Friday Post: Craftworld Sarathai Fire Dragons

Hey folks, since the last post I've finished the guardians and started work on the fire dragons. This model is my test model which I think turned out pretty well. Hopefully I'll have the squad finished soon, giving me more pretty pictures and more importantly, completing my current collection of Eldar models.

Tau'va,

Ko'vash

Friday Post: Craftworld Sarathai Guardian Defenders

So first Friday follow up post and only a week late. Managed to get some more Guardians painted since the last post. The squad now sits at seven painted plus a bright lance platform. The other three are on the painting table and rapidly nearing completion. These folks are the citizens of my homebrew craftworld Sarathai. Without further ado, some pictures:

I got these guys second hand and very prepainted. Unfortunately they didn't come with a weapons platform so I had to convert one from a spare jetbike and some wave serpent parts.

Hope to have the rest of the Guardians done by next Friday and possibly some Fire Dragons.

Tau'va,
Ko'vash

Well, its been a while

So... It's been two years since I updated this blog. Not a lot of Warhammer has been going on in that time sadly due to a combination of university, regular opponents moving away and most of my stuff being stored at my dad's house.

However, I'm currently taking a break from university due to ill health which has meant I'm suddenly a lot less busy. Coupled with a discovery of how much of my collection is unfocused and unpainted I've decided to work out what my respective armies need to bring them to 'completion' and get back into the collecting and painting side of things. I've also promised myself not to buy anything new (easy when you're living on a student budget) until the current stuff is painted which leads me into the main point of this post. I'm hoping to use a regular blog deadline (every Friday) as a motivational tool to get models finished. I'm working on a squad of Eldar guardians at the moment which I hope to have pictures of for next Friday's post.

For now, I'll leave you with my current hobby to do list:

Eldar
Finish guardian squad

Dark Eldar
Finish venom crew
Finish 3 reaver jetbikes
Finish 5 wyches
Paint 5 bloodbrides
Assemble and paint a wych raider

Tau
Repaint 10 fire warriors
Rebase 20 kroot
Finish 5 stealthsuits
Repaint 8 pathfinders
Finish 2 shield drones

Sisters
Convert and paint a scheme test model

So there we have it folks, hopefully I'll be back next Friday with a painted squad of guardians and some progress on the Dark Eldar.

Tau'va,
Ko'vash

Finished Gaming Table

Over the summer I found the time and resources to paint my city fight terrain and fix up a base board from an old model railway board. The pavements were made from corrugated cardboard. The table has spaces on it for buildings with the buildings moveable. This means while the layout is the same, quite a number of configurations can be made. For instance, putting tall buildings in the centre creates a dense street by street firefight, while putting craters and low level barricades in the middle gives it a feeling of no man's land or bombardment impacts.

Some craters made from polystyrene and papier mache. The rubble is sliced up bits of sprue.

Looking out across the field of battle.

My Salamanders advance.

 Taking the city, for the Emperor!

Tau'va,
Ko'vash

Painted reavers and a converted old school broadside

I finally got round to undercoating some of my dark eldar models and carried along by my sudden painting enthusiasm I painted the reavers to completion.

I also found time to rescue some experimentally converted battlesuits Xenos and Proud gave me resulting in an old school broadside and a fireknife.

While I like certain aspects of the new broadside kit, I'm really glad I was able to convert an old style one so the squad maintains a similar aesthetic.

I'm aiming to get some more pictures of my dark eldar up over the next few days including some different angle shots of the reavers.

Tau'va
Ko'vash

Tale of Gamers: The Introduction

I recently attended a fifteen hundred point tournament at the Games Workshop in Aberdeen. It was a good tournament, fairly well run, with an interesting final mission. The big plus though, was that I got to catch up with Xenos and Proud and chat 40k with him for half a weekend. At the end of the tournament, we were both given with a flier for the next one: a 500 point tournament, with similar rules to the fourth edition combat patrol mission, designed to get people starting a new army. We were both taken with this idea (though I'm not sure if I'll actually make it to the tournament) and so set about deciding the armies we wanted to start. This was easy for me, I've always wanted to collect a Dark Eldar force and so this was the perfect opportunity to expand on the modest collection of DE models I already own. For XandP, it's a return to his first 40k love, the Blood Angels. 

