Sunday, September 25, 2016

Abaddon Kitbash Redux - Sword Envy


Abaddon has been sitting on my shelf for quite some time, collecting a good measure of dust. That was a shame, considering I thought I did a pretty banging job on a kitbash to represent him! Lately though, I was looking at the sword I gave him with a fair amount of disdain. Looked more like a butter knife than a fearsome Daemon weapon...


So I gave him an upgrade to appease his sword-envy. Using a left over Hellblade from the Bloodletters kit, I pulled out all the stops on my hot-glowy-flamey-sword effects. See for yourself... I think the result is pretty satisfactory!


Now that Traitor's Hate is out, I already have a few lists I wouldn't mind giving Abby another shot in. Ectomancy sorcerers and a unit of killy-termies sounds like a fun combo! Teleporting shenanigans... here I come!



Wednesday, September 14, 2016

First Crack at Traitor's Hate: Black Crusade Warband



So Swanky Tiger and I broke out the power armor so I could give some of the formations from Traitor's Hate a play through.

I played a Black Crusade detachment with a Chaos Warband, a Veterans of the Legion (Khorne Beserkers), and a Lord of the Black Crusade (a Sorceror). All-in-all, it included Kharn as my warlord (who rolled the ability to re-roll boons), 20 CSM with Mark of Khorne, 10 Bezerkers, 8 Chosen, 2 Helbrutes, 5 Raptors with a mark of khorne, and 2 Sorcerers.

Swanky played a bog-standard Dark Angels CAD, with 20 Tactical Marines, 15 Terminators, 2 flyers, a company commander, and a chaplain.


Chaos reigned supreme. The new Black Crusade detachment actually wasn't too shabby... the extra Boon rolls turned my champions into close-combat beasts, which in turn made them succeed in their challenges much more.


By far though, the most useful new tidbit out of Traitor's Hate is the Ectomancy discipline. It is a carbon-copy of the Fulmination discipline, just with spikey power names and descriptions. The powers are pretty useful, and in my opinion, the most useful of them is Soul Swap. With that power and some highly mobile units, you can teleport some of your slower footsloggers into combat range. It's surprisingly easy to manifest too, with the higher ML of Chaos Sorcerers and psychic familiars.


In the future, I'd probably use a Daemon prince with wings to catapult units into combat range, or take a unit of bikes to use as a leapfrog unit. The Raptors do in a pinch though.


Bezerkers are still pretty awesome in combat. I haven't had a chance to try a Maelstrom of Gore, but I imagine it is pretty potent with the extra running distance and the Red Rain rules. If only we had an equivalent of a Sanguinary Priest to drop in for some Feel No Pain shenanigans...



Another tactic being thrown around the net is using a unit of terminators and Abbadon, coupled with a couple sorcerers with Ectomancy (for soul swap), zipping around and causing a ruckus. I may look into that as well.

Well until next time,
Teun

Tuesday, September 13, 2016

The Best of Teun's Miniature Wargaming (Updated)

To remember the good times (and maybe even inspire a little motivation to paint up something?) I am putting together a short list of some of the biggest attractions on this blog that continue to generate hits, even to this day. These are in no particular order.



Scratch-built Tyranid Hive Ship-
Built from spare parts from Warhammer 40k Tyranid kits and some household items, this scratch-built Battlefleet Gothic model generated a lot of buzz. This was originally hosted on a BFG site that went down, whose name escapes me, but I believe the name was Port Maw.



The Flames of War New Player's Primer-
Although this post was written during the previous edition of the game, it still gets a lot of hits from people who want to learn the basics of this great WWII game.



Painting German WWII Armor Without an Airbrush-
Continuing from the Flames of War theme, this is another article that got a fair amount of attention. Airbrushes are expensive, but it seems like most of the guides around the internet for painting German armor required one. I tried to replicate the method without the expensive airbrush, and posted my results so that others might benefit!


My Imperial Guard rendition-
Before I auctioned them off on Ebay, my Imperial Guard army was lauded as one of my more complete and well-painted armies. Even though my technique was sloppy, and the paint scheme was simple, this was one of my favorite armies thematically.



My Blood Angels-
I first started with Blood Angels when I learned their codex was available as a free PDF download from Games Workshop. Back then, it was conceivable to get a PDF supplement for the game from their website without having to pay 30 dollars for it. Some of my best work was done on BA special characters, and I learned a lot from them. They will always hold a special place in my nostalgia. This army too fell victim to Ebay.


My Tyranids-
I had a particularly macabre method of painting 'nids using the old Bleached Bone as a base and shading it with copious amounts of Flesh Wash. I also had an interesting method of making Spore Pod transports out of a old nerf football, paper clips, and large quantities of hot glue! Mycenetic Spore Tutorial
When I found them not to my flavor, this army was yet another casualty of Ebay.



Falling into Chaos-
Armed with the knowledge and techniques I had acquired over the years, my most recent undertaking (before my recent disappearance) was whipping up some Chaos paint schemes. I experimented with OSL (one-source-lighting, pictured), Nurgle, and Black Legion themes. I also kit-bashed a rendition of Abaddon since I didn't care for the official model. More recently, however, I have become hell-bent on repainting my Chaos into Word Bearer colors, with many Khornate additions.


