Saturday, January 24, 2009

Labyrinth Comics and Games Tournament

Just finished playing in a tournament at the lab near downtown Ann Arbor. I used my Mech Pedro list and managed with a little last second luck to get a 1-1-1 in my three games. The winner of the tournament brought an Ork Horde army with like 100 boys and 30 lootas. I did not play him but I think that the tight time limit for these type of things make this army better than it should be. If you can only get through 3 turns in 2 hours it is nearly impossible to make a dent in that type of army. It also appeared that peoples list were set up for more anti armor than anti horde. None of my opponents had any problems destroying my vindi and predator before they could do much.

My major lesson learned is never use Pedro's orbital bombardment out of the Rhino of vanguards as their first turn. The turn lost moving pretty much holds the unit back to far to get stuck in when their Rhino gets shot out from under them. It might be a good tactic to try if the Rhino gets immobilized and you try to get it to self repair.

Game 1: Mech Eldar
Mission was 5 loot counters with Spearhead deployment. Mech Eldar with 2 serpents and 2 falcons, small dire avenger squads, scorpions, banshees and warp spiders. This was probably the best board for me that I played on all night. Since Marines lack skimmer tanks the type of terrain is important. On this board the terrain was several large pieces so their was still room to move the tanks without tons of terrain tests. The other boards had many small pieces which really limited the tank movement.

I had first turn so I lined up the my tanks to try to move forward with my sniper scouts sitting on an objective near the center of the table. He left his men out of their transport afraid of them exploding before they moved. He had forgotten that in 5th you cannot move flat out if someone embarks that turn.

He stole the initiative from me and them started to work over my tanks. He had the advantage most of the game but a lucky shot from my scout missile destroyed a waveserpent with dire avengers far from any objectives. I got lucky and got few members of a tac squad onto an objective in his zone and was able to contest most of the others getting the win. If he had played the mission a little more and not just focusing on killing my units he probably would have won.

Game 2 Tau
This mission was Kill points and pitched battle deployment. Pretty balanced Tau list with excellent range of different units. I again had first turn but made a horrible mistake in deployment. I tried to keep my army together and avoid the big impassible base in the center of the board so I set up in one corner. He responded by pretty much setting up in the other so I ended up doubling the distance I needed to get to him. I was already in a hole since I have a lot of kill points to give with the tanks. He then stole the initiative from me and proceeded to wipe the floor with me. His 2 broadsides made quick work of my tanks while his ion cannon trashed the transports. I think the final result was like 6 to 1 with all my tanks and transports dead and my scouts dead with me only managing to eliminate a small crisis team. I have no doubt that he still would have won if I had not messed up deployment but it might have actually been a contest.

Game 3: Thousand Sons
Capture and Control with Dawn of War deployment. Enemy list was tooled up daemon prince, 2 rhino mounted 1K sons squads, 10 man termi squad, 2 oblits, Defiler. He had first turn and started both Rhinos and Daemon prince on the board. I started scouts on my objective and tac squad in rhino hiding. He then proceeded to methodically move up the board essentially abandoning his objective to destroy me. 1 Oblit immoblized my predator while the other killed my vindi then proceeded to assault my scouts. The daemon princed killed my tac squad's Rhino but the squad was able to get him back the next turn before being AP 3 boltered to death. The sternguard moved up one flank but ended up running into the terminators and retreated back. As turn 5 started, he was moving toward my objective while running a 1k unit back onto his after their rhino got destroyed. I had to use my vanguard to kill his oblit still locked in combat with my scouts so it would not contest my objective.

I ended up with a litte area around my objective clear at the end of turn 5. I had 4 scouts surrounding it with a rhino shielding them from fire from the termis and defiler just off screen. I also had 2 scoring Sternguard just in the building covered by the rhino and the vanguard surrounding the objective on the open side. My other suriving rhino was trying to block the path of the other 1K sons. The game ended at this point with me holding my objective at least at the moment clearly and him just barely making 3 inches to his objectives base. I think this is something everyone always needs to remember that all objectives need to be the same size either, 25 mm base or a 40 mm base or a point location. This is the second time where differences in objectives influenced a game. Had the game gone onto a the 6th turn he had a good chance of getting something to my objective with some good fleet and terrain rolls and wiping me out on a 7th turn.

