1000pt battle report - nids Vs Grey Knights [6th Edition]

Another 1000pt battle with PeteB, do let me know if you're getting bored with them. Vanguard setup with my first time playing Big Guns Never Tire. Four objectives, essentially one in each table quarter - hive nodes next to my prime manning the quad gun and between the mysterious forest, fuel drums in front of the bastion and the comms relay next to the cover my stealers and Ymgarls were dormant in. I had first turn and my Warlord had +1" to charge range, not sure what PeteB rolled. The Bastion and Aegis were not part of our list, just terrain we could use as per their rules, gives me chance to check out the Aegis ahead of completing my own Tyranid versions.

First turn advance towards the Razorback and the squad in the Bastion. Tervigon spawns 7 or 8 and keeps on going into the ruins. Hive guard are too far away but the quad gun fires at the unit in the Bastion, but fails to wound, bah. Stealers stay hiding.

Hormagaunts, spawned Termagants and Trygon go up the left flank. Termagants enter the forest to find it is made up of Overgrown Spinethorn. PeteB did his move which was equally quick the Razorback, Bastion Heavy Bolters and Defence Lasers all targeted the Trygon which managed to whether the hail of fire and suffer just one wound.

Turn 2, the Hormagaunts enter the second forest to discover it is made of Ironbark.

The Tervigon spawns 11 Termagants with still no doubles. They get projectile birthed throughout the three levels of the ruins and then the Tervigon smashes through the walls. The Trygon moves up to support the Tervigon. I think the Tervigon tried to charge the Razorback but was too far away. The Quad gun fires again but does nothing.

The Ymgarls woke up and sat in the cover. It was this point PeteB had an interesting discussion about where these should have been placed. With hindsight I should have had them in the pillars next to the Rhino. I was thinking too much about the games recently where Stealer out on their own have been mauled through lack of support but PeteB's idea made much more sense as they could have done what they were supposed to d, assault from cover in their first turn.

PeteB's turn two, a squad teleports in and scatter just in front or the Hive Guard, they open fire with all guns and kill one Hive Guard and wound the second.

His Nemesis Dreadknight teleports in, scatters but doesn't suffer a wound. He opens fire with his flamer and the Devgaunts don't fair well with 4 of their number BBQ'd.

Now I have to decide what to do, the Prime needs to take the immediate threat and abandons the quad gun. The Hive Guard moves further back to help delay any charge but still give it target options of the NDK or the squad. The Devgaunts target the unit in front and take out 3 or 4 but don't manage to break them. The Hive Guard takes a shot at the NDK but it's armour shrugs off the impaler ammo. The Prime charges the unit and the leader challenges me, saving the rest of the squad from his Boneswords but as you can see he either failed to hit or wound as it was 3+ for both, so much for protecting his comrades.

The Tervigon spawns 8 more Termagants and poops out, they're fired from it's belly towards my deployment zone so they can get back and capture my objective. It finally reaches the Razorback but only manages a couple of glancing hits. The Ymgarls and Stealers sally forth to target the Dreadknight but not before the Termagants in the ruins do the same. All three units fail their charge range, the most frustrating being the Ymgarls as they fall an inch short due to their frontrunner being mown down by overwatch. This was a major disappointment for me. It wasn't particularly 'bad luck' which I don't believe in but the failure of almost every element of my attack to achieve just something started to weigh heavily on my morale.

The unit of knights in the bastion had moved out last turn behind the Razorback and here they 'shunted' behind my stealers, their flamer and storm bolter fire leaving just the Broodlord with one wound left after this shot. It was going from bad to worse.

Grey Knight Terminators materialised in my deployment, they sparked up their flamers...

... and incinerated the entire unit of Termagants. And even more worse! Oh, did I mention that was first blood, and again worse.

But could it get worse? Indeed, the Ymgarls were also toasted by the NDK. This left me with little choice, the Broodlord was going to die next turn, fact, either by the knight or the NDK on overwatch if I charged it. The only option was to take out the Razorback and then die...

At this point my phone battery ran out. As expected the Broodlord took out the Razorback, the Tervigon and the Trygon assaulted the NDK. None of their Hammer of Wrath's did damage then the NDK called out the Tervigon in a challenge - I didn't see that coming. It declined so could do nothing the Trygon assaulted and added a wound or two to the NDK. In return it put three wounds on the Trygon which was now at 5 thanks to more autofire from the Bastion.

The Prime managed to take out the sergeant or justicar and managed to rout the unit slaughtering them all - success finally. The Hormagaunts headed towards the barrel objectives, and the Termagants in the woods hid in the Ironbark for cover. The Devgaunts hot-footed it back to the Quad gun objective securing that post with the Prime eventually getting back to the Quad gun and opening fire on the terminators who were eventually destroyed.

