Warhammer 40k

I'm going to buy and paint some Cadian infantry for my friend as a Christmas present, he would take the painting them part as a bit of an insult but I'm going to be painting them in a special way that he can't be angry about, I'm going to paint them all like Magnum PI, Hawaiian shirts, bushy moustaches and cigars, I'll even do the squad leader with a Sponge Bob shirt and extra large moustache. A real manly squad, I think I'll have to use some space marine head's because there aren't many heads in the Cadian pack that don't have helmets. Maybe for his next birthday I'll use some green stuff to make Necron's with Hawaiian shirts etc.

Fenrisian Wolves are so easy to paint! So far anyway, I started last night and the bulk of the fur is painted, there aren't many details just teeth etc. I think though the time consuming part will be highlighting, there's a lot of edges to the fur. They look good though with little effort and it's nice not to have to worry too much about being accurate with the painting because it only looks better if the markings aren't 100% accurate. I've not painted them the same way as they are on the box, I'll paint a few like that though, I'm going to have about 30 of them so I want them to mostly look different.

Hmm I wonder actually, against a horde army they might be very useful for meeting numbers with numbers, and they are very cheap, ok they are very weak against guns but hordes are pretty crap at shooting...

My experience of the 6th edition of 40k.

My first game was against Blood Angels, not a typical list either. I was massacared by bolter fire. And Mephiston who is a monster.
My second game was against Grey knights, who I totally wiped out. The grey knight list was very elite, and I was able to make severe dents in the enemy numbers with my Leman Russ demolisher. Took out half the army in three turns.
Third game was tonight against Space Marines with a comfortable victory. I was able to get 8 vp's just by sitting in my deployment zone on objectives. And had an Aegis defence line to hide behind, which is a bargain for 100 points. Also I feel it was tactical error on my opponents part not being more aggresive with his land raider and assault terminators.

Somes notes.
Random charges suck
Plasma cannons getting hot on vehicles suck.
Placing objectives after choosing deployment zones sucks.
The rulebook has a poor layout. Finding rules is a nightmare.
Why so much random terrain!?

Flyers are fun
Snap Fire and it's implementation is great.
The missions are good, as are the secondary objectives.

Interesting, I don't like that there is so much setting up and rolling to see what random affects terrain has etc. I've watched people setting up games it took too long with the old rules, plus all that crap to remember.

I'm trying to finish off my fifth model at the moment, mostly trying to get the skin right on the head and also the eye's. It's going a lot better than my other heads, the colour tones are blended a lot smoother, which is good but now it's not very noticeable that it isn't just a flat layer of Bugman's Glow. The eye's are better as well, they are nicely fitted into the correct place, the problem is they aren't very pronounced against the skin because the eye's are yellow, the eye's are tiny anyway so you really have to take a good look to notice. I think by the next model I might have it down.

My next model is coming closer to being finished, that will make 5. I would have finished it already but I've barely been able to paint in the last two weeks. When I have been able to paint say at night the light has been too bad to be able to do anything without screwing up, but thats dealt with now and I have good enough light again. I might finish the model I'm painting at the moment and then upload the photos of it and the last model I finished and still haven't taken the photos of.

Ok well I have bought the brown case from GW, I'll get that other case as well sometime because I don't like walking around with a case that has Warhammer 40k in massive letters on it, I might try and cover them up. The club I'll likely go to is off the beaten track though so no walking through town to get there, and the only other place I'm likely to go to is my friends house which I can park right infront of. I imagine the only time I'd go into a public place with a case is if I entered the armies on display thing that GW does.

I also bought the assault marine pack, not so much for the jump packs, it's cheaper to buy them as packs of 10 on their own, I mostly bought them for the legs, they have more of a look of being in motion so if I put them on the Blood Claws or the Wolf Guard it will look like they are chasing down their pray. I'd think it would be better with the Wolf Guard, buying enough legs for a whole squad of Blood Claws would be pretty insane. I might try reposing existing space wolves legs, I expect that would be a massive work load though.

What would you put in an Imperial Guard Veteran Squad? I'm thinking of basing this squad I'm going to paint for my friend on them but I don't know what they can use or rather whats best for them to use.

I'm thinking Hive Guards would be a good option the Impaler cannon seems to be pretty decent for Tyranids anyway. At £15.50 a model it's a pretty expensive unit though. They are a pretty sweet looking model though.

I don't think I'll bother with a Tervigon/Tyrannofex to start with, I don't really want to do all of the painting for it and also I don't want to have to magnetize it so it can be either, assuming that's possible. I doubt I'll have enough Termagants anyway to start with.

There's so much stuff in the Tyranid codex that doesn't have a model or is even explained well, like the Tyranid Shrike Brood. I'd have thought that given how long Tyranids have existed they would have finished them by now.

