White Scars

Food for Thought: Tactical Marines

2012-02-10T10:00:00.007-05:00

As much as I want to love tactical marines.... I can't.

I have never used tactical marines in the past 10 years I have adopted the biker way of playing space marines. In my mind they are just so inefficient compared to other troop choices in the space marine codex.

Lets do some math

For 10 tactical marines with a missile launcher and a flamer it is 170 points. For 185 points we can get a 5 man bike squad (4 bikes + and attack bike) with 2x melta guns, 1x multi-melta and twin linked bolters.

The tactical squad has more wounds and a longer range. However they trade off durability, maneuverability, and shooting ability. For anti-tank detail, I much rather have 3 melta weapons zipping around then a lone missile launcher which is probably going to miss anyways. They are called "miss"ile launchers for a reason ;p

The bike squad gets a load of anti-tank weapons, maneuverability, twin linked bolter death, relentless, and durability because of their bike. On the down side, they are don't have as many bodies.

Now if we take the same tactical squad and compare it too lets say 10 scouts with sniper rifles, camo, and a missile launcher which comes up to 180 points.

Marshal Angman's Tactical Marine

The tactical marines' primary range is 24 inches and they increase in success at 12 inches because of rapid fire. But if they get to that point they are vulnerable to everyone else's short range firepower and assault. Likewise they can't move and fire 24 inches which is meh...

Scouts on the other hand, despite their worse stats, have the ability to hang back and contribute to long range fire support, being that their main weapon range is 36 inches. Scouts don't need to move to be effective; they can sit back and camp objectives all day long. Deckchairs anyone?

Did I mention they can also infiltrate (or outflank)? Oh and they have move through cover as well. Those sniper rifles can wound a monstrous creature with ease and they can occasionally rend. Can a bolter do that? Finally, in cover, scouts get a 3+ cover save and if they go to ground it is a 2+ cover save. Yeah marines can go to cover, but they would be hard pressed to receive a 2+ cover save.

In order to mitigate the ineffectiveness of tactical marines in my mind you have to spend more points on them, such as power fists, combi-weapons, melta guns, transports, etc. In addition, they really can't operate alone and need a companion tactical squad or two to ensure anti-infantry/anti-tank is being done somewhat reliably. So as soon as you realize it, one bad squad becomes three bad squads working together to achieve the same result as a full bike squad can for half the points?

I'm not sold on them.

I guess what I am trying to say is that are tactical marines really that bad? Or am I being overly harsh to them? If you do have success with them, how do you run them (weapon load out, transport, etc)? If they are bad in your eyes tell me why they are. I look forward to hearing what all of you have to say about them.

Discuss!

EPIC MOMENTS in Warhammer 40k

2012-02-09T23:08:00.001-05:00

Warhammer 40k means something different to everyone. For some it is about the painting. For others it is about socializing and drinking. But one of the things that keeps me playing are all of the Epic Moments that occur when playing this game. These moments are memorable, everyone can relate to them, and they are just simply awesome.

Epic Moments range from incredibly good (bad) dice rolling, too sheer stupidity/genius, too how in the world that seriously just happen.

Let me discuss a few of these with you all.

I have been playing 40k for just about eleven and a half years now and I have seen plenty of Epic Things happen in my own games or in others. I also love hearing stories of amazing triumphs which beat all odds and should have never had happened.

For example, I saw this happen at a tournament a months ago. Fateweaver deep strikes in, scatters onto dangerous terrain, fails his dangerous terrain check, fails his first invulnerable save, fails his re-roll, then fails his leadership check, and dies. EPIC FAIL!

Another example of this is my command squad lead by Khan pulls a charge off against 80 Necron warriors, they win the assault, all of the Necrons fail their leadership tests, and they all get ran down. EPIC WIN!

A third example is back when Kroot Mercenaries existed. I charge a land raider and completely surround it with kroot. All of the doors are blocked and terminators are inside. My shaper pulls out his evicerator and straight up demolishes the landraider. I kill the raider and all of the terminators. However the raider explodes and hits everyone in that 30 man blob. I only pass 4 saves... Yes 26 kroot, 5 terminators, and a land raider died by the hands of that shaper. EPIC DESTRUCTION!

So enough about my experiences... What Epic Moments have you seen or heard about? I want you all to comment below about your Epic Moments in 40k. If we get enough of them, I'll do a few posts about which ones are the most Epic in nature and maybe we can have a reoccurring series regarding this topic.

I look forward to reading your stories... and keep it EPIC!!!

Look at what I picked up!

2012-02-07T09:00:00.015-05:00

I have been in the market for a preheresy kit for a land raider for my custodes army. I thought about picking up the Forgeworld version, but after cost & shipping it is crazy expensive. However, I came across Chapter House's version of the kit, and I must say from the pictures I am very impressed with that they have made. There website is located here

Lets check it out!

This Kit itself:

Now in addition to this kit, I also picked up a few sets of these:

Now I have always wanted some assault terminators for my White Scars army, but I didn't really like the way the claws looked from GW. These however seem more appropriate for my terminators when I get around to buying them.

I am also considering picking up a storm raven extension kit and some heresy jump packs as well (for my custodes), but we will see how the quality of these pieces are first. With that being said I am really excited to get my hands on these!

Look forward to a product review in the near future.

Tying up loose ends

2012-02-05T12:00:00.000-05:00

Hey everyone.

Well the purpose of this post is to inform all of you what exactly is going on regards to the tournament scene over the next six months. This was prompted by constant nagging from a friend and reader called ForTheLion.
I'll leave your real name out of it! This time!!!

I figure since he has been so nosey about it, that all of you have been relatively curious about it too... at least I assume so.

ForTheLion wanted to know three things: 1) What army am I taking to the Adepticon Championships, 2) What army am I taking to the ATC, and 3) What army am I taking to the Adepticon team tournament. Well I am going to answer all three of these questions in this post. I hope you are ready for a wall of text!

So question #1 "What army am I taking to the Adepticon Championships?"

This is actually the easiest one for me to answer as it is my decision alone. I am playing my Space Marines and I am looking to repeat my successes from last year. However I did not come up with this decision lightly. When the rumors of a new Tau Codex surfaced a few months back, I was going to take them as I could laugh at the internet with my non net list whooping ass before a new codex. However it turns out those rumors were false and Tau are going to be a ways out. So Khan and Klan it is! The list I am currently toying with is this:

Khan on Moondrakken
Command Squad with all of the goodies + a flamer (yeah I had a five extra points)
Full Bike squad with 2x plasma guns, power fist and Heavy bolter attack bike
4+1 Bike squad with 2x melta guns and multi-melta attack bike
4+1 Bike squad with 2x melta guns and multi-melta attack bike
5 man scout squad with deck chairs and sniper rifles
2x Typhoons with heavy bolters
2x Typhoons with heavy bolters
1x Typhoon with heavy flamer
Thunderfire cannon
--1850

This list is actually very similar to what I ran last year. I lost one speeder, 1 combi-melta, and 1 razorback but I gain a thunderfire cannon and I split my large bike squad into two small melta. So I have a more durable list, more anti-tank, and a bad ass thunderfire to piss off the internet. That is what I call winning. I can't wait to bust that out in the finals!

Question #2 "What army am I taking to the ATC?"

Given that 1) I am very proficient with the Space Marine codex, 2) Khan based marines are my trademark style now, and 3) No duplication of codexes are allowed on the team, I will be playing Space Marines. But this is a great thing. Given that my team did so well at the Da Boyz Team Tournament back in October, we have a good grouping of lists and player ability. Not to mention we are going to have a fifth player who gets to cover one of our weaknesses with his list (I have no idea what army he is using, but I am sure he will be proficient with it.)

So what does my army list look like? Well honestly, I have not given it too much thought. It will take a list that will closely resemble what I took at Da Boyz as everything just worked so well. As a refresher, this will probably be the list:

Khan on Moondrakken
Command Squad with all of the goodies
Full Bike squad with 2x melta guns, power fist, and multi-melta attack bike
4+1 Bike squad with 2x plasma guns, combi-plasma, and multi-melta attack bike
4+1 Bike squad with 2x plasma guns, combi-plasma, and multi-melta attack bike
5 man scout squad with sniper rifles, camo cloaks, and missile launcher
2x Typhoons with heavy bolters
2x Typhoons with heavy bolters
2x Typhoon with heavy flamer
Thunderfire cannon
--2000

I did make one change and that is to include the missile launcher over the heavy bolter on the scouts as it has longer range and the potential to pop a tank. The heavy bolter didn't really do anything for the squad, so I am going to pass it up. One thought is to drop the combi-plasmas, the camo, and the missile launcher and take 3 more scouts and some 5 point upgrade ( a flamer on the command squad probably). This would allow the scouts to take and hold 2 objectives with a 12 inch spread which is something that would be useful in some of my games.

Question #3 "What army am I taking to the Adepticon Team Tournament?"

Believe it or not, the team tournament preparation is under a lot of secrecy as my team takes it very seriously. So I am not allowed to release the name of our team and I am not allowed to release the lists that we are currently working on. But as a teaser I will show you a picture of what we are painting up and you will get the idea.

So we are team : ~~Redacted~~ and the army we are playing is: ~~Redacted~~

I hope that this answered all of your questions ForTheLion and everyone else who was curious about what is going on.

Congradulations Dameon!

2012-02-03T19:01:00.002-05:00

I just wanted to say congradulations to our very own Dameon who just tied the knot this evening. I wish him and his beloved the best of luck into the future

Combat squad shenanigans

2012-02-03T12:52:00.001-05:00

So once again, combat squads it under fire by the internet! Oh no! But actually this is a good thing for a change. What? I know what you are thinking but hear me out.

I know that I have discussed combat squads before in length here. Games workshop recently released an FAQ practically agreeing with everything that I have stated making is perfectly clear... or so I thought....

The discussion on BoLS about the recent FAQ's just made everything a bit more interesting. Because of it, I have been asked about a different interpretation of combat squads, specifically outflanking.

What happens if you roll a 5 or 6 when choosing sides when combat squading?

Under a roll of 5 or 6 it roughly states "you choose what side the unit deploys on". However since you are making one roll for two units and that according to the GW faq, the units can be deployed at two different locations (notice it did not say same side). This means you could hypothetically deploy one combat squad on the left table edge and the other squad on the right table edge, assuming you roll a 5 or a 6.

I personally have a feeling that this is a bit of shenanigans, as a short table edge is 4 foot and both squads can deploy anywhere on that table edge, which explains the different locations part (or even deep striking, you don't want your units landing on each other).

But in all honesty, I have never thought of it in that fashion. If it is indeed true, that subtle manipulation does allow a bike army to do some very interesting things, such as sending off that multi-melta attack bike to take a long distance shot while the other half of the bike squad controls an objective on the other side of the table.

So as always, discuss! On a roll of a 5 or 6, can a combat squad split and come on both sides (left and right) or are they limited to one side? Go!

Ghost Knights WIP

2012-02-02T01:25:00.000-05:00

Well I said I would post some pictures....

But I never said they were the best quality.

So this is what I have been working on these past two days and I think they are definitely coming along. I still have some more work on them in order to make them stand out a bit more. I have to paint the eyes (which I am thinking read), preform some highlights using some scorpion green, and touch up the raider.

So far I have painted, a crusader, a dredknight, 10 interceptors, a libby, a GM (not shown), and 14 terminators. I still need to build a Grey Knight terminator with a brotherhood banner and put together a few more terminators. I also have 20 power armored marines that I can paint up this was as well and I should probably paint a dred or two.

Even though this currently has my attention, I assure you that regular White Scars programming will be back shortly.

So I was painting...

2012-01-31T23:19:00.000-05:00

Believe it or not I do own other armies besides White Scars. I currently own a Tau army modeled as Kroot Renegades and a massive GK army consisting of all the old metal models.

Well the new GK codex came out last yeah and I have played a grand total of 5 games with them since they were released. I really felt de-motivated to use them as everyone and their mother has been playing the nonstop at all tournaments. DAMN CODEX JUMPERS!!! This is not good being that I have close to 5000 points of them and that is after selling models.

Anyways...

Back to the new codex... once it was released, I decided I wanted to redo all of my GKs and separate them into two different armies. The first army was a conversion project based on Adeptus Custodes because they are simply awesome. The second army would be a "Ghost Knight" army which would feature a crap ton of terminators.

Now I have actually had the urge to paint the Ghost Knights (which is really weird for me as I hate painting) and I am busy working on them right now. I have painted them so far in a green wash with blue swords and what not, but they seem to be missing a few colors. So I am looking for suggestions from the masses. I was thinking about doing some gold or chainmail on them but then washing it in green just to bring out some details in the armor but I am unsure how that would look. I also have no idea what colors to do the eyes in either. My one friend suggested that I use scorpion green as a highlight in order to really make them pop and I now thinking about that. So yeah... I need some help.

What do you all think? I'll be posting up some pictures of them in a bit!

Oh and any ideas on an army list would be awesome, as I still don't have one.... UUUgggGGHHHhH

Footdar on 11th Company

2012-01-30T14:34:00.000-05:00

Hey everyone,

Released yesterday was a podcast of my friend and team mate Greg Sparks discussing his (in)famous footdar that he plays on the tournament scene. Check it out if you are interested in Eldar or just learning about one of those armies that the internet loves to hate.

Here it is!

Adepticon Team Tournament 2012

2012-01-27T17:00:00.030-05:00

After last years disaster during the team tournament, aka all of my team members bailing on me the week of the event and having to find a team for complete strangers and try to be competitive.... I seriously did not have the urge to commit to a team during this years event. This was sealed when the tickets for the event sold out in less then a day so it ensured I was not going to play.

Or so I thought!

On Saturday 1/21/2012, I took an excursion out to Toledo in order to get some gaming in. This would be my first serious game play since Da Boyz so I was excited to bust out Khan and his brotherhood. I played a game against Brian playing his Dark Angels and it was going very well for me (I know you read this, but Dark Angel Tactical marines aren't that good ;p).

Afterwards, all of us at the store ordered some pizza and began to chat about life, gaming, and whatnot. Then I found out some interesting news. One of my fellow Codex Toledo members, Brad Chester is unable to play on the Codex Toledo team this year. So in order to complete the team for the Adepticon Team Tournament, Greg Sparks and Mike Mutscheller asked me if I would like to take his spot. Naturally I agreed to do so! There is nothing quite like kicking ass with friends. Tools Unite!

Then after chatting, I threw together a quick army using the desired codex and rules and took on Daemons and beat the crap out of them. Being my first time with this particular army, I have a lot to learn, but I think with a little practice I will pick up the strategies in no time.

Now we are still working on armies and lists for the event but it looks like I am not going to be using Codex Space Marines for this venture. Sorry patrons of the blog, it just isn't happening this year. However White Scars will be present at the championships in a test to repeat the successes from last year.

Pretty exciting news? I say so!!!

Only 83 more days till Adepticon and I now need to work on two armies.... Shit I better get working!

To Build a White Scars Army Part 2: List building for the Table Top and the Shopping Cart

2012-01-27T09:00:00.013-05:00

If only these were models....

Posted on Behalf of Nimort.

I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday season. Here on the home front my brother and I have made our move to our new house and things are getting back to normal, slowly. Without further ado, now that we have a good idea for the type of army we want to invest in (White Scars Space Marines), we need to lay out a plan to build a list of units we want to incorporate and how much those units will cost on the table top and in real life.

Looking at our force organization chart we notice right away that we need 1 HQ choice and 2 Troop choices to form the basis of our army - and to get bikes as troops we need to have a captain on a bike. With this in mind, setting the initial points of the army is our next step. I believe that 500 points is too restrictive, in this regard for a starter army 1000 points is optimal. It allows for the core choices and some extra units from other parts of the force organization chart. This will also serve as the foundation for 1500 points and beyond.

Considering that there is shooting and close combat on the table top, focusing on three units that can do each in some degree will go further for our enjoyment. One unit will focus on combat (but can shoot), one unit will focus on shooting (but is able to do combat if needed), and the last unit will be focused on utility, being able to do both and doing things that bikes can't do (entering buildings being one). So with this in mind our initial list looks like this:

Captain on bike w/power weapon & hellfire rounds 160 pts

Command Squad x5 on bikes (champion, 2x lightning claw, power fist) 275 pts

Bike Squad x5 (2x melta gun, attack bike w/multi melta) 210 pts

Tactical Squad x10 (chainsword & bolt pistol, plasma gun, heavy bolter) 180 pts

Rhino APC (tactical squad transport) 35 pts

Predator MBT (autocannon & stormbolter) 70 pts

So quite obviously the captain and the command squad are the melee/assault unit, the biker Squad is the main ballistic unit, with the tactical squad being our utility unit. The predators will serve as support units, more than likely supporting the tactical squad in the rhino. What does all this mean? Well, we have quite a few models to buy, assemble, and paint. The model count for the list at 1000 pts is 25, including a few vehicles, so after we add in all the special bits we want to purchase (melta guns, lightning claws), the paints and tools this can run pretty steep just to get started!! To tackle this goal we will have to take it in steps, and even set a schedule for when we would like to get things done, and what to begin on the next phase of the project.

With this in mind the first item we'll be starting on is the rhino kit. Why the rhino? First, it is an easy kit to put together. Second, as it is a vehicle it will allow me to hone my dormant skill of painting while allowing me to have some mistakes that won't "kill" the model. Last, it has a relatively low cost, allowing me to purchase paints and tools for this and future kits (I am trying to stay around $100 dollars in purchases on the schedule that is set). The schedule is set on a 2 or 3 week basis (depending on how many models) and is initially set out like this:

First purchase - Rhino kit, paints, brushes, tools, glue; work time - 2 weeks

Second purchase - Tactical Squad kit, Devestator kit; work time - 3 weeks

Third purchase - Ravenwing box set, Special order bits; work time - 3 weeks

Fourth purchase - Predator kit, Space Marine Commander kit; work time - 2 weeks

Fifth purchase - Ravenwing box set, Special order bits; work time - 3 weeks

Sixth purchase - Space Marine Command Squad kit, extras; work time - 3 weeks

Keep a budget in order to get the most out of the hobby!

The special order bits are purchased with the Ravenwing box sets because the models will be using them and we saved money on the previous purchases to stay within our budget. The Devestator kit is in the purchases to give us a variety of heavy weapons to choose from (HB, MM, or ML) for the tactical squad and allows for some extra bits and models to be used later. Instead of the traditional melta guns for the bikers (and flamers later on), we are going to purchase the Death Company inferno pistols (and hand flamers), and I like the "X" marking on the hand. This will go with a lightning claw and a couple heavy flamers for future landspeeders. Regretably, the "old lady" theme I dreamed up with Sisters of Battle riding tandem with melta guns and flamers went by the wayside, because GW still does not make any Sisters of Battle in plastic. Darn!

