Urban Mammoth mini has arrived

Following on from my earlier post about Urban Mammoth miniatures, I went ahead and ordered one of the Amazonia Decurion gladiators. It arrived today in it's blister. It's supplied with a round edged base. I'm going to convert this one to a Death Cult Assassin.

Here a picutre of it next to a GW Inquisitor Acolyte:
You can see from the picture (ignore the base she's on, it was the first one that came to hand), the figure is a similar size to the acolyte. It's also a very clean miniature, with hardly any mold lines. I'm looking forward to painting this one.

Eek over at Heroes of Armageddon knows alot about Urban Mammoth and the Urban War game, and I read his recent post about an Urban War battle report which introduces the principles of the game. I'm actually really interested in the game having seen the miniatures and read up a little, so I downloaded the rule book from the Urban Mammoth site. I haven't finished reading it yet, but it look interesting. The game also looks quite reasonably priced to get started with as well, as being a skirmish level game you don't need a ton of miniatures.

Final tournament list

With the quick game I played on Wednesday, and the advice I've received here (thanks!) and elsewhere, I've refined and submitted my 500 point Chaos list for the doubles tournament. I've submitted it now, so there's no going back.

Daemon Prince, Mark of Nurgle, Wings, Warptime (175)
6 Plague Marines, 2 with melta guns (158)
Rhino with dozer blade (40)
Vindicator (125)

From the general chat around the club, I think most people are going to be bringing small model count armies, with ridiculous vehicles or characters (I suspect we'll see alot of Land Raiders for example), hence I went with Warptime rather than Nurgle's Rot. Mark of Nurgle gives him an extra push so he won't be so easily wounded.

Having experimented with plain Chaos Space Marines, I decided to go for Plague Marines, even though I get fewer models. I intend to keep these inside the Rhino as much as possible and snipe with the melta guns. Finally the vindicator gives me both anti-horde and anti-tank capabilites.

There we go. It's the practice games next week, then the tournament starts the week after.

Battle Report: Chaos Space Marines VS Orks

Went to my usual Wednesday night club again this week. I managed to get a couple of games in, one at 1500 points and a small one at 500 points. My opponent in both was playing Orks, and he was a new player to the club who had just moved to the area, and he was good, and I don't mean good I mean good, like former UK GT winner, played for England at the ETC, that kind of good, but he was a very sporting and fun opponent. I wasn't holding out much hope for a win this game....

The mission was annhilation, with the pitched battle setup. My list was the same old one (fifth time out for it, still needs fixing). His list was roughly:

Warboss on a bike, power klaw, attack squig
4 Nob bikers, one with a boss pole, one with a Waaargh banner, one was a Pain boy (at least they didn't have cybork bodies)
20 slugga boyz
30 shoota boyz
20 shoota boyz
10 lootas
Looted wagon
3 deffkoptas

Clearly from the list, it was going to be difficult for me to kill this many models. He still only had as many kill points as I did, but I had a third of the models.

He won the roll to setup and go first, and chose to do this. He setup his bikes on my right, next to the lootas, with the boyz in the middle and looted wagon on the side. I deployed in my left corner with everything close up, and well away from the the lootas and bikes. I held my terminators in reserve (which was a mistake).

He's something approximate to the table at deployment:
The deffkopta scouted forward in front of the ruins in the face of my army, hoping for an early crack at the vindicator.

In his turn one, everything advanced towards me, the nob bikers and warboss turbo boosted over the hill in the centre. His shooting was pretty ineffective, with the lootas managing to immobilize the rhino and not much else.

My turn one, my defiler scuttled forward towards the deffkoptas looking for an easy kill point, my right most PM unit moved into the ruins. I knew the bikes could pretty much annhilate the whole army, so I threw my daemon prince at them, hoping to hold them up for a turn or two. My shooting was pretty ineffective, with a big scatter on the vindicator. In assault, the defiler charge the deffkoptas and destroyed them. My daemon prince charged the bikes, did one wound and then got ripped apart. Not a great start for him.

Turn two, opened with the looted wagon going crazy and driving forward, ramming into the defiler. I gambled and went for a Death or Glory! attack, which was succesful and managed to take destroy it. Two kill points for the defiler. He called a Waaagh! so his sluggas could fleet into the ruins and engage the defiler. Everything else advanced, including the nob bikes who moved into charge range of one of my PM squads. In the assault phase, the defiler chewed up one Ork for nothing in return. The nobs and warboss took down 3 PMs.

