Friday 29 January 2016

Eagle Knights Command Squad

With all elements of the Eagle Knights complete I thought I'd show some close ups of the Command Squad and Captain. Ok, I finished these a while ago, before Christmas in fact, but I haven't had a chance to post the pictures up yet.

 
 The completed Command squad. Some minor conversion work undertaken, but mostly they are just kitbashed from Chaos Space Marines. From left to right are; Vet, sanguinary novitiate, Champion, Vet with Company Standard and another Vet.


 The Company Champion, armed as per the book. Why he only has a combat shield and not a storm shield I will never know, as he's now out classed by the vets in his unit. Anyway, this champion uses a DV Tac Sgts chest with robe and DV Chaos pack (below), a BA DC power sword and helmet. The combat shield is a fantasy item, dwarfs I think(??) with a chaos arm. Overall, I like the look. He looks like a marine who's customised his armour over the years and is showing the influence of chaos/mutation that plagues the chapter.

 The sanguinary novitiate, who at present doesn't really stand out. When painted he will, as I will use the classic scheme I posted about in an earlier post. He is basically a mash of Chaos legs, marine body with BA DC arms, pack and head. Pretty simple really.
 The Vets, these guys are the real power of the command squad. All are armed with Storm Shields, Power Swords and Pistols. The power swords can be seen below, poking out from behind the packs. These will be painted fairly prominently, to make them stand out. The storm shields are again from fantasy, chaos I think this time. The are the long versions, rather then the smaller version, to represent the difference between the combat shield and storm shield. The centre vet carries the company standard, a DA item, which I will paint up for the company, in a
 very basic free hand job. The rest of the models are mostly BA DC models apart from the packs which are DV Chaos items and the heads are old chaos heads, the centre one has lost its 'ears' but will hopefully gain a fancy face paint job.

As for fluff, these guys need some work, as presently theirs is very thin on the ground. I will work it out at some point, but that's for the future I think.
 And this brings us to the main man himself, Captain Verreaux. A man who shows his preference for combat by wielding a storm shield and a relic of the chapter in the form of the Raptors Bite (aka the BA relic Valour's Edge) and is clad in ancient Artificer Armour. This armour shows the signs of repeated exposure to chaos and the influence of the chapters mutations. The captain retains his bolt pistol, a relic of his days as a Scout, many centuries ago.
 The model itself is the DV Chaos lord modified with a new arm from the DA Storm shield and a bolt pistol attached. I'll do some minor conversion and some liquid green stuffing to remove some of the chaos items, others will be hidden (hopefully) by the paint job. The pack is also a DA item.
And finally, a nice little picture, hopefully one I will be able to recreate when painted, just don't expect it anytime soon!

Friday 22 January 2016

2015

Well, I've been reading around and a few bloggers are doing 2015 updates, you know the type, what I did this/last year, like this one. Anyway I thought I would do something similar and give a bit of a run down on whats happened this year. I know I touched on areas in other posts but I thought I'd bring it all together in to one post.

So, what happened in 2015? Well, the first part of the year was taken up with the birth of my daughter, so in terms of gaming, not a lot happened. However, what did happen was all geared towards the Kings of the North 2015 tournament that I attended in April.

Kings of the North was a very well run and hugely enjoyable tournament, one in which I did not disgrace myself in, so I was happy. If I remember rightly I finished 17 out of 22, not great as I made a few mistakes and really didn't bring an optimised tournament list, more of a list of units I liked the sound/look off! Next time I get to a tournament I will take a more dedicated list and see how that goes.

After KotN, most of my effort went in to completing my MT force, the Dagr Ormr. This was done with the use of Dreamforge Eisenkern and Panzerjager units along with a box of the GW MT's. I also got hold of a compressor to go with my airbrush, not that I have actually got around to using it yet! The rest of the year was spent mostly putting together my other forces, building the Hjaltland and Hrossey Guard units and also finishing off the Eagle Knights.

So all in all, not an overly successful year, although I got a few units built, I got very little painted, I don't think my paints have been out for several months! I would like to get a few more units painted, even if its just undercoated/base coated with the airbrush!

