No 'Risk' No Fun

On how small changes in a list and the way you play it possibly turn out to be a lot of fun and victory! But being hard to apply. Part I

Trying to play a little bit more risky with my marines last night, turned out to be fun and brought me the 8th win in the 10 games I played in our campaign. Usually I basically run a Librarian with nullzone and some other power, a dread, 2 Preds, a Vindi, 3 Landspeeders, 2 tactical squads and a stern guard and I try to vary depending on the enemy, sometimes drop the stern guard and add an additional tactical squad. I did pretty well so far. But as strange as it may sound, I wanted to change something to this working lists I had not tried before. I tried the Captain with Command Squad (4 plasma guns and an Apothecary) against the necrons and it worked out pretty good. So I wandered what to take and after reading a nice article on the 'Yes the Truth hurts'-blog I decided to run a 'Master of the Forge' (henceforth MoF).

the agony of choice
With the current SM codex one definitely has a lot of choices and some of them really sound great, considering the rules or the fluff, and there are many fantastic models BUT, if you do spent some time on studying the individual choices you will see, that in the end a player tends to reduce this plethora of units to a core, which typically is the same had used before. In my case this have always been, dreads, tacticals, scouts, landspeeders, predators , vindicators and stern guard. Additionally some units always drop out because they are really useless or because of personal taste. In my case this have always been things like, bikes, scout bikes, Land-speeder Storm, Assault Marines, ...

Wait, but this exactly melts down to the same list(s) I already mentioned above, and there is the dilemma, you cannot just change your army list completely, you can do changes judging on experiences with units, personal taste, enemies,.. But all these changes are (normally) very 'small' and the core of the army will stay the same. (Ok, at this point I should say that I specialise myself now to the case of a SM army.)
So, changes like dropping Melta bombs when playing against 'Nids or including them when facing IG are usually what happens.

Now what I tried was to at least change the HQ choice and take a look on how this effects my army. Taking the MoF I had to choose whether to give him the conversion beamer and or use him more close combat related. I chose the conversion beamer.
Ok, now since he probably should not move very much in that match, I had to support him with an unit to ensure his survivability. Now the MoF is able to bolster ruins by increasing its cover save by +1. Thus I chose scouts to support him carrying camo cloaks (giving them a 2+ cover save in that ruin), sniper rifles and a rocket launcher.But bolstering ruins is not the only and real advantage of the MoF, he also changes your army list composition by allowing you to take dreads as heavy support. Sounded great, lets play a dread base army I thought, until, until I realised the problem related to

Confinedness of the personal collection
I noticed that in no way I could field more than 2 Dreads, simply because I don't own more then two (well, in fact 3 but one is not usable). And this was not the only unit where I noticed that changing an army is not just limited by the personal taste and the usability of certain units but also the banal fact that one has to own enough models! To cut a long story short, I quickly saw me facing the same choices as always. Sure I could have used a whirlwind proxy but I did decide for the predator again.

Now the final list I used looked like this:

MoF with conversion beamer
10 Tactical SM, with Rocket Launcher, Flamer, Rhino
10 Tactical SM, with Rocket Launcher, Flamer, Rhino
10 Tactical SM, with Heavy Bolter, Melta gun, Rhino
7 Scouts, with Camo Cloaks, Sniper Rifles, Rocket Launcher
Dread with Plasma Cannon, Heavy Flamer
Dread with 2 x twin-linked Autocannons
Landspeeder Typhoon
2 x Predator with Autocannon, Heavy Bolter
Vindicator

As one easily notices, no big changes made even though I tried really hard. But at this point I was really sure, that the change of the HQ choice would enable me to change my style of playing against the 'nids. If it worked out and how will be told in the next part of this article, following the next days...

