Terrain is everything - Simpler Mini Bunkers for 40K

Just a little one this, Pete Ball, one fo my regular commenters and reader has been exploring his terrain building efforts. He's had loads of simple CD sized ideas on his own blog recently - earthworks, watchtowers and the rather effective bunkers below:

http://veganhaggis.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/terrain-tutorial-simpler-mini-bunkers.html

Check out his blog on the link above and this compendium of the recent articles to see if there's something that would suit your battlefields.

'nids part 73 - Magnetised Hive Tyrant part 1

Having magnetised the Winged Hive Tyrant I thought I'd do the same to my metal Hive Tyrant. That way I can mix them up, have him with the Twinlinked Devourers, or as the Swarmlord or back with his normal Heavy Venom Cannon and Boneswords.. Of course the first thing to do was pull off the HVC and other weapons. This resulted in the HVC shoulder snapping but hopefully I can fix that.  

With some new drill bits I was able to chew through the pewter no worries, in fact if you can see in the bottom hole a slight darker horizontal curve, that's the abdominal ball joint attached to the torso. The rest of the miniature is looking quite dilapidated now, not from the conversion process, it's been unnecessarily in my figure box for months now and the crest got bent, fracturing the paint. And all the areas where weapons overlapped Chitin plates hadn't been painted either, I should be able to touch these up though.

The magnets in situ and the slotted in perfectly. You will note I haven't angled them like the Winged Hive Tyrant as this will primarily be using other weaponry so if the Fleshborer/Devourers are used I'm not fussed so much if they 'bunch up'.

The other side, equally as sweet.

And look what happens when I try out the Wings and Fleshborers/Devourers! I have to say how impressed I am that they made the wings fit the existing model. It may seem obvious it fits but there was always the chance the plastic version was different given the different moulding process.

Indeed the flat magnets means the Fleshborers/Devourers do look quite bulky, certainly more so than the dynamic winged pose but if I was ever to use these on the standard Tyrant I may have him with Armoured Shell and the weapons are bulky enough to get that across. What I would put on his other limbs I don't know, perhaps some of the spare tiny Mawloc claws.

I've started to magnetise the Swarmlord's Bone Sabres but the drill bits were so sharp they've torn through the edges of the plastic, less a cavity to slot the magnets in as a crater for them to rest on :( Still I'll fix it somehow. The great thing is when they're done I'll also be able to mount them on the Winged Tyrant - him leaping through the air!

One last thing to consider is that my next Throne of Skulls tournament is due in March and I think I can get the Winged Tyrant painted by then and it will be cool. So, do I take him? He's 260pts in a 1500pt list. I'll have to drop a Brood of Stealers but the lost Broodlord powers will be made up by the Tyrant and also my Prime and Warriors but the two Tervigons and two 10 man squads of Devgaunts [although whether I make both Tervigons troops when I could keep one as a HQ for my Warlord, safer than the Tyrant].

I feel less confident with the Winged Tyrant competitively. It's a shooting magnet and if it dies that's a lot of points gone but with it I have something that can tackle flyers [just about] instead of ignoring them and alternatively cause mayhem in the back field with the Doom. Otherwise I'll stick to pretty much the same list as last time, just without the Hormagaunts and maybe more Hive Guard. What do you think?

'nids part 72 - Magnetised Winged Hive Tyrant part 1

Here's the tail of the Winged Hive Tyrant. I've stuck it to a piece of slate, it'd be rude not to, and I've another few bits that will be thrusting out of the Ferron Proxima sands. Another wandering adrenal gland will be making an appearance too.

Having magnetized the arms I wanted to create some kind of mechanism that would trap the Fleshborer hive arms against the wings so they don't flop about. You can just make out a claw from the monstrous Scything Talons [the ugly ones ;) ] that has bee stuck on the top of the shoulder. In fact this doesn't silve my problem, and neither did the second claw I attached, both seemed to be on the wrong side of any protuberances to trap it in the direction gravity was pulling it, ha, ha!

Having done a perfect job of drilling the body completely square I found out the Fleshborer Hives would look totally ridiculous positioned flat like the wing magnets. Therefore both weapon mounts are angled to allow the Fleshborers room and the Tyrants head to be seen between them.

You can see just how far I had to angle my recently salvaged Magnetix magnets, costing me nothing from my Son's long unused collection and rightly so given most of them were recalled due to kids swallowing them!

Here's the Right arm, again sitting quite proud of the torso to allow some space between the two arms. The exposed magnets will be covered with Milliput to disguise them.

Here you can see the magnet in the arm. The Magnetix sets we [shown below] had included the standard bar shapes which had magnets bigger than 6mm tall and diammeter and then the smaller ones fromt he more dangerous connector pieces in the second picture. The arms have the smaller magnets and the torso the bigger ones.

