Caledonian practice games at the club..with PICS! Whoot!

Well, it's only a week away now so it was clearly time to get some practice in.. To be honest I don't need the practice with the army, more its application against other forces. This will be my second Caledonian Uprising tournament, and in fact my second with Necrons.

that's right, Ven has actually played an army solidly for OVER a full calendar year! (Apart from winning a sixth ed tournament with space wolves, but we'll skip over that..as just 6 games in a year)

It's pretty crazy to think that a guy with mad levels of army-ADD has actually stayed focused.. But we can all see why, the army looks great on the tabletop and is uber-effective across a multitude of builds. Seriously, what more could you want?

Last night at the club I got in 3 games with my crons vs 3 separate opponents with three distinct armies.
I played demons, space marines and blood angels with SM allies.

Some shots.. No full bat reps, but some comments to accompany...


First shot shows the deep strike defence I have developed versus demons. In this case, due to terrain, I was able to use the centre of the board I as was going first and had some impassible terrain in front of me to act as a shield - generally, I will use a board edge and a short edge to shield my army, then use the multi wound, 3++ save of the 10 wraiths to shield the army. Versus mass flamer demons, I like to have all my forces on the board, bar the fliers, from the word go. I leave distinct distances in between my units so that the flamers can only spray wraiths and perhaps a warrior or two, this minimises the benefit of a dangerous, daring deep strike.. This either keeps my boys safe from having the drop on them, or it results in a couple of wraiths going down and then all the guns are on the table to shred the flamers.

I've been playing a considerable amount versus Demons and I feel like I am ready for them..



We then see some action of ba/sm, here I had to play a strategic game, playing close attention to the positioning of units in the current turn and in future turns and to coax the sm/ba to where I wanted them to be, thereby mitigating the impact of the 4 strong Hyperios missile launcher and the quad gun. I had no wish for my fliers to die. I used my speed to lure in Meph and the large assault termies, whilst engaging units on an individual level applying my whole force.





Vs the dual land raider, dual ass termies, lucious podding ironclad marines, I used wraiths to aggressively stall the land raiders, blocking exits and killed the other units piecemeal. The termies of course got out eventually and wrecked face, I had all four fliers in reserve for three turns, the final shot shows go the game went when I actually had a full army on the board... Fuck I love rolling sixes... ;)

Well, that's another week at the club done. I'll get some more games in vs Bringer of Death and his Demons on Monday, I may try and play with Space Marines to gain a more developed sense of strengths and weaknesses of the current popular builds.. there are a fair few of them at Cally.. But Crons are the big one.. some 19 out of 91 players are Necrons...including me.. good job I know them well.. 

Baby needs Milk Money - Ebaying again and an experiment...rate my 40k Chuck Norris

Hey all. Just put up another load of ebay stuff. Lots of random stuff if your looking for a good deal.

http://www.ebay.co.uk/sch/9006gary/m.html?_ipg=50&_sop=12&_rdc=1


But in amongst them is the little beaut you see above.

This is a lone wolf that's no longer needed in my Wolfs army that im painting up. So im putting him up just to see how much my painting would make on the market. The army will all be ginger and made up of elite wolf guard...proper little kung fu army :). Lead by the Logan himself, its going to be a very hitty affair - One fingered push ups the lot! You've seen Lone Wolf Maquade right!!

Boom!

Anyway the army will be going up for sale once finished but for now i was going to put it to people to see if any c & c was forthcoming to see if it could be improved upon. If you was going to buy a 2000pt army looking like this would you be happy? Would you pay top dollar?

Thanks for looking

G

First project of the new year: Master of the Path

Hola bitches!
So it's been quiet here over the festive season. I apologise if this has been annoying to anyone..at all. I can't imagine it has been, there has been plenty of bloggers conducting excellent bloggery over the end of the year.
Plenty of DA rumourage too. Getting excited for this one, and only a few days to go til preorders go up on the 5th. A little dubious though as all we have heard about are Deathwing and Ravenwing. Whilst I have an army of both, I must admit I am looking forward to mainly marine based action. But I am not a pessimist, I will wait and see what happens.

Still very excited to find out what a Rift Cannon does.

