Broken Paintbrush

Sunday was the tournament at my local GW store. There were eight armies present: two IG, two Dark Angles, Orks Space Wolves, Daemons, and my Iron Warriors. The missions had not only the primary objective, but a secondary, tertiary and bonus objectives. This added to both the fun and the challenge of each game.

Round One

First round had me placed on the city fight table against one of the DA armies.  The primary mission was to capture table quarters, secondary was to kill the most expensive unit, and the third was destroy the enemy’s fast attack. Set up was spear head. Luckily my opponent was also a compact, elite army, so trying to claim full table quarters was easier than it might have been against the orks or IG. My two troop squads claimed both of the non-deployment zone quarters, my berserkers and lord took out Azerel (his most expensive unit), and my defiler (after loosing as his guns) charged the enemy jump troops hiding in a near-by building. I claimed two quarters, denied my opponent the other two, and killed his most expensive unit and his only fast attack. This was a good start to the tournament for me.

Round Two

Second round I was matched up against one of the guys I often play against but instead of his normal Death Guard, the green was in the form of Orks. Set up was table halves with the main objective to claim the 5 pieces of junk on the board. Any squad (except tanks) could claim an objective my rolling a 3+ in their movement phase. The squad then counted as moving in difficult terrain, but could move the objective with them. The secondary objective was to move at least two pieces of junk into your deployment zone. The third objective was to make an enemy unit run off the board. After stealing the initiative from my opponent I made a big mistake of jumping my berserkers out of the land raider to claim one of the objectives. This mistake became apparent on his turn, when a truck full of nobz rolled up and wiped them out. I got some payback when my vindicator came onto the board and took out 8 nobz, sending the remainder back into the truck and towards his table edge. The tank then went on to kill another 7 nobz in another squad and make them flee off the board! One of my troops did manage to grab another objective, jump back in the rhino and make it back to my deployment zone. The other attempted to steal an objective from a squad of decimated boyz (thanks to the defiler) but was run of by nobz. My opponent got both the first and second objectives, but I earned the third and the moral victory of making nobz run!

Round Three

The third game was against the Space Wolves. This was by far my favorite game. The main objective was to kill the opponent’s HQ, secondary was to kill all his vehicles, and third was to have more of your units in the enemy’s deployment zone than your own. The game started with taking 7 rolls to determine who went first! I figured I could easily attain the third goal (my army is very aggressive as is), the first would be a bit more difficult since he took a venerable dreadnought as his HQ and the second objective would be a challenge indeed: he also had a land raider.

Leaving my vindicator and defiler in reserves, my first turn saw my three tanks full speed ahead then popping smoke. Keeping the dread behind his land raider, he open fired and destroyed one of my rhinos.

Turn 2 had my now foot slogging squad march towards the land raider while the other disembarked near his Vanquisher, my vindicator and defiler moved on and I opened fire. The Vanquisher disappeared, taking one my troops with it. The land raider survived two lascannons, a meltagun and a battle cannon, power fist and 9 krak grenades with only a stunned result. On his turn he brought on his jump-pack blood claws near my disembarked squad, brought scouts in near the read of my vindicator, took his grey hunters out of the land raider and moved the dread around the land raider. The grey hunters and dread assaulted my troop squad near his land raider while the blood claws assaulted the squad near the smoking ruin of the Vanquisher. Neither of my squads survived, but at least the scouts failed to do anything to my vindicator.

Turn three had me disembark my berserkers and lord near his grey hunter squad, hungry for revenge. The rest of my army opened fire on the now visible dreadnought HQ and blew it apart. The defiler opened fire on the scouts with the heavy flamer and cooked them all alive. The berserkers charged the hunters and my lord and skull champion alone did 7 power weapon wounds, killing off the squad instantly. On his turn his land raider killed three berserkers standing in front of it while the remaining blood claws assaulted my land raider with three power fists, but failed to even scratch the paint.

