I Now Have Chaos Space Marines!!
Thanks to John from Santa Cruz Warhammer, I now have no more Imperial Guard left, but I do have a heafty army of Chaos Marines.
This came at a great time too as my FLGS is about to start a campaign/league called Mittennacht. If I wasn't able to trade away my IG in time, I was going to run my Daemonhunters (which are always good for a sure loss). Fortunately, I will be running my new CSM.
I've worked up a quick list to try out. I'm a bit short on time (and the holiday season isn't giving me more time), so I need to get some list-testing done ASAP to weed out any problems and get used to the new army quickly. Here's my initial list (trying to be somewhat fluffy too):
HQ: Daemon Prince with MoK & Wings (140 pts)
HQ: Daemon Prince with MoN & Wings (150 pts)
Elite: Dreadnaught w/ Plasma Cannon (105 pts)
Elite: 4x Terminators w/ 2 Combi-Meltas & 1 Reaper Autocannon (155 pts)
Troops: 7x Plague Marines w/ 2 Plasmaguns, Champion w/ Power Fist, & a Rhino w/ Havoc Launcher (281 pts)
Troops: 8x Khorne Berzerkers w/ Skull Champion w/ Power Fist & Rhino w/ Combi-Melta (268 pts)
Troops: 10x CSMs w/ Aspiring Champion, Icon of Chaos Glory, & Rhino w/ Havoc Launcher (225 pts)
Troops: 10x CSMs w/ Aspiring Champion, Icon of Chaos Glory, & Rhino w/ Havoc Launcher (225 pts)
Troops: 10x CSMs w/ Aspiring Champion, Icon of Chaos Glory, & Rhino w/ Havoc Launcher (225 pts)
Heavy Support: 2x Obliterators
Heavy Support: 1x Obliterator
Total: 1999 Points
That gives me 60 models with at least a 3+ save that should be a task for any army to whittle down. I wanted to keep everything Khorne & Nurgle (and in their sacred numbers no less) and originally I was toying with 2 of each Cult Troops instead of just 1 each (too few models for my taste though). I'm going to go back through in a bit to try to see if I can find a bit of room to make to give the DP with the MoN a Psychic Power (possibly Nurgle's Rot since I want him up close and personal, but Warptime is awesome too).
What sucks a bit is that I really like Lucius the Eternal and alot of the Slaanesh stuff, but I also really like the Berzerkers. Mixing the 2 would kinda kill the fluff thing I want to keep, but it's be fun. For this, I want to keep a bit of fluff going, but in a future fluff-be-damned list, I may play with them together a bit more.
Another list I'm playing witht hat I think would be a really fun list to play is a Black Legion army fielding 1 of each Cult Troop in their respective sacred number (Tzeentch,= 7, Khorne = 8, Nurgle = 7, Slaanesh = 6). Fill that out with other units divisible by 4 (to model evenly amongs the Chaos gods) to get more support and a bit more variety. I've toyed around with it a bit, but so far, no list I rally love yet.
What’s My Must-Take Chaos Daemon Unit?
Bloodcrushers.
I NEVER leave home without 3+ of them. For a mere 40 points each, you get a Power-Weapon wielding, 3+ Armour Saving, Furious Charging, model with a WS that means you'll nearly always hit on 3s and wound on 3s (often on 2s). On the charge, these bad boys have a better Initiative that SMurfs, and get 4 attacks each that hit on 3s, wound on 2s, and deny armour saves.
Yeah, you probably won't always be fighting marines, but I think they're a good standard to compare killing power. I mean, if you can rip through SMurfs like butter, what odds does a guardsman (or Gaunt or Tau or Ork) have? You even deny Plague Marine's their ever so evil Feel No Pain save.
When I run my Daemons, you can be sure that I make sure to save at least 120 points for these guys to come along. Their only drawback is that they are a fire-magnet the turn the Deep Strike, so you have to be careful to protect them (you did take Chaos Icons to avoid scattering disasters, right?). Once they touch down though, the can mow through pretty much any other unit on the table.
Mnly complaint with Bloodcrushers is their models. Yeah, there's awesome; but it's hard to vary them enough to make them look distinct from each other. I've found that I can use some of the Fantasy Warriors of Chaos models as a stand-ins, and they've been great looking so far.
Here's one of my Fantasy models used as a Bloodcrusher (I still need to finish the head and base, but he's more finished than most of my work):
‘Dawn of the Dead’ Scenario Game
Friday, we had a 'Dawn of the Dead' scenario at my FLGS from around 6 till closing (although ACTUALLY, we only played until about 9:45). BASICALLY, the scenario was that you get 2 Troop choices to score points for killing zombies and other nasties. Once your models are killed the 1st time, one of your units would come back as zombies and score points for killing living models. TECHNICALLY, we could attack fellow players from Turn 2 onwards, but we were all too busy dealing with the zombies to do that (although, plans were made, but never executed).
We ended up having seven players involved; they were:
- A Chaos Daemon player with 15 Bloodletters and 17 Daemonettes (me)
- Another Chaos Daemon player with 30 Bloodletters
- A Imperial Guard player with a Platoon (~40 guardsmen) and allied Sisters of Battle in a Rhino
- A Deathwing player with 2 squads of 5 Termies
- A Space Marine player with 2 Tac Squads in Rhinos
- A Necron player with 2 groups of Warriors (what else?)