In my turn 2, firstly my terminators didn't show up. My vindicator rolled backward to get away from the advancing boyz, one PM squad moved behind the hill to move towards supporting the defiler, and the other moved and later charged the nob bikers. My vindicator did more damage, taking down 4 Orks. In the assault phase, I caused some wounds, as did he, but I don't think he lost any models due to having 2 wounds and every model having different gear.

Turn 3, he advanced, and blew up my rhino. The defiler and boyz fought on, with several more boyz going down, but the power klaw nob finished off the defiler. The PM/bike combat continue with some bikes actually dieing this time, but I was rapidly running out of plague marines. When this combat finished, he had one nob biker and the warboss left from the squad with a single wound.

In my turn 3, my left most PM squad advanced on the slugga boyz who had killed the defiler, killed one or two from shooting (they were down to about 10 now) and then charged them. They were nearly destroyed, but he rolled a double one for his Ld check, the only roll that would have saved them. The bikers killed off my plague marines, leaving one nob biker alive, and the warboss with one wound.

Turn 4, his nob biker moved towards the defiler, and the warboss moved towards the PM/slugga boyz combat. Shooting was uneventful. In assault, the nob biker destroyed the vindicator, and the warboss charged my plague marines in combat with the sluggas and reduced them down to the single Plague Champion with power fist.

Turn 4 for me, and I had one model on the table. My terminator finally turned up and I DS'ed them in close to the warboss/slugga/PM combat, but they scattered very close to the edge. I ran them in the shooting phase hoping for some cover from the 40+ boyz in range of them. In assault, the warboss killed my Plague Champion but not before losing his last wound.

Turn 5, I had 5 terminators against his entire army. They survived a ridiculous amount of fire (crappy Ork BS, T5, 2+/5+ save helped), but were eventually wiped out. Game over, with a loss for me.

This one was always going to be tough, I simply don't have the amount of firepower to destroy that many Orks. I was pleased with my deployment, it felt like the best tactic to use, but I clearly should not have DS'ed the terminators, as their they would have been more effective on the table for 4 turns. They could have held up the bikes for a turn or two giving me more time to finish of a unit or so of boyz.

An enjoyable game, but it was always going to be a tough one.


We were done early, so we had a kick 500 point game to prepare for the doubles tourney. He ran his Warboss and nob bikes as above, with one deffkopta. I ran my DP with wings and Warptime, 10 CSM with Icon of Chaos Glory and a melta gun, and a vindicator. I did manage to win this, thanks to some lucky rolls. My DP killed his Deffkopta in close combat and his bikes destroyed all my marines in assault. My DP flew over and sorted them out, thanks to warptime and me making 3 invulnerable saves.

I'm going to refine my 500 point list tomorrow following this little test. There's going to be some really cheesy lists coming out at this tournament.

Urban Mammoth Miniatures

Not a new company I don't think, but I've only just found the Urban Mammoth miniatures range. They've got some lovely looking miniatures on the site to use as alternative 40K models. They've also got some snap fit terrain which would make nice Necromunda terrain.

Some examples (I can't link the pictures directly, they're java pop-ups in the online shop, but you can find all of them in the Urban Mammoth online store):

Junkers Convict Legionairres:
These would be sweet as Adeptus Arbites for Witch Hunters armies, or Necromunda.

Junkers Lictor:

Change the gun on this, you've got an Inquisitor.

Gladiator Myrmillo with flame thrower:
This one would make a nice Acolyte, or Warrior with flamer.

Amazonia Decurion:
Pure badass. Swap the guns for hand weapons, I'd say this would make a Death Cult Assassin.

Triad Boss Veteran:
This one is a possible Inquisitor, as is...

..the Triad Boss.

And how about these sumo guys as Crusaders:

This guy is called Konrad Borislav and has a pretty Inquisitorial or Commisar like air:
The prices are pretty good (round about a £5 for a single character model), but be aware they charge a £2.50 handling fee, plus postage on top.

If anyone's bought any minis from them, I'd love to hear about it. I may place an order myself over the next couple of days.

Edit: If you're looking to order some, you might save a bit by getting them from other suppliers rather than direct. Allsortsemporium on ebay has them, and doesn't charge a handling fee.

Two simple Battle Sister Conversions

I'm trying to get a ten woman squad of Sisters together in case I decide to take them to the upcoming 500 points doubles tournament. I was justing going to put them together as straight Sisters, no conversions, so I could get them done quickly, but once I got them out of the box I couldn't resist a bit of converting.

