Battles for the Greater Good

Hi, 

Here is a complilation of some stories from the front lines where my Fire Warriors fight for the Greater Good. 

The first story tells about the battle with Tau and their Ultramarine allies (Allies from here on) against the mechanized fist of the Astra Militarum in a 1500 point Eternal War: Emperor´s Will Mission. The allies side consisted of a primary Detachment of 900 points of  Tau and a allied detachment of 600 points of Ultramarines. 

The Setup

AM got the first turn. The Allies plans was to hold their own objective with the space marines and fire warriors while the Tau commander with XV8 suits and drones, terminators and gun drone unit deep strike behind enemy lines to cause mayhem and ultimately capture the AM´s objective. I must admit that always when I see the AM's wall of steel deployed, doubt creeps into my mind as I already two times in the past got steamrolled by it. The whole battle plan was haning on the performance of the deep strikers so it was a very risky plan. 

AM Turn 1

Allies deployment

Allies Turn 1

Shooting turn 1 

The AM machines of war rolled forward and a relentless barrage came raining down on the Allies lines causing some casualties. The Allies manouvered to better positions during the first turn, but overall a very cautious start. The AM bombardment intensified during turn two and caused substantial casualties on the Tau force. A Broadside and a unit of Fire warriors were wiped out scoring AM First Blood.
The start of turn 2 for the Allies was the most crucial one in the game as a lot was depening on the reserve rolls for the deep strikers. This time the Tau and their Allies had more luck than Aun'La Sa'cea Shaseira when the reinforcments never arrived. This time the orbital jumps and teleports struck their targets with surgical precision. As soon they landed the fusion blasters, plasma guns and other guns turned vehicles to molten slag and shattered the bodies of the guardsmen caught in the torrent of fire.

A successfull Deepstrike mission. The Tau Coimmander, Terminators and Drones drop exactly as planned on turn 2 

Allies Shooting Turn 2

On turn 3 AM regroups to face the new threat and pours tons of fire into the Tau Commanders unit destroying most of the drones, but the suits survives the onslaught. On Turn 3 and forward the Allies defence line with Space Marines and FW unit with their Devilfish start to advance forward building up to the Mont'ka "the killing blow". The Deep strikers joined with the Dreadnought continued to wipe out the AM forces. The AM commander had his last stand in the wood near the objective as the Allies filled every inch of air in the woods with grenade shrapnell and storm bolter rounds,






The AM can put up some fierce resistance and on the last turns the commander's last squad mate succumbed to fire and only the commanders Iridium suit saved his life. In the end a lonely Guardsman stood defiant holding their objective, but as the game continued to turn 6 the hero dropped his gun to the ground surrounded by the towering Terminators and Tau Commander. After that the guns silenced on battlefield. The Allies were victorius on that day.






A few lessons learnt:


-Tau Commander in Battlesuit is a monster. With T5, W4 and 2+ armour save and tons of wargear he is a one man army. Add in squaddie suits and drones with him and the unit delivers a world of pain to both vehicles and infantry.


-Fusion guns. Did I already mention fusion guns?


-The effectivness of Gun Drones suprised me. In this game they destroyed Chimeras and infantry alike. But leave them in the open and they will quickly go down as evrything else.


-Deepstrikers. In this game they won the game, but as in my previous game they nevere arrived. If half your force never arrives you are practically playing with half the points compared to your opponent for many turns and at the time they arrive it can be too late. I think your reserve should only be one tool (a potent one) in your toolbox, but not be relied on as only one.

AM retaliates for their losses

Drones get decimated

Turn 5-6. The last survivor holds the objective as he is a troop choise.

In this second story, the fickle Ultramarines have turned their coat on their former allies and joined AM against the Tau, in a game of 1200 points, Maelstrom mission: Lost Contact. For this battle I had worked hard the whole week to get assemled, magnetized and painted my bigger guns This was the first time I used the Riptide, Hammerhead two Broadsides and Piranhas. I had quite a warm fuzzy feeling in my chest seeing my army deployed. Unlike the previous games I was less scared of the AM as I had equal big guns on my side. My biggest worry were the Terminators that would be deepstriking so I had equipped my Riptide with Interceptor to lessen their impact, also my Broadsides were deployde with the Terminators in mind so the could plasma and rail them wherever they landed.