Short Battle Report: Iron Knights vs. Chaos Daemons

So tonight I fought against a good friend of mine who was fielding his chaos daemons for the first time. this army was basically his whfb army but he used it for a test match now in 40k against me.

he was basically fielding:
- Herold on Juggernaut w/ 2 or 3  Bloodcrushers
- 3 Flamers
- 10 Horrors with standard bearer/icon and the Changeling (if that was his name)
- 10 Plague Bearers  with standard bearer/icon
- 10 Daemonettes w/ standard bearer/icon
- 10 Bloodletters with standard bearer/icon
- 5 or 6 Seekers
- 3 Screamers
- 2 Soul Grinder

I was fielding:
- Scriptor
- Sternguard, 5 veterans, 3 combimelta, serg. w/ pf. in Razorback w/ heavy bolter
- Dreadnought with multimelta, heavyflamer in drop pod w/ beacon
- Trike w/ multimelta
- Landspeeder w/ heavy flamer, multimelta
- Vindicator
- 2 Predator with autocannon and heavy bolters
- Tactical Squad, 10 Space Marines, Flamer, Rocket Launcher, Rhino
- Tactical Squad, 10 Space Marines, Melta, Multimelta, serg. w/ pf, Rhino
- 5 Scouts, 4 snipers and heavy bolter and cloaks
- 5 scouts, 4 snipers and rocket launcher and cloaks

This short report is some kind of test for upcoming reports and unfortunately without pictures but some scatches.

Deployment and movement here:

I started and could not do much but move. His Flamers scattered off the table and got lost. His Soul Grinder 1 also scattered off the table and I was allowed to redeploy him and put in some ruin, where he failed his test for dangerous terrain and got immobilized! My Drop Pod scattered just 2 inches and I moved all my transporters towards the objectives and the landspeeder went full speed behind some cover. In the shooting phase his Horrors took out the Sergeant of my Scouts squat S1 (with heavy bolter) and his Soul Grinder was able to kill one Scout from S2 (with RL). I will not mark all shootings and movements on the following maps. But in my second turn my Predator to the left killed some Screamers (Sc) the Tactical Squad (melta) left the Rhino (R2) as well as the Sternguard the Razorback (RB). Ok the Trike moved full speed to the right. The Tactical Squad from R2 fired at the remaining Screamers as well as the Razorback did and killed them. My Dreadnought (D) used his Heavy Flamer to kill 1  Plague Bearer (PB) that had walked up to the Scouts S1. But missed with his multimelta. The Vindicator also shot at the PB scattered but managed to kill  2. The second Predator did also very well and killed 1 PB. The Scouts S1were forced to do a leadership test for shooting at the Plague Bearers due to the Changeling but passed and killed 1 Plague Bearer, thanks to the Hellfire-Amo. The Landspeeder showed up and killed 3 or 4 Horrors with his Heavy Flamer. After this the Dreadnought charged the PB and killed 2 and survived without any hit against him, thus 2 additional PB died because they were fearless.

it looked like this at the begining of his second turn.

So I am gettin tired of producing this pictures but here is what happened in his second turn. His Daemonetts and the Seekers as well as the second Soul Grinder showed up. The Horrors scored a glanzing hit at the Landspeeder but fortunately his crew was only shaken. The Grinder destoryed the left Predator which exploded and killed on Veteran from the Stern Guard. His Seekers ran forward and the Soul Grinder 1 again killed one Scout but they passed the leadership test. The last Pleague Bearer was taken out by the Dreadnaught in closecombat. In my 3rd turn, my sternguard entered the RB and drove up to where the left Predator has been and killed some Horrors with the heavy bolter. the Vindicator drove back and killed all the Daemonetts while the Predator killed 1 Seeker, the Dreadnought also killed one with the heavy Flamer and the Scouts SG1 also with the heavy Bolter. Tactical Squad 1 entered the objective in the north and Tactical Squad 2 moved further into the ruins. ah, and the landspeeder moved behind the big ruins in the north to recover...

daemons turn 3 his Herold and Bloodcrushers appeared directly above the last Predator. His Bloodletters scatterd off the table and where also destroyed. At this point all daemon hope was lost but we continued. His Soul Grinder 2 destroyed the Multimelta of the Dreadnaught and the Horrors moved towards the left objective and tryed to kill the RB but could not penetrate the armour. the seekers attacked the scouts but just killed 1 of them but also lost one, thus a draw. the soul grinder tried to charge the Dreadnought but failed.