Overall it was a good time but I am just not that good with tanks. I think I might try a Shrike based list next or maybe actually work on my nids so I could actually try them.

Wednesday, January 21, 2009

1500 Mech Pedro List

Here is my 1500 mech Pedro list I expect to be using this weekend.

Pedro
10 Man Tac with Powerfist, Meltagun, Multimelta in Rhino
8 Man Sniper Scout Squad with Cloaks, and Missile Launcher
10 Man Sternguard Squad with Meltagun, Combimelta, Combiplasma in Rhino
9 Man Vanguard Squad with Relic Blade, Powerfist, Lightening Claw, Power Weapon, Meltabomb in Rhino(Pedro goes here)
Landspeeder with Multimelta and Heavy Flamer
Vindicator with Siege Shield
Predator with TL Lascannon, Heavy Bolters

I pretty much dropped a landspeeder and a dreadnought from the 1750 list. If I did a 1750 list again I might try to get a 4th Rhino with some of my new honor guard.

Tuesday, January 20, 2009

And the Next Project is ...

Razorback Turrets. Everyone pick the hardest one. Well at least no green stuff work. Before I can really get started I need to build my new vindi and rhino/razorback frame to see what parts can be saved for use in the turrets. I luckily have 2 classic rhino style tanks(old vindi and old predator) in my collection so I have plenty of interesting armor plates to use for the project. I also have 2 classic side metal lascannons which could be used without chopping down a plastic one. I am pretty sure I have enough parts to build 2 so if the first one comes out poorly I can try another one.

Sunday, January 18, 2009

No New Post Today

You can check out my wife's blog to see why no new posts over the weekend. No work got done. Maybe I can think up something new for tomorrow. Maybe a rant about why Deathwing lists are such a pain to write.

Saturday, January 17, 2009

Veterans

So my poll looks to be going to the razorbacks but I needed 2 new vets for an event next weekend so I figured it was fine. First guy is a vanguard sergeant with Relic Blade. My old vanguard sergeant with Relic Blade earned a promotion to the honor guard so I needed a replacement. This is of course jump pack free vanguard. Relic Blade is a champion sword cut at the wrist and mounted at a different angle on a different arm.

Next is a beaky sternguard vet crouching. My vets are generally denoted by color scheme(white trim on shoulder pads). The sternguards often have gun sights and/or bionic eyes.

Next post will probably be a list and then a selection of the bits for the las-plas razorback project.

Thursday, January 15, 2009

Poll: What should my next project be?

I put up a poll the other day asking what people out there thought my next project should be now that my Honor Guard is built. I have gotten some responses which is good so I thought I might discuss each of the projects in a little more detail.

Razorback Turrets: So I am planning on converting my current TL Heavy Bolter turret to TL Assault Cannon. This is pretty straight forward and nothing big. I am also planning on a bigger project of building Lascannon+ TL Plasmagun turret. Originally I was thinking about doing something simple like what is seen for the Space Wolves campaign army in the back of the 4th Edition rules, but I decided I will try to build the manned turret like is visible in the sample ultramarines army in the beginning of the 3rd edition softcover. I expect that I will not make it such that the turret will actually rotate just mounted at a slight angle to show it should.

Terminator Apocathry: This guy is based on the versions from the Dark Angels white dwarf a little while ago. While I have a full unused apocathry right now most of his bits are going to go to a biker command squad so I am planning on building the reductor by hand out of assorted bits and a chainfist. The white dwarf ones actually cut the reductor apart and mounted it one a chainfist. The only real apocathry parts I expect to use are the bottles and bits cut off the front chest since those would not work well with the seated biker.

Moondrakken, The Jetbike: So when I was spending my holiday money I picked up another set of 3 bikes(with metal torso pieces) along with a single scout bike. I already had 6 bikes usuable as either 6 marine bikes or 3 marine bikes and 3 scout bikes(previous versions). This new set brings me up to 9 bikes plus an attack bike which allows for 2 scoring unit of 5 models if I just had a captain on a bike, but I am short 1 sm bike to put him on. I was thinking that I would like to make my own Khan model and his bike is special. Maybe he can have a jetbike that just cannot maintain much altitude due to unrepairable malfunctions. Not quite a jetbike for game purposes but enough additional ability for the running and fleet it has over normal bikes. I though I could use my new scout bike as the chasis for this since it is smaller. I have a picture of the jetbikes from the late 80's to try to model after using parts from the city ruins kits.

