Wednesday 9 September 2015

1500pt battle report - Dark Angels v Craftworld Eldar

Having promised to take my Dark Angels to BWX I created a list that had most of what I've got painted, plus some other bits that will 'make do' and some I can hopefully achieve in the intervening period. However I found myself in the unpleasant position of having a new army/codex to get to grips with and I need to do it now and I can only achieve that with some part-painted models. So I arranged a game with PeteB and he was actually shocked [as you, good reader will too] to see me turn up with figures that weren't painted.

So I have 2 tactical squads with a Rhino, 5 Scouts with Sniper Rifles and one Missile Launcher. Asmodai as my Warlord with a Techmarine and 5 Deathwing in a Land Raider Redeemer, a Ravenwing bike squad, and a Missile Devastator Squad in a bastion with Quad Guns.

The low down:
  • Hammer and Anvil
  • Some Maelstrom mission, we only ended up drawing an objective or two per turn, I think we messed the rules up a bit
  • Warlord Trait - Asmodai - 3 VPs if I kill the opposing Warlord in a Challenge.
  • No night fighting, lost deployment, deployed second and failed to steal the initiative.
Pete B


Missile Devs, in the Bastion.


Combat squadded Tacticals, there's an objective the other side of the tower.


Two Wave Serpents filled with Fire Dragons, Striking Scorpions, Dark Reapers in the watchtower a Fire Prism, some Swooping Hawks amongst other things


Pete's first turn and he manages to wipe out one of the Tactical Combat Squads for First Blood. Typically I fail just enough cover saves to lose all five. He surges the Wave Serpents forwards to pressure the Land Raider.


With the Wave Serpents in my face I had to deal with them. Not having any experience and this being a learning game my immediate thought was just to ram the Wave Serpent in front but Pete gave me some advice, the plan was to hopefully wreck one or both of the Serpents with the Devs, Quad Gun Plasma Cannon and Krak Grenades on the bikers and potentially mop up the contents with the Flamestorm Cannons. However, thanks to Jink only one Hull point was taken off it and I lost my Plasma Gun Tactical to 'Get's Hot' when he fires from the top hatch of the Rhino :( We did discuss later on the merits of the Terminators charging out of the Land Raider and and breaking a Wave Serpent apart, with the view to starting the turn again, to achieve that as a learning experience but I decide to press on with my original tactical choices.


Swooping Hawks arrived in my Deployment Zone in the newly vacated watchtower.


Their grenades targeting the Dev squad in the Bastion, not sure how effective it was.


After quite a while trying to find the Ravenwing special rule in my electronic Codex and being super stoked for re-rollable Jink saves I was then immediately deflated by having my tiny biker squad obliterated.


Matters made worse by the now de-bussed Fire Dragons destroying my Land Raider. It survive the initial fusillade from the Dragons on the right, only one pen, but the second squad melted it and one of the terminators in the process.


I'm now left with only the two Devastators, which became none! At this point I realise I've made no mention of objective, well in fact it doesn't really matter, most of mine ended up being unobtainable, Pet was scoring with objectives in his deployment zone and I think the Land Raider scored him a point so he was well up on me at this stage.


I get an objective to destroy a unit outright but if I destroy 3 I get more VPs. I split Asmodai and the Techmarine from the Terminators. The Deathwing head for the Fire Dragons on the right they shoot them and assault losing one of their member but killing the dragons outright. I take a gamble to get my three units, the Techmarine assaults the Wave Serpent, I take two hull points, but fail to destroy it with my pens. Meanwhile Asmodai assaults the remaining Fire Dragons, which are down to just two thanks to some lucky shots but he fails abysmally in assault, but thankfully so too do the Dragons.


Pete's War Walkers turn up.


I'd had the Scouts in the really tall tower on the right but moved them towards my deployment zone and the central tower. There were actually quite effective with some shooting, or did they capture the objective in front of the tower? I can't quite recall what it is that they did, I think they wrecked the Wave Serpent but they became a target for Pete this turn and I was happiest with their performance, which says a lot as they didn't really do much else!


As the War Walkers finished their movement  my Quad Gun Intercepts and kills one.


The second War Walker wrecks my Rhino which had been moving round the back to get away from the Swooping Hawks and deploy my combat squad of tacticals.


Warp Spiders move up, into the position previously occupied by my Deathwing so I'm guessing they ate them or something.


My Tac squad assaults the War Walker.