Turn 4 and my berserkers were still hungry for blood so they charged the blood claws. Meanwhile by vindicator, defiler and land raider all piled shots into his land raider, but again failed to do much of anything. The blood claws were wiped out and more skulls were offered up. His turn he shot my defiler (because he was angry at it!) with his land raider and blew off the battle cannon. He also was desperately running his other squad of grey hunters (who had been ill-placed on the other side of the board) toward my board edge so he could attain the third objective.

Turn 5 and all I could do was run my berserkers into his deployment zone and open fire against his land raider yet again. This time I managed to immobilize it, took off one of the lascannons and stun it yet again. He only had his wandering grey hunters to move into my deployment zone and rolled to determine there was no 6th turn.

Summary

I had a great time and it was wonderful to get in so many games in one day. The missions were different, which made them fun, and the gamers all had a great time. I am really happy with my list and how well it played (other than my mistakes the second game) and will need to think long and hard on what to add to bring it up to the typical 1850 point game.

I was voted as best painted army, which made me excited, I was a bit worried my painting score would be dinked because of my berserkers. I haven’t even posted pictures of these yet because they are really poorly painted (some of my finer work from 10 years ago!).

So I stopped by the hobby shop near my new place last night to try out the 1500 point list for my Iron Warriors and found I need to rethink my list. I played against one of the store owners with his IG list (you can read his battle report here). Moral of last night’s battle: don’t take two Chaos Dreads at 1500 points. These guys did nothing but shoot at each other and make their ‘team’ mates go running the whole game. This is motivating me to take one f the two alternatives I made it the original list. Right now I’m leaning towards the defiler due to his versitility and the fact he doesn’t go crazy. Also I’m going to take Zen’s suggestion and remove both dreads and give my other tanks daemonic possession. So here it is: 1500 CSM list take two:

• Chaos Lord with terminator armor, twin lightning claws and mark of khorne (140 pnts)
• CSM x10 AC w/ power fist and plasma pistol; plasma gun; meltagun; icon of chaos undivided (240 pnts)
  • Rhino, extra armor (50 pnts)
• CSM x10 AC w/ power fist and plasma pistol; plasma gun; meltagun; icon of chaos undivided (240 pnts)
  • Rhino, extra armor (50 pnts)
• Khorne Berserkers x8 AC w/ power weapon, plasma pistol and melta bomb; 2 plasma pistols (248 pnts)
• Land Raider, daemonic possession (240 pnts)
• Vindicator, daemonic possession, twin linked bolter (145 pnts)
• Defiler, reaper auto cannon, heavy flamer (150 pnts)

Total Points: 1498

Kill Points: 9; Scoring Units: 3; AP 2 weapons: 13, large blasts: 2

In the future I am going to remove the Defiler’s other guns and give him more close combat attacks but I don’t have models for that yet. Also I was advised to remove one of the assault weapons from each of my troop squads and give a longer range, heavy weapon, or at least trade a melta and plasma. This came up from the game last night where I had my meltagun troop squad stuck in a ruin hiding from two Demolishers but nothing to hurt them with.  You may have noticed I did switch the two guns, but I don’t have anything but old (and crummy looking) missile launchers right now to try the heavy weapon option. I will have to build and paint the two lascannons I have sitting in my bitz box to try this out.

Thoughts, criticisms and comments welcome!

So this morning I finished one more base color on 5 of my traitor guard. I was a bit intimidated by the fact that I have 50+ guardsmen to paint and I don’t often get hour stretches to paint. My solution: paint a little, often. Such as this morning, I had 10 extra minutes before having to leave for work, so I grabbed my brush and painted the boots, belts and any other dark gray part on 5 more guys. Sure I have 10 more in this platoon to paint that same gray on, but it is 5 less I have to do later.
Painting a little, often also will help keep my painting skills up. Its been a few months since I did any painting, and I can tell. I’m a little less steady, not as good at mixing the right water to paint ratio, and generally slower. I have plenty of projects to paint, so even when I get new projects in the mail (the sentinels are next) I will continue to paint a little, often.

