Venom Squadron!

I am so close to finishing this army I can taste it lol. Over the weekend I managed to finish off the last of my warriors for my Venom Squadron as well as the 3rd Venom. I have been using this set up (3 venoms with 5 warriors with a blaster in each) for a bunch of games now and for some reason this 375pts of awesomeness does so well every game. I love it. All I have left to paint is a single squad of 10 Wyches, so hopefully I will have that finished within the next week or so :)

I also wanted to post my revised list to show you guys what I have been using and what I have been having great success with:

HQ

Haemonculus - Liquifier Gun, Venom Blade
Haemonculus - Liquifier Gun, Venom Blade

Troops

Warriors (10) - Blaster, Dark Lance
Warriors (5) - Blaster, Venom w/ extra splinter cannon
Warriors (5) - Blaster, Venom w/ extra splinter cannon
Warriors (5) - Blaster, Venom w/ extra splinter cannon
Wyches (9) - Hydra Gauntlet, Hekatrix, Agonizer, Raider, Night Shields
Wyches (9) - Hydra Gauntlet, Hekatrix, Agonizer, Raider, Night Shields

Fast Attack

Reaver Jetbikes (6) - 2 x Heat Lances
Scourges (5) - 2 x Haywire Blaters
Beastmasters (2) - 10 x Khymera

Heavy Support

Razorwing - 2 x Dark Lances, 4 x Monoscythe Missiles, Flicker Field
Ravager - 3 x Dark Lances, Flicker Field
Ravager - 3 x Dark Lances, Flicker Field

1850pts right on the dot

I keep switching between setting up my first Wych squad with 2 Shardnets/Impalers and 10 Haywire Grenades and just running a Succubus with the Hydra Gauntlet Wych squad (gives you a min of 10 agonizer attacks on the charge) and what I have now. Both ways seem to have their benefit, although, I have never actually had a chance to use the Haywire Grenades, which is why I went back to this one. The main strength of this army is the fact it has maxed out Troops, which I find is crucial for DE as they are made of glass, so you NEED backups.



In the Works: I will have my last squad of Wyches up shortly plus I have just started work on my first of many Dark Eldar Tactics articles (like how I did with the Tyranids).

40k Skirmish 2011 Round 2 Space Wolves vs Lysander Marines in a modified "Secure and Control"

Lysander lays a beating on everything even Thunder Wolf mounted Wolf Lords!

The next round had me playing against a Lysander lead marine army.  I can't remember his name, totally my bad but his army looked something like this:

HQ

Lysander

Tech Marine with Thunderfire Cannon

Elites

7 Terminators (3 x LC and 4 x TH/SS) in Redeemer

Command Squad with Champion, Medic and TH

Dreadnought with Multimelta and Dread CCW

Troops

10 x Scouts

10 x Marines with Lascannon and Meltagun in Rhino

10 x Marines with Lascannon and Meltagun in Rhino

Fast Attack

Land Speeder with Multimelta and Heavy Flamer

Heavy Support

Vindicator

40k Skirmish 2011 Round 1 Space Wolves vs Salamanders in "Looks expensive I'll take it"

When twinlinked Melta fails it's a good day for the Space Wolves!

The first game was against Derek from Petawawa who was running a mean Salamanders list lead by Vulcan.  We were playing a modified kill point scenario where the most expensive thing was worth 2 KP everything else was 1 except the cheapest non-transport which was worth nothing.

Space Wolf Assault pack Lupus

HQ

Wolf Lord with Thunder wolf, TH/SS, Saga of the bear, Wolf tooth necklace

Wolf Lord with Thunder wolf, Frost blade/SS, Saga of the warrior, Wolf tooth necklace with 2 wolves

Canis Wolfborne with 2 Wolves

Rune Priest with Living Lightning and Jaws of the World Wolf

Troops

9 x Grey Hunters with Meltagun, Power fist in Rhino

9 x Grey Hunters with Meltagun, Power fist in Rhino

6 x Grey Hunters with Meltagun, Power fist, Wolf Standard in Rhino

5 x Fersian Wolves with a Cyber wolf

Fast Attack

Land Speeder with Multimelta and Heavy Flamer

Land Speeder with Multimelta and Heavy Flamer

Heavy Support

5 x Long Fangs with 3 Missile launchers, Lascannon in Razorback with Lascannon and twin linked Plasmaguns

Salamanders

HQ

Vulcan

Elites

5 x TH/SS Terminators in a Land Raider Redeemer with Multimelta

3 x TH/SS and 2 x LC Terminators

Troops

Tactical squad with Power sword, Plasma cannon and meltagun in Razorback with heavy bolters

Tactical squad with Power sword, Plasma cannon and meltagun in Razorback with lascannons

6 x Scout squad with Combimelta

Fast Attack

Land Speeder with Multimelta and Heavy Flamer

Land Speeder Storm

Heavy Support

Land Raider 

Razorwing!

