Wednesday, April 7, 2010

April 24th- brothers Grim Tournament

Man i havent posted in a long time. This blog thing takes a lot more dedication then I thought.

Anyway. I managed to steal(borrow) my little brother's camera for good for a while. So maybe I can get about making some better, and hopefully more consistent posts.

Right now Im working on painting up the new venerable Dreadnought Kit, and working on a list incorporating 2 of the suckers. Ill try to get some work in progress picks on the newest member of my Dreadnought horde... I have around 12 or 13 in various states of completion/collection of dust.

Ussually when it comes to Dreadnoughts I stick to regular ones, or Ironclads, and consider the Venerables far too expensive to be competative. However in honor of the model and in a decision to give them a whirl, Im taking my venerable(oldest dreadnougt), as well as the new venerable kit out for a spin. Along with several of their friends.

So here follows a list Im seriously considering for a tournament(that you can gather from the title) at the end of this month. Its gone through several steps in my head before finnally hitting print in this form. Hopefully it has enough of everything to deal with anything. I think it is pretty balanced but leans more towards dealing with light mech spam and marines.

The last time I went to the Brother's Grim(great store by the way if youre on long island) I played 2 marine players and an eldar player, mainly mechanized, and the winner was mech IG. So I like the archer dreads to deal with transports. And the plasma cannons, which I have not used in ages, I like to knock out clumps of power armored or termiator armored marines. Plus the ap 2 will help with any feel no pain shenanigans from the new Blood angels, as well as the tyranids and orks.


1850- Marines

Lysander – 200

Master of the forge – conversion beam – 120


Venerable Dreadnought – heavy flamer, extra armor, drop pod - 225

Venerable Dreadnought – heavy flamer, extra armor, drop pod – 225


Ironclad Dreadnought – heavy flamer, drop pod – 180


Tactical Squad – flamer, power weapon, drop pod – 220


Tactical Squad – melta gun, plasma cannon, powerfist, rhino – 240


Dreadnought – twin linked lascannon, missile launcher – 145

Dreadnought – twin linked lascannon, missile launcher - 145


Dreadnought – plasma cannon, drop pod - 150


Obviously the list also hopes that people will have a hard time dealing with 6 dreadnoughts. The three at the bottom will deploy and walk most likely. The pod was simply included to buff the total to 5. Along with the master of the forge and the combat squad toting the plasma cannon. The other half of that squad will mount its rhino and advance along with the dreads.

The other 3 dreads, the vens and the ironclad, will likely be the first turn drop. As the tactical marines will want to be off board as much as possible to preserve their scorng ability. This however does limit Lysanders ability to affect the battle, so perhaps his points would be best used elsewhere. However when they do land he gives the squad the ability to torch an infantry unit more effectively with mass bolter fire, and a huge boost to their close combat ability in a countercharge scenario. Also his stubborn rule is a nice touch for a light troops army.

Hopefully the sneaky ammount of effective shooting, with the archer dreads and the BS5 venerables, I can cut down on the enemy's mobility and push toward victory. Heavy melta armies will be a problem, as will massive horde based armies as the dreads can easily get bogged down in combat. So either of those opponents will require some more decisions at deployment and may lead to Lysander and his retinue landing earlier in the match.

I will update this army if any last minute changes arise, and am at this moment commited to trying to take as many pictures as possible at this next event for a good set of battle reports.

As always any comments, criticisms, and questions are welcome and encouraged.

Sunday, January 24, 2010

A Good Game With a Good Friend

So in the final pairing of the Conflict GT my friend Bob and I found ourselves matched up. Now not wanting to go into the vast amount of unfairness this involved(considering there was a team aspect of the tournament as well), we ended up having a really good game.

Bob was playing his ork list that can be found on his blog: http://bloodskullsfire.blogspot.com/. He had a unit of nob bikerz, 3 large boy mobz, 2 small loota units, and 2 defcoptas, and snikrot with some kommandos.

I was using my Salamander drop pods plus landraider. With Vulkan, a large unit of sternguard, 2 dreadnoughts, and 3 tactical squads, 2 in drop pods and one in a landraider.

The mission was 5 objectives, with wonky rules where they would scatter after we deployed them. The deployment choice was spearhead, which bob doesn't particulary like because it squeezes his large horde into a corner. Being a mainly drop pod army I rather enjoy spearhead. These red circles were the objectives. The top middle circle over thin air was Bob's asprin bottle, which along with the super glue he kept picking up accidentily and after several minutes one of us would realize the objectives were missing and have to replace them.

This next picture shows Bob's deployment. He put two mobs front and center along with his defcoptas. The nobz are hiding back behind the building that the lootas are in, and using the table edges as a deterent to my sternguard dropping in. He kept the choppa boyz and snikrot in reserve. I should have been a lot more frequent with my pictures, but Ill be better next time. Not shown here is the landraider which I deployed with its tactical squad and Vulkan inside. I figured that the orks had very little ability to kill the landraider at range, otherwise I ussually keep it in resere to wait for my drop podding units.