I stopped by my LFGS yesterday to try out my traitor guard but instead I was surprised everyone playing fantasy! (quick side note: fantasy is what brought me back into the hobby but everyone at the store stopped playing when the new 40k edition came out, maybe that new steam tank lured them back in…). I did find out about a 40k tournament happening at the store on Sunday though (wasn’t I just talking about tournaments last post?).

Since I don’t have my traitor guard finished, let alone even play tested (or even played any IG at all), I’m going to bring my trusty Iron Warriors to the battle. The guy running the event hasn’t worked out the missions yet but he did say there would be judging on painting, best army, best general and composition.

With all this in mind I took my normal 1850 list and removed some of the extras to bring it down to the 1500 point limit for the tournament. After writing the list I realized my entire initial setup will be vehicles!

Any comments or suggestions would be helpful as this is my first 40k tournament, and although it is just a small local event, I’m sure there will be some nasty surprises for me.

• Chaos Lord with terminator armor, twin lightning claws and mark of khorne (140 pnts)
• CSM x10 AC w/ power fist and plasma pistol; 2 plasma guns; icon of chaos undivided (245 pnts)
  • Rhino (35 pnts)
• CSM x10 AC w/ power fist and plasma pistol; 2 meltaguns; icon of chaos undivided (235 pnts)
  • Rhino (35 pnts)
• Khorne Berserkers x8 AC w/ power weapon, plasma pistol and melta bomb; 2 plasma pistols (248 pnts)
• Land Raider (220 pnts)
• Vindicator (125 pnts)
• Dreadnought with plasma cannon, heavy flamer (110 pnts)
• Dreadnought with multimelta, heavy flamer (105 pnts)

Total: 1498 pnts

Alternative:

• - Dreadnought w/ multimelta, rhino and the icon for plasmagun squad
• + 2x oblitorators

The thought on the alternative is that I don’t have a great deal of long range shooting and the versatility of the oblitorators make them an almost must have (plus its fitting for an Iron Warriors army). I like having the dreadnought and rhino in there for two reasons: they are both painted much better than my old (3rd edition old!) oblitorators, and it is two more vehicles to choose from for the opponent’s shooting, leaving my other tanks less vulnerable.

To start off with, I am not a ‘power gamer’ and have never played in a 40k tournament (yet…) so my lists may not be that competitive. My goal with this list is to build up a ‘core’ army to build off of when I do want to build a specialized list or gain some experience in tournaments. It is also an excuse to build and play with some really fun units.

I present two lists, the first is a 1000 points of what I currently have assembled and the second is the 2000 point list I am building up to and will hopefully have finished by the end of the summer. Please let me know what you think and any suggestions on units to add, remove or tweak. One thing I know is worthless points are the standards, but they give so much character to my army, as well as further tie them into the Chaos theme.

1000 Point List:

• HQ: Company Command Squad 137 pts
  • Company Commander with bolt pistol, power weapon and melta bombs
  • Veterans with regimental standard, medi-pack, plasmagun, vox, krak grenades
• Troop: Platoon #1 442
  • Platoon Commander with bolt pistol, power weapon, melta bomb; standard, 2x grenade launchers, vox 77pts
  • 2x squads with vox, flamer, power weapon, melta bomb , krak grenades 85 pnts each
  • Heavy Weapon Squad with 3x lascannons 105 pnts
  • Heavy Weapon Squad with 3x missle launchers 90
• Troop: Platoon #2 412
  • Platoon Commander with bolt pistol, power weapon, melta bomb; standard, 2x grenade launchers, vox 77pts
  • 2x squads with vox, flamer, power weapon, melta bomb, krak grenades 85 pnts each
  • Heavy Weapon Squad with 3x lascannons 105 pnts
  • Heavy Weapon Squad with 3x mortars 6