Anyway, I'm off work til Monday and I need some geezers to do.. This will fall into two categories:
1) PreHeresy marines to be assembled. I loved the Autocannons and I knew I had to have them...so I have them.
2) masters of the path for Malifaux.. Undead Samurai!! What could be better? Answer - fuck all. Hopefully you can see the built "Izamu the Armour" - a feudal samurai badass.. Clad in ornate family armour befitting his station and wielding the huge glaive like Dadao..
You can also see more of the Master of the Path set due for release in March. I picked this bad boy up on early release for Wyrd's birthday event about three weeks ago..it's arrived and I can't wait to get it on the tabletop..I think by Friday you will see painting and tabletop reports with this crew...

Other than that...lists are in for Caledonian Uprising on the 4th... A substantial 40k tournament up at Maelstrom. I placed 11th from 120 last year...hoping for a top ten finish this year.. It's Crons again..I took the last year to Cally and feel they are even stronger here and now..

Judging the Mood: New Dark Angels models out!

This is all over the internet and I am very, very happy!
I have prepared for this and am so pleased! I have 60+ marines of various types ready to roll.. vehicle support from all the typical Marine stable - from Rhino's to Land Raiders and everything in between..
Aegis Defence Line, FW AA Missile platform..
DW and RW forces ready..

Now, just need to await the new models and plug a few in to the force!

My purchases will no doubt include the new fliers - if they are nicely costed (points) and effective..
I anticipate great things for the new Deathwing Knights and for the Ravenwing..
I have an army of each ready to roll and I must say that I am incredibly excited to add the new Speeder and Fliers to my Ravenwing and that running a 'niche' army is going to be a real possibility once again.
Let's face it, bike armies are the coolest thing since the other side of the pillow, so I look forward to rocking them again.. perhaps this time with some IG platoons to bulk up the numbers and make up for the small scoring bodies.

As for Deathwing - very excited to simply have a greater variety of units available in the army other than plain ol' DW. It'll be great to have a unit of Deathwing Knights and Command Squad dudes alongside the regular DW. Add in a platoon or too and once again we can make up for some of the limitations of a terminator army.

Now, neither the DW or RW is going to be a full on hardcore army.. unless the DW Knights are Paladins on crack and regular point price termies! Broken! But this will not be the case, so both niche armies will be just that. They will both suffer from the same frailties that niche armies do and will not drop the big boys of early 6th - Crons, Demons or Nids.

How it all fits together across a more balanced Dark Angels force remains to be seen.. and to be totally honest - I'll be waiting to get the codex into hand for a vigourous pumping of information before I commit to any purchases!

What are your thoughts on the new models? I love the DW Knights, the Fliers and the Ravenwing with Plasma 'Talons'.. not sure about the new speeder, but will ce rtainly convert one up from an old Land Speeder Storm.. unless of course that is a dedicated transport for Scouts.. and useful lol!

Thunderfire Cannon Scratch Build

Like many others out there, I refuse to buy the thunderfire cannon for £35 or whatever it is.. silly money for a  techmarine and a gun.

So I thought I would build one myself just from bits n bobs I have lying around from my random ass collection.. free whoot!

I had to get an image of what the Thunderfire is supposed to look like.. then I had to have an extensive search of my bits. This is what took the longest to be honest... I have a huge collection of random bits and finding Space Marine parts that suited as well as other non-Imperial bits.. I mainly raided a Empire Steam Tank, a spare Manticore kit, some random Marine tank bits.. Vendetta landing gears, all sorts.

It took a few minutes to think what I wanted it to look like, I like the idea of it being dropped into the action from space or low orbit from a thunderhawk.. that way, it wouldn't have to have tank tracks - the most important element that I could not source in my bits...and I'd be damned if I was paying anything at all for this!

My first steps were to put the TFC base platform together. This was a very simple platform, with just the 3 landing gears under a razorback hatch. This would give me the size to mount a pretty decent sized gun on, also a space to angel the gun already built in.

Once this was done, it was time to build the Cannon itself.. I toyed with putting the Cannons from the Empire Steam Tank together and adding a 3d cannon from the Nemesis Dreadknight Heavy Psilencer..but it just didn't look man enough for the job..

Then I found a set of Storm Eagle rockets I had left from my Mech IG army that I sold.. nice one.. trim the flights and noses from the missiles..glue together.. sweet.

Next stage was to provide some bulk to the TFC, and a way in which to elevate the barrel/cannon so that it looks like it could lob shells overhead. This was done with a spare Baal Pred ammo box from the TL Assault Cannons.. and the control panel from a Drop Pod. These, combined with a second Razorback weapons mount gave me the necessary elevation on the cannon and the mountings for the Steam Tank Cannons gave me the pieces that would hold the cannon in place.

