April Painting Pledge - Eldar Vehicles - Progress #4

Morning folks.

Made a bit of progress on Wednesday night with my Eldar pledge, managing to get my Falcon painted, washed and based ready for warfare!

I'm much happier with the wash on the bone coloured flat plates on this vehicle, so might re-do the older ones another time.

While I had the chance, I did the black basecoat on the Eldar Warwalkers too, so that they had plenty of time to dry but I've not had chance to make a start on painting them up yet.

On top of all that, we managed to squeeze a 1,000pt (2 x 500pt players) game in for a bit yesterday afternoon which let me try out my Brotherhood of the Forge. I really enjoyed getting to use the Sisters of Battle codex, especially since I've not looked at it at all during 6th edition. And also the fact I bothered to read the basic Sister's infantry Act of Faith again and read the bit about re-rolling 1s to hit in shooting and assault.

So... the Brotherhood of the Forge will take to the battlefield on Monday night!

SB

April Painting Pledge - Eldar Vehicles - Progress #3

Morning folks.

Another progress update from me last night. I managed to get a fair chunk of work done on my Eldar Falcon. Got the brass and bone areas painted up whilst I had the chance to and made some progress on the Falcon turret.

Tonight's job will be to finish off the Falcon completely by painting the cockpits, assorted Gems on the hull and weaponry, touch up the black areas and then give the entire thing a wash.

Hopefully I can blast through that bit quite quickly and get onto basecoating the War Walkers and leave them to dry overnight. It's a shame as if I get the Falcon done, I could make good progress on the War Walkers - I should have basecoated them at the same time as the other vehicles so they were ready to go straight onto.

Who knows, maybe I can get this month's painting done in a fortnight? HERESY!

If the unthinkable does happen and I manage to finish them, I've got myself a Dark Angels Devastator squad to finish off, an Immolator to paint and various bits to build, so there'll be a Painting Pledge Plus, later on this month.

Byes!

Post-game Thoughts - Khorne Daemons v Slaanesh Daemons

Afternoon chaps!

After playing the other week using my Dark Angels against Slaanesh Daemons, I decided to have a rematch aganst them, this time using my Khorne Daemons and have Hatred going all over the place.

Back in 5th edition, and late 4th edition, I attempted to play a Khorne only Daemon army, never did too well with it but the new Codex got me all excited and I thought I'd give them another run out to see how they go.

My list was as follows (where I can remember):
- Bloodthirster
- Herald on a Juggernaut (Greater reward + Greater locus of fury)
- Herald on foot.
- 4 Bloodcrushers
- 10 Bloodletters (Icon, Instrument, Champion w/ Lesser reward)
- 10 Bloodletters (Icon, Instrument, Champion w/ Lesser reward)
- 10 Bloodletters (Icon, Instrument, Champion w/ Lesser reward)
- 8 Flesh hounds
- Skullcannon
- Soul Grinder (Iron Claw, Phlegm)


We were both battling to take control of a Warpgate in the centre of the board (The Relic) and deployed as Dawn of War. Slaanesh Daemons deployed first and got the first turn.

For my Daemonic rewards I rolled the following:
- Bloodletters #1 - 18" S8 AP4 Assault 1, Soul Blaze
- Bloodletters #2 - 18" S8 AP4 Assault 1, Soul Blaze
- Bloodletters #3 - swapped for Axe of Khorne
- Herald on Juggernaut - Re-roll failed Invulnerable saves
- Herald on Foot - Fleshbane and Armourbane

I tried to set my Bloodletter units up with a supporting unit each, 1 had Bloodcrushers, 1 had a Soul Grinder and 1 had a Skullcannon. Unfortunately, when I saw the Slaanesh daemons crossing the board at a ridiculous speed I got a bit carried away and bunged stuff forward into poor choices of assaults.

On top of that, I didn't realise quite how badly I'd do in all my assaults with the basic Bloodletters down to the fact we both had Hatred and I was striking last with reduced attacks from previous edition. In short, I was still playing most of my units as though it was 5th edition and the old Codex.

As far as the game and objectives went, the Slaanesh daemons got onto it in turn 1 and I never got near to removing them from it, due to poor shooting, bad assault decisions and some abysmal dice rolling for difficult terrain and charge distances.

The most notable was on turn 1 I chose to walk my Bloodthirster 6" and use the wings in the assault phase so I'd get hammer of wrath and a re-roll to distance. I forgot Monstrous Creatures always have hammer of wrath for a start, and then rolled 3" for my charge, followed by another 3" on the re-roll meaning he couldn't get into a nice squishy Fiend unit he was eyeing up.

