An interim project - Dark Angels

The "downside" to buying Devastator boxes for Grav Cannons (just doing the bits is usually not worth it, or they are recasts) is having a bunch of other heavy weapons left over.

I decided to go with a unit for Dark Angels, going with all Lascannon.

So this my next project waiting impatiently for my tax refund to begin a new, more focused army build.  Right now the only thing I know I'm going to buy is a Dark Vengeance box.  That will be a nice expansion to my CSM (mainly more cultists) as well as enough Dark Angels models to have a good sized force of those if I want to play them - mainly as a non-competitive Marine army.

Showcase: Nurgle Chaos Lord on bike.

As you may have noticed, I've done a lot of work on my Chaos this month. That's because I really want to get these guys on the table, painted for league play.

Next up is the Lord on bike, which will run with the spawn.

No more One eye open! rolls!

That, and I haven't picked up too much Ork stuff lately. I still want to get some meganobz but the shipping crap has made it hard to get stuff lately.

Also, I was able to get the last few Blood Angels models I needed in trades, so I got the 3 bikes and 2 drop pods for no cash layout.  Not bad!

Anyway, on to the Cultists.

Showcase: Nurgle Chaos Spawn

Finished up these guys so here are the pics!  Not much to say tonight. Busy painting.

Building allied detachments.

Ever since 6th hit, I've thought one of the best ideas in there is allies. I *love* allies.  It just adds so much variety to what you see on the table.   This is, to me, a win-win for everyone involved. Gamers get access to more units.  Modelers get more opportunities for painting and conversions. And GW sells more stuff.

Back in January 2012 I started to build a Space Wolf army..razorback spam. Then 6th hit and that changed completely. I just sat on the models for a long time.  I finally finished building and started painting the models, I have a full 1000pts of them.  I plan on running them as allies for my Tau.

I am also thinking about other allies. Mainly, CSM for my Orks.  I have a pretty good idea of the models I want ...flying demon prince with back mace, noise marines and a helldrake.. but the hard part is what I want to do with the modeling.

Specifically, if I should just build a regular CSM force or do something more interesting. Basically I'm thinking of building some Orks as chaos marines. An Ork with CSM shoulder pads, backpack and bolter. All done in Slanneshy pink!  The demon prince? How about a Ghaz model with wings?  Noise marines? Goff rockers, obviously.  Helldrake? Ork riding a dragon.

I also have a couple boxes of eldar models (Farseer, bikes) that I might either trade or use for Tau allies..sigh.


When thinking about an allied force, especially when you have multiple main armies, is which army are you building it for?  The main problem that I'm trying to figure out is basing. All 3 of my main armies are based differently, so trying to use a single allied force for more then one is hard. I would like to use my Blood Angels as allies for my Space Wolves as well...plus using my BA as codex marines for the Tau (which I've done). 

So much to choose from, so many options. So many ideas! It kinda makes me in a hobby lock as I can't decide what to do, how to do it and if I do it wrong I'm stuck with models I don't like.

But next up is a commission I need to hit pretty hard (still recovering from OFCC) while I think about it.

Allies for Tau part 1 - Space Wolves

When talking about allies in 6th, a lot of people will say if you need allies then the army book isn't well balanced. Well this does not really apply to Tau, as pure Tau plays just fine and has many viable builds.

So when planing out allies for Tau, there really are not many holes to fill.  Tau has plenty of access to melta (unlike say, Orks). It has a lot of mobility, ignore cover, monstrous creatures, flyers, etc. 

The two main holes are lack of psychic defense (which is getting very scarce these days), and any real close combat punch.  This is where Space Wolves really come in, as they have plenty of both to spare.

Now I'm going to concentrate on allies with Tau primary, so it limits the number of units available.  Tau as the allied detachment is a completely different discussion.

Here is my first Wolf ally list, which I am currently working on painting:

Primary: Tau
HQ: Commander; Iridium armor, shield generator, Multi-spectrum sensor suite, Puretide Engram Chip, Missile pod, vectored retro-thrusters

Troop: 8x Firewarriors, Shas'ui
Troop: 6x Firewarriors
Troop: 19x Kroot, sniper, hound

Elite: 3x Crisis Suits, 6x Burst Cannon, Shas'vre, Target lock
Elite: 3x Crisis Suits, 6x Fusion, Shas'vre, Target lock

Fast: 5x Pathfinder, Shas'ui
Fast: 5x Pathfinder, Shas'ui

Heavy: 3x broadsides, 3x missile pods, 2x velocity tracker, 1x Target lock

Allied: Space Wolves
HQ: Rune Priest, Runic armor
HQ: Wolf Lord, Runic armor, t-wolf, fist, stormshield, Saga of the Bear

Troop: 10x Grey Hunters, 2x Meltagun

Fast: 2x Thunderwolves, 2x Stormshields

Heavy: 6x Long fangs, 5x Missile Launcher

The best part of Space Wolves is that they can take 2 HQ units per slot, even as an ally, which is in the FAQ.  This allows both a rune priest for the "I say no" runic weapon and a powerful assault Thunderwolf Lord.

You also notice I pack a lot of melta in this list, with both Crisis Suits and Grey hunters maxed out. This isn't for vehicles as much as it is for Riptides and Wraithknights.

