Tyranids: First Contact

Hi all,

I haven't gotten much further with painting the hive tyrant but instead this week I managed to borrow some models off a friend and play a 1875pt game so thought I'd do a short one about my experiences so far.

I was using a flying hive tyrant with lash whip, bonesword and heavy venom cannon, 2 units of 30 termagants, a unit of 30 hormagaunts, 2 tervigons, 2 exocrines, a unit of 3 zoanthropes with neurothrope, a venomthrope, a unit of 4 warriors with 2 boneswords and lash whips, 3 deathspitters and a barbed strangler using a Combined Arms detachment.  I was playing against raven guard using a talon strike force with a pinion demi company, which mostly deep struck or outflanked, a librarius conclave of 3 and a shadowstrike kill team.

The battle went well, playing a maelstorm mission, my tervigons were disappointing as they did little before getting killed, while the gaunts of both kinds did very well holding up space marine units and even wiping some out after a few turns. I really liked the exocrines, their Ap2 high strength weapon really helped against the marines where other units just had to rely on weight of shot to do damage.

Another unit I like were the zoanthropes as they more than earnt their points back and worked well to anchor the back line of the army against the deep striking stuff and take on the librarians.

I didn't get much out of my tyrant till the last turn but I think I needed to play it more aggressively rather than holding it back in future games.

I definitely want to get an exocrine and loads of gaunts for this project as for me they're what worked well during the game so I'll probably look into the endless swarm formation, which allows gaunt units to go into ongoing reserves when destroyed on a 4+.

Hopefully I should have a guide for how I'm painting my Tyranids plus a fully painted Tyrant to show with it next weekend.

New Year, New Army: Tyranids

Hi guys

With 2016 being a month old now, I thought it was a perfect time to share on of my new projects for the year.  I was inspired by the "getting started" boxes that Games Workshop have release to start a new 40k army different from the many shades of power armour I normally do, so I'm starting to collect Tyranids.

For those who don't know Tyranids, they are a race of bio-weapons controlled by a central hive mind who's only aim is to consume biomass and increase their numbers.  They area a bug like swarm consisting of a multitude of differing creatures each suited to a particular role whether that be overwhelming with numbers, attacking from below, scouring the skies or killing people with mind bullets there's a Tyranid for every job, even their ammunition and ordinance are smaller Tyranids.  This race of bio-weapons also has no vehicles in their army list, rather they have a vast array of differing monstrous creatures which will be very different from any army I've collected before as I like my tanks.

As I mentioned above I've got the getting started box which contains a hive tyrant,3 warriors and 10 gargoyles to start my army with the plan being to expand from this to create about a 2000 pt army, maybe even taking it to tournaments and to use in a narrative campaign I have ideas for later in the year potentially.

The first model I've worked on is the Hive Tyrant which I've built on foot with bonesword, lashwhip and heavy venom cannon and for the colour scheme I picked black glossy carapace with orange accents, green fleshy parts and the weapons will be a dark red. The picture below shows the progress so far, the green is almost finished requiring a wash in the recesses to finish off and the black has been gone over.



There will be more progress on the painting side next weekend and I'm also hoping to write some reviews and tactica for units and formations.  Let me know in the comments if there's any particular unit or formation you'd like me to review.

Thanks for reading, you can find more posts about designing a game on the blog and more posts like this will be coming in the future.

All Hail Mars! Adeptus Mechanicus: Skitarii Rangers and Vanguard Kit

On the 5/4/15 I got my first wave of skitarii for my army, which was three boxes of the infantry.  These models are great and really easy to put together coming in 7 pieces, legs, torso front, torso back, two arms, head and backpack.  There are 5 different poses of leg, torso, arms that could be put together in combination to give lots of different overall poses.  There are two different sets of heads to make either hooded rangers or helmeted vanguard plus the two sets of guns for them and one of each special weapon.  The squad leader has all the options for pistols and melee weapon plus some special heads.  The only thing I think the box is missing is more of the special weapons as a squad of 10 can take three, which can be three of the same.

Painting-wise they are very nice models with loads of nice details all over.  The standard martian paint scheme of red and silver really looks good on these models and the martian ironearth paint makes for an excellent base.  My first squad of rangers are below to show how they look painted.

I also recently had a chance to play a small 750 point maelstrom game with them as well and these new units are good, I was only using the rules from the white dwarf as it was before the codex release so I wasn't able to use the doctrine imperatives.  The rangers work really well as back field units with their extra range over most standard units and their ability to pick you special weapons and characters being very useful, while the vanguard proved their worth as a support unit for dragoons, allowing them to take down a chaos lord easier by lowering toughness.  The additional rules available for the codex allows you to improve either BS or WS (sometimes to the detriment of the other) and if using the special formations and battle-forged force organisation chart gives them crusader and scout (without outflank).

