Warhammer World - Random shots of senseless violence

Here's some of the other 'action' shots I took at Throne of Skulls, first up my mate Ben playing the 5 Tervigon list of Lee Durkin. Coincidentally Lee lives in the same village as my local friendly neighbourhood gaming club and since ToS has been in touch to ask about popping down. I'm sure we'll all look forward to facing his nids ;) 

I may have shown all these when I showcased Otty's figures but they deserve being seen again. Now this is how to secure an objective!

And this is how to man the battlements.

His Mycetic Spore is so large and has so many bits on it you can forgive the size because you're forever spotting another 'Tyranid bitz'. Otty was convinced it was the right decision to take a Tyrranofex purely for the amount of fire it absorbed. I gues the 6 wounds and 2+ save is quite special but still too many points for me to ever consider.

 The Ruins of Osgiliath? One of the Lord of the Rings themed tables which I just thought was awesome so had to take a pic.

Otty's nids against Necrons.

Necron Bastion.

Ben's last match against Space Marines.

Apologies for the next five pics, they're all pretty much the same but this 'tableau' of Immortals positioned atop the Chaos Mound looked so cool I kept on trying to take a picture of it without disturbing Ben's opponent but couldn't quite manage it.

Allied with what?

I'm currently under a certain sense of confusion, I can't work out whether the internets have deluded me or if I've misunderstood something but I'm having real difficulty getting a handle on 'allies'. I know as Tyranids we don't get allies but on the many discussions on blogs, forums and whatnots relating to Tyranids and the allies matrix I was led to believe that we could at least ally with another Tyranid force. The main reason for doing so was to open up more Elite slots - the slot with most of the goodies according to other people. Personally I was hoping to get some more troops but that's by-the-by.

So up until this point I haven't really looked at the rules but when I wanted to try out a winged Hive Tyrant band still see if I can get a Tyranid Prime and a Tervigon I was curious to see if I could fudge it with another allied detachment of nids. I start reading and I think I understand the bit where it says a single allied detachment for each primary attachment but it was this bit on p109 that suddenly made no sense to me

As with the primary detachment, all units in the allied detachment must be chosen from the same codes, and this must be a different codex to the one used  for the primary detachment. 

Now I've just looked at the next page and I see that for battles of 2,000pts or over you can have another primary detachment FOC but it must be from the same codex, which explains where folk were excited about the extra nid elite slots. But what of the sub 2,000pt games - the popular 1,500pt ones and what have you. Admittedly the inability to choose a secondary detachment from the same codex affects everyone but given nids can't actually ally with anyone it hits us that little bit harder.

The fact is allies throw up some interesting options for folk and we saw that at Throne of Skulls, Necrons with Imotekh the Stormlord night fighting for most of a game whilst the Tau allies with night vision shot with impunity! However, I'm more inclined to stick to one codex. To return to my old martial art of Kendo there are different ways to fight.

The standard style - chudan no kamae both an attacking and defending stance that everybody learns and is the most widely taught way to do kendo.

Then there is jodan no kamae, I've mentioned this before when I was looking to pose my son's Wraithlord in a kendo stance. Jodan is a purely offensive stance, using the projectile like attack from on high to reach your opponent long before they get in reach. The real problem with this technique for a beginner is that you do not have the wonderful bamboo sword acting as a measuring stick between you and your opponent telling you they're within distance. Kendo is very much about distance and you need a certain level of experience to judge the right distance and even more so without the sword to help. So this is an advanced technique and quite often people will stick with chudan for their entire kendo lives as that is sufficiently challenging enough.

Lastly there is nito, or 'two sword technique' this involves the use of a long and a shortsword. The long sword is used in a similar fashion to how you would do jodan but obviously with one hand. The short sword is used as a parrying weapon. It's very difficult to master and very few people will practice it although many people will have a wish to do so as it is an exciting challenge in itself, oh and it looks cool.

All I'm really getting at is that for me personally there is far more to master from using a single codex than to try and master two or discover the optimum synergy between them. That's not to say there aren't ways to do that - the Tau/Cron pairing was obviously inspired but for me it's a way focus how I play, even if it is a flawed belief. Ultimately though the opening up of the Force Organisation Chart with allies and the ability to field what you want, although inviting abuse, is once again a bonus to all, except Tyranid players! Marginalised yet?

'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.