Bloodcrushers die a LOT easier nowadays due to the fact they don't have the 3+ armour anymore, but make up for a bit by being able to tank some wounds. It really helped that I could re-roll the Heralds invulnerable saves too. Oh - and the other thing is that they've now dropped to T4 which was killer and I didn't realise until locked in combat... Oh dear.

Fleshhounds I didn't really get much chance to do anything with... I forgot they had Scout until I looked up there stats for getting into combat with a Seeker unit and even though they've now got 2 wounds, they got dragged down and then failed their Daemonic instability to kill them off.

Skullcannon had a prime shot on a Daemonette unit that was sat bunched up on the relic and missed completely. Then got smashed up by a Seeker unit a bit later. I'm not convinced by Chariots from my reading of the rules for them in the last few days, they seem to me like a Close combat oriented unit that's pretty easy to drag down in close combat because it's hit on rear armour. Few more games are needed with this because I still like the idea of it.

As with the Skullcannon, the Soul Grinder failed spectacularly and didn't really do anything. It managed to kill 2 Daemonettes with the big template and that was about it. Apart from one combat where he killed a few Seekers and then they rolled double 1 on their Daemonic instability and came back to life. BOOOOOO.

So anyway, notable things from this game:
- Khorne v Slaanesh in close combat is Slaanesh all the way due to the speed, number of attacks and striking first with re-rolls to hit. Maybe I should have piled more units into individual Slaanesh units.

- When playing against an opponent with no flyers and very limited shooting, don't walk around with a Bloodthirster. Fly it around, shoot stuff, vector strike and get to the soft underbelly of an army!

- Daemonic Instability rarely got used because units were wiped out to a man. The few instances it got used saw my Khorne Hounds with 2 dogs left fail by 11 or something silly, then the other with the Seekers where 4 of them came back to life due to the "reality blinks" double 1.

- On the Warpstorm table, we rolled 6 pretty much EVERY time for 4 turns. Which meant lots of D6 S4 AP3 Poisoned (4+) Ignores Cover hits got distributed, weakening my Bloodthirster and also the Keeper of Secrets.

All in all it was a really brutal game, I was wiped out apart from a Herald by turn 3 without ever getting close to the Relic or even out of my table half.

Maybe next time I'll keep some units in deep strike, take bigger Bloodletter squads and not waste so many of my units as I did.

That's all for now folks!

April Painting Pledge - Eldar Vehicles - Progress #2

Morning folks!

Productive weekend of hobbying for the most part, I managed to get my 3 Wave Serpents painted up fully, apart from the guns as I'm planning on doing them as one big batch later on for all the vehicles.

So yeah, these are done now. Not completely happy with them as the large flat bone coloured areas look pretty messy so I'm thinking about touching them up when I've finished the Falcon.

Speaking of which, I got my Falcon basecoated black last night and then while I had 10 minutes spare in the morning today I got the chassis and metallic areas drybrushed with metal. I ran out of time for getting the brass areas finished though, so that's a job for another time.

Paint:

• 3 Wave Serpents
• 6 War Walkers
• 1 Falcon
• All the Wave Serpent, Falcon and Guardian platform weaponry.
  

Buy:

• Soul Grinder
• Black Spray

Black Templars pulled from GW Site?

Morning folks.

No painting progress last night due to a poorly Baby badger, but instead this was brought to my attention this morning - the Black Templars section of the GW site is now empty.

See for yourselves here: Games Workshop - Black Templars

So what does this mean? Well... not much is really clear. If you do a search on the GW site for the Black Templars you can still order their Codex and some shoulder pads, but nothing else will show up.

Option #1 - New Codex: Black Templars
For me, this is a possibility simply because GW have kept them as separate entities where necessary in the 6th edition rulebook. There are a few things I noticed in the 6th ed book that were precursors to Dark Angels and Daemon codex updates.

They are one of the few Marine chapters that feel different to others, rather than just giving bikers / terminators / assault marines as troops and a few new vehicles or special units. I would like to see them keep a new codex, but the fact they're not very detailed in the 6th edition rulebook in terms of fluff, makes me think of....

Option #2 - New Codex: Space Marines that includes Black Templars
This might be quite hard to do and get it to feel like a Templar army. Perhaps the Emperor's Champion is a character in the Marine HQ slot which unlocks the ability to add Initiates into squads and replaces Chapter Tactics with some zealous rules.

This is also a likely option simply because the Imperial Fists seem to be sporting the crenellated Templar armour, Templars have the Stormtalon and Stomraven at the same time as Codex Marines and the fact there's now very scant detail on them in the 6th edition rulebook.

