Wargames Gallery: Typhus reaping orks

Charging in to a full mob of Orks, Typhus rolls a 6 for his daemon weapon and gains the maximum number of attacks possible. And he also does his stink bomb thing in assault. Plus his psychic powers. The Orks fail to cause a single wound and he slaughters many, resulting in the Orks bouncing off him and fleeing in to the distance. Sadly, he does not withstand the counter-charge by two more mobs of Orks the next turn, but this turn was epic for him! Such is Apocalypse.

Battle-scarred power armour experimentation

There are many tabletop game players who utilise pristine painted and un-damaged armour. This is particularly true of space marine players in warhammer 40,000.  But as one gets a little older and wiser, perhaps even more skilled with painting and modelling, the urge to demonstrate weathering on armour as well as battle damage increases.  Many of my Nurgle Death Guard army demonstrates this to greater or lesser extents; as an example, my plague marine tactical squads (squad one; squad two; squad three) show a large number of conversions that accentuate the damage accumulated during battle. Indeed, individual miniatures (particularly the Forge World Death Guard set) demonstrate ways in which to add battle damage to armour quite readily.

Today, I wanted to demonstrate a few simple things that even a starting modeller might like to think about doing to start modelling battle-scarred power armour and encourage them to do a little experimentation of their own.

The easiest thing to do is to drill holes in plastic armour to represent physical damage from bolt gun rounds. In the image below, we can see several holes drilled in a line along both pieces depicted. To add an extra level of detail, I've added radial lines away from the centre of the holes to suggest blast damage that has come out of the hole (i.e. the bolt round exploded near the surface of the armour or slightly deeper and has ripped out chunks of the surrounding ceramite.

The next step to consider is complete hacks of armour to suggest cleaves and strikes with chainswords or power weapons. Have a look at the shoulder pad to the right. There is a large slice taken out of it on the far right hand side. The surrounding area has also been "distressed" to give a feeling of having seen an epic battle worthy of Isstvaan V.

The final bit I've done is to attach wires to the arm on the left hand side. These are (presumably) where the technological pieces would mesh up with the body of the power armour. My intent with this arm is to actually use it for scenery on the base of another miniature -- suggesting a rampaging nature to the other miniature perhaps, or simply detritus from the battlefield in general.  I'd certainly encourage others to start experimenting with these kinds of things: they're modestly straight forward (assuming you have a modelling knife and are old enough to handle one) and can be achieved with a minimum of fuss.

Taking this kind of experimentation to an extreme, one of my earlier conversions (see image at bottom) features a Death Guard marine with a backpack that has been extensively decayed away. This is a rather strong conversion, but can still be pulled off with a bit of practise: a nurgling hangs on to the pipework and guzzles down whatever strange fluid is flowing from it, whilst the rest of the back pack lies at its feet -- I very much like this miniature and play it regularly in my Death Guard army to this day. It pulls regular comments from my opponents!

CSM Options: Icon of Despair

The icon for Nurgle marked units is the Icon of Despair.  As well as adding 1 to the combat result, the Icon of Despair confers the fear rule to the unit.  Naturally, fearless units don't care.  And They Shall Know No Fear units also don't care.  Yet, the ability to cause fear (reducing opponent's to WS=1 on an unsuccessful Ld check) can be neat.  But, the meta-game features a strong amount of fearless and space marine armies.  The latter in particular make the fear rule one that is very easy to forget.  I've played against eldar, tau and others under 6th edition and not once yet remembered to force a fear check.  Why? Because the majority of my opponents are space marines.  I fear, fear, that I will not remember you. I also fear that fear is not terribly fearful.

Therefore the only reason to take the Icon of Despair is the benefit to combat outcome.  If equipped on tar-pitting units, this is pretty good (see my tactica about plaguebearers and instruments).  So, perhaps I could entertain an Icon of Despair on plague marine squads once in a while.  But, they have more attacks than plaguebearers.  So the case for an Icon of Despair even on plague marines is poor.  Given that the points cost is double the cost of a chaos daemons instrument, my answer becomes a firm no.  Forget the Icon of Despair.  Its a waste of points in my opinion and I won't be taking them.

