assault, longer synapse range, instant death weapons that make you re-roll successful inv saves, he is an MC so you all the benefits that brings and counts as a character for the purposes of challenges.  All in all that unit is an absolute must.  There are 2 drawbacks, the unit is expensive and SLOW.  they can move 6", run upto 6" or the 2d6 charge range.  Experienced players will just avoid him if they can.

My other choice for the title of warlord in my Tyranid force is the Flyrant (to be more precise a Hive Tyrant with wings).  I He comes with 4 wounds, T6, 2 rolls on the psychic powers but can only cast 1 per turn (again biomancy), he is a MC so has all the benefits that brings, he has wings so he is VERY fast, can swoop or glide, counts as a character for challenge purposes.  I run him with a 2+sv, 2 twin linked devourers with brain leech worms and old adversary (it gives him and other friendlies within 6" preferred enemy).  the devourers give him 12 twin linked S6 ap- shots a turn.  This is a very effective unit but comes in at 325 points and can end up being stranded due to its speed.

Id prefer to have them both in my army, having a trimmed down version of the Swarmlord unit, may be by losing a guard and the 3 lashwhips but that would still be a total of 725 points for 4 models and both HQ choices.  I don't think I could really justify that in my list.

So have at it, any thoughts, alternatives?

All comments welcome

Daemon Update and Flyer Rumour Thoughts

Morning folks,

In my effort to do a bit more blogging, I thought I would comment my opinion on some of the upcoming Daemon update rumours.

Normally anything from an Anon. source is a bit iffy, but I've seen plenty of occassions where these turn out right - but this current batch looks like it tallies up with things.


Rumours from HERE in highlight....

//-------//

The next white dwarf previews the new daemons.

Hurrah! Personally, I love Daemons. They're one of the more exciting Codexes for me to play and, like my Dark Eldar, victories with them feel all the sweeter as opposed to a gun-line Guard army or my Ork horde.

The previously white dwarf released units are changing slightly (some get better, some worse).


This is 90% of the reason I wanted to do a post about this. For GW to change the units, after people have been out and bought a shedload of them, so soon after the initial release, seems really cheap.

Admittedly, people are spamming these units and creating "broken" builds and I've heard cries that these units are "too cheap / good not to take" and fair enough if GW want to fix them. Personally, I would rather them have sorted it in the first place by

The following white dwarf previews flyers. So feb daemons, March flyers.

Have heard that there might also be Daemon flyer in this WD, so the Daemon love continues on into March.

Hoping that the Harpy gets a model so that can be added to my fledgling Tyranid army, as well as a an Eldar specific flyer.


Oh p.s. No new god. No hybrid GDs.

No new God? Wasn't really expecting one and I think people who were are a bit too hopeful. The 4 Gods have been corner stones for years now and to add another would be a bit WTF.

As for hybrid GDs, I'm assuming this means you can't get a plastic Lord of Change and have the bits to make it a plastic Fateweaver? If so, that's another shame for people like Skarbrand and Ku'Gath without models, but it's nothing a bit of hacking and converting can't do if there are plastic models on the way.

Expanded fluff on malice.

This is the bit I love. Anywhere they re-introduce older fluff into the current era like Jokaero in Grey Knights. I don't think anything more needs doing with Malice in terms of a playable force as that would un-balance the 4 Chaos pillars, but I'm sure just by adding the fluff back in it will inspire some cracking themed armies and paint schemes.


it's two separate books. Not one book that has rules for both like the white dwarf updates.
it's a hard cover full release not an insert.

Did anyone really think there'd be 1 book shared between 40K and Fantasy? It's never been done before and it'd be fairly hefty... and therefore a much heftier price.

Glad that it's an actual Codex (although my wallet isn't) as opposed to just a WD leaflet.

//-------//

That's all for now folks. What do you reckon about a Daemon update next month? More codexes for me to buy now... Joy!

SB

Blood Bowl: Getting Started

Morning everyone.

For the last couple of weeks a few of us at the club have been having a Blood Bowl resurgence and really enjoying it. The rules are simple to learn, everything is very streamlined and both sides tend to  match up evenly so there's no "uber-lists" or "Unit X spam" like you can find in 40K and Fantasy at times.

For those who don't know about it, it's American Football crossed with the Warhammer Fantasy universe. So teams consist of Orcs, Goblins, Trolls, Lizardmen etc.

