Warrior to Hive Guard Conversion

So Hive Guard are one of the winners in the new tyranid codex with their S8 Assault 2 weapon that does not need line of sight. This is your anti light mech unit with essential short range autocannons that have 1 higher strenght. People might want to compare them with missile launchers but those have higher AP and dual fire modes so it is better to think of them as Tank hunting autocannons.

GW has some neat metal models for them but I am in a no buying zone until I get a majority of my previous purchases assembled (no claim on painted though). I did have 6 unbuilt warriors and 3 venom cannons and 3 sets to rending claws lying about so I want to see what I could do with them instead.

Here is unit member 1 in the hunched over firing position so he can brace with his arms as per the fluff in the codex. Only way to get the claws close to the ground is to really lean him forward.



Pretty Straight forward just bent him over forward and clipped the opposible thumb off the venom cannon feed hand since it was in the way. I used the now useless fleshhooks at the tip of the impaler cannon to get the spikey bits.


I also added a few extra armor plates on tha back since they are supposed to be tougher than warriors. The other 2 members of the unit are waiting on their spikey bits and armor plates to be attached. They are more upright so that no one claims I intentionally modeled the unit to be short to hide behind cover.

As We all Know ...

GW does not know their own rules. We all know this from the White Dwarf battle reports but here is another example. These model where shown in the GW daily Blog today. The guy on the right is a librarian which is fine. Maybe he has two force weapons or maybe he has a pistol somewhere but that is unimportant. Pistols re small potatoes and who has one modeled on every marine that has one now. What I like is the marine with the powerfist. They list him as a Honour Guard with the grenade launcher upgrade. That is fine but why does he have a powerfist. Honour Guard have no access to powerfists and only the Champion has access to a thunderhammer (which you should probably take so the unit cannot be held up by dreads and such). Oh GW when will you ever learn.

March 2010 Apoc Battle

League Subterranea seems to get an Apocalypse game going about once a year. This time it was a smaller game with only 18,000 total points compared to some of the 30-40K battles in the past. The guys at Labyrinth Comics and Games were nice enough to host the game on a day they are usually closed. Members of the Labyrinth team made up about half the players.

Unlike many of our normal Apoc games this one was a little more themed with Good Guys (Tau, Eldar, Space Marines) verses Nids. While there are really no good guys in 40K these races are ones who might join together (or at least stop fighting each other long enough) to fight off the Nids.

We played on a composite table which was about 10-11 feet wide and between 6 and 8 feet deep. That 8 foot deep part was a problem since there was this 18 inch zone in the center of the table that was very hard to reach. We also played the game with the capture and hold style objectives where you earn points for hold objective at the end of your player turns so last second objective grabs are of minimum usefulness.

My unpainted partially assembled Nids can be seen trying to march up the long way across the table while my opponents landraiders try to roll up my flank.

Here is where my units are trying to go but they never made it. Not because they were destroyed but because we ran out of time after 3 turns. It did not really matter since one of our team deepstriked a ton of units behind the enemy lines while I outflanked a unit of stealer who tied up those broadside for 2 full turns.



While interesting things were happening on my side of the table the real battle was won on the other side. During the bidding for first turn process, we had intended to go second and just absorb their fire but I actually bid 1 minute lower than the opponents so we went first. We decided not to make it to easy for them to get first turn and they thought we would want all the time we could get to set up on hordes of minis so my 9 minutes beat their 10 minutes. We set up heavy and they place their objective in our zone behind on the side with the player who had hold at all costs for his units. I took the advantage to load his side of the table with our 3 objective objectives. Their zone objective I put exactly 1 foot from the edge right past no mans land. Then I placed our other 2 objectives as close as possible. This left 4 of the 6 objectives in easy reach of a massive wave of scoring(hold at all costs) nid army. The rest of the board was just sort of a holding action to prevent them from moving to take all the objectives that we quickly gained back. Turns went 3-2 then 3-2 and by turn three we had 4-0 so we called the game as it was getting late.

Tyranid Speed Building

So I have my self signed up for an multiplayer Apoc game on Sunday. My first 40K game in a long time. I normally take my marines to these type of things since I have 9,000 points worth now so I can make our standard Apoc 3K list totally customized. Usually our battles are sort of mismatch to get the players and points to match. This time their were 2 nid players for the 6-7 player game so 1 more would make a single totally nid side. This ofcourse gives the game a better story so I said I would be the missing nid player.

