New Dark Eldar Raider...

I finally finished painting the main portions of the new Raider. All I have left to do is add on the crew hanging off the side and it will be fully finished. Basically, I am trying to figure out how to have the crew set up so when there is a unit in the raider, the crew are there, and when the unit disembarks then I can remove the models hanging on.

Overall it went really smoothly with some exceptions. Basically when I do my next one I will do it completely differently. Here are some quick tips when building/painting your Raider:

- Dont glue the sail section in. Build it (so sails, boom, splinter rifles) and paint it as its own piece. It will take drastically less time as you arent trying to manouver around the edges of the boat

- Dont glue in any of the spears until they are fully painted. I glued mine in and they are such flimsy little pieces its really hard to get a good brush stroke on them. The result of this is my skulls dont really look all that good (not nearly as good as I had hoped).

- The nice thing about not gluing in the sails or spears is it leaves the entire inside of the Raider open and makes it very easy to paint. I just did a metal cat walk for the crew to stand on so all I will have to do on my next one is bust out my tank brush, some metallic paints and some washes and I will be done in no time :)

- Do all the crew seperately and last, once the boat has been finished. Again, allows you to fully detail your models and you can pose the whole boat out in a "dry run" to make sure you like where the hangers on are standing.

- Last and not least DONT glue the plastic stand into the bottom of the boat. This time around they are these wonderful "ball joints" that the plastic stant snaps into, so it sits there on the stand (you can even move it into dynamic poses). Once your game is done and you need to pack up you just pop it off the stand making sure it wont break in transit. Just awesome.

Soon I will have the rest of my first 10 man Warrior squad as well as the crew for the Raider. I was also thinking of doing a "painting tutorial" for this army if people are interested, so let me know :)

Dark Eldar Warrior Test Model!

So I FINALLY have my hands on the first bunch of models for the new Dark Eldar army. Right now in my possion I have a unit of Warriors and a Raider. I have finished building it all and I have to say that these really are some of the nicest models that GW has made. Three big things that stand out for both kits is the sheer volume of bits and options, the detail of the models themselves and the lack of mould lines. Building the warriors especially was a dream since its basically just cutting them off of the sprues and glueing them together...DONE!

I have done a lot of thinking of what I want to do for my new scheme. I did a whole slew of test eldar figs and after much debate decided that I really liked my old scheme and would like to revamp/update it for the new range. Here is a quick comparison between the old warriors and the new one I finished last night.





As you can see the quality of high-lighting is much improved (especially when you see it in real life as my stupid camera washes out most of the detail..its much crisper) I also added pieces of gold and steel as well as keeping the red nice and dark. I also added black helmets instead of the dark green ones of the old and added bright green, glowing eyes as I love how they did that with their preview models.

In the next couple of weeks I will finish off this squad of 10 and I will have the Raider up and running. I am also going to do an "initial thoughts" of the book as well as some sample army lists :)

Tyranids Rick-Rolling Fallcon!

Over the weekend I went to an event that I have never even heard of, and that is Fallcon. Every year it runs (and has been for about 20 now) and it is a giant convention for everything boardgames. The reason I went in the first place is to attend the mini 40k Tournament that was being run, but after getting in the door I gotta say I wish I went for some of the other events (and next year will definitely be signing up for some of those). It had tournaments for pretty much every boardgame you can think of from Catan, Agricola to rarer games that I have never even heard of. The single coolest thing set up there was a mega battle for Flames of War, which is a game I would totally get into if I knew I had friends in the area that played on a regular basis. Here are a couple pics I took of the game they had set up.






On to the mega tournament...OF DOOM! When I signed up for the tournament it was billed as a mini tournament, 1700pts, 2 games with 12 spots available with the only prize going to the person who came in first overall. I have played exactly one game of 40k since the end of June, so I thought it was about time to bust out the Great Devourer to eat some faces...regardless of how small those faces are. Here is my 1700pts list:

HQ
Hive Tyrant - Scything Talons, Bonesword, Lashwhip, Armored Shell (aka 2+ save), Hive Commander
Tyrant Guard (2)

Elites
Zoanthropes (3) - Mycetic Spore
Hive Guard (2)

Troops
Tervigon - Toxin Sacs, Cluster Spines, Catalyst
Termagants (20)
Hormagaunts (25) - Toxin Sacs

Heavy Support
Mawloc
Mawloc
Trygon

Pretty much just a goofy monster mash list. I was using a bunch of stuff I have never used before (Tyrant Guard, Tervigon, 2nd Mawloc, etc..) so I figured it would be interesting to see how the old list does :)

1st Game - Capture and Control vs. Demons

This game was against a Demon Player...and I won't lie, when I heard that my brain went "woooooot!!!" as it is an army with very little shooty, smaller numbers then me, it HAS to come towards me and basically lands near me and does nothing for a turn. One thing I wasnt counting on is that almost every unit in his army either was T5, 3+/5+ (like 9 Juggernaughts of Khorne), T5 5+ save, FNP (plague bearers), a greater demon/demon prince or chariot. Basically after about the 3rd turn I was just playing for a draw with the hopes that my Mawlocs would win the game by coming up on turn 5 to contest his objective.

