1500pt battle report - Dark Angels v Khorne Daemonkin

I'd arranged a game with Ben, but had to cancel so my next organised game was with PeteB and his new Daemonkin army [is anyone keeping score on how many armies he's had since I met him ;) ]. He'd found a Dark Angels themed mission in White Dwarf 74 so had challenged my Fallen angels to hunt their naughty bretheren so I accepted and offered hospitality in my kitchen for the very first time. Knowing the mission in advance I got my youngest to set up the terrain but frankly he was rubbish and I was more than a little impressed when the wife took over and made some sense of what I had available.

The low down:

• Hunt the Fallen - The Dark Angels player must choose a Primary Detachment from Codex: Dark Angels. His opponent must choose a Primary Detachment from either Codex: Chaos Space Marines or Codex: KhorneDaemonkin, and must ensure he has at least four characters. One of these characters is the Fallen that the Dark Angels are searching for.
  The enemy player secretly makes a note of which of his characters is the Fallen; the Dark Angels player can only discover the identity of the Fallen by issuing a challenge to an enemy character in close combat. This challenge cannot be refused by the enemy player. If the Fallen is destroyed outside of a challenge, his identity remains secret to the end of the game and is only revealed after the last turn has finished.
  At the end of the game, the Dark Angels player earns a Victory Point if the Fallen character has been slain. If the Fallen Character was slain in close combat, he insteadearns D3 Victory Points. The enemy player earns D3 Victory Points if the Fallen character is still alive at the end of the game.
  If the Dark Angels player has an Interrogator-Chaplain, the Interrogator-Chaplain scores an extra Victory Point if he slays the Fallen in a challenge.
• Warlord Trait - Precision shots [I think] :(
• Not night fighting first turn, I deploy second within 12" of my Hammer and Anvil, Pete deplys anywhere else except within 24" of no man's land in front of my DZ, I go first and Pete fails to steal the initiative.

With the mission quite specific I made a laast minute decision to drop Ezekiel and take Asmodai, as the head of the Interrogator Chaplains it only seemed right and fitting he was there, he also gives me an extra VP if he slays the Fallen AND an extra D3 VPs if he Slays the Warlord in a challenge too!

So I had a list that was similar to my Blog Wars prep lists but I'd dropped the Land Raider and a unit of Deathwing, brought back some Ravenwing and gave the Cerastus it's first walk in the sun [a searing yellow giant while the world burned around his brazen feet].

Pete had a lot of Fleshhounds, plenty of bikers, Berzerkers a Maulerfiend and a Soulgrinder. In my first turn the Lancer had moved up, stupidly right in front of my Bastion, denying my devastators with a good field of fire c'mon, he's an impetuous Knight they do that stuff. He managed to shock lance the Fleshhounds with his Warlord on a bike, killing about two of them and wounding the Warlord once. He then failed to make a 7" charge and stood admiring his spear.

With their obstructed view the only thing worth shooting for the devs was the unit of hounds on the right.

My Ravenwing charged the hounds on the left, killed one, lost one of their own and then broke and fled behind the tower containing the Missile launcher combat squad. I'd also been bemoaning how rubbish Asmodai's Warlord Trait was - precision shots with a Bolt Pistol! But he got a shot off - rolled a six and shot through the gap in the future containers to pick out the Chaos Warlord biker. Sadly he was using some old ammo that had come from a bad Forgeworld and failed to wound. That ammo was spread liberally throughout my Dark Angels, as I'd discover as the game progressed.

The Fleshhounds on the left charged my Scouts in the ruins, they somehow manged to fend them off, but took a couple of casualties. The Cerastus took a Hull Point from the Soul Grinder.

The rest of the Chaos forces moved up.

The Warlord biker and his hounds charged down Asmodai and his tactical retinue.

The rest of the hounds charge the 8 man tac squad with the Plasma Cannon, Asmodai and the Warlord went toe-to-toe

Equal initiative meant we attacked at the same time - the Warlord had an Instant Kill axe - did the one damage and Asmodai failed his Rosarius save! But as he was killed he struck back with the Blades of Reason - equally fatal but with AP- the odds were stacked in the Lords favour.

So these might hereos of the Imperium and Chaos had rocked up, and after centuries of training and warfare had both struck single blows killing each other outright!

 

We both score First Blood, and Slay the Warlord but I get a one on my D3 for an extra VP. We then move onto the hounds and I remember that one is concussed as it was wounded by the Shock Lance, so fights at Initiative 1. Here PeteB points out that the Chaos Lord was also wounded so would have struck at Initiative 1 so capricious Chaos Gods rewrite time - Asmodai strikes down the Lord before he can draw his Axe and it's now First Blood, and Slay the Warlord [+1] to me. Asmodai looks on the corpse with a practised eye and can find no evidence this is the Fallen we seek.

The Fleshounds continue to maul the Scouts and Techmarine.