Now I have a nid army but it only has about 1K of points built but there is a scratch built biotitan at 1250 points available so I just need to make up the ~750 point gap. Pretty large gap for a few days. So I am going to try and see where I get. Built up about 180 points last night but need to get in gear to make the goal. I am probably going to have to use some partially finished stuff where the arms are held on by putty since I need to magnetize them and there certainly will not be time.

I will get a picture of my rag tag force once it is ready to go.

GW Games Day Blood Bowl Pitch

So GW online actually has some new blood bowl content. They have a discussion of creating this cool looking Orc themed pitch for Games Day. Ofcourse it is inspired by the videogame instead of the fluff of the board game but it is something. Nice to see GW doing anything for Blood Bowl. A couple of interesting notes though for people going to make custom pitches.


Blood Bowl Pitch spaces are not 1 inch squares. They are a little bigger like 28 mm to make more room on the board for placing minis. Short squares means longer affective passes so this pitch would give the advantage to throwing teams which I am sure Orcs would not want. Also the endzones are only 1 square deep now instead of the 2 in 2nd edition. This makes it such that anyone just standing in the endzone waiting a long bomb can be crowd pushed pretty easy. So this is clearly a display piece and not really a proper playable board.

Tackle Zone Radio #9

The friendly gents down under have dropped a new episode of Tackle Zone Radio on us. Episode is a little long so I would download it and listen in pieces but a lot of interesting stuff. Great discussion of other fantasy football minis and less used skills.

Blood Bowl League After 3 Games

Well I have been playing my Chaos team in our league now for 3 games and it has been total failure for me. I have 2 losses and 1 tie. Only been able to generate 2 touchdowns and like 2 Casualties and just lost my Minotaur to death at the hands of a necromancer team. I am also rolling 1's for my winnings which means while the top team had like 180K in cash earning already I have made 70K. I made some mistakes in not just getting pretty much everyone block with my skill choices in our special team creation and how I am trying to play the team. I even tried twice to make the pointless Turn 8 passes to get 1 SPP for a player to get a skill missed both passes.

I am also the only player in the league with no player faster than 6 move. Every other team has at least 3 players with 7+ move and most have 8 move player. We have a Dark Elf team(Many Move 7 Players), High elf Team( Move 7 Blitzers, Move 8 Catchers), Lizardman (Move 8 Skinks), and Necromancer (Move 8 Weres, Move 7 Ghouls one has +1 MA anyway). Only the necromantic team has players slower than mine but he also has ones much faster. I am finding myself totally out moved and if I cannot bash anyone which seems to be how it has been I have trouble moving the ball.

I will continue the struggle and maybe I will get lucky and get a few CAS in a game and make a few touchdowns to get some more skills. Maybe by the end of the season I will have some idea how to play the game with Chaos.

Vanguard Vets

I recently finished assembling my jump pack vanguard vets. This unit is made up of 5 metal vanguards with 2 plastic guys mixed in. I was thinking how to make my vanguards a little different. First thing I knew was that there was no way I was going to build 2 with plasma pistols and 2 with power weapons. Way too much point bloat on a unit which is already overcosted. So the 2 with the special weapons on separate arms were going to get switched out for standard ones. I was also thinking what makes Vanguard different from normal assault marines is not really how fancy their armor is but that they can assault straight from deepstriking which means your weapons need to be at the ready.


I decided that if their weapons were chained into their wrists then they could jump out of that Thunderhawk without fear to losing them on the way down. Luckily I already had a pile of black templar cc weapons from earlier conversions so I used them anywhere the weapon arm was not a piece of the main body in the vanguard kit and in the 2 plastic vanguards. I have 2 melta bomb vanguards who might get an arm exchange soon in the near future. My pictures did not really come out so I will post them later.

Blood Bowl PC Game

So the Blood Bowl video game made it into retail channels in the states recently. I decided to pick it up for the PC. I had originally planned on getting it for my xbox 360 but I heard that the xbox 360 game did not support online leagues. While my 360 is not on live right now, I plan on getting it back to live at some point and leagues are the only way to really play blood bowl.


Now having it on PC presents some problems. My PC is perfectly able to run the game but my wife uses it most of the time for running her two blogs which are much bigger than mine so I can only use it at odd hours for gaming. I had actually not played a game on the pc since moving a few years ago.


I picked the game up a few weeks ago but finally actually got to play it this weekend since I was at Disney world the previous weekend. My first impression is that the AI is pretty weak. I have played about 6 matches so far (1 one off match with Chaos, and 5 campaign matches with Dark Elves) and I have won them all. The computer plays its team OK with trying to cage to protect the ball carrier and such but its biggest problem is that it does not change tactics when the end of the half or the game approaches. It seems to not really pay attention to the turn number like it should.

