Lots of pics of last Mondays 4 player 40k

Last Monday we played a 2v2 game of 40k. 2 Blood Angels players vs a Marine and Nid player. We setup in a weird quarters situation with our ally in our opposite corner and our opponent either side of us.

It made for a fun and weird game.

1500 pt semi competitive army - i.e. what I'm using at the moment

My current 1500 point list for my Blood Angels is a semi competitive list I've written to fit around using my Sanguinius model and have a reasonably balanced army. No spam here! There is no unit repetition at all, its not because I particularly dislike spamming, its just that I find it a bit boring to play with.

                                                        Don't forget to fist bump the Necrons after the battle....

To cut to the chase, my list is this:

HQ - Mephiston

HQ - Captain with jump pack and 2x lightning claws

T - Assault squad, 10 men, 1 power fist and 2 meltas

T - Tactical squad, 10 men, 1 power fist, 1 melta and 1 missile launcher

         - Dedicated Rhino

E - 1 Sanguinary priest with jump pack and power weapon

E - Furioso Librarian Dreadnought with Wings of Sanguinius and Might of Heroes

H - Devastator Squad, 10 men, 4 missile launchers

H - Dreadnought with 2 twin linked autocannons

It comes out at 1475 points I could probably cut 2 of the devastators to buy another rhino but that means painting a rhino and having a weird squad size.

                                                          Yes those are rogue trader devastators :O

The basis of the list is to deploy with the Rhino empty and Mephiston gets in it first turn. He then hurtles towards the enemy as fast as possible in the Rhino and pops smoke. With him so close to the enemy and relatively well protected the opponent should be forced into aiming most of if not all of his guns at the rhino and meph, leaving my assault squad and libby dreadnought to make it up the battlefield and leaving my shooty units untouched. Then I carry on with my normal tactic which is just hit it till it stops moving.

The army has enough shooty and enough hitty to be able to cope with most threats relatively well. If I'm facing a harder combat opponent then I'll hold back with my assault units and shoot the enemy till its close, maybe keeping my assault marines in reserve to hit them in the rear. 

The reason for the captain with lightning claws in the army is due to most Grey Knights opponents I normally face have a lot of force halberds and I'm fed up with them always hitting first. The captain is base initiative 5 and with furious charge due to the sangiunary priest he'll hit on initiative 6,  so at least he'll be hitting simultaneously. Not the best answer to the problem I know but its better than nothing. Also Mephiston is initiative 7 and can hopefully nullify their force weapons and phychic tests with his hood.

With the Librarian Dreadnought I seem to be having a bit of a hit and miss experience. Either he does awesomely or for some unexplained reason he seems to get immobilised far too often for normal probability. I should really give him a psychic shooting attack but I like Might of Heroes too much. Ideally he'll charge a unit, kill one or two in my turn hopefully keeping the enemy in combat through their shooting phase and then in their assault phase he'll unleash Might of Heroes and pulverise a big chunk of the squad, the squad the looses it morale check and runs away. Freeing him up to assault his next target. Dreadnoughts with armour 13 that fly around and get an extra D3 attacks are awesome!!!

For the shootyness in my army the Devastators and rifleman dreadnought do pretty well. I prefer a full 10 man Devastator squad for the human shield factor, keeping my big guns shooting until all 6 of the ablative wounds are gone. If the bolters get to fire then its either a lucky bonus or its OMG why has the enemy got this close!?!

I rarely ever see Landraiders or even Predators in my games, usually just rhinos, so the S8 and S7 shots are more cost effective, I occasionally come across shooty dreadnoughts but I'll just charge them with Mephiston or the libby dread (if he gets there without immobilising).

Overall I think its a relatively well rounded list with hard hitting combat units backed up by some good guns.

Its also the most fun list I've played so far with my BA I think.

Apoligies for the funny coloured pics, bad lighting followed by bad photoshopping to try and fix it....

Sanguinius - counts as Mephiston

 

Sanguinius - Smiter of green daemon thingys

While browsing ebay aimlessly I came across a Scibor model that I just had to get. You can see the original here http://sciborminiatures.com/en_,shop.php?art=1120

I saw him and immediately thought Sanguinius. So I sent off for him and he arrived a few days later. 

He was only 99% Sanguiniusy though. Instead of blood drop symbols on him the original model had fleur-de-lis symbology like the sisters of battle. So I made a few modifications to him. I removed all the Fleur-de-lis and replaced them as well as adding a giant iron halo which was weirdly enough knicked from a spare Saint Celestine model in my bits box. I added a couple of blood drops, a couple of purity seals and a skull thingy at the end of the chain dangling between his legs and greenstuffed the wings and halo to his back and voila.

Assembling him was relatively easy if you know how to pin things. I pinned all the resin parts. He comes in 5 separate parts; the main body, the base, wings, sword and daemon head and hand. The most awkward bit was the sword, the join is where the hand meets the winged hand guard and pinning it was quite fiddly and nerve racking. In the end I've left the sword unglued so I can detach it for transport, I really don't want to see such a fragile resin sword snap.

I tried to paint him as closely as I could to the GW artwork. I couldn't find the gold paint in my paint box so I ended up using Brazen Brass to paint the armour, which actually turned out better I think. Unfortunately Brazen Brass stopped being made a couple of years ago so my supply is slowly dwindling. If anyone wants to know the process I painted the armour:

• Base coat of Brazen Brass
• cover it with Devlan Mud
• highlight with Brazen Brass, then highlight again with Brazen Brass and Mithril Silver

Most of the painting was done using simple methods, usually just paint then devlan mud, the red robes and the sword probably had the most effort put into them using proper highlighting and the black bits on the sword took a while with a tiny brush and a steady hand.

In actual games I use him with the Mephiston rules and its much more impressive to see on the battlefield than the boring little Mephiston model (or the boring little conversion I was using as him). It somehow fits the statline and abilities much better I think, you don't want a little space marine with T6 S6 W5 wandering round. I should mention that the model is a fair bit taller than a standard marine, when I get round to it I'll take a photo for size comparison. He looks huge compared to my old rogue trader marines which I field in the same army.

All in all its a fabulous model from Scibors that was nice to build and paint, the only downside I think is the join on the sword.