Total points: 991 with 10 scoring units, 11 kill points, 10 small blasts and 4 flame templates

Tactic for this army list would to have the company command hang out near my objectives with the heavy weapons teams while the hoard of troops and platoon command swarm the enemy objectives. If the mission is kill points I would combine the two platoon squads reducing my kill points to 9 and hide the command squads behind everything or in bunkers while the fire power takes out the enemy. I know I will have a hard time with any dreadnoughts or high toughness monsters that assault me due to the lack of power fists, but hopefully my 6 Lascannons will do enough damage to not cause a worry.

2000 Point List:

• HQ: Company Command Squad 127 pts
  • Company Commander with bolt pistol, power weapon
  • Veterans with regimental standard, medi-pack, plasmagun, vox
• Troop: Platoon #1 407
  • Platoon Commander with bolt pistol, power weapon; standard, 2x grenade launchers, vox 72pts
  • 2x squads with vox, flamer, power weapon 70 pnts each
  • Heavy Weapon Squad with 3x lascannons 105 pnts
  • Heavy Weapon Squad with 3x missle launchers 90
• Troop: Platoon #2 377 pnts
  • Platoon Commander with bolt pistol, power weapon; standard, 2x grenade launchers, vox 72pts
  • 2x squads with vox, flamer, power weapon 70 pnts each
  • Heavy Weapon Squad with 3x Lascannons 105 pnts
  • Heavy Weapon Squad with 3x mortars 6
• Troop: Penal Legion 80 pnts
• Troop: Veteran Squad 115
  • Power weapon, 3x meltaguns, vox
• Fast Attack: Sentinel Squad 100 pnts
  • 2x Scout Sentinel with Lascannon
• Fast Attack: Heavy Sentinel Squad 150 pnts
  • 2x Plasma Cannon
• Fast Attack: Bane Wolf Squad 290 pnts
  • Hull Multi-Melta
• Heavy Support: Leman Russ 170
  • Leman Russ with heavy bolter and heavy bolter sponsons
• Heavy Support: Leman Russ 170
  • Leman Russ with heavy bolter and heavy bolter sponsons

Total points: 1986 with 12 scoring units, 18 kill points, 2 large blasts, 12 small blasts and 6 flame templates, 5 meltas

Tactics: the two platoon squads would cover my objectives with a large mass of bodies and fire power while the scout sentinels and veterans take out any enemy tanks. The veterans and penal legion would be the two scoring units to take any enemy objectives with the Leman Russes and bane wolves providing cover. The heavy sentinels are mostly for any terminators that decide to drop in, making them either run (rather than shoot my poor guys up) or risk getting hit with two S7 AP2 blasts. Ideally i would like to work in a Chimera for my veterans to protect them a bit and give them a better chance at taking an objective. This would work if I removed the points for all the banners and took no options.

My local GW is having a painting competition for a terrain piece. I had a Manufactorum kit laying around (originally bought for bits for the titan) so I decided to build this up. I wanted it to be modular in a way so I only built one wall including a single corner. This will allow me to take four of these and create a square building or mix and match walls. I attempted to follow the color scheme shown on the box so it matches the store’s sets but I’m not sure what the exact colors used are.   The sandbags are made with basic air-hardening clay (same thing I used for my mortar team).

Click on link for a larger picture

Manufactorum Front Wall

Once I finish the last few details and build my light box (yes another new project!) I will get more pictures up of the top and back.