(Aside: Pity they don't double up as homing icons, otherwise they'd be worthwhile! -- I feel the codex writers and playtesters really dropped the ball on this one -- homing icons have been with chaos for several editions and I'm still shocked at their absence).

CSM in 6th Review: Plague Marines

Plague marines actually got cheaper in the new codex, despite apparent price hikes to the contrary. They lost their stinky blight grenades that caused no bonus attack for charging them, but instead, they gain poisoned weapons.  This change takes them back a few editions and they're now (once again) a threat to all monstrous creatures in close combat. Plague marines retain their tactical flexibility: they're able to take two out of flamers, meltaguns, and plasmaguns. Alternatively, two marines in a squad may take plasma pistols. This leads to a multitude of battlefield roles.

The plague champion gets access to melee and ranged upgrades from the armoury, as well as a gift of mutation, melta bombs.  Of course, they can also purchase Veterans of the Long War and can take an Icon of Despair and a rhino transport.

Regarding the Icon of Despair, I really don't think its worth it.  The ability to cause fear in opponents is a bit sub-par in a space marine heavy meta-game.  Without the ability to summon daemons / act as a homing device, this is one icon that has lost its touch and purpose. That said, they also function as an analogue of instruments of chaos from chaos daemons.  Therefore, if the express purpose of a particular plague marine squad is to tar-pit, then the icon will be valuable -- take it.

I feel a bit conflicted about the Gift of Mutation for plague marine champions.  On the one hand, they could get a good roll that makes it well worth the points.  This is particularly true for a tar-pit unit.  But a ranged unit, it is not so much worth while taking the upgrade.  So, I think this upgrade is situational.

Finally, since plague marine champions have I=3, I think that they're probably the one and only type of champion that can afford to have a power fist.  Since they're going to be striking after the majority of miniatures in the game, they're already relying on their enhanced toughness and feel no pain to avoid being killed in direct challenges thanks to the Champion of Chaos rule.  It's an expensive gamble, though, to be sure.  But one that I'll be taking.

Let's have a look at a few potential squad set-ups.

5 Plague Marines, 2 plasma guns, plague champion with combi-plasma (160 points)
A small squad of plasma death.  Team up with an infiltrating warlord to cause a little panic.  Or keep them in an advanced position in your half of the table: ready to shoot down enemy bikers that get too close.  Hold an objective late in the game that is in your own half.  Or add a fortification (Aegis defence line or a bastion, plus quad gun) for a strong anchor that won't be taken down in a hurry.  Add two extra marines to make the squad size to 7 and be a little bit fluffy about things (and a little more survivable).

7 Plagues Marines, 1 Flamer, 1 Melta Gun, plague champion with power fist, rhino with havoc launcher (255 points)
This has to be one of my favourite set-ups.  Although it can be criticised for not being "focussed" in the sense of going for mixed ranged special weapons, it is an all-rounder that has proved effective time and again.  Use the rhino to get close (or as a line-of-sight blocker) and ping the enemy regularly with the havoc launcher.  Get out, rapid fire, flame and melt.  Then charge on the next turn (or get charged and have a nice flamer overwatch against the chargers).  Hope the champion survives an opposing sergeant and unleash the power fist on them in return.  The power fist also provides a way to down dreadnoughts and other targets.  There's little not to like in this set up for me!  Add in the Icon of Despair if you think they're going to be doing plenty of close combat, or Veterans of the Long War if you know the enemy in advance.  Either way, its still cheaper than the previous edition.

10 Plague Marines, Veterans of the Long War, 2 flamers, champion with powerfist, Icon of Despair, Rhino with havoc launcher (342 points)
A combat tar-pit squad.  Add in a gift of mutation on the champion if there's some spare points left over.  Get stuck in as soon as possible to the enemy.

20 Plague Marines (480 points).  Better to use as 4 x 5 Plague Marines for the same points in many circumstances.
A "naked" squad of 20 plague marines.  Their high toughness and feel no pain means that they're not going anywhere fast (so long as someone else in the force takes care of pesky vindicators coming their way).  Spread them out to hold lots of ground, use as a road bump.  Claim objectives and stay put.  Take on a monstrous creature you want dead. In short, they're hard to remove quickly.  This set-up is strictly better as 4 lots of 5 man squads due to the extra attack on the champion (assuming you've got a Nurgle lord and they're troops), but some players dislike such small squads, even when T=5.