First up: flamer to melta. The standard box comes with one Sister with a flamer and one with a storm bolter. My evetual 1500 point list requires a melta and a heavy flamer in each squad. The heavy flamer model I will buy at a later date, but I thought I'd be able to convert the flamer over to a melta. Here's the result:

Pretty straight forward. I cut off the flamer tank thing from underneath the gun and drilled two holes for the tubing. The tubing is a guitar string, which is something I've not used before. They were cheap (£1.49 for 6 strings and 3 plectrums inc P+P from ebay). This one is a D string. I also filed of the flamer nozzles from around the barrel. Apart from that I just added some green stuff to resculpt some of the detail that was lost as I hacked off the flamer parts and to fill out the front nozzle.

Second, I decide to convert the Sister Superior. She is supplied with a plasma pistol and a chainsword (or possibly an eviscerator), which I can't see I'm ever going to choose. I decided to swap this for a Brazier of Holy Fire (basically a one shot flamer and CCW), and swap the plasma pistol for a bolter. Here she is:


The Brazier is built from Empire Flagellant parts, consisting of a spiked club and the brazier I cut off the top of one of the heads on those sprues. I drilled her hand through and glued the club apart half way in to leave room at the bottom and then attach the brazier to the top. The backpack is a backpack from a canoness which has a little tank on the back so I drilled this and attached another length of guitar string. Finally, I just added a little GS around the hole where the string met the tank.

The bolter looks a little weird in the picture as I had to cut of the bullets from the bottom to make it fit. I've re-attached them to the side of the weapon so it's more like a WW2 sten gun.

I'll be using alot more guitar string in future. Main thing I learnt from these two minis is to bend the string into the shape you want it before you glue it in. Other than that it is pretty easy to work with.

Upcoming Tournament: Need some help

My local club is running an informal tournament over several weeks in June which I'm going to enter (first tournament for me). There's a couple of twists:

1- It's a doubles tournament
2- It's only 500 points per player
3- You won't be able to choose who you are paired with, it'll be chosen by the tournament organizers (not sure on what basis, hopefully something sensible like shooty paired with assaulty).
4- The only compulsory requirements are 1 HQ choice and 1 troop choice
5- It will be scenario based

There's alot of unknowns there so it's going to make choosing a list a challenge. I've also never built lists for such a small number of points.

First thing, I've got a choice of armies! I could probably scrape together 500 points of Witch Hunters for this which will be their first outing, and clearly I've got my CSM's already to go. I'm favouring WH currently, as I'm itching to get them on the table, and this will push me to them going.

Second thing, I've only got a limited selection of models to choose from and I won't have time or money to get anymore.

Here's a couple of lists I threw together last night:

Chaos Space Marines
Daemon Prince, Wings (130)
5 Chaos Space Marines, 1 meltagun, Icon of Chaos Glory, Rhino (130)
5 Chaos Space Marines, 1 meltagun, Icon of Chaos Glory (95)
Vindicator with daemonic possession (145)
Total: 500 points

This would be played aggressively with the DP spearheading the charge and dealing with big stuff. Meltagun drive-bys would be possible out of the Rhino. The Vindicator can bust armour as well as killing infrantry with it's demolisher cannon.

Witch Hunters
Canoness with jump pack, bolt pistol, power weapon and cloak of St. Aspira (96)
Inquisitor with psychic hood, bolter (42)
3 Gun Servitors with heavy bolters (75)
9 Battle Sisters with Veteran Sister Superior with Book of St Lucius. Squad has 1 meltagun and 1 storm bolter (144)
5 Seraphim, with Veteran Sister Superior who has Book of St Lucius and melta bombs. Squad includes 2 pairs of twin hand flamers (144)
Total: 501 points

The battle sisters, along with the Inquisitor, shoot anything which comes close to them (took a Storm Bolter as it's longer range and one point cheaper than a flamer, plus I have the model). The Inquisitor has an unlimited range psychic hood to protect against psychic powers and the unit can put out 9 BS4 S5 AP4 shots per turn from the servitors. The Seraphim are there for counter assault or to protect against Infiltrators. Depending on the allies they can also assist in a close combat charge and tank hunt. The canoness is a tar pit for tying up any unit which looks nasty. She has a 2+ save which can be made invulnerable with an act of faith.

List drawbacks
CSMs: A power armoured Chaos Lord would probably be better and cheaper and I could take some more CSMs, but I don't have the model for this. My other model alternative would be my Chaos Sorcerer/Lord in terminator armour which would probably end up as expensive (or almost) as the DP anyway.

Witch Hunters: The Inquisitor choice isn't optimal, I just like them alot. If I had an Excorcist, I'd swap them for that probably, but I haven't. I've taken a storm bolter on the BSS squad to give them a little more range than a flamer or melta. Overall it probably needs another troop selection, but I'm stuck with the models I actually own.