The best part of Blood Bowl is that *technically* it is free. The rules are downloadable straight off the Games Workshop site, all you have to do is print them out and go. However, as we're finding at the club, unless you have access to the boxed set GW sell, then you're going to need a fair few things.

After speaking to people on Twitter over the weekend, trawling some forums and doing a bit of research, I've tried to compile a guide here of how to get started with Blood Bowl at different levels, ranging from free, cheap and then stuff that costs a bit.

The Rules
First thing you need is the rules themselves. GW seem to have introduced a streamlined document called "Blood Bowl Competition Rules" which cuts out lots of artwork and fluff pages, which makes it easier on the printer load.

Blood Bowl Competition Rules: HERE

The Boxset
One of the quickest and easiest things to do (especially if you or a friend want an Orc / Human team) is to just buy the boxset. It's £50 off GW and doesn't tend to dip much lower than that on eBay.

Personally, I got it bought for me about 5 years ago and although I've not played it as much as I should have, it's definitely got some good value to it (once you start comparing cost to other stuff).

Blood Bowl Starter Box: HERE


Alternatives to the Boxset
£50 is a fair wedge of cash for a game you might lose interest in, or like me you may need more pitches, tokens, etc. and don't want to be spending £50 a pop. So understandably, some people like to make their own stuff, buy cheaper parts or alternatives.

Luckily for us there seems to be a few generic "Fantasy Football" items out there that can be used.

Now, onto the physical stuff you will need to play the game if you haven't bought the boxset.


The Pitch
Next thing is, everything in Blood Bowl is done based on a grid of squares. Players move a set amount, have an effect squares around them, throw a certain length, etc. This means that you need to get yourself one that is to the correct size and scale.

Printable
First up, is printing yourself a pitch. These are sometimes a bit tricky to do as it requires multiple pages being stitched together, along with getting the printer settings right so that it prints at the correct scale.

I found a few different pitch designs available to print at this website: HERE

These are all themed to different teams in the game, like a Skaven one, Wood Elf one, etc. but personally, Pitch #8 is the most generic one and one that I would plan on using.

Grid Paper
Another alternative is large pieces of grid paper available from stationery shops, which is what a chap in a "Blood Bowl on the cheap has used. Check it out: HERE

Mat
In searching for alternative Blood Bowl boards, I found that a company called Impact Miniatures has their own range of "Elfball" and "Boulder Brawl" football games and sell a mat that is compatible with Blood Bowl.

These are £15 but I'm sure if you enjoy the game enough it would be a worthwhile investment. The main thing is you get the "Large" mat and "29mm" as that's the correct sized one for Blood Bowl.

It's available from their Webstore: HERE

Templates
Next up, Blood Bowl uses a few different templates for different things. These are unique to the set and no longer available to order from GW as a separate component. You can find these for a few quid on eBay usually, but if you need several at once (or don't fancy paying) here's 2 options I found.

Throw in template.

Scatter Template

Printable
Quick google searches found a really really useful Blog offering free printable templates for the game. He only offers the Scatter and Throw-In templates, but they're good enough to do the job and come 2 to a sheet (1 for each player, or 2 games worth).

You can nab them here: HERE

Pre-Printed
Impact Miniatures also offers some pre-printed ones for a few quid that are a bit more colourful. Handy if you are already ordering with them or don't have access to a printer.

They're £1.36 from Impact!: HERE

Range Ruler
Now, this is possibly the most awkward thing of the lot as it is specifically sized to the Blood Bowl pitch. You use this to measure throwing range and it's 1:1 with the size of a Blood Bowl pitch. If you make the pitch slightly bigger or smaller when printing, it'll mess up this range.

Likewise, if you make your own and the size is wrong, it'll mean throwing and intercepting the ball is impacted.

Here, you've got 3 options...

Pre-Made
You can buy these range rulers from eBay if you're lucky, but also Impact again do their own version of this. Going rate for either is around £5, but it's probably the one thing you should invest in if you're buying any template stuff that is pre-done.

Impact's version: HERE

Home-Made
Similar to the "Blood Bowl on the cheap" link earlier, you can always make yourself a range ruler out of some stiff paper or card. It helps if you have access to a GW range ruler and simply trace around, line the zones and then you're done.

You can find some measurements of the ruler available at "Sons of Twilight" blog: HERE

Throwing Matrix
With the lack of availablity on range rulers, Blood Bowl community have come up with a "throwing matrix" which uses the squares on the grid rather than a ruler. This means that no matter what size squares are on your pitch, you are always guaranteed correct throwing distance. The only issue with this is it then becomes harder to judge interceptions I suppose, and also a bit awkward to explain to people who've learned to play using the range ruler.