Plague Marines Got Cheaper in the New Codex

I want to make a point today that might not be so obvious on the surface.  It is this.  Plague marines got cheaper in the new codex, despite apparent points costs to the contrary (i.e. the basic trooper costing 1 pt more!).  Here's why.

In the new codex, Death Guard players get 1 champion and 4 plague marines for 10 points less than in the old codex.  Hence unless we're taking lots of additional plague marines to our units (perhaps a 14 man strong squad for fluffy reasons?) then the new codex is always going to be working out cheaper.

Consider this "typical" set up from 5th edition (typical in the sense that I used to run it anyway...!):

7 plagues marines, of which 1 is a plague champion armed with a power fist, 1 flamer, 1 melta gun, 1 rhino with havoc launcher = 266 points.

Now consider the 6th edition equivalent: 255 points.

Oh yeah: the havoc launcher got cheaper too!  Horrah!

And plague marines now have plague swords once more.  So, my typical squad got 11 points cheaper AND has more abilities!  Count the Seven!

Typhus and Zombie Plague Armies from the New Chaos Codex

In Apocalypse, Typhus and friends had a formation that consisted of Plague Zombies.  This has now been translated to the new Chaos Space Marine codex in a specific format.

With Typhus, the chaos cultists can be converted in to plague zombies.  This has advantages: fearless and feel no pain being chief among them.  That said, there are disadvantages: slow and purposeful and the inability to take optional upgrades that would usually be open to regular cultists.

One of the problems that has already been flagged with the wording of Typhus' rules concerns what counts as "upgrades".  Specifically, whether increasing the number of zombies in a unit counts as an optional upgrade.  I don't see that this counts as an option.  An option is usually taken as being one of the listed equipment swaps (and so forth).  Hence, huge blobs of plague zombies seem feasible!

For under 1000 points, one can now form the core of an army from Typhus and hundreds (well, perhaps up to 200 and something anyway) plague zombies.  This is quite incredible really!  Even if the plague zombies are weak, the feel no pain rule will keep many alive for long enough to get in to close combat to cause headaches, and to go to ground on top of a valuable objective.  Not too many armies have the firepower to take down more than one hundred models ... and even in close combat, death star units can only take out up to tens of models in close combat per turn.  Take thunder hammer terminators: a squad of 5, at worst, would take out 10 per turn.  Against several tens of zombies, they're going to be locked up, tarpitted and whittled to death eventually (yes: even terminators roll 1's for saves, despite recent experiences!).

Depending on points limits, this leaves room for several fast attack, heavy support and elites choices (perhaps alongside some plaguemarines, or Nurgle daemon allies as well?).  Building such an army feels appealing to me -- I've not done such a "horde" army in a while.  And making it competitive seems like a neat challenge -- so I'll try to post a speculative army list once the codex is actually released.  Is this flavour of plague zombie army speaking volumes to other people as well?  Or is it simply my Nurglesque mind that has been corrupted?!

Leaderless Squads

Personal challenges in close combat are one of the main changes in 6th edition of 40k, bringing it closer in similarity to fantasy.  For my plague marines, I've been toying with the idea of attempting to construct a list that does not contain any squad leaders.  The main reason for this is that at initiative 3, they're usually going to get kicked by most other squad leaders (ignoring those with power fists of course).  Having said that, their increased resistance to power weapons (thanks to feel no pain) is making me second guess this tactic.  And having a power fist of my own buried in my squad is generally a good idea I find.  

So what would a plague marine list with no squad leaders feel like to play?  Probably little different to a regular plague marine list if I kept it reasonably mechanized.  The guys stay in their armoured personnel carriers and get out to shoot when required, leaving the big boys (daemon princes) to tackle the major threats encountered.  For the points saved (23 points for a regular plague marine, versus 63 for a power fisted plague champion), I can get another plague marine and have spare points over.  This increases my tarpitting ability.  I'm therefore seriously tempted to make an ally of Epidemius and use his ability to buff my plague marines (as required) to make up for the lack of squad leaders.  Very tempting...