The Allies went first. A single Chimera drove forward to get the objective. Also the Space Marinesquad with the Warlord in the middle moved forward towards the objective in the middle of the table. On their right flank the Walkers lumbered forward into cover. Shooting resulted in a orbital bombardment taking a hullpoint away from the Hammerhead and a dead or two Fire Warrior. On Tau turn one the Piranhas flanked the Chimera and destroyed (exploded) it with fusion guns and the gun drones. The Devilfish with a squad of FW moved forwarded and disembarked near the middle objective to wrestle it from the Space Marines. The Riptide walked forward to Greet the imperial walkers.


Shooting resulted in the destuction of the Dreadnought. With the aid of 4 Markerlights the Riptide Nova Charged it's Ion Cannon and caused the Dreadnought to explode. The FW in the middle managed to kill enough Marines so that FW unit held the objective.The Veteran squad that had emerged from the exploded Chimera was reduced also to 3 men after my second squad of FW. The Tau had scored first blood and Secure objective 6 on turn 1.


On turn 2 the Allies managed to deepstrike their Terminators in the middle of the Tau Forces. The Riptide intercepted and managed to kill one Terminator. In the shooting face the Allies caused enough casualties to invoke 3 morale checks, but the Tau's will held. Perhaps one of the turning points in the game happened when the Space Marine squad with the librarian failed to assault the FW squad even after a re-roll.


On Tau turn two I got 3 more objective cards as I held 3 Objectives at the beginning of the turn. The AM had not got any on their turn. The Tau Commander with suits move forward. The Riptide also moved to secure the objective on the flank in the middle with a secondary objective to assault the Sentinel. The Piranhas turbo-boosted to secure the objective in the woods. In the shooting phase the Space Marines with the warlord Librarian was wiped out, one terminator fell to Broadside fire. The Sentinel was wrecked by the XV8 suits, so the Riptide assisted in wiping out the Space Marines. In the end I received 3 more VPs, The situation was 5-0 in the Taus favor so we decided not to continue the game as the end-result looked quite obvious.


Lessons learned:

-The Allies sides biggest downfall in this game was probably the army list. I had against me two small distinct 600 point armies that put too much limitations on the force compostion. I again could effectively utilise the Force organisation and 1200 points to bring a balanced and powerful force to the table. Allies should probaly not be used in a very small games unless you have a very specific role you want to fill with the ally.

-Big guns can be waste of points. The Hammerhead was a very expensive Objective holder that did absolutely nothing.

-In Tactial Objective Game you live or die depending how you can utilise or receive your objectives each turn. In this game the Allies only received the single objective card as I had 4. I think the Tactical Objectives are fun with the decision points if you should rush for the objective this turn sacrificing shooting and even the unit next turn. It can turn out that there is too much randomness in the tactical objective system, so that you feel out of control. But it is still too early to say with only one (half) battles experience.


So far the Tau's are rolling victoriously forward to spread the Greater Good in the galaxy. Let's see how they fare in a larger game without allies. Until next time!

Deployment and Objective markers

Situation on turn two of the Allies. The Riptide killed one Deep striking terminator with it's Interceptor ability 

Start of Tau turn 2

Tau Turn 2 movement

Tau Turn two shooting and final situation

Aspiring for greatness

Hi,

The week is at an end. I had a great game of WH40k with Space Marines & Tau vs. Astra Militarum (aka Imperial Guard). It was the first game I won since we started playing so that was nice. I will post a mini report on that game in a separate post.

Today I spent half a day painting a Chosen Chaos Space Marine that will be an Aspiring Champion for my CMS squad.