Either way, you can find an example pass matrix on a printable reference sheet: HERE

Dugouts
These are simply just bits of card that help keep track of a few things in the game, such as what turn it is, what subs you have, who is injured and crucially, how many re-rolls you have left.

You can always just keep this kind of thing on a sheet of paper, or knock up a quick one in MS word, but for the lazy folk like me, there's a pre-done printable one: HERE

Block Dice
These are special dice for Blood Bowl that feature various different symbols on them. At the end of the day, they're still just a D6 and you don't NEED them.

Using a D6
Simply make yourself a chart with what the D6 value corresponds to on the block dice results:

1. Attacker Down
2. Both Down (unless you have BLOCK)
3. Pushed Back
4. Pushed Back
5. Defender Stumbles (unless has DODGE)
6. Defender Down

Buying Block Dice
Again, Impact Miniatures sell some block dice through their website as does eBay. Also, you can join the NAF as a member and recieve some free block dice (assuming they still do this?)

Impact Miniatures sell them for £5: HERE

A single D8
This is used for scatter dice, which happens every kick off, failed pass and if someone drops the ball. This is essential unless you want to start using 2D6 and discount anything above 8.

Lots of people might already have these from RPGs, board games and other such, but if not, they're less than 50p a pop from most places.

The Ball
Occasionally (quite often if you're Orcs) the ball will need a physical representation on the pitch as no player will be holding it. When it comes to this you'll need a token or counter to mark where it is. The main boxset comes with 4 plastic balls, 2 for on bases and 2 for on the ground.

Green Stuff
One alternative is to make some out of green stuff, leave it to set and paint them brown. Just a really simple egg shape. The more detail you start to add, the more awkward it can look.

Pre-Bought
GW sell their own metal Blood Bowl balls, but they're about £3 for 2, and again Impact have their own range that come with a little ring on them to attach to people's bases.

Teams
Assuming you didn't buy the Blood Bowl boxset, you're going to need some models for teams. I'm planning on saving this for another blog but the jist is, you can buy 1 box of Warhammer Fantasy figures and some bitz to convert yourself a full team. Admittedly it's not so easy since they've re-packaged most figures to come in boxes of 10, but it's still doable.

I'll go into more detail on converting Fantasy models into teams on another post.

Failing that, there's also a LOT of other Fantasy Football companies making models out there, like Impact's "Apes of Wrath" and various other races that can count as certain other teams.

Conclusion
Blood Bowl is a cracking little game and people shouldn't be put off by the investment. It's well worth it, especially since once you buy a team (arguably the most expense) you're set for good. No codex creep, no changing or scaling points values etc. Buy yourself a team, keep a few extra blokes spare and you're sorted.

I've found it to be the most enjoyable GW game that I've played and helps a lot with 40k/Fantasy fatigue and provides a most sociable experience.

Any questions or other suggestions drop me a comment! Keep your eyes peeled for more Blood Bowl over the coming weeks.

Cheers,
SB


* Handy References
Figured it would be handy to provide links to a few places I've hotlinked to in the main post:

• Your Lord and Master's Blog, for printable templates (HERE)
• Impact Miniatures Webstore, for all sorts of stuff (HERE)
• Blood Bowl on the cheap, a 40Konline forum post that shows you can do it for pretty much free (HERE)
• Gaming Corner NL, for various printable resources (HERE)

2013 Hobby Goals - Update

Been a bit without a blog again, due to people going back to work and general "Meh"ness of January.

Couple of things have happened in the mean time such as the release of the Dark Angels codex and models, a resurgence of Blood Bowl at the club and preparations for tournaments this year.

At the start of January I tried to outline my overall hobby plan for 2013 and what I would like to achieve in the following year, dependant on where the hobby goes for me and what GW plan to release. Here was the post in qustion: 2013 Hobby Goals

The original list was pretty optimistic as it was and also wasn't accounting for some other things I've found in the mean time, nor did it account for new releases.

I'm going to paste the original list in here and tack in the newer stuff I've thought of, or found, since writing the list... Freshly added goals will be highlighted.

//---------------------//

Imperial Guard:

- Find a use for, and assemble, 18 plastic Cadians.

- Buy 3 lots of the hostile environment special weapons upgrade sets from Forge World.

- Assemble and paint 3 special weapons teams.