Adding a few details to the rear of the Cannon covered the dodgy looking glue job at the back, a DA tome glued on the front gave it the mechanicus/DA monastic nonsense I was looking for.

The Cannon itself got some Baal Pred Sponson covers to give the Cannon itself some covering and armour plates. I did look for one of those targeting thing-ma-bobbies that goes on top of the TFC, but I couldn't find one amongst my scrap.. which to be honest, I was amazed at lol!

Then I think that was it.. pretty easy, looks pretty sweet and it cost absolutely nothing...pilfering bits from kits that I have no interest in using nor have the need.. IG for me are now reduced to just Infantry platoon plug ins as Allies and I have more BA mech than you can shake a stick at.. so a few odds n sods are really not useful.

You can of course see my scratch built Techmarine with full servo harness.. my guy has more practical tools for siege work than lifting equipment..lighting, drill, hammer.. and of course the TL Plasma and flamer..

I love it when a plan comes together! What do you guys think? Cracking little freebie or "needs some work Ven"? I'm pretty pleased, I save £30-odd and exert some creativity.. 

Dark Angels WIP - 60 marines airbrushed!

I've been digging out all my unclassified space marines over the last 2 weeks.
You know what I've found?
About 3000 points worth of stuff that is not part of my Blood Angels, Grey Knights or Space Wolves armies.
All miscellaneous Space Marines.
This is mainly made up of 60 Tactical Marines, almost half of which (25) are robed Dark Angel Vets.
I mixed these guys with BA bits to get wings and baroque bling into the models back when I was trying out my "Band of Brothers" Sisters counts as army.
I felt pretty bad about doing that..

Anyway, I also have 20 Ravenwing Bikers, some MM Attack Bikes.. and the coup d'grace.. about 40 Deathwing Termies.. including 2 of the new squads from Dark Vengeance.
I grabbed the Libbie and Chapter Master off of fleabay and now I have a full blooded DA army.

So where is the painting and modelling at?
I see an airbrushed army coming here..

Tacticals 

Just really old tac marines I put together when I got into the hobby again at the start of 5th.. plus 2 sets of Black Reach dudes .. still..they do the job.


The Green on these guys is worked up from Caliban Green to umm...Moot Green, yeah that's it.. although it is never PURE Moot Green, always at least part mixed with CG.. The next stage for these boys and all the miniatures you see here is a Thraka Green wash to bring the tone together a bit and then a devlan mud wash to certain parts.. I am thinking of using dust pigments to give them a real 'in action' look..


Sternguard
These guys are the robed bad asses we need in a DA army.. plus a few traditional sternguard which will form the veteran sergeants in the normal tactical squads.. I think this is a great way of getting some flavour into the tact squads..





Bikes & Termies

So this is a big ass pile of stuff... An entire Deathwing army plus 2 new Dark Vengeance squads.. 20 odd Ravenwing bikers..

Whilst the Deathwing are ready to roll as a complete force, the Ravenwing do not have enough bodies to form a true force, but with Allied Guard or something they may be viable.

I'm thinking Speeders and Fliers (if they materialise in the new book), 2 max Bike squads for troops, Drop Pod Sternguard and then IG Allies for bodies..

Special Characters - these guys are just Libbies.. I wonder what the Dark Angel psychic powers are going to be like?? Exciting! But even if they are just Marine ones re-hashed.. I can deal with that!


Inner Circle (Rumour mill unit) - when I heard about a big pimping, closed group of fanatical Inner Circle morons who DUAL WIELD PLASMA PISTOLS I had to have some! So I ordered myself some extra left handed plasma pistols, which I struggle to find for some reason amongst my collection and boom.. off we go!  To be honest, even though this is a cool ass idea for a unit, if they don't materialise in the new DA Codex, then I'll just grab me these dudes as Sergeants for my squads, I love a dual wield and PP will be the new black.. especially if the rumoured "Rites" come into play for DA, one of which supposedly allows rerolls for gets hot! - how sweet? Very.

These are the next project for the weekend.. plus hopefully a scratchbuilt Thunderfire for my Techmarine to use! Speaking of which... over the weekend I'll post up my scratchbuilt techmarine with a full servo harness.. I am really pleased with him and best of all..every part of him was something I already had somewhere in my massive garage-sized bitz box! lol