Musings

It's been a dogs age since I posted here, but that's no surprise considering that my daughter has been eating up oodles of my time.

In the news:

Hobby HQ
I've built a game table so that I can host get togethers. It's a fairly simple construct, 2 folding tables made from table legs and 2 4x4 plywood boards. The idea being that they are easier to move around and you can combine them to play. It leaves you a 2 foot staging area. I plan on reinforcing the bottom of the tables, and maybe even doing some extra work on the staging area to make it a good place to roll dice. Tough to decide, I have 2 warmachine/hordes tables at that size.
I also have a bigger/better hobby cabinet with cupboards and glass windows to display stuff in. Neat. I'll post pictures when I can.

Best painting discovery in the past month or two ? Acrylic flow improver/retardant. Get some.

Chaos
The Chaos slowly progress. I settled on a list to build towards and am slowly priming and painting things. My defiler came in the mail as well, but I've promised myself not to crack it until I get more stuff done. Really happy how these guys are turning out.

Tau
These kids are almost done. I'm putting the finishing touches on my HQ and accompanying Crisis Suits and after that all that's left is a Hammerhead and Piranha. It's actually been hard to finish this army. Part of the problem is that my skills have grown an incredible amount since I started the army. It's been a 2 or 3 year labour of love (I've lost track), but now that I'm at the end, I'm a bit unsatisfied. A large part of that has to do with the quality of my paint job on the early models. Granted, I was learning and they are a good tabletop quality. I'm tempted to go back and *fix* some of the older models, particularly my stealth suits and pathfinders, but I'll have to do this some other time.

Menoth
Still waiting for a package in the mail to round out my starter force. Eager to try out Warmachine.

Orcs
Getting my fantasy bug. Talked to a friend about playing it, been reading my rulebooks and getting excited. Watched Lord of the Rings which makes me excited about the fantasy genre again. I have had sitting around everything I need to build a good starting army, I have no excuse to not start them at this point.

Changes to my Chaos

After playing a game with a friend of mine, we discussed the painting end of the hobby. I had always enjoyed that he picked a custom scheme for his Imperial Guard army, with his own background/ideas instead of a pre-packaged GW theme. I had mentioned that I was starting my second army using a Black Legion colour scheme, and he suggested that I make my own faction up and do it my way. Now, while I enjoy the game-play a great deal, I think that the hobby end gives me some of the greatest enjoyment, it's certainly a focus for me. At any rate, here is what I've come up with so far: It's just a test scheme, but I enjoy how it looks so far. I figure my veterans will have bone colour helmets and a slightly different chapter emblem, while the less experienced marines will have green helmets with black as a secondary colour. I think I'll base them on a bit more of a wasteland look, with dead grass. I tried to keep the tones muted, yet give it enough oomph to stand out on the table, I think the contrast in the shoulder emblem really works for this figure. I'm really trying to think of a good name for the chapter that suits their theme. I feel that this groups is more on the space pirate/raider/marine renegade of the spectrum (a la Red Corsairs etc) than the "I'm crazy and mutated and tainted" end of it.

Continued sickness

After a brief recovery for a few days, I'm back to being sick again. I spent yesterday down in the dumps and today is actually worse than yesterday. Seems to be the same cold rearing it's ugly head. Some hobby update.


I picked up the new Greenskin codex for fantasy. Really impressed with the binding/presentation. Finally GW is going full colour. Good layout, easy to read and built for the beginner or the vet. Haven't delved too far into it yet, but hey, gives me an excuse to at least basecoat what I have laying around.

Put the finishing touches on a Chaos Lord on a bike, with a daemon weapon. Banged out a scenic base - basically a cliff/jump of stone, with space marine helmets underneath. The lord is a bit of a kitbash, using a unique head, one of the less possessed posessed backpacks, and the flaming sword from an empire wizard kit. He looks awesome. I'll post pictures as I work more on it.
Only thing I am concerned about is that the scenic base is going to give me LoS issues, since he should be able to safely ride behind a rhino without being seen at normal base height. I'm sure that the rulebook covers scenic bases though if I recall. At the very least I can clear it up with my opponent before I start any games.
Also primed up some Chaos. Giving up on the Black Legion scheme for my army, going to go with my own scheme/chapter. More on this later.