This is just a little look at them, I'll do a more in-depth tactica and review when I've played more games with larger forces.  I will also do posts on the other types of units when I have made them and had a chance to play a game with them.

All Hail Mars!: Adeptus Mechanicus: First Look

This week sees Games Workshop releasing the first waves of releases for a new factions for 40k, the Adeptus Mechanicus, which are one of my favourite in the fluff and something I've been looking forward too since their were rumours about this release several months back. The Mechanicus are a part of the Imperium of Mankind, basically being scientists and engineers who are responsible for the production of all technology, regulation of technology and seeking out lost technology but are very much not like modern scientists and engineers.  The members of the Mechanicus worship the Machine God and the Emperor as the Omnissiah (its physical manifestation), and believe that a small part of it lives in each piece of technology called a machine spirit.

The Mechanicus have been missing from Warhammer 40k for a long time, despite their reasonably regular appearance in the background material and novels.  This weeks sees two kits up for pre-order with their rules in White Dwarf, one infantry box and one walker box which both contain two different choices of what to make with it.  With the rules out in White Dwarf yesterday, I though I'd have a quick look at the rules for the infantry and give my opinion on what they're like.

The first unit is the Skitarii Rangers, they are consummate hunters who stalk their prey until its destruction has been achieved.  Squads start at 5 and can go up to 10. They have a profile similar to scions with 4+ armour, a 6+ feel no pain, relentless and move through cover.  Their weapons are 30" range S4 ap4 rapid fire with precision shot, so they're very good at picking out things like heavy weapons etc.  The can also take special weapons, 2 normally or 3 if the squad is ten models.  The special weapons they can take is an arc rifle, transuranic arquebus and plasma caliver, which I'll have a look at later as they're shared with the other squad.  The rangers look like your back field objective holders who are very good at taking the teeth from guard veteran squads etc or killing anything space marine scout or lower.

The other unit the infantry box makes is the Skitarii Vanguard, who are rad-troopers equipped to fight in the worst environments using radiation as their weaponry.  They have the same profile as the rangers but swap move through cover for Rad-Saturation, which reduces the toughness of models locked in combat with the vanguard (to a min of 1).  This helps to make up for their strength 3 in combat but you'll still need to watch out as you're ws 3, t 3 and i 1 so you're outclassed by space marines in a one on one fight.  The vanguard have radium carbines as their weapon which is a 18" s3 ap5 assault 3 weapon with another interesting rule called rad poisoning which means that on to wound rolls 6s auto wound and cause 2 wounds rather than 1.  They can also take the same special weapons as the rangers in the same proportions.  My take on the vanguard is they're your assault/close shooting troops who are good anti-horde and can have a go at high toughness monstrous creatures with their auto wound on 6s causing two wounds.  The special weapons can really help with squad more than the rangers as they have to get closer so get more use out of the arc rifle and plasma caliver.

The special weapons these guys have access to are interesting and unique to their faction and they are the arc rifle, transuranic arquebus and plasma caliver.  The arc rifle is where the majority of these guys anti-tank will come from its a 24" range s 6 ap5 rapid fire weapon but the best part it is haywire so will easily strip hull points from any vehicle especially if you get within 12" for two shots.  The transuranic arquesbus is a 60" ap 3 heavy 1 sniper with armour bane so my thoughts are that it fits best with the rangers, improving their ability to hurt models with a better save and give them some anti-tank capability plus with reltenless you don't have to worry about moving with it.  The plasma caliver is your terminator killer as an 18" s7 ap 2 assault 3 gets hot weapon so it can do some tank busting too but you need to be careful as three shots give more chance of killing yourself with it.  The way I'm thinking of using the special weapons would be mostly in smaller squads so not to make them too expensive as the arquesbus and the caliver are equivalent to ~3 and ~4 vanguards in price so quickly stack up and bring your model count down.

These are my current thoughts on the new skitarii infantry, I should have a smilar post on the walkers coming soon.  What do you think of them? Post in the comments below.

Marshalling a Legion: Part 1; Starting off

Hi all, I recently attended the Horus Heresy Weekender and have started off a new project to build up a new Space Marine Legion army.  For my Legion I've picked Imperial Fists as they're going to be a nice challenge to paint plus their rules are good for playing them in game.  So I thought as I progress this force I'd post up a series to link with that.

This first one I'm going to talk a little about starting off a Horus Heresy (or 30k) army using the Forge World books available, so this first one I'll discuss a bit about picking your army and then show you the first mini that I painted for my force.

The first step in starting 30k is to pick your legion, which has three major ways to choose from what I've done and from hearing how other people have chosen.  The first is to go with one that has captured your imagination in the novels and background fluff, which is how I chose my original legion which was Iron Hands following reading novels and short stories like Fulgrim, Riven etc.  The second is to look at the colour schemes and chose one which you'd like to paint, either because you like the colour or want a challenge such as painting white or yellow.  The final way is to look at the rules and playstyles of the legion and pick one that suits your tastes.

