One week out

Adepticon is a week from today and I think I am ready.  Everything is in "good enough" mode.  I will probably still do some touch-up over the next week, but if it was today I would be ready.  I'm actually quite impressed with how little space three armies are going to be taking up.  The SHIELD bag that I got at Adepticon two years ago is serving as the primary workhorse transporting all the infantry, bikes, a pair of wave serpents, the storm talon and all the artillery.  The hornets fit nicely in a old laptop case leaving just the two wraithknights who each get a custom box of their own because they are just annoyingly big to transport. 

I know this is a mistake but I am already starting to think about what to do after Adepticon is over.  Hobby wise I am pretty set, I want to get back to my Void Dragons.  But playwise I want to get away from my current comfort zone.  The Void Dragons are different and a clear power level below "normal" eldar not having farseers, jetbikes or wraiths but that just makes them more reliant on things like wave serpents and warp spiders.  I really want to step outside the box I have been playing for the last couple months.  Maybe a biel-tan style list as I have always liked aspect warriors or maybe ever further and I'll bring back the space marines as a force onto themselves.  Either way it will be time to step back from the competitive training mode and just get some good old fashioned fun games in.  At least for a couple months until it is time to start thinking about the Michigan GT again.

Three weeks to Adepticon

Adepticon is just three weeks away.  Not sure how it got here that fast.  Fortunately my Adepticon To Do list is that bad.  It does have some rather important items on it however.  Anyways here is my list.  If you are going what is yours?

1. Create objective marker
2. Create display board for my army (finished)

2b. Finish the central webway
 3. Figure out where I am staying before the rest of you show up
4. Paint up 6 bikes for two person team list
5. Figure out how to transport all this crap
6. Print out army lists
7. Do gems on farseers head

Adding a Raider

The progress on the void dragons continues.  I've even got a Void Dragon army list put together that I brought up to AFK last week (but failed to get a game in for the second week in row).  A reminder that this is part of the Independent Characters Hobby Challenge.  Here is a raider, now all I need are a few more guys to put in it.

Void dragons, Vect and OSL

The progress on the void dragons continues.  I've even got a Void Dragon army list put together that I brought up to AFK last week (but failed to get a game in).  Anyways I committed to creating a Vect model for the Independent Characters Hobby Challenge.  The main reason for this is he is expensive and gets me a quarter of the way to 1000 points by himself.  Digging through the bits box, this is what I came up with.  It takes a little liberty (namely his specter is a spear) but it is suitably archon-y for me.  Not that it liely to ever see significant table time, but I would probably use him as a generic archon in the future.

I also took advantage of the fact that this guy isn't going to see a lot of table time to try some new techniques. Namely object source lighting and air brush work.  The airbrushing didn't do much and was largely covered over with traditional painting, However I did get a little more feel for how it works on actual models.The OSL lighting worked nicely I think.  As a rule I think OSL gets overused but I wanted to create an impression of the archon dodging the plasma shot by inches.  I think it worked.

If I were to do this again I would give him a bare head. As a rule, I hate uncovered heads as a rule and I think they are massively overused.  Really in a world of bolt shells, ray guns and guns that shoot ultra thin shurikens, you think your skull will stop the shot by itself?  However here I think it could have given shifted the focus a bit more to the eldar.  I went with the helmet because I wanted to make sure I got enough red in there to fit with the army, since his ghostplate was gray he didn't have much black or red on him yet.

Return of the Void Dragons

When the Eldar Imperial Armour book came out I took a bunch of old models that I had as leftover from previous trades and decided to make a corsair force.  It was however fun to paint as the scheme is fairly simple and looks great on the table.   Unfortunately the corsair rules are pretty horrible in terms of clarity so the army didn't see much sustained usage. However since the only real investment I had in the army was 1 razorwing/nightwing conversion this wasn't a huge loss.



I have been toying around with the idea of doing some dark eldar and after a trip to Flat Land Games and raiding their sprue pile I had a bunch of pieces for conversions.  A second place finish at a local event got me a couple of boxes and the project was up an running. The final straw was a hobby challenge hosted by the Independent Characters forum that I have entered.  (On a side note a number of Lansing area players are taking part and we are planning to do a multiplayer Zone Mortalis game in June at the end of stage one- if you are taking part let me know so we can include you)

2014 progress

For the past few years I have taken part in the 40kfightclub's annual painting challenge (paint at least a unit a month).  I'm not sure if they are doing it this year so I going to be posting it here in the mean time.  Anyways, here are my goals for the year:

1. Finish the year with fewer unpainted models than I started with

2. Complete at least one unit a month

3. Complete in the Independent Characters painting challenge

4. Finish and sell the feral orks  (or more realistically make good progress on them)

Anyways here are my entries for January.  Two Vengeance Weapon Batteries.

and a feral ork wartruk

TJ Must Die Open Summary

Just braved a lovely little snow storm to play in a tournament over at Evolution Games that was held in honor of TJ from Dark Future Games being in town.  Larry did a great job running the event and I played three good, different games.  Despite the snow we had 20 people show up for the event. The list I played is the same one I have been playing for a couple months now.

