Road to STGCC - Actual 2v2 Practice

Managed to get organize a game with Wai Liong who runs Here Be Geeks. We originally planned to do a fully painted batrep but because I need some practice for the upcoming tournament, I asked if he was open to teaming up with me to play against Patrick and Keith. Unfortunately since most of us were still firming up our lists majority of our armies were not fully painted up. 

Almost firmed up list

1000 points of Blood Angels in a Battalion.
Slamguinus with Angel's Wing, Thunderhammer, StormShield
Smash Captain with THSS
Death Company x 10 with Thunderhammer and Power Fist
Sanguinary Guard x 5 all with Power Fists
Scouts with Shotguns x 5
Scouts with Shotguns x 5
Scouts with Sniper Rifles x 5
Sicaran Tank with Autocannons and Heavy Bolters

This was basically the list I intended to bring to STGCC with maybe slight modification. The plan again was to send Slamguinus against the biggest threat and take it down.

In this game I was playing to get myself acquainted with my list.

Deployment - it's amazing when all the minis are painted to such high quality

I have to point out that Wai Liong is not only an amazing painter but also great at converting. His favourite seem to be mecha or large robots.

Dark Mechanicus - most of his models are lovingly crafted, some merging parts from Forgeworld making the model expensive!

Deployment

Keith and Pat brought Chaos with Nids. Pat brought the same list he played against me previously so I prewarned Wai Liong of the speed of Pat's Nids. Unfortunately some miscalculation later, Pat's Genestealer made it into combat.

These are some amazing models! Those Genestealer look angry! 

Chaos and Nids sure seem to move very quickly! 

Turn 1

I had little choice but to send in my Death Company to attempt to remove that pesky Dreadclaw only to have it limp away on one wound. On the flip side, I somehow managed to save an ungodly number of 6+ FNP on the Death Company due to some mortal wounds coming my way.

Our gun line was totally overwhelmed

In a bid to protect Keith's Daemon Prince, Pat wrapped his Gants around it

Though I still did manage to charge Slamguinus in

We were almost tabled at this stage so Wail Liong and I both called the game. It was amazing to see the painted armies though! Wai Liong and I will be doing a Blog Challenge after Orktober so stay tuned!

Unfortunately I didn't really learn too much about my army in this game. It was way too skewed but still it was important for me to get used to deep strike timings, model placement, strategems and army wide rules. 

Slowburn: Blood Angels vs Adeptus Mechanicus

Got Pat into the store and we put our 750 point armies on the table. Pat was looking to try the Admech and I had my Slowburn army with me. I played the very same Take All Comers List while Pat brought a simple Admech list. All models are WYSIWYG. 

Mission: Spoils of War

Pat got the First Turn and took it. I failed to Seize. Night Fighting was in play.

Kept everything out of Line of Sight

Those Kataphron have a punishing amount of firepower and they are all Grav Weapons too! 

His first turn of shooting failed to do much as the Admech could only see the Scouts on the Bastion.

I moved the Death Company up again, hiding as much as I can

Scored 2 VPs

Gorro's Squad went to work but only managed to remove 2 HP from the Onager Dunecrawler

Gorro and squad failed and paid the price. The Admech turned their attention to the squad and kill them all giving First Blood to Pat.

Pivotal charge

I jump packed up within an inch from the Kataphron. Rolled 2D6 to charge needing a 6 to complete the charge. I rolled a 5. And now the Death Company is staring down the entire Admech army.

I managed to score another VP

In Pat's Turn 3 he managed to ping off 2 HP from my Sicaran the Blood of the Fallen. Other than that he moved some of his units forward to take out my Death Company and earned him Slay the Warlord.

And another 2 more in my Turn 3

Turn 4 saw the Admech popping off the Rhino

Keeping focussed on the objectives, I ran the Squad Rayzor to cap Objective 3 for another KP

Pat scored 2 VPs

In Turn 5 and 6, I took a massive beating. The Kataphron took off the remaining HP from the Sicaran and removed the unit of Tactical Marines. In the last turn, Pat managed to also kill off the Drop Pod who would have scored Line Breaker.

3 Scouts remaining

Pat scored this at the end

Final score including bonuses:
Admech: 9
Blood Angels: 6

Victory to the Admech!

First game against the Admech and man, they have a ton of shooting attacks. There was little you could really do to mitigate the shooting except to hide and stay out of Line of Sight. 30" from those Kataphrons make it hard to hide though and they each come with 2 wounds. They can dish out 15 shots per model, Grav. Hot sauce!

Looking forward to the next game.

Breaking News: Mars Adeptus Mechanicus Spotted

Here are some leaks! Sure look like they have been influenced quite a bit by the current Imperial Guard line especially the limbs. Enjoy! 

