Random Model Wednesday 5 - The random models that I've had to make for recent tournys

Do one eyed necrons have a monobrow?

 
For the last 2 tournaments I've tried new methods with my crons that required new models. I needed 2 Crypteks, Zahndrek, Obyron and a lord with a warscythe.

These models haven't been painted as nicely as they could have been but they're good enough for the table. I've been using a quick and easy method that I've developed recently due to having to make 25 extra warriors. I start with a coat of army painter silver spray. Paint on any other colours as base coats, like bronze for shoulders and weapons and red on their heads. Then dip the model in a huge pot of Vallejo black wash that I've added some matt medium and flow enhancer. Then just dry brush 1 or 2 highlight colours and I'm finished. I'm sure its more than halved the time it takes to paint my crons and I'm quite pleased with the results. I also don't paint the eyes any more as I think necrons looks spookier with dark eye sockets.

I had to rush to assemble and paint these before my gf got home and would want my attention.

My two cheapo crypteks have served me well so far.

This was the old metal lord that came with the Necron Warrior Phalanx but I replaced the warscythe to be more dynamic and less fragile.

The Final GoT 40k Tournament of 2012 and the Grand Champion announced

Last Sunday was the final battle in this year's Guardians of Tyr 40k championship. It was a big game with 2 teams which were randomly selected. Each player had 2000 points but no force org chart. We had 4 secret team objectives worth 30 points each and personal objectives that could total up to 40 points and these could be secret from your allies if you wished. There were lots of bonus points available for things like having a fully painted army or deepstriking or killing a warlord.

The game is limited to 4 turns....

I think the crazy rules for this game may have scared some players off as there were less than usual. We still had a great game though. 3 on each side. On my side we had Glenn Few's Red Scopion marines, myself with Necrons and Imperial guard with a Warhound Titan! Our opponents were Space marines, Ken's Salamanders and Ian (Duggie Dunlop)'s Grey Knights. There were 4 Land Raiders on the table! 2 of them directly opposite me!

The board was 3 6 foot by 4 foot tables and there were 12 objectives in three lines equally spaced. Out team objectives were 2 in the middle on out side and 2 in the middle on the opposition side. My personal objectives were to hold 2 on our side and one in the middle line.

I'm not going to go a full battle rep as it was a huge game and I can't actually remember it all. I'll do some highlights though.

I had to rush to paint Zahndrek and Obyron on the Friday before the game as Weyland games failed me and I had to go to a physical shop to get the models. Won't be ordering from them again!

My army:

Squad 1
Zahndrek
Cryptek with veil of darkness
20 warriors

Squad 2
Obyron
Lord with res orb and warscythe
20 warriors

Squad 3
Overlord with res orb, warscythe etc.
Cryptek with veil of darkness
20 warriors

5 warriors
4 night scythes

So I had a highly mobile, hard hitting and hard wearing force. Capable of hurting vehicles or infantry alike and hopefully capable of doing some damage if they get charged.

We get to deploy 2nd and fail to seize the initiative.

Ken's Gunline of Tanks

Glenn's Tanks

Turn 1, enemy drop pod lands. With the power of Zahndreks cheese I bring on all of my flyers in their turn. They promptly shoot 2 of them out of the sky before I've done anything with them. Fail on my part maybe?

I deep strike my 3 squads of warriors behind Ken's horde of tanks and take out a landraider and a land speeder.

Other damage ensues everywhere.

Turn 2. I deepstrike my stuff again. I plonk a squad next to Ian's land raider then forget to fire it, then get torched by AP3 flamers from a dreadknight but I messed up the armour saves, had to roll again and only took 1 wound on the overlord with all the warriors safe.

Kens other land raider and his vindicator get taken out. Glenn has terminators in his deployment area and a combat between his warlord and his opponents.

This combat seemed to last all game, the stubborn guard blob just wouldn't leave combat

I rolled a misplaced on the mishap table when my deep strike went wrong. Ken placed the squad in the far corner and then afterwards found out the two dreadnoughts were on his side and he'd plonked me in rapid fire range of both.

 Turn 3 is a mulchy mess of combat and shooting. I loose my flyer that has 5 warriors in it and they come on from the edge.