Any got any tips or comments on the lists? Or any better suggestions for the list, or for building lists at such a small points value?

Battle Report: Chaos Space Marines VS Eldar

A thoroughly kicked ass...

Played a game last night, still using my standard list I've been running for the last few weeks.

My opponent was using Eldar, which was a nice change from MEQ lists. He had something like this:

Avatar
Autarch
5 Fire Dragons with Exarch (he had the flamer style upgrade)
5 Fire Dragons with Exarch (he had the melta style upgrade, Fire Lance or some such)
6 or so Striking Scorpions
10 Swooping Hawks
10 Dire Avengers with Exarch who had Blade Storm
10 Dire Avengers with Exarch who had Blade Storm in a Wave Serpent
5 Rangers
3 Shining Spears with Exarch
3 Heavy Support Platforms

As usual, you can see my opponent had a crap ton of models.

Mission was Annihilation using the Dawn of War setup. This favoured me on the surface as I had substantially less KP than he did.

The table was pretty dense with terrain. For deployment and first turn he castled up in one corner in plenty of cover and bought on the rest of his force around them. I made a major balls up in my deployment and deployed well away from him with my DP and two squads of PMs and then bought on my reserves on the other side of the table. This simply meant he had two tiny armies to deal with seperately. I'm not 100% sure what was actually going through my mind at this point.

Needless to say the game did not go well (this is not to say it wasn't fun of course). My daemon prince and vindicator died without causing a single casualty, pretty much the same with my terminators. My defiler did well (starting to love the unit), and destroyed the Shining Spears and mauled some Dire Avengers. Two units of plague marines got mauled by the Fire Dragons. Result was a blood bath. It ran to 7 turns, which gave him the opportunity to table me completly. I'd scored a massive 2 kill points, to his 8.

My poor deployment was my most fundamental mistake. I should have deployed everything close and used my 2 ordanance weapons to wear him down. His only long range weapons were the wave serpent and the support platforms which were barrage weapons (forgive me I forget their name) which were weak against Plague Marines anyway. This would have meant I could have held my DP and shorter range troops to attack anything that was thinking of coming in close.

I don't want blame the dice gods too much, but I had some crappy rolls. The wave serprent took 3 rounds of shooting from a melta gun and a plasma gun without doing anything worse than being shaken, my DP lost his last wound to a shuriken pistol, my vindicator died to a jet bike.... Frankly though the dice gods could have gifted me sixes for the whole game and I'd have still lost. Still it was a fun game anyway, and a learning experience.

In more victorius news, I managed to squeak a win on the Warpstone Flux May Army List challenge. I was thinking about the list I'd written for the entry I'd written on the way home from this game, and how freakin' useful 3 orbital barrages would have been :)

Inquisitorial Acolyte and completed squad

I've not put a brush to a miniature for 10 days, so tonight I kicked in and finished off the second acolyte for my Inquisitor's retinue:



I decided to go for grey colour scheme on this one, to tie him in with the first acolyte in the squad.

I also did a bit of work on the face of the unit's sage which I finished a couple of weeks ago. After photographing him for the blog, his face looked quite flat. The face sculpt on the miniature is actually really nice so I tried a little to bring that out:
I added some more shadows into the creases around the mouth, added a wrinkle across the brow. I also added some stubble hair, as almost every other figure in the unit is bald so I thought this might break up the shiny heads ;)

Finally, here's the completed squad for the time being. I've decided to call him Inquisitor Lord Flavian after the fluff I wrote for the May Warpstone Flux challenge. Here they are:



Next projects:
-Finish Nurgle Chosen
-Base Nurgle Dreadnought
-Convert a priest into a chirugeon for this squad
-Paint Sisters of Battle squad

AoBR Dreadnought to Nurgle Dreadnought Conversion

I've been working away for most of this week, so I have managed to get anything painted, however, I did take my tool box with me and got some conversion work done. I picked up this Assault on Black Reach dreadnought from ebay pretty cheaply:


I was pretty surprised by the model, it's really well detailed. I'd definitely buy a load of these if I was doing a Space Marine chapter. Of course, I'm not, so this was going to fall to the power of Nurgle :)

The first thing I needed to decide on was the weapons. It comes with a multi-melta, but I also wanted to have the option of taking a plasma cannon. These are the standard arms:
I thought I could probably get away with just changing the barrels on the MM arm for a plasma cannon barrel as plasma cannons sort of have pipes and stuff like that on them. With some conversion work I managed to get them magnetized, and got the front part of a 2nd edition era plasma cannon also magnetized. Here's a close up:

As you can see I cut off the front part of the MM and drilled it and fitted two magnets (2mm wide by 1mm deep). I also drilled corresponding holes in the arm and fitted 2 more magnets with reversed polarity. It was pretty important at this point to make sure they stuck together. I then painted my arm magnets with a bit of orange paint and pressed the plasma cannon piece to them to give me two marks to drill and fit magnets to. I then drilled and fitted magnets to that piece (two 1mm holes took me 20 minutes each with a pin vice, I need to get a Dremel...). This method also means I could add other parts in the future by magnetizing the barrels. I have a spare twin linked lascannon that would probably fit for example.