High Points
- My Tervigon and Termagants almost killing his 300pts unit of Juggernaughts of Khorne in hand to hand. If I had committed just a little bit more troops to it and he didnt charge me with his great unclean one I think I would of done it.
- My Hormgaunts just mangled everything they hit, which was nice

Low Points
- Overall my army did almost nothing to his. If it was a kill point mission he would of slaughtered me. Basically he just had too much ultra tough stuff with a good saving through that used would allocation. He also also made saving thoughs like a man possessed. For example, on the turn my Tervigon and 30 gaunts charged his unit of 6 Juggernaughts he managed to only fail two or 3 saving throws on 15 or so wounds.
- I had 2 chances to win the game IF he assaulted my two Mawlocs who were about 8" from his objective. All he had to assault me was 1 demon prince, 1 khorne herald on a chariot and 3 Juggernaughts. Really, when I look at it I am thinking that both mawlocs will live with maybe 1 or 2 wounds. His 3 Juggernaughts killed my one Mawloc (so, 12 attacks, hitting on 3's, wounding on 5's which should of done 3 wounds did something like 7) and I did manage to end the turn on my second Mawloc with exactly one wound left. I then made my hit and run roll only to roll a 6, so I didnt do it...sigh.






Final Result - Draw
I just couldnt get my stuff to contest his objective for the life of me. To be fair instead of just hitting both Mawlocs onto his objective and camping it, I placed them further away to make it so I didnt get charged by his big stuff. Ah well, all in all it was a pretty good game

Game 2 - Capture and Control vs. Space Wolves

So, this game is against Space Wolves filled with virtually everything you would never want to fight and I personally think is retardely overpowered. 7 (yes you read that right, 7) Thunderwolf Calvary (5 + 2 Lords)...CHECK! Runepriest in a Razorback with JAWS?...CHECK!...2+ Units of Long Fangs with 5 Missile Launchers each?....CHECK! It's funny, even though only FOUR people showed up, every last person brought a 'Ard Boyz style list lol. The fourth player was an Imperial Guard player who had something like 6 Battle Tanks and a stupid amount of Chimeras with Vets that had Multi Meltas. Ah well, at least all the tables were fairly filled with Terrain :)

Hi Points
- Oddly enough, despite how much I *hated* the army I was playing against, there were quite a few.
- For starters my first Mawloc rolled a direct *hit* when coming up from under the first long fang pack and it killed the whole squad
- My Hive Guard killed ALL his armor...every last one and every single shot was blown up on the first try
- My Tervigon failed his first "pooping" roll on turn 5 and man o man the Gaunts that he crapped out for some reason did SOOO much damage lol. They killed a unit of 10 grey hunters (killed 5 through shooting then they ran away). Killed a Lord in Hand to Hand and then went and killed off the second long fang pack. Go little guys!
- Hormagaunts wrecked crap...again. They also killed his other Thunder Calv lord, so that was cool.
- Trygon *almost* single handedly killed the Thunderwolf Calv unit in hand to hand (left the 5 models with 3 wounds)
- Hive Tyrant got into hand to hand and killed the crap out of the Rune Priest

Low Points
- I finally lost my first model to Jaws. I know its a game but man oh man I fucking HATE that power. Easily my single least fav thing in 40k. The worst part about it though is I actually shouldnt of lost my Mawloc as I rolled a "5" and I totally forgot MCs get +1 to the rolled (his init is 4). Thats actually pretty much it for low points lol




Final Result - Victory

Basically he just 100% didnt play to the objective and that was what lost him the game. The entire game was me trying to figure out how to get up close to his objective through being "Jaws'd" and avoiding the Thunderwolf unit of negative fun.

Tournament Result - 1st place.

Basically everyone but 1 person had 1 win and a Draw. The tie breaker was painting and since 1 army (the demons) wasnt finished, the Space Wolf army was using proxies and the IG army was grey dry brushed with some flat coats of paint on the actual imperial guardsmen it meant that I won the tie breaker. I felt bad for Rob (the organizer) because of just how few people showed up. The tables were nice with lots of terrain, which for me is a huge plus.

Next Tourney Up - Dream Team Tag Team Tourney on Nov 6th!!

Finished Tervigon!

Here is the Tervigon fully painted and ready to go. Surprisingly it didnt take very long to paint, only about 6-8 hours which pleased me.

Well, this is the last creature I am going to paint for this army so it is finally finished. I am going to post a group shot of the entire army as well hopefully sometime next week. I am also working on the brand new Dark Eldar Raider and a box of Warriors (a friend of mine owns a local game store and is letting me paint the preview models :D ). I am going to have the Raider up next week as well as an initial view/thoughts on the codex.