 

 

 

In addition to starting these armies, we wanted to compete at Throne of Skulls in August this year. It was an obvious decision to take our new armies so a Tale of Gamers blog series seemed the only proper course of action.

The basic premise of our Tale of Gamers is that each month, starting in May, we will aim to collect five hundred points of our chosen army working our way up to our fifteen hundred point Throne of Skulls lists (the time scale may change depending on free time and disposable income, but this is what we're working towards). Over the course of the month we will paint and convert these forces with a showdown of our slowly growing armies happening at the end of each month. Hopefully, we will be able to provide work in progress shots of the models as well as a bit of insight into why we chose the units.

So onto the lists.

The initial five hundred;

Succubus, venom blade, haywire grenades

7wyches, haywire grenades, raider, enhanced aethersails

10 kabalite warriors, splinter cannon, raider, splinter wracks

Ravager, three disintegrator cannons

The middle thousand

Duke Sliscus

2x 7wyches, haywire grenades, raider

10 kabalite warriors, splinter cannon, raider, splinter wracks

5 kabalite warriors, blaster, venom, extra splinter cannon

6 reaver jetbikes, 2 heatlances

Ravager, three dark lances

The fifteen hundred I'm working towards:

 

Duke Sliscus

Four blood brides, venom, extra splinter cannon

Four incubi, venom, extra splinter cannon

2x 8 wyches, hekatrix, venom blade, hydra gauntlets, haywire grenades, raider

10 kabalite warriors, splinter cannon, raider, splinter racks

5 kabalite warriors, blaster, venom, extra splinter cannon

6 Reaver jetbikes, 2 heatlances

Ravager with dark lances

Razorwing jet fighter

 

These lists are a combination of the models I own and some from the army list and model ranges that I like. I don't expect to win many games, but I'm looking forward to hopefully fighting in the assault phase rather than just jet packing out of the way. 

That'll do for an introduction, I'll see you in May when I start gathering models together. 

Ko'vash

Battle Brothers January 2014: Game 3

Mission: Crusade, five objectives

Deployment: Vanguard strike

Terrain: A big ruin on left (objective) and right of our table edge, a ruin in the top right corner (objective), big hill in the centre from realm of battle, two forests on the other side, top left and top centre (objective). Wreckage middle left (objective) and wreckage central right (objective)

Warlord trait Tau: Exemplar of the Selfless Cause

Warlord trait Tau and orks: Not sure

Night fight: no

Psychic powers

Eldar: guide, perfect timing, presience

Opponents:

Tau and Orks

Fireblade, shield drone

3 squads of firewarriors

2 railgun hammerheads with submunitions

Boss, 2+ save and 5++, power klaw

10 Nobs, 5++, feel no pain, a few power claws

Dakkajet

20 boyz, Nob, power klaw

Deployment

We deployed first, hiding the fire warriors behind the hill claiming an objective. The Bikes parked up next to them on their left. The farseer and riptide joined together, and stood next to the skyray in the centre of our board edge, with the hammerhead cowering behind some ruins which the pathfinders were ready to scout into.

They deployed the nobs facing the pathfinder ruin with the boyz to the left and the fire blade and a unit of fire warriors left of them. Two fire warrior squads took up residence in the big ruin in their deployment zone, with a hammerhead hiding behind each corner of that building. The dakkajet was in reserves.

They failed to seize.

We kicked off with the riptide leaping forward to take on the fire warriors with the hammerhead in tow. The skyray swivelled to have a go at the nobs. The jetbikes moved up to blast the fire warriors. Several fire warriors were downed but not enough to wipe the squad. A big chunk of boyz were submunitioned into Mork’s (or possibly Gork’s) embrace. Some of the nobz took wounds.