This is what I have so far, I've ditched the Heavy Venom Cannon, I misread the special rule as it having 1 less strength rather than doing -1 to the dice roll against tanks etc. I don't want to make the Hive Tyrant any more of a tempting target than it already is. I've gone with 2 Zoanthrope's to spread out the synapse range and I suppose also protecting against Psykers, tempted to stick them in Mycetic Spores and drop them near his tanks but I'm doing that with Space Wolves and I don't really want to use the same tactic.



HQ's:


Hive Tyrant

Indescribable Horror

TOTAL = 195pts.



Elites:


Hive Guard Brood x3


Zoanthrope


Zoanthrope



Troops:


Genestealer Brood x10

Mycetic Spore

TOTAL = 180pts






SUB TOTAL = 645pts

Ok here's my sort of finished 1,000pt army list. Tyranid Prime's are pretty much just Tyranid Warriors yes? I may be tempted to which out the Tyranid Prime for 10 more Hormagaunts with toxin sacs. I want to try and hide the Termagaunts with Devourers in the mass of other stuff to make them less appealing as a target.



HQ's:

Hive Tyrant

Indescribable Horror

TOTAL = 195pts.

Tyranid Prime


Elites:

Hive Guard Brood x3

Zoanthrope

Zoanthrope


Troops:

Genestealer Brood x10

Mycetic Spore

TOTAL = 180pts

Termagaunts x10

Devourer x10

TOTAL = 100

Termagaunts x19

Hormagaunts x10

Toxin Sacs x10

TOTAL = 80pts



FINAL TOTAL = 1,000pts

I'd drop the spore on the genestealers. They have infiltrate. Thats more than good enough. Give it to a zoanthrope, and let it lance stuff to death. And buy some stuff for the the hive tyrant.

If you really want to be a nuisance, drop the big termagant brood and a zoanthrope and take the tervigon, with toxin sacs and adrenal glands. Worth it's weight in gold. And you will on average get way more than 19 gaunts from it in a game.

Shrike models are easy enough to do, just get a box of gargoyles and take use their wings, though they are a little small. Forgeworld do wings, but they get pricey. Tyranids actually have it pretty good for range of models. Only really lacking the uniques.

I've dropped the Mycetic spore, but I was kinda thinking I'd go with toxin sacs for the 19 Termagaunts (Which I guess I'd make into 20) and maybe spinefists, I'm not sure if they are really better than the fleshborers though, I did a few tests and they did seem to get a few more kills on average than the fleshborers.

I might get the wings from Forge World, £16 for 3 pairs of wings is pretty nuts but they do look pretty nice. I think I'll proxy the warriors as Shrikes first to see if I actually will want to use them.

I will for sure get at least 1 Tervigon but I don't really want to bother with all that magnetizing to start off with.

I was reading about the Deathleaper last night, I want one of them they sound like a lot of fun to use. I suppose it's best to use it to pick off units that stray too far from the group.

A bit late but here are my newly painted Grey Hunters. The photos aren't great I'm afraid.






Here's the squad so far, the guy that's in pieces in the top right is who I'm working on now and he's nearly done.

Did my first bit of free hand on a model today, it was only some runes but they are supposed to look like they have been crudely drawn on by the Space Wolf himself in the blood of an animal, like a pre-battle ritual to avert evil/bad luck. I was concerned about doing it (To the degree that I put it off so long I almost forgot...) because I didn't just want to paint it on in red paint because that wouldn't look like blood, plus it would be as if it had only just been done. So I mixed the red with the Agrax Earthshade and Seraphim Sepia to give it more of a drying blood look and didn't keep the shapes too crisp, I made it look like the blood had run down the armour a bit. Then I mixed that paint with more of those washes and painted around the edges of the runes to try and make it look like the blood was drying more around those edges, I don't think that really worked out well, so I just took the Agrax and after whipping off the excess I went around the runes again to make them more of a brown and also went over the drops.

I think I've achieved what I wanted, could be better though. I wasted my time a bit painting the blood onto his fingers to show that he just dipped his fingers into the blood and painted the runes on, the reason that was a waste of time was that those fingers are on his right had and that's pressed against his body so you cannot see them at all, it wasn't a mistake I knew you wouldn't be able to see it, I just did it for my piece of mind, I could have painted the blood onto the other hand but I don't think he would have used that hand to paint the runes on.

Here's my latest semi finished Wolf, the helmet I'm not too happy with but I didn't like the look of it before painting. Might replace it or try to fix it at a later date.






My next model will have a chain sword with bones instead of metal for the blades. I'm hoping it will look cool and not stupid.

