Teun's Death Guard (Photo Dump 10/02)

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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!

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

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.

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.

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.

2000 Points: Word Bearers / KDK vs Tyranids Photo Dump

Swanky and I sat down to another game on the home table this week. Her Tyranid list, slightly revised, against my new concept army. I combined some Crimson Slaughter formations with a KDK CAD. I used the Dark Apostles to great affect, creating both a Zealous Cultist blob and a Feel No Pain CSM horde. They turned out to be pretty "beat-stick"... I pinned large creatures with the cultist blob, which due to the formation bonus, regenerated lost cultists each turn. I'd then charge in with other units (helbrutes or the Khorne-marked CSM) and get the kill. Swanky Tiger was not thrilled when my Heldrake vector-struck her flying Hive Tyrant to the ground in one mighty strike.... killing it outright.

We played Maelstrom objectives for a change... it was Swanky's first time at it. She made a valiant effort at her objectives, but my forces were really savage, viciously repulsing any of her attempts to take objectives or secure maelstrom assignments.

The final score ended up being 19 to 2... I got some very fortunate D3 rolls on some of my better objectives.

Khorne cares not from whence the blood flows, only that it flows :)