Option #3 - White Dwarf Update and switch to Finecast
Another not so likely option and I can't remember if the Templars characters got swapped to Finecast, but it could be that combined with a White Dwarf update to keep the army separate, without the need for a full codex - similar to how the Sisters of Battle got a "tide you over" WD codex.

Again, I'm not so sure on this, but since there's a lack of rumours in general on the Templars at the minute (from what I've seen anyway) it could be anything.

Then there's the possibility of the unknown, it could just be a glitch and mean nothing and the range will be back up in a day or two, but normally this kind of thing heralds something soon. Although there's not been much rumour build up for the Black Templars recently, so who knows?

What do you guys think to it all? New codex for them? New codex for Marines with Templars included? Something else? Anyone? Bueller?

SB

April Painting Pledge - Eldar Vehicles - Progress #1

Morning folks.

In between errands and jobs at home last night I got an hour of painting on my Wave Serpents in. I got a bit fed up in the end and didn't make it onto the third Serpent's wraithbone sections because I slowly added more and more bone areas to the main vehicle chassis.

This is after I said I would never paint bone armour again after doing all my Deathwing! So as I've painted, I've gone back and re-done some panels to be bone to try and break up the black sections a bit.

Next thing to do tonight is to get the bone areas done on the 3rd Serpent and then make a start resetting the black areas. Hopefully if I can make good speed with that then I can roll straight onto getting them washed up and leave them overnight.

Last thing is whether I want to add some detail on the panelling. I've seen lots of people do the thorns and vines design on the sides of vehicles - so maybe, depending on how I feel at the time.

I'm going to leave all the weapons until the end and do a batch of them all at the same time, possibly buying myself some Army Painter spray to get the job done quicker.

That's all for now chaps! Hopefully I can get the Wave Serpents finished by the weekend and make a start on the Falcon.

SB

April Painting Pledge - Eldar Vehicles

Morning folks!

It's the start of a new month so that means a new painting pledge! Having over-run February into March, I managed to claw some progress back and get them finished on time. Which leads me onto my next endeavour to "finish" an army off (for the time being).

This month's line up involves all my Eldar vehicles, which I'd been dreading painting for ages because they're vehicles and also really spindly and fragile. Even whilst I was getting them prepped half the stuff broke off and got re-assembled.

 

In here we've got 3 Wave Serpents with magnetised weapon turrets, a Falcon with a magnetised turret weapon choice, 6 War Walkers (4 with 2 x Scatter laser, 2 with Scatter laser and Missile launcher combo) and then the weapons to go onto my guardian squad's weapon platform.

They're all following my Ulthwe colour scheme, so I'm hoping that the Wave Serpents and Falcon are quite quick to paint up, as the War Walkers and weapons are going to be pretty awkward.

In addition to the painting pledge, I've got some hobby goals I want to get out of the way this month...

The first one is to sand the bases on my new Dark Angels Dev squad, all armed with plasma cannons from the Dark Vengeance sets. I'm trying to retro-fit my DA army to have plasmas where possible and thanks to a good deal off a bitz site, they seemed a logical inclusion. So these guys also need spraying and MAYBE become a stretch goal to get finished this month.

I'm quite excited to use them once painted, which means they'll all die to over-heating on the first shots fired.

On top of this, to get things ready for next month's painting pledge, I need to get my Necron reinforcements, from when their new Dex came out, sprayed up ready to be painted. I'm planning on sticking to the original Terminator style colour scheme for these guys, since that's what my old army is painted up as - so they'll hopefully be quick to paint up once sprayed!

There's also a Ghost Ark, Catacomb command barge and an Overlord to get done. My only worry for these guys is making the vehicles look good. My older Necron monoliths look a bit shabby now looking back on them, so what I do for the new vehicles will probably end up getting applied to the Monoliths when I re-do them.

Paint:

• 3 Wave Serpents
• 6 War Walkers
• 1 Falcon
• All the Wave Serpent, Falcon and Guardian platform weaponry.
  

Spray:

• Dark Angels Plasma Cannon Devastator Squad
• 1 Imotekh
• 1 Trazyn
• 1 Cryptek
• 1 Overlord
• 10 Tesla Immortals
• 5 Lychguard with Voidblade and shield
• 1 Ghost Ark
• 1 Catacomb Command Barge / Annihalation Barge

Buy:

• Soul Grinder
• Tyranid Additions
• Black Spray

That's all for now folks, busy busy month ahead it seems!

SB