He's bravely running away!

 Turn 4. The game breaker turn. Everyone manoeuvres to claim objectives. My 5 man warrior squad amble up to a team objective and nobody seems to notice hehe. I deepstrike one of my squads onto one of my personal objectives but scatter and land on the wrong one but luckily it still gives me points. I deepstrike a 2nd squad and hit the mark, claiming a 20 point objective. My 4th squad shoot the snot out of a squad of marines contesting and objective with myself and Glenn, while their overlord detaches and punches a tank to death.

End game.
At the end of the game none of us had a clue how well we did. Our objectives were secret and there were bonus points to add up too. Our side held to of our team objectives and the opponents held 1 and contested one. I managed to claim all 3 of my bonus objectives by accident due to the scatter.

There was a tense countdown from last place to first. I managed to get 1st with 169 points WOOO! I can't remember the rest of the scorings but because we held the 2 team objectives our side came in the top 3. Always remember the objectives.......

Things I've learnt that day.
Super heavies just don't die! That titan kept taking shots but barely noticed anything.
Huge squads of warriors that can deepstrike and have res-orbs are AWESOME!
Nightscythes aren't as awesome and scary as everyone makes out, in the last few times I've used them they haven't done much damage, but they are cheap so I'm not bothered. They make a good distraction.
Landraiders are laughable against lots of gauss fire, I feel bad when I kill the tanks so easily.

The Guardians of Tyr Warhammer 40,000 Grand Champion for 2012 is:
erm, me.  The only person that could have challenged me didn't come to this game.

Look at that smug bastard!

Blog Wars 4 Pics

Well, last weekend was Blog Wars 4 in Mansfield. I've been really busy all week with Christmas stuff happening and haven't gotten round to posting. This post will be picture heavy and not a lot of text. I'll probably get round to doing a detailed set of batreps at some point.

I had a great time at the event and met some players that I'd met before at Open War. To cut to the chase I came 6th out of 24 which was good for 1 minor loss, 1 minor victory and a tabling.

There was a real mix of armies at the event, some were really crazy. There was a full squat guard army, a Custodes Grey Knights army with a flying rhino and a Nurgle army with scratch built resin jetbikes!

My army for the day was:
Imotekh the cheeselord
Overlord with warscythe, res orb, mindshackle scarabs, sempiternal weave, tesseract labyrinth
Lord with warscythe, res orb, mss, semp weave
2x Crypteks with veil of darkness
Cryptek with chronometron
2 x 20 warriors
4 x 5 warriors
4 nightscythes (this made me feel dirty)

My idea was to have an ultra mobile force that could be wherever I wanted it and control the board this way.

MOAR WARRIORSSSSS!!!

Awesome scratch built jetbikes. I faced this army first with Epidemius below.

Dirty Matt Wardian alliance between Necrons and Blood Angels

SQUAAAAAAAAAAAAAATTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

Custodes

We meet again Mr Lane

This lord just wouldn't die, he killed the gaunts then died while killing the big gribbly

4 Tesla Destructors to the Face!

I will get round to posting some actual written stuff at some point. I've got the Guardians of Tyr big game tournament on the 16th at Wargames workshop Northampton. I'm not using the same list as blog wars because they'll nerf Imotekh :( so I've got some other cheese up my sleeve instead.

Necron Harbingers of Despair Cryptek conversions

Now that the warmachine league is over I can get back to 40k. I've got lots of prep work to get my necrons ready for the Blog Wars 4 tournament and the final Guardians of Tyr tournament of the year. Both in December, I've got just under 2 weeks to get all my stuff ready for Blog Wars. 

One of the things I've put in my army list for Blog Wars is a couple of Despair teks with veil of darkness. I don't like the Cryptek model that GW do and I can't even tell what type of tek its meant to be. As with my first tek I decided to make these out of normal warriors and odd bits and pieces I could find. I cast the heads with greenstuff from the mold I used last time. The staff is from the lychguard/triarch box and the weapony bits are from destroyers and the old metal spyder guns. To get the staff to hold together I had to pin it everywhere. One pin at either end and one for each hand. There was much cursing at the arms for not wanting to fit nicely to the warrior. I've put hoods on them because I like the idea of them being a bit spooky, being Harbingers of Despair. I'm not particularly good at sculpting so I hope they turn out ok after being painted. 