Towards the end of the year, I did take a little journey in to the world of Green Stuff, rather successfully if I do say so myself.

On the whole thought, not a lot has happened this year on the hobby front, on the fluff front a lot has happened, mostly with this blog and the putting pen to paper to record the thoughts in my head. It appears that there are quite a few people out there who like reading my ramblings. So thanks for reading! I even tried my had at a bit of fan fluff, I know, it needs some work, but I enjoyed writing it. I wouldn't mind writing a few more bits, but I don't really have the time.

So all in all, hopefully next year will be a little more productive on the hobby front and I may even get my paints out at some point!

Friday 15 January 2016

A game at last!

Well, I finally got a game in, this happened a few weeks ago (nearly 4 weekes!!) as decided I had to get at least one game in before Christmas. With Christmas and all its taken me a few weeks to get around to writing it up properly, but I though I would anyway, as I learnt a lot form the game. I decided to try out my newly finished Eagle Knights and it didn't quite go according to plan, but more of that later. Firstly, the low down on the game set-up.

Played Tau - I still hate Tau, but this was a little bit more of an old school, more balanced list. From memory it consisted of 3x troops of Fire Warriors, one with the Fireblade bloke, 2x Hammerheads, one with the Rail Gun and one with the other gun, Ion Cannon(??), 4x Piranha, 2 with Metla and two with Burst Cannons(??),  a Devilfish (with one of the Fire Warriors)  2x Pathfinder Teams, A Riptide, A Crisis Suit team, and a Commander with two Bodyguards and loads of Drones.

We played Malestrom mission 3 - Tactical Escalation, which suited me as I would be holding a lot of my guys in reserve for the first turn. At this point we forgot all about Warlord traits! It may have helped me, if i had rolled a 5, but otherwise it would not have made much difference at all.

In the game itself (sorry no pictures, completely forgot about taking any!) things didn't really go my way from the off. In deployment I made a stupid mistake, by placing my Command Squad out in the open, believing that their storm shields would be enough to see them through until my turn. This wasn't the case, as the Tau had nothing else to shoot at turn one, they poured everything in to the command squad and decimated it, leaving only the Warlord standing. This was a blow, not only for first blood, but they were one of my hard hitting CC units, which was gong to go after some of the key units. Needless to say that my first turn nothing really happened, nothing was in rage of the two Tac squads and the Captain just ran forward to get in to cover, which he failed to do with a 1" run!

Turn 2 and the mistakes continued. The Tau didn't do much, tried to hit my Tac squads, but did little damage, mainly focusing on my Captain but he managed to survive, somehow. In my turn things started off well, with 2/2 for my reserves, but it ended with 2/4 coming in. And this is where i made the biggest mistake, as I brought them in separately. I brought them in, an assault squad by the back of the board and the Talons (DC) down by the Riptide. This meant that they ended up being taken down bit by bit, taking most of the firepower of the Tau next turn to do so, but they were still eliminated before the next set of reserves came in. One of my Tac squads also charged in and destroyed 2 of the piranhas, immobilising a third.

So, as just mentioned turn 3 was mostly the Tau destroying my reserves, as well as a few marines. My turn 3 saw just the Hawk Brethren (Vanguards) coming in, leaving the last assault squad still in reserve. As a result, i did nothing again, although my Tac squad finished off the Piranhas and my warlord, down to one wound, tried to take on the Tau Commander and failed to do anything, although, I just realise that I completely forgot about his Sword, at +2s and Ap2 it should have done a lot more damage than it did! Dam it, I should have challenged! Oh well, you live and learn.

Turn 4 saw the destruction of my Vanguards, and most of my Tac squad that took out the Piranhas. in My turn, the assault marines dropped right behind the Fire Warriors, again, probably not the best thing to do. All this lead to turn 5 where the assault marines were destroyed, and the Riptide took a chunk out of the Tac squad that had so far been hiding at the back, causing them to fall back. In my turn, all i did was run to garb some objectives, stealing one off the Tau Commander and a Tac squad took another for some extra points.