Played a game with my Tau vs IG doing a battlemission. Great close game. It really looked like it was anyone's game in the last few turns, but in the end I managed to get the victory.

In the next few days I plan to get my but in gear and get the start of the planetary empires campaign that I'm promoting off the ground.

Sickness

It's official, my daughter is a germ incubator.
I've just been off two days of work, one to take care of my family, the other to have them take care of me. The good news is, I had some time for hobby.

Now that the dust has settled after the move, I've organized up my hobby.

Today was a bit of off topic hobby. Though I didn't think I'd ever try any tastes outside of the GW hobby, I picked up a starter warmachine force. Realization that to play the game required very little models (I have four to start with!) made it pretty approachable as a side project. After all, that's maybe a week's worth of hobby work. With that in mind, I plan on putting extra work into the figures as I do them, really take my time.

In the past two days I did up the bases for the starter force.

Since I'm doing a Menoth force, I opted for dry, cracked earth, to lend itself to some of the desert/fire themes in their background.

Here's how I started, filling the bases with GS, using bark for some extra rocky detail. I textured the greenstuff with crumpled aluminum foil, a toothbrush and a sculpting tool:


Then I primed in black, basecoated in a medium brown and drybrushed lighter colours to achieve this look:


With a model:



I also wanted to experiment with off-whites of late, so I've been working on this marine for fun, painting him to a higher standard than I would an army. Still thinking up a unique chapter symbol/name.




I should have some pictures of a Chaos Sorcerer and standard bearer for my Black Legion up soon. As well, my Tau army nears completion. All that remains is some finishing touches on a crisis suit squad and a bit of vehicle painting.

Hobby Mastery

So, I've been painting and I've been comparing and I've been thinking.

Since I've started back into the hobby, my hobby skill level has gone up quite a bit.

Since I've been packing to move, I've had to organize my hobby stuff before I box it up. This caused me to dig into my models. I lined up a selection of models from different points in my development, from one of the first cruddy blood angel marine I painted to the more recent stuff like my dreadnought. I was pretty shocked at the degree of difference from my early work to my more recent projects. I'm encouraged. I always wanted to paint magazine/competition quality models and it's good to see that I'm still improving and haven't hit a plateau. I really need to get a better camera so I can take a photo to accompany this post. It should be happening soon.

The other thing that has picked up is my painting speed. With my improvement as a painter, I'm painting at a fairly rapid pace. I think I'll get into hobby overdrive mode once I'm settled into my new place.

Expect more frequent updates with photos shortly after the move.

On the block for the coming year:

- Game table and terrain building.
- Completion of my Tau army
- Orcs and Goblins
- Chaos Space Marines
- Gundam models painted, possibly dioramas. I plan to mostly airbrush this
- Warmahordes
- Baby pictures
- tons of battlereports including events surrounding an upcoming campaign that we should be starting shortly.

Measurements

Man, wargaming has made me an inch machine.

My wife phoned me last night because she's picking out a curtain rod for our new shower.

Her: "I don't know what to get, this one says 72" how many feet is that?"

Me, (immediately): "That's....6 feet. Yeah that would work".

Her: "how do you know that so fast?"

Me: "Uh... a standard gaming table is 6 feet by 4 feet."

Her: "......."

Chaos

Hello there,

A while ago I started building a chaos army. Really, I have almost 2k points in stuff built yet most of it isn't primed or table top ready from a painting standpoint.

The first thing I tackled were some older models I inherited from a friend.

First off, Raptors. I love the old models, I had some fun mixing in new shoulder pads, hands, and weapons to bring them up to date a little bit. The photography still needs some work, but mostly I need a better camera.

Not shown - the one raptor that I managed to break on th way to being photographed, I need to redo the base, and do some touch ups.

Click on the pictures for a much better view. The detail is much clearer in real life I'm afraid.






And there's the dreadnought. I'm really proud of how this guy turned out.

I'm back baby!

Months after the cuteness invasion in my life, I'm back into hobby. Sadly I have no pictures for this post, since my cameras are bursting with pictures of my sweet Ava.

Some of the more exciting news comes in the form of the life changes that came with my baby. I've bought a house, which turns the hobby dial up. I have 500 square feet of basement to play with, and a garage, which opens the doors for ease of priming, setting up my air compressor permanently (for basecoating etc.), and creating a real hobby space with a game table or two. Finally I can get into building terrain and making my own little slice of hobby paradise.