Now I just need to paint these guys up, along with a lord, a night scythe and 20 warriors, all before the 1st of December. AAAAaaaaaaaahhhhhhhh..........

Guardians of Tyr 1750 point tournament - I came 2nd WOO!

Sunday was the Guardians of Tyr 1750 point tournament. I’ve been to every one of their tournaments so far this year and the next one is a 2000 point apocalypse style event (not quite sure how that’ll work at the moment).

I turned up late because I had the wrong time in my head so I was in a rush and flustered before I started.

I used the same list as the day before:

HQ – Destroyer Lord with Mindshackle scarabs, Sempiternal Weave and Warscythe

Troops – 3x 5 warriors

• 1x 12 warriors

Dedicated Transports – 3x Nightscythes

• 1x Ghost Ark

Fast Attack – 6x wraiths with 2x whip coils

• 9x scarabs

Heavies – 3x3 Spyders

1^st game

The first game was an objective game with secret objectives with dawn of war deployment. Both players get random cards that detail which of the 2 objectives on the table they need to go after. These can be the same as your opponent.

When I found the table with my first opponent my heart immediately sank. It was guard mech army with 3 vendettas. My least favourite thing to ever see on the table. It put me in a pretty foul mood before I’d even got out any models. Luckily I was setting up second.

He deployed in a big blob in the middle of his deployment zone with his manticore and medusa to the side. I used this to my advantage and deployed everything in a corner keeping my scarabs out of range of his nasty guns and my wraiths being the only thing he could safely shoot at. It was this deployment that I think won me the game. He focussed his shooting on the wraiths when he could have slaughtered the scarabs with his ordnance barrage manticore. My scarabs grew while my wraiths shrugged off wounds and eventually I got into combat with his tanks with both my wraiths and the scarabs and it all went downhill for him from there. My Nightscythes came on and pounded his tanks, on one occasion I killed a chimera and the arc sparking off it managed to kill another chimera next to it but this was the only time over the whole weekend that the arcing managed to work.

By the end I had both my objectives and my opponent had one of his, kill points didn’t count unfortunately, I’d made it into a slaughterfest.

2^nd game

The next game was 5 objectives on the table with the short edge deployment zone. My opponent had daemons that were a real mix of everything, stuff from all the 4 powers with a daemon prince and a Lord of Change.

I deployed my force as spread out in my zone as possible expecting all his stuff to come in hard and fast next to me. What happened next baffled me immensely. He deep struck a soul grinder and a squad of plague bearers about half way up the table and the rest of his army landed right at the back in his deployment zone, including his shooty units! I managed to keep my poker face though.

My army moved up the table picking off units and when my flyers came on it was all over for him.

I won the game holding 4 objectives and contesting the 5^th with my scarabs. I had a quite unhappy opponent and I don’t blame him for being unhappy but daemons are meant to be an in your face hard and fast army not a sit at the back army especially when they don’t have much shooting.

3^rd game

The final game was a fight for 1^st place with Ken’s Salamanders allied with Tau. Lots of shooty but a real mix of units. The mission was half kill points and half relic.

We deployed facing each other and he kept a variety of units in reserve for the bonus points achievable for deepstriking, outflanking and coming on from reserve.

My wraiths shrugged off a ton of fire and made their way into the squishy innards of his army. My spyders ran around killing all sorts of things including most of a squad of marines, a squad of tau shooty stealt suits (I think), a drop pod and land speeder and nearly killed Vulcan Hestan.

Vulcan Hestan was the bane of my army, he didn’t kill much but just wouldn’t die and kept running away from combat. At the end of the game I had neglected both the Relic and Hestan for a turn and this was my downfall, he ran up and claimed it (any infantry could claim in this game). I charged him in the last turn with 2 spyders and a failed charge from my wraiths but failed to kill him and it was ruled that the relic was still held by Hestan at the end and not contested. In the end this pulled Ken 4 points ahead of me and two points ahead in the overall tournament. So he came first and I came second. To be fair he had put in consistent effort all day long to gather every single bonus point he could and I’d neglected the bonus points most of the time. He deserved victory and he outplayed me in the end anyway.