The deathwing arrive and blast the rear of the Rhino apart

My Ravenwing rally, try to shoot the other bike squad but fail to damage and and were hopelessly outmatched in combat too, losing one of their own.

The Knigght looks down on the Soulgrinder with righteous indignation.

He charges the beast spearing it on his Lance [more blood for the blood God]

The Bikers get within Melta range of the Bastion and do what they do - once again the Bastion falls, with just one casualty to the Devastators who must go to ground.

The Maulerfiend is also eager for destruction and demolishes  the tower in front of it, killing 3 of the tactical squad inside!

Asmodai remains embroiled with the hounds but as these are daemons and not Chaos Marines his lack of re-rolls make him less effective and he fails to break the combat.

The Knight looks around the battlefield for the next biggest thing to face and spies the Maulerfiend thrashing in the rubble of the tower. He charges...

and smashes it off the table. [Incidentally the Techmarine had managed to repair it's hull point in a previous turn]. The Terminators went toe-to-toe with the Berzerkers, even with huge weight of attacks they couldn't pierce the Terminator armour. The sergeant issued a challenge and won but dragging the corpse into the ligth could see it was not the Fallen they were looking for.

Having finished off the scouts the hounds from the left bounded through the rubble of the Bastion and assaulted the remaining Devastators.

Who were killed outright. I think the other hounds finally succumbed to weight of numbers and the Tactical squad managed to kill off the bike squad.

Asmodai, consolidates after killing the last of the hounds he faced. With so much blood on the battlefield Khorne was pleased.

 

Pete had generated enough Blood Tithe points to elevate the last character to Daemon Prince, now this guy was inside the Rhino with the last lot of Chaos Marines so ordinarily this would have not been possible but I was all for the cinematic reveal of the Prince ascending inside the tank and bursting through the top hatch as his chaotic brothers exited out the back to watch him fly off.

He landed by the remaining Deathwing [again there seems to be some debate online with whether he can switch flight modes, but we agreed he could as it would also give me the chance to assault in my turn]

Techmarine and assault squad pile in to support the last of the Ravenwing, this guys armour saves had been insane, everything the Chaos bikers had thrown at him had bounced off his power armour. The remaining two bikers were overpowered by their combined attacks.

The Daemon Prince killed the Terminator Sergeant.

Asmodai quickly realised this was the Heretic they sort, the foul traitor from tehir own ranks.

He bellowed across the battlefield a challenge to end this abomination and purge the sins of the Fallen.

The techmarine and Ravenwing had already committed to end the last of the Fleshhounds

The Knight was caught the wrong side of the derelict Bastion with the Chaos Marines taking cover behind the Rhino his only recourse was to Kickt the Rhino to pieces so he could then get at the traitors in the next turn.

Having killed the last Deathwing Terminator the Fallen Daemon Prince heard Asmodai's challenge and jumped across the board to face his interrogator.

His powerful attacks were sufficient to end the Chaplains righteous appeals for revenge against his traitorous brother and Asmodai was laid low.

In triumph the Prince jumped on top of the abandoned container crates and surveyed the battle-field while bellowing profane obscenities to the remaining loyal sons of the Lion!

We called it a night at this point, the Damon Prince had escaped justice and the end result was a draw, which was fine all round. The Cerastus had performed brilliantly, just going round booting things off the board and if it hadn't been for the concussive Shock Lance then Asmodai would have died at the hands of the Chaos Warlord. It was a great game, probably the Knight was a little dominant but I'm sure Pete will find a way to overcome it in the future and every time something died he was gleefully racking up those Blood Tithe points anyway so he could get his Daemon Prince.

The other Dark Angels did OK too, but it's all the extra wargear that's a problem, working out who has bolter and who has a bolt pistol and quite often that's not clear in Battlescribe. I think I need to manually make some lists, really get to grips with what I'm building into my list. I was also really impressed with Asmodai, his preferred enemy rules make him pretty lethal against Chaos Marines although I forgot he has the Deathwing rule so could deep strike with the Terminators. Lastly I love the Techmarine and was immediately looking to see if I could put one on a bike as I love the idea of one whizzing about, lopping heads and keeping up with my Knight to make running repairs as and when it needs. So that may be a plan in the future.

Wigan Comic Con Heresy

The Family and I went to Wigan Comic Con the other weekend, we'd been to the Preston one ealier in the year and although there were some sulky tantrums from the kids we actually had a good time. We'd tried to attend the Blackpool one, which turned into a farce getting tickets and we didn;t get in, but by all accounts it was overcrowded and badly organised anyway so Wigan was our next event and although it's not the most auspicious of guests there was a Dr Who going to be there - Colin Baker to add to my Sylvester McCoy [who was at Preston]. Sadly he got stuck in traffic so I missed him :(

Anyway, as we walked in I was confronted by this heresy

And later on

Great costumes, the Chaos Marine was exceedingly tall too.

