'nids part 65 - Ymgarl Genestealers

I've been sitting on 4 Ymgarl Genestealers since I won those bargain ebay sales which provided a fair few Termagants and 4 Hive Guard conversions. I finally managed to win another auction of 5 Stealers, but with loads of heads for variety. Below is the basic builds with the 5th Ymgarl in the rear on the right, using Hormagaunt Scything Talons bbecause I was under the mistaken impression I had no more Genestealer 'stubby' talons. Still these are mutating every turn so there should be a little more variety in these and I need them to stand out compared to normal stealers. Therefore, with no real need I decieded to make some tentacles for some slightly more unique Ymgarls [you'll have seen my tutorial on this the other day].

First up, is the triple tentacled fiend, using the 'blind' stealer hed and some Monstrous Creature armored plates. I appreciate this is showing all it's mutations at once but my Ymgarl genestealer mutation markers handle that aspect of their rules so I can indulge my modelling however I like.

The tentacles did break in some places so a healthy dose of Superglue is holding it all together, and my fingers for a tense few minutes! 

The double tentacled Ymgarl has the same 'blind' head but I was short an extra armour plates so I split one in half and positioned it at the front and then used two Termagant armour plates behind it and it works pretty well.

The tentacles on our left are a bit flat, thanks to the heat unwarping them but the right ones are spot on. There's still an argument that just because they have weight doesn't mean they should droop and as it is turning away from the arms on the right they would fly out a bit...

The single limbed stealer. These tentacle came out the best but I was concerned the might stil snap so notice the claws manage to cover and protect the Milliput. 

The extra armour plates are made from a single Monstrous Creature plate with the blade edge removed, then split in half. Then a Warrior Plate was also split in half and they were joined together. Quite a neat little hatchet job that I think wil be nigh indestinguishable once painted.

Lastly was a complete mix-and-match. The last tentacel [the worst of the bunch] a Hormagaunt Scything Talon, a Rending Claw and a normal hand. 

Ectar armour courtesy of termagant biomorphs. I jst wanted to use up some bits and show how mutated they could be even though I had plent of limbs to kit it out more uniform.

Here are the four brothers

And this is the complete nine Ymgarls. Granted you can pretty much see these are two groups but the silver lining is if I had one more stealer I could kit it out with Tentacles so I could run two broods of 5 which would be handy.

Now to get some paint on them!

Impromptu tentacle maker

There are a couple of tools out there at the moment for making your own power cables/tentacles out of green stuff. Green Stuff Industries Tentacle Maker and Masq-Mini's tube Tool being two of the more well known offerings. However, what happens if you just have a quick need to make some tentacles and can't wait for either of these two 'fit for purpose' devices. Well I'm not sure which blog I read where they casually mentioned a fairly common-place alternative but here's what  I did when I got all squid-like for some Ymgarls.

First up I rolled out a tube of Milliput [again I'm using what I have to hand here and green stuff, surprisingly, is still not something I've invested in]. I used an old phonecard [who remembers them] as a roller, later on I put a few drops of water on the cutting mat so the Milliput didn't stick.  

Here's the tentacle maker - a common or garden comb. Being follicly challenged this is my sons. You will note the tool comes with two gauges, particularly useful in illustrating how the ridges get wider as the tentacle gets fatter towards the base.

OK, these aren't the best examples I did, but they were first attempts. Adding the drops of water helped with definition.

And as you can see they got a bit better because of it. You have to be quite careful though that the pressure of the comb doesn't ended up amputating the lower, thinner tips of the tentacle.

I doubled and tripled up some tentacles for the Ymgarls, pictures to follow. I then added a piece of wire so I could pin it to the Stealer armpits. This may have slightly smudged the ridges but overall it was a good effort.

One other point of note was that the Milliput wasn't drying out quite quick enough for my likeing so I rested them on a radiator, which in fact made them wilt a bit, like you'd put a dough in the oven. Eventually after some curing I returned them to the radiator and they dried out in the same curved positions I had intended.

Alternatively check out Eye of Errors awesome tutorial on making octopus tentacles, I wish mine had the wire core in now, I seriously doubt the tentacles are durable enough, but we'll see...