With that we'll wrap up this portion of building a White Scars army. Right now I am starting the first phase, and if things go along smoothly, I might get a jump on the second phase early. I'll be posting some pictures of the paint work on the rhino soon.

Nothing quite says commitment like killing zombies together

2012-01-26T18:00:00.002-05:00

Anyone who has been following the blog regularly now realizes that I am engaged and that the wedding is coming up really soon. So besides school, (looking for) work, warhammer 40k, family stuff, I have been working with my fiancee on planning a wedding.

Well Swanson shared a link with me to garden ninja painting to talk about painting commissions. When I checked out the site I saw that the dude creates and paints Geeky Wedding toppers. Everything from slaying zombies to steam punk this guy can do it. Now only if I can convince my significant other to want to get these for our wedding.... Any ideas?

Here are some more pictures, but check them all out:

Guest Article: Painting Tips and Tricks 3/3

2012-01-26T09:00:00.007-05:00

The tools to get it done!

Part one of the series can be found: here.

Part two of the series can be found: here.

• Wet palette. I have one from PP, but there are tutorials on how to make them for those who don't want to pay the money. The palette allows you to portion out some paint and close the lid, keeping your pot out of the air. Also, it allows you to blend some paint and keeps it alive for the length of your session. When paint gets mixed, we spread it out to mix it thoroughly. The side effect of that is the mix has more surface area to dry out with! The wet palette counteracts that.

I found it really hard to paint metallics [Boltgun, Chainmail, Mithril Silver] without them drying out on the dry palette, or on my brush [if I was painting a good sized batch of minis]. The wet palette has made my metallics painting much easier by keeping the paint as moist as possible. Metallic paint is already a bit thicker than regular paint, and so needs all the help it can get to stop it from going gluggy.

I would have to say metallics is the thing the wet palette has helped with the most.

• Thin your paints. Generally [always?] the paint is too thick to be used straight from the pot. You only need a fairly thin coverage and will get better results [not obscuring detail] by using two thin coats rather than one heavier one.

• Three colours + wash. As for a technical thing, I always try to use three colours for each piece.
For example, if I am painting a Bolter;

Boltgun -> Badab wash -> Chainmail highlights -> Mithril Silver extreme highlights.
You could drop off one of the highlights though.
Likewise with eye lenses;

I forget the GW names...

Dark blue -> Asurman wash -> Midblue 2/3rds -> Light blue 1/3rd -> Skull White dot.

And the same for the edge highlighting of armour, etc.

The three levels makes the transition less noticeable and so more ‘real’.

• Different sized brushes. To help me do the three levels of edge highlighting or three colours on the eye lens, etc. I use differing sized brushes. I have the GW set, and the 'fine detail' brush is the equivalent of a 000, which you could call a 3/0 brush. But I also have a 5/0 brush [so even smaller than the 000] a 10/0 and a 20/0. Sure I ‘could’ use a 000 with super mad skeeyulz to get the same effect, but why not just get the right tools for the job, eh?
+++

I hope these pieces have been news to some and been an encouragement to getting closer to finishing that army, to enjoy a host that is fully painted.

Way back when: Movie Marines!

2012-01-25T18:00:00.010-05:00

Hey Everyone,

I was surfing around the web yesterday and I stumbled upon a scan of all the old Movie Marines rules that White Dwarf published way back when. It sure brought back some memories... Back in the day when White Dwarf provided good content...... umm yeah... that is a discussion for another day.

At any rate, I thought I would share the scans with you so that you can try out the rules and see if they really work. Now only if they had a space marine riding a bike in this list...

For legal purposes these are from Games Workshop and they were originally posted here. Enjoy!

Guest Article: Painting Tips and Tricks 2/3

2012-01-25T09:00:00.003-05:00

Setting the painting "mood"

Part two of three.

Original article can be found: here

Now onto an explanation of what those points means:

• Use good lighting - I have a fluro lamp that I am able to get close to the desk if I want. I used to have another lamp, with a 100W halogen bulb for a secondary source, which is really useful. You can lose track of things with just one light, but two stops shadows or glare from hiding that part you missed ;)

If you can see where your brush is going and how the paint is being laid down, you are much better off.

• Preparation. Build a house without using proper foundations and the thing cracks. Likewise, if you don't get _all_ the mould lines off, it doesn't matter how shmick a job with the brush you do, it'll still look bad.

Of course, sometimes I do miss them and use a little more paint to cover the ridge or fill the gap.... *nervous cough*

I always wash my minis before I paint them, using an old toothbrush and washing up liquid in water. Remember to then rinse them off in running water. This process gets off any gunk from the manufacturing process, but even the natural oils from my finger prints. Most good undercoat sprays will eat into such gunk, but why risk having to fix bubbled undercoat? The mini will get some marks on them from me handling them after washing them, but we've done a pretty good job ;)
I try to do this the might before, as waiting for minis to dry is like watching a kettle boil....

• I wear x3 magnifying glasses - $20. I don't have great up close eyesight and could wear spectacles but chose not to because having worked as a tradesman makes it awkward to use something that is quite breakable and needs to be kept clean, etc. But if I can zoom in with the glasses whilst painting, any mistakes I make at that level 'should' be hard to detect with an inspection by normal eyesight.

• Pot tipper. I have a block of hard foam. It is like an L shape, but slightly kicked over. When the paint in the lid drips down, instead of going onto the rim, it drips cleanly back into the pot. This stops a build up of dried paint, which would otherwise stop the lid from sealing and so dry you paint out prematurely. Remember to shake the pot after you've finished with it - this puts a tiny amount of paint around the lid and this seals the pot.

Add a couple of drops of water to the pot after use.

Psychology: Templates and You

2012-01-24T18:00:00.000-05:00

Playing 40k is making a series of decisions. Deciding where to move, what to shoot, and what to fight. We hope that we make the right decisions, or the better decisions in our games when faced with multiple choices. We hope our opponents make the wrong decision and that we can choose to punish them for their transgressions, while making fun of them for there lack of vision. Now hoping our opponent makes the wrong decision is not really what I call a long term strategy. I mean I hope Brandon will open his eyes and stop thinking bikes are good… but no one can be perfect, let a lone mediocre, like myself. Now what if you could make your opponent do what you want to do? I’m not talking Jedi mind tricks… but then again I’m not telling people stop using it if you can.

Bikes are good because they give me the options to do what I want and adapt my game play depending on who I am playing. Not to mention they can easily take advantage of all the strategies you present in this article.

I’m talking about manipulating your opponent into doing what you want them to do. This isn’t done though clever talk or a stout poker face, but one way of doing this is with simple army list building that if done can make your opponent act radically different during game play. You can then manipulate the situation to make you game much more successful. Some people love to break down army lists solely on numbers, statistics, and effectiveness. I’ll actually give you a little insight into our ETC army making process. Several of our members were actually doing binomials to rate overall effectiveness of certain war gear options. WTF is up with that!? I’m not saying its bad but I’m also saying its not the final criteria you should have. I’m talking about looking past numbers and looking at the end effect of what a weapon can do. I’m talking about the inclusion of templates and the effects it has on your opponent.

So templates… Ordinance, Blast, Flame (Thunderfire cannon!!!). They are designed to hit multiple targets. If I bring one its assumed I want to hit multiple targets. So your natural reaction is to deny me what I want (as my assumed opponent). So you take your army and spread out to lessen the effect of my weapon, but what if that’s what I wanted? Take a generic army. If I have no templates you can deploy in a tight close pack. Each unit nearly on top of the next. I attack one part of your army and now every other part is nearby to help support it, with a move and double tap of a bolter or a fast counter assault. Now if I bring a template or templates you get a little threat and all of a sudden your army is forced to spread out or else face the dire consequences.

So what happens when your opponent spreads out? Well the army is no longer in a position to support itself. You can separate and attack small pockets of your opponents army while facing little to no retaliation. Certain tactics like a refused flank become much easier to pull off. A refused flank is when you go second, your opponent spreads his entire army out over his entire deployment zone, your reaction is to put your entire army on just one side. So now you engage half of his army with your entire army. This tactic works particularly good against certain elite armies such as Grey Knights, who can’t risk you getting large numbers of hit with templates because loosing a few squads usually means loosing have the army, where as a guard army could care less about loosing a few squads (its actually there strategy most of the time). Grey Knights are also great on the counter attack, you eat storm bolters followed but a strong counter attack fueled by power weapons, take away the assault counter attack and that’s half there strength out the door.

So as you can see forcing your opponent to spread out opens up holes in there army and can lessen the overall strength of the army. You just need to get ready to punish them for the mistake. So do me a favor, don’t knock the article if you think its FUBAR. Try playing two games, one control game and one experimental game. Take a list specifically with no templates (yes a missile launcher counts). Then take an army with a ton of templates. If your playing a competent opponent I bet you’ll see a radically different change in his deployment and movement. If you do now think of how to design your army to take advantage of is. As always if you feel like chatting throw me an email at jonathanwillingham@hotmail.com, I always love talking 40k.

Check out the Thunderfire Article Series were I discuss the uses of template weapons and controlling firing lanes and deployment. It compliments this article very well --Frosty

Guest Article: Painting Tips and Tricks 1/3

2012-01-24T09:00:00.007-05:00

Marshal Wilhelm's Black Templars

This is a guest piece from one of our frequent contributors Marshal Wilhelm. There is some good advice in here if you are looking to step your painting up a notch! Check it out! --Frosty

Greetings one and all,

Here I am to present my contribution to the Khan’s Golden Horde. I am Marshal Wilhelm, and have armies for Templars, Tau and Retribution of Scyrah. I also play Space Marine on PS3 under the same name :)

Stillfrosty asked me if I’d like to do an article on painting and my response was ‘no but....’ and it kept on stretching onwards to article size. I guess I do have something to say :P

I am no pro painter.... so why should you read this article? I guess for exactly that reason - I’m not super gifted but just a regular hobbyist who, after much internet trawling and being blessed with an older brother who has been painting minis since I was a wee lad, is now implementing all that wisdom with patience and persistence.
If I can paint to this standard, then you can paint to this standard :)

I think that why my minis look better than simple table top standard, is not because I am skilled or quick, but because I persist and have bought the tools for the job - a surgeon wouldn’t do brain surgery with a spoon (I hope....) but has all the right kit and techniques for the task at hand. Why not the same for painting toy soldiers?

How I paint is by trying to be as neat as possible, and so in 10 years time, I can still look back on my minis and still think 'hey, these still look pretty good!'

Here is a link to my best photographed mini:
http://www.bolterandchainsword.com/index.php?showtopic=209020&st=50
look for post #52

So how do I do it?

Part 2.
Good lighting.
Preparation - no mould lines and wash the minis before undercoating.
Magnifying glasses.
Paint pot tipper.

Part 3.
Wet palette.
Thin your paints.
Three colours + wash for each part
Full set of GW brushes & three even smaller ones.

Hopefully this is of use to any budding painters or even something fresh for people who have been around the block a few times.

Thanks for reading, Marshal Wilhelm.

Poll Results: Stillfrosty's next army

2012-01-23T13:09:00.000-05:00

I meant "poll" not "pole"....

This was actually really close in the voting and it was awesome to see a lot of participation. The end results were as follows...

White Scars 32 votes
Legion of the Damned 35 votes
Other 4 votes
Don't do it 8 votes

I kinda wish I knew that armies wanted to see for "other" but the only recommendation I got was to paint up a Marauders army. Because the results are so close and that I am still looking for a painter for this project, I have not decided on a scheme yet. But I am considering including elements of both armies to contrast one another. Not to mention it would allow me to justify using dreds and terminators in my White Scars army!!!

What would you guys think about that?

As an aside, I have started up a new poll discussing whether or not analyzing player and army list psychology has a place in 40k. This is sparked because of some interesting discussion during the Whirlwind article just a few days ago. So make sure you let us know what you think and look forward to a few articles about this topic in the next few days!

The White WAAAGH!!!

2012-01-22T01:28:00.004-05:00

Hey guys just a quick post from me tonight. I was at a local store that I don't go to often and spotted a hidden treat that I just couldn't keep to myself, especially as this is a White Scars blog. This is a fully converted Ork biker army, complete with White Scar shoulder pads to really knock home the idea of the White WAAAGH!!

Check it out!

Check it out!

White Scars: GMM Style

2012-01-19T17:00:00.000-05:00

While I was looking around for potential painters for my White Scars army, one of the first people I asked was Brandon Palmer over at GMM studios. And no, I did not ask him first because his name is Brandon.

Anyways, I saw his amazing work at Adepticon when he painted a Nurgle themed Chaos Space marine army for a charity auction. Then I became hooked!

So after talking with him for a bit about commissions and what not, he informed me that he actually painted a White Scars army before for another client and shared a link to his work. I must say, the dude has a lot of talent for clear and crisp color schemes. So if you are in the market for a really well done paint job by GMM Studios, talk to Brandon and tell him that Brandon sent you. His prices are very reasonable and I believe you will be very impressed with his work.

Here are some more shots, but if you want a detailed look at every bike, check it out here

The 2nd Annual ATC: Are you ready?

2012-01-19T09:00:00.004-05:00

The word on the street is that this event is going to be amazing! As of right now, the organizers of the event have booked 21 teams out of 24 (though that might change soon). Their website is here and there facebook page is located here.

The event is a weekend long battle royal consisting of 5 player teams each playing a 2000 point list where no codices are allowed to repeat on the team. The tournament emulates the ETC in format and if you are interested in the rules you can check them out on the website. The smack down is going to take place on July 14th and 15th in Cleveland, Tennessee.

This is shaping up to be a big time event with lots of solid gamers and clubs attending. So who all is coming? I know Greg Swanson attended last year, will he make a return appearance?

As an official announcement for this blog, Codex Toledo aka "the Toledo Tools" will be attending. I have been asked to take part in this event and Jon Willingham is going to be there too. The other three members of our team are the infamous Captain Greg Sparks, the Veteran Mike Mutscheller, and our very own muscle man Brad Chester.

I look forward to discussing and planning potential army lists for this event in the coming months!

Now with five members we can properly spell out "codex", "Tools" or even "Fucks". It must be destiny!

Are You READY!!!! COME GET SOME!!!!

Stop SOPA/PIPA

2012-01-18T11:43:00.002-05:00

I normally don't get involved in political discussions on this blog, but this is important and should be discussed by all bloggers.

Right now the US government is discussing passing a bill which would allow them to censor websites which contain ideas, images, music, videos, etc which are not copyrighted by them. Websites which will be effected, Facebook, Twitter, Ebay, Google, Craigslist, Wikipedia, Blogger, Photobucket, and so many more.

So lets say hypothetically I post a song by one of my favorite bands on blogger. The band could sue for IP infringement and that would give the United States the authority to shut down the entire blogger website. If that is not insane, I do not know what is. This technology is currently in use in rouge countries, such as Iran and China, in order to suppress ideas and promote governmental oppression. Why the United States is considering this legislation is beyond me.

The internet is controlled by no one. It is a place which is meant to share and exchange ideas in order to boost communications, commerce, innovation, job creation, and so much more. It is an avenue in which you can discuss gaming, new model releases, strategies, army lists, tournaments, even White Scars paint schemes. Not to mention I've met so many awesome people, including my fiancee, thanks to the internet. Why would someone want to ruin this amazing piece of technological innovation for all?

Here is the Legislation, you should read it.

Thank you for reading this and I hope that you let your voice be heard.

Bloody Hell!

2012-01-17T09:00:00.012-05:00

Seriously!

Look at this wonderful use of pigments on this chaplain. I don't know about you guys, but he looks a bit angry and ready for some action. I never thought a crozius could be used that way!

*insert puns here*

The original image is located here:

Food for Thought: Whirlwinds

2012-01-16T17:00:00.012-05:00

Whirlwinds? What is a Whirlwind?

Well believe it or not, in the Space Marine codex there is a tank called a "Whirlwind" that never sees the light of day or is acknowledged on any forum, blog, or website because of all of the other options in the Space Marine codex. Seriously it is on page 79 of the Space Marine codex.

So why do we never see it? In order to answer that, we need to discuss what the unit has to offer.

The Whirlwind is an armor 11/11/10 tank with one main weapon which has two firing modes and 12-48 inch range.

The first firing mode is: heavy 1 strength 5 ap 4, large blast, barrage.
The second firing mode is: heavy 1 strength 4 ap 5, large blast, ignore cover, barrage.

You can purchase additional equipment for the tank such as a storm bolter, hunter killer missile, extra armor, but they are generally pointless upgrades for a tank who is trying to stay out of sight. You can get this fine piece of armor for 85 points.

So why don't we see it? Well this is a short list of reasons why I would suspect we never see this tank.

For the same amount of points you can buy a "Dakka Pred" which pumps out more shots and is more durable.
For 15 more points you can buy a Thunderfire Cannon which does anti-infantry better then a Whirlwind (higher quantity of shots, more firing mode options, longer range) and comes with the ability to modify terrain.
The Whirlwind suffers from "only having one gun syndrome" similar to a vindicator.
You can not move and fire the tank
It has a minimum range of 12 inches
The weapon system is mounted on a rhino chassis therefore not that durable.

However, a Whirlwind does offer two things which you do not find in the Space Marine codex

An indirect weapon
A blast and pinning weapon

The ability to fire indirectly and out of line of sight is a big deal. With the preponderance of LoS blocking terrain which now exists due to the adaptation of 5th edition terrain rules by tournament organizers means that it is now possible to hide this tank with relative immunity. Secondly, it allows you to target units which are hiding behind terrain, I am looking at you 10 man grot squad on the back objective! I am also looking at you JSJ crisis suits!!!

In addition, though often over looked, pinning is an effective method stopping units. I know fearless and leadership 10 is common place, but for certain armies (guard, orks, dark eldar, eldar, tau, etc) this is awesome. Used in tandem with the ignore cover shot, the whirlwind can decimate most soft troops in one go. Likewise, one of the most critical complaints about the Thunderfire cannon is that the effect of the small blasts can be mitigated by spreading out. Well this problem doesn't exist with a large blast weapon (assuming it does not 8 inches out of the way).

Why I am not saying this is the most amazing tank ever, what I am saying is that it does provide a unique niche in the Space Marine codex which can be advantageous against certain armies. Taking this into account, in addition to certain spamming anti-tank weapons (space wolves, dark eldar, grey knights) being able to hide while still being effective has a merit on its own. In an army which is trying to deny kill points, it can be effective. I can't tell you how many times a manticore has played hide and go seek with me when I am trying to blow it up!

Finally, with Necrons now on the scene and their nerf to necron warrior saves (being 4+ now) and the spamming of scarabs, this unit can prove to be very annoying to this army. Being a barrage weapon, Whirlwinds are not stopped by night fight targeting, the weapon just scatters more. How cool is that?