Hobby Update

I squeezed in my fist game since my baby's birth just a week ago. Orks vs Tau, I tried out a list with stealth suits rather than Crisis and included a load of Kroot. It was a fun infiltration/outflanking list. Very close game, came down to the last turn, but ultimately the Orks squeezed one out ;).

Tau-wise I haven't painted too much more. I finished a few more of my Chaos hounds turned Kroot hounds, painted a Fusion stealth suit and basecoated my second Broadside and final Crisis suit team. I'm so sick of painting blue-grey that it's becoming a chore to finish the Tau. Sometimes I wish I picked a different colour scheme for them, but they look sharp on the table and for my first complete army it's a great first effort. My painting skills have really grown with the army.

My Black Legion project progresses slowly, but I'm not in a rush with this one. I love how the chaos models look, and I'm really taking my time to get a close look at the detail as I paint. I put together my plastic Daemon Prince finally and he's a real monster! I knew he'd be around the size of a dreadnought, but he is so much more dynamic. Can't wait to paint him and field him.

My squad of old school Raptors is almost complete. I basically inherited 5 of the old raptor models from a friend. They were missing a few limbs, but Chaos Space Marine parts filled the gap and look real natural. It really updates these models using modern weapon and shoulder pad sculps. I can't wait to post a photo when they are done. I really went to town on them and hand painted their shoulder icons when adding detail and it makes them pop. I wanted to give them each different versions of the Eye of Horus, inspired by the codex rather than using the bunk transfers that come with the kits.

Tenatively, I'm starting with a 750 list as a goal. I plan to cut on some painting time by making my chaos hound as kroot hounds be summoned demons for this army as well. This doesn't represent a competitive list, but rather one of the easier/fun lists to put together.

HQ
Demon Prince - Wings, Warp Time

- wish I could spare points for a mark of Nurgle here

Troops
10x Chaos Space Marines, Icon of Chaos Glory, Rhino, 2x Melta
5x Lesser Demons
5x Lesser Demons

Fast Attack
5x Raptors, Champion with power sword, Icon of Slaneesh, 2x Melta

- a bit pointy for this scale of game, but useful when used correctly. Great for armour hunting or wiping out squads of 5 men or less (stragglers).

Heavy Support
Predator with Sponsons

That's off the top of my head, probably some small errors in there. Nice and basic, has some flaws of course, but I've played some variations of this list and had a lot of fun with it. Normally I'd run a squad of Khorne Beserkers at this point level rather than raptors, but I'm a Fast Attack sort of guy at the heart of things.

The Prince Has Arrived

While I was out getting the latest White Dwarf, I ended up picking up one of the new Demon Prince kits! I'm pretty excited to bolster my black legion with this bad-boy. I know I'm giving him wings, but I'm not sure how else I want to model him. Do I go hardcore 40k parts or do I make him more fantasy? Any ideas?

Of late I've listened to some podcasts that brought up terrain as a topic. It sounds as if there are pretty big regional differences as to the rules people use with terrain and just how much they are putting on the table. It sounds like (at least in the US) tables are pretty sparse for terrain or people use house rules as to how a terrain piece works (ie: for purposes of line of sight and cover saves). My basic approach has been simple: follow the rulebook. It has clear rules as to how each common piece of terrain works for cover and movement purposes and when it comes to line of sight, well, true line of sight. Take a gander. Use your eyeballs and a laser pointer. I think the rules are very clear on how this works. If people think it's too grey area then they are either doing it wrong or being poor sports. Further to this, the rulebook states that the table should not only have about a 1/4 of it covered, but that it should be a mixture of area, short, tall, and line of sight blocking terrain. In my experience the best tables for balanced and tactical gameplay follow these rules. A lot of pictures I see around the web of game tables (notably tourney tables) are either far too sparse, or feature short terrain or terrain that doesn't block LOS. Try it according to the rulebook and you'll find it to be a better game.

I wonder how much of the above is due to people remembering previous editions or just local flavour that came out of a misinterpretation of the rulebook?