Tactica: Castling (and Epidemius)

With the addition of allies and the ability to purchase a fortification, certain tactical options now present themselves that weren't always available in 5th edition.  

For example, if you have an important unit in the game that you need to keep alive, "Castling" is now a viable option.  There are a number of units such as these: Eldar Farseer with runes of warding for psychic defence, and Epidemius for a buff to all Nurgle units.  These guys don't really want to see the front line of combat if they can help it -- particularly if they're simply an allies choice in a force composed of other primary elements who ARE there to get to the front lines.  

So, here's the idea.  As well as your valuable allies that provide you with nifty bonuses, you're going to need somewhere for them to skulk away and hide in.  What better than a bastion?  With AV=14 at a third of the cost of a land raider, why not?  The bastion will take a bit of pounding to get at, and it is probably not going to be target number one on your enemies' hit lists.  Or at least, that's the theory.

Let's have a look at Epidemius.  To Castle Epidemius is relatively simple. Because he is going to be deep-striking through daemonic assault on to the battlefield, all that we need to do is have an icon inside the bastion at set-up.  When Epidemius arrives (hopefully on turn 1!), he will deep-strike without scatter to the ground level of the bastion, and within 2 inches of the front door (for the rules for embarkation to work).  In the movement phase, disembark the marines (or whoever it was with the icon), or perhaps move them up to the battlements section, and then in the shooting phase, run Epidemius in to the building.  Castling move complete!  

You now have Epidemius and chums safely tucked away and are ready to take on the rest of the battlefield!

Power Weapons and FNP for 6th

I must admit that I'm a little torn about the 6th edition rules for power weapons and Feel No Pain (FNP).  Although I've not yet got the new rules (and hence going by the rumours), it seems like power weapons are now AP3.  This gives terminators a big buff, but on the other hand makes units like bloodletters and bloodcrushers a touch worse off.

On the other hand, feel no pain moving from 4+ to 5+ means that my plague marines are suddenly a lot weaker.  No longer do they have an equivalent 2+ save -- it's a 2.33+ save equivalent.  This makes me sad as small arms fire is going to bring them down more frequently.  It feels like this change has been brought in to specifically tackle other armies (Blood Angels?).  I hope that the new chaos and daemons codex makes plaguebearers and marines back to 4+ FNP -- their points value is now over costed.

On the other hand, they now have a FNP save against power weapons which they never had before!  But then again, only a small subsample of opposing units have access to those weapons by the bucketful.  So its not going to particularly balance the move to 5+ FNP I think.  Maybe I'm wrong.  Either way, it'll be good to finally get hold of the new rules when they come out and play a few games through.  There's a number of game changers in there (allies, fortifications, etc.) that go above and beyond these considerations and we'll all be re-thinking our army lists as a result!

Currency Conversion

Following on from showing that the cost of my Death Guard army has risen nearly seven per sent in some one and a half years, I thought it might be illuminating to also cost the same products in Australian Dollars.  I'll do this in two ways: simply converting directly using an exchange rate, and computing the cost if I'd purchased the same parts through Australia's arm of Games Workshop.

Firstly, let's have a look at the cost of the parts in AUD, bought directly from the outlets.  Of these items, the plague ogryn and the dreadnought are the only items not sold directly in AUD, so I'm forced to use an exchange rate for those (0.6 UKP to 1 AUD).

Daemon Prince -- a forge world plague ogryn (32 AUD) combined with dragon wings (17 AUD)

Dreadnought from Forge World -- 45 AUD (body), + 12.50 AUD (left arm), + 12.50 AUD (plasma cannon)

3 squads of 7 plague marines in rhinos. Assuming they're just basic chaos marines, that's 3 boxed sets (3 x 62 AUD) and 3 rhinos (3 x 55 AUD).

1 predator (83 AUD).

2 Vindicators (2 x 83 AUD).

That's a total of 719 AUD.

This compares with 290.65 UKP that I computed yesterday.  If I use an exchange rate of 0.6 UKP to every 1AUD, then this would amount to 484.4 AUD.  Only if the exchange rate were more like 2005 ish rates, (i.e. 0.4 UKP to every 1 AUD) then the prices would be about the same. So at present, I'm spending about 200 AUD more than I have to it seems here in Australia.  Food for thought!