So what do you guys think? Is the tank worthless? Only for fun? Or can it be used competitively?

The FAQ's are coming.... The FAQ's are coming!!!

2012-01-16T10:23:00.003-05:00

It is always nice waking up and being hit with the next big think in Warhammer 40k. Usually it is a new set of rumors or discussion about a new army tactic. But this time, Games Workshop decided to release a massive FAQ update to the majority of the codices on the market and here it is.

An interesting note about this is that Black Templars and Tau are the two codices not given a new FAQ update. It looks like those rumors might be true about one of those armies being released in the near future.

At any rate, the only clarification that occurred in the Space Marine codex is that GW has openly said that units can combat squad from reserves. Anyone who has followed the blog will know that I have all ready covered that discussion here. In addition to this, Marneus Calgar's special rule "God of War" was clarified. So I must say, not as crazy as the last update, but interesting none the less.

Other codices on the other hand had much more coverage. Chaos psychic powers have been brought into line with other codices aka Lash needing to hit (which is how it is and the Daemon codex) and having to re-roll all of the dice in Warp Time instead of the ones you choose (which clearly states it in the codex, but Chaos players want to cheat ;p). Also, Scarab Farming (covered in this article by Jon) has received a kick in the shin as Necron players are no longer able to get a first turn charge off by stringing scarabs in a line. So it looks like you don't have to beat the crap out of somebody as Jon suggested any more.

I hope you enjoy all of these rules updates and feel free to discuss!

Round 2 Battle Report or Snatching Victory From the Jaws of Stupidity

2012-01-13T22:49:00.002-05:00

All right after a bit of lunch and some good natured smack talking it was on to round 2. I found out I was paired up against Tony Malave a member of the Chicago Kamikazes Blog. It seems that every tournament we attend together we are fated to play each other. Tony brought his razor spam wolves list.
The list was:

Runepriest chooser, Jaws and Living Lightning

6 Scouts w/melta bombs and a meltagun

7 Man Grey Hunter Pack w/plasma gun in a rhino

4 x 6 Man Grey Hunter Pack w/meltagun in a las plas razorback

Land Speeder typhoon w/heavy bolter

6 Long Fangs w/missile launchers

6 Long Fangs w/heavy bolters

6 Long Fangs w/3 missile launchers and 2 plasma cannons

My List was:

Khan

Libby on Bike w/Avenger and Null Zone

Eight Man Bike Squad w/PF, 2 x Melta Guns and MM Attack Bike

Five Man Squad w/Combi Plasma 2 x Plasma gun and MM Attack Bike

Five Man Squad w/Combi Melta 2 x Melta gun and MM Attack Bike

Land Speeder Typhoon w/Multi Melta

First Sideboard

Land Speeder Typhoon

Dakka Predator

Vindicator w/dozer blade

The mission is Dawn of War. Each person will place three objectives. One in your side of the board and two in your opponent's. The victory conditions are 1) control more objectives in your opponents board half them him 2) control more objectives in your board half then your opponent. (Both can only be controlled by scoring units but may be contested by anyone) and 3) Have more units of any type within 12" of the center of the board then your opponent.

We place objectives pretty much along the center line slightly staggered. He keeps one in his back field to my right behind terrain. There is big ruined buildings in the center to my left in my deployment zone and to my right in his deployment zone. We roll off to see who goes first I win and then have a complete rectal - cranial inversion. I allow him to go first. I wish I knew what the hell I was thinking - quite obviously I wasn't. If I go first the game is probably a walk over he has a lot of his firepower in static mode. He will have not much to shoot at me as he comes on. But no me being the sporting person I am insist he goes first. I must have been in a diabetic coma from lunch..... Anyway he walks everything in first turn. I refusing to learn from my previous mistake also drive everything on in my first turn.

His Turn 1

His speeder comes on going cruising speed about 12"on my left a center the plasma fangs come into just to the right of them three of the razorbacks and the rhino with the rune priest come on in a diamond formation dead center with the rune priests rhino in the rear. The other two long fangs struggle through the big building in his deployment zone on my right the other razorback comes on with them and the scouts lurk menacingly.

My Turn 1

My speeders come on to my left to try and avoid as much of the shooting as possible moving to get the 4+ save. All my bikes move at turbo speed to gain the 3+ and stage behind the big piece of terrain in the middle. The big squad combat squads and Khan and the Libby go with the fist and two meltas while the three guys in red uniforms and the mm attack bike go just to the right of the center behind the ruins. The vindicator and the predator move 12" just to left of my center pop smoke. I hunker down and wait for the carnage to come.

His Turn 2

He moves the left most razorback 12" to the left of the center building and pops smoke. The six man squad gets out on my side to shoot me. The heavy bolter and missile launcher long fangs keep moving through the building so the can see next turn the point of the diamond guys get out and along with the squad guarding the long fang building make a line so I can not get to his objective in the back. this means the two razorbacks have to move. limiting their shooting. The scouts come in to my left just behind my speeders. Uh oh! The rest of his army takes careful aim and starts shooting. Amazingly I come through almost unscathed. The scouts fail to hit with the melts gun and whiff on the charge. Everything else shoots and kills one bike from the plasma squad and does a wound to the attack bike in that squad. The melta bikes also lose a guy and take a wound on the attack bike. Khan's group lose one guy and the combat squad loses a wound on the attack bike. The rune priest puts a rune on himself with a miscast Jaws. Wow! Not to bad I despite sticking my head up my butt I may still have a chance.

My Turn 2

Khans group goes through the center terrain to get in the center of the diamond. Of course both Khan and the Libby fail their dangerous terrain checks. Lets' hear it for skilled rider. The combat squad moves to charge the 6 man squad on my right closest to the center. The melta bikes go to try and deal with the 6 man squad that has moved up to the center on my left. The plasma bikes scoot around the razorback to go talk to the plasma fangs. The speeders move up 6" to fire. The predator stays put and the vindy moves up 12" realizing with Khan's group among the razorbacks it will have no targets. I open fire the melta group manages to kill three grey hunters. The plasma group wipes out the long fangs. The combat squad downs two grey hunters. The predator kills 4 scouts. One speeder stuns the up close razorback while the other manages to take the plasma gun in the left most razorback. Khans group was positioned all around this razorback hoping to get them to spill out and make nice juicy targets, unfortunately this does not happen so the two melta guns in Khan's group shoot the razorback missing. Khans group charges the razorback stunning it. The melta guys kill one and take a casualty in return. The combat squad kills one but the remaining grey hunters stand firm. Everyone of course passes all their morale checks.

His Turn 3

I have put some hurt on him but not enough this turn could be ugly for all my non turbo boosting army. The heavy long fangs finally get through difficult terrain where the can finally see something. The small grey hunter squads all get out where they can rapid fire my bikes into oblivion. The razorbacks all move at least a few inches to not allow me auto hits which is nice because it at least cuts their shooting in half. All right the scouts attempt to shoot the speeder again and miss. The rune priest tries to jaws Khan's group but I am able to hood it. The plasma grey hunter squad and two of the melta grey hunter squads, along with two of the razorbacks target Khans group. Luckily most of the squad was positioned around the stunned razorback to get cover. However the libby dies, Khan takes another wound and all of the squad but the fist dies. The long fang razorbacks and the speeder open up on the plasma bikes knocking them down to a wounded attack bike. The scouts then charge the speeder they shot at killing it with melta bombs. The melee with the melta bikes and the grey hinters squad is a draw with both units taking a casualty. The combat squad manages to break the squad of grey hunters they are fighting and is able to force them off the table. Could be better but could be much worse.

My Turn 3

All right Khan moves to go get himself some grey hunters. The attack bike from the plasma squad goes to aid the melta squad. The combat squad moves to aid Khan with the grey hunters from the right most razorback. The vindy moves up and targets the mass of grey hunters who fired on Khans squad. In my shooting phase the speeder stuns one of the razorbacks. the vindy shoots though the big cover in the middle of the table and targets the group of 2 grey hunter squads, killing 7 grey hunters causing both to fail morale checks. One with the melta gun falls off the table. The predator pastes the speeder. In the assault phase the combat squad and Khan make short work of the other grey hunter squad. the fist is able to take off the plasma gun on the razorback he charged. And the melee continues between the melta bikes the plasma attack bike and the three grey hunters with me losing one more bike but staying locked in. Not looking too bad for the moment he is down to two troops choices while for the moment I still have four.

His Turn 4

Tony knows he needs to whittle my troops down and moves to do so. The squad of 4 grey hunters rallies. They move away from vindicator range towards the block of ruins to my right with the long fangs in it. The rhino moves to allow the rune priest a better shot with living lightning at the speeder. All the razorbacks move to shoot except for the left most one which moves to pick up his last unengaged grey hunter squad. The shooting commences. He hits the speeder with two living lightning bolts but fails to do anything. All the razorbacks and the long fangs open fire on the powerfist guy the command squad and Khan. It comes down to Khan failing his last invulnerable save and dying leaving me with only the two scoring units still engaged with the forward grey hunters. In the assault phase I finally finish off these and consolidate away.

My Turn 4

The attack bike from the plasma squad and the sgt and attack bike from the melta squad turbo off to objectives in our respective board halves behind cover out of sight. All I have left is the speeder, vindy and the predator. The vindy is just out of range of the grey hunters. The speeder and predator each stuns a razorback.

His Turn 5

At the start of this turn we are given the no more turns started warning meaning this will be the last turn. His grey hunters get in a razorback and drive to an objective in his zone. The rune priest fires the speeder the long fangs fail to do anything to the speeder and the last razorback shakes the vindy. He has two razorbacks with in 12" of the center. At this point I think he forgot about the center objective. He could have moved the rhino and 12" and probably been close to 12" to the center with two more units and more than likely the long fangs would have dropped the speeder.

My Turn 5

I have one unit on an objective on his side giving me a draw in on that victory condition. I move the other bike squad 24" on to the objective in my zone with in 12" of the middle. This gives me the victory condition dealing with objectives in my half of the table. Both the vindy and the pred move 12" to with in 12" of the center giving me that victory condition as well

Game to me 2 -0

I have no idea what I was thinking at deployment. (I must have been in a food coma from lunch...) Luckily I was able to take the extra turn of shooting I would not have had to take and still win. All I had left was two attack bikes, a vet sgt and two tanks. Luckily the game ended when it did. Tony was a great opponent as always and it was a great game. I would now be on one of the top tables for the final round.

Guest Article: White Scars and how to paint white

2012-01-13T17:00:00.003-05:00

This is a guest post from Ron S. over at FTW. The original article can be seen here. I hope you enjoy this guide on how to paint White as this is a very valuable resource to all of you out there. Not to mention that it makes it even more difficult for me to decide how I want my new bike army to be painted... --Frosty

Ever since I painted that Deathwing squad of mine, I've received a ton of questions on how the bone color was painted and then how to make that into white. Since I don't know how to take that process and turn it into "white," I figured I'd go over white on it's own.

White is like black... wait, what?
I mean, it's at the far end of the spectrum and it, like it's cousin at the other end of the spectrum, tends to give people lots of problems when it comes to painting.

There are lots of ways to paint white, this one is mine
I've done a few "white" models before and this is what I've settled on as my approach. It's fairly quick and painless as well which makes it my favorite. My previous method was a bit more time consuming since I started with a grey and worked up to white. Now I start with white and add the shadows in selectively.

Since the focus of this post is the white armour, that's all I'm really going to cover here. I built this guy specifically for this post since I wanted to see if I could get something that captured the feel of the army instead of using a normal space marine model. Truth be told, I needed an excuse to try and sculpt a fur pelt and a super cool mustache. It didn't matter what color I had to paint him as long as I could add those to the model.

Priming and basecoating
In this case, since I knew I was going for white armour, I used a white primer. I kept the coverage light, only applying a very thin coat to the model at first.

Over my white primer, I worked a couple of thin coats of GW Skull White over the armour until I had a nice, smooth finish.

I think it took two coats in the end. Really, it came down to filling in the few spots I didn't get with the primer. You can see the difference on the model above between the areas that have been touched up and the still primed portions. It's not much, but the Skull White fills in the primer and you should end up with a nice, smooth coverage on your armour.

Adding the shadows to the armour
Here's where it can get tricky for some folks. Since we're starting at one end of the spectrum, we can only go darker from here. Some folks start with a light grey in order to avoid this problem as it allows them to work "up" to white. Since we know we are staring with white and working backwards, we just need to be careful.

Here we have the route I chose to go. I decided a wash over the armour would create the shadows and if I kept my application limited to the recessed areas only as best I could, I wouldn't have too much clean up work to do in the next step.

So what do you use to create the shadows?
I kept away from using GW Badab Black as my wash because it's black and is transparent. As a matter of personal taste, I don't like the way it looks over a white basecoat.

I wanted something a bit lighter (in terms of value) and cooler in color. At first I thought I might try making a wash from thinned paint... something like GW Foundation Adeptus Battlegrey. I scrapped that idea because of the opacity and I didn't want to have to duplicate it over and over in the event I was painting an army.

I ended up using a wash from Secret Weapon minis. When these first came out, I gave them a less than glowing review and while they worked, I wasn't the biggest fan of them. They did find a place in my toolbox for creating slightly stronger washes (for things like grime and spills) due to their richer colors.

Thinking back to the effect I got with them, I pulled out the Soft Body Black wash to give it go. I did NOT shake the bottle up either. It was a technique I was trying out before and I thought I might give it another go. The review explains the reasoning more in depth.

The beauty of using this particular brand and color of wash (in this instance) is that I got the exact effect I was looking for. I wanted a slightly cool grey (and not thinned black) look to the shadows. I wanted it to be a wash in order to blend into the basecolor cleanly and not look like thinned paint (which tends to exaggerate subtle surface texture) resting in the recessed areas.

As it worked out, it came out perfectly. I got the darker grey shadows that blended into the white like I wanted. Like I said before, it's a matter of personal taste when it comes to the final effect. Using something else like a GW wash or thinned paint might do the same thing, but I wanted a certain look here.

The other added bonus was that this process took only one pass and I did not have to do anything else to the wash (other than not shake the bottle). I didn't thin it and I didn't have to make multiple passe to build up the color. This translates into time if you're working on an army and not just one model.

After the wash dried completely, it was simply matter of cleaning up the armour plates where I was a little messy in my application.

And that's it for the white armour. Prime white, basecoat white (thinned multiple passes, wash for shadows and then clean up any mistakes.

The rest of the details bring the model to life
Just like any other model, it's the details that bring it to life. In this case, it's the red accents, the fur and all the other little things that make the white armour stand out. The pics below show the model prior to any weathering being done.

The fur and red areas or the White Scar parts
The fur is sculpted in place with greenstuff. I'll need to do another post one day to cover the process. It's not the best, but it gets the job done.

The red areas started out as GW Foundation Mechrite Red and were given a pass with GW Red Gore and GW Baal Red wash to darken them down before adding a slight highlight across the toe and top of the shoulderpad trim.

The Chapter icon on the left shoulderpad is covered up with fur for the most part. What can be seen was freehanded in place with GW Foundation Mechrite Red and Foundation Iyandan Darksun. The tactical squad arrow on the other side was outlined with thinned black paint and filled in once I had the correct shape.

The weathering to bring him to life
I used powders to darken the exhaust vents on his backpack and dirty-up his boots. The battle damage was done partly with paint (since it's a light colored armour) and partly with pencil after that. The reason I had to use paint when it came to adding battle damage can be found here. The base comes from Secret Weapon as well and I kept it dark to make the model pop.

In a few places, I went in with a warm colored powder to simulate some rust and dirt that has collected in the joints over time. That and it provided some contrast against the cool shadows of the armour. In order to push the deepest recessed areas, I went back in with thinned black paint and made them the most dark of all. Places like the underside of the shoulderpads, around his waist and the bottom of his leg armour near his heels.

I seem to struggle with urban basing sometimes and can't quite get it right. In this case, I started with a light grey basecoat, washed it with thinned GW Foundation Charadon Granite and then did some light drybrushing with the light grey and GW Rotting Flesh to pull out the surface texture of the ground.

All in all, I like the way he came out. I think a little more work on my white and I could refine the process even more. Right now though, it's fairly quick and easy and those are the big things for me with a color like this
.
Make sure to check out these posts as they might help:
Priming my models, how I physically do it
How to do pencil battle damage over light colored armour

A few more unposted/WIP model shots

It is a close one.. but lets make it more interesting.

2012-01-13T08:00:00.003-05:00

Evening everyone!

So a few days back, I posted up a poll to see which color scheme should I have my army painted in. I was planning on having it professionally painted by so I can start doing better in soft scores on the tournament scene. More details can be found here... The voting process is still going on as to what all of you think, but right this minute there is a virtual tie between the two color schemes. Therefore, I wanted to make it more interesting.

However, I recently came across a painter named Bobinator who has tore up the painting scene with his amazing legion of the damned color scheme. I inquired more about his work and it just so happens that he is currently working on some bikes for a commission. So given the fact that I am very interested in having a legion of the damned army with some cool conversions, this was an excellent opportunity to see his amazing work and what my army could look like.

These dudes are simply amazing!!!

The best part about it is that they are not even completed yet. So what do you guys think of a Legion of the Damned bike army now?

J Willy Conques Net Lists Part 3!!! Venom Spam Big Willy Style!

2012-01-12T00:20:00.004-05:00

Welcome to my 3rd exciting installment of anti-net list articles! I’m fresh off my anti scarab swam article (found HERE), which in my opinion was awesome… but judging by the comment section no body else did! Never the less I’m here to tell you things I hope you want to hear or read if your not reading out loud.

Your sister and I read your article. So did your mom, so at least you have a handful of fans...

So today lets Cure Venom… Spam

Venom Spam is an annoying list that can decimate certain lists but has the tools to deal with just about anything… well except for Blessed Hull Land Raiders, and this guy (http://lettheskiesfall.blogspot.com/). This list usually comprises 5+ Venoms, usually having either warriors or true born holding about as many dark light weapons as they can. Here we have a great package! We have both anti vehicle and anti infinity all at a cheap price, I’ve seen list sporting 9 of these things and its scary. Next up on the docket is an assault element. Depending on how many venoms you usually have there is more or less in this area but it ranges from a giant beast unit(s), to Hellions w/Baron, or a few units of Witches and Homunculus in Raiders. Regardless of what it is, it's there. Finally three Ravagers, because you can. So we have dedicated anti infantry by the droves and dedicated anti tank by the droves, either one can whip their respected category right off the map, leaving you a pitiful hulk of your once former self, then again I’ve always been pitiful!

Do you need a hug? I know 40k can be stressful at times, but no reason to beat yourself up over it.