- A Chaos Space Marine player with 2 Squads (one was in a Rhino... maybe both)
I made a quick Battle-Report of this here: Dawn of the Dead Battle Report
The pictures are here:
If you were there and have corrections for any of my notes though, shoot me an email and I'll make the fixes. This is all based on my memory which ain't what it used to be.
As Promised… Col. ‘Iron Hand’ Straken
As I promised earlier today, here's my Colonel 'Iron Hand' Straken model, fully painted. It's not great compared to some of the amazing painters on other blogs, but it is a big step up for me. Here's the pictures:
Straken was hand-primed with Chaos Black and base coated with P3 Paints (I don't recall the exact ones, but I'll try to remember to look them up and update this post). Once that was done, I gave it a wash of Badab Black). Once that was done, I went back and touced up a few spots to lessen the darkness of the wash (which I guess is kinda like a highlight).
I do need to read up on getting pictures taken. Getting clean, sharp images was HARD. The 2 pics above are the best I got, and I'm not quite as happy with them as I want to be. I'll read up and practice a bit before Harker, so maybe I can improve my photography skills and painting skills. Reading all these blogs with great painters makes seeing my own work kinda painful, but I am learning alot...
Coming a bit later, I'm hoping to have Gunnery Sgt. Harker painted (and then I'm done with special characters and moving onto the rest of the army).
Well, I did it Anyways…
I ended up caving in and getting Space Hulk.
Having punched out all the tiles, and snapped-together all my figures, I'm not regretting it. It turns out my big fear was completely off base. I was mainly concerned that I would seldom get to play, but my wife ended up enjoying the game. Granted, it took a bit of convincing and pointing out that even though it is Games Workshop, it's really nothing like Warhammer (although, she was the alien mostly, so that helped).
All told, it ended up being a fun game. I had played 2nd Edition way back, and there's a few similarities, but this is quite a different game (I hear it's more similar to 1st Edition though). I wasn't exactly ready for how vicious the aliens can be. The first few games, I did not fare well (should have used more Overwatch), and the aliens completely wiped the floor with me. Later games I did better, but I was never able to get a win out of my Marines.
Despite many loses on my part, it was a win overall. I was n't sure exactly how my wife would take to the game, and while it's still not her favorite game, she did like it and I'll probably be able to play again.
Next up is my brother and my dad. I'm a bit more optimistic about them liking it, but we'll see...
Otherwise, it was a slow week (for games... was a busy week for work) and I didn't get any games in, but I know for sure I have an Apocalypse game Saturday, so I'm hoping to get at least one game in prior to that.
2000pt Capture and Hold – Daemonhunters vs. Space Marines
Another quick and dirty Battle Report from the escalation league I was in. I had added some non-Grey Knights by this point so I had officially changed to Daemonhunters instead of referring to my army as Grey Knights. It was a sad day.
No major updates still on the Wordpress plug-in. I've done the database schemas and basic grunt work to get it going. I'm working on using the Battle Reports I've already done to give me some sample data to get the display done and from there to move on to adding functionality it input them without hacking the database directly.
Since I'm sure you're not here to listen to me go on about me coding stuff, here's the Battle Report after the jump...
Battle Report: 1000pt Capture and Hold – Grey Knights (Daemonhunters) vs. Imperial Guard
Just a quick note... I play both Daemonhunters and Imperial Guard. This was an escalation league game I was in as the Daemonhunters, but up until the 1500pt. games, I ran purely with Grey Knights. Sadly, I don't have pictures, but I'm workign on remembering to take pics more in the future.
Also, I am working on coding a plug-in for Wordpress to make creating and posting Battle Reports simple and easy. It's still early in it's progress, but as I get it up and running, I hope to have it unveiled for viewing this Winter. I'm aiming to have it open for outside contributions early 2010. More details to come, but feel free to read the Battle Report following the jump...
To Space Hulk or Not…
Games Workshop just re-released Space Hulk after 20 years of it being out of print.
This is something I've wanted to play for a while, but never found a copy, now that parts not too bad (although it is on a "limited" print run). Unfortunately, GW wants $99 for the game. That's alot for a game that I can't foresee my wife playing too often; and honestly, I'm not sure how much I'd play it.
Looking over the bits and pieces, $99 seems like a whole lotta money for not alot of stuff. If it were metal, I'd be more understanding. But 35 plastic minis? Granted, they look much more dynamic than the normal terminators and genestealers from 40k, but come one...
All told, I'm certain this will sell out and GW will make a mint on it. I'm still not sure if I want it still or not, but I do know I'm not interested in it for that much money.
I've ended up with 2 ways to go on this:
1) If the "limited" run goes well and GW releases it again, I might check eBay or something andsee if they ever get down to around$60-$70. That's still more than I like to spend on a board game; but this game does look pretty fun.
2) I have 40k minis already, and Board Game Geek has the rules for 1st and 2nd edition available. So, I could use my minis with their rules and printout my own corridor tiles. While it might not look as cool, it'd be MUCH cheaper and might be more fun since my Imperial Guard could be like the marines from Alien/Aliens...
Meta
Categories
Tags
Archives
Blogs I Follow
- A Host of Word Bearers
- A Year of Frugal Gaming
- Bell of Lost Souls
- Berks Warhammer 40k
- Blood of Kittens
- Daemonic Possession
- Dark Future Games
- From the Warp
- Santa Cruz Warhammer
- Spite for the Dice Gods
- The Back 40k
- The Painting Corps
- Warpstone Flux
- Yes the Truth Hurts