Congrats to Ken!

The results:

total	player	ach	game 1	game 2	game 3
76	Ken Chambers	8	27	17	24
74	Mike Towers (ME :D )	6	22	26	20
71	Mike Stewart	3	24	15	29
71	Dave Stewart	6	23	5	37
69	Ryan	4	13	23	29
51	Steven Almond	8	13	16	14
50	Glenn Few	7	24	11	8
21	Charles Lister	7	1	4	9

The summary from the GoT guys:

"Ken Chambers wins our October 40k tournament with Salamander Space Marines allied with Tau. He played well and made the most of  the days achievements to win by just 2 points! Well done Ken and the rest of the days contestants, Michael Towers picked up 2nd place with his Necrons and the Stewart brothers in joint third with bragging rights going to David who had more achievements."

It was a good day of games even if it started badly. After two days of using the list I’m thinking of getting rid of the scarab farm, it’s just too vulnerable to blast and flamers but I really do like it. I won’t post what my new ideas are though until I’ve used and tested them though. Some of my opponents have been reading my blog and finding out my tactics lol.

Open War XVIII - Necrons take a beating - some nice pics of other armies too

What a busy 4 days of wargaming stuff I’ve just had. Friday was finishing my necron croissants and new destroyer lord, Saturday was Open War XVIII, Sunday was the Guardians of Tyr 40k 1750 point tournament and Monday was the first club night of our WarmaHordes Journeyman league. My girlfriend is desperately hoping I've had my wargaming fix for a while.

I’ll do a post on these things separately but I’ll start with Open War first.

It was my first big tournament and there were some proper hardcore army lists there. The list I was using was hard I know but some of them were just mental!

There were some truly excellent armies on show there too and I took some pictures, not particularly good ones though as my camera is a cheapo thing.

That immense and amazing dude in the middle was a Trygon, his entire army was based on a tyranid warrior theme

A Full on Death Korps of Kreig army, holy crap. There were very well painted too.

Pre-heresy Blood Angels FTW.

The list I was using was:

HQ 

• Destroyer Lord with Mindshackle scarabs, Sempiternal Weave and Warscythe

Troops

• 3x 5 warriors

• 1x 12 warriors

Dedicated Transports 

• 3x Nightscythes

• 1x Ghost Ark

Fast Attack

• 6x wraiths with 2x whip coils

• 9x scarabs

Heavies – 3x3 Spyders

So Basically a scarab farm, a DLord+Wraith squad and a little bit of flyer spam. I cocked up on my list by thinking I could have the 12 man warrior squad in the ghost ark but it only has a capacity of 10 and the scythes have space for 15 so I had to bung them in the flyer instead. Having just 5 warriors in the ark made it pretty ineffective but it was surprising how much people wanted it dead just because it’s armour 13.

First game was against Nids with lots of monstrous creatures. It was a kill points game so my opponent had his tervigons ruined effectively as any gaunts they make would just be squishy kill points for me. His list was (copied and pasted from his own blog lol http://clawsandfists.blogspot.co.uk):

Flying Hive Tyrant w. 2x TL Devourers & Hive Commander

Tyranid Prime w. 2x Boneswords, Scything Talons & Regen

Zoanthrope

Zoanthrope

Tervigon w. Cluster Spines, Toxin Sacs & 2 Powers

Tervigon w. Crushing Claws, Cluster Spines, Toxin Sacs & 2 Powers

10 Termagants

10 Termagants

Mawloc

Trygon

2x Carnifexes w. 2x TL Devourers each

I can’t remember a great deal of this game as it was at the beginning of a very long weekend for me. We basically moved towards each other and duked it out in combat.

My wraiths and Dlord were in combat with a Trygon, Lots of Gaunts and eventually his Tyrant. The tyrant fell foul to my mindshackle scarabs in a challenge and smashed himself in the face. Eventually My lord and wraiths ground them all down to a gooey pulp without taking too much damage.

I generated a large scarab squad, somewhere in the region of 30 bases I think, and charged into his Carnifexes and slowy munched on them but was left with bugger all scarabs at the end and still in combat with 1 fex at the end. He was quite unfortunate with his rolling in this combat.