From that points it was on with the green stuff. Here's the final finished product with multi-melta:


....and with plasma cannon:

The helmet and daemon mouth are Defiler parts, and the whole thing has plenty of green stuff applied. I didn't magentize the arms, they're just on the pegs they come with. I might have magentized them had I got any magnets big enough.

I particularly pleased with the close combat arm:

This was done using horns from the Chaos Spawn box and then using a flat needle file to file a flat section at the thick end. These were then glued to the fingers of the power fist and the joints smoothed over with green stuff. I did briefly consider trying to magnetize the bolter and having a heavy flamer option, but I couldn't work out an easy way of doing it.

I also found a bit of time to work on a squad of Nurgle Chosen. I only got time for the first 4, so here they are, they just need 3 more to go with them:

Edit 8/6/09: The dreadnought is now painted and you can see the finished model elsewhere on the blog.

Warpstone Flux May Army List Contest: Poll now open

Head over to Warpstone Flux and vote on the May Army List challenge. You can read all the entries over there (they're all good ones). More details on my entry can be found on my earlier post.

New race musings

I'm sure you saw the news a couple of days ago on Bell of Lost Souls about a new race for either Fantasy or 40k. An interesting development, new stuff is always good.

However, thinking on this, do we really need a new race? Let's assume for a minute it is a 40K race (rumours I've heard from other sources like Warseer say it's going to be a Fantasy race anyway). Is it possible for GW to justify development time on a new race when existing factions languish in forgotten obscurity. There are so many current and existing Codex's which are in need of an update, would it not be better for GW to focus development time on updating Dark Eldar, Daemonhunters, Space Wolves, Necrons, Witch Hunters etc?

Games Workshop want to sell miniatures, and I suppose that a new race is more likely to sell more minis than a Codex update, but conversely it's alot more work to start an entirely new faction.

In an ideal world, I would like GW to:
-Update existing 3rd edition Codex to bring them in line with other updated Codexs
-Put more effort into timely and accurate FAQs and errata
-Bring back Chapter Approved, great fluff and army lists here
-Perhaps introduce variant lists such as used to appear Chapter Approved. I'd buy a load of IG models if they were to update the Lost and the Damned list for example. I can't see this would be a huge use of resources. Writing some mini-dex for CSM Legion's (like we had in the old Codex) wouldn't be that hard.
-...and at this point introduce new factions. Once you've got your existing house in order, at this point you can start adding new things to it.

Ultimately, perhaps the entire Codex system is just wrong. It must be incredibly difficult to balance all Codexes against each other. Trying to balance the new IG codex for example, against Codexes which are 7 years out of date for example can't be easy. Is there an alternative? Well, GW manages without individual faction lists for Lord of the Rings for example (they've got Legions of Middle Earth, though they do have army books as well, I understand Legions of Middle Earth is used for tournaments) with all army lists in one book so they know how to do it. Privateer Press don't use individual faction books for Warmachine either, though I understand they might be changing this in the future.

Just some random thoughts. As for the new race, I'd like either Adeptus Mechanicus or Squats.

I guess the final thing to remember is that this new race is likely to be a long, long way in the future if indeed it ever happens.

Zombies

Jawaballs has done a couple of excellent posts on "Surviving the Zombie Apocalype" a subject I love. My wife doesn't seem overly concerned by the inevitable zombie apocalypse (leaving it to me I suppose), although this is the woman who did stock pile bottled water after 9/11, because Yorkshire was almost certainly going to be Osama bin Laden's next target.

Anyway, I like zombies. Alot. I posted a while ago about the TV series Dead Set which if you haven't seen, you really should, so Jawaball's post (and Salsa Prime's Zombie Survival blog) has insipired another zombie related post.