Cost of an Army in 2012

Inevitably, talk of price rises abound at this time of year.  So, I wanted to return to my own armies and see how much they'd cost to build up these days.  In 2010, I posted a costing of a 1500 points Death Guard / Plague Marine centric army.  Today, I want to return to that post to see how times have changed (and if I'd build it slightly differently).  I'll use UKP rather than AUD or USD in this analysis.

Daemon Prince -- a forge world plague ogryn (19 UKP) combined with dragon wings (6.15 UKP)

Dreadnought from Forge World -- 27 UKP (body), + 7.50 UKP (left arm), + 7.50 UKP (plasma cannon)

3 squads of 7 plague marines in rhinos. Assuming they're just basic chaos marines, that's 3 boxed sets (3 x 23 UKP) and 3 rhinos (3 x 20.50 UKP).

1 predator (31 UKP).

2 Vindicators (2 x 31 UKP).

Would I build it differently?  Perhaps some Forge world death guard bits, probably finecast plague marines (because bubbles in finecast don't truly matter for plague marines in my humble opinion), and of course, I'd be changing the army list around a bit ... based on the new codex of course (whenever it shows up).

The grand total for the above comes to 290.65.

This compares to 272.50 in September 2010.  That's an increase of 6.6% over 1.5 years.  I don't believe that my disposable income has scaled at the same rate as that though.  So, as with other folks in this hobby, I'll be more discerning about what I'm buying when the new chaos codex warps to us.

Wargames Gallery: Objective Melee

Around a hotly contested objective, a squad of plague marines meets Black Templars and Blood Ravens head on.  Although the objective switches hands a number of times, the clock runs out for the Death Guard and they lose the battle eventually.  At least the librarian and his pesky Null Zone perishes.

How Many Tesla Carbine Shots Are Required to kill Plague Marines?

Nurgle's plague marines are tough; no doubt about it.  But how worried are plague marines when taking incoming fire from Tesla Carbines (as used by Necron Immortals)?  Let's look at some statistics.

An immortal will hit a plague marine on a 3+ (probability = 0.67).  

The tesla carbine will wound on a 4+ (new combined probability = 0.33).

The plague marine saves the wound on a 3+, followed by a feel no pain roll of 4+ if required.  Hence the probability of the wound being saved is 2+.  Therefore an unsaved wound has a probability of 0.056.

But the Tesla special rule will activate on a hit roll of 6.

So we'll modify the above calculation to count for only a roll to hit of 3, 4, or 5.  That yields a probability of an unsaved wound of 0.042.  

Now let's add in the roll to hit of 6 (probability of 1/6 = 0.167).  This causes an automatic 2 extra hits.

So we're taking 3 hits with a wound caused on 4+.  That's 1.5 wounds * 0.167 = 0.25 wounds.

Each wound is saved (as above) on 2+.  This gets reduced to 0.042 unsaved wounds if the necron rolls a 6.

Combining the two results (0.042 unsaved wounds on a hit roll of 3,4,5 with 0.042 unsaved wounds on a hit roll of a 6) yields 0.083 unsaved wounds per incoming tesla carbine shot.  That means 12 tesla carbine shots are required to down a plague marine, on average.  That compares to 27 bolter shots (or indeed, gauss flayer shots) to down a plague marine.  So an immortal armed with a tesla carbine is more than twice as deadly as a regular necron or space marine to my plague marines.

Apocalypse Homebrew: The Dark Contagion

This one was inspired by the old Realms of Chaos: The Lost and the Damned book:

The Dark Contagion.
Points Cost: 77 points per unit; 17 points per character.  May only be given to followers of Nurgle (daemons of Nurgle or models already possessing the mark of Nurgle).

Description: One of the more unpleasant "gifts" of Mortarion, the Dark Contagion causes the victim's flesh to swell up and sport black and purple blotches.  Out of these blotches spills a viscous and foul-smelling pus. 

Effect: If an opponent lands a close combat wound (regardless of whether it is subsequently saved or unsaved) on the unit or character possessing the dark contagion, the pus bursts out and splatters the opponent, causing them to retch and/or generally be overcome with disgust.  The opponent's initiative is reduced to 1 for the next close combat round and they strike last.  (This applies to the whole attacking unit in an analogous way to thunder hammers causing oppenents to strike last.)