Swanky Tiger's Hive Fleet Leviathan Showcase
Swanky is a talented painter. Her rendition of Hive Fleet Leviathan is definitely worth looking into. This was her first army, and put many of my models to shame. She successfully has painted approximately 2000 points of Tyranids so far, and plans on getting into Daemons next.







Teun's Iron Hands
With the 7th Edition Space Marine codex, I really found myself liking the Iron Hands. Feel No Pain on everything sounded amazing, and I also liked the fact that they were heavily mechanized. It was a force that I found matched my playstyle. As I dove more into the fluff, I discovered that I found them to also match some of my ideals... the appreciation of bionics and close relationship to the Mechanicum for example. I really kicked this force off when I purchased a Betrayal at Calth boxed set, and started getting into Horus Heresy gaming as well.


And that about wraps it up. I have a whole lot of little nuggets and gems hidden around the blog or buried, but a lot of links and pictures remain broken. Someday, when I have the time and the motivation, I hope to get around to fixing all these incongruities.

I also eventually plan to finish some of the incomplete projects I left lying around. Even if I only complete them with the goal of auctioning them off, it would be a shame to leave things in the state they currently are in. Here's to the hope that I finally finish what I began!

--Teun

EDIT:
So it's been a full year since I posted this (a few days after, actually) so I wanted to update it with some of the major projects that have been featured on this blog over the past year. I went heavy into Iron Hands, and Swanky Tiger began her own Tyranid force. Soon my son, the Lil'General, will be adding his own Tau force to the blog as his own painted force. Lately, I have been working on Word Bearers, as 2017 is rumored to be the Year of Chaos. I, for one, am delighted by that. I have long loved Chaos.

Here's to another year of great hobbying...
--Teun

Kharne Kitbash


There has been a lot of debate about Kharn's new model. Some love it, some hate it. I decided to go a different route and kitbash my own using a Beserker box and a spare barbarian arm I had, coupled with some chain. So far, so good!

Looking forward to using him in upcoming games.


Wednesday, September 7, 2016

On My Table: 09/07/2016



Made a proxy for a Warpsmith, since apparently a lot of the new Traitor's Hate formations use them. Good marketing by GW to get rid of overstocked models, probably.

Sunday, September 4, 2016

Pyromancy is Underrated


Teun here. Just played a game of 40k today against the lovely Swanky Tiger, but in a departure from the normal, she played a force of Dark Angels today. 1500 points, Dark Angels CAD vs Black Legion Warband.

In this warband, I took a sorcerer with 2 extra mastery levels, a spell familiar, and the Last Memory relic, giving him an effective mastery level of 4. I said "why the hell not" and rolled all my powers on Pyromancy, which although not the most powerful of the psychic discliplines, they are a hell of a lot of fun!

Due to the relic, he already had Sunburst. Rolling for 3 more powers, I generated Spontaneous Combustion, Inferno, and Fire Shield, in addition to having the Fire Breath Primaris power.

Using Fire Shield was interesting. On the side of the board my psyker was on, a unit of Ravenwing Bikers was attempting to shoot up the board edge. Being able to shut down that avenue of approach by making the terrain both difficult and dangerous was pretty awesome, as was blasting them with a multitude of cover-ignoring powers.

The finishing coup d'etat to the game was a timely double-tap of the enemy Interrogator Chaplain, wounding him first with Inferno and finishing him off with a Spontaneous Combustion focused witchfire.



 As usual, my helbrute (I have nicknamed "Punchy the Robot") made an impressive showing. Racking up multiple Terminator kills, Punchy single-handedly (ok, it was two hands) managed to crush a unit of terminators, a tactical squad, and the Company Master. He only sustained a minimal amount of damage thanks to Swanky whiffing her Powerfist rolls! The new errata increasing their attacks has made these units much more worth the points! I am tempted to start running the Helfist Murderpack... can you imagine 3 formations of those and nothing else? In a 1500 point force, that is a lot of Helbrute murdering. Though the forced-squadrons would be somewhat of a burden.


My Chosen were not quite as effective. Without any sort of wound-mitigation, these 300 point squads were definitely over-costed. The mish-mash of special weapons was not very effective in combat, either. I would have been better served with standard CSM squads, utilizing bolt pistols and CCWs. Many CSM veterans probably already knew that, however. 


My other helbrute babysat objectives most of the game. His Multi-melta shots were wildly ineffective, typically whiffing the wound roll. The one time he succeeded in hitting and wounding what he was shooting at (the chaplain in this case) the victim managed to pass his Invulnerable save. 


I took a CSM lord in Terminator armor, usually the model I use for Abbadon. In this case, however, I used him simply as a Lord with a Hand of Darkness and a combi-bolter. He didn't do much but objective baby-sit.


I won the game eventually. It was a simple Scouring mission, and I held 4 out of the 6 objectives, as well as secured Linebreaker, First Blood, and Slay the Warlord for a combined total of 15 VP. Swanky held 1 objective, worth 3 VP.

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