I've watched a truck load of zombie related films over the last couple of months. Here's a few:

Zombie Flesh Eaters: Classic. Watch this again yesterday as my Dad got me the uncut version from Europe. There's an eyeball piercing scene which had been deleted the first time I saw it on the UK version.
The Dead Hate the Living: Zombie in-jokes but not much else really. Pretty average.
Severed: Unusual premise and setting (it's set in a forest at a logging camp) but the action is lets it down as you can't really make out what actually happening, the camera moves around so much.
Zombies Anonymous: Great premise for this one, the dead are returning to life but they have the same personality, intelligence as before (they're now "mortally challenged"). Falls off a bit at the end, but the early part is good.
Zombies Strippers: Zombies, strippers, Jenna Jameson, Robert Englund. What's not to like? This film works on the "Cheesy Peas" principle that if you like two things seperately, you'll love them even more when they're together.
Zombie Flesh Eaters 2: Pretty bad, I've got the third part ready to watch.
Mortuary: Starts better than it ends, this is Lovecraft inspired, and has some zombie action. It's got Tasha Yar out of Star Trek:TNG in it.
Day of the Dead 2: Contagium: Bilge. Bears no resemblance or relevance of the original film, avoid this unless you're a zombie completist (like me).

That's some anyway, I'll spare you the rest. Zombie Flesh Eaters is the only one I'd watch again readily, but some of the others pass the time.

I'm always open for zombie suggestions (books, films etc), so post 'em if you got 'em.

Rules I forget

Warhammer 40K is a complicated game, with rules spread over the main rule book, a dozen Codexes, FAQs, errata and so on. It's easy to forget a rule that might be to your advantage, or equally to your disadvantage. Here's some that frequently slip my mind (and my opponents):

• Ordnance weapons roll 2D6 for armour penetration and pick the highest.
• If a blast marker hole is over a vehicle it hits the armour facing the firer, unless its a barrage weapon in which case it hits the top
• If the blast marker hole is not over the vehicle, the weapon is half strength
• Plague Marines have blight grenades, which are defensive grenades
• Assaulting into difficult terrain needs a test, and they fight at I1 unless they've got assault grenades
• Chaos Rhinos can have two firers from the top hatch (CSM FAQ)
• WH/DH psychic hoods have an unlimited range, unlike Space Marine psychic hoods
• Chapter Master Orbital Bombardments scattered 2D6" and can't be used if they've moved

What other rules do you forget, or need reminding of?

Battle Report: Chaos Space Marines VS Ultramarines

I played a 1500 point game on Wednesday night, with my Nurgle marines taking on the boys in blue. My list was my usual one I've been running the past couple of games. My opponents list was roughly:

Marneus Calgar
5 Assault Terminators (3 Lightnings Claws, 2 TH/SS)
10 Tactical Marines, Veteran with power weapon, missile launcher
10 Tactical Marines, Veteran with power weapon, missile launcher
10 Tactical Marines, Veteran with power weapon, missile launcher
10 Assault Marines, Veteran with power weapon
Predator with lascannon turret
Vindicator

The mission was capture and control, with a dawn of war setup. I won the roll for deployment and opted to go second, mainly so I could grab any objectives on the last turn and see where he setup. Both of us held our terminators in reserve to deep strike and deployed the requisite number of HQ and troops on the table. Here's how things looked at deployment roughly (my units where a bit further back on the edge of my table half (I had a PM squad in a Rhino):



As you can see (hopefully...) my objective was bottom right of the picture, his top right.

Turn 1 kicked off with the marines and Marneus in the top right advancing, and the reserves coming on. His Predator took a pop at my Rhino but it made its cover save, and Marneus orbital strike killed 4 of my Nurgle marines around my objective, who lost another of their number to the Vindicator. I bought my reserves on in my turn, so at this point we looked something like this:



Morbus the Foul, daemon prince of Nurgle, jumped over the woods, cast Nurgle's Rot and then charged the tactical marines, smashing 5 of them. The marines thought better of sticking around and ran, to be charged down by Morbus. Good start for him. He consolidated back into the trees. My Defiler continued this good start by stunning the Predator with its Battlecannon.

Turn 2, and the Ultramarine Assault Squad and a tactical squad advanced towards my objective and Marneus moved to shoot at the DP (with no effect) but was too far away for a charge. The UM vindicator took out another PM around my objective. In my turn, the Vindicator rolled forwards but was out of range and my Defiler advanced. Morbus jumped onto the Predator (I was hoping to be out of charge range of Marneus Calgar) and comprehensively destroyed it in assault. My Rhino moved behind the cover of the hill.

Turn 3, there was a general advance of his remaining assault and tactical marines towards my objective, and Marneus Calgar just proved to be in charge range of Morbus. His Assault Terminators arrived in the space to the right of my objective, very near my Defiler and a Plague Marine squad. In combat, my DP turned out to be higher Initiative and WS than Marneus (God of War my ass :P), but I spectacularly rolled 4 1's for my attacks... Marneus caused two wounds in return. In my turn, the Vindicator fired on the advancing tactical marines, killing several. The Defiler and Plague Marines killed 3 assault terminator with gun fire and the Defiler squashed the remaining two in assault. This was a relief to me as they would have torn me apart. My terminators arrived and deep striked close to his objective hoping to contest it. I stupidly forgot to fire with them though...

