So I promised a little step by step on the Space wolves and so here it is. All the models were spray painted black. Then the entire model was painted with a 50/50 mx of chaos black and shadow grey. Then as you can see here the armor was all painted in shadow grey, making sure to leave the recesses showing the darker under coat.
Next I did some of the detail work with boltgun metal, on both the gun and sword as well as the chest and mouth piece(which you'll see better in some of the later pics).
I used dwarf bronze for some of the chains and ornaments on the armor. Also the shoulder pads were added once the boltgun work was done. The trim was done again in shadow grey.
Vomit brown then forms the base for the shoulder pads. Because yellow is nearly impossible to paint over any color.... much more so with black.
And here you can faintly see the first layering of golden yellow over the brown. I found it worked better to water down the yellow and simply layer it over the shoulder over and over again. In fact every time I got the yellow out to do the next member of the squad I would add another layer of yellow to all the marines I had already done.
Here the model is nearly done. The armor has now received a n edge highlight of a 50/50 mix of shadow gray and spacewolves gray. The tooths were a simple bleached bone. Also you'll notice the yellow has begun to get brighter after a few more layers.Well I hope you enjoyed this little run through. As you can see Ive been experimenting with some picture taking and so hopefully most of my posts from this point on will include some visuals.

Space Wolves

So in my good deed for the holidays I helped out a fellow member of our club in painting up some space wolves models for his son. It gave me a real chance to step out of my comfort zone and really try out some highlighting and layering techniques by following the pages of how to paint space wolves that I was given. They came out so well that I was sad to even look at my own rather simple marines. And so my next project... along with my fantasy army is to update my own marine army so I can be as proud of it as I was of these space wolves army.






In my next post Ill go through with a simple step by step rundown of how I painted these models.

The Trolls of Khorne!!!! errr I mean Tzeentch.

This is my first forray into the game of Warhammer Fantasy battles. I havent even played a game yet. But Ive been reading the rules, and I put together this list combining some models my brother had from a 40k chaos army, and some rudimentary conversions as well(my trolls are greenstuff enlarged old khorne bezerkers). Im going to get my first small intro game at the end of the week and hopefully from there work in some larger games and tweek the formation of this list as we approach February when Ill be taking part in our club's Bloody Valentive Tournament.

2237

Daemon Prince - Lv. 4 wizard, mark of tzeentch, tendrils of tzeentch, Fury of the blood god -555

Throgg the Troll King - 175

Sorcerer - Lv. 2 wizard, mark of tzeentch, barded steed, infernal puppet, conjoined homoculous - 211

Sorcerer - Lv. 2 wizard, mark of tzeentch, barded steed, power familiar, dispel scroll - 206

3 Trolls - 135

3 Trolls - 135

3 Trolls - 135

7 Trolls - 315

5 Warhounds - 30

5 Warhounds - 30

5 Chaos Knights -full command, mark of tzeentch, blasted standard - 310

Im planning to hide the small troll units behind warhound screens to advance. Throgg will march with the large troll block down the center of the field to draw the enemies' eyes. If they fire on the unit then liely it will get some eye of the gods rolls and beef up even more before it hits. I wanna test out this block idea and see how it goes. i will also test the list with all the troll units at a uniform 4.

Whats Your Favorite Army to Fight?

With rumors swirling about the contents of the new Tyranids codex, my friend and I have been having some serious debate about the new direction and power upgrade to the gibbering horde.

Now I hope the new codex is balanced and fun not only for me as an opponent but also for the Tyranid players. I really do hope to see them come out in droves, and new bandwagon players pick up a pile of tyranid warriors to take advantage of the new codex on the block.

Because I love killing Tyranids. They are by far my favorite enemy race. I dont know what it is about them. I just love squashing the little(and not so little) bugs. Part of the reason I guess is the particular armies Ive played have had a nice time against the army. And a part of it is the shear "alienness" of the army compared to the others. There is no moral ambiguity with the Tyranids, they need to be exterminated.