- Wash vehicles to dull them down and match rest of the army.

Necrons:

- Spray and paint the following...

- 1 Cryptek

- Imotekh

- Trazyn

- 1 Catacomb Command Barge

- 1 Overlord

- 10 Immortals

- 5 Lychguard

- 1 Ghost Ark

- Go back and wash older models to match them with new stuff.

Dark Eldar:

- Paint the following...

- 10 Hellions

- 1 Raider

- 1 Razorwing

- Re-purpose my Dark Elf corsairs into Trueborn.

- Decide if I'm ever going to use the old DE models and do something about it.

Squats:

- Paint up and glue on some power axes for the Sergeants.

Eldar:

- Actually bother writing an army list.

- Paint the following...

- 6 War Walkers

- 3 Wave Serpents

- 1 Falcon

- Paint heavy weapons for the Guardian Squad

Chaos Marines:

- Buy the new Codex

- Spray and Paint Dark Vengeance Chaos bits

- Use what I can to get the army to minimum 1,000pts to use as allies for Daemons.

Dark Angels:

- Buy the new Codex.

- Buy and paint Belial

- Get bits for 2 Veterans I found in my box to convert to Chaplains or Vet Sergeants

- Paint Cypher

- Spray and Paint Dark Vengance bits

Tyranids:

- Assemble and paint Battleforce, Gargoyles and Carnifex

- Get hold of as many Mycetic Spores as I can

- Get the army to at least 2,000pts before the end of the year.

- Ensure that the army is fully assembled and painted.

Orks:

-  Fix the 2 converted WW2 planes I have into the bases and carrying the correct weaponry for Dakkajets and Bommas.

Bretonnians:

- Paint the following...

- 3 Pegasus Knights

- 20 Grail Pilgrims and Grail Reliquae

- 8 Grail Knights

- 15 Men at Arms

- Actually play some Fantasy!

Blood Bowl:

- Assemble and 13 Gnoblars for Ogre team

- Buy box of Ogre Bulls for Ogre and Human team

- Make some spare Blood Bowl pitches, templates and counters that can be left at the club.

- Start a Blood Bowl league

Hobby:

- Build / buy enough buildings for gaming table at home.

- Organise hobby storage better.

//---------------------//

So yeah, more added onto the pile without including anything that gets released or updated this year or any crazy whimsical purchases from Hobbycraft or whilst bored on a Sunday evening.

Will update my January painting pledge on Monday when I've hopefully made some progress!

Tyranid Rumours

Hi All,

Angryman here, its been a very long time since I have posted anything so I thought I'd start out with something nice and simple.

The folks over at Spikey bits blog have heard a rumour or two regarding my favorite army, the Tyranids. 

"From Faeit via Spikey Bits Blog:

Please remember that these are rumors, early rumors at that, so please apply as the author mentions.

Q4 2013 40k goes to Eldar supposedly, so will be early/late Q4 2013/Q1 2014. May be Q3 2013. Not entirely sure. There will be a codex release and there may be a WD/model release earlier. That would push the codex back though.

Kit released for harpy that will make a second FMC - current playtest name hydra. Harpy will remain anti-infantry, hydra to be anti flyer/vehicle.
Synapse will go back to giving eternal warrior - and instinctive behavior will be radically changed.
For other new kits - nothing major. Prime plastic kit, shrike upgrade pack, and lastly, a new MC that is built off of infiltrating and will have a snacking rule similar to the fantasy ghorgon.

next two Rumors should be taken with even more salt then normal - there will be multiple large plastic kit that is a multiple option kit that can make warriors/zoanthropes/lictors, one that can make venomthropes/raveners, and one that will make biovores/pyrovores and one for tyrant guard/hive guard. The finecast models are getting changed up a bit - will move to plastic. Also, some of these kits may be condensed into one box. Secondly - Ward is writing the dex. Extra salt here folks - extra salt.

Once again, keep in mind this is a long ways off and these are playtest rules.

http://blog.spikeybits.com/2013/01/s...ntent=FaceBook"

Could it be true that my beloved nids are finally getting some love!!!

All comments welcome.

To make grey... great

I haven't made as much progress on Vorenus as planned, so I am going to do an update next week on him.

Today, I plan to tell you how I want to play my Grey Knights from now on... I am currently reading the new Grey Knight book by Aaron Dembski-Bowden (by far my favourite author). It got me itching to use my Grey Knights again (just as his Night Lords books got me to start a Night Lords army). But I don't want to play a uber-boring net list, I want to play how Grey Knights are imagined in the old fluff.