I picked Imperial Fists as my legion for the project because I wanted to paint yellow as it can be a hard colour to paint and I was planning to make a zone mortalis themed force of infantry and dreads suited to corridor fighting which the Imperial Fist rules and units do well at.  So as my army progresses I will post updates on my painting, how it plays gaming-wise etc and as such below is the first model I did for the army which is Captain Alexis Polux.

Hope you've enjoyed this little blog post about a personal project and keep your eye out for more updates on the Imperial Fists.

Horus Heresy Weekender 2015

This weekend just gone (7-8th Feb) was the Horus Heresy Weekender and I was lucky enough to go so I though I'd share some photos of what I saw and some notes on what I heard.

So for the seminars I went to the Book 4: Conquest seminar, which though its been out a while it was still good to got to and listen.

The book focuses on Horus' initial consolidation of a power base following Istavaan having lost the element of surprise with a lot of the brunt of the fighting for the loyalists falling on the non space marine forces such as the solar auxillia and mechanicum though fragments of the Iron Hands, Salamanders and Imperial Fists also appear.  For the traitors the Sons of Horus and Deathguard are leading what was dubbed "Dark Compliances".

In the book there is a full campaign system for use in the Horus Heresy for 2+ players, which is very customisable with character progression and relics of the Dark Age of Technology.

Also in the book is the Solar Auxillia army list, who are the elite of the Imperial Army and formed in an exploratory fashion ready to fight in hostile environments and in the void. Additionally a knight household army list is included where the force organization slots for the knights are defined by the pilot then you give them a suit of knight armour most suited to his role.

In the Q&A after there where a couple of interesting ones which area as follows:

The first was the the Legio Tempestus (who are loyalists in Mechanicum) are trator in this book?

The Answer was that this was always in the fluff and the titans in the book are more loyal to Horus having been at the front of the crusade, and ot was laos said that they are the Tzeenchian titans when it comes to Terra.

The New Models seminar was the next one I attended, where the new models shown off are hoping to be released by or at the Warhammer World Grand Opening in May.  I wasnt in a good position for this seminar ( I was having to stand at the back) so for photos from this you'll need to look elsewhere but if they were in the cabinets there will be pic of the real models rather than of the slide show.

The first shown was the new Solar Auxillia command section, which seemed to have both the command squad and the Lord commander models as part of it.

Next us was the Magos-Enginseer, which I'd think is for both mechanicum and solar auxillia and then a new version of the Tanator called the calix which has a weapon called a gravity hammer as well as a dark lance style massive cannon.

The largest model shown was in the 3D CAD drawing stage which is a new mechanicum lord of war, an Ordinatus which is a massive track mounted cannon with inbuilt void shields.
There are also two new tiles coming out, one called the Primus Redoubt, which mounts what looked like a warhound weapon and a Thunderhawk landing pad, which are just about to go into production.

There are also some new upgrade packs, a raven guard accessories pack, a mk6 command upgrade pack and a ultramarines accessories pack on the way.

Dynat, an alpha legion character from Extermination was also shown along with Samus who will be appearing in book 5.

A new space marine flyer, the Xiphon Interceptor is coming in the new book too, which I got to look at the rules and it looks to be very nasty against other flyers, and also previewed was a new weapon option for the Deredeo, a plasma carronade.

The biggest reveal of the session was the Solar Pattern Stormbird, which is still a work in progress but it larger than a Thunderhawk being able to fit a rhino in the internal area of the model and down the back ramp.

The final seminar I attended was on Book 5: Tempest, which is planned for Spring 2015 and hoping to have some advance copies at the Warhammer World Grand Opening.
In the book are going to be the Ultramarines, Word Bearers, Mechanicum, Imperial Militia, Warp Cults, Knights and Titans.
It focuses on the Word Bearer's assault on Calth, not including the underworld war or the shadow crusade and it contains the background on the Ultramarine Legion, more for the Word Bearers and for the Knight households and Titan legion at Calth.  It also contains a campaign to play out the final hours of Calth.
In the book are army lists for the Imperial Militia and War cults which are the normal human troops of the imperial army and the word bearers hangers-on who will rely on numbers above all else.
There will also be new legion units in the book for all legions plus specific units for Ultramarines and Word Bearers, with new characters being Telemarcus, the dreadnought who fell from the sky, Ventanus plus updates for the word bearers characters and potential one new character as yet unmentioned.
They also previewed the next primarch in this seminar, who is Robute Guilliman I think sculpted by Simon Egan (but I may be wrong).

They also said briefly that the next book will detail the Shadow Crusade and maybe the Underworld war on Calth, then the following book will hopefully be Calth.

So this is my brief summary of the Heresy Weekender, hope it was informative.  If you have questions put them in the comment and I may be able to answer them.