Approximate positions at the start of 3rd Chaos turn with Chaos Terminators about to arrive

Turn 4, his Assault Marines doubled back to attack my terminators, but were out of assault range. Meanwhile my terminators shot up and charged the tactical marines in front of them. The other tactical squad was destroyed over this turn and the next by shooting from the Defiler, Rhino havoc launcher and Vindicator. Marneus killed off my Daemon Prince, but not before receiving two wounds in return. The Ultramarine Chapter Master played no further part in the battle, being too far away from the combat. I think he was mourning the Predator he was stood next to. Anthrax squad of Plague Marines, having got out of the Rhino, stunned the Vindicator with a melta shot.

Turn 5, my Vindicator and Defiler began a rush to the Ultramarine objective to contest it. Anthrax squad advanced close to the Vindicator to shoot it with the meltagun and assault if necessary. It wasn't as it exploded from a melta shot. The Assault marines charged the terminators, who were already engaged with the remains of the tactical squad.

Turn 6-7's only action was the terminator combat. They broke the tactical marines, who ran off the table. In turn, the terminator broke from combat in turn 7 but fortunately they stayed alive.


The result was a win for me, as I was holding my objective and no one was holding his. All my units performed pretty well. My daemon prince had been lacklustre in his previous two outings did well in this battle, taking out a tacitcal squad and a predator. The defiler and terminators also did well. I'm not sure I'm using my troop choices to their full advantage to get the most of their formidable abilites, they almost seem to expensive to sit babysitting an objective. Overall, I was pleased, as by concentrating my efforts on one part of his army and destroying it at minimal cost to me meant I was in a good position to deal with the rest.

Hope you've enjoyed reading this, any feedback or glaring errors always welcome.

A blast from the past

We went over to my parents house at the weekend, and my eldest son was rooting around in some old toys of mine. What should he find, but a hidden gem...


Games Workshop top trumps! I'd forgotten I'd even owned these. There were a number of sets, I think I had more than one. There was even a 40K one I think. They date from around 1990 if memory serves me, and there's plenty of old school miniature action in there. Take a look at these old greater daemons:




I miss the old bull headed Slaanesh daemon, it was actually pretty cool looking. You can tell looking at these old school minis how much the painting and sculpting style had changed over the years. I've got the 40K 2nd edition rule book here, and the miniatures are incredibly brightly coloured, unlike the more muted style GW uses today. Next time I'm over at my parents I might try and find my old boxed Dark Future for a look at.

In other unrelated news, I painted a sage for Inquisitors retinue:



Pretty unremarkable. Photographing figures close up makes them look a hell of a lot worse than they do in real life...

Thanks for the comments on my Inquisitor, always much appreciated. I've re-evaluated the mini, and as was suggested I've neatened up some of the highlights, by darkening some of the lower points of the model, and crisping the edge highlights. I don't think it will show in a photo, but take my word it gives it a slightly better look.

Completed Inquisitor and Servitor

I posted some WIP shots of this Coteaz based conversion a while ago. Here he is with the finished paintjob on him:




This one above is my favourite looking weapons configuration with the power sword and combi-flamer. He has a number of other options (I'll spare you them all) such as this power stake and combi-plasma:



Some points to mention which I was pleased with on this:

-The scroll on the front worked really well. I used a 0.5mm pen to do this (the same as I did for my familiars) and it provides a nice focal point for the miniature.
-I'm particularly pleased with the blue on the power sword. I attempted to use a wet blended technique for this (see From the Warp on tips on how to do this properly), and I stole the idea for the colour from The Astronomican I think. Its come out pretty well, though it was slightly more luck than judgement.

I've also finished a servitor (first of three) for my Inquisitor's retinue:

Happy Star Wars Day!

May 4th is Star Wars Day! Let's remember the good bits and try and forget about Jar Jar Binks :)

Warpstone Flux May Army List Contest

You may remember April's army list challenge was around the Alpha Legion, and you can read my entry here. I managed to finish second of four in the vote which wasn't too shabby (miles behind the Suneokun's excellent pre-Heresy list which won). May's challenge has gone up this morning, here's the rules:

Overview of the Challenge:
Your strike team is being deployed on a mission to take back technological marvels of the Dark Ages from a renegade planet. The planet has corrupted imperial guard elements and chaos space marines standing to oppose you. You don't know the exact make-up of the threat however. You will be deployed in a city environment (lots of buildings and cover available to both sides) via deep-striking or infiltration.