Farseer on bike
2 groups of rangers
3 jetbikes with cannon
6 jetbikes with 2 cannons
6 spiders
2 wraithknights (warlord)
3 shadow weavers

Chapter master with toys
Full bike squad with 2 grav guns, heavy bolter, power sword and meltabomb
Storm Talon
Thunderfire Cannon

Game 1 was vs Joshua Earle.  I've never played Joshua before and it was a good game.  Joshua played a 5th edition eldar list.  Farseer, warlock and 6 bikers, 3 wave serpents with dire avengers/storm guardians, a falcon with fire dragons, large squad of warp spiders and swooping hawks and some war walkers.  Not a bad list but far from optimal in my opinion.  Mission was Emperors Will (2 objectives) and Joshua was playing for a draw from the start because the internet says the mission is a draw.  I got lucky turn one with the thunderfire cannon hitting 4 times allowing me to target the swooping hawks that were hiding under a ruin by hitting the Falcon next to them (Techmarine than failed 3 out 3 armour saves next round). The game was close for a while because he boosted his bikes into my back field forcing my marine bikers to turn around and wipe them out (which they did).  But eventually the weight of my fire power made it safe for me to advance.  In the end he was wiped out on turn 5.  The key to this game was just patience.  He didn't know a couple of key rules (such as barrage), however a couple of different dice rolls and he could have pulled it out.

Game 2 was vs. the tournament's namesake TJ Atwell, unfortunately he didn't bring his army with him from NC
.  As an added bonus, beating TJ would result in the store throwing in an extra $20 to the prize pool.  I've only played TJ once when he was playing Dark Angels a few years ago.  I don't remember much about the game other than it was good and TJ was a good player.  He was playing a Chaos Necron mix that I knew from the start would be trouble as he has 5 flyers (3 necron, a deamon prince and a hell drake).  Look closely at my list and you will see the 0 anti-air I have.  
Mission was 5 objectives.  I got lucky and got to place 3 of them (not that it would matter). Game was very killy and neither of us had much left at the end of the game.  I had 1 bike and 2 rangers left as my only scoring units (and the only reason they were alive was because the hell drake rolled double 1 to wound the rangers and 5 warriors failed to rapid fire the last jetbike away.  He had no scoring units left.  It was very good game that I should have been a 2-2 draw on secondaries but I did get two objectives pulling out a win and moving me to the number two table (since I didn't get as many objectives as others).

Game 3 was versus Jesse Zischke, the top general at the Michigan GT, and his Grey Knight army.  Despite being a local I think this was our first game vs. each other.  Jesse runs a tough army with three dreadknights and a pair of storm ravens.  Luckily my army is a good matchup vs. his, minus the two flyers.  I got to go first and he forced him to be reactive from the start.  In a funny series of miss communications I asked if his dreadknights had force weapons.  He said no because he thought I was asking about a different unit, we eventually figured it out but he never changed his answer to the original question.  Next turn I misfortune a dreadknight and get an instant kill.  There is confusion about his armour saves because he thought got regular armour vs 1 but not the other.  After some confusion we figure it out what each roll was intended for and what was needed but because of the confusion we forgot about the misfortune.  I follow it up with a charge and fail to kill it, he wounds me and uses his force weapon.  After I point out he said he didn't have one, we go back and undo the entire combat.  His turn he charges the wraithknight who this time kills him despite less attacks.  End result was what would have probably happened had we remember the misfortune, we just took the long way.  Other than this cluster, it was well played and even with a disadvantage Jesse was still in position to win until turn 4.

Overall I am happy with the list it performed well going 3-0 and tabling 2 opponents.  Bill Kim ended up in first with three tables using his very strong deamon list, you can see his summary here.  As expected it struggled vs. the flyer heavy army but it faced three very different armies and survived.  I'm not sure I care enough to address this however.  The thunderfire cannon continues to be the question mark in the list for me.  It is a great unit but is it needed?  I still don't know.  I also don't know what I would pick up instead.  One thought is two vengenance weapon platforms with either a punisher cannon/quad las or two quad lascannon, but to do this would require dropping a unit of rangers bringing me down to 4-5 scoring units.  I also played around with the wraithknight as my warlord, seemed ok.  Not great but not bad either.