The monstrous assault continued but this time the Tervigon accepted the challenge but hit second due to Initiative. The NDK had already suffered one wound trying to activate his force sword thanks to Shadows in the Warp. Having wounded the Tervigon it gambled again and it paid off slicing the Tervigon dead with one mighty stroke. The following turn the Trygon and the NDK got angry and killed each other and when it came to turn 5 the game was over. Despite my 'bad luck' and heavy losses I'd managed to win due to the capture of three objectives - 9VP, Line Breaker and killing his heavy support. PeteB got 3VP for objectives, First Blood and killing my heavy support.

It was good game, though I having seen so much failure I don't feel my win represents how outgunned I felt. PeteB felt the opposite though pointing out I had so many scoring units it suddenly became impossible for him to tackle everything. It's just different to go back to an objective based game. Suddenly I'm doing what I've geared myself to do and it feels wrong considering all the Purge the Alien games.

So lesson to learn is really how to use Genestealers and Ymgarls now, or not at all!

'nids part 55 / Terrain is everything - Tyranid Quad Gun pt4.

Base colours in place, Ultramarine and my cheap bone white equivalent 'Latte' I believe it's called.

This is nearly exactly what I wanted to achieve but now the colours are in place I can't work out if it's actually a bit stupid looking. It doesn't seem to be out of balance but then I look at the gun and think perhaps it's a bit big and the heads a bit 'stuck on' and what's the point of the tail?

I dunno, I don't suppose it matters much really, it's just something to represent a Tyranid Quad Gun. It doesn't have to be physiologically correct and if there'spart of me that thinks it does what I set out for it to do then I should just accept it and move on.

Next up, liver, reds and washes...

Warhammer World in 3D!

After this there is only one more set of pics from Warhammer World you'll be happy to know. I took some shots of my son gaming but I keep asking him to write something to go with them, a little guest post, maybe a mini-report in places. I'll bully him into doing yet! In the mean time how about some 3D, no glasses required except perhaps afterwards if ti screws up your eyes!

You may have noticed I took an awful lot of pictures [and a lot of awful pictures too] quite often I would take one picture only to see in the preview that it was slightly blurred so I would take another shot to get a crisp image. The unexpected bonus to this was that I suddenly realised the other day that I had the makings of some 3D Stereogram images. If you recall they were very popular in the 90's mainly the 'noise' variety where if you held the page in front of you and crossed your eyes in a particular way eventually you would suddenly refocus and the noise would coalesce into some 3d shape hidden within the patterns.

You can do the same thing with slightly offset imagery, just like the pics I had taken. Some work better than others but once again the best thing to do is click the pictures below to see them at full size then go a bit cross-eyed and try to bring the two images into focus in the middle of the picture. If you get it right there should be some 3D shenanigans, so here's the Blight Drone, which is an awesome model and one of the best 3D images.

One of the Forgeworld large scale marines.

Lurtz the Uruk-hai who guards the entrance to Warhammer World. When viewed properly I think this is more 3D than the real thing! My son refused to have his picture taken with him, which is one of the 10 things you are supposed to do when visiting Warhammer World.

Be careful when you enter Warhammer World as this Marine guards the building opposite. You may have seen pictures of the statue that stands outside the front of GW headquarters. This is his brother who has a rather less glamorous location but slightly more disturbing when you see him poking round the corner of the car park watching for ne'er do wells and xenos of course.

Now in case you're having problems seeing these I turned a couple in flick movies so perhaps you can see the 3D a little bit easier.

'nids part 54 / Terrain is everything - Tyranid Aegis Defence Line Pt4

Now this is what we're talking about...

Having suggested many different ways to add detail, but in so doing increase time to model I ended up with just some string tentacles on the backs, just to make them a little more organic and alien. You can also see that the grey-board bases have warped just a little bit after being based with sand. Not enough to be a problem but I thought I'd draw attention to it.

Sand also got added to the fronts, I'm hoping to transition between the chitin and the ground without too much stupid contrast, if you follow.

As a group they're really starting to come together and I think the alien tentacle vines break up the slightly shoddy sculpting on the back.

I hope the paint job works because right now they look decent enough as is, ha, ha!

And the quad gun in place, still visible over the defence line.

But still capable of gaining a cover save ;) Next up base coats.

FAQ looky - Aegis Defence Line

Now this is one that I don't like. If you recall when I posted the Eldar Defence Line details pictured below I agreed with comments about it's single fixed build. Not just for transport reasons but it's not versatile and it can't be split and scattered over the battlefield, well it IS 'Battlefield Debris' afterall.