Here's everything in place. As you can see the left arm does hang down low despite my 'trapping mechanism' but the arms are significantly separated to not make it look dumb.

From this angle you can see that rather fortuitously the slightly 'droopy' left arm works quite well and the Tyrant seems to be banking to it's left with the left arm dropped and right raised it's turned it into quite a dynamic pose [thankfully].

The Fleshborer Hive also points quite neatly to its right knee and visually takes up the same space as most of the torso preventing the Hive's from dominating the model too much and making it look too bulky to fly. As much as I liked Jes's original model I think mine's going to look even better.

'nids part 71 - Ymgarl Genestealers Chitin and Bone Highlights

First and second sets of highlights on the Chitin and the Bonewhite is done. I think these are going to end up a lot paler than the standard Stealers, in itself not a bad thing. Nice to see the tentacles suitably writhing and scary.

A bit of variety in height thanks to the scything talons in the back row there.

So I'm beginning to wish I had one more to make two sets of 5. Perhaps even have him partway coming out of the ground  from dormancy...

When I get to basing them there will be larger stones and bits on the base. Seeing as they're coming out of terrain they need to be a little more densely populated than a normal base. I have some lava pebbles from a plant pot that can be sanded flat in seconds on a paving slab that make interesting shapes.

Here's where I've used the lava pebbles before:

Something Random - the Harlem Shake

OK this isn't 40k orientated but I just want to share yet another example of the internet meme sweeping the globe - the Harlem Shake. For those outside the UK [like my many readers in Alaska!] the characters are from a British Public Information Film from the 1970s that was referenced in the Prodigy song 'Charly' in the 90s.

Anyway, if you find it amusing, remember it or just want to join in the nonsense of the meme it'd be nice if you could share, tweet, like or repost the link below. There's more to it than bandwagon jumping but it needs a kickstart, without kickstarter so help a little boy and his cat out ;)

http://youtu.be/kdK1YDxJt9c

'nids part 70 - Ymgarl Genestealers base coated and washed

Some more progress on the Ymgarls. Interestingly the Red Oxide base coat having little effect on the resultant colours compared to a white primer. That;'s not stopped me ordering a new can from eurocarparts [£3.98 for 500ml and free postage, still seems like the best offer online].

Interestingly I've begun to notice a distinct difference between Seraphim Sepia Shade and it's pre-cursor Gryphonne Sepia Wash. The wash seemed to tint the underlying colours much more. The shade sticks to the nooks and crannies and seems to shy away from those points Gryphonne would tint.

Sadly it's left me pining a bit for the old wash. The Army Painter Shades are also sticking to the same attributes as the old wash, all the Devlan Mud equivalents seem to be leaving their dirty traces all over the model, where I'm sure the new shades would stick to the grooves more.

Still, chitin next...

1500pt battle report - nids Vs Necrons in the 'Dividing Line'

I've had the Dividing Line Mission for quite a while now and thought it was finally an opportunity for Ben and I to see what it was like. essentially it's a Dawn of War set-up with two objectives, one in each half of the board and the board is split by a force-field of some type. The force-field has five emitters running up the board [the Necron devices as used here] Av13 3 Hull Points. Nothing can shoot or pass between the emitters if they are intact. Should an emitter be destroyed models can cross the line following a difficult and dangerous terrain test. Units can shoot across the line, but use the night fighting rules and those being hit receive a 5+ invulnerable save.

Psychic Powers Tervigon HQ CC Tervigon T Tal Broodlord [Adrenal] Broodlord [Toxin] Endurance Enfeeble Iron Arm Iron Arm Haemorrhage Life Leech NA Haemorrhage NA Haemorrhage

OK, the setup picture below is NOT what I expected/wanted to happen. Ben won the right to setup first and decided to camp everything behind his Defence Line except his Night Scythe and a unit of Immortals - presumably going to come in on my half eventually for my Tyranid objective. So given the difficult ground on the left and the rather large killing field I was forced into setting up on the other side of the 'Jurrassic Park' fence.

Pretty much everything sat there on the wrong side of the fence, but at least safe from harm, for now. The Stealers infiltrated in a hope to reach the 2nd from top emitter and trash it so we could sally forth across the breach. 

Ben was quite happy to sit back and wait so at least the first few turns would be quick.

I won the initiative and barrelled forward, the Troop Tervigon spawning 10 [with doubles] to secure the objective.

In Ben's turn he repositioned some of his force, but not by much.

Turn two and everything continued to move forwards.

Annihilation barges at the ready for any Xenos incursions through the force field.