My flyers just flew around picking off easy targets like his lone zoanthropes and gaunts hiding at the back.

In the end I won 23-7 and I can’t for the life of me remember how that scoring works but I know I killed more and that’s what counted.

Game 2

Grey Knights with allied Blood Angels

He had 2 storm ravens, one from each army, Mephiston and a metric crap ton of shooting.

It was the mission where heavies can take objectives.

I was slaughtered. Grey Knights always seem to be the scissors to my paper in 40k. Nuff said.

Game 3

Grey Knights again :(

This was a really nicely painted and converted army. The entire army was a heresy/pre-heresy 1000 sons. 

Space Crusade Dreadnoughts!!

There were lots of plasma weapons which helpfully kept blowing up in the faces of the guys using them.

I lost this game but had a fun time loosing. I was pretty much slaughtered but not tabled this time. There was 1 truly epic turn where I had just 2 warriors left on the table and 2 of my flyers in reserve refusing to come on. The warriors were on an objective in ruins and the random ability it gave was a bonus to cover saves. My warriors went to ground and absorbed a round of shooting by everything that was in range without loosing either dude. They deserved a medal! My flyers then finally decided to arrive and saved me from being tabled.

Overall I ended up coming about 13^th or 14^th out of 18 but I had a good time. The venue was great, it had loads of tables and there were tournaments going on at the same time for Warmahordes, Epic and Warhammer Fantasy. Lunch was provided, a mixture of sandwiches, pizza, chicken nuggets etc. Chocolate cake was provided too in the afternoon. At the end there was a raffle and trophy ceremony. I didn’t win anything in the raffle even though there seemed to be enough prizes for half the participants.

The top 3 armies for the tournament were all Daemons.

Tomorrow I’ll post about the Guardians of Tyr tournament. I did better at that one…….

Necron defence line ("Cyborg barricade set") unboxing

I recently came across a "Cyborg Barricade set" at http://www.lasercutcard.co.za/.(from http://nothingunpainted.blogspot.co.uk/) with a decidedly Necron feel to it. Well I liked it so much I ordered it.

It arrived about a week and a half after I ordered it, all the way from South Africa.

I'm impressed by the crispness of the edges on the card and how easily it comes it comes out of the card sheets.

The set contains 8 sheets of card, enough to make enough walls to make an Aegis defence line. Also the pieces just happen to be exactly the same size as the aegis defence line sections which is convenient.

A Tesla gun seems a fitting substitute for a Quad gun in the defence line

All I need to do now is assemble the damn thing and I've been very lazy and not painted anything over the last month. I have managed to make a gun for the defence line and a destroyer lord using a destroyer body with an upper body from a lychguard with a warscythe.

Terminators suck! and my first use of Nightscythes. A 2000 pt DA vs Cron batrep

Picture is unrelated but cool

Necron by ~Obrotowy on deviantart

Before I start, apologies to Tom for saying terminators suck, I’ll explain why I think they suck below. If I was using his army I’d have probably done the same things though.

This Monday at the club I played a 2000 point game with my Necrons vs DA Deathwing terminators. It’s the 2^nd time I’ve played against the army in 2 weeks. The first week was my ork bikes+dakkajets vs deathwing terminators with allied BA.

The armies we used:

Me with Necrons:

Destroyer lord with Mindshackle scarabs, sempiternal weave and warscythe

3x5 warriors

3x Nightscythes (hastily assembled and almost painted at the weekend)

2x10 warriors

2x Ghost arks

6x wraiths with whip coils

3x3 Canoptek Spyders (I still call them tomb spyders)

9x scarabs

Tom with Dark Angels Death wing (from memory so probably inaccurate):

Belial (attached to one of the termy squads with an apothecary)

Interrogator chaplain.

5-6? squads of 5 terminators (an assortment of combat and shooty squads)

Landraider

Mortis pattern contemptor dreadnought with 2x twin linked lascannons and typhoon missile launcher

We managed to get the Relic mission with the corner to corner deployment. Tom got the warlord trait to redeploy and I got one for my HQ to get counter attack in my own deployment zone. He deployed first with his army close to the objective and the dreadnought hiding in the back to snipe vehicles. I deployed close to the objective too, my scarab farm deploying opposite his landraider and my wraiths opposite his command squad of doom.