The warboss and co advanced on the poor pathfinders. The hammerheads moved up. There was the characteristic whip crack of railguns but they either failed to find their mark or were negated by cover saves. The boyz and nobz ran forwards and the fire warriors killed a couple of jetbikes.

The pathfinders scampered further up the ruins to avoid being assaulted as the hammerhead lined up to pie plate the fire warrior team. The riptide rolled around the corner to gun down some of the nobz or the fire warriors depending. Our fire warriors moved up to secure the forest objective as the bikes closed in for the kill. The first of our crisis suits arrived ready to try and blow holes in a hammerhead. Through various large blasts and shuriken blades the fire warriors were slain but the fireblade survived (first blood). The crisis suit tried to silence the hammerhead but was denied by jink. The riptide put wounds on some of the nobz but most were denied by the boss’s 2+ save and feel no pain.

The dakkajet failed to show up. The nobz couldn’t decide whether to assault the pathfinders or not so stayed put. The boys moved up to put the hurt on the bikes as the hammerheads and fire warriors prepared to hit my deep striking crisis suit. Most of the shooting was ineffective with the crisis suit losing a drone and a wound. The jetbikes were shot down to three models. The hammerhead took a glancing hit.

The crimson hunter swooped in and promptly failed to hurt a hammerhead at all. The other crisis suit landed and with his friend, they were able to stun the other hammerhead which was bearing down on them. Our hammerhead submunitioned a bunch of boyz catching the fireblade in the blast and instant deathing him for good measure (slay the warlord). The blue jetbikes shot across the field to hide in the ruin in our deployment zone, and the fire warriors moved into the trees. The riptide finally downed the painboy and swiftly removed most of the other nobz bar one and the warboss on two wounds.

The dakkajet soared on, a waaagh was declared, and the orks rushed forwards, the warboss gunning for the hammerhead. The fire warriors lined up on my suits and the dakkajet aimed at our backfield squad of fire warriors with the fireblade attached. Despite an insane number of shots, the dakkajet was denied its kill by the fire warriors diving for cover, leaving only two dead. The boss charged and made short work of the hammerhead, but the fire warriors couldn’t remove the crisis suits. In the assault phase, the dakkajet attempted to ram the crimson hunter (we weren’t convinced you could do this in normal 40k, but gave it to them as it was in the death from the skies rules) but failed its toughness test.

The crisis suits gave up on the hammerhead and went for the fire warriors who are troops after all. The skyray prepared to be smashed into tiny pieces by the warboss. The skyray fired missiles at the dakkajet, successfully velocity locking it, but it jinked any other damage. The riptide and jetbikes removed the last of the orks from the central objective. The fire warriors killed the last nob but couldn’t stop the warboss.

The dakkajet flew across the field. The warboss smashed the skyray to bits, and the fire warriors mercilessly gunned down my battlesuits. The opposition hammerheads tried to shoot down my fireblade’s unit but where unsuccessful. The dakkajet assaulted the crimson hunter and downed the flier.

Everything shot the warboss. The guy was rolling like a champ with his 2+ save but the forest fire warriors eventually downed the roaring xeno. The riptide and bikes advanced on the central objective, claiming it for the Taudar Empire.

Their last turn consisted of them trying to remove the jetbikes from the objective, but bolstered by the farseer joining the unit they held.

Final score: Taudar 15 (four objectives, slay the warlord, line breaker, first blood) Tau Orks 3 (one objective)

After game thoughts

This was an odd game. We had some difficulty with luck at times but then again so did our opponents. I think our deployment was quite poor, we deployed too heavily on the right, and got ourselves trapped in a corner because of it. In the end we pulled through though.

Unit of the match: jetbikes. Jumping around, picking off units, claiming objectives and even a threat to light tanks, jetbikes are awesome.