Sunday 21 February 2010

Painting and modelling hiatus has lasted longer than I should have let it. Oh well spent today trying to undercoat my warbikes. Their second hand and came with a red spray undercoat that like all good undercoat got everywhere. So been trying to go over it with black without destroying the detail.
Lost my mini rulebook at vapnertak so was going to eBay a copy but there going for more than I want to pay so bundled a new black reach boxset with my advance order of the battle mission book along with new deff dread and killa kans. Threw in gazzy for good measure to lead my mega nobs whihc number 5 now. These will be the first models I have painted before assembly so untreated to see how that goes. Pictures to follow...

Saturday 13 February 2010

Hiltar vs Nids



Nuff Said really... but very funny.

Vapnartak Report

I'm sorry this post is late.

Had a good fun day at Vapnartak's 40K 1000point tournement. I came second to last but to be honest I wish I could say I was surprised. I came to the scene full of shine and spirit to see some of the vicious lists people had crafted and mine was not up to scratch :(

Anyway here are the games as best I can remeber (sorry no pics at the moment, will try and dig come out)

Game 1: Dark Angels
Faced off against a Chaplin lead Terimaintor close combat squad in a Land Raider and a pair of tactical squards. Never could deal with those terminators and never damaged the Land Raider beyond destroying a Lascannon, wiped out all the tactical marines with one unit of Orcs, the squads were all split into combat squads, with 3 combat squads sat on one objective? Game ended in a draw as my boys couldnt take the charge from the Teriminators when it finally came but I kept the Dark Angels in their deployment zone the whole time.

Game 2: Tyranids
To be honest if I had to pick a moment of the day I didnt like it was this game. I was informed that the new Nid codex was not being used as it had been out less than a month and to be fair most people hadnt had chance to even see it let alone play against it. So basically I felt cheated, round after round of New rules and units I have heard about but never seen. Guns without line of sight, Trygons deep strike without scatter, spores without issues hitting terrain and the bloody Doom of Malantai which stripped a good 10-15 boys of the table by itself. 90 points of broken shit if you ask me. I lost the game as I was at a lost as what to do and to really kick my teeth in about a 1/3 of the army was unpainted, I felt really bad about marking down someone for not having painting models as alot where ether undercoated or two colours, which really annoyed me as I had sweated over a paint brush for 2 weeks to get ready for the tournement. The biggest issue I had was the number of models that were unclear as their purpose, The Doom of Malantai was a un-converted Zoanthrope so impossible to tell aside from the other two on the board. The new gaunt breeder thing was just a carnifex so imagine my suprise when I killed it. Overall the only downside of the day and I suspect a bit of that is losers blues but I think it was it wasnt something I knew how to deal with at all.

Game 3: Dark Eldar
I was very surprised to get to play a Dark Eldar player since I assume the army given its old out of date codex was uncompetative, how wrong I was. They bloody vechiles wouldnt hold still and I lost most of my vechiles about half way across the board. Still managed to claw a draw due the lack that Witches dont get saves agasint deff-rollas so to stop me wiping out the bulk of the army they got onboard a tranpsort and flew to a uncontested objective.

Game 4: Space Wolves
This was one of the armies I really wanted to get to grips with, an all terimnator force with a LandRaider, since only SW and DA can pull this off only two such armies were their (there was a third but it was all plague terimantor judging by the paint scheme and converting but this chaos player had clearly just picked up the SW codex and decided that 'Counts As' extended to a whole army)
I pinchers around the Landraider to take out the unit on foot, after loosing about 6 boys I wiped out the first of two units (40 boyz plus two HQ will do that to a unit) and then I seperated my army for the counter charge. Out of the LandRaider came Logan Grimmnar who along with his squad proceeded to wipe out a Mob (bear in mind these are 20 strong mobs) a turn until there was nothing left. I had managed to immoblize the LandRaider and its short range weapons in the middle of the table before the Shoota boys and their trusty rokkit where assualt cannoned to death.
The game ended with 3 turns of Benny Hill style Chasing of my one surviving battlewagon Running over Grimmar and his Terminators (now down to 2) over and over again. Again a draw but a fun and quick game.

Conclusion
Overall I realise now where I went wrong with my List, two HQ meant that I was giving away points every game as they were not designed to survive a beating, just to go down swinging. The Battlewagon Deff Rolla Charge was a very one trick pony and very easy for skilled players to work around, I surprised a few with the complete disregard I had for terrain when tank shocking, never got stuck once.
I feel a little down about my place, there were 4 Ork players in total and I never got to play them, thanks to the swiss system the moment I stopped winning games (not that I started) was never gonna meet them as they all finished in the top 3 (except me, second to last).
Maybe the cheese needs to come out next time. While mech seems to be the standard I think I may have the wrong end of the stick, those Battlewagons struggled to make up their points and giving their high front armour, my oppoents guns just spend the first few turns firing at my Koptaz or Trukk which were much easier to kill.
Seems alot of armys centred around one kill sqaud or combo and I didnt.

Saturday 6 February 2010

Close Up Photos

Clearly the lighting in my dining room is terrible so here are some up close pictures took in the kitchen.


Trukk with Red Paint Job

Deff Kopta

The yet unnamed Big Mek

Warboss Heed himself.



One of the battle wagons, notice the blue armour plates donated by some friendly ultramarines, going to have to paint on some ultramarine symbols.

The three Nobs with Power Klaws in the army.

One of the shoota boyz with the Rokkit Launcha

Finally Done

After a frantic fortnight of painting I am done with my 1000pt army, why I picked a Horde army for my first real army (ie one I have fully painted) is beyond me and something I should look into if I can open my brain pan and get a mirror.

Anyway the colour scheme I'm using is a hybrid of a scheme that is easy to apply to models that are already assembled and a homage to the paint scheme of one squad in the second high army I bought.



The orignal is on the left my take on the paint scheme is on the right.

Hope this pictures come out well, took them on my digital video camera which may well come to the tournement (tomorrow) with me.




The thinking on the 1000pt army

Been very busy painting my army for the Vaperntak tournement tomorrow and I just have a few more pieces to do. So pictures will follow shortly, just wanted to go though some of the thinking in creating my army.

Firstly both the HQ are lacking Power Klaws, this is as much a point saving exercise and a response to issues I've been having with my Warboss of Late, given the lack of Initiative when using a Power Klaw he was getting singled out in Melee and killed before he could swing and this was getting a little annoying so I've given him a Big Choppa so he hits pretty fast on the charge with a high strenght attack, only issue is it doesnt ignore armour, well it working so far, will have to re-consider his gear at a later date.

The Kustom Force Field on the Big Mek has saved my vechile and infantries bacon a fair few times now, although I do tend to sarcfice him when the mob he leads gets into the thick of thinks.

The Battlewagons lack any guns also as a cost saving and as I dont ever want them to slow down, I imagine after dropping off their cargo they will fly around the battlefield ramming or tank shocking everything within 13 inchs. I have however encounter faster armies and in these cased the battlewagon will most likly stay put on once the boys are done killing let them back in. The lack of guns means they are more vulernable to being immoblised so in the future I'm going to drill some holes in the cab at the back and add some removedable gunners. Will show you that later when I get to work on it.

The trukk boys are armed with longer range weapons so that they can grab and hold objectives for me, I am learning not to throw them head long into fights like I do with the rest of my armoy and given enough terrain to hide in they are almost as hard to kill as Space Marines.

Finally the DeffKoptas are in my eyes over priced but I do like them more than the
Buggies on sale which I would have profered. I guess I could convert them later with Buzz Klaws and Big Bomms to see if that makes them any better.

More pics to follow shortly once the army is finished.