Here's the FAQ:

Q: Can you deploy the Aegis Defence Line sections in two or more groups of two or more sections apiece (this way, they will still be in base contact with at least one other section)? (p114)
A: No – the Aegis defence line sections must be deployed in an unbroken chain, though they can be connected end-to-end such as in the example shown on page 114.

So it would seem it's only 'debris' insomuch as it's in one solid piece. Of course this disappoints me as I feel if you're paying the points for a tactical reason you should be able to pursue those tactics. However I have reconciled my disappointment as being able to split the line and position 'staging posts' allowing you to creep from cover to cover is perhaps a little shady. I still think it could have been resolved with a middle ground approach of suggesting that it could form no more than two lines perhaps...

Sadly, it's just a loss of something before I've even got to benefit, well not true I've used it twice now and both times it was split but I'm not entirely sure that tipped the balance of play. It makes a mockery somewhat of 'short' and 'long sections' but nevermind we live and learn.

100000!

100000 page views! It may have been search bots or my own constant monitoring of the blog but it's a milestone, thank you for everyone else who has bothered to pop along.

A freebie - Biomancy Psychic markers

The more games I play the more markers I find I need, latest is Biomancy psychic power markers. Constantly rolling for Warp Speed and Iron Arm each turn and adding D3 I&A or D3 S&T to the psyker means you really need to keep track of what's doing what. Of course there's other rules attached to these powers so I've included an asterisk to remind you to check out the full rules but each marker has +1, +2 or +3 respectively so you know what your psychic monstrosity is doing.

Additionally there are some Enfeeble and Endurance markers, three of each in case you have a few psykers. As per usual my suggestion is print 'em out, mount 'em on mounting card, sellotape for faux lamination and cut 'em out neat and tidy like. Bob's your Uncle [he actually was] and Fanny's your Aunt [she wasn't, it was Joan].

Enjoy!

Usual step-by-step:

1. Print
2. Apply double sided tape to back
3. Stick to mounting card
4. Carefully apply sellotape to top if you want them pseudo-laminated
5. Cut out with craft knife/scalpel
6. Amaze your friends and enemies with these cards
7. Tell them to visit 40kaddict.blogspot.com for their own free markers.

FAQ looky - Scout/Infiltrate

New FAQ's came out the other day. Obviously we all look for the the thing that interests ourselves. Sometimes you miss the other stuff so I thought I'd look through and pick out some things that struck me, explain why I got struck and then maybe you might see something you've otherwise missed. I'll be adding these in amongst my other posts so bonus content for all.

One big thing for me was in relation to my oft bemoaned 6th Edition issue that primarily focussed around the inability to assault from outflank because Stealers get the Infiltrate rule. Of course you can still Infiltrate but equally the Infiltrate rule states:

"A unit that deploys using these rules cannot charge in the first turn."

However the new FAQ has a precedent that changes the implication of what this means, it's the same terminology, but in reference to Scout.

Q: The rulebook states "A unit that makes a Scout redeployment
cannot charge in the first turn." Does this mean that if your
opponent has the first turn and you go second, your Scouting unit
can charge? (p41)
A: Yes.

Therefore when you reread the Infiltrate rule and apply the the above FAQ:

"A unit that deploys using these rules cannot charge in the first turn."

It must effectively mean that if your opponent has the first turn and you go second, your Infiltrating unit can charge! So G.O.D. help anyone who starts the game in a position where my Stealers are hiding 12-18".

'nids part 53 / Terrain is everything - Tyranid Quad Gun pt3.

Talking of quad guns, here's where we are at. Tyranid armour plates have been sculpted in place. Unfortunately I didn't prep this to be what i had in my head, perhaps a sketch might have been in order. The aspect I'm unhappy about, but will have to accept, is that I didn't bulk out the base enough.

I wanted a more bulbous squashed tomato profile, instead its a bit mushroom like. I also hadn't thought ahead regarding the fleshy top encased in the plates, it needed some texture so I was forced to take a drill bit to it to achieve something. It's the best of a bad job to be sure and I believe it'll get some praise but it's not 100% what I hoped for. You can tell how much I wanted to bulk it out by the empty space in front on the base.

I also added the Trygon Prime tail as a node antenna, with some reasonably sculpted fleshy folds. I also added a slight spinal ride running up the back to the toxin sacs, which I hope don't look too 'stuck on'. The second shot shoes the spinal ridge better.

If you actually look closely on the Tyranid Codex you will notice quite a few little green creepy crawlies pottering around on the crazy Tyranid bio-structures. By all accounts they're the adrenal sac bio-morphs. Almost all of the Tyranid weapons and upgrades revolve around symbiotic organisms that attach to the greater Tyranid creature. But we don't often see many of the little beggars mooching about on actual models as we see in the cover. I've always thought that was a bit sad as plenty of folk will have spare Adrenal Sacs. I've put them on a couple of figures but never been openly creative with their painting, so they don't stand out.