So what are some of your favorite armies to face? Either stylistically or narratively, or for no reason at all.

Conflict Grand Tournament January 2010

So I just finalized my entry into the Conflict Gt. Will be taking over for Matt from http://chaos-space-marines.blogspot.com/ who is unable to make it. Two other members of the Ordo Ineptus will also be in attendence, Bob and Lord Victor who's blogs are linked in my profile.

It is a 1750 point tournament and I will be using my Salamanders(or Shadow dragons) Space marines. Because its a tournament and I dont need to be nice to people that means that almost all the toys I enjoy taking will be in my list. This includes Vulkan and a large unit of sternguard in a drop pod. I dont have quite enough points to slip my other favorite the Ironclad drednoughts into the list, but oh well regular ones will have to do the job.

1748

Vulkan - 190

Sternguard - 6 combimeltas, 2 combiflamers, 2 heavy flamers, powerfist, drop pod- 370

Drednought -assault cannon, heavy flamer - drop pod - 160

Drednought - drop pod, heavy flamer- 150

Tactical Squad - flamer, multimelta, powerfist, drop pod - 230

Tactical Squad - melta, multimelta, combimelta, melta bombs, drop pod - 225

Tactical Squad - (8 men) powerfist, combiflamer - 173

Land Raider Redeemer - multimelta - 250


Its a heavy drop pod list with 5 pods. I hope to get second turn in order to hopefully get my opponent to deploy. Putting a whole army in reserve is a common tactic that people seem to think defeats the major threat of drop pod armies. But really it means that for the most part Ive forced you to play a style that doesnt work well for your army(unless of course youre a fast army that plays from reserves against most foes).

I dont deploy anything on the board no matter if I am going first or second. Even the Landraider and its tactical squad passengers gets placed into reserve. Vulkan rides with the sternguard to maximize their ability to desroy targets. The squad will split upon entry and target multiple heavy units of the enemy. The dreds are also part of this first turn alpha strike.

The tactical marines all get to arrive after some portion of the action has already taken place and the direction of the battle is more clearly developing. This lets me choose where they will be most helpful in either a fire support role or simply to grab objectives. The Ladnraider bound squad basically ensures that the objective closest to my table edge is mine to control. Because of the Redeemers overwhelming fire ability at close range it will be hard for any sort of unit to claim that objective from my tactical squad, which will not even have to get out of the Landraider to fulfill its main job.

I used a variation of this list at a recent larger tournament(2000pts) and it performed very well for me. Had I not made some errors in addition or over thought my final game I could have placed nearly at the top of the field. So I am fairly confident heading into this next event. As always hopefully the dice will be with me that day and I can draw some favorable match ups. Luck has a lot to do with how you do in the games.

Any thoughts, criticisms of the list are always welcome. Ill update any changes I make as the event date approaches(lists are due Jan 1st) and will try to get some pictures and battle reports up after the event itself.

edit-weapons change on dred, replaced combimeltas on sternguard, and removed powerfist on one tactical squad-Lord Victor was right I was getting away from some of my standard stuff

Assault Terminator Obsession

I have a question for other space marine players out there. Why are so many of you obsessed with assault terminators. And more specifically with a Landraider filled with them.

Now I will admit I like the models and at times I have toyed and tinkered with them in my lists. And that when used they demand a Landraider transport for full effectiveness.

But I often find them lacking in true usefullness. And in further contemplation finding them rather one dimensional for the usually jack of all trades marine units. I am moving further and further away from even thinking of using assault terminators in my competative list builds.

On the continuum of this discussion, I do still like the Landraider. And being the good transport it is, if its not carrying terminators what is it carrying? I advocate throwing in a full tactical squad into your landraiders. Suddenly the 14AV all around tank that everyone fears is a scoring 14Av all around tank. And all those terminator players loading their redeemers up with 5 terminators and Vulkan, can cry when your Redeemer packing vulkan and a full tac squad has the same capability against a large range of opponents. But also has the ability to score without ever getting out of the landraider.

