'nids part 45 - To done! - Broodlord 2

My second Broodlord and he's complete [except for the Mechrite bit on the base and couple of touches on the bitts on the scenic base, but we'll not mention that].

I may well prefer to use this one in future, he's got the swanky base and the green tongue looks a lot better than his pink tongued brother. 

Interestingly I had a game the other week where the Broodlord bottled out of a lost combat and spent the entire remainder of the game running, Usain Bolt style, across the entire battlefield. Given that his unit was destroyed there seemed no way for him to rally. However, when I consulted the interwebs the following morning I found out that even though the Genestealer is not subject to instinctive behaviour, nor require Synapse they still rally automatically when they enter Synapse! Too late now but it's handy to know that Synapse and the 'fearless' inherent with it affects 'any Tyranid unit'.

And that is the key, not 'any Tyranid Unit subject to Synapse control'. Its another one of those moments [like the Hormagaunts 3D6 'leaping bound' run] that you find another little gem of info about your Codex that you thought you knew already. So I advise anyone to have a quick read of their Codex, you never know what new little rule you may see that you'd missed or misinterpreted or dismissed as not important in your 'then list' only to be relevant in your 'now list'.

Gaming with Mr Ben [5th edition]

Once again due to the unique way of preparing these posts in advance I have stumbled on a new problem. I still have battle reports for 5th Edition while I'm exploring new 6th Editon so I hope you don't mind having to straddle the two rule-sets to enjoy what went down. For one you've no choice and for two I'm not about to dump the content, in particular all the Warhammer World battles, not to mention an obscene 25,000 point [each side!] Armageddon battle. This was my last match with my mate Ben before 5th expired quietly in a corner somewhere.

Having initially cancelled our next match my old gaming mate Ben realised to bin off 5th Edition before 6th had even come out was a little premature and was eager to pit his 'Crons against my 'Nids again. So he reinstated our planned match and I got a few pictures but not a complete turn by turn report so don't think the pictures necessarily represent the action taking place in the description.

Annihilation again with Dawn of War setup, he got to deploy first and initially I wanted to box everything up in the bootom left corner. The magma chasm in the centre of the hill would become a complete nightmare - Ben asked if just the chasm should be impassable or the whole of the area terrain. Seeing all those scarabs and flyers I said the entire area just to see the car park it'd make of everything. I took some Ymgarls and thought the best place to set them up would be in the Aquila wreck just below the magma chasm as I assumed the 'crons would be heading in that direction...

Anyway so here's turn 1 after I stole the initiative. Taking into account he has Imotekh the Stormlord which would have been DoW anyway I was hoping to make fast ground ahead of the daylight coming and my guys being open season for shooting. The Stormlords lightning took two wounds off the Trygon and 3 wounds off the Hive Guard [so 1 was dead] not good considering their my main anti-tank.

Having barreled everything forward Ben did the exact opposite of what I thought he'd do, he didn't come to meet me but retreated, suddenly my Ymgarls were in completely the wrong place. Also that magma chasm suddenly became a hindrance to my movement and not Ben's. In his second turn Imotekh tried to keep the storms shoruding the battlefield in darkness but rolling a 2 meant that the clouds cleared, no more lightning and the battlefield was revealed.

Last time I played Ben he'd no used gauss weapons, his Teslas being much more effective for their extra sparks and arcs. I thought these Warriors failed for him because the gauss weapons don't really allow you to move and shoot. Anyway later on in the game I managed to get the 6 remaining Hormagaunts into combat with them but as they were in cover the Hormies struck last and the Warriors killed the brood before they could even lift a scything talon/ 

3 Annihilation Barges - these are just killers of 'nids. I managed to immobilise the one on the right quite early on thanks to the lone Hive Guard. I would later immobilize the second one which allowed auto-hits from the Broodlord but the remaining barge and active weapons still plagued me throughout the game.

The Tervigon managed to spawn for the entire game, and each roll was double figures in extra gaunts which with hindsight was a mistake as I was just creating more kill points for him to take down. By about turn 3 pretty much my entire force was bogged down in the Aquila wreckage. The Hive tyrant had repeatedly fired on the Ghist ark but kept on missing and taking out scarab swarms. The Adrenal Stealers had gone straight to Imotekh and the Immortals - the Broodlord hypnotised the Stormlord and caused a wound, the remaining stealers ravaged the Immortals and the innability of th eunit to land telling blows meant they broke and ran allowing me to slaughter them as they tried to flee. Luckily Imotekh failed to resurrect and I consolidated into the trees.