So I’ve tried to in all my articles to discuss some cleaver tactic to manipulate the battle or fight to help you out of a sticky situation (I'd say it is more of a shooty, stingy, stabby, melty death but hey whatever). Well unfortunately there really isn’t anything here. This list is tough and not a lot of cleaver fancy moves are going to help you beat your way out of this one. What you can do is follow this:

Jon’s Simple Steps to Success!

I've found the best way to play this list is to follow a tried and true simple formula that if done right can greatly increase you chances to succeed far beyond the chances of ~~getting that girl to actually swallow the ruffy~~ Redacted (are you sure they didn't swap drinks with you?). Now these steps work for me and maybe they require tweaking on your part, if so experiment and do it. One of the things I do want to stress to you is thinking ahead! Yes! Especially before making bad decisions in life. Think of the children! If you’ve been following my articles you may notice an over arching theme in most of them. My commentary or your emotional problems? The things I do need set up, not just a single movement but multiple turn set ups. If you want to move your game to the next level you need to start thinking past this turn… or even next turn. The difference between a horrible chess player and a great one is the ability to plan 4,5,30 steps in advance. We can do that in 40k! Don’t let people tell you 40k has no tactics, plan ahead and prove them wrong, by waiting for them in the parking lot of you FLG with a baseball bat! Now that is thinking ahead! You have to make sure you have the bat with you before hand and you have to wait for them, it will work out... I promise.

Hopefully this article will get you planning before you even hit the table.

STEP 1: Deployment

If your going first deploy… if not, don’t. Here’s the deal Deldar (Dark Eldar) are a glass cannon. They hit you hard but are frail when it comes to the return. If you let them hit you first your setting your self up for failure! No matter the army, all mech, eat 15+ Dark Lances, all infantry, eat 72 poison shots. Few armies can deal with this. Now all this offense comes from paper air plains that tend to go down to a stiff breeze (harsh language works too) . The dudes inside wear cheetah print thongs and nipple tassels and go down to a peppering of Mardi Gras beads. So by reserving we can hit him as we come on and ensure that we at least trade units.

STEP 2: Stay in Your Box or Hide Your Ass

Ok so if we are deployed, or we are coming in from reserve, DO NOT LET THEM SHOOT INFANTRY! Instead play hide and go seek, bikes are awesome at this. I’m serious here guys, even a 3+ marine army withers to the sheer volume of shots you eat. A few rhinos removes one of this lists most powerful abilities (for a time). If you have foot units try and hide them till the time is right, when is it right? Well, we’ll find out. Where the hell did you find this picture? It is wrong on so many levels...

STEP 3: Put That Assault On Lock Down

Ok Turns 1-2 I put my focus on the assault elements of the army. So blowing up a raider full of witches, or peppering a beast squad. The reason is that shooting can only take you so far, its assault that will most of the time finish you off. They have scary assault units that will hurt you, by either blowing up there ride or reducing there combat efficacy down to a point where you can handle them easily. Doing this you eliminate there finishing move. If we just blow up witches raiders that’s fine two, because now we know where the assault will be coming from and can deal with it when it gets to us, or force them to move through firing lanes to hit us.

For these first turns we rely on hiding our infantry or staying in our vehicles and let that buy us some time form the venoms shots. This won’t last long though as they have anti vehicle and the movement to get to our hiding units, but once that assault unit is less of a threat we can now push into there army and start putting the hurt on them.

STEP 4: Kill Them Venoms!

So turns 1-2 we neutralized the assault while mitigating the anti infantry. Now that we took the beast’s teeth, its time to take the head! Turns 2-4 We push into the army. We move up and out everything. Our rhinos rush forward, dudes jump out and our units come out of hiding. We take everyone (and I mean everyone, no one is left behind, purge them all with flame!!!!! MUHAHAHA) and we target the venoms. I can’t stress this enough on taking everyone to do this. We need to target as many different venoms as we can when we do this. If we only go up piece meal and kill one or two venoms then every unit we sent out will get killed, but if we jump our entire army out simultaneously then we can put results on nearly every vehicle. Best case almost every vehicle is wrecked, but we’ll take a can’t shoot.

If done we have now removed the most fatal weapon, the Venom, or at least put them out of commission for a turn (stun them and move on). There are guys inside, but they become an afterthought. Venoms exploding kill them off quickly, and they get pinned a lot. They just require:

STEP 5: Mop-up!

So we made or bug push into an aggressive army (bet they didn’t see that coming). Now there are left over remnants of what used to be in the vehicles, and some vehicles you didn’t kill. Last few turns allow you to deal with them as you feel appropriate, OR moving onto your objectives.

So there you have it: Jon’s Simple Steps to Success! Sounds like an infomercial... Again this might not work perfectly for you, but it has for me. I want to stress again you need to go in with a plan against this army and have an idea of how to deal with the threats it posses, with the tools your army has, because there are many and scary things you need to deal with. If we go in all willy nilly like a drunk collage sorority chick on a Saturday Night looking for a good time, we’ll usually end up like a drunk collage sorority chick on a Saturday Night looking for a good time, in a bad situation… and NO!... not working receptionist for her daddy’s company after 6 years of non-graduation…

Who's yo daddy? Yeah it is a really bad pun... Sorry

Bad puns aside, I actually agree with Jon on his assessment of how to defeat dark eldar. Use reserves to your advantage, take out the assault element and then focus on the venoms. --Frosty

Again if your facing any army lists you need help with throw a comment down, I’ll try and give you my thought and maybe we can get an article together about it. As always if you feel like chatting throw me an email at jonathanwillingham@hotmail.com, I always love talking 40k.

Swanson's Tournament Report Round #1

2012-01-10T13:00:00.002-05:00

All right played in a 28 player RTT last Sunday. Was only three rounds at 1500 points. After the dust had settled I went three and oh with 7 victory conditions achieved. For those of you not familiar with Adepticon style missions there is a set of three victory conditions that must be achieved. the person who has more of these at the end of the game wins.

My list was:

Khan

Libby on Bike w/Avenger and Null Zone

Eight Man Bike Squad w/PF, 2 x Melta Guns and MM Attack Bike

Five Man Squad w/Combi Plasma 2 x Plasma gun and MM Attack Bike

Five Man Squad w/Combi Melta 2 x Melta gun and MM Attack Bike

Land Speeder Typhoon w/Multi Melta

First Sideboard to be used against most everybody

Land Speeder Typhoon

Dakka Predator

Vindicator w/dozer blade

Sideboard to be used against orks, dark eldar and nids

Land Speeder Typhoon

Dakka Predator

3 Man Heavy Bolter Attack Bike Squad

The first battle I faced a Dark Eldar list run by Dave Skrivan. Dave is a good player and usually finishes in the top half of our tournaments. His list was the following:

The Baron

Haemonculus with stuff

3 x 4 man Kabalite True born w/3 Blasters in Venoms with flicker fields and splinter cannons

17 Hellions w/exarch with agonizer

3 Wracks

5 man Warrior Squad w/blaster in Venom w/flicker field and splinter cannons

2 x Ravager w/3 dark lances, night shields and flicker field

1 Razorwing w/flicker field and 4 mono scythe missiles

The mission was Kill Points, Seize Ground with Five Objectives and Recon (more of any type of units in your opponents deployment zone than in yours)

The deployment was spearhead.

Terrain is pretty even with a big piece in either quarter and plenty of smaller pieces scattered through out

He won the roll to deploy objectives and they were placed pretty much placed across the middle of the table with one in each of our deployment zones sort of like a Z.

He won the roll and elected to go first which was great as I was going to reserve everything anyway.

He placed his whole army on the table in a clump in his quarter. I reserved mine. I thought about outflanking but decided against because invariably they don't come in where I want/need them. Khan and the Libby join the large bike squad

DE Turn One

He zips everything into the middle of the board except for the wracks and haemonoculus who hunker down on an objective in his deployment zone out of sight. There is some sort of pain token shenanigans where the Hellions end up with two tokens when the baron joins them after starting with the wracks and they leave the haemonoculus

My Turn One

I get a drink of water

His Turn Two

Everything Zips into the back center of the board. All the vehicles are moving fast.

My Turn Two

I roll for reserves and get everything but the big bike squad and the small melta bike squad. This is where the game takes a decided turn for the worst for Dave. I send my attack bikes to the left and put the plasma bikes predator and speeders in the middle of my board edge. In my shooting phase the predator downs one ravager, the attack bikes kill a venom (killing two passengers and pining the rest), the speeder stuns the razor wing and the other speeder knocks a gun off the other ravager and stuns it. He fails multiple 4+ cover saves. There will be no dark lances for him.....

His Turn Three

Dave turns the wrath of two venoms on my three man attack bike squad man that is a lot of poisoned shots. He kills two and puts a wound on the third he breaks and runs. Luckily he was just out of range with his blasters. The other venom lights up the plasma squad putting a wound on the attack bike and killing one of the ablaitive guys. Man I hate splinter cannons! The hellions and the baron move up to the center of the board and fleet into cover.

My Turn Three

Khan and the melta squad come in. I combat squad them sending three bikes and the attack bike off on their own. I move them to support the plasma squad all of them about 6 inches in on the center of my board edge. The attack bike rallies. Once again the speeders and the predator go to work. The speeder with the multimelta downs the last ravager. The predator and the heavy bolter speeder both target the razor wing. In a spectacular display of abysmal rolling I am only able to glance it, while Dave fails all his flicker field saves and I can roll nothing but shaken results. The attack bike finishes off two Trueborn who were hiding in the wreckage of their venom. The plasma bikes down the venom that shot at them the last turn. The other squads take some pot shots at the hellions but are out of range for the most part.

His Turn Four

The razor wing zips back to neutral corner moving ludicrously fast. One of the venom opens up on the lone attack bike killing it. The other venom shoots the plasma bike killing off the last non important guy and the attack bike. The blasters in there down the multimelta typhoon. The warriors in the downed venom closest to my bikes shoot Khan's squad killing one with their blaster and wounding Khan. Damn I hate poisoned weapons! The hellions move forward to try and charge Khan. They will probably need a 5 or 6 on the fleet to get them but roll a three so now they are stuck in no man's land. They hug some cover and wait for the inevitable.

My Turn Four

All the bikes roll up to get close to the hellions. The attack bike combat squad goes to talk to the warriors in their wreckage. All the plasma, melta and bolters unload on the hellions killing like 12 of them. Unfortunately for Dave they decide they would like to take the charge and stay right there. The combat squad kills two warriors and they also decide they would like to see what combat with the bikes is all about. The speeder downs one of the other trueborn's venoms and the predator finishes them off. Khan's squad and the plasma squad charge in and proceed to wipe out the hellions down to the baron. I think I take one more casualty as the agonizer hit three times and roll three threes. All that is left is the baron and he is testing at minus 5. He blows his morale roll and rolls a 1 for his int test sealing his fate. He is run down like the treacherous dog he is. The combat squad finishes off the warriors. Khan and the Librarian start heading towards the wracks.

His Turn Five

Dave has precious little left at this point. He has a venom full of trueborn, the fighter and the wracks cowering with the Haemonculus. The razorwing opens up on the melta bike squad decimating them all that is left is the sgt and a wounded attack bike. The venom shoots at the combat squad putting a wound on the attack bike and killing another. Both pass their morale check.

My Turn Five

Khan and the libby keep heading towards the wracks. The bike squads move to take objectives. The speeder takes down fighter the predator kills the last venom along with two of the trueborn. I roll to see if the game continues and it does not.

Analysis

I have three objectives to his one, and a lot of kill points to his two. However his two surviving trueborn are in my deployment zone while all of my stuff is not in his. I should have moved two units into his deployment zone but forgot. I win 2 -1. A silly oversight hopefully this will not cost me later in tournament. Dave was a great guy throughout even when his dice were screwing him. A great game. Now onto lunch and game two........

How much is my army worth?

2012-01-09T23:02:00.001-05:00

Just like the head line says. The vast majority of my models are converted and painted (which is surprising for me) so I am curious as to the estimate worth of my force (not including time lost building, painting, and gaming with it).

Yeah I know this is going to be subjective, but I am curious as to what all of you think the "worth" of my White Scars army is.

So I am going to list it all out, along with what is painted, partially painted, still on the sprue, etc and try to get a rough estimate of what it is worth.

Here we go...

Korsorro Khan on bike
Command Squad on bikes
Korsorro Khan on foot
Vulkan He'stan (not painted)
Librarian on bike
Chaplain on bike
Master of the Forge with conversion beamer on bike (not painted)

18 sternguard (6 combi-plasma, 6 combi- melta, 1 power fist, 1 power sword, 4 bolters)
4 rhinos (2 with forge world doors, 2 twin linked assault cannon razorback turrets)
1 Drop Pod (primed)
20 legion of the damned 2 multi-melta, 2 flamers, 2 power fists (not painted)
2 chicken walker dreds with twin linked autocannons (primed)
10 Tactical terminators with 2 cyclone missile launchers, chain fist (primed)

Bike Squad (8+1) 2x melta guns, power fist, and multi-melta attack bike
Bike Squad (8+1) 2x melta guns, power fist, and multi-melta attack bike
Bike Squad (5+1) 2x plasma guns, power fist, and multi-melta attack bike
Bike Squad (3) 2x plasma guns (primed)
Bike Squad (8+1) still on the sprue
Scout Squad (12) 10x sniper rifles 2x heavy bolter (primed/metal)

Assault Squad (10) 2x flamers, fist
Attack Bikes (3) 3x heavy bolters
Attack Bikes (3) 3x multi-meltas
Attack Bikes (2) 2x multi-meltas
Attack Bikes (2) 2x multi-meltas
Scout Bikes (6) 3x grenade launchers, power fist (primed)
Scout Bikes (6) 3x grenade launchers, power fist (primed)
Land Speeder Squadron (2) 2x typhoon missiles and heavy bolters
Land Speeder Squadron (2) 2x typhoon missiles and heavy bolters
Land Speeder Squadron (2) 2x typhoon missiles and heavy flamers (primed)
Land Speeder Squadron (2) 2x multi-meltas and heavy flamers (work in progress)

Predator with Autocannon and heavy bolters (primed)
Predator with Autocannon and heavy bolters (primed)
Vindicator
Vindicator
Vindicator
Thunder Fire Cannon (primed)

This could be enjoyable or depressing, so have at it. Let me know what you think this is all worth if you were going to buy it at an action. Have at it!

J Willy Conquers 40k Net Lists Part 2!!!

2012-01-08T20:15:00.000-05:00

Now back to the second exciting installment of my now 2 part series on net lists! Its part two cause it’s the second part! Any way to my tens of readers you might have remembered my earlier article about some net lists HERE, if not I completely understand… its not like anyone reads what I write any way, besides my Mom and she’s very encouraging.

You forgot about your sister too, she is reading it with me right now.

So lets get our nose’s down to the grind stone because we are starting with Necrons and as everyone knows they have no noses, WE HAVE GROUND WE NEED TO MAKE UP!

No Micheal Jackson noses here boss....
Scarab Farm

Ok so this is one of the newer net lists out there so “we got some splainin to do.” So the Bug Farm consists of a unit of Scarabs usually max size, maybe a second unit but there is only a focus on one unit and you’ll see why shortly. Now you back this unit up 3 units of 3 spyders. The way this works is that every unit of spyders can each pump out 1 scarab base a turn. So if you max it out you make 9 scarab bases a turn. So every turn you nearly double the size of the unit!!! Well, that’s crazy! Those scarabs are fearless, have stealth 3 wounds a piece, roughly half a million attacks on the charge (and that’s been proven with science). Top on all that entropic strike which will reduce an armor value on a tank by 1, on a roll of 4+ after hitting it in close combat. I refer to this as “Hide your kids, hide your wife, hide your land raiders cuz they’re rapin err body out here.” Now back this up with the ability to force night fight for the first several turns of the game to let this unit bump its self up worse then a teenage girl with a bump it on prom night, and it’s a dangerous combination, and not just in the teenage pregnancy kind of way. Those things are stupid. It is similar to ancient tribes wanting to extend their skulls. WTF! If this wasn't enough this unit can assault for from 34.5 inches away. it’s a beast (so max 24 inch) and when you spawn you can spawn units in coherency of the unit, so every time you spawn you increase the threat range.

So how do we kill this unit before its eats every vehicle we own, and ties up every unit we have in an endless amount of fearless wounds?

Glad you asked!

Well first off all we need to set ground rules.

1) Don’t bother shooting this unit if you can’t kill more then 9 bases a turn. Essentially with this unit constantly refilling its ranks every tune a few shots here and there are a bad investment in your shoots, where targeting other units might be better for your long term success of the game. Only shoot if you know it’ll make a dent or you absolutely need to suppress it for a round.

2) Assaulting this unit shuts down the manufacturing of scarabs faster then the economic collapse did to Detroit. You can’t spawn into a unit in combat according to there rules so always keep that in mind.

At least we're not Detroit...

3) This units is less scary the farther it assaults. If they do hit you from 34.5 inches away then only a small fraction of the unit can attack thanks to the assault and coherency rules.

4) Some people claim they can string units out as they make them, essentially 1 base two inches, one base, two inches and son on. This is the stupidest manipulation of the rules I’ve ever seen. This is also easily stopped by, punching your opponent in the dick and calling him an asshole (Brandon can I use asshole on this blog, I‘m going to just assume I can). Now I’m not saying to actually do those things, but I am actually telling you to do those things.

I approve this message. Yes John, you can, just don't go crazy.

However I am not responsible for any activity that occurs to you after you preform this action. This includes, but is not limited to, Getting your ass whooped, losing your friends, getting banned from a tournament, losing the match, winning the match, getting bro-fisted, being internet famous, winning, getting drunk off of free drinks you'll receive, any damages to your army or your well being.

Ok so actually dealing with this unit we several approaches.

Option 1) Assault it Yesterday.

As I stated in our ground rules as soon as we assault it they stop making scarabs, if we pull turn two assault then they haven’t buffed that unit enough, any dedicated assault unit will beat or tie them up over several turns which is what we want, this army has few other weapons after the scarabs so removing it from the game early spells disaster for the rest of them. Storm Ravens overcharging 24 at them. Bikes going 24 at them. Heck even a rhino going 12 and next turn getting out and assaulting them if your opponents get to close. Doesn’t matter how you do it, just do it! Keep in mind they have a lot of attacks and wounds, they can and will win combats, so subsequent units to hold them might be required.

This strategy actually justifies (in my opinion) a unit of scout bikes or a land speeder storm with scouts. You could potentially tie them up before the game even gets going and shut them down. In tandem with some krak grenade rounds or a heavy flamer (from the storm) you could do a lot of damage to this unit.