Its a walker with 4 armoured mechanical spider legs. The crew compartment is large metal box angled in the front. There is a small robotic arm in the front with tools and drills on the appendage. The visor for the drivers inside is a slit with optical lenses on the the left hand side of the opening. The Eradication Beamer is big, and looks like a giant conversion beamer, up top there is a gunner with a heavy stubber. I don't know the optional guns, but there are a couple. One that looks like a long barreled autocannon, but has some sort of array attached to it. None of the weapon options look like standard Imperial Weapons.

Adeptus Mechanicus Skitarii

box contains 10 new plastic models. They can be made up as either Skitarii Vanguard, or Skitarii Rangers. Both units contain special and close combat weapon options. 

Adeptus Mechanicus Ironstrider 

Said to the backbone of the Adeptus Mechanicus Scout forces. It's a dual kit allowing you to make either the Ironstrider Ballistarius -long ranged heavy weapon walker, or the Sydonian Dragoon which is a close combat version. 

It comes with a riptide size base and stand just as tall as the Riptide or an Imperial Knight. 

Gun options- 

Replace the Eradication Beamer with 

-Twin linked heavy phosphor blaster 

-Neutron Laser and Cognis Heavy Stubber 

-Icarus Array 

Admech Skitarii - 10 minis can be built as Rangers or Vanguard. €31 

Admech Ironstrider €38 

Weapons 

the plasma pistol described in your previous article is not an odd looking plasma pistol. its an arc pistol. arc weapons will be available for the skitarii in both pistol and rifle. the arc rifle is rapid fire with haywire. rifle and pistol both are s6 ap5. 

Cognis Weapons are normal weapons with the Cognis attached to it, like Cognis Lascannon. They simply use a BS 2 when firing snap shots because of an awakened machine spirit. 

Burst Pistol rules allow for 5 shots to be fired instead of just a single one. 

Galvanic Rifle looks like an ornate flintlock rifle with a canister on the side. R30", rapid fire, S4. 

Onager Dunewalkera heavy choice walker called a Onager Dunewalker will be part of the skitarii. they are an armor 12 walker that comes with overlapping forcefields that give an invulnerable save. each additional walker in the squad increases the save by 1. they come with a conversion beamer type weapon that is more powerful up close and disperses to a large but weaker blast at longer range. squadrons up to 3. 

Dragoon WalkerThere is also a Dragoon which looks to be a dual kit with a rider on top of a bipedal machine. It has legs similar to the IG sentinels, but has a grafted human in the center of the machine. I am not as fluent in the background with the skitarii as I would like to comment much more. 

Ive seen a walker bearing the ad mech symbols on it. The walker has a horizontal pilot hooked up to the machine with optical lenses for the pilots sight, and little mechanical grabbers that extend out from the pilots hands. There is a gunner on top in red robes and odd looking armor that reminds me of the tempestus armor except for larger eye lenses. The walker has sentinel legs, and the weapon up top is a ornate twin-linked lascannon.

Completed House Taranis Imperial Knight.

After rushing through the first 2 days of getting my hands on this model I finally completed painting this beast of a model. Best model put out by GW till date? Maybe, I'm definitely not gonna argue with that. The details found on every single part of the model is absolutely amazing. Even parts that is no way going to be seen after assembling has sculpted detail. 

Here you can see my first completed Knight (sans the base), the Adeptus Mechanicum aligned from House Taranis. Inspired by the colour scheme and decal placement directly from the Knight companion book, I'm glad it turned out well!

I just love taking pics with a guardsmen to emphasise it's massive bulk.

I decided to go for a bare head for several reasons. First was that this looked the most "Mechanicum-like" you know the skeletal servo skull look. And honestly I dislike the rest of the faceplates as they are simply too "war machine" for my liking. Here lies the problem, I'm going to be in a dilemma when I have to build up the remaining Knights.....

Top shot of the carapace along with the wonderful transfer decals. GW really topped themselves with this decal sheet. I've never been a fan of using decals in so many years of my hobby life, but this kit literally begs the decals to be used. And spam them I did. 

These set of decals are perfectly designed to wrap around certain armour plates, eliminating the dreaded crumpling and folds normally associated with transfers. All it required was a little design magic on the part of GW and these work like a charm. In fact I'm so sold on the set of transfers that comes in the kit that I am seriously considering buying the add on!

Most people would say to go for the battle cannon. But I just can't resist the look of a massive melta.

This kit is chokeful of details.

After I was done with the mini I turned my attention to the base. Being such a large base (and such an expensive model) I decided to give the base some extra lovin'. 

I used a pencil to draft out the position of the feet. This is to keep the surface flat when it's time to glue the model down. 

I went to dig through my bit boxes and came up with lots of remains from building the cities of death. 

And here I carefully positioned my knight to be nonchalantly striding over a fallen balcony. 

All filled with rubble and sand and stones.

One knight down. Two to go.