With the scarabs coming forward I threw the lead termagants at them, followed up by the couple of remaining Ymgarls and the Trygon. They smashed them to pieces and despite the significant losses to the 'nids [the Zoanthrope too was killed before he got to shoot!] very feew complete broods had gone. By about midway I'd managed 5 kill points to Ben's 2 but with the spore pod over on the right and out of synapse the 3 remaining Devgaunts were already routing towards the board edge and a further Necron KP.

So by the end of the 4th turn the roles had reversed and Ben was on 6 KP to my 5. The Tervigon had headed towards the Annihilation Barges and had suffered 5 wounds and saved quite a few other attacks but eventually it succumbed but the psychic back wash of it's demise killed an entire brood of 11-13 termagants stood in front of it - 2 KP's for the corns with one shot! Something else eventually gave up the ghost, the warriors with Tesla Carbines may have finally took the Broodlord down who had scrabbled ineffectually at one of the immobilised Annihilation Barges leaving a sole Ymgarl to keep mutating in a hope to rend it to death.

Meanwhile the Royal Court on Necron Lords had diembarked from the now wrecked Ghost Ark, their weapons casuing a lot of damage and then their mindshackle scarabs doing worse to the Tyranid Prime and the Warriors. My initial hopes for the combat after the all but one of the Warriors passed the Mind shackle test and resulting in 3 ou tof 5 lords being killed was scuppered as all three resurrected. I threw everything at them, all the Termagants bottlenecked by the magma chasm, but still quite a few got to join the mellee. The Trygon too tried to battle on but ended up stabbing itself to death. By the end of round 5 I think the Hive Tyrant and Hive Guard had also been takne down by long rang fire. With the big assault likely to end up in a wipeout for me I pointed out that there was literally no chance for me to catch up and we called it at about 12:30 am!

Once again a game that teetered on the edge but it was the durability of the Crons that won out again in the end. I think I had been much more aggressive and challenging this time and I think it was one of my best games yet. A lot of my force did what it was supposed to do barring the fail with the Hormagaunts and the ineffective Zoanthrope. My deployment fails were down to the spore pod and the Ymgarls in the wrong place and also not getting the termagants into place as a shieldwall against the mindshackle scarabs. That way my Warriors could attack the Lords without fear of being taken over. Successes were the Broodlord, I dithered over Hypnotic Gaze and Aura of Despair to potentially help the Hormies - they lost anyway so I'm glad I neutered Imotekh, so much for his battle prowess! The Hive Guard also did their, or should I say 'his' job given he was on his tod for the entire game.

'nids part 44 - To done! - Rippers and a Spore Mine

My fourth Ripper base, my son still has to finish his. I really wanted this one to play with the lava balls so it looked slightly like the rippers were bursting from the ground. Now I know this doesn't quite capture that feel but it's quite different to the other three bases and from a low down level it does make them rearing up on their tails make sense.

Although, whether it makes sense they're gong in different directions I'm not sure. I think it goes some way to implying they've tunneled out of the ground and that's all I want to use it for.

 

And a Spore mine I had knocking about just finished up.

I really do like these, they're fun to paint but the rules are a bit sucky and the Biovore never really flings enough of them out. However, they do make decent alternative objective markers too. At least that's one things Nids do excel at!

Tuesday night's all right for fighting [6th edition cherry popped!]

I hadn't planned to go to the local friendly neighbourhood gaming club on Tuesday night but given the excitement of new rules I thought 'what the heck?' My good buddy PeteB has seen sense and despite saying he wouldn't get into 6th and sold his Eldar has gone right back in and ploughed his ebay earnings into Grey Knights, but still has a lot of Blood Angels/Marines that he uses with his son. He was going to make it late on in the evening so I hung around for a 500pt bash, again no pics I'm afraid.