The Techmarine joins Asmodai who was only able to kill one Fire Dragon in the previous assault phase, seriously if you can kill a Warlord with this guy then you deserve more than just 3VPs, he is absolute rubbish and I'm thinking Ezekiel for 5pts more may be a better choice for BWX, although my Librarian is a proxy whereas this is the proper character model..


The central tower gets wrecked but my scouts stand fast in it's smoking ruins.


The Scouts prepare to go down fighting, which is more can be said of the slightly more experienced units that have fallen like dad leaves around them.


The last Fire Dragon succumbs to Asmodai and the Techmarine [well probably the Techmarine] and they consolidate.


My Tactical Squad manages to destroy the War Walker, they really are quite vulnerable to almost anything.


And the final insult - Pete 'claims' my Bastion for his own, no VPs awarded, just bragging rights.


I think the final score was 5:1 to Pete, but I only had the Scouts, 4 Tacticals Asmodai and the Techmarine. I'm thinking back to when Dawn of War II came out and they said that reduction in unit numbers was to give you the impression that every Marine matters, a single loss is a huge loss. Of course no one wanted that sort of game and ultimately the expansion increased the numbers significantly to levels similar to the original DoW. Well I certainly mourned every lost Marine here. I was genuinely disappointed about how fragile things were. I expected Power Armour to shrug off all sorts but it was the cover saves I was reliant on. The Land Raider was more vulnerable to the Fire Dragons some of my Tyranid MCs, just one Pen will kill a Land Raider but it takes 6 to kill a Tervigon!

In all honesty when I see the amount of figure I'm putting on the board then this is actually how I imagine the outcome is going to be but I know on paper they should be more durable and effective but I actually felt my nids are superior and that's despite me often bemoaning their ineffectiveness. It's early days though so I shouldn't throw in the towel just yet. I am thinking though that the Dark Angels will be more a show army, that is unless I go Ravenwing which really do look quite durable and effective, that is if I can actually paint up some bikers to deploy.

But it does make me appreciate my nids a little more, I did have an epiphany a few months back when seeing my MCs all aligned about how chuffed I was not to have space men in vehicles, even if it did have a Tervigon or two transporting  gaunt embryos. I was just pleased just to have an army of creatures, no tanks or giant robots to cover weaknesses Anyway, I've a game with Otty coming up where I'll take the nids because as a fellow nid player it's nice for him to see how I approach them, maybe share tactics and theres a chance he may take nids too which is always an interesting match up. Then my next game against Ben will be Dangles again so I can get in some more experience.

Monday 7 September 2015

Dark Angels - Dark Vengeance Tactical Sergeant

Quick Micro-blog while I prepare my latest battle report. This is the current state of my Dark Vengeance Tactical Squad Sergeant. All the squad have had their first highlights, similar to this. I now need to add second highlights and then look to add some more black wash to try and Darken them up a bit. The tabard, bronze and plasma really wors though, which is more than I can say about his eyes...


I really need to tackle the eyes, both on this and Azrael who has frankly gone pear shaped. Still I'll manage it with time...

Friday 4 September 2015

Dark Angels - Bastions, it's not easy being green

Bastion 1 has had it's Angel Green buffing/stippling. As you can see the initial result is so much better than the the Hunter Green, I've managed to blend in the shadows a bit too. I'll be adding some rust elements in later on so it should look really quite vibrant and cool.


This is how the highlighting goes on with the Angel Green, I'm practically stippling it on with a big chunky kids paint brush. It almost looks like a ceramic tile in it's richness. This was on Bastion 2


but even so the end result will look like these, which bears little resemblance to the wet version. You should also be able to see some of the next level of highlighting on the edges and ledges. Not sure which GW paint that was [edit: Waaagh! Flesh] but the Manchester store manager said he used it but when I got it home I wasn't convinced. Instead it'll be used for highlights on the Bastions, it'll shift the colours hue a little bit compared with the Dark Angels but I'm hoping it won't be too noticeable.


Close up you can see where the Martian Ironearth crackle paint has created some really interesting paint chips. Because the cracks are formed based on how thick the paint is, so long as you smooth out the edges ,it'll blend seamlessly with the texture molded onto the Bastion [and any textures you've added to it].


Bastion 2 has also been sprayed green and shadow washed.


I'm still going with the red roof, it helps the Dark Angels blend in when they're on the battlements so I'll try not to obscure it too much with metallic scratches and scuffs, because I tried that on Bastion 1 and had to repaint the red because I felt it had lost something.


I'm hoping that some of this texture will work out as rust perhaps...


And just to prove there are two Bastions - 1 & 2


Of course progress will be slowed soon by detailing and I've still got to deal with the heavy bolters.