Option 2) Bubble Wrap

This is a great tactic, you take an expendable unit/hard-hitting unit and wrap them around your army. Maybe a big unit of terminators, a two unit blob of 20 guardsmen, 30 man shoota squad of orks. What this does is force them to assault the unit you choose. Anytime your making the opponent do what you want, your winning. If it’s a sacrificial unit they get killed and now you take your entire army to shoot and assault them. Stronger units could even beat them, think about a 10 Thunderhammer Storm Shield Terminator unit wrapping an entire army of marines. A squad of 30 scarabs assault them. Well its 150 attacks, 75 hit, 25 wound, We loose 4. Now on the return 6 terminators have 12 attacks, 8 hit and 7 wound. that’s 21 combat res (thanks to insta killing them). He losses by 16 and has to take 16 fearless saves. This can apply even better to a Grey Knight army that has force weapons, where every unit kills a base, all before the scarabs even get a chance to swing.

Most important thing to remember about the bubble wrap is that you can not allow the scarabs to get past it. They can assault past your line if you have enough space. So make sure your spacing model from model is less them 1.5 inches, else they run past you, straight for all your metal lunch boxes.

A note to our guard friends out there. I have heard a lot of complaining from guard players about how powerful this unit is… and every time I hear it I feel like I need to choke a bitch out. Guard has more tools then any other army in the game to deal with this unit. Two-three guard squads blobbed up is a perfect bubble wrap. They have MASSES strength 6 shots in multi lasers which insta-kill a base for every wound that gets though. Hydras make mince meat of the unit. Not to mention massed heavy flamers... Every vehicle has a search light so they can’t hide. Finally they have the best unit in the game for removing scarabs by the droves. A unit of two hell hounds isn’t a bad unit in general, I actually love them. Additional the strength 6 combined with a flame template means every model you wound removes two bases. So if your flamers touch 4 models each, you remove 16 bases… So guard I don’t want to hear it.

Well guard players are either really good or really bad. I guess you must be playing and listing to all of the bad guard players. If guard seriously can't beat this army with all of their shooting then they are challenged and probably play fantasy.

To bring it back to space marines, you can pull off the same maneuver with White Scars. Tank shock and flame. Since they are fearless, a simple tank shock can group a unit of scarabs into a smaller size and use some flamers, frag templates, or your thunderfire cannon to really decimate the unit. Keep in mind that swarms take double damage from blasts and flamer templates. So a Thunderfire Cannon solid shot (being strength 6 and ap 5) can really give that unit a bad day, especially if you hit that unit four times.

Same as last time, let me know if your having any problems with a certain list build in the comments. I’ll see what I can do to help you out with beating what ever your friends might have found on the Internet. As always if you feel like chatting throw me an email at jonathanwillingham@hotmail.com, I always love talking 40k.

The Adeptus Mechanicus Project

2012-01-07T23:32:00.002-05:00

Pulled from Khepri's Eternal Legion

The Skitarii Warrior..P

WIP Part 1

Starting with a basic paint scheme I started to play around with the “Prototype” Admech warrior.. I only call him a prototype, considering I have 40+ fully assembled and another 70 staged, because as I mentioned before this is the model I plan to use to test the paint pallet on.

I did end up taking some of the provided advice, trimming off "most" mold lines etc..

Basic black basecoat, using Dupl-Color Black Sandable Primer

Mud Brown Zenithal Highlight (trying)

Shinning Gold, which I washed with a brown Ink.

"Power Plant"

After taking the photos I noticed a couple places to touch up (Macro photos are great for catching mistakes!)

Mid way through the detail work, highlights etc.

Feedback VERY welcome, as always.

Thoughts on color combo's? Image of 150 of them acrossed the table from you..

Base color? Planning to use the Admech Ruins bases I posted a couple weeks ago..

Army List Analysis for Kevin

2012-01-07T21:42:00.003-05:00

Original Image Located Here

Hey Stillfrosty,

Love your site, it was the inspiration for me starting up a marine biker army as opposed to BT!

I'm new to 40k and was wondering if you could have a quick look at my roster. At my local gaming store we play 1850 and to get in my dreads and speeders I gave up some power fists in bike squads and the champion in the command squad.

khan

command
   apothecary
   veteran - chain sword, bolt pistol
   veteran - lightning claw, storm shield
   2 x veterans - power fist, storm shield

full bike squad
   2 melta guns
   multi-melta attack bike

4 bikes
    2 plasma guns
multi-melta attack bike

4 bikes
   2 plasma guns
   multi-melta attack bike

3 rifle dreads

3 typhoon landspeeders

Kevin,

I would love your list at 2000 points, because you have plenty of firepower in order to dish out the threats at that point level, but you would also need that extra 150 points to make the army well rounded. Since your store plays at 1850, I think we might need a few changes in order to compensate for this.

Here is what I am thinking... I have toyed around with the idea of substituting land speeder typhoons for dreds and currently they come out at a 3 speeder to 2 dred ratio in point value (not exactly but close enough). So with that being said, even if you dropped one dred (which would free up 125 points) you would have more then enough fire power to suppress and open up transports. In addition, in order to free up some points (you'll see why in a bit) give the two smaller squads melta guns and the larger squad will have plasma guns, therefore saving 10 points. I recommend spending those points 135 on the following.

Upgrade the naked veteran to be a champion 15
Add two melta guns to the command squad (one on the power fist and one the lightning claw) 20
Take a 5 man sniper scout squad 75
Add a power fist to the large bike squad. 25

Why? Well I prefer to run the command squad as a swiss army knife, being able to deal with multiple threats without relying on the rest of the army. Adding melta guns to this unit increases the unit's self sufficiency. In addition, the melta guns assist in the wound allocation process which makes the unit more durable. The champion was added in order to provide you with more power weapon attacks to benefit from khan's furious charge rule.

The sniper squad is there for holding the home objective. 5 scouts with sniper rifles are generally ignored, and small enough to be hidden in decent terrain. Yeah they might not have much damage output, but they free up your bikes to do what they do best and they will be protected from the dreds that you are running. If you want, you could drop one storm shield from the command squad in order to give them camo, but I am not sure it is really worth it.

Finally the power fist on the large squad. Yes there are some bike armies which do not run power fists on large squads, but there have been numerous occasions where that fist as saved the day. I would also refer you to Jonathan's power fist article as further proof that it is a good idea.

As an aside, you do not have the weapons listed on the typhoons. Since you are running three individual ones, I would recommend heavy flamers in tandem with the missile launchers. For the cost of nothing, you vastly improve their effectiveness and your hoard control. Now if you were running lets say six up them some heavy bolters would be nice, but you don't need it.

The list has plenty of anti-tank capability and anti-infantry capability to deal with all of the modern lists. I hope you like it and I might even have to give it a spin some time in the near future!!!

New White Scars Army?

2012-01-06T17:23:00.000-05:00

Believe it or not, I have a mostly painted White Scars army that I am completely happy with. I converted all of the models, I have painted all of the models, I have done well at tournaments with it, and yet I am seriously considering dumping the whole army and restarting from scratch.

Why in the world would I do that? Well it is complicated...

After attending Adepticon, NOVA, and Da Boyz, and looking ahead to future tournaments, my paint scores and standing are substantially decreased due to the fact I am no where near an excellent painter and it hurts my overall score. I could go about repainting my current army, but there is not a product which will successfully strip all of the paint off of a plastic model without damaging it in some way. In addition, I have accumulated so many extra models which never see the light of day, such as assault marines, vindicators, sternguard, and so forth.

Because of this, and the desire to have my army professionally done, I am thinking about scratching the whole army, and using the funds to finance a new, professionally painted, bike army. Because I have been playing non stop for the past year and a half, it is not like I don't know what to purchase or what units are must haves, I would probably just work on a 2500 point list and be done with it.

If I do decide to do this, the question becomes what scheme to choose?

One option would be to have my army completely redone in a true White Scars fashion, similar to this...

I absolutely love this model. It has so much character, everything is crisp, clean cut, and he clearly represents a grizzled war veteran, which is what my army is. I'd probably stay away from all of the knicks in the armor, but this gives you guys a good idea of what I want out of my army. I am looking for a work of art that will be recognized the world over.

Another option would be completely scratch the White Scars theme and go with something all together. Something like this...

Yes, Legion of the Damned. Little do you guys know, but before I had my White Scars army, I originally had a "legion of the damned biker list". The entire force was painted black with flame detailing done on the models. However, I was never really happy with the color scheme as it was not professionally done. But If I can get a bike army to look like this drednought in quality and color scheme, it would be downright amazing and I would enjoy it very much.

I wasn't originally thinking of painting my force in legion of the damned colors, but then I saw this guy.

With a spruced up color scheme, some conversion work, and some trophies, he would look awesome! It would also give me an excuse to acquire more legion of the damned models which are so amazingly beautiful that Games Workshop produced last year.

So what do yo guys think? Should I abandon my current White Scars army in favor of a new and improved color scheme and paint job?

Let me know what you think!

1500 Point Army for this Sunday

2012-01-05T23:27:00.003-05:00

All right after the comments from the last article I am going to come up with a 1500 point army for this months tournament. As am aside I am not tactically impaired and understand about not going head to head with an army. I understand using bikers all about using your maneuverability to concentrate your forces on smaller parts of your opponent's army. I also have done the outflanking and understand how it works. I have been playing bike themed armies since second edition and have done well with them. That being said we do have quite a few players in our local league that do consistently well at major tournaments and it will be much easier said the done.

The tournament will consist of three rounds. Each scenario will have three victory conditions and the person who has completed more than their opponent will receive the win. In case of a tie victory points will be used as the tie breaker. A difference of 150 points is needed to win in the event of a tie. Usually there is one kill point type condition, either straight up kill points or modified kill points or units marked for death. There is usually one type of objective based condition and then usually one odd one like kill the enemy commander or have more units in the enemies' deployment zone.

With this in mind let's start our army.

First we need a captain on a bike. I am going to of with Khan on Moondrakken. He really makes the command squad shine plus hit and run can be invaluable. Next we will add a chaplain on a bike. Usually I prefer a Libby but can concede the point that the chaplain enhances the command squad more.

All right that costs 340 points, in to the command squad. One apothecary, one champion, three vets all with shields one with power fist two with claws. I may add more later like melta guns but we will see. That totals 320. We are now at 660.

Now we need some troops. The first one is a full bike squad with power fist 2 x melta gun and multi melta attack bike. This is 310. For my second bike squad I will go with another full bike squad with combi plasma, 2 x plasma gun and multi melta attack bike for a total of 305. I like full squads because I feel it gives me more flexibility especially if the games are weighted for kps. All right we are now sitting at 1275 not a lot of points for long range shooting. I could cut four bikes off of the plasma squad giving me 325 points but that then leaves me dangerously short on troops and bodies. I am probably going to include at least two land speeder typhoons giving me anywhere from 45 to 1 to play with. I would like to put at least one melta gun in the command squad.

All right let's say we go with the minimum on the plasma squad and put two melta guns and a melta bomb on the command squad. That gives us an even 300 to spend. After two land speeder typhoons at 180 that leaves us with 120. I would like to include a thunderfire but it seems too static and a luxury at 1500 points. I could go with three heavy bother attack bikes as there usually are a horde ork payer and some tyranid players. However since I expect to face a majority of GK, BA and SW players I will just slap mms on the seeders and go with a pair of multi melta attack bikes. All right there you go

Khan

Chaplain on bike

Command squad apothecary, champ 3x shield, 2x claw, 2x melta, power fist and melta bombs

Full bike squad power fist, 2x melta gun, multi melta attack bike

4 man bike squad with mm attack bike 2 x plasma gun, combi plasma

Typhoon w/multi melta

2 multi melta attack bikes

All right have at it let me hear your thoughts, comments and criticisms

Thanks

Greg

Caledonian Uprising Draw & My First Opponent

2012-01-05T09:04:00.001-05:00

Originally posted on Skcuzzlebumm's Scuttlebutt

SoScotland's Team Manager, (ex) Captain Fantastic Tim 'Timmaaa' Kingpublished the first round draw for Caledonian Uprising 2012 andmy first round opponent is none other than my oldest friend on earth,the current UKGT Champion Mr Paul Burke....

Nowme and Paul learnt 40k together when we were about 11 years old and,together with Rob Sims, we used to waste many a evening or weekendplaying 40k on our bedroom floors with books and boxes for hills andrings of paint pots for woods. Ah those were the days.

Buttime marches on and the 18 years since saw me leave the UK for Swedenfor many years and even when I returned I never did move back toPreston. So whilst we still remain friends we do not have toopportunity to play each other on a regular basis anymore. I think itwas some 4 years since I last played Paul and so am really lookingforward to the opportunity to play him again.

HoweverI am NOT looking forward to having to face his Imperial Guardin what will likely be my first game with my Vulkan Bikers (Paul isalso trying to downplay things by saying he has never played his IGat 1850, only thousands of games at 1500 and 1750....). Here is hislist:

PAUL'DAZEDANDCONFUSED' BURKE - IMPERIAL GUARD

HQ1: Command Squad (50), 4 Melta guns (40) [90] in TRANSPORT 1

HQ2: Command Squad (50), 4 Plasma guns (60), Plasma pistol (10) Meltabombs [125] in TRANSPORT 2

ELITE1: 6 Sanctioned Psykers & Overseer [80] in TRANSPORT 3

TROOPS1: Platoon Command Squad (30), 4 Melta Guns (40) [70] inTRANSPORT 4

InfantrySquad (50) Mortar (5) [55] in TRANSPORT 5

InfantrySquad (50) Mortar (5) [55]

Specialweapons squad (35) 3x melta (30) [65]

TROOPS2: Veteran Squad (70) 3 Melta Guns (30) [100] in TRANSPORT 6

FAST1: Vendetta (130) Heavy Bolters (10) [140]

HEAVY1: 2 Hydras [150]

HEAVY2: 2 Hydras [150]

HEAVY3: Manticore [160]

TRANSPORT1: Chimera (55) Multi Laser (0) Heavy Flamer (0) [55]

TRANSPORT2: Chimera (55) Multi Laser (0) Heavy Flamer (0) [55]

TRANSPORT3: Chimera (55) Multi Laser (0) Heavy Flamer (0) [55]

TRANSPORT4: Chimera (55) Multi Laser (0) Heavy Flamer (0) [55]

TRANSPORT5: Chimera (55) Multi Laser (0) Heavy Flamer (0) [55]

TRANSPORT6: Chimera (55) Multi Laser (0) Heavy Flamer (0) [55]

TOTALPOINTS: 1850

Right....so nothing 'surprising' there. Well actually the 2 mortar squads aredifferent but lets face, and sorry to be harsh Paul, it is prettystandard fare in terms of Mechanised Imperial Guard.

Straightaway the biggest threats that jump out are Melta and Plasma squadsriding in Chimeras. Dealing with them could quickly prove to be amassive problem when you consider the majority of my anti-tank is at12" or 24". This means that to get in range with my bikes Iam either going to have to just shoot with my Multi-Meltas startingfrom 25"-36" and hope that those single S8 shots are enoughto pen the front of the Chimeras (as Paul is not going to show me hisside armour) and at the very least immobilise them. Otherwise thoseChimeras will roll forward and the bikes will get Melta-Plasma'd todeath. Try to get my Melta guns in range and that means I will haveto start from 24" out, which means that before I can move in andshoot, those Chimeras can roll forward 12", spin around, and theunits inside will disembark once again brining hot Melta-Plasma deathto my bikers. Next up is all that S6-7 multi shot that the Guard willpump out. It won't take much to start wrapping wounds around andtorrenting my melta guns and the like out of the game. Then as icingto the cake there are 2 Vendettas to skim around and blast me withLascannons and Heavy Bolters just to make sure nothing is leftstanding. Even my Land Raider won't get an easy ride as in additionto the above there is also a Manticore to drop some S10 Ordnance onit's roof.....

Socurrently, on paper at least, my summary of this first round is bestsummed up as BUGGER!!!

Thoughnot all is lost as obviously paper analysis does not take intoaccount mission (which we do not know yet) and terrain. Terrain iswhere this game will be won or lost for me. Maelstrom has a veryhealthy supply of terrain for its boards and it could quite easilymean we end up facing each other on a board with lots of LOS blockingand area terrain. With the right balance of terrain my bikes couldsneak up for a few turns lining up to pounce on mass and in realclose with the Guard before they get to blast me away.

AmI missing anything else I could do?

Eitherway it is going to be a quality game, already the banter on TWFhas been people highlighting our game as the one to watch in round 1.And as Paul said to me last night "either I get blown of theboard in 2 shooting phases, or his shooting wiffs and then his armyfolds like a wet towel. But regardless we will both be warming up thebar nice and quickly for the rest of the morning."

NowI LIKE the sound of that :-)

Fister of the Bride or Crouching Sgt. Hidden Fist

2012-01-04T23:42:00.005-05:00

Question; What is a powerfist in a squad?

I believe that most of you answered a hidden power fist. Your wrong. Jonathan here again to drop some knowledge on you post New Year's style. Before I begin I want to say to my tens of readers, hope you had a great and safe Holiday!

Drop it like its hot! That reminds me, did you get what you wanted for New Years? You never said...

Anyway, no holiday jeers make you right when it comes to the previous questions. Its not your fault though! The internet has permeated the idea of the hidden fist for years. There has multiple discussions to which is better fist or weapon, really it doesn't matter in my opinion for the following tactic. It can apply to power weapons, agonizers and any other cool close combat weapons. I think though the fist is the most applicable because several of the situations and set up work best with the fist, so I'll be using the fist in all my examples.

So your still wrong on what a hidden fist is, so lets talk about it. A hidden fist is not simple having a power fist in a unit, that's... well... having a fist in a unit. A real hidden fist is how you set up, deploy, and play with a powerfist welding sgt to utilize it correctly. If done correctly it can ward off IC's, and generally allow you to dictate combat set ups even when being assaulted.

So lets talk about the deployment/set up. First off all, anyone who knows Scaven in Warhammer have herd of the rule, lead from behind. Well guess what this idea applies directly to 40k! Its a little known fact that your special weapons (like fists) should never lead form the front. There they are exposed to all sorts of nasty things they just don't need to be exposed to. It also allows your opponent the ability to dictate what it is you swing against. Did you want to swing that fist on the Sanguinary Preist? Or the storm shield Terminator? Well guess what, how about fighting the one that has a 3+ invulnerable save... Did you want to see 3 combat res from exploding a homaculous? Or rather the have a witch dodge that slow motion attack? Well witches delight in dancing around in their nipple tassels and cheetah print thongs laughing at you manically. Just like my ex...

I think I saw you ex at the club the other day. Was her name Candy or Jasmine? Maybe it was Ferrari...