Dont believe me on the effectiveness idea. Think the terminators have to be better at assault. Well Im not a math major(far from it) but some simple equations can show that when moving out of their landraider transports the tactical squad and the terminator squad along with Vulkan in each are nearly as effective as each other.

Now ouur tactical squad has a flamer, Multimelta, and a sargent with a powerfist and combiflamer, which comes in at 205pts. While our assault terminator squad has 2 lightning claws and 3 thunderhammers, and both squads have Vulkan.


Lets assume that Im going to charge a 10 man Meq(Marine equivalent) unit. Lets also assume that I will drive up right next to it so no matter how he were to remove shooting casualties I would still get the assault(highly likely Since i can assault even if the Landraider moves)

Pre assault: lets assume I can get only 4 guys under a flame template... if Im this close odds are I can get more but lets use this number its fairly small. with 2 flamers and a heavy flamer. Thats 8 hits with a regular flamer causig 6 wounds(75% because of the reroll) and the heavy flamer will cause 3.5(88%) then bolt pistols from 8 marines = 2.64 wounds. Thats 12.14 wounds. After saves thats 4 dead. Ok now I charge. Vulkan has 4 attacks with 1 reroll to hit and 1 to wound, also odds are he has the highest initiative. 3.3 hit, 3.2 wound... no armor saves which brings us up to 7.2 dead.
With 18 attacks half hit half wound, and after saves 1.485 dead from my regular marines. If we assume that the enemy marines are down to their sgt with a powerfist, as well as 2 guys with Bp/cc weapon then they have 4 attacks half hit half wound and I lose .33marines. My powerfist kills 1.2 marines bringing the total up to 8.4 and his powerfist kills .8 marines bringing his total up to 1.13 or we round to 2 i win combat by 6 or so and the enemy likely flees. Or is fearless and takes a few more wounds.

Now all that is with my landraider shooting its guns at a completly differant unit.

Terminatos assuming 5 cus thats about the same cost as the tac squad and all that will fit with vulkan in the LRR. I get 1.55 dead from vulkan's flamer. Vulkan kills 3.2 again in combat. 2 lightnniing claw guys kill 3. Thats a total of 7.7. If we assume again 3 survivors, then that means .2 dead termies. I lose another .24 to his power fist. Then 4.98 die to my thunderhammers. Ok so the termis kill the whole squad on the charge and are guaranteed to be left in the open to be shot.

The tac squad only performs marginally worse than the terminator squad. And has a chance to hold the enemy in combat for another round and barring reinforcement will easily win combat likely before the enemy even strikes back(Vulkan).

Plus the tac squad scores so doesnt have any need to get out of the LR until doing so would create an advantage for the army.

Now against non-MEQ armies the tactical squad could see its effectiveness go up even further because of the inferior saves invovlved esspecially against its shooting attacks. The only thing that the terminator squad would be better at killing is really high toughness and high save monstrous creatures. Like Daemonprinces, or tyranids monstrous creatures, especially if they lack a good invul, or lucky instant death against special chars and nobz. Both units will fail miserably against high initiative things with power weapons. So theres nothing to really gain there. Daemon princes fall to massed firepower. And remember both units still have the backup firepower of the landraider, in my recent army lists this is the redeemer but all the variants would perform nicely.

The terminators arent even that more survivable than the tactical marines, being inside the landraider means both wont be shot easily, if the Lr is blown up the 4+cover save is plenty good nearly as good as the terminator save against low ap weapons. Plus the tac squad has more bodies and so isnt as susceptible to a bad round of dice. And if the tac squad never gets into combat then it still can be active towards winnning a game.

So save the veterans for boarding those pesky spcae hulks and try to out tactic your opponents with some standard tactical marines. Math isnt everything, in fact I value experience in games over mathhammer hypothesis, however it is nice when you notice the trends youre seeing on the tabletop are backed up by the number crunchers.