To bad for him, in my 4th turn the Landspeeder showed up and fired his multimelta in his back and blew the guy up. the Sternguard in the RB drove forward. The Dreadnaught charged the seekers to support the Scouts, while the Scout Squad 2 had already reached the ground floor of the ruin to move forward the right objective. The Predator killed 1 Juggernaut while the Sternguard had left the RB and also killed 2 Juggernauts. The Seekers where killed by the Dreadnaught and Scouts...

Well I font remember the last part of the battle exactly, an maybe it was turn 5 not 4, but this was basically all the action that took place. So at the end of turn 4 or 5 with the exception of the immobilized Soul Grinder and some Horrors the Iron Knights killed every Daemon and captured all 4 objectives. And lost 1 Predator, 4 or 5 Scouts and one Stern Guard Veteran. I have to say, the Daemon player was unluky with two scattering dices and the Bloodthirsters have just been thrown into this dangerous region to get the chance to see them fight, because the game was already lost at that point. Unfortunetaly they dissapeared in the warp... I personally had much luck with the scattering dices, I scattered nearly all the time but always just 2 or 4 inches before subtracting the WS. It was a nice game even though I really dont like Daemons at all...

Librarian WIP & Da Waaagh

Here are some pics of my selfmade librarian (still working on it) and the first of my (test-)Orks! I am planing to set up a new blog for them as soon as they make any progress.

Please excuse the quality of the pictures, not doing it very often , taking pictures is still a new area for me.

Quick WIP: Stern Guard I

Just a quick preview: These are 5 guys of my Stern Guard unit(s). This is just a WIP post and therefore mold-lines maybe there, shoulder pads and back pads are missing, heads and shoulder pads are actually not fixed yet. And of course the legs of one of the veterans are still missing. These guys are actually not forming a single unit but I have no more meltas left, thus I am not able to build the missing combi-meltas currently. For the Sergeant (the guy w/ the power fist) I did a conversion, placing his bolter under his p-fist with an ammunition belt.


Please  forgive the poor quality of the pictures, they were just taken in between.

... there are .. voices .. in my head ...

This is a short review of the psychic powers a space marine librarian has access to. Please leave your personal thoughts on the powers as a comment!


Hi there,


the last two games (against two different chaos armies) I tried a new way of playing my iron knights space marines, I used a librarian accompanied by stern guard in a razorback (5 Veterans incl. a Sergeant with power fist, 3 combi-meltas and a heavy flamer, the razorback with heavy bolters). Despite the fact that this squad did not do anything special I will try them again next time. Regardless of the special equipment of the stern guard, I was thinking about which PSYCHIC POWER(S) I should take.


So this post is supposed to give you briefly my impressions on the different powers and additionally I would like you to comment your thoughts! I don't want to start a discussion here, where one discusses about the comments of other users. It is just supposed to be a summary of thoughts and I would really appreciate your comments.


So here we go:

    * Smite: A psychic shooting attack.

--> This is a solid choice, but since the Librarian has 'only' BS 4 he still has to hit the target. The fact that it is an assault 4 weapon and an incredible AP 2 makes it (on paper) a really nice power to take out heavy armored units like terminators, but the range of 12" also limits the use of this power.

    * Force Dome: Grants an invulnerable save to the librarian and his unit.

--> A 5+ inv. save is not that good, could increase your chance to survive in the open against some heavy shooting or cc. But I think this power could block one of the two power slots most of the time instead of being really useful.

    * Machine Curse: A psychic shooting attack against a vehicle.