The Tervigon and Hive Guard pushed on through. Ben had the Stormlord and had been hitting me with lightning each turn and would continue to do so for the entire game. I believe there was no outright massacre of a squad or unit but with 5+ turns of night fighting and lightning there was a persistent small loss of figures/wounds each turn.

My Trygon turned up for deep strike but I was forced into putting him on my side of the fence for fear that putting him on the other side would have seen 1500pts of Necrons shooting at just one target...

Necrons shuffled about a bit again. Ben was showing no signs of cracking the force-field emitter and for fear of spending the entire game on one side of the fence [that I actually 'brought to the table'] it was going to be down to me to rip it down...

The stealers charged in and managed to trash the emitter, now the game was on! They'd also been endured and the Broodlord was Iron Armed up, but not by much.

The HQ Tervigon suffered three wounds despite the 5+ invulnerable save.

A warrior also suffered a wound probably thanks to lightning.

The Doom arrived pretty much spot on and thanks to the new FAQ allowing it to disembark 6" from the spore pod as opposed to the original Codex 2" suddenly he was in cover and within 6" of two units. Unfortunately he wasn't able to leech more than a couple of wounds.

Even worse the Quad gun used it's interceptor fire to shoot the Spore Pod before it could lash the back of the nearest Annihilation Barge :(

The Trygon, Tervigon and Toxin Stealers crossed the Force Field line with the Broodlord taking a wound from dangerous terrain. Everything else moved up on the nid side of the fence to still get an invulnerable save and be out of range before breaching the field line.

Ben's Immortals suddenly arrived in a flash, his Cryptek holding some arcane device allowing them to deep strike, oops. Usually I leave slightly more in reserve backfield but given the need to get upfield I was suddenly completely out of position and the ten Termagants holding my objective looked doomed.

One of the Hive Guard was shot down, they'd been practically non-existent up till now. They did eventually Immobilise and Annihilation Barge but of course that still allowed it to fire...

The Toxin Stealers were reduced to one but the Adrenals managed to arrive in support meanwhile the Trygon had taken 4 wounds and wouldn't make it across the Necron Defence Line.

With only two Broodlords and a Stealer remaining, not to mention the destruction of the HQ Tervigon my 'BIG push' was well and truly stamped on at this stage. One last gasp was to get the Broodlords into combat with something over the wall.

The Toxin stealer managed it but I also forgot that as the Stalker is a Walker and not a 'vehicle' as such he would still get his snapfire option

The Doom managed to float out of cover and I had a really fun moment where I was looking forward to using his Quad Gun on his own troops only to be reminded of my most bemoaned fact ever - nids can't use the Quad Gun! How did I forget that? Anyway, he still had Cataclysm to cast but the Immortals denied me. I'm assuming I still had remove D3 wounds for using it, hence why I was left with just one wound left :( It doesn't seem to be getting any better.

Meanwhile I tried desperately to shoot or delay the Immortals near my own objective.

But clearly to no avail as all my gaunts were slaughtered and my Devgaunts were reduced to 3.

I'm sure the game went on a but more but the result was inevitable, with First Blood, Linebreaker, Slay the Warlord and both objectives I had no chance. I'm not entirely sure what I killed, a handful of Immortals but not much else. If I'm brutally honest this wasn't a good game and I'm pretty sure Ben was of the same opinion. What I hoped would be an interesting tactical challenge of running two smaller forces ended up with us on completely different sides of the board. Nothing happened for two turns except getting struck by lightning. In some respects this makes the game even more dismal as even covering that ground in safety was not sufficient to prevent my near extermination.

Of course I could have started split up but I'm pretty sure that having half my force on one side against all his Necrons would have been suicide. Equally I could have not knocked down the force emitter, then we would have both been waiting for the other to do it and it would have been a pretty dull affair. The big question was what factor was causing this mission to not function in 6th Edition, it being afterall a 5th Edition scenario. I asked Ben if:

• the Defence Line that gave him no incentive to sally forth
• there were D3+2 objectives would that encourage more open play

His suggestion, and probably the best option, is that in the setup rules perhaps a stipulation that whatever forces are deployed in your initial setup the units must be split evenly either side of the Dividing Line. Hopefully this will then force people into making those crucial decisions about putting units where they are most needed.

I really hoped this was going to be an interesting and different battle report and the sad reality was I doubt we're likely to play this again, even with the 'fixes' to the mission, which is a shame. Hopefully someone out there will give it a go and prove it's worthwhile. I believe in it, I've just came away with a real downer, hence the poor report and in fact it's brought a real slump in blog posts too. I've run out so now it's time to look at what I've got and  rediscover my mojo, fingers crossed.