 

Afterwards I found out the Blood Raven actually won best cos-play costume which was pretty cool.

Anyway, thought I'd share.

Imperial Knight - in manufactorum pt 3

The fires of the Ferron forges glow hot as I return to the Knight that started it all. The original plan was to build this and the Cerastus at the same time, reach certain milestones together and end up with two knights at the end. However, I had quite a number of other projects on the go at the same time so when I began to focus my efforts the Paladin fell by the wayside. Annoyingly the only real reason it was abandoned was the basing of the model and potentially repositioning the legs. I wanted something a little different but I didn’t think I was prepared to cut the legs up just yet. But when I revisited it, having completed the Cerastus, the planets aligned for me to overcome that stumbling block. The solution was just one cut, albeit quite an awkward one - I had to remove the hip joint pipes. This would have been so much easier if I’d done it before joining the two parts together but y’know hindsight. Anyway, I managed it and still have all my fingers and eyes.

With the pipework removed I can now rotate it around the groin. It locks into the leg with a hexagonal plug and socket, obviously those could have been cut off but I’m already reducing the structural integrity by slicing the joint off.

This way I could rotate the joint so although the leg is still in a similar position as before because the pipework is not pointing downwards and more forwards it'll at least gives the impression it’s advancing. If I point the body the other way it'd be more apparent I think, but it's removable anyway so that's not a problem.

I had another spare Termagant, again missing a head so a bit of judicious pruning, some spare bits of Genestealer node tentacles and lashing of poly cement and I managed to squish the two under it’s foot. My kit-bashing is always a bit slap-dash, I could probably do a better job but I’m all for using just glue and spare bits of sprue to fill in gaps and for the most part I get away with it.

I’m going to struggle a bit with putting the basing material on but I’d done a fair bit that night, it’d had got to midnight and then I had a second wind and think I went on for another hour or more because I knew that if I cracked this there was only magnetising the weaponry that could slow me down. So I glued everything together - Superglued the other foot to the slate, which had been hot glued to the base. I'm a little anxious there are no screws fixing it but there isn't quite the surface to drill into and I think a plastic weld is pretty strong and the model is much lighter than the Cerastus so will be under less stress.

I think this picture shows best how the rotation of the hip joint can be subtley effective. to be honest I only realised above that although it was rotated the leg was essentially in the same postion. It is tilted a bit because of the gaunts underfoot and the fact the joint was separated it made it easier to position, it only needed the torso to be in place to add a bit of weight to ensure the joint and waist lined up correctly.

The only thing that annoyed me was I just realised I'd planned to try out the Paladin Torso on the Cerastus and vice versa, just to see what they looked like but forgot all about it and now it's too late. I have had them stood together and there is still a small part of me that regrets that the braced pose of the Cerastus loses a lot of height that differentiates it from the Paladin. It's still bigger it's just not as big, not to worry the dynamism of the pose more than makes up for it. Anyway, the Paladin needs basing yet and then I need to follow Alex's magnetising a Knight tutorial so I'm not beset by further hurdles to overcome.

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What's on my palette?

Bless me readers for I have sinned, it's been just a couple of months since my last confession. The Knight Lancer is complete but where do I go from here?

 

Obviously I have my To Do List to mine for ideas but I also have my most recent project detours, some of which align with my list but were a bit leftfield in their commencement.

So I’ve basically fished out a load of things I want to work on, I want to feel that buzz of focus that I’ve just had on the Lancer [yes that is part of the addiction] but I also want to feel like I’ve moved some of these gestating [or even hibernating] project on so I can flit between them. I’m also aware that some things are quick wins and I could really achieve a lot just by applying a modicum of effort and that would finish them off . Quick wins are something to relish but they've generally reached that point of inertia for often truly unfathomable reasons that cannot easily be overcome.

Currently these include - a number of magnetised nid arms and heads, alongside my Azrael and Dark Angel Commander, and the Tactical squad; all things I could complete over a two week period and remove three items off my To Do List if I made the effort. Not to mention the Bastion which has been mothballed for more understandable reasons but again is close to completion and would tick another box...

 

I did play a game with the Dark Angels last night and was saddened that the Tactical squad was still incomplete, that might be the incentive to move them up the queue despite them not being my muse...

But the items that have been pulled out of storage are:
•    6 Ravenwing Bikers - bold as I’ve not even painted one yet
•    Nephilim Jetfighter - it needs magnetising at the very least
•    Paladin Knight – magnetising, basing and undercoat

These are the things I want to do but the reasons they’ve stalled could well be the reasons why I throw my efforts behind the other stuff listed above or even crack out the Tyranid VSG! So I’m just short of feeling overwhelmed by the workload which isn’t good so if needs be, things will have to go back in a box just so I don’t have to stare at them and I also need to get some good nights sleep as I’m feeling a little frayed with all the post-midnight sessions and 5:20am starts.