Blood is Decorative

I am trying out a new basing technique for my Bloodletters. The first one to receive the treatment is the Herald, when I created with extra pieces left from the Skull Cannon. Agrellan Earth with some grass tufts, and a colorful scenic item.

Can you tell I don't care much for Ultrasmurfs?

Blood for the blood god! Skulls for the skull throne!

On My Table: 5/6/2016

On my table this week is a whole mess of black power armor... which takes horrendously long to line highlight! I spent a solid 8 hours on this combat squad, fixing up all the highlights and washing them back down to take the edge off them a little bit. My Deathwatch/Iron Hands mixup is going pretty well though, and I am pleased with the results. The helmet-less guys came out especially well. If anybody is wondering how I achieved the shaved-head look:

1. Regular flesh (flesh color, flesh shade wash, base color highlight or drybrush)
2. Grey paint (dealers choice) about 50% mixed with medium
3. Nuln Oil wash
4. Profit!!!

As you can see, basing them helps contrast the armor pretty nicely. Although you would think black power armor would be easy to paint, I counted the individual colors I used to paint the squad... I wound up with quite a few.

1. Primer
2. Black Base Coat (for consistency)
3. Leadbelcher (arm and weapon)
4. Dark Grey (craft paint, used for highlights)
5. Bright White (craft paint, used for hard edge highlights)
6. Cadian Fleshtone
7. Reikland Fleshshade
8. Ghenna's Gold (Or Shining Gold, dealers choice)
9. Khorne Red (Or old Mechrite Red, for purity seals)
10. Stirland Mud Texture Paint (for bases)
11. Mournfang Brown (for bases and undercoating purity seals/tabards)
12. Ushabti Bone (for bases and purity seals/tabards)
13. Nuln Oil (wash for entire model, except flesh)
14. Argax Earthshade (For bases, and over gold bits)

Above the 3-color minimum? I'd say so.

At my local gaming store, they are restarting the "Tuesday Night Fights League" in which you gain points for showing up and playing, but also for painting progress. It's to encourage new players to get down to the store and actually start playing, and it's a great venue. The last couple weeks have been fairly packed, with at least 10 players a night. A few weeks ago there was closer to 20. The format is that you bring a single detachment, 600 points, and just play! It's really fun, and I am looking forward to it.

The painting progress is going to be scored in a new fashion. The standard 3-color minimum will net you 1 point per Character or Unit, but going "above and beyond the 3 color minimum" will net you 2 points. I am hoping to show up with 2-3 newly painted units by Tuesday, and secure a decent number of points. Anybody who knows me, also knows that I don't typically win my games! This may be the only chance I have to secure a decent lead in points!

I have one more Tactical combat squad to paint, as well as a Command squad, which I might be able to finish over the weekend. Today, however, is my weekly 1850 point game with my long-time friend. So I'm off to stomp whatever he is deciding to throw at me today, be it Wulfen or Meganobz!

Iron Hands Superfriends - Angels of Death

Iron Hands Captain

So the Angels of Death supplement has been out a while, and my friends and I have been having fun testing out some different lists here and there with the new Nested Detachment formations (aka Decurions).

I've always liked Iron Hands, though before their FNP was somewhat ineffectual when compared to some of the tastier Chapter Tactics on the market. With the new Fist of Gorgon detachment, however, their Chapter Tactic suddenly became more viable. The new Iron Hands Reliquary also added a whole new reason to take that chapter as well.

In my latest game, the MVP definitely ended up being a Captain with a Relic Blade and Gorgon's Chain, attached to a command squad, with a ML 2 Librarian attached. In the formation and with the Chain, I was able to easily maintain a +2 FNP result for the entirety of the game. Highlights include going toe-to-toe with an entire unit of Meganobs with PKs and a Painboy, as well as an entire unit of Bikes with a warboss and a painboy.

For 4 turns this unit withstood ridiculous amounts of krumpin' (thanks to the Librarian casting the Might of Heroes power from the Librarius discipline) and was able to take out the Meganob squad and also put a few wounds on the Warboss. My Captain, with his 3+ invulnerable save and 2+ FNP, was able to tank every wound thrown his way. He didn't suffer a single wound the entire battle, despite the opposing Warboss's best efforts.

Other fun tricks was giving my Centurion Devestator squad 5+ FNP with an attached Librarian in Terminator armor (also able to tank invul wounds, and give the squad +2 Toughness from Might of Heroes), and I greatly enjoyed the FNP benefits my tactical squads were able to reap. My opponent was running mostly Meganobs, however, so the Powerklaws may not have been the best example of my list's newfound resilience.

