Tanks fr th Mmrs

So. Tanks. That isn’t a misspelling, although its a slight homage to a Fall Out Boy song. I just really wanted to see how many tanks I could fit into 1500 points of Imperial Guard. 8 is the answer on this occasion. More importantly 6 of these are Leman Russes. Considering the maximum you can fit in a force organisation chart is 9, I’m pleased with that although im sure you could fit a couple more in if you really went for it. As it is, this is a little bit more balanced for me.

Drive By Lightning and Fire

HQ
70 Psyker

Troops
150 Veterans, 2 Flamers, Chimera with Extra Armour
150 Veterans, 2 Flamers, Chimera with Extra Armour

Heavy Support

Squad Mortarion
165 Leman Russ Tank with Battlecannon and Lasscannon
245 Leman Russ Executioner With Lasscannon and Plasma Cannon Sponsons

Squad Alpharius
165 Leman Russ Tank with Battlecannon and Lasscannon
220 Leman Russ Demolisher with Lasscannon and Plasma Cannon Sponsons

Squad Curze
165 Leman Russ Tank with Battlecannon and Lasscannon
245 Leman Russ Vanquisher with Lasscannon

1500 Points




So, how does this army list work? Well. It shoots stuff. The plain Leman Russ tanks are there to take the hits in theory for the other ones. They are sprinkled around with the “rarer” variants to allow balance. Specifically, the Vanquisher pairs off with its partner and hunts armour. That’s why every tank has a hull mounted Lasscannon. Not the cheapest option, but it gives me 6 mobile Lasscannons. These two hang in the backfield slightly and just shoot stuff.

The executioner fulfils the anti infantry role and that pair works together to nail large mobs of Orks, or other things. This squad is paired with the Demolisher’s squad in an aggressive role, with Squad Alpharius being able to fulfil both anti infantry and anti tank roles, with none of the main guns lower than strength 9, and a pair of plasma cannon to boot. These four Tanks choose where they want to be and control that bit of the field.

The Chimera Veterans don’t get out. If they are out of their tanks, then they are probably dead. The only instance which comes to mind is when both squads plus the psyker get out and jump one squad, toasting it to death rather appropriately with Lightning and Fire. In the main, the chimeras will fit in behind the main body of the Alpharius and Mortarion, protecting them from infantry with heavy bolters and multi lasers.

Overall, I think that this would be a fun list to play. It wouldn’t necessarily win many games. Really you can choose to hang back and just blast away or really try and ram a lot of Armour 14 down your opponent’s throat. Av 14 is one of the major bonuses of this list, that coupled with a large amount of large blast templates. The main thing I can see as being a weakness is being outflanked or taken apart from the sides. This is why the chimeras nestle in behind, just near enough to react and shore up a flank. Only slightly behind them Curze picks of threats from afar. The easiest way to secure not being outflanked is to start on a flank. Deploying second and rolling up one side allows you to almost turn the battle into a lengthways engagement, something that would play right into my hands.

Next time: The Defence of Hades Hive

The Dead Guardsman's Boots

So after a furious Friday night of painting I finished off my Legio Custodes Furioso Dreadnought so I could enter it into the Leicester Games Workshop's painting competition named "The Dead Guardsman's Boots".

It was also a great opportunity to test out the colour scheme for the Legio Custodes and knowing I would not do a NMM (Non-Metalic Metal) justice, I opted for the classic gold.

There are still a few areas that I need to detail up but I'm happy for now and it has got me itching to paint more!! (oh, and it's another 5 points to my score!)

More soon.......................

Death Company Dreadnoughts Hurt

So...
Last night I got tabled (or floored) by stranded ninja. Stupid fleeting dreadnought. I took my space wolves against his blood angels and lost. Horribly. I should of set up different, I should of done a lot of things.

Annihilation on a normal set up left me for some reason in the opposite corner and then my long fangs only got one round of shooting of the whole game. The things that went right where I managed to jump Mephiston with both my grey hunter squads, and my thunderwolves jumped a blood angels squad in the same turn. The only issue was that by then they were the only things left. And my wolf lord had no way of dealing with a death company dreadnought (I just had to sit there and take it)

In other news, I entered a bunch of models into the local GW painting competition. I entered my thunderwolves, a goliath ganger and a TH/SS salamander into the varying categories at GW Leicester. It doesn’t have a prize (I don’t think) nor do I think I will sweep the awards but I think that my thunderwolves may be the best in the cabinet (at the moment) even if they may not be at the weekend. Its really nice to see the local store connecting with its members and in a way that actually gets me involved. I never have time for vets night due to work, and don’t get down to the store much, but that got me to go in, which was cool.

I am now currently painting three special weapons space wolves, the points system on the side is really giving me motivation! Hopefully I can nail these guys in the next week, and then when I'm finished I might make a test custodian....

Scoring System

I thought I would update the army building points system and bring it up to speed with our current journey.


Build model - 1 point
Paint infantry model - 2 point
Paint bike/cavalry model - 3 point
Paint character/dreadnought model - 5 point
Paint tank model - 10 point

Win - 3 point
Draw - 2 point
Loss - 1 point

I didn't want to put time limits on as we all have other commitments (work,babies,alcohol,etc.) we need to do.
I also can't edit the side widgety thing on my iPad :( so I put it here.....

Scores will be updated as we go!

Changed Again!

Okay, so I'm a magpie!

After getting a bit further though The First Heretic and hearing Lightning Slayer (LS) talk about Custodians, I thought I would have a dab at converting one. I had already said to LS about the parts I would use so it was just a case of putting it into practice.

I also quite like the idea of us both taking a Custodian army to the Throne of Skulls (ToS) but using different Codecies(sp?)