I wanted to push my boundaries of my paintig skills with this one as the sculpt deserves a great paint job. A few challenges I set out for this one;

-Power Axe effect with Object Source Lightning (or OSL)
This is aa first time for me painting a power weapon effect and I wanted to make it look that the gem in the blade looks like it lights up the rest of the blade
-A smooth gradient from dark to light on the shoulderpad. 
I wanted that neat almost gemlike gradient for the shoulderpad from dark to light
-Neat edge high lightas
I tried to be as neat as possible with the edge highlights and tried to avoid large blobs.

I am quite pleased with the end-restult, the axe took me a few retries and experimentig before I had an end result I was pleased with. Even if it took me about 5 hours to complete I had tons of fun and learned a lot in the process. Here some pictures, enjoy!

Front

Side with Power axe

Back, note tenctacles on bolter. 

Alternate front pic

Complete squad

A first step into chaos

Hi there,

Last time we had some pirate hats, but after all the name of the army is Chaos SPACE MARINES, so the Stars today are the Space Marines. With this I am really setting the tone and style for the rest of the army exploring the coulour scheme of the Red Corsairs. These models of Dark Angel SMs that have been tuned with pirate gear and a few skulls (for that chaos flavour).

During the process of painting these guys I was amazed how much time it takes to just paint them in two different coulurs and two highlights, even if spray primed them with red. I am quite pleased with the end result though. After highligting I dipped them in Army Painter Quick Shade, I might take a notch back on the quality of basic marines and concentrate on the fantastic Chosen models I will use as aspiring champions for the basic CMS troop and the crazy lord on bike idea I have in mind that will set the whole backstory of this little warband. ( a different post will be just about him).

Regarding the "chaosy" stuff  with mutations, spikes etc. I think that  I do not want to restrict myself too much regarding conversions and just cool miniatures that are totally wicked looking and demonic by limiting the fluff that they are just pirate versions of codex astartes marines. As the army evolves there will be more chaos specific units like warp talons, obliterators and demon engines that will probably fit into a bit of fluff story about a starting chaos warband that with time embraces more and more of the dark powers to gain an edge over their loyalist prey. It gives some motivation and fun things to do with the army beside painting and playing it. I should probably do the same with my Tau, but at the moment I am totally into all the crazy and cool stuff you can do with chaos.

So here is the first 4 marines and they are waiting for their Aspiring Champion to get his paint job done back in the Eye of Terror.

Space Marines from front

Pictures of some added items and conversions

Space Pirates and renegade Space Marines

Hi, 

The new year is here and I hope it will mean for my part a lot of painted miniatures and lot of slaughter and damned souls fuelling the dark chaos gods, ahem I mean battles of  WH40K. You may know that I obtained the Dark Vengeance starter set with Dark Angels and Chaos Space Marines a while ago and fell in love with the cute small cultist and insanely detailed Chosen marines. I have now decide that the Dark Angels will give in to Chaos and join the other side. The whole pack will apply for Space Pirate jobs at the Red Corsairs Renegade Space Marines under Huron Blackhearts leadership (Link to Lexicanun). My Taus will be in the backseat for a while until my reinforcements arrive with more magnets.

To successfully turn the Dark Angels gone bad I went shopping for Green stuff, Instant mold, red primer spray and sculpting tools. I will tune the loyalist marines with a little chaos bits here and there made of green stuff. To save time I will use the instant mold to replicate bits I need, like skulls, swords etc. To work with instantmold you pour hot water in to any container and drop one bar of the stuff in the water. A few minutes later it is soft and you can press in the master object in to it and let it cool down. Voila, you have a mold you can use then to replicate the object. When the mold is not needed anymore you can just throw it into hot water again. 

Green Stuff, Sculpting tools and Instant mold.

Red Primer

Other people have done similar projects with the DV box and it seems doable. I think I will leave most of the DA emblems on the miniatures and just paint a red X on them at least on the shoulder pads to signify that they are now part of the Red Corsairs. They should probably retain their Dark Angel colours on the armour, but I say that they have had time to paint them with the Crimson and Black of their new allegiance.

