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

Look what I got today

Sadly I won't have a lot of time to look at it until the weekend.  Gorgeous book and I'm looking forward to diving in.

Scorpion Grav Tank WIP

Scorpion Grav Tank

 So after a bath in simple green and some scrubbing to remove the old paint job, I primed up the Scorpion Grav Tank for my Mymeara Eldar and got a base coat down with the airbrush.  There's a whole lot more work to go and I'm really not looking forward to painting the giant gems on this thing.  I still have a lot of trouble making them not look terrible.  I might try masking the hull and use the airbrush as that could give me some nice gradients.

Last Game of 5th Edition

For my last game of 5th Edition I decided to bring out my ignored Eldar army, Michael came over and we played the Battle Missions Book mission, Infestation.  This represents the end of a Tyranid Invasion and the planet is destabilizing (as a result all area terrain is dangerous).  The Eldar deploy completely in one table-quarter and the Tyranids get the other three (though they can't deploy within 12" of my deployment zone.  In addition the Tyranids all get Stealth, and the Eldar all get Preferred Enemy.  I was really excited to play a different mission, as I am more of a thematic gamer, and don't rally like the standard missions in the book.

I won't go into all the details but the Eldar won 8 Kill points to the Tyranids 3.  The MVP's for the game were definitely the War Walkers who with Doom and Guide erased much of the giant Gargoyle  swarm and the Hive Tyrant.  They took a nice dent out of some Genestealers and the Zoanthropes as well and only lost a single weapon (they were nicely bubble wrapped and he didn't have any long range shooting).  The other was actually the Guardian squad.  They were fortuned up on the second turn and the Warlock and one normal guy actually survived a squad of hormagaunts and Genestealers assaulting into them.  That allowed me to focus fire on some incoming squads and probably won me the game in the end.

The Striking Scorpions were the biggest fail of the game.  Another screening Guardian squad would have been just as effective and cost way fewer points.  The Shining Spears were better than I expected, but just don't have enough attacks to do much for their point cost.  The Night Spinner was fun as well, but not better than another 3 War Walkers would have been.  In the future I would drop the Spears, Night Spinner and Scorpions and pick up two more Guardain Squads, a small unit of Pathfinders and 3 more War Walkers.

One problem the Eldar have with the Tyranids is the high initiative, something that they depend on to survive. The Tyranids on the other hand have trouble dealing with the massive amounts of fire (24 Strength 6 scatter laser shots, and 30 Bladestorm shots with doom and guide is rather disgusting).  I had a ton of fun playing, though I'm excited to see what 6th edition will have to offer.  

Eldar - 1997 Points

HQ: Eldrad Ulthran

HQ: Avatar

Troops: 10 Dire Avengers, Exarch (Bladestorm ;  Defend ; Power Weapon; Shimmershield)

Troops: 10 Dire Avengers, Exarch (Bladestorm ;  Defend ; Power Weapon; Shimmershield)

Troops: 10 Guardians (Scatter Laser)

               1 Warlock (Enhance, Singing Spear)

Elite: 10 Striking Scorpions, Exarch (Scorpion Claw)

Elite:   8 Harlequins (Harlequins Kiss)

            1 Shadowseer (Harlequins Kiss; Fusion Pistol)

            1 Troupe Master (Power Weapon; Fusion Pistol)

Fast Attack: 5 Shining Spears, Exarch (Skilled Rider ; Star Lance)

Heavy Support: 3 War Walker (2x Scatter Laser)

Heavy Support: 1 Wraithlord (2x Flamer; Missile Launcher)

Heavy Support: 1 Night Spinner (Holo-Field; Spirit Stones)

Tyranids - 1999 Points

HQ: Hive Tyrant (Lash Whip & Bonesword; Adrenal Glands; Implant Attack; Regeneration; Toxic Miasma; Wings; Leech Essence; Paroxysm)

Troops: 8 Genestealers (Toxin Sacs)

Troops: 8 Genestealers (Toxin Sacs)

Troops: 8 Genestealers (Toxin Sacs)

Troops: 12 Hormagaunts (Adrenal Glands; Toxin Sacs)

Troops: 12 Hormagaunts (Adrenal Glands; Toxin Sacs)

Elite: 3 Zoanthropes

Elite: 3 Zoanthropes

Elite: 8 Ymgarl Genestealers

Fast Attack: 24 Gargoyles (Adrenal Glands; Toxin Sacs)

Fast Attack:  5 Spore Mine Clusters

Heavy Support: Trygon Prime (Adrenal Glands; Regeneration)

Eldar castling in corner

Genestealers finishing munching on some Guardians

Avatar versus Genestealers 

Dire Avengers hiding on roof of building

End of game result

War Walker WIP

Mymeara War Walker 

I worked on a War Walker tonight for my Mymeara army.  I'm really excited so far with how it's coming out.  Looks much better than my old paint scheme.  It's also nice to have a break from painting so much yellow with the Lamenters, though I will continue to work on them as well.  The weapons are magnetized and will be white and black when they are painted up and the upper body is also magnetized to the legs for transport.  As a bonus most of the work is done with the airbrush so the army should paint up pretty fast.

I'm going to try something different with the bases and use some water-effects to have an ice-world theme.  Also looking at different products and ways to do snow.  I've seen the baking soda methods as well as the crushed glass products.  Might have to try a few out to see what works best.