So I am playing with them this coming Monday using a fast assault and deep striking army. I will have two units of 5 terminators who will be my reserve with a Grand Master (I took this guy to make my other units scoring) I will also have two units of 10 interceptors (jump infantry) who will start on the board, backed up by a DreadKnight with a teleporter.

Now to make my games a little more fun and give my Grey Knights a reason to fight, I am going to dig what was always badly thought out in the last Codex... The enemy HQ is a Daemon!!!! That's the idea, now here is the rules:

The enemy Warlord is corrupt, no matter how loyal, they are corrupt! The Grey Knights will stop them!

At the beginning of each of the enemies turns they roll a dice, if the number is equal or above the turn number nothing happens and you roll again next turn (this stops the Daemon turning up first turn) if they roll below the turn number then their Warlord is replaced with a Daemon Prince from Codex: Chaos Space Marines. If their Warlord was in combat then the Daemon Prince is now locked in combat, all models (friend or foe) are moved the minimum distance to allow the Daemon Prince to be placed.

Once the Daemon Prince has been placed roll a D6 and follow the chart below:

1: The Daemon Prince does not fully form, he loses all his wargear and special rules and does not gain any benefits of a god. But does keep his Warlord Trait

2: The Daemon Prince keeps his wargear and Warlord Trait and becomes a Daemon of Khorne (Gains Rage and Furious Charge)

3: The Daemon Prince keeps his wargear and Warlord Trait and becomes a Daemon of Nurgle (gains shrouded and T6)

4: The Daemon Prince keeps his wargear and Warlord Trait and becomes a Daemon of Slaanesh (gains fleet and rending)

5: The Daemon Prince keeps his wargear and Warlord Trait and becomes a Daemon of Tzeentch (gains re-roll all saving throws)

6: The controlling Player gets to choose one of the above options.

If the opposing player is using Codex: Chaos Space Marines and their Warlord isn't a Daemon Prince then they follow the above rules unless the model already has a mark then the Daemon Prince automatically has the corresponding mark (no need to roll) from the chart above. Furthermore, if they roll on the Chaos Boon table and roll either Spawndom or Daemonhood they follow the above rules instead of the Codex rules. (Meaning no Warlord turning into a spawn). If the opposing player choses a Daemon Prince as their warlord, or is using Codex: Chaos Daemons then the Grey Knights are already needed so disregard these rules.


So there you go. The only things I haven't planned for are, Tyranids and Necrons. It's hard to explain them becoming Daemons. I would consider letting the Necron Warlord turn into a C'tan shard with two random upgrades.

What do you guys think? This doesn't add any extra Victory Points, just gives a bit of story and a side mission to make the games a bit more fun. I am going to try it out on Monday, and any game my opponents will let me. If I get plenty of positive feedback I might even ask people in tournaments if they want to add it into our games (but I don't expect much from that).

January Painting Pledge - Dark Eldar and Spraying

Morning folks.

Hot on the heels of yesterday's "2013 Hobby Goals" blog, I thought I'd follow up with my plan for this month's hobby pledge.

Last month I got a bit carried away, as I thought with being off from work that I would be able to get more done and I did to a degree, but then got really burnt out from painting and spent the second half of the month playing on the Xbox or PC instead.

To Spray:
- Dark Vengeance

To Paint:
- 10 Hellions
- 1 Raider
- 1 Razorwing

I'll leave it there. That clears off part of my Chaos and Dark Angels list, and wipes out my Dark Eldar backlog on the 2013 Hobby Goals.

Let's see how I fare this month!
SB

2013 Hobby Goals

Morning folks.


Over the latter months of 2012 I accrued a lot of odd bits and boxes, combined with a load of un-touched Necron and Eldar stuff from the previous end of year, that's made me re-consider things somewhat.

What I imagine my hobby stuff looks like to the un-initiated...

Aside from purchases for my newly hatched Tyranid army, I'm going to refrain from purchasing new models for my armies (apart from anything needed for an event) with the exception of new codexes. For every army project I can finish off, I'll then allow myself to be able to buy new units for that force from then on. Until the army is entirely painted, then there's no buying stuff to expand.

So... what do I actually have on my to-do list?

First up is 40K, i.e. what I'm actually likely to do.

Imperial Guard:
- Find a use for, and assemble, 18 plastic Cadians.
- Buy whatever I need to get use out of those 18 Cadians.
- Wash vehicles to dull them down and match rest of the army.