Historical Notes:
This gift of Mortarion originally had the opponent take a willpower (now known as Ld) test if they caused a wound.  If that failed, the opponent lost all subsequent attacks in that round and in the next round as well.  In an on-going campaign, there was also a risk that affected models would contract the dark contagion themselves.  This interpretation of the Dark Contagion is a bit more stream-line and effective, which is reflected in the points cost. 

Wargames Gallery: In the Shadow of Vindication

The Death Guard secure the objective and allow their nicely rusting vindicator to trundle forward to take shots at the loyalist dogs.

Full Battle report on this one will follow next month (as soon as I sort through the images!).

Horsemen of Apocalypse: II - Nurgle

The next horseman is the Lord Corruptor -- the Nurgle chaos lord.

The steed has has some extensive greenstuff work applied to it (or milliput in this case). Lots of detail has been added to the surface to demonstrate a diseased horse with decaying and rusted armour. This technique has also been extended to the legs of the chaos lord to give a more Nurglesque appearance.  The horse also has eve guards that are similar to the destroyer hive accessories that Typhus carries around -- very fitting for this fellow.

The torso of the chaos lord is one of the Forge World Death Guard / Plaguemarine conversion set. He is armed with a power fist (chaos space marine) and a wicked looking halberd (chaos knights).  The toughest part of the conversion was getting the torso to sit on the chaos knight legs right.  Lots of re-positioning was needed to make the angle of the halberd and power fist look fluid.

In game terms, this is a chaos lord with the Mark of Nurgle, equipped with a power fist and a close combat weapon (halberd!).  His role is to take care of some of the hardier targets, terminators and so forth, before the bulk of the army has to worry about them.  I considered adding some melta bombs as well for extra anti-tank duty, but felt that the powerfist was okay for a bit of light tank busting.  He's therefore a threat to most opponents in the game: not an over-powerful opponent, but one that merits attention.

Wargames Gallery: Count the Seven

Beset by loyalists, Mortarion's finest make their stand where it matters.

Through faith in the true powers, they pull through and claim an objective in a capture and control pitched battle mission.

Decayed Plaguemarine Backpack, with Nurgling

To create variation within my plague marine squads, I have tried using a plethora of minor conversions.  This Death Guard marine has a ruined backpack -- I've chopped off the right hand side vent (as pictured) and glued a lot of grit around the edge of the pack.  Using some wire, I've then created an attachment from the damaged side to the broken off bit that is sat next to a nurgling on the base.

The nurgling is a Realms of Chaos era one and to ensure that the pose looks correct, I've bored a hole through his hand where he is holding on to the wire.  The broken part of the backpack is then inserted up to his mouth, making it look like he's having a cheeky drink from the messed up remains of the back pack.

Painted Death Guard Infantryman

This fellow was assembled a little while ago with a bayonet attachment to the bolter, to give a feeling of the older Rogue Trader era marines (and also inspire by the then recently released Forge World Mk.III attachments.

I followed my regular approach to plague marines -- splotches of greens, browns and leathery colours, highlighted in bleached bone with a red bolter frame and rusted attachments.  In particular, I'm especially pleased with the rusted appearance that has been achieved on the bayonet attachment.  This was created by using a black undercoat followed by a drybrush of boltgun metal.  This was over-painted with snakebite leather and drybrushed with bronze mixed with a tint of yellow.  Nicely aged and certainly Nurglesque!

Gargoyle Headed Backpack

This is a simple and easy conversion that I know many chaos players like to make.  Perhaps it is so obvious that it doesn't need posting, but I probably wouldn't have thought of it when I was a newbie to the hobby. 

Ingredients: one marine backpack (chaos or loyalist) and two gargoyle heads from the chaos tank sprue.

Method: chop off the exhaust vents from the backpack and ensure that the remains are filed down to a flat-ish surface (likewise for the back of the gargoyle heads).  Then simply glue the heads on to where the vents where previously located.  [The image shows a plague marine with a gargoyle headed backpack].

A simple, easy and effective way to create variety in your squads.  (Note that some loyalist chapters come with similar designs for free -- see the space wolves marine sprue for instance).