Ice Table WIP #3

 

Did a little more work the last few days.  Put the third board section together (also have enough left over to do a fourth board later), and sanded the flat snowy portions of the board.  Next step will to do the white over-brushing to give a better snow effect.  I will probably end up gloss coating the board as well to have it look a little more snow-like.  I still need to figure out how to do the iced-over river.  Probably use resin with a little white and blue paint mixed in to cloud it up a little and give that a try.  Also time to start making plans for the various terrain bits that I will be doing.  Probably will start on the ice-crystal forests tonight and plan some pumping station style buildings.  Not sure what else I want to do.

I also found a similar board here that someone has built, and will be using some of his ideas, especially on the ice crystal forest.  Hopefully mine looks as good when it's finished.

Ice Table WIP #2

 

 

I managed to do more work on the ice table.  I attached the foam to the plywood and put a base coat of light blue paint on the whole thing.  Also picked up the rest of the materials for the third board section, as I didn't have enough of the 1.5" foam to do the board.  Also you can see the test fitting of some of the details that are going to be added.  For the third section I'm considering narrowing the river down and maybe building some sort of bridge over it.  Though I want to be able to stack these boards on each other, so most detail needs to be removable.  Also I need to figure out what to do for the pumping station in the middle of the river. 

Ice World Board for Mymeara Eldar WIP

I picked up the supplies tonight to start my new board.  I've been having an itch recently to build some terrain for a while now and decided to do something different and build an ice-world board.  It will go well with the Mymeara Eldar, but could be used for any army really.  The first picture shows my concept drawings.  The board will consist of 3 modular pieces (maybe expanded out with a fourth for variety later on) that can be put together in different ways.  The main feature is a large river that runs through the middle of the board that will be iced over.  I've marked where on the board the river banks need to line up so that they can be placed in any arrangement.  The other permanent feature will be some pipes that run out of the river from a pumping station.  The rest will be modular.  A few ideas that I would like to build: crystal forests, communications/sensor tower, islands for the river and outposts.  Also thinking a few Eldar specific bits like a webway portal.

After I finish cutting the foam up, I will paint with a light blue latex paint to seal the foam up, and then apply a fine sand to the foam portions to act as snow.  The real trick will be to do  the iced over river.  I figure I can paint it a dark blue and then use either a clear resin or water effects and than scratch the surface with sand paper to get an ice look, but I'm not sure yet.  Will have to experiment a little to figure something out.  If anyone knows a good tutorial on doing ice, especially in large scale post a comment.

Vanguard Veterans

 

I uploaded a picture of these guys a while ago, but blogger ate it at some point so here is a new pic.  I plan on using these guys as a unit of vanguard vets, who can also be substituted out for death company or just sergeants for the various squads.  The modeling options in the death company box are just amazing and there is a ton of detail, too much in some cases.  After painting 15 blood drops on a model it starts to get tedious.  Almost as bad as painting all the gems on Eldar models.

I will soon be posting some rules for a mini-campaign Michael and I will be playing soon.  It will be a Tyranid invasion of a planet that the Lamenters and Eldar will defend against.  I'm really excited considering how the new rules really push towards a strong narrative experience. 

Death Company Chaplain

Painted up a chaplain/reclusiarch for the Lamenters tonight.  With death company getting a whole lot better with 6th edition, I figured chaplains might be getting a bit better as well.  He's built out of a couple different bits: torso is from the death company, bolt pistol from chaos space marine, and the power maul (I figure now that crozius counts as a power maul I might as well use one) from a Chaos Terminator.  The back is magnetized for the normal backpack or the jump pack.  Overall I'm pretty happy with how he turned out.

