On My Table: 2/17/2016 - Post V-Day

I hope all your Valentines were happy with your attention on the big day! As for me, mine went well. I managed a small surprise for my dear one that got me some brownie points. With my birthday being next week, I was bad and bought myself an early present:

Now I can cut out some of the proxies I was using for my Daemonkin! Unfortunately, this adds a lot to my work load, painting wise... :P

On My Table: 02/11/2016-

Finished! 1 Squad of Khornate CSM

Now working on my next project, a conversion of the FFG model from the DooM board game!

Khorne Daemonkin: How To Paint Red (In Batches)

So you want to paint some Daemonkin (or otherwise Khorney) CSM? The biggest problem is getting the reds to pop. You want something that stands out on the battlefield, but you don't want to have to paint all those CSM individually with highlights? I have got the solution for you.

1) Black Primer
2) Khorne Red base coat
3) Agrax Earthshade wash
4) Wazdaka Red drybrush
5) Squig Orange zenith drybrush (top down)
6) Baal Red (or whatever the new equivalent is) wash to finish it up

Bam! Now you can put your brass on, pick out some black details, metal up the guns... give those bits a wash and call your CSM finished. And they really pop with that red color too! This method allows for batches, without spending all that time highlighting and blending each model. The 4 CSM above were completed in 2 sessions, approximately 4 hours of work. An hour a model ain't too bad, huh?

It's actually probably less than that... I have already applied base coats and the first wash to the remainder of two whole squads (16 models). So I am on course to having these two squads done by Friday, when I have a game with them.

Crunch time!
--Teun135

On MyTable: 2/8/2016 - Daemonkin and Nids Showdown!

So after looking at the Khorne Daemonkin rules for CSM and Daemons, I decided that I wanted to give them a go. I've always liked painting red anyway. So I found some proxies for the daemons and enlisted my fiance in a 2000 point game.

Someday I'll have enough space for a full-size game table. But for now, this one had to do. It's a 4'x4' table, primarily set up for Cities of Death battles.

My fiance had picked up a roughly 2000 point army of tyranids from a local guy for about 200 bucks. Quite a steal. So since she has had them for several months, it was time to test them out in battle. So we blocked off a time slot in the weekend and had a several-hour long battle to test out our new armies.

I trounced the poor girl pretty well. I robbed her of charges, and did not give her very good targets for her mid-range shooting models. Highlights of the game included:

• A 5-model Bloodcrushers squad chewing through 22 termagaunts over the course of 2 turns
• My Bloodthirster of Insensate Rage going toe-to-toe with not only her Flyrant, but also 3 carnifex and a unit of hormagaunts (killing the tyrant, along with 1 carnifex and 8 of the hormaguants)
• A squad of Gargoyles swooping in to assault my Possessed, but then receiving a charge from a 20 man cultist squad and drowning in a wave of angry minion attacks.

She played her Nids very passively, which is a generalship thing that she will have to improve upon. Both these armies are clearly designed for high-aggression (especially Daemonkin with their Blood Tithe rules).

I never got to use my Blood Tithe rules. We both ran standard CAD lists, to make it easy, and so I didn't run the Daemonkin Blood Host formation which adds a Tithe point every turn. Since I had pretty much tabled her at the bottom of turn 3, we called it at that point.

Next weekend, she wants to play again, enlisting the aid of the Little General to help her play. Before that, I will further test the Daemonkin in battle against a local player's Ork army.

Until that game, I am working on painting a lot more red.

So until next time,

Teun135

Campaigns in 40k 7th Edition?

I've played a few games in 7th now, and am starting to get back into the local scene with a few friends. Friendly games are fun, but after a while the missions get pretty repetitive, and simply do not provide the narrative that makes the game so entertaining for my friends and I. So we discussed creating a game league, or doing a narrative campaign. Both ideas would reinvest interest in the game, but which one to pick?

Being a small area with a couple dozen players total, fewer of which would even participate in weekly matches, it seemed best to go with a narrative campaign. The Planetary Empires rules where a bit out of date though...

Then my friend suggested I read through Crusade of Fire. So I did. And I loved it.

Planetary empires... but new! With maps for different planets! And special scenarios for gaining ground on a new planet (like Planetstrike) or attacking a Hive city (Cities of Death). Better yet, it arranges its players into 3 factions. This sounds like pure gold... rather than have two sides gunning for each other all the time (or worse, every player for him/herself), you have 3 faction politics and all the hijinks that goes with it (If you have ever played Planetside on PC, you know what I mean!).

With 7th edition, however, and the prevalent use of Formations and Superheavies, the campaign system is going to need a glance over. I'll be brainstorming with the other campaign GM (seems like we are heading towards splitting duties) and I will keep you updated with what we come up with.