--> Well, ok a glancing hit against a vehicle within 24". Sounds not much, but for example, with a bolter you need a 6 on a D6 to do this to the rear of a rhino and you will need a 5+ on a D6 for a Land Raider with a Las Can, so this is not that bad. And glancing hits  even if they are really bad in this edition and cannot destroy vehicles (except some skimmers) can at least save you some time or make a vehicle useless by destroying its weapon. So one could think about this power, but as ill luck would have it and you are facing tyranids this power could be a total waste!

    * The Avenger: A template based psychic shooting attack.

--> Well, I think this is one of the best powers to take. Since it is template based you don't need to hit, it ignores cover saves and has an incredible AP of 3 with roasts even marines easily. Put another way, it is a marine roasting heavy flamer! Definitely a power to think about

    * Quickening: Grants Fleet and a boosted Initiative stat for the assault phase.

--> I think one of the more useless powers since it puts your Librarian where he should not be, in close combat. Even worse it just affects the Librarian itself. Nonsense

    * Null Zone: Forces enemies to re-roll Invulnerable Saves.

--> This power does not affect your troops directly but decreases the durability of your enemy. It is certainly the hell for demons and other units relying on there inv. saves. But there are some things I think one should keep in mind: first of all it does not neglect theses saves they just have to be re-rolled if successful and there are not so many units that have to rely on inv. saves. Take for example the assault terminators, ok you may force them to re-roll their 3+ storm shield saves (or their 5+) but well, to penetrate their armor you also need AP 2 weapons... so this power is not bad could have a very good effect but is sensitively depending on the opponent you are facing

    * Might of the Ancients: Increases the Librarian's Strength and armor Penetration against vehicles in the Assault Phase.

--> Same as Quickening, It is only useful in CC, where your Librarian should not go to anyway. The armor penetration of 2D6 is nice but if your plan does not work out you are left somewhere in the open (since you are not stuck in cc with vehicles) and a very nice target. Rather useless in my opinion.


    * The Gate of Infinity: Teleports the Librarian and any unit he is with.

--> Hell, this is one of the most useful powers in my point of view. And there are some combinations which may make this power even more effective. For example, since you are allowed to re-deploy your units using the deep strike rules you can use locator beacons to place your troops without scattering and thereby without worrying about loosing a member of your unit due to a rolled double. So a deep striked dreadnought (or what ever) in a drop pod can provide you a region (of at least 12" in diameter) where you are able to drop your librarian (incl. unit) exactly where you want. Having different locator beacons spread (within 24") this means you can jump with your unit over the battle field like a rabbit. To make your unit even faster you can (YES I ASKED A GW GUY IT IS POSSIBLE) use the power within your razorback (rhino) which leaves the vehicle behind, but this means e.g. you drive 12" pop smokes, next turn you teleport 24" and then unleash the hell with your stern guard within 12". This makes a total movement of 36" in two turns and an effective range of 48"!! An additional feature of this power is, that since you use it at the beginning of your movement you can leave CC like this filthy necronlord, teleport yourself out of the CC lets say 12" and again unleash hell!

    * Vortex of Doom: High strength psychic shooting attack with a blast template that has a chance to fail and affect the Librarian.

--> Speaking of HELL, if you take a look at the stats of this power this really looks like hell for every terminator unit on this world BUT (!!!) if you take a look at the further rules it looks like hell for you and your librarian! Even though it does not happen very often, failing the psychic test will kill your Librarian and approx. half of the accompanied unit on a 2+ on a D6! Maybe a Librarian in a terminator armor with a storm shield in an equally equipped unit will be able to make use of this power without being in fear for one's life! This power is literally the SWORD OF DAMOCLES!


So this are my personal thoughts on the different powers, now it is up to yours to tell me/us what powers you like and for what special purpose! Lets go

Captain / Sergeant finished

I found some time to finish this Sergeant (which will sometimes work as a Captain). And I took this opportunity to improve my photographing skills...

Comments are welcome, as always.

