New Codex Techmarine

With the new codex, my techmarine mini was no longer a good combination so he needed an update. It also did not hurt that he was damaged in transport. He has a metal bolter so his power weapon needed to go since he could never get the +1 attack from the bolt pistol. Replaced the arm with a pointer from the command squad box. He can now direct the fire of his servitors if I only had more than 2. He is unlikely to see the table anytime soon since I never use techmarines but maybe someday for an Apoc game he can hang out with some vehicles as a repairman.

Chapter Banner Man

Here is the first member of my new Honor Guard Unit. The Chapter Bannerman. He started life as the dual lightening claw vet in the previous set of veterans. Those claws are off to my Shrike model so I decided to use him for this. He has a great pose and nice details. I added the command squad banner pole, commander powersword, pistol, and attack bike holstered bolter. Even drilled out the holstered bolter on the back.


Also made a custom armor pad by cutting of the Ultramarines U from a commander one. This leaves a small skull which matches nicely all the other small skulls including the one on his knee.



I am thinking I might also elevate the vet with power axe from the same vet squad to the honorguard. Much smaller change of removing pistol for bolter and adding holstered pistol.

New Year Conversion Plans

Here are the models I am planning on building in the next couple of weeks.

Special Characters:

Shrike: I am going to use mainly a basic beaky assault marine with the 2 lightening claws off the metal veteran with an iron halo probably from commander box.. I really do not see the use of a single vanguard having 2 lightening claws when the same points gets me 1 lc of one guy and 1 power weapon for another.

Telion: I am going to use slightly modified bald head from the space marine commander box coupled to a standard bolter scout with a scope and silencer(from spare sniper) add to the mini.

Honor Guards:

Chapter Champion: Space Marine commander back, company champion front, helmet shoulder pads. Power weapon, bolter, and holster pistol.

Chapter Banner: The rest of the 2 lightening claw veteran with a company banner and power axe, Holstered bolter from attack bike, and holstered pistol.

3 Honor guards with bolters and power swords.

Others:
Terminator Apocathary: Switching a white dwarf termi to a thunderhammer yields a spare termi to build an Deathwing Apocathary using the normal Apo front plate and a custom build reductor based on a chainfist. That way I can build the ravenwing/bike command squad apocathary still with the backpack and normal reductor if I want to in the future.

Scout Sergeant with shotgun for scout bike and powerfist.

Sternguard and Vanguard Marines.

Toys

So while my daughter was helping me open my Christmas presents, my wife asked her what daddy got for christmas and she said "Toys" in a very happy and excited way. As you can see I did pretty well and will pick up a few more things this next week to get myself set until my birthday in summer or maybe the space marine second wave. Everything pretty much has a list driven purpose except the Assault Terminators who are just so awesome with TH and Stormshields now not to have a least 1 squad available. Maybe I will have to write up a Shrikeforce list with them.

Merry Christmas to All

May everyone's stockings be full of blisters (and not the swollen kind unless you follow the lord of decay) and their trees surrounded by Forge World kits. I have a feeling I am getting socks but I think there might be some things to help me out with my Mech Marine army and I got some spending money which is promised to a FLGS for a SM Battleforce with plans for my own Shrike and Telion along with more plastic Sternguards. I already got a space marine commander box from the in-laws as a stocking stuffer. It was on my list for bits purposes with most of the components already planned for use with Sternguard or Honor Guard marines.

The Rhino's Red Headed Step Son

So I have a razorback on my christmas list this year. I figure it is only 5 dollars for the turret spure more than a rhino and can serve double duty with a top change. I do need more rhinos. My current razorback runs TL HB so I was planning on doing something different. I was either going to go TL assault cannons or LC+ TL Plasma. I have the ravenwing spure to get the assault cannons from and looked like a pretty easy swap. Now if I am going to take the time to make up a custom turret I need to have a tactical use in mind.

Razorbacks suffer from their 6 man capacity. You can go combat squad on a tac squad plus a character. A good character for this might be a lib with shooty powers along with a plasma pistol sergeant and a plasma rifle for anti MEQ work or a powerfist sergeant and meltagun for anti vehicle. Probably the plasma road is best since the libs anti vehicle powers are poor.

Other squads also come to mind as good candidates for razorbacks. Sternguard since you can have 6 members and still pack a good punch and have 2 special weapons. Command squads can run around with 4 special weapons and feel no pain but only 5 people so you have an empty spot for the required Captain. Honor Guard also are an option. They can be 6 marines, all have bolters so can either due the 12 inch bolter hop or stay inside for the all power weapon assault next turn. I have a Pedro list at 1750 the next 250 could be used for a honor guard unit in a razorback. That list would probably want the Assault cannons since I plan to run 2 vindi's and a predator annihilator.

Maybe I will have to order one of those Landraider terminus upgrade backs to get another turret since the bits dealers run the turrets at about the same price.

News Flash

This just in. Christmas is a lot of work when you are an adult and have a kid. Remember that all you, youngins. Your parents and grandparents have put a lot of effort into making you happy. Be kind. I was hoping to get more painting done put I have just spent the last few hours learning how to make candies.

Trying new layout

I am currently working on a new blog layout with my poor skills. Ok, Basics set now I just have to get the colors to my liking.