Back to Hobby

I've finally managed to find a happy balance between newborn and hobby and am back to making some progress. I'm putting the finishing touches on my second broadside and another fireknife team so that they are ready for priming. Just a little more green stuff work on the fireknife team leader and I'll be able to get started on some painting.

Hobby slow down.

Hobby will slow down, but for good reason. I created something even more awesome. Her name is Ava, and she is incredible :).

Hobby update

Man. My School Systems spring course has been eating up my time, almost forgot about blogging.

A bit of an update.

I played the last game of this step of our 1000 point escalation league and came out with a win. It looked close for some time, but I managed to come out on top. Terminators are frightening, plasma rifles are terrific.

Construction wise I've managed to finish off building everything that I have left to bump my army up to the 1750/1800 range. I've also painted up another squad of firewarriors and a stealth suit with a fusion blaster. A bit of a wasted excersise when Kroot are my infantry of choice and I'm still on the fence about stealth suits, but my eyes have been bleeding from painting so many battlesuits that I needed a break.

For my 1250 step of the league, I'm looking to drop a devilfish, drop the shield drones on my HQ and take a pair of broadsides, another crisis suit and a stealth suit team. I'll post the list up shortly.

Army sizes:
I've heard lots of talk thrown out about army size. The north american standard is 2000 points, while Europe favours 1500. Still not convinced what I'd like to play. What I do know is that the game is playtested at the 1500 level, which means it's likely most balanced at that level. 2000 points does let you bring more toys - especially for an elite army like space marines, but vehicle spam, or unit spam in general becomes more prevelant at those levels. Honestly I think it's going to come down to some experience playing at both levels before I find a happy medium I suppose.

I've been keen on getting my orcs and goblins put together to try out the 8th edition fantasy that just hit. I think I'll just slap on a basic paint job to make it happen, just one highlight and shade maybe for now. I can't possibly go crazy like I do on some of my 40k models.

My child will be born in the next few weeks. That's exciting :). Wonder how it will affect hobby.

Army update

It's been a while since I have posted anything related to hobby on my blog, so I thought I'd share my latest addition to my Tau force. It's the first of a pair of XV88 broadside battlesuits. I'm hoping that they will help put a nice dent in enemy heavy armour. We shall see.

Also in the works is some more XV8 battlesuits, a Deathrain (Twin-Linked missile pods) and a Fireknife squad (missile pod, plasma, multi-tracker), but only the deathrain is near completion. I'm finding painting battlesuits to be a bit tedious lately though, so I've also been working on getting some more fire warriors painted. While I don't see myself making use of more than I have in the army at the moment, it gives me some flexibility try out some different types of armies.

I hope to pick up some more Kroot soon as well, but that can wait.

XV88 - Front

Side

Rear

Tau vs. Guard (League Match 3)

I had a terrific match with my Tau against a Guard army for the third round of our 1000 pt level of the escalation league. That was probably a run on sentence... oh well. Anyways. It was a really close game, but ultimately my opponent won the game in the last tense turns of the game. It was one of the best games of 40k I've played so far. I always find the close ones tend to be the best ones, no matter who takes it.

I played the 1000 pts league list posted a good while ago (of course).

My opponent ran two guard squads on foot, some officers, a pair of Russ, a pair of Hydra flak tanks, and a Chimera withe melta vets.

Spearhead Deployment, Capture and Control. While I had greater mobility, the location+number of objectives took away some of that advantage. While I had better guns, he simply had more of them, meaning I couldn't sit back and outshoot him either. In the end I chose to put pressure on his scoring units, ignoring his Russ tanks for the duration of the game.

Deployment:
I chose to go first after winning a roll-off. I held my Kroot to outflank, deployed my Pathfinders in some ruins for cover, and used their scout move to get them to a window overlooking most of the field. My devilfish deployed so as to move up either side of a central ruin and harass his infantry out in the open, and the hammerhead deployed centre table, to redeploy quickly where needed. The suits were the hard choice. Ultimately I placed them centre, when I should have anchored a flank to give them a bit more cover to work with. My lone deathrain suit covered my weaker flank.

My opponent deployed fairly centre due to the danger of outflanking Kroot, and placed his tanks on his flanks.