1500pt battle report - nids Vs Necrons

My gaming buddy Ben has been doing a lot of charity work recently. Having regularly mullered Liam, Otty and myself with his Necrons he decided to throw us all a bone for a bit with his Orks. Chalking up a few loses he's back from the dead with his crons, I'd say throwing us a bone but maybe that's a pun too far. Again this was his Throne of Skulls list and it was my second game in two days.

Here's the low down:

• Big Guns Never Tire (5 objectives - in front of the ruin below, behind the benign mysterious forest, just to the centre of the board, behind the meteor crater field and the far left out of shot next to the ghost ark).
• Vanguard strike, but you could tell that
• I ran two Tervigons, one as a HQ [my Tervigon Prime as I called it] with Toxin Sacs/Adrenal Glands, Iron Arm and Warp Speed. It also got the Warlord trait of being a scoring unit.
• Second Tervigon got Haemorrage and Enfeeble, but also had Regeneration
• Broodlord got two powers - Iron Arm and Enfeeble
• Ymgarl were hiding in the crashed debris crater with the green blob in it.

Hormagaunts and Stealers were in the woods to capitalise on their 'move through cover' with the Tervigon for support. Hive Guard Zoan Tervigon Prime and Trygon out of range behind the ruin.

Two Annihilation Barges, Command Barge, Ghost Ark [next to the objective] Immortals in the crater field and Spyders and scarabs on my right flank. Ben went first, I elected not to steal the initiative. I think a couple of Hormagaunts bit the dust but mostly I remained unharmed. The Spyders spawned but one took a wound for his efforts.

Tervigon Prime spawned 12 and everything went forwards, the Trygon through the ruins and the Hive Guard to get in range of the Spyders next to the wrecked Necron Monolith. The Zoanthrope discovered the nearest objective was a Grav Wave generator [units charging the controlling unit halve their charge range]

The vanilla Tervigon pooped out spawning twelve termagants who discovered a sabotaged objective but managed to leave it undisturbed. It also tried to Enfeeble the Spyders but was denied, the Broodlord however succeeded.

 The Hive Guard capitalised on the weakened Spyders and managed to shoot down one of them.

 Turn two - the Scarabs swarmed forward, their progenitor Spyder unfazed by the Enfeebled 'difficult terrain test'.

The sky was rent asunder by the sonic boom of Necron night Scythe, disgorging a squad of Immortals into the forest in an iridescent flash of lime green.

The Command Barge skirted round the Monolith with an Annihilation Barge following closely.

The Ghost Ark moved to broadside the advancing Termagants and a unit of warriors disembarked into the ruins of a crashed Imperial Lander, unawares the reason for it's destruction lay dormant under their feet. Their combined fire kill all but one of the Termagants. A Tomb Blade shot on from the board edge intent on destruction.

The combined Cryptek's Abyssal Staff and the Immortals Tesla fire destroyed all but one of the Genestealers and some of the Hormagaunts and put two wounds on the Broodlord.

The Spyder and two units of Scarabs assaulted the remaining Hormagaunts and despite taking a couple of scarab bases First Blood finally went to Ben with their demise.

In my turn two the warriors move to take on the Immortals, Termagants shifted to all shoot at them also. The Scarabs were Enfeebled by the Tervigon and the Broodlord Iron Armed up to take on the Spyder

The Tervigon Prime Iron Armed and spawned eleven Termagants to replace the eleven dead. The sole survivor moved back to the objective allowing the Zoanthrope to float in search of the Command Barge. The Ymgarl Genestealers awoke from dormancy, 18 attacks, 15 [or 13] hits, only 1 rend which ended up shaking the barge only for it's living metal to shrug of the effects. The Ymgarls totally botched that one! Eight of the eleven termagants survived the overwatch fusilade to assault the warriors

Back on the right the wounds had started to rack up on the Monstrous Creatures, 5 on the Tervigon [but Regeneration brought one back]. The remaining Genestealer was dead but the Broodlord continued to fight on. The scarabs couldn't damage the Tervigon and a war of attrition ensued keeping it locked in combat for most of the game. The Zoanthrope fired on the Command Barge, hit but failed to penetrate or was denied, either way it was spawny. The Hive Guard failed to damage too and the Trygon assaulted, failed it's Leadership and promptly put two wounds on itself, thankfully it manage to hold itself back from being sucked into the pocket universe of a Tesseract Labyrinth

The Warriors got to the Immortals, the Prime challenged the Cryptek who fled to the back of his unit. The Prime vented it's anger on the Warriors once again hitting with unerring accuracy only for it's deadly blade to fail to wound anyone! However the Warriors more than made up for his impotence and the unit broke and were cut down.