Lamenters Furioso Dreadnought

Brother Erelim led Volturno squad, 5th company for over a century, before falling to the vile Tyranids on Taumna IV.  He led his squad on a daring attack on a gargantuan Hierophant.  He was able to use his lightning claw to open up a joint in on the creatures massive legs, and plant a melta charge that was able to cripple the monster enough for the chapters Storm Ravens to bring it down.  He was almost killed in the explosion, and the noxious poisons and spores were able to compromise his battered body.  Brother Elim, the only surviving member of Volturno squad, was able to evacuate Erelim's failing body.  The Calix priesthood quickly decided to entomb his body in one of the chapter's precious Dreadnoughts.

Erelim Domitianus was reborn and now serves the chapter with the same daring he did in his prior life.  He favors a close combat load-out using the twin blood talons, that mirror the lightning claws he used as an assault marine, though he has been known to take a frag cannon and heavy flamer for boarding actions.

Bastion WIP

For a change the last two evenings I've been building some terrain, specifically fortifications. Rather than spend the forty bucks for a Bastion I pulled out the foam board and went to town.  I also used some craft sticks to do some detailing, and some 'granny-grating' for doing some nice metal grating.  I will be putting firing points on the four empty walls and making a cool looking gun for the top.  When I paint it up the four arched panels will get some Lamenter's murals and iconography.

One thing I will do different for the next one would be the shape.  Octagons are a real pain and instead I will do a square with another offset square to give a nice shape to it with nice 90° angles.

6th Edition Objective Marker PDF's

With the new missions in 6th Edition, there is a lot more book keeping to be done.  I have started to create tokens for all the various uses and the first one I did was for objectives.  Included in the document are six copies of each possible 'Mysterious Objective' result as well as enough of the various VP markers for all the primary and secondary missions.  I'm still working on tokens for Mysterious Terrain, vehicle damage, hull points, and psychic powers.  I am not a graphic designer but I hope you will find them useful.  I print them on  card-stock and then laminate and cut out.  A 1.25" whole punch works great for the round objective markers.

Link: 6th Edition Objective Marker PDF

A few thoughts on 6th Edition

So I played two small games this weekend with my Eldar versus Lamenters to figure out how the rules would work in 6th Edition.  It was a lot of fun and I look forward to the new game.  This will probably be something I avoid tournament play as it seems wound allocation and other things can be abused pretty badly.  A few first impressions though:

Blood Angels will still be fun to play and my army won't change too much except for a few things.  Death Company.  They are amazing.  With 5 strength 5 attacks on the charge these guys are going to wipe out anything they come across.  Paired with  a Chaplain or Reclusiarch they will be re-rolling both to-hit and to-wounds rolls!  So ten of these guys jumping out of a Storm Raven or Land Raider will be laying about 40 wounds most marine equivalents.  Sadly Furious Charge loses the +1 to Initiative, which is going to really drop the survivability of the Assault Marines.  I depended on I:5 to keep them alive.  The free I:10 attack is nice, but can only be used if they didn't move 12" in the movement phase.  Playing with Mephiston the other day I rolled probably the perfect combo of psychic powers for him.  Between the 3 powers he got: +D3 Strength, Toughness, Initiative and attacks; Eternal Warrior, Fleet, and re-roll all failed to-hit, wound, and saving throws!  While that was a pretty lucky set of psychic powers, most of them looks like they will have uses.

Eldar will get a nice rejuvenation with Eldrad being awesome with psychic powers (gets 4 and casts 3), and jet-bikes are really nice always getting a 5+ cover and being crazy fast if they need to be.  War Walkers are still great, and in my game I saw how useful the new squadrons rules are when one got immobilized I was able to leave it behind and move onto the objective with the other two (it was the mission that heavy support choices were scoring units).  I also discovered the joy of Dire Avengers with Shimmershield and Defend.  They were a nice tar-pit for a squad of TH/SS Terminators and a Librarian the entire game.  Dropping them down to a single attack a piece was brutal and with a 5+ the Eldar were able to really hang in there.

Overall my impression were good, though both armies will change a little and I will have to get used to the new rules.  I like the character that has been infused into the mission and game as a whole and think so far that it is a better system than the last.

Reclusiarch in Terminator Armor