I had Tervigon, 2 Hive Guard, 10 devgaunts and a Broodlord and just 4 stealers with adrenals.
Pete had a Razorback, a squad of scouts, a tactical squad with Plasma Cannon and a stormbudgie ;)

We did the 'scouring' mission on a 4'x4' table and tried our best not to trip over too many rules. I didn't swap out any psychic powers and whatever warlord skill I got I can't remember as it wasn't worth remembering.

First blood, or shodachi - a Japanese word for the first scoring point in a kendo match which is important psychologically and in 40K is important now for victory reasons. That went to PeteB, but he got first turn and I think that'll be pretty much the norm for most matches unless night fight kicks in.

We spent a good few minutes discussing first blood as the 5+ cover save was useless and removing figures from the front was just a bit weird as you try and allocate from the 'wound pool' but that doesn't really matter as you have to keep making saves for the guy in front until he dies before the bullets/beams/flames get to the second in line. I can't see how to speed that up really, there's a 'box out' in the rules called 'fast dice' but reading it seems complicated and I'm not so sure it'll end up all that fast. Anyway, 2 stealer went down and 3 Devgaunts.

In return I spawned 12 and pooped out, the Hive Guard could only draw a bead on the scouts and I think impaled 1 or two. Meanwhile all the gaunts hid out of sight in a building. It's handy being able to pre-measure that's for sure.

The Stormbudgie came on and did some wounds on the Tervigon. In reply my Hive Guard shot at the budgie but missed, at this stage we were less about winning and more about seeing what happens so PeteB suggested they have another chance but firing at the Razorback to see what happened - 2 pens, one of which blew it up - easy. The Stealers charged the slightly stunned combat squad inside and mauled 4 of them, Adrenals no longer give +1 Initiative :(

Next  turn and PeteB decided to Hover the Budgie so he could get a better BS, he put another two wounds on the Tervigon but it was ready to strike back. Meanwhile all the gaunts headed out of the building to try and capture two objectives by conga lining. The Hive Guard targeted the budgie [the Tervigon holding ready to mop it up if they whiffed] four hits, two pen and one glance so it was wrecked. We were taken aback by how easy it was. We weren't the only ones to think it had 3 hull points but 2 is just fatal. I'm pretty sure he won't make the mistake of hovering again. Part of me thinks the inability to fire blast templates at flyers is a bit daft, I pretty much recall my World War 2 films having anti-aircraft flak out the wazoo because I understand it was a better chance to hit them with an exploding blast munition than individual projectiles.

Anyway, the Tervigon cluster spined the scouts down to one man, the stealers finished off the lone marine and high tailed it behind a building out of sight of the five remaining tactical marines with the plasma cannon.

Last turn and I charged the stealers [down to the BL and one, passing their morale test just] from behind the building away from their objective to assault the tac squad just so we could see how overwatch worked, I think the Broodlord assaulted by himself, the squad failed to hit and he took out two marines in response. We didn't do any challenges as I thought it was something new too far at this stage.

So the end result was irrelevant really, the objectives we had we knew what the value was in advance and we did some pretty odd out of game stuff just to see what would happen. There are obviously some bits I like. Wound allocation will be the difficult thing and it's even worse when in assaults. All the psychic and warlord stuff just adds a whole new level of remembering things to add to your troops. Given how many times I used to forget to use Catalyst that's one thing I'm not overly looking forward to. I fear I'll fall back on the Codex powers which may mean I miss out on some cool stuff. I think I'm going to need some other nid player as a mentor!

Overall it wasn't too bad, 500 pts was neat and we pulled the game off in about 90 minutes. However my other abiding disappointment was the objectives. Allocating values to them and suggesting they be turned face down means the purpose of getting my Hive Node markers and the practice and awards given out for objective markers is going to take a hit which I feel is a shame. Given how many times I suggested using my markers instead of my opponents coins, buttons or navel fluff at the Warhammer World tournament I'm disappointed at the shift but interested in finding an alternative solution.

Terrain is everything - Tyranid defence line

Firstly, apologies for the lack of 6th coverage. I've got a shedload on my plate at the moment and fitting in the blog when it can tick away happily without my intervention for a fortnight makes it bottom of the pile, that's not to say I don't love you all, I do, you're just high maintenance ;) The sad fact is though that by the time I get to address some of the more pertinent issues with 6th many of them will have been addressed or discussed by those bloggers and forumites worthier than I and I may have missed the boat. Still I'll struggle on.