Anyway..........

I picked up a box of Sanguinary Guard, Tactical Marines and High Elf Phoenix Guard & some brass rod.

After looking at the sprues, I knew where I was going and within 2 hours had this!

I have not yet done the green stuffing yet but all-in-all I am pretty happy! I think a squad of 10 would look awesome!!!

More conversions soon.......

The Charge Of The Not So Light Brigade

Finished! It’s only taken me, like forever to paint these dudes. The third guy I managed to nail in a week just abouts. He looks a lot better painted than not, I really didn’t like the model unpainted, but the paint job really adds to the whole model. I'm particularly pleased with how the power sword / frost blade has worked out. It’s just a simple bit of blending, and it’s got matt varnish on it. But I'm very happy with it. I would like to add more models to the squad, but as it is there is quite a lot do to just get these three models done.



Furthermore, all three models have lightning strikes on their left shoulder pad. I have decided, since I have a lightning bolt on the back of my left of left leg that this would be my great company marking. The last guy that I painted with the storm shield and frost is in theory my 260 point Wolf Lord of killy deathness. His right shoulder pad is plain red at the moment, and I have no idea what to put on it. I feel like he should have his own personal marking, but I'm not really very good at freehand at all.



In other news, DREAD KNIGHT?!? Seriously, that guy looks mental! And to cost around only 130points, (if you believe the rumours) for basic bad-assery leads me to think that maybe I should have one or two. But I would need them to fit into my theme of my custodians. I am a little bit meh about the fact that I was intended to ure penitent engines as custodian dreadnoughts, and very glad I didn’t already shell out for what essentially is a smaller dread knight. I think also that the paladin knights sound awesome from a rules perspective, multi-wound models with different weapons a feel no pain that have jump packs and a 30inch move sounds great! The possibility of making them scoring makes it even better.

The free teleport move works perfectly within the custodian fluff, if you read the first heretic they are always bouncing around via teleport technology, and that was 10,000 years ago, so I imagine they won’t haven’t lost that ability since they tend to hang out on Terra and near Mars a lot. April cannot come soon enough.

So, until next time (when I figure out what to paint as I have now run out of stuff) lightning slayer out.

I'm a hobby magpie

Okay, so my last post was about themes and sticking to one.

What I didn't talk about was sticking to an army!

I got myself the new Blood Angels Stormraven and I must say that it is a fantastic kit. Yeah there are the obligatory problems but what GW kit doesn't!

Obviously I needed an amy to join it so have dug out my standard Marine army (you know the type of Marine army that is a successor army to every Chapter depending on which leader/codex I'm using!). Also, I get to add my cracking Furioso/Death Company Dreadnought conversion.....

.......I'm looking forward to trying the Stormraven out in a game soon.

My week in Warhammer

So, I’ve finished this guy. I wanted to finish him by Saturday, but that didn’t happen. Real life and all that. I decided that they should have a lightning strike on their left shoulder pad as the great company marking. Took me a couple of goes to get It right but I'm fairly happy with it. Next ive got my third and final thunderwolf to paint. Then I kind of run out of new interesting things to paint, but we shall see.





Thats probly 2 weeks away in all honesty, and by that poinr its only 4-5 weeks till grey knights come out! Woot. The thing that appeared on blood of kittens saying that they would have something similar to madiblasters seems pretty cool. I'm kinda currently considering phoenix gaurd cloaks for their robes. Jo suggested maybe phoniex gaurd heads minus the wings for helmets. Things are progressing in my mind......

Painting with Non Metailic Metals

So, today I tried painting in non metallic metals, or NMM. I don’t think that it overly worked,. I mean, the model is fairly well painted per se; but it doesn’t look right. I did kind of skip some of the steps from the masterclass from WD 364 and I now think that was a bad idea. Anyways, the red is only there for contrast –ive decided I need to come up with the colour scheme before the release so that when the shiny new toy soldiers come out, I can just ham on in there straight away.

I think that the green eyes didn’t work. Partly cos I didn’t wait for the ink to dry, party because they are green. I didn’t want to use red as thats the second colour for these guys. A rather enjoyable afternoon non the less.

Thunderstruck

So, as you may have noticed there is a new member in the band. Stranded Ninja has joined me here at the slightly new looking blog. Together we’re intending to document our exploits towards the ToS 2011. I can honestly say that having somebody else on board is already helping me – I want to post, and to post I have to paint (atm anyways.) so I painted this week as opposed to playing guitar hero for several hours.





Today I have been mainly painting what I affectionately call my Thundercat. This thunderwolf cav model has a thunderhammer, so there is a lot of thunder involved. As you can see, he is nowhere near finished, but I'm about halfway through the second layer of highlighting on the armour. First highlight was probly 60/40 space wolf grey/ ferisian grey. This layer is pure space wolf grey. It worked really well on my original njall model, so I'm hoping for great things. The fur on these guys are my first real effort at green-stuffing, and looking at it now, its not amazing. Hopefully if I do more they will get better. Also, I always struggle with what colour to paint thunderhammers. I'm trying to go for stone, but I'm just not sure. Any ideas?





In other news, this week I have been reading my new white dwarf and have decided that actually stormravens could be cool for my grey knights. Now admittedly this is off the strength of a battle report where they show off the new toy, and of course it cant die... but I did not realise it had an assault ramp. I think its a fast skimmer, so 24’ plus dismount plus charge could be quite tasty for custodians. And I'm thinking penitent engines for dreadnoughts. Just for sheer awesomeness. I haven’t figured out the conversion yet, but it could be pretty cool. Or some really old school forge world dreads.