So the best way of positioning your hidden fist is what I call the sweet spot. The sweet spot is 6.1 inches to 7.9 inches away from all the models that are going to be assaulted. What this does is prevent your fist from being assault and locked into a particular fight it doesn't want. It also means that with a full consolidation move he can't engage the enemy. While at the same time allowing him complete freedom to go any where.

Lets see some pictures:

As you can see when we are hit from the front the fist has just enough consolidation to move within 2 inches to get his swings but he dose not have to necessarily get into base to base. Thanks to the current edition we can throw our attacks through another model in our unit as long as they are in base to base and its within 2 inches.

You seriously need to paint this board all ready. Some brown paint and green flock would do wonders....

So lets see it in practice! Roll the clip!

Here we see some a squad of Space wolves with an attached Terminator Wolf Guard wielding a Power Fist in there normal habitat peacefully grazing... BUT wait we see a dastardly pride of Wraiths lead by there fearless (or ld 10) leader, a Necron Overlord, slowly sneaking up on the unassuming Wolves.

Ok maybe not a great example... and an unlikely unit composition... but I think they could easily be a Librarian and say 4 (They come in units of five! Noob!!!) Thunderhammer Storm Shield Terminators. IC and some dudes with a 3+ invulnerable...

Well we were assault be some wraiths and an overlord. Well we could swing on wraiths and MAYBE get through that 3+ invulnerable with our power fists, or every wound we get through could mean another wound on that overlord (*cough* librarian *cough* insta-death *cough*).

Now since we saw this assault coming last turn we specifically moved out terminator to the WAY back of the unit in our own turn. So that the terminator can not be engaged by the assaulting unit and after our 6 inch consolidation we are still not engaged. So we now get to throw our attacks through anyone who is engaged in base to base combat, assuming we are within 2 inches of them.

Lets take a look at the consolidation, again... ROLL THE CLIP!

Well those wraiths and overlord assaulted us. We made our required 6 inch consolidation and what do you know... our fist isn't in combat, but as his forefather the Little Engine that Could did before him, he won't let anything stop him. He'll swing though the model within 2 inches... who just so happens to be in base to base with the Librarian... I mean Overlord.

Maybe you should have actually used a librarian and a terminator squad to prove your point....

Maybe we loose the combat in the long run... but if this is implemented we can get swings onto some characters and at least salvage something from the fight. We can get those special weapons on important things like Librarians, Techmarines, Homunculus, Sanguinary Priest, and so on.

Now Brandon is still convinced bikes are good... (They are absolutely amazing, I know you want to start a bike army of them) I know, what is he thinking? But whats really cool is the lengths of the bike base can really make this tactic fly because the bases are so long you can actually get your power fists extremely far away from the front lines. Ensuring no hope of the enemy grabbing your power fist. So you get even more ability to dictate the position and what unit it fights because its in an even safer location then normal 1 inch bases.

Next time I want to talk about a similar application that doesn't require as much set up, but tends to be a little harder to do. I refer to it as blocking, and its a great tactic to have in your tool box.

Very easy to pull off which bike models. You can do some really fun things with this ability!!!

Well if you have any questions, comments, concerns, or emotional outbursts please throw a comment my way at the bottom, and if you have any questions feel free to email me at jonathanwillingham@hotmail.com. I always love talking 40k.

He needs some friends. Help him out! He is hurting.. -- Frosty

Bikers...ehhh maybe

2012-01-04T21:40:00.002-05:00

I know I have not been posting much lately on the blog. I really haven't been playing my Storm Lords lately. They don't seem to have what it takes to win consistently around here with the rise of Dark Eldar, Grey Knights and Blood Angels in my area. I know that any army can win on any given day but I just can't seem to come up with lists I like any more. As a case in point there is a 1500 point tourney this Sunday and I have been playing around with lists but haven't found one I think will do well. I am hoping my fellow Scars players can give me some inspiration.

I just want to talk about why I feel that way and take a look at the strengths and weaknesses of a White Scars army and why they I feel they have dropped in power.

The number one strength with a White Scars army is speed. We used to besides Eldar be the umatched kings of maneuverability. With fast troops we could redeploy on the fly and take objectives in late game turns and extend our threat bubble accordingly. However with the rise of Blood Angels, DE and GK we are just one of the fast armies. BA can be fast all their vehicles can move 12 and shoot or go supercharged and go 18". Plus they have a lot of jumpers and precision deep strike to get where they need to be. Dark Eldar are ridiculously fast. No comment is even needed on how fast they are. Even GKs can be fast. Stormravens, personal teleporting interceptors and dread knights plus the teleportation of strikes, termies and paladins.

This has all combined to negate or blunt our speed advantage. Plus a lot of armies now have ways to put units in difficult terrain. Tremor staves, murderous hurricane, sanctuary, thunderfire cannons are all murder on bikes. All those dangerous terrain checks can really but a hurt in your units plus it doesn't allow for turbo boosting to get the all important 3+ cover save.

The second strength of the White Scar force is toughness five troops. This makes up for the limited quantity of guys. However DE don't care about T5. With poison all toughnesses are the same and you will be making a ton of armor saves. In combat with BAs everybody is usually in the furious charge bubble making your toughness five not nearly as effective especially with then going at int 5.. GKs are shooting you with psycannons and autocannons which laugh at your toughness five, plus when you do get into combat they are also going ahead of you and all have power weapons and hammerhand at the very least.

With these two strengths neutralized or at the very least marginalized it seems like the inherent weaknesses of low numbers and dearth of long range firepower are even more magnified. The tournament scene in the Chicago area seems to be dominated by Wolves, BA, GK and a smattering of DE (Especially GK). Just wondering what your fixes for these armies you have implemented so I can steal er I mean gain inspiration from....

The Adeptus Mechanicus Project

2012-01-03T00:01:00.009-05:00

Pulled from Khepri's Eternal Legion
The Skitarii Warrior..

I have been saving bits, bobs, drawing sketches and planning this out for the whole 3 years I have been in the hobby. The insanity includes collecting over 200 servo-skulls from every line (25mm, battlefleet gothic, forge world and even the inquisitorial scale); 155+ “power plants” and practically thousands of bits to make this happen.

The standard trooper will be a universal non-power armored solider, based on skitarii and inspired by the gorgeous artwork Games Workshop has given us.. The goal is STC repeatable model that stand out from the crowd and fits in with my love of Egyptian themed art. This was the 5 minute proof of concept I used as a basis so don’t judge too harshly.

From this spawned the weapon conversions that I had cast up 180+ times (personal use only)

One hundred and ten models are in the middle of the phase of conversion and construction, and this model will be the paint test model to pick a scheme..

This will be my "Swiss Army Knife” which I have hopes of being one of the ultimate “Counts As” armies in the tournament circuits ….

I am excited to post WIP photos as I work through the bugs and complete the first several…

In the meantime I plan to post detailed photos of my Egyptian based Thousand Sons bikers

A Year in Review and Resolutions for the Year to Come

2012-01-02T21:15:00.008-05:00

The New Year finds me, finally, at a point of stability and tranquility. In June, I attended my first GT, and I have had the pleasure of attending three more before the end of the year. This year saw me put together my first true fifth edition army, my White Scars, and become somewhat of a regular on the East Coast GT circuit. At the Battle for Salvation, I made it to the semifinals and received an invite to the NOVA Invitational. In latter months, my hobby has taken the back seat to my studies; I graduated from college this past December and will begin full-time work in the defense industry in the spring. With both the job search and university out of the way, I will be again be able to devote my time to 40k and, well, blogging.

So, what are my hobby objectives for the year to come? In the coming year, I want to adjust my focus on the hobby from competitive play to the overall hobby. This does not mean that I am abandoning the tournament scene; if anything, I plan to increase the number of events I will attend. However, many of the following goals are hobby related:

1. Build a proper display board: For the past year, I have been using a piece of MDF with rubble, flock and paint as a carrying and display board. It is an efficient and portable display, but I really could do better. The thought is to have a raised cliff for the sternguard and the thunderfires, while the bikes and land raider rush through a gap in the embankment into an open valley. Any suggestions on techniques/how to work with pink foam?

2. Place in the Top 10 Overall in a GT: I’ve managed to place in the top 15 in generalship in the last two GTs that I’ve attended, but my painting score has really held me back in the overall standings. There are a number of things I can do for my army, included more advanced bases, the aforementioned display board, and squad and chapter markings for the marines. A win in a major tournament would be nice, but I would rather be a total gamer than a WAAC tournament player.

3. Got to Adepticon: This will be my first year at Adepticon, which has been a real dream of mine. I will be playing in the Team Tournament as a member of the WAAGHshington Greenskins; for a change of pace, I’ll be playing orks. On Sunday, I’ll be playing in the Kill Team tournament, where the White Scars will be making an appearance, once I can come up with a list I am satisfied with.

4. Meet Great Friends: This hobby has earned me some of the best friends to date! Through various GT’s, working the NOVA, and the blogosphere, I am grateful to have met Mike Brandt, James Watkins, Brandon Vallee, Brad Nichols, Nick Nanavati, Andrew Gonyo, Neil Gilstrap and so many others. I find 40k, and the tournament scene in particular, to be as much of a social activity as a competition. I look forward to another year of meeting great friends and opponents, and to inviting them to BW3 after a day of games (there is one near BFS, NOVA, and Conflict; does Adepticon have one?)

On a completely unrelated note, I will be attending the Conflict GT in West Nyack, New York on January 12th-15th. I’ll be playing a stripped-down variation of the Sternbikers list design that I’ve previously listed on the blog; the GT is 1750 points, which is a new level for me, so should be interesting. Will anyone else be making it out there? If so, I’ll be the guy wearing either a Viking hat or a shirt in Arabic. Anyways, here is the list:

HQ – Captain: Bike, Lightning Claw, Combi-Melta, Artificer Armor 175
HQ – Pedro Kantor 175

Elites – Assault Terminators (5): 4xThunder Hammer and Storm Shield; 1x2 Lightning Claws 200
Transport – Land Raider Redeemer: Multimelta 250
Elites – Sternguard (5): 2x Lascannon 155
Elites – Sternguard (5): 2xLascannon 155

Troops –Bike Squad (5): Meltagun, Flamer, Multimelta Attack Bike 180
Troops –Bike Squad (5): Meltagun, Flamer, Multimelta Attack Bike 180
Troops –Bike Squad (5): Meltagun, Flamer, Multimelta Attack Bike 180

Heavy Support –Thunderfire Cannon 100

Happy New Year everyone, and I hope to see/meet many of you soon

Vulcan Bikers for Caledonian Uprising

2011-12-31T12:04:00.003-05:00

So as my previous post eluded to I am attending Caledonian Uprising in my capacity as Team Scotland Captain and also more importantly as gamer looking to have a good fun weekend.

With having as much fun as possible being the key goal I need to ensure that I bring an army that will allow me to achieve this. Again as I mentioned previously whilst my Terminator Templars are certainly competitive enough to blast their way to the top spots, it's a boring 1 dimensional army to play with.

So enter my much maligned Bikers and a chance for them to prove their worth both in terms of gaming and entertainment. The list I have fallen upon (and submitted to T/O) is slightly different other Space Marine Biker army lists I have seen. Hopefully this will mean I have stumbled upon a hidden gem rather than a red herring;

NEIL'S CALEDONIAN BIKES

HQ 1: Vulkan 'The Techno-Chef' Hestan = 190
HQ 2: Space Marine Captain: Relic Blade, Bike & Melta Bombs = 170

ELITE 1: 5 Assault Terminators: Thunder Hammers & Storm Shields = 200 + TRANSPORT 1

TROOP 1: 8 Space Marine Bikers: Power Fist, 2 Melta Guns & Multi Melta Attack Bike = 310
TROOP 2: 4 Space Marine Bikers: 2 Melta Guns & Multi Melta Attack Bike = 185
TROOP 3: 4 Space Marine Bikers: 2 Melta Guns & Multi Melta Attack Bike = 185
TROOP 4: 5 Space Marine Scouts: Sniper Rifles & Camo Cloaks = 90

FAST 1: Land Speeder: Heavy Flamer & Typhoon Missile Launcher = 90
FAST 2: Land Speeder: Heavy Flamer & Typhoon Missile Launcher = 90
FAST 3: Land Speeder: Heavy Flamer & Typhoon Missile Launcher = 90

TRANSPORT 1: Land Raider Redeemer: Multi Melta = 250

TOTAL = 1850

Right so basically I have taken Vulkan and then shoehorned in as many units that take advantage of his Chapter Tactics; Melta Weapons = Check! Flamer Weapons = Check! Thunder Hammers = Check! Ok I didn't say that it was a cunningly unique army list, just that I have yet to see anyone, at least in the UK, combine Space Marine Bikers with the Techno Chef's abilities.

Will it work? More to the point will it be successful against the plethora of Mechanised Grey Knights, Spaces Wolves, Imperial Guard and Dark Eldar that the UK tournament scene is awash with? I can safely assume that all my weapons will be far more reliable and therefore hit that little bit harder. Furthermore Maelstrom, the venue for Caledonian Uprising, is well known for having plenty of terrain on it's boards and importantly plenty of LoS blocking pieces. So in theory I will have the opportunity to turbo-boost around and get in a position to hit fast and hard against the enemy. All that twin-linked Melta will obviously be a boon against the aforementioned abundance of armour I am likely to face. The Redeemer and Typhoons also provide me with a little anti-horde should I come across something that the Melta's cannot deal with.

However, all said and done it is a very small and comparatively fragile army especially when you consider that all those common armies I am likely to face will be packing lots of high strength, low AP, multi-shot weapons that could cut swathes through my bikes in a few short shooting phases. It is for this reason that I have never seen Biker armies do well, in the UK that is. But they have been having some marked successes in America, namely under the command of Dameon Green and Brandon Vallee. Both are well accomplished gamers and those examples are not the only events that they have won, or come close to winning with their Biker armies. So why can the same not happen this side of the pond?

I guess I'll find out in a couple of weeks, and if not there is always the Steve Bulter Invitational the weekend after, Vapnartak the weekend following that, and 2 weekends later Battlefield Birmingham.... well that is certainly going to be plenty of opportunities for me to get things right, or horribly wrong, with this army ;-)

2012 resolutions

2011-12-31T11:49:00.000-05:00

So that time is almost upon us. It is new years eve and the year 2012 is quickly approaching.

2011 has been both an exciting year for me and yet it has been one filled with stress and anxiety. For the blog, we have vastly grown in members and followers, participated in many events and shown that White Scars are pretty f***ing awesome and can be competitive in a crazy 40k world out there. In the following year, there will many promising days ahead, but there will be challenges that will need to be overcome as well.

So, why I am talking about resolutions? This is something I never due as I figure that if you are going to change something, why are you going to wait until the first of a new year. For me, this more of a collection of what I am currently working in order to improve myself. White Scars blog may be a blog dedicated to everything related to White Scars, but it is still my personal blog and I like talking about the people, the experiences, and the community behind the game which is often overlooked on the net. On numerous occasions, we have mentioned about our real lives and commitments, naturally this is an aspect of that.

What are my resolutions? Well in order to be really effective, they need to be 1) easy to achieve and 2) mean something and 3) only a few to focus on. Personally, I believe that most resolutions fail because people shoot for something that there is no way they can achieve it, like winning a million dollars. With this in mind, I have come up with these for my personal life...

Get married (Yes I'm engaged)
Get a real job
Do well in school
Play some more 40k
Get in shape/Eat healthy (yeah I know)

Why did I pick these?

It is really simple. My wedding date is in October so it is going to happen in 2012. But what needs to be mentioned is that I want everything to go as smoothly as possible while being a very happy time for my fiancee and I.

As far as the job, I currently work part time and have maintained a part time job throughout my college life. But it is time for me to move on and start down that career path. It is intimidating, but I have started applying like no other and I have started acquiring suits for all of those interviews. Now if I could only figure out how to tie a tie....

While working towards these resolutions, I want to continue to do well in school. I am currently going to graduate school, so I want to give it my all. Doing well in school is my key to a meaningful career and quite possibly more school. Shit....

Playing more 40k. This is an easy one but it highlights one of the methods on how I will continue to be stress free during a rather stressful time. Several tournaments are coming up and I am working on getting some casual games in as well. But not having a dedicated gaming store to go to anymore isn't cool

Eating healthy and losing weight. Over the past 2 years, I have put on probably about 25 pounds due to lack of exercise, poor eating habits, love of food, stress, whatever. I can say it is probably the whole part about not eating enough regular small meals in addition to eating a gigantic meal after I get off of work (at like 10pm) and falling asleep which has done the most damage. But I have all ready started on changing this by eating at fast food restaurants less, trying to consume less pop, and eating more regularly. In addition to this, just getting out more and exercising. Nothing crazy, just walking the dogs more or even shopping more. I was just in Chicago a few days back and my fiancee and I probably walked 10 miles over three days. It might not seem like much, but it burned off all of that pizza I had.

I might not accomplish all of this as much as I hoped but it is worth trying. Just ask me in a month or two how I have been keeping up with these resolutions to see if I am really going anywhere with it. So I think that is enough from me on this topic. If you are interested, feel free to share your resolutions. Have a happy new year everyone!

Oh and wish John luck on getting kissed tonight at midnight. He is going to need it! hahahahahah

I'm Back! New Year = New Challenge = New(ish) Army

2011-12-30T09:51:00.003-05:00

So ages ago Brandon asked me to blog on White Scars, I posted a few things about my plans for the ETC but then got caught up in way too many other things to continue. Sorry :-(

But with 2011 coming to a close in little over 24 hours I thought it high time to rectify that fact, especially given what my plans are for taking my 40k hobby into the new year.

January sees me attending Caledonia Uprising which is the Scottish 40k ETC Team's annual fund raising and team selection tournament. As the current Scottish 40k ETC Captain my attendance is obviously obligatory but at the same time it is hardly a burden. I am seriously looking forward to the weekend as it will be a chance to get together with the rest of the team, plus members from the other UK Home Nation teams, and many other wargaming friends beside for a beer and 40k filled weekend at Maelstrom.

Last year I took my Nurgle-Steam Punk themed Daemons and came a very respectable 4th. However times have changed and the Daemons are not what they were, in fact I also became quite bored of them after 2 years of gaming, and am in the process of getting them sold off.

So what I am going to run? For the past 6 months I have been running a Terminator heavy Black Templars army, it was what I took the last summers ETC in Montreux and overall it has been doing very well on the tournament circuit. BUT it is a very 1 dimensional army to play with and again I have become extremely bored with it. To put things into context this past 6 months I have had a total of 3 none tournament games of 40k!!!! That is NOT good, hence my mojo being at an all time low.