At this stage things sped up which is why we lack some intervening pics. The Tervigon Prime was killed by the Necron Overlord in combat [Slay the Warlord], but not before spawning another 11 Termagants to replace the single one that had been picked off. The Trygon too had bit the dust [Big Gun VP]. The Broodlord had finished the Spyder off and went and took out an Annihilation Barge giving me 2 VPs   for heavy Support kills. The Spore pod came in perfectly back field [linebreaker] and shot up the Immortals taking 3 but denying them the objective. So I was 9VPs to Ben's 3VP's

Seeing the left flank crumbling I started to reposition and secure my Deployment Zone

The Termagants headed to bolster their bretheren, the Warriors taking their place in the still unexploded objective. the Tervigon finished off the scarabs and had regenerated to just 2 wounds. The Broodlord moved to intercept the other Annihilation Barge.  While the Command Barge overran the Termagants. The Night Scythe left the board and the Immortals killed the Devgaunts and Mycetic Spore. I think at this stage I had realised I'd let victory slip from my fingers once again thanks to the tenacity of my foe. 

It was midnight and I wanted to call it at this point as I didn't think I could win, but we carried on with the Annihilation Barge taking responsibility for the Command Barge objective and the Warriors in the centres VP's were 12 to Ben and 5 to me. My only chance lay in the Tervigon assaulting the Annihilation Barge on the bottom most objective. It would gain me 4 VPs, and lose Ben 3 securing a draw. It was within 5" and had to go through cover, 3D6 - 1, 4, and 6. Taking the lowest numbers 1 and 4 = 5 yes! 

BUT if you remember way back at the start of the game we discovered this objective was a Grav Wave Generator, meaning units charging the controlling unit halve their charge range. So I fell short by two inches and the game was lost at 12:30am. Part of me wished we hadn't gone on but equally the drama on the last dice rolls was perhaps worth it. So close and once again so far.

Terrain is everything - ancient Skyshield Landing Pad

Taking into account I really should be sharing the love of other blogs I stumble across and community spirit it engenders I thought I'd share this truly awesome ancient Skyshield Landing Pad at Cinders of War.

As you can see  C!nder has made something quite unique for his mate Ben's Thousand Son's force but the amazing thing is that the Pad doesn't end with the image above, it's a truly modular piece that has a variety of configurations:

or even turned upside down!

There's loads more at Cinders of War, not to mention some very effective Tyranid Spires, scratchbuilt Jump Packs and a number of army boards. There may not be a blog post every day from him but that means you can just add it to your blog rolls/feeds safe in the knowledge you're not going to be overwhelmed with yet another blog to read as I know I feel sometimes - so much cool stuff to read.

Warhammer World ToS Brad Glover's Necrorks

I really like Brad Glover's Necrorks. I was amazed he didn't get nominated for best army and could only presume he hadn't painted them himself, which he informed me he had. Neither of us could figure it out but I can only assume the judges are looking for clear cut armies that represent a Codex. Mix and match, however cool may fail to meet the criteria. That's the only reason I can imagine because I thought the conversions were cool and the painting was ace.

The Ghost Ark/Trukk was very impressive.

I liked the maroon bases too.

All the figures were finished to the same high standard and I'm pretty certain they all had conversion work on them, certainly worthy of a nomination in my book.

Even ogres got in on the action.

There was also a bit of humour with the likes of this spotlight headed character.

His award winning Necrork Quad Gun and Aegis Defence line [which I voted for].

His large monster and collecting his award for the Fortification!

 

Also here's a couple of pics of my mate Liam's Dark Eldar awaiting their next battle.

His pain and wound token's have just as much attention as the rest of his army!

Also here are some Necrons, I believe this was the best Necron Army over the weekend. Pete Ganderton was the owner I think and he came over a couple of times to see how I was getting on and to say how great he thought my Nids were. He was very modest about his won efforts which I really liked, particularly the airbrushing effects he did on the flyer.

Here's Pete winning the best Necron player award.