I have seen several games where it could have likely scored near the end of the half or game if it made a effort to make sure it was advancing the ball more. The AI will place deep receivers to throw passes to even with teams that do not really throw but it does not seem to make the effort in turn 6 for example to make sure it has people forward enough to score in the last two turns.

Another problem I saw was skill selection. Even for the preprogramed teams it seems like the skills were chosen more to show the possiabilities than to really make an optimal team. In one of my early campaign games I ran into a beastman with a prehensile tail as its first skill. Now there are way better skills than that for a chaos team that they really need.

The interface is a little funky also and I sometimes find myself thinking I have switched to a different player but actually still moving someone else or doing crazy things like dodging back and forth between squares because I used the wrong mouse click. Anyone out there know how to declare a blitz such that you hit the opponent as the first thing and then are free to determine you movement path after the hit?

I am still enjoying the game and would recommend it to people who know the board game. I skipped the tutorial so I do not know how it is for someone new to the boardgame.

Tyrannofex: Close only Counts in Horseshoes and Hand Grenades.

So I am looking at the rules for one of the new super bugs trying to see what he is good for. He is a W6 Av2+ monstrous creature who with regenerate and choice of main weapon runs in at almost 300 points. Pretty hefty chuck of a 1500 point army. While they have some secondary armament that are like hull heavy bolters/flamers, these guys are all about their big guns. But this is really where they are lacking.

The basic choice is the Acid Spray which is essential the same in game terms to a hellhound's inferno cannon. The problem here is that the hellhound is a fast vehicle which means it can move 18 inches in a turn(twice the pace of a running tyrannofex) or move 12 and still fire the inferno cannon out to 12 more inches. So the tyrannofex is probably going to have a much harder time bringing this weapon to bear optimally than the hellhound. While you can use the Tervigon's Onslaught power to get it into range better this is another 160+ points invested and prevents that monstrous creature from shooting, running, or assaulting that turn. Sure the tyrannofex will be more survivable but you can probably get a squadron of 2 hellhounds for the cost of 1 tyrannofex. Here you are probably better off drop poding a unit of Pyrovores at lower cost.

Next Up is the Fleshboarer Hive with its 20 shots. This is the Leman Russ Punisher version except with S4 AP5 instead of S5 Ap -. The lower strength is fine if you are shooting at Av5+ troops but against Av4 or people with cover saves the punisher wins. The punisher also gets the advantage with twice the range meaning it can do its damage outside of meltagun, rapid fire plasma range, or non fleet assault range(powerfist in tac squad will keep this guy locked all game) . In the nid list, I think the newly out of favor dakkafex is better than this equipment since 12 Twinlinked Str 6 shots are probably similar in effectiveness.

Final Big gun choice is the Rupture Cannon. The name makes it sound like it will be deadly. S10 Assault 2 now that could put the hurt on something. Oh wait AP 4. So this is totally useless against MEQ infantry unlike any other S9-10 weapon in the game where if no good armor shows it self you can at least force a couple of marines to make coversaves if they have them. Since you are BS 3 your 2 shots get you 1 hit which has a good chance of penetrating most armor but then again you will be shooting at the front most likely so 13-14 is that standard armor you will be seeing that makes a worthwhile target. (Rhino's, Waveserpeants, and Chimera's are for Hive Guard putting out 6 times your shots on a per point basis). 1 Hit per turn, less than 50% penetration rate then 33% kill rate means you can expect to kill 1 tank a game with this guy. Maybe you will be lucky and get that landraider before it drops those thunderhammer terminators on you because they will own your monstrous butt in combat with 10 wounds to your less than 0.5.

Now you cannot compare this gun to the ordnance blast weapons of demolisher since they both anti-tank and anti-MEQ. The best comparison is with the Tau Railgun on a broadside. Both have solid stand off ranges, can be fired on the move(assuming upgrade to broadside suit never seen one without it), have 10 Strength, Twinlinked Heavy 1~Assault 2(not as good but close), but AP1 vs AP4 for that important +1 on the damage table. That +1 increase vehicle destroyed results by more than 50% (more vs those pesky holofield grav tanks). Plus while I do not know the cost of a Broadside I bet you can get at least 2 (canceling the shot advantage) plus some shield drones to increase survivability for 300 points. And you can hide in low level cover.

So the morale of the story appears to be that the nids big gun is really not big enough. Maybe you will find just the right situation for this guy once in a blue moon but most of the time you will probably wish you had something else like a 3 Hive Guard and 2 Zoans for about the same price for anti tank duty.