Drop Pods vs. Rhinos

I feel that this topic is one that comes up on every message board and every blog that even remotely deals with the 40k universe. Space marines are the mostprevalent army and the debate between their two main modes of transportation can get very heated.

Now on the 40k fan site 40k Online which I read frequently and on several other blogs I have purveyed, it seems to be that Rhinos are considered far and away the morecompetitive choice among the two.

Posters point to the reliable nature of the Rhino. The protection it gives the squad inside, along with the ability (barring it destruction/damage) to move your Space Marine troops around for the entirety of the battle. These factors push people to rate the Rhino ahead of the Drop Pod unless gamers are looking for something fun or fluffy.

I however look at the drop pod as being far and away more dynamic and game changing than the simple rhino. With its inertial guidance system it has all the benefits of deepstriking without nearly any of the draw backs. This means your troops will be nearly guaranteed to get to the objective you want them to.

But the true benefit in my mind is that you still get to benefit from the combat squadding rule for this drop podded squad. Where the rhino hopes to reach the objective with its full squad of 10 marines, or perhaps merely a 5 man tactical squad. The Drop pod lets you drop 2 five man marine squads in essence on the target. Not only does this let you target multiple enemies but it also means that the enemy has to destroy 2separate targets, and a third if the drop pod is close enough to contest as well, to clear the objective.

Surely Drop Pods do have their disadvantages. They involve certain callousness when thinking of your troops. Also they need to be committed to more fully than other transport options. I think a minimum of 3 if any, and 5 is nice for games past 1700pts. Its best in these situations to have your troop choices coming in the second wave of pods, or to have enough of them that it doesn't matter, because return fire and lost units is a big part of playing with drop pods. And a certain ammount of foresight will be necessary when opponents decide that they will
look like smug geniuses by simply leaving their army in reserve.

So you can keep your Rhinos you 40k pundits. But look to the skies because my pods are coming to rain fire and death.

Short Story

This is a little story inspried by a battle between myself and a friend of mine.



Brother Sergeant Gaius woke from his hibernation system with a start. No matter how many times he entered battle that first gasp from dream filled tactica to the rumble of the Landraider and the deep inflections of the Chaplains prayers always came as a shock. His terminator suit’s sensors coming alive with his return to active status brought his battle brothers into vision, each stretching or turning the heads of their adamantine exoskeletons, so powerfully imitative of their owners, thoughts and movements. Gaius focused in on the sonorous voice leading the prayers, Chaplain Xavier was the highest ranking Chaplain in the entire Shadow Dragon’s chapter and his presence leading this campaign filled Gaius with pride. None would stand in their way as they cut a bloody swathe through the Emperor’s enemies. “Ad Mortem Properamus!”” Towards Death We March!” Gaius shouted out the last words with his brothers, and Xavier’s prayers were done.

The enemy position was closing fast. Gaius began to remember the plan so artfully crafter by his commanders and ingrained deeply within his mind during his stasis flight. He and his Brothers would close with the enemy and crush them into oblivion. Members of the second company as well as ancients from the Drednought legion would advance in their wake to secure an extraction point. The operation must be concluded swiftly lest the Dark Angels realize that the Shadow Dragon’s had landed on this planet they had declared exterminatus. Dark rumors whispered that fallen angels had landed on the planet and that the Dark Angels were enroute to destroy the planet immediately. But the high command had discovered that a scientist on the planet had unlocked a genetic secret about the Great Devourer, the enemy the Shadow Dragons pursued above all others. And so Gaius and his brethren had been sent to extract either the scientist himself or failing that obtain his research. The foolish scientist had been less than cooperative. But Chaplain Xavier was well versed in many forms of interrogation. Gaius smiled remembering the fool’s screams of repentance as he gave up his arcane data. Little did he realize that heresy can not be forgiven short of death.