Even so, at the end of turn 5 we had to call it due to time and the scores stood at;

Tau; 12pts (9pts + Line breaker, First Blood and Slay the Warlord) to EK; 5pts

So, not a good run out for the Eagle Knights first time. The list played was at 1750, so basically, the 2000pts list with out the vehicles, which worked out at 1746. I don't think the extra points would have made a difference, maybe it would have kept the Command Squad alive the first turn, but with all the S5 weapons the Tau have, a Razorback probably wouldn't have lasted long anyway. The 2 main errors I mad was splitting up the first lot of reserves, I should have kept them together and gone for a safe landing spot away from the big guns and waited my turn to strike, which hopefully would have relived some pressure on the squads that followed. The other issue was the reserve rolls, I think I need a way to modify them and for just 130pts, I could with a IG/AM command squad with Officer of the Fleet and accompanying basic vet squad, both of which can camp on objective in my deployment. Not sure where the points are going to come from, but it would give me a way of influencing the reserve rolls. 

I'll give the army a few more runs out before I even think about changes to the list, but mostly likely, I'll just leave it as it is anyway, as I like the fluff, although, I am still regretting not putting jump packs on my 
Captain or Command Squad. Next time I'll definitely run the Razorback and maybe that will make a difference. 

Friday 8 January 2016

My Christmas

Well another Christmas over and done with,  and while I haven't added much to my collection, I have got a few bits and peices. Most of my presents this year revolved around the DIY for the house, namely plastering, with a few other bits. I also got a driving experience from the wife, one of these simulation jobs, but it was really good and felt realistic. Defiantly would do it again one day.

My main 40k present was a pack of the new Cadia Datacards. These are going to be useful in any games I get in the future, although I have missed the Xmas tournament at the club as I was down south visiting family.

The tournament sounded like it was good fun, with lots of interesting scenarios and missions. There was a range of different armies, one including just 5 tanks (a superheavy and 4 russes) @1500pts. I'll try and get a full report about it up here if I can, but I'll see if I get around to it as I've only just got home from visiting the family and there's a few things that need sorting first.

Sorry for the short post, time has been fairly limited at the moment, we've just got back from visiting family. Hopefully I'll be able to get few games in with my new cards, if I do I'll let you know how I get on, and I've got a few other posts I'd like to get up here in the next few weeks, hopefully I'll get time to write them!

Friday 1 January 2016

New years resolutions

So its that time of year again, and I thought I would start off looking at last years resolutions and see if I actually achieved anything?

So last years I said I wanted to;

1) Finish painting my Hjaltland LI, I'm slowly but surely getting there but I need to go faster. - Think I've done about half a dozen models, still got lots to go!

2) Base coat all vehicles, should be easy with an air brush! I've got a few done, but need to get the rest sorted. I'll try and get some of the details done as well. - Um, should have been easy, but I haven't actually done any more. Maybe one or two? But still got about 4 left unpainted!

3) Start on Eagle Knights, I'll probably start with one of the formation, as they'll be easier to complete and I want to use them anyway. - Woo Hoo, well, kinda anyway, there all modelled up, even if there still unpainted.

4) Not buy any more models I don't really need! Not sure this one will last but I'll try and it'll link in with the next resolution. - Um, yeah, well, I now have a few shiny new models, mostly for my MT force, Dam you Dreamforge and your shiny new model kits!

5) Sell off models I don't need, there only taking up space and will provide money towards supplies and paint. - Yeah, still need to do this.

6) Get some pictures up here, its all very nice talking about my models and army fluff, but it'd be nice to get some pics up here.  - Well, this has gone better, still need to get some more up here, but I'm doing better with this one.

So, all in all, pretty rubbish. This year I will try and set some more realistic goals I think.

So here they are;

1) Try and model up all the missing models from the various army lists

2) Sell models I don't need! I really need to do this!

3) Try and base coat some of the models, so at least I can place them on the table together with out getting confused with what model belongs to what army.

4) Play some games!

So there they are, hopefully I'll be able to keep these ones a little better than the last lot!

I hope your resolutions when well last year and good luck with your resolutions for this year!