Note to myself to remember what colors I used for any other piece I paint:

• walls: Chardon Granite
• doors/window frames: Ork Shade Green
• pillars/pipe: Adeptus Battlegrey
• brass: Dwarf Bronze
• piping: Tin Bitz
• sandbags: Dheneb Stone with Gyphonne Sepia wash
• rust: Calthan Brown, Macharius Solar Orange

So I realized I didn’t have the obligatory post of my workspace. I was reminded of this yesterday when my wife and I decided to redo the office/guest bedroom and I was kindly asked to remove my extra large desk and replace it with a much smaller version. The end result makes the room as a whole nicer looking and more function overall but I do fell a bit squeezed. The current projects on the desktop are my Manufactorum wall, Warsmith, and traitor platoon. Due to the smaller workspace I had to put the rest of the guard squads in the closet.

My New Cute Little Desk (NCLD)

The pull-out drawer for the keyboard has drawer organizers taped to it and filled of my most used supplies (namely paint and brushes).

Desk Drawer Full of Paints

The closet is where most of the supplies, materials, old projects, and boxes of new projects are kept.

The Closet of Goodness

Here are a bunch of group shots of my traitor guard horde as it currently stands. As you can see I have the one platoon command nearly done and the two platoon squads started (well only one coat of orange so far…). At this point I have a company command squad, two platoons each with two squads and two heavy weapons squads. I have two squads of lascannons, one missle launcher squad and a mortar squad. This comes out to around 750 points which is a nice starting point and a solid core of any size game I am able to play in the future as this army continues to grow.

on to the pictures!

overhead view of my traitor guard horde

The missle launcher squad and the mortors still need to be primed, I had built them while waiting for the other models to dry. After seeing this post on From the Warp I may try priming with brown and save some time painting multiple layers of orange, flesh and light brown while maintaining the dark shadows where the brush doesn’t fit.

the company command backed by the mob of traitors

Yes, that is indeed a inquisitor model leading my traitor army. Ironic as it is, the model is great and with some slight modification looks like a merciless leader of traitors under the whip of the Iron Warriors.

Lascannon Squad #1

Because of their larger bases, the heavy weapon teams screamed for more customization and imagination. I had a great time building these squads and tried to build a story into each one. In this squad, its hard to see in this picture, but the guy on the far left got too excited and cut the power cable for his now upset teammate.

Lascannons, missiles, orange, oh my!

Here is a group shot of the other lascannon squad hiding in the ruins of a building (I know the cover doesn’t count, but it sure looks cool), the missile launchers (with a very upset spotter) and the platoon I started painting.

Mortars hiding in the back

Here is my mortar squad hiding in the back and behind a pile of sand bags. I have a long way to go to get all these guys painted but I’m hoping I can work on my bulk painting skills and bust out a platoon in a week (heres to dreaming!)

I’ve had this model since Christmas and have been trying to figure out how to turn the WFB Khorne Lord on Juggernaut into a mighty Warsmith of the Iron Warriors. The model as sculpted is a terrific looking model but the challenge was to make it look like it could fit into the 41st millennium. In the end I replaced the arms with CSM arms, added a CSM head and backpack and re-sculpted the cloak to fit the backpack. The power weapon is a combination of a CSM banner pole and a giant axe from the WFB Chaos Knights.

The pictures are a bit hard to make out the detail due to the black primer but I am excited to start painting. Work on this will be interleaved with painting my hoard of Traitor Guard but I will continue to post pictures of the progress.

Warsmith on a Juggernaut of Khorne

Warsmith from the side

Warsmith from the rear

So I finally found the camera and took some pictures of the platoon command squad I’ve been painting as a test unit. I wanted to see how well an orange color scheme would look before painting 50+ models as well as the added bonus that Bell of Lost Souls is hosting a hobby challenge for command squads. I will need to take some better pictures when the squad is finished but I wanted to post some pictures as they now stand.

click on the pictures for a larger image.

Traitor Guard Platoon Command

Traitor Guard Platoon Command (rear)

The squad is currently armed with two grenade launchers, vox and a platoon banner. The commander carries a power sword and bolt pistol. As I build the army and start playing with it I may change up the squad a bit. I don’t think the banners are worth it but they are great visuals that this is a army dedicated to Chaos.