Warning beacons began to flare within the cabin and Gaius stopped his reverie to prepare himself. The enemy had fallen right into their trap and had drawn up their whole lines to stop the advance of the lone Landraider heading towards their position. Xavier began a song of battle and Gaius and his brothers joined in whole heartedly . Their sonorous voices booming through speakers and in the close confines of the cabin drowned out the screech of shells and the impact of Drop Pods that rained around their blessed tank’s hull. With a shuddering lurch their Landraider was finally stopped under the weight of the enemies’ bombardment. But with a hearty roar and bight smile Gaius rushed after his brothers eager to follow Xavier into the fray.

Sensors whizzing Gaius saw that the enemy had truly erred in haste. Speedy bike units and tactical strike teams had obviously hoped to quickly eradicate the lone tank before retreating beyond reprisal. But the nigh impenetrable armor of the Landraider had allowed his team to penetrate deep into the enemy’s battle lines. Flexing his shimmering lightning claws Gaius charged after the bikes, who seeing their doom were futilely attempting to turn about. His first strike ripped through the power armor of his foe, and with a spin he impaled another rider while the fools attempted parry rang harmlessly against his terminator suit. He could see the heavy suits of his division deftly maneuvering their great thunderhammers as they battled an indomitable Drenought. Their strikes ringing with victory as they brought the great metallic giant to its knees. Word rang through Gaius’s transmitors then that the second company was soon to be ready for extraction and that the terminators need only stay the enemy’s hand a bit longer. “Brothers regroup… the enemy is bound to have a bit more fight in them.” Xavier nodded at Gaius wise commands and his brothers heeding their leader’s voice quickly prepared to hold their ground.

Waves of bikes poured towards their position and with a thunderous impact another Drenought plummeted behind their lines. Surrounded Gaius smiled and said his prayers to the emperor for victory or swift death. Afraid at last of the power of their foes the enemy riddled Gaius and his brothers with countless shells, Artex fell pierced to the core. Gaius was proud of his brothers standing strong against the foes powerful last push. Suddenly the world flashed a dizzingly bright orange as the enemy rained gouts of burning promethium upon them. But the terminator armor held true, and the enemy was filled with a terror they had never known as they watched the lumbering behemoths they faced emerge unscathed yet bathed in fire. They fled.

Gaius knelt with his brethren around their fallen brother as Xavier intoned the final rites of battle. The solemn preceding was interrupted by urgent reports from the command vessel. “Sergeant Gaius prepare your team for immediate teleportation . A Dark Angel Battle Cruiser has emerged from warp travel in the system. Congratulations on a successful mission the second company reports that all teams were removed via thunderhawk extraction.”

With swift coordination the squad formed up in a circular position. And with a flash of bright light they were gone. Moments later the planet’s crust began to shake as torpedoes crashed into its surface and began to detonate. Within minutes the core had been breached and the planet shuddered apart. The Dark Angels Cruiser circling in the wake soon burst once more into warp travel….hunting …. always hunting.

Welcome

Insprired by a friends blog, I decided to test it out and see how hard it would be to run my own. It will probably take some time for me to get the hang of it. But hopefully soon Ill make some additions that someone somewhere will find interesting or amusing. And if not thats ok too. Because in the end its all about me anyway. ;-)

So welcome to the opening of my Blog: Let it All Burn. I'm Sean, and I play warhammer 40k and am starting to also play warhammer fantasy battles. Ive been a 40k player for going on 9 years now. I started with Eldar and soon after that began playing space marines as well, I also have smaller chaos marines and dark eldar armies that I recieved second hand, but they are at the moment not something i play with.

In the world of 5th edition rules my eldar have taken a back seat, for mainly fun random breaks from the marines. Which brings me to the title army for this blog's naming. My Salamander Space Marines are my main army at the moment. I have roughly 9000+ points that Ive collected and am slowly getting ever closer to having it all painted(that is until my next purchase). So the majority of the posts that will come into this blog in the near future will involve my Salamanders or perhaps if youre lucky my budding warrors of chaos army for fantasy.

So once again welcome and do enjoy.