1^st turn night fight! Yay, cover saves for everyone!

Turn 1

I failed to steal the initiative and he advanced towards the relic and my army. His shooting took a couple of wounds off a spyder and a hull point off a ghost ark. In retaliation my army moved up, I took some pot shots killing 1 termy in his command squad. My scarabs were then in range of his land raider, charged it and munched all of its armour off mwahahaha. They’re so easy to kill now in combat with 3s to hit, loving it!

1 VP to me for first blood.

Turn 2

His army moves further up. His command squad run in the shooting phase to get into contact with the relic. His shooting failed to do anything dramatic, Ghost arks still pretty much unharmed and all my spyders and wraiths still intact. He charged my scarab squad of 18 bases with 2 terminator squads and his chaplain, they kill a big bunch of scarabs, my scarabs kill 1 or 2 termys but due to the new fearless rules they don’t care (hehe, they’re so evil now as a tar pit).

All 3 of my night scythes come from reserve, sweet! 6 of my spyders are in range of the scarabs and bung 6 more bases into combat with the termys. One of my Arks heads towards the relic and my night scythes move up to pummel all of their firepower into his command squad who are sitting on the relic. I shot the 3 night scythes, ghost ark and embarked squad into his command squad, all the shots ping off harmlessly and I almost hurt one of my spyders with the tesla arcing onto them. I charged the squad with my wraiths and 3 of my spyders, by the end of his next turn his squad and HQ are dead and my spyders, wraiths and DLord are unharmed. Belial managed to punch himself in the face twice because of my mindshackle scarabs.

Turn 3

Termys killed the last of my scarabs. Another termy squad killed a ghost ark and charged the warriors inside, killed 3 warriors and lost 2 termys. The termy command squad died to wraiths and spyders. He shot down one of my night scythes with his dreadnought.

My night scythes moved up and killed the contemptor dreadnought with glances. The warriors in the surviving ark jumped out and grabbed the relic. My wraiths and spyders charged into the termys that killed my scarabs.

Turn 4

Combats leave 2 terminators standing, the chaplain in endless challenges with my DLord and 1 terminator failing to damage any warriors. My ghost ark with the relic floats around aimlesslessly.

Turn 5.

Still the same 2 terminators fighting on. We called it a game there. I had 5 VP for relic, first blood and warlord, Tom had 0. 

It felt a bit hollow at the end, it wasn’t a close run game. I lost a night scythe and my scarabs and he lost everything. They're terminators! The Emprahs best of the best aren't meant to drop like flies... I think the problem was that his army has no significant shooty elements. Its built entirely around death star units from a really old codex, maybe the next DA codex will sort this out, maybe make their termys cheaper or something.

I think one of the problems with terminators is that your average terminator hasn’t really changed much since 3^rd edition whereas there have been all sorts of new Xenos and marine units appearing that handle how they save and attack differently from what terminators are really setup to deal with. Terminators are really built for dealing with bog-standard marines. A 2+ save doesn’t cut it these days on a one wound model that is often equipped for hitting last in combat. There are just too many units out there with volume of attacks/wounds/shots to overload their saving capacity before you even think about AP2 weapons.

Wraiths have more attacks, admittedly not power weapons, and always hitting first with 24 rending attacks is just going to make it a bad day for terminators, especially with preferred enemy from the destroyer lord giving them re-rolls on a 1 to hit and to wound.

Terminators also lack mobility. You can bung them in a landraider but things start getting stupendously expensive and again the scarabs will just pop up and munch it.

One thing I have noticed is that Relic mission really changes how the game works. I’ve played 2 games with this mission, once using massed guard infantry vs Eldar and the above battle. In the battle vs Eldar my opponent had jetbikes pick up the relic and I just couldn’t catch up with my guardsmen. The jetbikes were perfect for the role as they move an extra D6 in the assault phase.

In my game last Monday the entire game turned into a bundle in the middle and my mobile warriors hopped out of their transport, picked up the relic and hopped back in.

Having to pick something up, protect it and run away with it really changes the mechanics of 40k and forces you to thing quite differently from any mission I’ve played before.