Back to the post, you've all seen Fortifications are 'in' and everyone and his dog can make space for 50pts of Aegis Defence Line so they can bring their cover with them. GW's point of view is that now folk will be buying this set in bucketloads and not just for the quad guns to make Mortis dreadnoughts! My initial reaction for Tyranids was excitement because I'm not going to buy the Aegis set because my nids obviously don't use Imperial Architecture and if you've seen the nid FAQ:

Q: Are Tyranid units inside buildings (ie the Bastion) subject to instinctive behaviour tests? Further, are they able to manual fire emplaced weapons? (p33)
A: No to both questions

But apparently the FAQ implies that only Imperial folk can use the weapons emplaced within - BOO! I was looking forward to using spare deathspitters and Tyrannofex weapons to represent the weapons attached within. But if the nids can't use them that sucks. My knee jerk reaction was eventually not 100% justified as the weapons can be auto fired, so a semi-sentient nid presence will still get 'quad' guns
Ultimately though my hope was that the 'in game' purchasing of Aegis Defence Lines, Bastions and fortifications etc. would herald a new renaissance in folk creating their own xenos equivalents to get the benefits but by doing it old school hobby style on the cheap and with some exciting creativity. Obviously a Tyranid Bastion equivalent in my case might be a nice challenge.

Of course there are already 'alien' 3rd party equivalents out there, the most well known is Darkartstores First Contact Terrain. It's not necessarily the cheapest option but you do seem to get quite a lot for your buck - a 5" section for £4.50 seams equivalent to any sort of Forgeworld prices/purchases.

Alternatively there's Do It Yourself and you know that's what I'm all about, especially if it's cheap-cheap and doubly so if it looks cool. So forgive me if I just bow to someone who's already been there, done that and created the solution to our problem: Mr_Pink and his alien barricades

From this:

To this:

And lets be honest we can all manage that I think! And whilst we're at it I may as well share some more of Mr_pink's awesome work:

• Mycetic Spores
• The Infestation of Casavant Prime terrain table
• The making of the Infestation of Casavant Prime terrain table posts on Warpshadow 
• Mr_Pink's terrain posts on Warpshadow

That should be enough for now, but it's got me thinking about Bastion and Skyshield equivalents and it's only a little step further on to look at Tau, Eldar, Necron and the oh, so amusing Ork versions!

Warhammer World - Imperial Fists for Turiya64

OK, here's one for my blog buddy and STC 'guinea pig' Turiya64 he's a big fan of the Imperial Fists so I thought I'd treat him to the Warhammer World studio display.

I really like this Venerable Dreadnought, I thought it was Forgeworld but I see now it's the original metal one that's out of production [OOP as the say]

Some cool looking scouts.

Unfortunately the High Marshall of the Black Templars came out a bit blurred, I know he's not Imperial Fist but 2nd founding so he kinda counts. Anyway as he's the number one figure you see when you browser deletes your country preferences on the GW website I thought I'd capture him for posterity. I appreciate I didn't quite manage that but nevermind it's the thought that counts!

My Son's Eldar Guardians

By the time you're reading this we'll have been and gone to Warhammer World and my Son will have been fighting with these or with a secondary Tyranid force, I'm betting the latter. He allowed me to prep all the bases, I've obviously left the Mechrite Red edges as I wanted to ensure they wouldn't be handled if he still had bits he wanted to paint.

I think he's done a decent job, they're much better than my first attempts. My only reservation is he doesn't seem to want to 'take them further'. Y'know, just had a highlight here and a highlight there, just to make them pop a little more and in the process neaten them up. As they're simple Guardians maybe he's right to stop here, he has gone a little further with his 'Diving Eagles' but when he says he's more interested in the painting side of thing and then dismisses an opportunity to improve it gives me the impression he's not really too fussed afterall...

But, they look great as a whole and he has put a fair bit of effort into them so I'm rightfully proud of his efforts.

Here's the support weapon gunner, we need another support weapon but they're expensive on ebay or difficult to get hold of. I'm looking at trying to mount a spare Wraithlord Weapon on a plastic spoon but even a dry fit looks a bit cheap and nasty. I'm surprised those 3rd party figure makers haven't tried to fill this void...

Still to do the face and hair of this helmetless Guardian.