Ugh, when do GW release their advanced orders usually? I want to see whats coming up next release. It's been blank for too long.

Wow, mixing the wash 50/50 with water makes it so much better, shading is smoother and much easier to clean up. I also found it pretty depressing to put the thick wash on making the model look ugly and also making me think how the hell can I fix this now. I only did it with what I had left in my Agrax Earthshade, because I have a new pot of that (I didn't use all of my first pot, I spilled most of it) I don't think I'll do it with the other washes/shades because they are more useful to me thick. I might end up saving lots of time and having better looking models! Actually I might try watering down the flesh wash, if it mostly flows into cracks on the face it will be easier to see the details of the model.

Had my first battle today, 500pts Space Wolves vs Imperial Guards.

Imperial Guards are pretty daunting to go up against, I won but only because of very good luck. My Grey Hunters were all but useless, they didn't get into combat until very late game and when they did get into range where they could do something I was too nervous about moving them out of cover, it was only a squad of 5 and they were quite highly upgraded. I got lucky in that his plasma guns over-heated and he had extremely bad lasgun rolls.

Canis did the most damage, though the Dreadnought that I put in a drop pod caused him a major headache.

He had 30 imperial guard (2 squads of 10 and two 5 man command squads) a 3 man heavy weapons squad and a sentinel.

I had Canis, 5 Fenrisian Wolves (Canis attached) 5 Grey Hunters and a Dreadnought in a drop pod.

He had 3 times my number.

Bought some new dice today, 36 see through purple dice with white dots and 12 almost metallic (Pearl?) purple dice with gold dots (planning to use these for psychic attacks). I've wanted purple dice for a while, well since I saw GW had coloured dice, I don't think GW had purple dice.

I've already got two sets of dice from GW, the basic white dice and also the clear dice that look like frogspawn, I'm pretty sure I have more dice than I'm ever going to need now, 98, I suppose if I had 30 Termagaunts with Devourers, nope that would still only be 90 attacks.

That guard army is illegal. But can let it slide at 500 points. Depends what weapons he had, but good job winning. Spamming infantry, guard can have a frightening amount of firepower at low points values.

I don't know the imperial guard army, what was illegal? The heavy weapons were 3 models with missile launchers. We made loads of mistakes when playing, which is normal I guess. It was a lot of fun, my friend would rather play by 6th Edition rules so I guess at some point I'll have to learn those.

We had a mini argument about the heavy weapons squads, saw a weapon that insta-kills hits the weapon squad does it loss both it's wounds or are each of the wounds counted as a different model and don't get insta-killed? I let it not get insta-killed on the night because I wanted to stay in close combat (The model ran off the board anyway so the argument was totally pointless).

The infantry platoon is one troop choice. Needs a second troop.

Heavy weapon squads are t3 2 wound models. Str 6 them and thats a base gone. Why I don't tend to take them. One multilaser/assault cannon/scatter lasser and you can lose the entire squad.

Grrr Games Workshop! They took the brown case off sale just as I attempted to buy it and I pretty much had to settle for the black case, now they've released a case exactly like the brown case but it's red! Why couldn't they just leave the brown case on sale until they were ready to release the red case... They are total dicks.

The Imperial Defence Network looks pretty decent, not sure if I could ever find a use for it, I think I'd rather do what Blue Table Painting did and dig actual trenches in sheets of polystyrene. I imagine the dug-in trenches would be a pretty big pain in the arse to play in, a lot of debates about whats in cover I should think.



I'm not really keen on Games Workshops fortresses on the whole, the Imperial Bastion is a pretty ugly thing, I think a lot of that is down to being able to use the kit to make things other than what they are intended for

I hope these mega forces aren't going to replace the battleforces, the Space Wolves battleforce is pretty useful to me, and I think the Necron battleforce is useful to my friend, I don't think he'll like whats in the Necron megaforce.

I think we're going to find out that Dark Eldar and Chaos are closely aligned soon:

Just read your Blog post about the Martyrs Trenches, I dislike them as well. I'd have rather them make another version of the Aegis Defence Line but with the look of the Martyrs walls. Mostly I dislike the shape of the thing, I think it will be rare that the thing will ever look right on the battle field, not as a full set anyway maybe only using a few parts to make a wall across the board. At some point I might have a go at making a board like the on in the video above, but perhaps only have the trench in a hill on one half of the board.

I can forgive that it's an above ground trench only because the set would be very expensive if they made one that was in the ground, maybe they could have done it as an entire board.

P.S. I looked at some of your older Blogs and finally saw a close up of some of your Guardsmen, they look good. I like the Master of Ordinance's face, has he done better in battle yet? My friend wants to get him.

No he's a waste of time. Can't hit anything. Though against nids, orks etc. Worth a go.