Rules:
(1) Design a 1500 point army from any codex to take on a numerically superior imperial guard and chaos space marine contingent (totalling 2000 points: 1000 points of Guard and chaos marines each) in a seize ground mission with 3 objectives in a city environment. Use a standard force organization chart.
(2) All members of your army must be able to deep-strike or infiltrate.
(3) If your chosen codex doesn't have troops or at least 1 HQ capable of deep-striking or infiltrating in the force organization chart (e.g. Chaos Space Marine troop selections have daemons that can deep strike, but they don't take up a slot in the force organization chart), you may ignore rule (2) for troops or HQ choices. Comment on how they will fit in with the army theme of the 100% deep-striking or infiltrating.
(4) Post your army lists as a comment to this posting.
(5) On May 14th 2009, I'll start a voting poll that will be open for 1 week to vote for what Warpstone Flux readers consider to be the "most effective army list that also best articulates the theme" (whatever readers interpret that to mean) out of all entrants.
(6) Winner will be tallied and announced on May 21st.

Interesting challenge. On the surface, it'll lend itself well to drop podding Space Marines, Death Wing, all Infiltrating IG from the new Codex, so I thought I'd do something a bit less obvious. Here's my entry:

Great challenge. For my entry I've used Codex: Witch Hunters, hope you like it.

Army background:
Inquisitor Lord Flavian was present on the world of Mordos IV investigating a suspected Slaaneshi pleasure cult amongst the world's nobility, revolving around unknown technological artefacts. Sensing they were close to being exposed, the cult revealed itself and it's influence spread far wider than Flavian had discovered. The planet rose up in revolt, and elements of the loathed Emporer's Children arrived anticipating the debauchery that was to come.

Flavian and his retinue struck as quickly as they could at the heart of the insurrection, located in the planetary capital. Arriving aboard his personal Chimera transport, the Flame of Terra, he sent part of his retinue forward to strike at the enemies leaders. Troops from his household guard were quickly summoned from Flavian's orbital battlebarge, the Emporer's Light, landing behind enemy lines and moving up to support the Inquisitor, anticipating a close range fight. Flavian's call for aid was answered by Canoness Katherine of the Order of the Bleeding Heart from thier nearby convent, who managed to arrive with her contingent of elite Seraphim in time. With thier lightning speed combined with orbital support, Flavian hopes to break the enemy.

The list:
HQ:
Inquisitor Lord Flavian, combi-flamer, auspex, rosarius, melta-bombs
3 Acolytes, combi-flamers, carapace armour
3 veteran guardsmen with flamers
Chimera "Flame of Terra", 2 heavy flamers, dozer blade
(246)

Canoness Katherine, jump pack, mantle of Ophelia, eviscerator
(105)

Elite:
3 Death Cult Assassins
(120)

Troops:

9 Inquisitorial Stroom Trooper and 1 Veteran, 2 melta-guns. Veteran has an auspex and combi-flamer
(142)
9 Inquisitorial Stroom Trooper and 1 Veteran, 2 melta-guns. Veteran has an auspex and combi-flamer
(142)
9 Inquisitorial Stroom Trooper and 1 Veteran, 2 flamers. Veteran has an auspex and combi-flamer
(132)
4 Inquisitorial Stroom Trooper and 1 Veteran, 2 flamers. Veteran has an auspex and combi-flamer
(82)

Fast Attack:

5 Seraphim with melta bombs, 2 inferno pistols
(160)
5 Seraphim with melta bombs, 2 inferno pistols
(160)

Heavy support:

Orbital strike: Lance Strike
(70)
Orbital strike: Lance Strike
(70)
Orbital strike: Lance Strike
(70)

Total: 1499

Let me explain some points:

Versatile: Units are armed to take on either armour or troops, as the enemy forces are unknown.
Cover: Attacking an entrenched enemy in cover, Flavian has deployed as many flamers as possible to root out insurrgents.
Jump packs: The Sisters will all enter play via Deep Strike.
Troops and Inquisitor: The Inquisitor is already planetside and so starts deployed, and has landed his troops at the first sign of the uprising.
Auspexes: The enemy deployment is unknown so troops are equipped with short range scanners (this is more fluff inspired than in-game useful).
Orbital Strikes: These are bombardments from Flavian's battle barge.


Can you do better? Head over to Warpstone Flux and have a go!

Edit: Should just point out that Death Cult Assassins can Infiltrate, fitting the brief :)