Necrons:
- Spray and paint the following...
- 1 Cryptek
- Imotekh
- Trazyn
- 1 Catacomb Command Barge
- 1 Overlord
- 10 Immortals
- 5 Lychguard
- 1 Ghost Ark
- Go back and wash older models to match them with new stuff.

Dark Eldar:
- Paint the following...
- 10 Hellions
- 1 Raider
- 1 Razorwing
- Decide if I'm ever going to use the old DE models and do something about it.

Squats:
- Paint up and glue on some power axes for the Sergeants.

Eldar:
- Actually bother writing an army list.
- Paint the following...
- 6 War Walkers
- 3 Wave Serpents
- 1 Falcon

Chaos Marines:
- Buy the new Codex
- Spray and Paint Dark Vengeance Chaos bits
- Use what I can to get the army to minimum 1,000pts to use as allies for Daemons.

Dark Angels:
- Buy the new Codex.
- Spray and Paint Dark Vengance bits

Tyranids:
- Get the army to at least 2,000pts before the end of the year.
- Ensure that the army is fully assembled and painted.

Now onto Fantasy which is where things start to get flakier unless I start playing it again anytime soon...

Bretonnians:
- Paint the following...
- 3 Pegasus Knights
- 20 Grail Pilgrims and Grail Reliquae
- 8 Grail Knights
- 15 Men at Arms
- Actually play some Fantasy!

There's lots of other bits to do as well, like trying to organise my shelves and storage better, along with a wedge of LOTR minis that need a look at and my increasing interest in WarmaHordes but these are the main contenders of things to get done in 2013.

I'm hoping that these 9 armies can each be given a time slot of about a month to get finished and signed off. Spread over 12 months it seems doable to me, obviously real life and work dependent. There's some bigger chunks on there that might need longer than a month (I'm looking at you Necrons!) so this might be spread out to help things.

So there we are. That's my hobby goal for the next year. If I can get even half of it done, that'll be a massive boost, especially if I can avoid buying much more stuff on top of that (Tyranids aside). Expect January's painting pledge tomorrow when I've decided what of this list can get set for this month.

Anyone else got hobby goals planned for this year? Or is no one else as daft as me?

New Year: Old Failures and New Goals

Morning folks,

Been a while without a post as everyone's been busy over the holidays with work, family, general socialising away from a keyboard, etc. So happy new year to everyone, and hope you all had a good festive period.

Now it's back to work time, which means a new set of goals for this coming year, as well as a recap of what I got done over December.

Dark Eldar:
Out of my Dark Eldar backlog I got all the Kabalite Warriors and Wyches completed and the Hellions ready for painting, although by that point in December I'd got painting fatigue and gave up in favour of Xbox gaming.

I didn't manage to get much else done, apart from getting Dark Vengeance bits out of the box ready to sand the bases and spray... So all in all, apart from that hefty chunk of Dark Eldar, I didn't get much else in the painting pledge dented.

Festive Gaming:
As a send off for the last game before Christmas, some of us playing in a 4 player kill team game involving a crashed shuttle and it's pilot S.Claus. So I spent a Sunday evening converting, undercoating and painting him ready for the game on a Monday night and thought he looked cool.

As for the actual game, alliances went out of the window pretty much straight away, and the Ultramarines kill team used it's Random Target Generator (tm) to full effect meaning no one was safe.

Tyranids:
I decided with it being a new year and not really being too interested in the Dark Angels stuff, that I'd start myself a new army project and try to add at least 1 new unit a month. Hopefully reaching 2,000pts of painted stuff by the end of July in the hopes of going to Britcon 2013 in August.

The options were Tau, add to the Chaos stuff I had from Dark Vengeance or an army I'd been after starting for ages - Nids.

I decided on Nids as they were my original first army (after splitting Battle for Macragge) and I wanted to do the paint scheme I did on them with brown and bone, and mostly because it didn't involve vehicles, just big beasties.

 
So with my Xmas pennies I went out and bought the Battleforce and Codex as a launch point, and hopefully place an order for January's unit in the next few days.

I'm not entirely sure how I want the Nid army to be, probably just a collection of all the different units I can get hold of. Initially I wanted the core of the army to be Warriors, but it's pretty expensive to be running that, even with eBay prices.

That's all for now folks while my work PC churns into life after a month with no activity! I'll get a painting pledge for January sorted in the next couple of days too.