The commander goes with the Broadsides, to soak up wounds and make sure they always ignore cover so I'm not dependent on the Pathfinders.  (I would normally take marker drones, but the pathfinders are cheaper and more flexible here, giving me more shots if needed)  And if they do get assaulted, with the 2+ save and the invul they could survive more often then not and have a chance to get away since Hit and Run uses the highest initiative instead of the average.

The Rune Priest will usually go with the Long Fangs to doll out prescience.  I will keep JoWW against Riptides or Necrons.  I was thinking of some plasma cannons, but the S8 is a great help against the constant thorn that is Riptides/Wraithknights. 

The thunderwolves will move up to take pressure off my gunline, but the best part of this list is the wolves don't have to go in alone, they can get support from Kroot and/or deepstriking suits. Saga of the Bear is a must-take, with even a Riptide able to instant-death him before he gets to swing. Dropping in 24 S5 shots will soften up any target, if need be.  They probably won't deep strike too often, though.

I have a few more guys to assemble before I can start play testing, but I expect this list to do very well especially against the meta I face locally.

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Now if  you don't take the Thunderwolves (they do eat up a lot of points after all) then you can really go overboard on the shooting, going with 3 full units of 3 Crisis Suits all with 2 burst cannons.  Not much is going to survive that.  Add in more Grey Hunters, maybe one unit in a rhino or drop pod to go for an objective as well.  I've seen this style on the table before, as one guy plays it, and it's pretty nasty.

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That concludes part 1 of my Tau allies.   I still have Orks and Bloo...*cough* Red Space Marines. I tried some Codex Marine allies before the new Tau dex came out, and it wasn't bad...running Assault Termies out of a Skies of Blood-ruled Stormraven.  After that I'll dive into the TauDar uber combos.

A sad day indeed...

Never before the release of the Tau codex would I have imagined this day would come.  It really saddens me.

Tonight I tore off the railguns from my Broadsides.  Cleaned up the superglue, put in magnets and then painted over the scars like they had never been there.

It's hard for me to call it a nerf, considering just how overpowered broadsides have been in 6th.  Especially against Bastions..teehee.. even more so combined with 30 lootas..teeheehee..

You can just see the sadness in their faces..

I'm still working on scratch building some high-yield missile pods, but what I came up with so far is way out of scale to the crisis suit..even though it's probably close to the size of the actual bit from the new Broadside. So for now I'll just pop on some missile pods I have already.

Now I really need to re-think the allies for my Ork army, and what I'm going to do about AV14.  S10 broadsides have served me so incredibly well over the last 10 months I'm almost at a loss on what to do next.  Maybe I'll go with the Chaos Space Marine thing taking some meltaguns.

Anyway off to bed, ready for game night..

Slannesh Chaos Lord

Despite Tau coming out tomorrow, I still have it in my head to build a small Chaos Space Marine ally force.  I was thinking about a unit of noise marines for the blastmaster, but due to the rules in the CSM book I would still have to have a troop choice.  But it would allow me to take a Helldrake.  A pink helldrake would look pretty bad-ass IMO.

Anyway the ideas are still going through my head and I wanted to try a color scheme.  Went through all the pink paints at my FLGS and finally settled on Vallejo Game Color Sunset Red and GW Emperor's Children.

The armor is based in sunset red, then washed heavily in Baal Red wash (Yes I still have a lot of it) and then layered with sunset red and emp's children.

This is both a test and potential ally HQ but I didn't put anywhere near as much work into it as I did the last one.  Not much blending, just layers.  It's overall an OK paintjob. I could have blended the armor and cloak but just didn't feel like it :)

He was definitely much easier to paint the second time around. The first time I spent a lot of looking trying to figure out what was what on the model.

I almost went with yellow for the sword and plasma, but thought it would be too much of a spot color.

Anyway, pics. Enjoy. 

The need for psychic defense

Over the last 2 games I've lost 7 nob bikers and the warboss to psychic powers.

Basically Jaws of the World Wolf lost me this game. all by itself. If I had made even statistical saves on it, my nobs would have had a good shot at killing all my opponent's scoring units. Necrons are scary at range, not so much up close and personal.

I've thought about the need for psychic defense, but now I've played more the need is clear. 

If you run nob bikers that is, if you don't then it isn't anywhere near as bad.  Enfeeble makes nob bikers weak to S8 again.  JoWW of course is just bad news in general.  I'm sure there are more including the totally unneeded Terrify.

I see two valid options for adding defense as allies:

Option 1: Space Wolves

HQ: Rune Priest 100pts
Troop: 5 Grey Hunters, 1 meltagun 80pts

Pros:
stops all powers on a 4+
useful as an offensive unit
Really good powers
I already own the models (no cash needed!)
A bit cheaper in points

Cons:
limited range


Option 2: Eldar

HQ: Farseer, Runes of warding, Doom (95)
Troop: 5 Rangers (95)

Pros:
table-wide
No need to put models in harm's way

Cons:
Not that useful outside the runes
I have to spend money
Depends on opponent's rolling instead of mine

Overall I think the Eldar are better, simply because the farseer can hide and still do it's job.

So for now I'm going to put together the Space Wolves (converting a priest from the space wolves box) and I'll try that out.  Depending on the points level of the Bay Area Open, I'll have to go for some Edlar.