So with me having sold off my Tyranids and Orks I am left with 2 options; buy, build and paint and entirely new army in the 2 weeks I will have upon returning to the UK (currently I am in Sweden with my Fiancée until 6th January). This is totally unrealistic as I will also be returning to my final module of my History degree and obviously need to prioritise that over anything else. Furthermore I am trying to save as much money as possible before I move to Sweden in mid-July so splurging £200-300 on a new army for Caledonia just isn't viable (I may buy a new army for this summer's ETC but that is another story for another post).

All this leaves me with one option, and it is one that has me quite excited. A couple of summers ago I fancied building a Biker heavy Space Marine army I bought a couple of Ravenwing battleforces and stuck a whole load of bikes together (part of the reason Brandon coaxed me onto this blog). However since then they have languished on a shelf unpainted, unfinished and unloved. That is all going to change!

Therefore, for this years Caledonia Uprising, against all of going for the easiest route to the top spot therefore taking a dull, humdrum and all to common 'power-gaming/net-list army' *cough* Grey *cough* Knights *cough* (yes my loss of mojo goes hand in hand with me becoming quite cynical of late) I am going to resurrect and complete the Bikers at least to a minimum gaming standard in the 2 weeks I have upon my return to York (which considering they are all built, based and a undercoated shouldn't be too much to ask). Bugger trying to be uber competitive, but probably having very predictable games as a result (like I said can you tell I have become a bit jaded) lets go for a challenge and win or loose I will hopefully have loads of fun with a very different and challenging army which will revitalise my mojo for playing 40k.

Right that is enough rambling for today. Next opportunity I get I will post up the list I am taking to Caledonia and some of the thoughts, few that they are, behind the choices.

Oh and all this mojo resurrection I have also started my own blog which will chronicle all things 40k, not just Bikes, and the various other things that occupy my life (yes this is a shameless plug!). Feel free to check it out if you are bored and looking to kill 5 minutes..... Skcuzzlebumm's Scuttlebutt

Dameon gets honored with "Army List(s) of the Year"

2011-12-25T17:32:00.001-05:00

Yeah it was on his blog....

While taking a break from the family (oh by the way, Happy Holidays everyone!) I was browsing the blogs and came across this post by Tastytaste over at Blood of Kittens.

Here it is

In the article, Tasty just talks about some of the lists used by people who actually won major events and what sets them apart from people who just talk about list after list after list. Dameon is one of those individuals who was mentioned and I just wanted to share this with him and everyone else.

So congratulations Dameon. Hopefully next year one of the others on the blog can get that title for 2012.

Well enough of my post. Stop stalling and go hang out with your families this holiday. I should probably make some dinner with mine.... Later!

Pedro Bikers rethink

2011-12-17T03:04:00.001-05:00

Since I haven't really played recently (which sucks) I've been thinking about a Pedro Kantor bike list...

I have seen this bad boy in action (playing against Eric), I've talked back and forth about him for a long time, and I've come to realize that Pedro can contribute a lot to a bike based army, assuming he is not just shoehorned into a list. So with that being said, I got bored tonight and decided to make a list which has some possibility to it and who knows, I might give it a shot one of these days. Here it goes...

Pedro Kantor (aka pedo khan) 175

Captain
Bike, Combi-Melta, & Relic Blade 175

Tactical Terminators (10 man)
2x cyclone missile launchers 460

Sternguard (5 man)
2x lascannons, 155

Sternguard (5 man)
2x missile launchers 135

Bike Squadron (4+1 man)
2x melta guns and a multi-melta attack bike 185

Bike Squadron (4+1 man)
2x melta guns and a multi-melta attack bike 185

Land Speeder Typhoon
Heavy Flamer & Typhoon Missile Launchers 90

Land Speeder Typhoon
Heavy Flamer & Typhoon Missile Launchers 90

Thunderfire Cannon 100

Thunderfire Cannon 100

Total 1850

For 2000 points

Add 2x Multi-melta attack bikes 100
Add 1 Sternguard to each squad 50

The list would play very defensively relying on the thunderfire cannon(s) in order to slow down incoming troops. Everyone would be benefiting from modified cover saves in ruins (which is just awesome) and a +1 attack bonus. Scoring heavy weapon teams (aka the sternguard) is a lot better then crappy old scouts with sniper rifles. The bikes become principle anti-land raider units and can be used to distract and claim objectives late game. The speeders would be used for light tank popping, template craziness, contesting, and blocking. The Terminators are the "Swiss knife" as they are a deterrence, anti-infantry, anti-tank, and since kantor is in with them, I can get a crap ton of attacks on the charge which would rape most units. I would have the bike captain in with the terminators which will be with the terminators for some slingshot action or he can hang with the bikes for a healthy distraction. What I like about it is that every unit is flexible in what it does and provides a lot of tools for me to use.

The army would be radically different from how I play now, but as a concept, it looks like a rather fun (perhaps competitive) army to play at a tournament.

So what do you all think? I really need to start playing some games so I can try out all of these lists!!!

J Willy conquers 40k net lists part one

2011-12-13T17:00:00.004-05:00

Internet lists are prevalent now a days and why wouldn't they be!? They are a 40k player's safety blanket. Like on a cold winters night, you sit alone in your dark room, your little light in the corner your only friend. When out of no where your mom bounds through the door saving your form the depths of your loneliness as though a nightingale aloft in the wind. In her hands the only thing that can finally lure you to sleep, your blanket fresh and warm from the dryer, as though freshly toasted by the sun itself.

I think you are hiding something? Do you need a hug or something?

Man! Why did I ever move out!?

Tournaments come and go, but it seems I'm always left with a nasty aftertaste of the armies that win it or do good. Case in point, weekend after Nova I had to play Allen's list... twice. Now don't get me wrong. Safety blankets have a place in 40k! People don't know what to play and having a proven formula to base your game off of can help you tremendously! You get your feet under you, you develop it and tweak it to your own style and you move on. Though these list really only come to there true potential under a sturdy and tested helmsmen, not that kid with a dial up internet connection. Now what about the rest of us? These lists are tough in there own right.

I want to lay down some strategies I use when it comes to several of the internet lists. These have proven to help me over come the nastier lists and I believe we can all implement them into our own unique games and over come.

Draigo Wing

Draigo has really come on strong lately with the tremendous success of certain internetz celebs like Blackmore and GoatBoy in some reputable tournaments (whats up with weird handles? I mean whats wrong with your name! Your mom gave it to you... and she brings you a warm blanket!). So how do we beat it? Well I think there is two ways. Damn man! More mom and blanket references, I am starting to become really concerned about your well being. You might want to see a doctor about this.

First of all you can avoid the unit. Going full reserves (or out flank all your White Scare aficionados!). The inherent flaw of the Draigo wing is the majority of the points are invested in one unit, that unit can't engage more then one unit a turn if you rule out multi unit assaults or blowing up a vehicle and assaulting the contents. If we don't come on till turn 4 they might not be able to engage enough units to make it worth the investment. This is a tried and true method. It works wonders in many situations and really frustrates most opponents.

Ok blah, blah, blah, we herd that one before.

BUT! I play 40k like a man! The way I beat that unit is by assaulting it! (Really bad idea in my opinion but to each their own) As crazy as this may or may not sound (yep). You go get that unit. So lets set it up. In order to assault this unit we have to go about it in a very careful manner or it WILL come back to slap you in the face, not in the good way, but in the Draigo Hide Your Kids Hide your Wife kind of way. We do this my mitigating the damage output of Draigo's unit while maximizing our hard hit units survivability to make sure they stand and deliver.

This is best shown through the lost art of interpretive dance, in loo of that I will use pictures. Warning: Imagination required in the following segment, because if you believe Draigo can't hurt you, you take away all his power... j/k he still rapes you. Seriously though the Space Wolves and Logan Grimnar will be standing in for Draigo and friends. Are you dancing with your blanket now?

Step one shows us move our models toward the meat blender. Here we see a tactical marine squad spread out across the entire bow of Draigo. While sneaking on the other side is a unit of terminators. Now I've positioned a few up front and I've spaced them just within the 6 inches required to assault one model (NO MORE!!!), I've placed the rest of the unit 2 inches away from the front ones. So the vast majority of the unit is actually 8 inches away form the Paladins.

Now we assault, you can see now that we engage the entire Paladin unit with the marines. Our terminators now hit and engage only one model while not sacrificing any of there hitting power. Well the Paladins have no choice to obliterate the marines (with only one hitting our termis), now our unmolested terminators swing away. Every wound we are doing is counting for two and we start running up the score board like the Green Bay Packers against the Raiders (not sure how relevant that is in a gaming blog).

Its not far fetched to say 8 terminators coming form a land raider with Thunderhammers have 24 attacks, 12 hits, 10 wounds, maybe 7-6 or so get through (1 from a Staff another from swords, one/two 5+'s) we now get 14-12 combat res, they only got our 10 man marines. We win combat and now Draigo is on his back foot. Lights out...

Generally White Scars players don't use terminators in a land raider, well at least I don't. The same concept can be applied using a squad of bikes and the bike command squad. Now not as devastating against two wound terminators due to the lack of power fists in the unit, the command squad can wear them down with a bunch of furious charging power weapon attacks. The glorious thing about the unit is that Khan gives the squad hit and run, so when the bait squad is demolished the command squad can run away, regroup, shoot their bolters (along with the rest of the army) and do it all again. Another suggestion is using a librarian with null zone in order to ensure that you cause as many wounds as possible on the unit with all of those power weapons. Wash rinse and repeat.

Personally, playing keep away and using the Thunderfire cannon to slow them down to a snails pace as you focus on the rest of the army is probably the best way to go.

Battle Wagon Orks

Battle Wagon Orks are a little bit out older but I still think relevant, especially for younger less experienced players. These things kick it to 11 and roll over you. Armor 14 screaming at you like there is no tomorrow, and let me tell you. I've done the research, tomorrow never comes.

Once again I think there are two ways to beat them.

The easiest way is to once again avoid the Battle Wagons, use speed to out flank, maybe split up your forces and force them to split up turn around. Exploit the HUGE side arcs with harassment units. Or your entire army if you play something like... I don't know... White Scars.

Ok blah, blah, blah, we heard that one before.

What I like to do in this situation... CLIMB FOR FREEDOM!

Its pretty simple. If you your army on the second floor of a build/ruin Battle Wagons can't get you. Its simple math. Battle Wagon + Stairs = Fail Wagons. Force the orks out of there wagons and come play in your sandbox for a turn. In the world of Grey Knights, Space Wolves, and Blood Angels orks are not the combat monsters they used to be. More like combat enthusiasts. Now maybe not applicable to a pure bike army but you still have aspects of your army you can use this on. Take a chance at romance, fly your Speeders up a level and watch the orks hurl nothing but insults. Brandon is on a kick about Techmarines/Thunderfire Cannons (shows what he knows) (John, how about you identify a better way to remove 20 orks in a battle wagon crater from long range? Or how about this idea, how about you ask Shaun Kemp how his orks feel after getting thunderfired to death repeatedly? I love the smell of burning orks in the morning....), well make sure you get that up a floor and throw scouts in the mix, for good measure a Dreadnought as well. They might not be the bulk of your army, but the combination of speedy bikes avoiding the Deathrolla and everything else watching/firing from up high you can eliminate one of the orks strongest weapons. Remember this strategy is applicable to beasts (so Scarab Swarms, Fiends, and Thunder Wolves) and sadly bikes.

Make sure you guys review the "How to defeat ork battle wagons" three part series posted up by Eric. There is plenty of more in depth ideas for all of you White Scar generals out there.

Next Time I want to talk about Venom Spam, they seem to be annoying. I have a nice check list of what I do every turn, once implemented DEldar became a walk in the park. Let me know if your having troubles with an army build in the comments I'll see what I can give you to help come out with the W. As always (ok the second time) if you feel like chatting me up throw me an email at jonathanwillingham@hotmail.com I always love talking 40k.

John, how about you just give them your phone number so they can talk and text you too. With all of this talk about blankets and missing your mom, you must be lonely. Maybe they can help out!!! As an aside, I look forward to seeing what you have to say about dark eldar. --Frosty

Stormseer on Rogue Trader Era Jetbike

2011-12-12T15:05:00.000-05:00

Hello once again, and Happy Holidays! I can't believe it's been eight months since I last posted here. There's a myriad of reasons as to why I've been absent, not the least of which is lack of motivation. I haven't played any 40K in all this time and really haven't had the drive to sit down and model/paint anything. Anyway, I've had this partially converted Stormseer sitting on my desk for months begging for attention. Knowing that The Old Republic will be out soon (have any of you guys played the beta or plan on picking it up at launch?) I decided that I really needed to get this conversion done or it may been sitting on my desk collecting dust for another eight months. So, I started pressing forward...slowly. And I do mean slowly. I made that commitment several months ago, and it's taken my this long to finally get him done.

If you look back you will see that we last left this poor soul with a partially converted jetbike. Well, as you can see below he has come a long ways since then. The main feature that stands out is the custom force staff. The staff is actually seven bits threaded onto a length of wire. His hand and the handle are from a power ax, as is the power unit. I don't recall the name of the scroll bit, but it had torch on top of it. The ram head is from some fantasy bit, as is the tassel. Also of note is the psychic hood (from a Grey Knight torso) and the skull/eagle shoulder pad (a banner top sanded thin then glued onto the pad). I finally added a chained book, purity seal, scrolls, and a rune and teeth around his waist to complete the look.

So, without further ado I present the Stormseer on Rogue Trader Era Jetbike.

I hope you guys enjoy this model as much as I do. Although it's taken me a long time complete I am very happy with the results. This was originally posted on my White Scars 3rd Brotherhood Project log.

Painted Egyptian Bases Part 2, 40mm Bases...AND Made it on FTW Main Page!!!!

2011-12-11T21:31:00.002-05:00

Originally Posted on Khepri's Eternal Legion

Because I am SUPER GEEKED about it will start with FTW!

From The Warp

Now on to the bases!!!

Shockingly we sold out of the first run and I had to ship out the demo bases verus painting them up. This is from the third run, and I finally found the time to paint them up.

And of course the shameless plugging of product..

Base (Single) Listings
Bases (Multiple) Listings

To Build a White Scars Army Part 1: Preparation

2011-12-08T17:00:00.002-05:00

So, where to begin?

As with any modeling project, we have to approach it with the right tools to accomplish the task, but before we even buy or assemble our first kits, pots of paint, brushes, and modeling gear, we always do one thing first (or at least I do), and that is read.

We read the instruction manuals for model kits to learn how to assemble them, we read the instructions on the paint to know the proper way to apply it, some modeling gear comes with warnings because they can cause cuts or be harmful if swallowed. In the case of 40K though, the modeling is taken one step further, where we can take the models we have created and apply rules to play a game, allowing our hobby to come to life (so to speak).

So the first part to building a proper 40K army is to read the relevant material (BRB and codex of your army), then read it again. Make sure you like the story and the models before you buy anything, because to complete an entire army is a small investment in time and money. The next item to tackle is whether this army is long or short term. Life happens, and people change their minds about what they like and don't, and there is always the lure of the newest and best thing. Once these two questions are answered, the last thing to think about is the ever famous debate of Fluff or Fiction. Quite literally, are you going to build you army according to all the material written about a certain faction(Fluff), or are you going to make an army using the codex without a concern for what came before (Fiction).

With all this in mind the answer to those questions concerning myself and my nephews are:

We like Space Marines. They like the big, bold warriors able to best 10 normal men, I have liked them ever since they went from T3 to T4,and the stark contrast of the White Scar color theme is very appealing.
This is a long term army for me and probably a short term army for them. I expect at some point in time those young minds will wander away from the Emperor's light and try their hand with some unclean Xenos, or worse yet traitors!!
We will follow some of the Fluff, just to give a little challenge to this army. No dreadnoughts, no devastators (although there will be heavy weapons in Tac Squads), and no sponsons on predator tanks!!

I feel that these three points will dictate how you feel about modeling and war gaming in general. In some war games, (Period Napoleonic, WWII etc.) number 3 is not negotiable, you have to follow the orders of battle, and some people like that, but for myself I find this to restrictive. I do like challenges, but there are only so many charges of the light brigade that you can do before you say enough.
Next time, List Building for the Tabletop & the Shopping Cart

Adeptus Mechanicus, Unknown Ally/Best Friend of White Scars

2011-12-08T12:04:00.001-05:00

Hey Brandon suggested I post up some pictures of my current army I'm playing and I gladly agreed.

This is my Adeptus Mechanicus Army! I play it as a counts as Grey Knights Army (boo, hiss!). Honestly I don't care if people haten, as I always take my approach as seen above. Plus I think a counts as army representing non-existing armies is fine. A counts as army using existing models to be other things is not cool (no counts as Space Wolves using Chaos Models). So take a look and see what you think. As a disclaimer I did purchase this army (I like to be completely upfront with anyone about this). It was originally played as a Counts as Space Wolves (which I found interesting). I saw an awesome Grey Knight army in this so made some lists like my options and bought it. I've added to the army where necessary, I've painted up some Rhinos and some Psycannons

Magos Crvsivs: Grand Master

Adeptus Walker: Dreadnought

Knight Titan: Dreadknight

Tech Priests: Purifiers

Knight of The Flame and Librarian

More Purifiers

True Scale Iron Hand Marines: Strike Marines

Aquilla Lander: Storm Raven

More Strike Marines

Heavy Combat Servitors: Terminators w/ Psycannons

Techmarine w/ Servitors

Heavy Combat Servitors: Terminators

More Terminators

He just looks awesome...

White Scars blog is expanding

2011-12-08T12:00:00.004-05:00

A couple of days back, I posted on the blog that I was looking for some assistance in writing hobby articles for the blog. Well I had two brave volunteers have signed themselves up for the cause.

Nimort (his introduction can be found here) Is in the process of just starting a band spanking new White Scars army with his nephews. He is going through all of the paces, making the transition from 3rd to 5th, planning out his army and how he plans on collecting it, going through play testing and building. Everything a relatively new person needs to do in order to choose, develop, and personalize their army. I hope you all can give him some good advice on his adventure and if you don't currently have a White Scars army, maybe he can inspire you to build one?

Jonathan (his introduction can be found here) Is one of the members of the USA ETC team, tournament circuit veteran, and fellow Toledo Tool. Though he does not expressly play White Scars, (nor do I think he has any interest in the army?) he has volunteered some of his time and knowledge about some of the finer points of the game. I would expect a lot of tactics, unit analysis, tournament reports, and articles dealing with the finer points of the game. He can definitely teach everyone a thing or two about the game that we probably never knew before.

So lets give Steve (nimort) and Jonathan a well deserved welcome as the newest editions to our team.

As an aside, if any painters out their are interested in doing painting tutorials (regardless of army, though I would prefer it be biker related) and wants to have them host on this blog, please feel free to contact me.

Slingshot To Success aka Slingshot ENGAGE!!!