It's nice to have progressed so far on these though, particularly so soon into the Hobby Season [although I did start the before the season began]. I've also completed the first set of highlights on my Dark Vengeance Tactical Squad so that's coming along too!


Thursday 3 September 2015

Dark Angels - Bastions, double trouble

Having rinsed the salt stained bastion to within an inch of it's lifeI had to try and recover some of the actual richness in the colours that also leakeed away. Bastion 1 got another load of shadow washes in all the nooks and crannies. Angel green is next, considering I never rated it as paint I'm really getting through it all now. It goes on but just tints the underlying colour, it definitely works on the Hunter Green to create a much more vibrant colour but it can be very difficult to obscure the areas of shadow I may have been more exuberant with than I should have.


Bastion 2, and as you can see this bears little resemblance to the grungy orange beast you last saw. The shadow/texture/grime wash has dried very flat on the red oxide primer. I've then worked a load of red oxide texture paste into all the crevices and on edges to try and cover up cracks and seams.


It's questionable the amount of effort going into this when I'll be covering it all up with green. I suppose if I'd been doing the salt weathering technique or using one of those chipping paints then it might be justified. But I'll stick to what I'm comfortabel with, deviations from the norm have met with little success so far. However, the Martian Ironearth is still something that is paying dividends so I've used it in places here.


Wednesday 2 September 2015

40kaddict Towers - Almost there.


When I was ordering the shed I was advised to paint it to protect it from rot. The recommended product was Protek Royal Exterior Wood Finish I was kind of sceptical as this was £60 for a 5 litre tin but I managed to find it at that link for £45 delivered, even so how much would 5l cover?


Well it seems quite a lot. So far I've painted the shed twice [with the left end wall 3 times] and I've still got about 25% of the tin left. So I've no doubt 5 litre tin would paint this 10' x 6' shed three times over.


Now the opacity isn't compltely solid, the colour gets stronger each successive coat and you can still see the wood through this end after three coats. I'll probably be doing four coats on this end and side leaving the back and right side on two. They're not as visible and less exposed to I expect them to receive less weathering as the back is covered by a hedge and the right is sheltered by the second shed. 


However, I'll monitor the situation over the next year or so and should I feel the need I may paint it with an exterior house paint just to bulk it out, it's much cheaper and again it doesn't have to match perfectly, particularly the back, but for now this will do.


Incidentally the colour of choice was Cornish Cream, whicc is another [tenuous] link to my past in the four years I spent at university in Cornwall. The other shed in the garden is black/dark oak but I thought this would be too imposing to be dark, whereas this is quite bright I think it does evoke a beach hut feeling, so I'm quite chuffed.


I'm just waiting on the electrician now and opportunity in the weather to finsih off my tin of paint.

Tuesday 1 September 2015

Hawk the Hunter


One of the very first videos we rented on our Betamax video player was Hawk the Slayer, that and Sword and the Sorceror. I'm pretty sure this was my choice, my parents weren't that fussed and I can't imagine it being my brother's choice but anything fantasy for me was a must. I still love the film today, cheesy it may be with production values some scoff at but it holds a special place in my childhood.


 I even have a foil etched slipcase VHS copy as well as the paperback 'book of the film' that literally promised there would be a sequel, something the film only hinted at.


Well, after 35 years the Director has finally got backing to create that sequel - Hawk the Hunter. So far he's got backing from Rebellion, video game publisher and owner of 2000AD no less. However, they're still looking to secure the remaining 20% of produciton costs so have gone to Kickstarter to see it through. Although it's highly unlikely it'll stretch to getting Tom Hardy as the lead, which was rumoured a few years back.


The fact is I'll be backing this myself, the first time ever I'll have backed a Kickstarter and just had to share so you can all appreciate the awesomeness of Hawk, I mena he has a MINDSWORD!


Here's the Kickstarter pager https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/723609774/hawk-the-hunter

Otherwise this is the deal:

700,000

Over the weekend I managed to reach another arbitrary milestone [I've another two about to threshold real soon]. 700,000 views is still an amzing figure though and I feel really privileged because even though my stats have levelled off over the last few months and are lowere than they once were I'm still getting hits that many bloggers would love to have.

I can't thank you all enough for the continued support of the blog, particularly as there have been some lean times over the past few months - this may actually be my least published year. But it is your support and following that continues to drive me to post and hopefully I can continue with this momentum as there are a lot of things going on and it's ideal material for shorter, more regular blogposts in the immediate future.

Anyway, thanks once again for making this achievement, you're all awesome!