All in all, however, I believe that with the new formation, this is a fun list to play. I like to run:

• Librarius Conclave (1 power armor ML 2, 1 bike ML 1, 1 terminator ML 1)
• Demi Company (Bikes with meltas, Gravcents, 3 basic squads, command squad with 2 melta/2 grav/ apothacary, and the Captain with a Relic's Blade and a Gorgon's Chain, mostly in drop pods where able. Command squad took a rhino.
• Skyhammer Annihilation Force (1 Dev squad with Grav, 1 Dev squad with LCs, Assault squads with flamers)

The Librarius Conclave let me sprinkle my little force multipliers around, spreading out the FNP bonuses of the detachment. The Skyhammer gives me some decent mobility, allowing a 1st turn drop that gets lots of models on the board quickly and where I want them to go. The command squad hauled ass on turn one, getting them where I needed them to go and camping midfield objectives, and proving to be a very difficult unit to move. Bikes zipped around as needed, grabbing objectives (thanks obsec) and popping juicy targets with their meltas. The gravcents got deployed in the middle of the board, on elevated terrain, providing a deadly obstacle to enemy movement. (Definitely made their points back).

This is probably one of the better ways to run this detachment. With lots of infantry, you get lots of benefit from the FNP bonuses. If I were to change something from my list, it would be to provide more rhinos to the Demi company instead of drop-pods, to give more first-turn presence. The mobile strike force of the Skyhammer helps grab those deep field objectives well enough where the pods in the Demi company aren't as needed.

I'll be playing this type of list more in the future, and I would love to see if I can add to the Superfriends command squad to make a decent deathstar.

Ideas so far include:

1. Adding a Company Champion for more CC capability
2. Adding a Chaplain for another invulnerable wound-tank, and increasing CC capability
3. Adding one more librarian for redundancy to keep those buffs going.

That's it for now, I'll report from the field as I test them out further.

What's On My Table: 4/16/2016

So I haven't been getting as much done as I would have liked lately. Such is life. But for what I have been getting done, it's coming out pretty well! The devastators above are coming along nicely. I tried to replicate the glowing effect in the grav amps, it's a bit hard to see at a distance but up close it looks pretty nice!

I also kit-bashed a tech marine using mostly parts from the devastator box. It came out fairly well. I also have an apothecary on the way, as well as the rest of a command squad I plan to fill up with grav weapons...

I don't have a picture, as I am still going through it all and cleaning/stripping/organizing, but I got a good deal of Dark Angel bits and ends from a local player that wasn't using them anymore. Included was 2 finecast Belials. One was magnetized, but it looks like only the Lightning claw pair go with it. The other is the sculpt with the sword, but the finecast sword looks like total gak so I will have to find a way to replace it. Probably will pin a plastic powersword blade in it's place. I'd like to make a TH/SS combo variant of Belial, but I don't have any Storm Shields lying around. Also included were a couple snap fit marines missing their bolters (fine by me, I needed some guys to hold grav guns) and a single bike model with a plasmagun. I'll be chopping him up and making a Libarian out of him, most likely.

All in all, I have a good deal of work to do left on my table. I should probably get to it!

What's On My Table: 4/3/2016

Members of my Angelus Obscurum (AKA Dark Angels) hold a ruin as Grey Hunters from the Space Wolves 13th Company arrive via drop pod and rush the building.

I've been continuing the grudge matches against my friend and favored opponent, who always rolls a great game and keeps the game interesting. I usually lose, though most times by a small margin, but the games are always full of narrative and full of good laughs.

During this game, I was proxying all "Plas as Grav" to keep it simple. Best moment of the game was when his flyer (the Storm Wolf?) went into hover mode directly in front of my grav gunner and suffered the consequences as I rolled many sixes and immobilized it... sending it crashing into his own squad covering an objective.

My girlfriend, being the avid crafter that she is, helped out my fledgling Dark Angels army by putting together several paper templates of Nephilim fighter craft. As you can see here, the detail on the papercraft models are pretty darn good. In this game, I was using it as a Dark Talon. Pictured above is the craft lining up for a strafing run. It did marginally alright... I think a Nephilim would have served me better for the points.

Finally, some Magic cards I had been sitting on for years finally pulled their weight. I traded them in to my local card shop for some credit, and I found out I had been sitting on quite a bit more than I had realized.

So last night I stayed up until 3AM putting together these two squads. The kits are way more detailed than they used to be, so it took me a lot longer as I was paying attention to detail and ensuring that I could magnetize the special weapons. It should come out great, I am looking forward to getting some new models to paint, as I was approaching completion with my DA models.