Turn 1
My opponent forgot to seize the initative, I had already made my moves for my movement phase when he remembered. From now on I'll sportsmanlike remind my opponent. Turn 1's shooting was lacklustre on both sides. My Deathrain penetrated the Chimera sneaking up the flank, but I rolled a 1 on the table. The hammerhead and 'fish caused a few casualties on foot guard with markerlight support, but scatter reduced the potential of the railgun submunition. My opponents retaliation was better - his flak tanks got 4 penetrating hits on my Phirana, and the cover only saved 2 of them. One devilfish was immobilized It was wrecked. My opponent moved up my flank with his Chimera


The Kroot showed up and moved into some ruins near my opponent's objective. I dismounted the fire warriors from the immobilized fish and moved them into some ruins. My other fish and Hammerhead moved into better firing positions and cleared one guard squad out with markerlight support. My Fireknife squad barraged the Hydra squadron, destroying one and stunning the other, while taking cover in ruins. My opponents sentinels arrived from reserves on my flanks and took out my deathrain, but did little else. My Fireknife squad held their ground in their ruins despite battlecannon shots, and a Marbo satchel charge, but my dismounted firewarriors broke from concentrated fire and ran.

The Kroot continued their advance through the ruins, the wrecked Pirahna's drones stunned a sentinel, while my suits and tanks pounded foot guard, killing most of another squad, but failing to make them break. My fireknife squad began taking casualties, but stayed in the fight.

The pressure on my opponent's flank continued, my Kroot moved too far into the open and got pounded by mortars and artillery, causing them to break. My suits continued hammering his infantry, killing another bunch, while the hammerhead moved back a bit to deal with the incoming Chimera vets.

At the bottom of Turn 5 the battlefield looked pretty sparse. Burning hulls, scores of dead infantry, battlesuits thinned out, Kroot running off the table. It was great! All that was left to threaten was a Firewarrior squad mounted in a 'fish on my opponent's objective, being contested by a Hydra, while my opponent still had his Chimera vets. Dramatically, I had failed to destroy his Chimera with a railgun slug, rolling a 1, remarkably, his Chimera got stuck trying to drive through the crater left by a destroyed devilfish. Nailbiting! It was Turn 5, a draw thus far, but the roll was made and the game continued! The Hammerhead fired once more, killing many guard, but failing to make them break, they advanced onto the objective. The hammerhead was hit by a battlecannon in the side, failed it's disruption pod save, and was wrecked! With nothing left near enough to contest, it was the end of a game.

Overall - terrific game as you've gathered by now. I thoroughly enjoyed myself. It looked like I had it in hand for a good part of the game (at least from my point of view :D). I made some mistakes in the last few turns that cost me though! I should have recognized the danger of the Chimera sooner and moved units to support it sooner, likewise, I could have used drones and my Devilfish hull in a way to prevent having the objective I held from getting contested. Still, it was anyones game up to the very end, which makes for good Warhammer.

A few pictures!

The Black Legion Swells!

Yes, my chaos army has grown a bit. I finally got around to putting together my land raider and it's looking fairly sharp. I must say I didn't have much of a concept of just how BIG these things are. It makes my old 3rd ed predator look like a baby tank next to it. I've also put together a nice sized Chaos Terminator squad. I picked up a Chaos Terminator Lord box and a box of Chaos Termies. While those boxes give me 6 termies to work with, I was able to put together a solid 8 terminators by using the extra arms, heads and bits in conjunction with some of my loyalist terminators that are collecting dust. Slowly, my loyalist models are turning to the lure of Chaos! I have enough bits still to throw together another 1 or 2 termies yet. I'll post up pictures when I get my camera back.

I played a battle missions game today and tried the terminators out. They worked out well enough, but the mission type forced them to run without the terminator lord and weakened them somewhat. I feel that, overall, they'll perform better when I throw them in a Land Raider in a higher point game to get them into assault a bit more quickly.

In the realm of my main army, the Tau, I've put together my second hammerhead and built up another Crisis suit squad as well as a pair of broadsides. These additions will make their way into my army marching up to 1750 points. In the meantime, I've been busy trying to paint up the extra suits I'll need in the jump to 1250/1500. While I feel confident at getting what I need done for 1250 in time for the next step in our escalation league, I may have to substitute some stealth suits in place of the additional crisis suits I want. I'm still waiting for an order from GW, and it takes a while to paint these big guys. In the meantime, I do have stealth suits painted and ready to go, though I don't think they'll give my army what it needs at that level, I'm canny enough to make things work.