Veterans: I need a couple of new Veterans since I reorganized my army so I would build them. Nothing really special.

Paint Something, Anything: I have an huge army to paint but I just like building things better. I cannot help it. Just like at work where I like to do all the new stuff and let others fill in the small details for existing things.

Wednesday, January 14, 2009

Circle of Support


I think the best thing about the FtW Blogger group is mutual support and readership. My wife and I both started blogs at essentially the same time about a month ago. I have about twice the followers she does due to people from the FtW group. While I myself do not use the followers feature, I use the FtW page more than once a day to check what people are up to. I also try to leave at least 3 comments per day scattered around the group. When I first start the blog, I bet I had at most 1 visitor before I joined the group. While my blog is small and my paint skills are pathetic, I get a few comments on most posts. It is good to know that someone is listening.

Monday, January 12, 2009

Shrike

This is my simple counts as Shrike. My goal is not to reproduce the Shrike image but to make a simple version out of the parts I have. Nothing really special. Shrike is actually pretty easy since he probably should not have a lot of extra stuff. Only really interesting thing is that I used the Dark Angels beaky head where the sword is removed. I am considering adding some type of smoke launchers to one of his Talons to represent the See But Not be Seen rule.

Saturday, January 10, 2009

Honor Guard Grenade Launcher

Here is the Honor Guard with Grenade Launcher. Champion head, space wolves powersword(taken off a partial painted model who got moved into the Sternguard and a Lightening Claw instead), commander tabard and shoulder pad.
Grenade Launcher was made with a standard bolter. I moved the barrel up and did the side ammo feed. I then used another barrel taken out of a flamer(any cylinder of the same size will work) mounted underneath. I then cut off the normal clip and replaced it with 3 shells on band together cut from longer piece from the new scout biker.
I made sure I drilled out the two barrels to different diameters to make sure they appear different.
One more guy is pretty much done but I need to get a holstered bolter like I used on my Banner man. Anyone got a spare one. It is in the attack bike kit and actually make the bike not WYSIWYG if you use it.

Wednesday, January 7, 2009

The Honor Guard Goes On and On


Here is the next mini in my Honor guard series. He has a commander chest, space wolves power axe, and dark angels skull backpack and covered pad. Originally he had a crusader helm but I thought this made him look to busy so I broke it off and replaced it with a more standard helm. The crusader helm is going to go on my grenade launcher honor guard which I hope to finish tomorrow during the BCS title game. This guy probably needs a little more needle file work and some clean up.

Monday, January 5, 2009

Mk 6 Honor Guard

Here is the close up of the beaky honor guard. I got the idea of giving him a classic bolter from the consecrator captain in the dark angels book. Tabard from commander, powersword from assault marines.

Here you can see the studded shoulder pad from the dark angels veterans with the dark angels medallion replaced.

Other side with a shoulder pad probably from the commander kit.

Sunday, January 4, 2009

Honor Roll

Here are the mini's I have assembled for my Honor Guard Unit. From left to right we have an Honor guard with Relic Blade, Chapter Champion, Chapter Banner, and 2 normal Honor Guards. I have one more guy to build using dark angels robes for the first batch of 6 to fit nicely in a Razorback if used. Pedro rides with some vanguard in a Rhino.

The metal Honor Guard unit from GW do look really great but there are just to many Ultramarine U's to make them practical for home brew chapter. I also did not want such a uniform look since it did not fit my back story of a chapter on the brink of failure. I wanted each member to look unique as they have built their armor up as they moved through the ranks and not just had it bestowed on them when they joined the Honor Guard. I think that any of them would make a reasonable captain model for an army which was what I was going for.

This is the chapter champion. He has company champion front and shoulder pads, commander head and back, and a powermace from the dark angels veterans box. I just cut off the dark angels medallion and replaced it with a crux termius type one. A great thing about using the mace is that it is different enough from the other power weapons to call it a thunderhammer. While adding a thunderhammer makes the unit even more expensive, it helps against dreadnoughts and other big nasties.

If anyone is interested I will post some close up pics of the other 2 plastic ones.