The problem is I never truly decided how to paint them, the Trygon's is just painted bonewhite, the Tervigon is more yellow in place and the one on my Tyranid Prime is practically camouflaged.

I want them to be red, to show the Rage building chemicals inside but will they show  up on Ferron Proxima? Only time will tell but for the mean time I put three of them on the base and they look kind of cool, if a bit bumbling ;)

Warhammer World - terrain 3

Another terrain-feast, this time the Tomb Kings table. OK I know what you're saying why would I be interested in a fantasy table? Well for a start off the wife is a bit of an Egypt fan so I thought she might like it but equally who knows what lies out in the Badlands of Ferron Proxima and who knows what Avro Vulcan may discover next?!

Again I got some figure eye level shots and the great thing about this board is the majority of the edges are simple lines with the odd curve so they'll be super easy to cut out.

This may look cool in red, no?

Plenty of scope for fluffy compositions, I just need more time to do them?

I'm just snapping pics in the hope I may be able to use them for something, or I'll be doing something and THEN realise I can use this for it. Or instead you can find a use of the uimages.

ARRRGGHH! Frost me!

Damn and blast it. The weather was nice yesterday, very warm, so I decided to Purity Seal some figures:

• Tyranid Aegis Defence Line
• Tyranid Quad Gun
• Deathwing Terminators
• 10 Devgaunts
• A Ripper Swarm base
• 4 Hive Guard Conversion

You know where this is going right? I'd say 65% is fine, the Aegis and the Terminators but it's the Hive Guard that took most of the frosting and the Devourers on the gaunts. Now I'm mot sure about the humidity yesterday, it didn't feel humid but as today it's saying it's 75% maybe it was the wrong day but I know full well Hive Guard got more spray than anything else and I think it was my overuse and too close that 'brooked things up'.

I tried looking online for solutions, so I'll be trying the old 're-spray with gloss' technique tonight and also the 'olive oil' solution. Bizarrely when you wet the frosting it disappears but then when the water evaporates it 're-freezes' so I figured that using a paint on gloss varnish might solve that problem and it didn't. All it's done is encapsulate the frosting in a shiny coating. I fear the spray of gloss won't 'melt the frost', now it's been so carefully protected.

Anyway, I'll document the outcome and perhaps try my solutions on the Devgaunts instead of the Hive Guard first! Sometimes you just want to punch yourself for your own stupidity.

'nids part 52 / Terrain is everything - Tyranid Quad Gun pt2.

When last we left the 'quad gun' I had a head and a gun and a champagne cork. Now I have something that looks a little more like an anti-aircraft weapon.

Some flower wire was pinned into the back of the gun and the cork. The I hot-glued the cork to the 50mm base and used a sausage of tin foil to bulk out the bottom of the cork and save Milliput. I've sculpted the Milliput on top and used my sculpting tool to add a bit of 'alien' detail. It also went some way to join the gun to the cork. I also added it to the base as I had some left over and didn't want it to go to waste.

I added some of the Monstrous Creature Toxin Sacs to the head. This helps cover the join between the head and the weapon arm. The could be classed as sacs or even synapse conduits like I justified the ones on the side of my Tyranid Prime's head. This way my Tyranids aren't manually firing the gun with their hands but using the synapse to control the limited sentience of the 'gun beast', much like the Mycetic Spore.

Once I put two sacs in place there was a perfect gap for another Termagant sac so I added that too. I looked in my bits and found the Trygon Prime tail - the one that looks like a Rattlesnake tail. I've decided to mount this at the bottom, again justified as a synapse 'antenna'. I haven't pictures but I drilled a hole and pinned it ready to put a Milliput sheath around the join, so it looks like it's coming out of a fleshy protuberance.

Chitinous plates will be sculpted around sides. I'm actually amazed how solid this feels. I tied to pull the cork off after I initially clued it in place because I'd made a slight error but if felt like it was going to tear the base apart before separating.

This fortification is coming along and totally monopolising my hobby efforts, which isn't a bad thing. My only concern is that Liam and Ben both have reservations about this being able to be manually fired by 'nids. The semantics that justify it are OK with them, although they think it's sketchy at best, but they're just worried that I could be making this for Throne of Skulls and have someone disagree with my stance and therefore I won't be able to use it. So really I should be focusing on the Tervigon because I will definitely need that complete. But it's easiest to go with the flow so as my hobby meme is in this direction I'll go with it and get it done, hopefully coming back to the Tervigon with renewed vigour.