Epic Space Marine

The recent posts over at the Bell of Lost Souls had gotten be thinking about my old Epic Space Marine game. This was my first 40K Era game and was not played anywhere near as much as my second edition Blood Bowl or Dark Future games. My mother, who still lives in the home I grew up in, stored it for me for the eight years I lived around the country until I moved into a house near by(about 1 hour away). I decided just to grab a couple of quick pics of some still pretty pristine almost 20 year old pieces.

Here are a small sampling of the vehicle type objects.

Boxes which make up my collection. The Eldar are pretty lame just a ton of grav tanks and the same 6 mm model with different colored bases to represent different types of units. Notice the Epic Squats. I wonder if Squats still have a army list in Epic.

Heresy Era Landspeeder.

Heresy Era Imperial Robot

Landraider

Rhino

Original Death Guard Color Scheme

I was looking at my epic space marine box for another post and decided to grab a pic of the Dusk Raiders/Death Guard Original Color Scheme. You can also see the Red Thousand Sons. The deathguard do not look bad and plan to use this color scheme for my Heresy era epic space marine force which will be countered by a modern model Ultramarine force.

Chicken or the Egg

My space marines are completely an army first project. I am currently trying to paint up a single 2000 point list with some options out of my 7K of unpainted marines. My Tyranids, I am trying to make a list first which is probably why that assault brood has not even be clipped off the spures.

Mech Pedro List Mk I

My Mech Pedro List at 1750 points using the 5th edition codex.

Pedro Cantor
Tac Squad: 10 Marines, Powerfist, Flamer, Missile Launcher, Rhino
Tac Squad: 10 Marines, Lascannon, Plasmagun
Sternguard Sqad: 10 Marines, Lightening Claw, Combiplasma, Combimelta, Meltagun, Rhino
Dreadnought: Assault Cannon,Heavy Flamer
Landspeeder: Heavy Bolter, Assault Cannon
Landspeeder: Multimelta, Heavy Flamer
Vanguard Squad: 9 Marines, Relic Blade, Powerfist, Powerweapon, Meltabomb, Rhino
Vindicator: Dozerblade
Predator: TL Lascannon, Heavy Bolters, Dozerblade

Scoring 3
Killpoints: 13 (Too many)

My general plan is to use the unmounted tac squad to camp deployment zone objectives, deepstrike the landspeeders to attack armor and infantry units, and push forward with the mech units full bore. Pedro rides with the vanguard making them a nasty unit if they can get the rhino in range and survive the response fire to the rhino.

After a couple of games at the Fight for Food Event I decided a few changes. The tac squad campers were not very good so I was going to go sniper scouts with cloaks. I also wanted to get another vindi so I will probably upgrade either one of the speeders or the dread to the second vindi.  Most likely the Dreadnought would be replaced.

Power Weapon or Lightening Claw

With the 5th edition codex, power weapons and single claws have the same cost. Simple analysis suggests that the more base attacks you have the better the lightening claw will be since the lost attack for not having 2 weapons is a small portion of the overall number of attacks. The claw will also work better with higher Toughness targets.


The following numbers are from simple mathhammer of averages:
For T3 targets without a charge bonus the claw is 88% as effective as the power weapon.
This is the only time the power weapon with bonus attack is better.
With Charge on T3 and without charge on T4 they are equal.
Charging a T4 target makes the claw 112% as effective.
It goes up to 137% for charging a T6 creature.

These numbers are for veterans with 2 base attacks, a sergeant with the claw who is not a veteran will far worse. For a captain or master with 3 base on average the claw is always equal to or better than the power weapon for normal targets(ie not grots).

For the full distributions consider 2 cases:

Being Charged by WS4 T3 opponents:
Wounds Caused______0____ 1____ 2____ 3
Power Weapon ___29.6%_44.4%_22.2%__3.7%
Lightening Claw __30.9%_49.4%_19.7%___ 0%

Charging WS4 T4 Opponents:
Wounds Caused_____0____1____2____3____4
Power Weapon __31.6%_42.2__21.1__4.7%__0.4%
Lightening Claw__24___43.9__26.___5.3%___0%

So for offensive minded unit against anyone but Eldar, the Lightening Claw is the better buy. Defensively they are pretty even with the decision based on the toughness of the assault units of the enemy.

So for your vanguard unit in the Rhino with Pedro, a Lightening Claw is going to be better than a power weapon.

Pistol or No Pistol

With the new rules for large close combat weapons and the inclusion of a pistol in all marines gear the question has arisen, should I keep that bolt pistol with the powerfist or trade it in. For a unit like Sternguard, this is easy since their bolters are special, but what about your normal sergeant. Bolters help the units firepower but the pistol still allows you to shoot and charge. What to do? I decided that the captain in the assault on Black Reach has a Relic Blade since the bolter was pretty much set in the model. Most of my early models still have pistols with their powerfist but I am tempted to change one of my scout sergeants or get another new one made. He will have the shotgun and powerfist combo. You can shoot twice and still assault only losing he AP 5 off the rapid fire bolter. This conversion is currently on hold since the plastic shotguns have 2 hands on them and my only metal shotgun on an old scout biker is not quite the angle I want. The new scout bikers have a nice looking shotgun held 1 handed. Maybe need to bike up a box after the holidays and see what I can do.

FtW Monthly Challenge

Since I just joined the group this week I knew I was not going to get another game in before the deadline so I mocked a special one up for the Holidays.

My I present:
Assault on Snow Princess Castle

























































The story of the princess castle can be found here.