Playing another friendly game with my chaos tomorrow, but on Saturday my Tau are out for their third league matchup. Report with pictures should be up on Sunday or Monday.

Strategies

To keep things easy to check up on, I created another page for any useful tips or strategies that I have to offer. I moved my first post on this (from a few days ago) over there and will add to it as I go on. You can click on the links on the right hand page.

I am also considering moving my battle reports into there, to keep things a bit more organized.

Tourney Round 2!

Exciting match. Here's a battle report written by my worthy opponent. Enjoy:

The Tau deployed almost the entirety of his army in his corner. His Kroot infiltrated.
The Guard deployed a lone Chimera on the battlefield. The HQ inside the Chimera was frantic to relay instructions to the rest of the Guard army, which was outflanking.

Turn 1: The tau reach across the board and unleash upon the lone Chimera. The transport was shaken, unable to move or act. The tau closed, with the kroot circling from one side, and the Piranha coming in towards the Chimera from the other.

Scared witless by the incoming force, the HQ bailed from the Chimera and ran away, into nearby bushes, where they bunkered down.

Turn 2: The empty Chimera was destroyed. The kroot closed in on the cowering HQ. The rest of the tau force drifted towards the middle in preparation for the incoming Guard counter.

That force came. The Lone Commando, one Valk (with melta vets inside), one Chimera (with the Gunnery Sgt and plasma vets), and two autocannon Scout Sentinels appeared on the tau's short edge. Melta-vets deployed from the Valk and crippled a tau transport. A few Crisis-Suits were frazzled by autocannon shots. But the HQ sallied from their hiding spot, and charged the Pirhana that was previously hunting them, and detonated the lone craft. Also, the Lone Commando detonated his explosives pack, destroying the shield drones that accompanied the Crisis-Suits.

Turn 3: The tau addressed the ambushing Guard force. One Scout Sentinel was destroyed, the other badly wounded. The Hammerhead devestated the melta-vet squad. The Lone Commando was obliderated from concentrated fire. The Valk was stunned. The kroot stalking the Guard HQ pounced and slew the humans, taking only minimal losses. They would later consolidate onto the forested objective.

The second Valk appeared, and threw its second melta-vet squad at the tau Hammerhead, destroying it before flying off and doing minimal damage to some tau Fire Warriors. The other Valk (stunned) flew circles around the tau, confusing them with some high-speed passes.

Turn 4: The kroot stayed on the forested objective. The other tau stunned the Valks, and destroyed the second melta-vet squad.

The plasma-vets inside the Chimera ended up clearing the tau transport from the choke point, but taking casualities from the explosion. The Valks continued to do futuristic fly-bys.

Turn 5: The plasma-vets were obliterated. The remaining tau tried bringing down the remaining Sentinel and Valks down, but to no affect.
Currently, the Guard don't have any infantry left. The tau are holding three objectives - one with the kroot in the forest in the Guard's corner; one objective in the centre, held by Fire Warriors in a transport. And another objective held by a damaged, dismounted Fire Warrior unit in the tau's corner.

One Valk attempts to chase the kroot off the forested objective, with minimal result. However, concentrated fire from the remaining Chimera chases the Fire Warriors off the objective in the tau's corner. The second Valk attempts to hurt the tau gathered in the centre, to no effect.

Turn 6: The tau consolidate in the centre, attempting to block Guard forces from contesting the objective with their positioning. They frazzle the Valks, even managed to destroy a weapon's pod, but otherwise leave them unharmed.

One Valk looms over the kroot on the forested objective, contesting it. The second Valk manages to steal between several tau units from an unexpected angle, contesting the centre objective. The tau that held the objective in the tau's corner are wisely retreating.

The game ends in a draw. A pyyric draw.

Weekly games roundup.

Hello there, I've played a few games of late and I figured I'd give a brief update.
My group had our regular monthly meet, and it was a blast!
I had my first match of our 1000 pt level of our escalation tourney against a pretty tough nut to crack in the form of Orion's scout marine army. It was an annihilation mission and he had all of 4 kill points to give up compared to my 15, so I had to basically wipe out his army. He had 2 10 man scout squads and a 10 man terminator squad! That's right, 10 terminators! My army proved up to the task though and was able to clear the table. It was very near to a draw though by the last turn. My new list is running like a well oiled machine and the extra mobility and killing power of the Crisis suits is really working out. We'll see how I do against the guard in my next matchup. Battle report with pictures soon.