I today finished the assembly of the all the DA miniatures, I am really impressed how they were just plug & play and how it was practically  impossible to stick the wrong bits together as the pins would not fit the holes or otherwise not fit. What you see in the picture is all without glue. I calculate that the whole assembly and cleaning of the plastic parts took me around 3-4 hours in total. So if you have a friend or two you could be blasting each other on the battlefield in just a few hours with all the models assembled and quick start booklet. How cool is not that for new people coming in to the hobby!

Krampus and his to be Red Corsair space pirates. Amazingly there is not a drop of glue holding this band of brother together (pun intended)!

How I learned to stop worrying and love the Heretic (i.e. Dark Vengeance unboxing)

Hi, 

This is more of a filler update with nothing new finished. It is more like a preview what I will work on the next months. 

Today after work I took a stroll to my local game store (Poromagia,com) with the intent to by some material for bases, rubble and the like. Tuesdays are gaming days and there were 20 or more people playing Warhammer 40k games at different tables. I watched the games for a moment after picking up the stuff I came for and saw that Tau are quite popular. Then from nowhere the consumer demon possessed me and I picked the Dark Vengeance starter set (7th Edition) with some additional secret boxes of Tau tools of destruction. After spending ten times more then I intended I walked out of the store feeling like Santa with a sack of presents for myself. The staff was very nice in the store and even gave me a free card game in addition to the purchases.

I opened the box and looked through the model sprues in the box. The box comes with about 500 points worth each of Chaos Space Marines and Dark Angels. "Holy cow" was my first impression. The details on the plastic sculpts are insane now days. I remember buying GW plastic stuff over 10 years ago and it doesn’t even come close in quality or detail of modern sculpts. One specific Chaos Space Marine sprue made me fall in love with the Chaos Gods and I let out a mad cackling cultist laughter. You will see soon which one. But here follows an "unboxing" of the starter kit and some impressions. Overall I felt that I got value for my money. Enjoy!

Box Art, a bit bland in my opinion. The newer Dethstorm is much more eye catching

All the contents in one picture

The gaming aids and paper contents of the box. The "how to play" guide is really nice with a simple go-through of the rules a phase at a time with clear examples. Notice that only 6 dice + scatter dice are included...c´mon. You include miniatures worth 100 euros, but only include six dice. Also I see that the horrible measure sticks are the same that first appeared in WH Fantasy 5th edtion box 16 years ago. The templates are nice though. 

Size comparison of the 6th Edition Rule book and the one in the box. A4 vs A5 and ~700 pages vs 208. Nice and handy to only have the rules in one small pocket sized book. It is full colour and the quality is ok. The cover is very soft and will probably look like hell after a few months. 

Comparison between page designs. These ones are almost identical, The design language in the 7th edition feel fresh and striking while the 6th edition is more traditional. I like both .

Then onwards to the first sprue with Chaos Chosens and a hellbrute. This one is absolutely spectacular

These 3 dudes made me fall in love with Chaos. The horns, the horns...and the crazy axe wielding cultist champion. Insane details. Admit it, after seeing them you also want to embrace the dark gods. The left side one with two horns is Krampus himself (Kranon the Relentless IRL)  .

Details of backside of the Hellbrute, I am not a greates fan of the flesh mechanical look, but again awesome details. 

The box contains two of these sprues. Bikes, Space marines and cultists.

Just look at these! They look adorable with their gas masks and spiky periphelia, Would go well wiht the Dark Eldar SM look. 

The Special Edition miniature inside the box, Vrosh Tattersoul, aspiring champion. The miniature is ok I guess, but Krampus sweeps the floor with him. 

Dark Angel Sprue

The Dark Angels are great sculpts with lot of cool details, but... put three horns on the Deathwing terminator in the middle and he would be awesome.  

More details of a terminator with a power sword. I really like the stuff that hangs from his belt (is the spehere a incense burner?)

Details of the bike. The banner pole annoys me tremendously and oterwhise they look a bit meh. If it must have wings I would put them as details from the front wheels going upwards or as covers for the legs.