Bob scouted his deffcoptas, one went down screen between the building and the trees just below where the dreadnoughts are shown here, the other went up to behind the gas cannisters at the top right of the frame. They along with the shoota boyz fired rockits at my Landraider. They didnt do anything and it was my turn.

Since the nobz were safely hidden away I chose to bring in my 2 dreadnoughts and a tactical squad on my first turn. You can see their placement here. They targeted and killed the deffcoptas. And the landraider moved forward to threaten the middle of the field. Ussually i try to drop my sternguard in and eliminate the opponents biggest threat, but Bob carefully kept them out of the way.
On turn 2 Bob's choppa boyz came in in the top right to assault and kill a combat squad half of my tactical squad. His boyz mobs moved up through the middle, one moving half its number into the building and rubble in the bottom left, the other assaulted my landraider. Needing 6's to hit the one powerclaw didnt harm the tank. The loota's opened fire on the drop pods hoping to open up clearer shots on the dreadnoughts. One pod was destroyed.

On my half of the turn, my reserve rolls failed me. My remaining 5 marines in the top ran through the cover fearing the boyz mob that had obliterated their friends. The Dreadnoughts had a rough time trying to move through the rubble of the building. Vulkan and the tactical squad got out of the Landraider to flame the boyz squad to the left while the Landraider itself lined up a shot on the squad that had assaulted it with its rather large flamestorm cannon. A lot of boyz burned, but in hindsight it was perhaps a premature moment to be getting out of the safety of the landraider.

This pitcute below shows what was left of the 60 boyz during bob's 3rd turn. The small squad to the left fled a bit, while the other squad moved to assault Vulkan and his retinue. His lootas immobilized one of my dreadnoughts, and then the scary Strength 5 twinlinked shots from his bikerz cut into my tactical marines. The rubble in the top right(not pictured) was as much a deterent to the orks as it had been to my tactical marines and the 5 men were safe from assault for now. In assault all the remaining marines of my tactical squad were cut down around Vulkan, who stood firm, but was also wounded once.
In assault all the remaining marines of my tactical squad were cut down around Vulkan, who stood firm, but was also wounded once. And the orks unhappy about being out of range of my other tactical marines assaulted and blew up the drop pod.
This picture shows my position after my turn 3 and also the begining of Bob's 4th turn. During my 3rd turn I moved the landraider back to pick up the scared tactical squad. My other tactical squad also showd up from reserves. The sternguard once again failed their reserve roll, which was still bothering bob as it kept him from commiting his bikerz fully to the battle. The still mobile dreadnought assaulted and finished off the boyz mob that had lost its nob, while Vulkan failed 2 2+ armor saves and promptly died.

In Bob's 4th turn his kommandos showed up on the bottom of the screen and advanced in true orky spacing, his bikerz once again pulled back, and his victorious ork mob, though depleted assaulted the dreadnought.

Here is once again where my picture taking failed to keep record, as the game got into its very intense final turns. Finnally on turn 4 my sternguard arrived. I decided that they needed to kill the boyz mob in the top right rather than risking everything against the nobz. They landed and flamed the whole mob away. The landraider once again advanced up the middle. While the tactical squad in the south split off and ran away from the kommandos and headed towards objectives.
Turn 5 saw the bikers spreading out to claim the two objectives on the left of the picture(see first pic Im too lazy to repost it). While the warboss himself circled in the other direction to threaten the top objective. The Kommandos assautled a dop pod.

In my turn the sternguard raced down to help the tac squad against snikrot. With shooting and assault it left a few tactical marines locked with snikrot. The dreadnought finnally succumbed to the nobz powerclaw.
In turn six the warboss got into 3" and successfully contested the top middle objective. The ork boyz relieved the nobs in claiming the bottom left objective. The nobz strung out to try and get into range of the middle objective but were short. They again used their devilish guns to blaze down 4 out of the 5 marines I had held that objective with. Snikrot killed a marine or two but held strong himself.

In my half of the turn I tankshocked the boyz off of their objective and then purged them with the flamestorm cannon, as well as the flamer from the long immobilised dreadnought. My long tactical marine made a mad dash for the bottom middle objective and with a great run roll made it, the sternguard slayed snikrot and those tactical marines made a good enough consolidate move to get in range of the same objective. So along with the bottom right objective I managed to win 2 - 1 in objectives.

Bob and I had a great time. It was sad to have to play one of my friends and teamates in the last game of a tournament but I dont think I could have had a better opponent to finish off the weekend with.

Hopefully Ill get better with this picture taking process and not forget about my camera during the most important parts of the game.

Wednesday, December 23, 2009

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.

Sunday, December 13, 2009

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.

Thursday, December 10, 2009

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.

Wednesday, December 9, 2009

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