I have slowly but surely been knocking off items to finish painting for my current 1850pts list. Feels good to get the biggest piece out of the way. Overall the Razorwing was actually a really easy model to paint. No real extra bits like pesky crew and since you will never be able to see the underside of it I just didn't bother painting it lol (well..except the missiles). It probably took me less time to paint this then it does to paint one of my Raiders. I also managed to finish my 3rd Venom but just ran out of time when working on that warrior squad (which I will finish Saturday). Once I finish that I will do a post of my "Venom Squadron" as it looks really cool when set up together. After that all I have left is my last squad of Hydra Gauntlet Wyches and I am done!

40k Skirmish 2011

This weekend was the FoW and 40k tournaments at Skirmish.  Here is the coverage for the 40k and check out the FoW coverage on Covering Fire!

Orks!

Lysander lead Marines

Necrons, bet he can't wait for the new codex!

Chaos Marines

Mechanized Guard

Very Green Death Guard

Very Silver Grey Knights

More Grey Knights

I have 4 Battle Reports from the Skirmish that I'm working on.  More to follow soon, I hope....

Beastmasters Part 1!

I have slowly been picking away at my 1850pts force and this week it is all about working on the first half of my Beastmaster pack which consists of 10 Khymera and 2 Beastmasters.

I had been waiting a while to see the new models that GW would be putting out for the warp beasts (as they were one of my fav units in the old dex). I was really happy when I saw the model itself...then I scrolled down to the price and that is when I decided there was NO WAY I was paying $17 PER MODEL for a 12pt model. I was figuring they would be in a box like the Mandrakes or Incubi coming in around $7 each. With that in mind I set out trying to find something I could use as a replacement model for the Khymera. Then I remembered the old Chaos Hounds I used for my first go through with the Dark Eldar - you can see them here:



I have always liked these models and I had 5 of them so I did some fancy trading and managed to pick up another 5 more. The other thing I noticed was the Beastmaster models themselves (metal flying stand models...ugh) were also $18 per model which made no sense to me since I could just pick up a box of 5 Hellions for $7 more and be done with it. The other great thing about this is that I get my 4 Beastmasters is I would have an extra one to convert into my Baron Sarthonyx to lead my Hellions (he is finished, will post him at some point). The only two things I bought that were actually NEW were 2 blisters of Razorwings and a Clawed Fiend since I just loved the way the model looked.

My final squad will be made up of:

- 4 Beastmasters (all converted from hellions) - $24
- 10 Khymera (all older metal chaos hounds) - $0
- 2 Razorwings - $29
- 1 Clawed Fiend - $26

The whole unit comes to 238 points, it has 4 different wound groups that have 28 wounds in total which is freaking amazing. Best part is the whole huge unit only cost me around $80. So, without further adieu here are some pics of how the unit is looking so far:











I repainted the Khymera to resemble the current warp beasts a bit more. So I added muscle texture to their skin and wanted to make it look like bones were poking out here and there. I went really extreme on the highlights (almost to white for all the colours) as I really wanted them to "pop" and make them look somewhat un-natural. For the Beastmasters I wanted to make them look very different then the Hellions from a colour scheme point of view. I changed up their skyboards to red and changed a lot of the black leather over to a standard brown leather. I am also going to add some Hawk Turquoise design work on the boards them selves to help tie everything in together (so they will look like a reverse version of the standard Hellions). After painting the Beastmasters I gotta say I just can't wait to paint the Hellions. Such fun models to do up and they look just fantastic when set up on the table top.

Next Up: Finishing off my last warriors and my 3rd venom. I also am hoping to have a battle report and a "WIP" group shot of the army as it currently stands sometime this week.

Scourges!

So, life has finally calmed down a bit and the wave of visitors for the new born have subsided so I figured it was time to get back into the painting saddle and finish up my 1850pts army.

Since I last posted I have made some minor changes here and there and now have the whole army 100% built, primed and based (bases built I mean). With the change out I made sure I kept 6 troop choices, (4 warriors, 2 wyches), and threw in a pack of Beastmasters for visual interest as I love how my unit is looking so far. The army has a great balance of anti troop shooting, anti armor shooting, a unit with haywire grenades for a last ditch anti armor and some really decent counter attack units. I have to say this is probably the happiest I have been with an all comers army...well...ever actually.

This unit actually came together quite quickly as there are only 5 models. I did buy 2 units of 5. This unit has 2 haywire blasters and the other has 2 Heatlances. Just because of how amazing these models are both in looks, options and how easy they are to put together, I am even considering buying another box of 5 just to make 4 splinter cannons for a 10 man squad (if they stay stationary they get 42 splinter shots a turn!). I decided to paint the wings black for the feathers and the bat wings the same colour as the Haemonculus' skin, just to help tie things together. While the elites have white helmets, I figured I would give these guys gold ones.

Next Up: Beastmasters!