Played another game with my Chaos today, this time at the 1250 point level. I basically took the list from my last matchup and tweaked it. Here's how it looked.

Chaos Lord, Wings, Mark of Slaneesh, Daemon Weapon

Troops

10x Chaos Marines, 2x melta gun, Icon of Chaos ...whatever, the cheap one
- Rhino, Twin Linked Bolter

8x Khorne Beserkers /w skull champ and power fist
- Rhino, Extra Armour, twin linked bolter

6x Lesser Demons
6x Lesser Demons

Fast attack
5x Raptors /w champion and power sword. Icon of Slaneesh

Heavy Support
Pred /w lascannon sponsons
1x Obliterator
1x Obliterator

The lord rolled with the raptors.

We played the suprise attack scenario out of space marines section of the battle missions book.

It went well for me. I was the defender and deployed, well, defensively. My raptors and oblits took cover in the middle of the board, while my rhino mounted squads covered each side of the board. The predator deployed in a position with good fire lanes and cover for its rear armour.

Everything went according to my plan, I left the Khorne Rhino in a position to be hit by my opponent's assault marines, it was cracked open leaving the 'zerkers in a position to counter-assault the next turn. The raptors preyed on small combat squads and chopped them up, the Lord's daemon weapon rebelled once, but for the rest of the game it was dealing deadly bliss. I put the squad in there to be some fast moving anti-tank, and to deal with straggler depleted squads and it did just that, it handled small squads handily. Other than that, not much to report. Everything unfolded as I wanted and I manage to wipe out the other army. Though the army has worked well so far, I'm not sure it would fare well against a shooty army or lots of bodies. Hard to say, I think I'd need some flamers or a battle cannon in there to be a bit more threatening in that regard.

My first fight with Chaos

That is, my first fight using Chaos, rather than with Chaos. I hope I've confused you!

It was a 1000 point game, using the
My list looked something like this:

HQ
Chaos Lord, Power Fist, Mark of Khorne, Personal Icon, Combi-melta

Troops

10x Chaos Marines, 2x melta gun, Icon of Khorne, Aspiring Champ /w power sword
- Rhino, Extra Armour

7x Khorne Beserkers
- Rhino, Extra Armour

6x Lesser Demons
6x Lesser Demons

Heavy Support
Pred /w sponsons
1x Obliterator
1x Obliterator


Not too sure what my opponent took.
It was something like this:

10x marines - lascannon/flamer - meltabombs, power sword
10x assault marines - meltabombs
10x scouts - Telion, Heavy Bolter, Sniper rifles, stealth cloaks
Whirlwind
Dreadnought with extra armour and plasma cannon

My HQ stuck with the Khorne Beserkers. The matchup was one of the battle mission games, nothing too special. It was objective based, I ended up getting an advantage where one turn I could give my guys furious charge and rage. It helped and hindered me during this game.

Overall, terrific game. Ended in a bloody draw - my opponent had four models left on the table at the end, but I had few more.

The lesser demons performed better than expected. A lot of people seem to knock them, but I found that their ability to deep strike accurately and pin down enemy units valuable. They solve the problem of getting guys into assault after they disembark from a rhino. the suprise factor is terrific as well. The ability to assault the turn they show up is awesome. Sure, you can get a marine for 3 points more, but the added synergy is worth it. It helps that they can hold objectives too! I'll certainly use them again.

Overall, very different experience than playing Tau. I could play much more aggressively and not be scared about getting close. I find the Tau a lot trickier to play that's for sure.

Looking forward to playing some more, I'll be sure to post a report next time.

A taste of my army.

Took some pictures today of my army. Still some elements that need to be finished up - my HQ, some drones, a little detail work on the hammerhead and some basing, but it's basically done.

Pardon the poor quality of pictures.

Crisis!





The Patherfinders leaping into action.



I'm proud of my Kroot, note my alternate hound models. I had to greenstuff the horn holes on these hounds and model some more fur.