Sergeant finished

I recently finished my Sergeant from the Black Reach Box. And took that opportunity to take some pictures because I  learned (but still have to learn a lot) something about taking pictures from a tutorial.

selfmade weathering powder / pigments

In the last time I read some articles about using pigments for weathering models. And yesterday I found this wonderful article(s) at 'ultrawerke'. 

So I started reading some more about it and I decided to do this myself! But this month I have to save some money so I could not just go to my local hobby store and buy me some pigments from Vallejo oder MIG. So I came up with the idea of producing some pigments for weathering and to share this with you in this tutorial.

To be rigorous I should say that this tutorial will mainly be about doing a dust, some rust and a mud effect.

Notice: If you are interested in doing this yourself, always do a test-run first!

So here are the things I used:

1. a pencil

2*. a colored pencil

3. Vallejo Matt Varnish

4. Vallejo Thinner

5*. Water

6. Sandpaper

7*. a knife

8. some container

9. brushes

10. sharpener

* : alternative

It goes without saying that we need a model to paint on:

In this case I used a part of an old Rhino. It was only sprayed with Boltgun Metal and only the parts needed for this tutorial have been painted. Namely the exhaust pipes. (Just for the sake of completeness: it was drybrushed with Boltgunmetal, washed with Vallejo Humo+GW Badab Black, drybrushed with GW Tin Bitz and Vallejo Hammered Copper)

How does weathering with pigments work?

Usually one needs different supplies, one needs a thinner, for this task turpentine or white spirit is often used. And one needs a fixer and/or a varnish. There are different ways to apply the pigments, mixed with a thinner or dry.

To say this right away, I have not tried working with this stuff but I read a lot about it and I am just showing a cheap and fast idea how to do easy effects on your models. For more professional results one really should use the supplies named above. As soon as I will have them I will make a second tutorial. Nevertheless the results of this method are surprisingly good!

So first we need to make our pigments:

I used a pencil (HB) which has as we all know a graphite mine (which is is one of the allotropes of carbon - as diamond) and not of lead! 

It has a dark gray color. I also used a a colored pencil for some rust or mud, it has a light brown color. To make our pigments we first need to use a sharpener (or knife) to sharpen the pencil. Now one can either use a knife and scrape over the mine or -as I did- one uses sandpaper and runs the pencil over it and collect the pigments. 

To avoid wooden impurities one has to resharpen the pencil many times.

 

  

The pictures show how I used to make the pigments.

Applying the pigments:

I applied the pigments in different ways. For the dust effect on the exhaust pipe and the mud/rust effect on the chain I first applied some of the thinner

Now its time for the pigments. Use a dry brush to take them out of their container and put them on the thinner without blurring them much on the surface. I just dropped them on the thinner.

Notice: I am just showing the dust effect on this pictures, the mud on the chain works equivalent.

For the (spontaneous idea) rust effect at the 'door' I used a different technique: I mixed the thinner directly with the brown pigments and applied them on the surface.

Now wait some minutes to let the thinner dry. And maybe remove some not-fixed pigments.

Sealing the pigments:

Know we need to seal the pigments to make sure they stay where they are.

For this I mixed Matt varnish with thinner

 

and applied this now on the pigmented areas

I applied the varnish by dabbing it with the brush and tried not to blur the pigments.

Again let it dry. (And maybe seal them again later)

And here is the result:

So you may think "ok, why should I use pigments when I am able to do weathering with my colors too?"

The answer to this question - I asked myself the same - is very simple:

"They look amazing!" just take a look at some pictures in the further up mentioned article.

And most important they add structure to your weathering and look very realistic.

I am thinking of using this easy method on the barrels of my Space Marine weapons. I did it on my Heavy Bolter but since I am absolutely incapable of taking good pictures the effect can not be seen very good on the following picture

 

(seriously if anybody could tell me (via email) how to take good close up photos with my digicam I would be very grateful.)

Other possible applications would be the tank chains, dozer blades,...