2011-12-07T17:08:00.004-05:00

“Slingshot Engage”
-Ricky Bob, Talladega Nights, The Ballad of Ricky Bobby

If you read blogs or have good taste in movies, chances are you know a little something about Shake and Bake, otherwise know as the Slingshot. In 40k terms this revolves around an IC pulling in a unit to combat or the reverse. I’m not going into detail of it as the resources to find that out are plenty. I want to talk about the implementation of it and how to specifically build it into your list.

My name is Jonathan, I’m a long time creeper first time poster. I’ve had plenty of practice in tournaments (which isn't important). I bet we all want to know who you are! I've had a lot of success in 40k but have always avoided the internet like the plague, mostly cause it is (not on this blog). When I saw my buddy looking for some writers I figured WTF. Here you plainly can see we are the best of friends!

As you can see I'm the good looking one... ok the center left one. Brandon is center right one (The BEST looking one). After all, you can't spell Tool with out the OO's. You could hypothetically use a "u" with an umlaut over it, but I don't expect anyone to be speaking German on the blog... I've been fortunate enough to take place in Adepticon a couple of times with great success as well as Wargamescon. I've also had the distinct pleasure of serving my Patriotic duty aboard our Nation's ETC Team (I understand Brandon is jealous Not Jealous, I just want your spot, tis all). Enough with introductions (which Brandon ruthlessly forced me to do btw), lets play 40k, or at least talk about playing 40k.

I would like to point out that 2 e-mails is not "ruthlessly forced". Thank you for making me look good....

Today I want to teach you how to use the Slingshot, not just hope it happens into your game, but to specifically build it into your list and set it up a turn before it happens.

Most people who currently use the Slingshot use it when they look down and just happen to see a character 13 inches away from combat starry eyed and asking the coach to put him in the big game, only to have the coach (you in this bad example) tag him in. To actively use the Slingshot you have to set up your army before hand with the proper tools to execute, back this up with proper placement the turn before and your ready to introduce Dr. Watts to an unsuspecting opponent.

So what tools to we need?
ICs (Duh)
ICs in transports (EASY!)
ICs that move over 12 inches (That’s less so…)

So lets take it from the easiest to the most complicated.

First example;
Top of your turn, you have two units. The first just so happens to include a IC and with in 12 inches of an enemy unit. The second unit is over 12 inches away from the enemy. What do you do? Drop your IC back to the second unit! Get all your boys into the action.

Priests: Putting the fear back in Necrons and little

boys since the year 40,000.

As you can see the Wolf Priest left the Grey Hunters

to get the more important Wolf Guard in assault.

Now how do we take this to the next level?

Example Two;
You have your Death Star unit a far bit away from your opponent even after there movement you make the judgment call that not even a good roll on the run will get you there next turn. So you run interference with a Rhino, this rhino has a unit within and an IC as well. You pop smoke. Your goal isn’t to distract your opponent with this move, but to actually get both these units into combat next turn. Your turn comes around and the unit jumps out of the rhino (or the smoking crater) the IC jumps out the back hatch and moves 8 inches in front of the trailing death star. They move up within two inches. As you can see we took steps in the previous movement phase to set up the assault this turn. Your opponent was never worried about the Death Star as they had foolishly convinced themselves they had an extra turn to deal with them. They sat and shot every missile, lascannon, and Heavy Stubber they had at the rhino trying to stop the immediate assault and not the horrible Earth shattering game ending assault.

Seems this Priest doesn't mind the back door...

Example 3;
Ok the last two can be done with nearly every army (I mean who brings transports any way…). This one requires the set up before the game in your army list. You need characters who move fast. IC’s on Bikes (wait a sec… this is a WHITE SCARES BLOG!), jump packs (looking at you Blood Angels), or ICs in assault/open topped vehicles.

The way this final example works is with two units side by side. One has an IC in it the last does not. Say two squads of marines, both are just out of the 12 inch line. One has an IC that can most farther then 12 inches. Normally they can’t make use of there faster movement while attached to a slower unit, well not so fast. The IC leave the first unit and attaches to the second unit, except in front of the unit, using that 2 inch coherence rule. If its on a normal base he just extended the assault 3 inches, if it’s a bike base more (5 inches in case you are wondering). The assault vehicle is a modified version of it similar to example 2, but with an assault/open topped vehicle you don’t have to wait for round two, the IC just jumps out the back while the unit jumps out the front. Now we have two units in combat where we had only one.

Just like a first date; pull up, get it out, get to business.

Remember, no ones likes Long Fangs

Well that’s about it. Hopefully you start to see ways of actively implementing the sling shot within your own armies. Nearly everyone has the tools! From Necrons/Dark Eldar and their plethora of open topped vehicles, to Blood Angel Sanguinary Priests with Jump packs, heck an old school Black Templar Techmarine on bike. Bike Captain, Khan on bike, librarian on bike, techmarine on bike, chaplain on bike, plenty of options to do this with in a White Scars army.

Keep in mind, it is possible to form a chain of independent characters in order to extend your slingshot into a "hyper slingshot" Though rare, it is completely possible and will catch people off guard. Now only if I could justify using a librarian on a bike on a more regular basis....

If you have any questions, comments, concerns, or emotional outbursts please feel free to leave a comment or shot me an email. I love to talk 40k.

Modified slightly, thanks Jon. --Frosty

Introductions are in order...

2011-12-06T20:59:00.002-05:00

Hello to all who follow the White Scars, I am nimort (Steven in real life) and have been invited by Stillfrosty to contribute to this amazing blog. My interests lie in starting (and completing) a 2000 point White Scars army in the next six months. This will be my 4th 40k army, but the first one I have attempted since seven years past (I got out of the hobby in 2004).

The new interest for 40k began when a friend bought the BRB and the Space Marine codex for me as birthday gift. I have read the materials, followed this blog and others, to gain an insight as to what had been happening in gaming for the past several years. The modeling aspect was on the shelf for me as I really did not have an incentive to get back into it. Then one day my two nephews were reading everything they could get their hands on about 40k (the BRB and codex, plus an couple of WD). They liked the stories, the art and the modeling, and eagerly asked me if we could do this!!

So with that we are building an army that all three of us can enjoy (I like bikes, they like tanks), and be fun and functional at the same time. It might not be tournament worthy (like Stillfrosty's) but still be a good match in a casual or semi-competitive environment.

With that I welcome all comments and suggestions, as I might need some advice along the way,and I might comment on a tactic or two since I've been gaming 40k since the models were made out of lead!!

nimort

Are YOU interested in writing for White Scars blog?

2011-12-04T12:00:00.004-05:00

Daily blog entries require a lot of time and effort in order to ensure quality pieces are being consistently written. I could churn out a post every day about my army list, someone's army list, or not even talk about White Scars, but I don't want to do that. I want this blog to be the best gathering of White Scars players on the net.

However, everyone currently contributing to the blog is busy with real life obligations in order to keep up writing articles. I can only write so many articles, especially when I am working, planning a wedding, and going to graduate school. Therefore I am looking for you to help out.

If you are interested in writing about your White Scars' army, showing off a cool color scheme, talking about your army list, talking about a conversion you did, showing off some artwork, etc etc I would be interested in hearing from you. Keep in mind that it doesn't have to a continuous thing, if you only want to write a piece or two then that is awesome as well. So if you are interested, let me know. We can talk about it, pound out the details, and work out a piece for the blog.

I look forward to hearing back from all of you!

Professor Stillfrosty at Adepticon

2011-12-03T12:00:00.011-05:00

Recently I have been talking with Jay Woodcock over at the Da Boyz Club in Rochester, New York and he suggested that I help him out at Adepticon. I inquired more about this and little did I know he was talking about his and Shaun Kemp's Warhammer 40k Tactics Boots Camp classes which are held on the Thursday before the main Adepticon festivities begin.

The first class is a basic tournament skills class where we will talk about:

How to ensure you have a balanced force to meet whatever your opponent's throw at you.
Determining both you and your opponent’s strengths and weaknesses based on the mission you are playing.
How to review your opponent’s army list quickly and how to pick out the dangerous units from their list based on the mission you are playing.
Methods to throw your opponent off their game without being a poor sportsman.
How to incorporate effective timing for your game actions.
Team tournament techniques.
And MORE!!!

If you are interested in this class, rumor is that Jay, Shaun, Ben Mohile, and I will be there. So you will definitely learn a lot about gaming. If you are looking to improve your game or learn some new tricks, check it out.

Basic tournament skills tickets are available here

The second class that I will be lecturing is the advanced tournament skills class. This class focuses on:

The main focus of this class will be on various specific tabletop strategies or "tricks" that can be implemented throughout the game to gain advantage. The first part will highlight some of the techniques that can be utilized in general by all armies. The second half will be presented by various guest hosts comprised of some of the better known Warhammer 40K individuals who have gained respect for their prowess on the tournament circuit and/or internet community boards. The purpose of this section will be to point out some of the specific "tricks" that apply for each individual army. Participants to be named in the next couple of weeks. Finally, a Q&A session at the end of the seminar will try to address as many questions as possible.

I want to point out the term "guest hosts" in that paragraph because this is a real big deal. Rumor has it that beside, Shaun, Ben, Jay, and I there will be some other tournament greats talking about their respective armies and codices. I even heard that Tony Kopach might be talking about his wolves. It should definitely be an educational experience for everyone, including me!!!

Advanced tournament skills tickets are available here

So if you at all are interested in learning how to improve your gaming skills or how to defeat that unbeatable army, I suggest that you sign up. Remember that tickets are in limited quantities so sign up fast.

If you have any questions feel free to ask away!

How many games do you play?

2011-12-03T00:17:00.000-05:00

Found Here

Hey Everyone

I wanted to spark some conversation as I have not been posting as of late due to real life and a lack of reliable gamer base in my area.

DAMN YOU RESPONSIBILITIES!!!

Anyways, since I hardly get the opportunity to play casual games anymore, I am curious as to how many times in a month do you get the opportunity to play 40k? For me, it varies depending on the month. More recently I only get a game or two in. If I play in a tournament add on a few more. If there is a major tournament it could be upwards of 9-13 more games!!!

So how about it? How many games do you play?

Painted Egyptian Bases...

2011-11-23T21:34:00.001-05:00

Originally posted on Khepri's Eternal Legion

A quick post, just finished some samples of the first wave of casts.

First our bases made it on MiniWarGaming on into Matt's Necrons!! Check the video around minute 2:30... Additionally you can see the "peach" colored disks in the background of his table.. Also mine!

60mm Bases

Bikes

120mm Bases

And of course the shameless plugging of product..

Base (Single) Listings

Bases (Multiple) Listings

I saddened to report...

2011-11-18T22:38:00.000-05:00

That even though I had full intentions of playing in the tournament tomorrow I am not going to. Over the past week I have getting progressively more sick. I do not think it would be a great idea to drive two hours especially when I have been getting dizzy and sneezing like no other while under the influence of nyquil.

I was looking forward to winning too! DAMN YOU ACCURSED COLD!!!

Oh well, there is always next time.

So in honor of this lame occasion, I figure I would spice it up a bit and share some information with all of you about zombie preparedness from our friends at the CDC. Check it out!

As an aside, it gives me a bit of time to work on some articles and convert up a pair of speeders. Who knows, I might even get industrial and have a tutorial on how to do it.

Finally, I shipped out the dice today. Most of you should have them at your door on Monday. I hope you enjoy them!

There has been a delay...

2011-11-17T22:30:00.001-05:00

.... But they are on their way.

I will be shipping out all of the dice tomorrow. I am sorry for the delay.

Mechanicon (part 2 of 2 part recap)

2011-11-16T12:00:00.005-05:00

To start I had a couple great conversations with both the Mechanicon staff and Chris (Mastermolder) about expensive tournaments… Mechanicon is one of the more expensive ($125 ticket price) 40k GT’s on the East Coast which has turned a lot of people off and I have heard there has been drama on the Interweb about the price and where the money goes. One thing people forget is unless it’s in a gamestore a huge chunk of the gatefee goes to paying for the Hotel. Ballrooms are not free, often costing thousands of dollars. Additionally Tony’s crew has some of the best tables around. Professionally built 4’x8’s, high end terrain, which adds up quickly.

With Friday’s excellent practice games, solid performance and win in the can I was feeling very confident… What the old proverb? Don’t count your chickens.. Without over sharing I started the day with what I thought was case of food poisoning, which then developed into the flu…

Round 1 vs Chaos Space Marines (Mike Belczyk)

Deployment – Pitched battle

Mission – Kill All Troops

Secondary – KP

Tertiary- Defend Deployment Zone

Before you pre-judge it was a VERY Close game, Mike is a great opponent who is a master with his CSM’s. Double Bike Last, x3 Oblits (3) and Khorne happiness. First couple rounds were solidly in his favor and his Obliterators were failing ONE in THIRTEEN saves (holy cow!)! In the last two turns I managed to kill the last of his Berserkers, shelter my remaining troops. Major Victory.

Round 2 vs Space Marines (Justin)

Deployment - Spearhead (Turn 1 Night fight)

Mission – Modified VP (Double for units killed totally)

Secondary – Kill HQ

Bonus Points (None)

Foot List with Rivers (They count as difficult at Mechanicon) I sheltered in a corner, outflanked with the bikes. Solid but fairly standard game, with Max points gained.

Round 3 vs Orks (Colin Jones)

Deployment – Pitched Battle

Mission - Double each scoring unit in Enemy deployment.

Secondary - KP

Tertiary – Kill Fast Attack

Colin was a great guy and ran a solid foot Ork list. Table had lots of LOS blocking terrain, rivers on the board again. This should have been a simple win, not to be over confident but 3 Thunder Fire Cannons. Two Big rulings made this complicated….

One- Blast templates had to be CENTERED on models, which made it impossible to hit more than one model if they are atleast 1.25 inches away. This meant I was getting an average of 6 per TFC instead of 12 – 16 (including 2 drifts etc etc).

Two – Non-IC’s could strike IC’s they are not in base contact with while based with a different target. Clarified, a Powerclaw based with Bikesquad A could strike Khan attached to Bikesquad B with in 2” but not based with the Nob with the claw.

I think I was viewed as confrontational by Colin when I requested rulings by the line judge, but both of these are different than what is commonly played with (or in the FAQ). I just like playing by the rules.

I squeaked out a minor victory, which was a moral massacre considering the uphill game, foot Orks with buried Powerclaws are a solid counter for bikes when templates cannot be used for full effect and THEY control movement.

Round 4 vs Sisters of Battle (Blood Angels played by Simon Leen)

Deployment – Pitched battle

Mission – Objectives.

Secondary – VP

Tertiary- Destroy all heavy Support

This was my third game Vs Simon on the tournament circuit, but the first time I have seen him not run his Sisters (ok, he was still playing with them, just count as BA). I was VERY rough Sunday morning . Simon’s list was a exceptional balance of Jump Assault troops and Missile Devastators . I killed more of my own bikes to dangerous terrain test then Simon did with shooting (6 failed tests, 5 bikes lost). Close until turn 5 when we called it with 5 minutes left. Draw, in fact ALL OF THE TOP TABLES DREW… See the end for more details.

Round 5 vs Grey Knights (Lewis S.)

Deployment – Spearhead

Mission - Capture and Control

Secondary – Destroy All Elites.

Tertiary – NA

High pressure game due to standings on the line. Standard Crow list, nothing special. First the opponent was hot and cold. He was friendly and understand when models fell or measurements were in question (until the end), but the whole game he was making snide comments but denied making them when confronted with his conduct (witnessed). Three issues decided the game..

One – A combat squaded attack bike was with in 12” of a razorback, hit penetrated and exploded a razorback. He rechecked the measurement and it was now just out of 12”. The terrain had gotten bumped a couple times. Rather than press the issue I just rerolled. Second time around was a glance, then a 6 (wreck) which he argued was a 4 (weapon destroyed). This was Witnessed by a Third party but I had picked up the dice to start rolling for the next set of melta shots at the second transport so didn’t have a leg to stand on. Lesson learned.

Two – Crowe. .. After the above round of shooting Crowe charged into combat with a bike squad. I knew he was out, was sure due to measurements during shooting. Changed the flow of the bike squads movement, little but made a big impact. Forced me to Hit & Run back away from where I needed to be.

Three – Objective… Per the printout the control range was measured from the CENTER of the objective. A point missed in earlier round and made contesting the objective hard as hell. Had the game ended on Turns 5 or 6 I would have pulled out a victory. I staged combat squad to turbo boost onto his objective to contest and turn 7’s could not close due to reduced control range.

Game was a Draw (again all top tables drew) as I could not kill his last Dreadnought. Had I realized the control range issue earlier I would have played the last 2 turns to try and remove it.

Closing thoughts…

Ok before I go on, I enjoyed the event tremendously. I am seriously considering going back next year. Staff was friendly, location was perfect, onsite food was cheap and amazing. I got 4th overall which surprised the top guys who assumed I clinched the top spot with the appearance scoring. No sour grapes.

But…

The missions..

Were very difficult to work with. When all of the top 6 tables have identical scores in 2 games there is a problem. When almost everyone who did not table their opponent, drew in the above mentioned rounds that proves the flaw in my mind. I witnessed a couple games get “heated” in the friendly tourney because of the lack of clarity and challenges of the missions.

Rules..

Issues came up a couple times, without officially used FAQ’s besides GW’s there were a lot of blanks. Being a “friendly” event I felt like an ass every time I disagreed with an interpretation and could not used the INAT FAQ or different source as a reference point. Even when using the core rulebooks example pictures I was ruled against.

Scoring…

The pub quiz was amusing but problematic for the points it gives. Next time I need to study!

The paint scores was surprising. I got one of the top 3 paint scores so not complaining about how I did, several of us were confused when reviewing the posted score sheet. As an example a few of the “weekend” armies scored close to or as high as fully converted and exceptionally painted ones.

Decisions: Tournament in 11/19

2011-11-15T13:04:00.004-05:00

Hey Everyone,

So there is a tournament this upcoming weekend that I was planning on attending. It is at 1850 points over at the Toledo Game room so hopefully I can get quality games in while BSing with friends. It should be a great time.

Anyways, I am looking at modifying my list as Adepticon is right around the corner, so I would like to try out a potential list for the event. Given what I have been using recently and what has worked in the past to a relative success, I am thinking that I should not stray too far from the norm at the event.

My 2011 Adepticon list last year was:

Khan
Moondrakken

Command Squad (5 man)
Apothecary
Veteran with lightning claw and melta gun
Veteran with power fist, melta gun, and storm shield
Veteran with power fist and storm shield
Champion with power sword and combat shield

Bike Squadron (8 man)
2x plasma guns
sergeant with Powerfist
Attack bike with multi-melta

Bike Squadron (8 man)
2x melta guns
sergeant with Powerfist
Attack bike with multi-melta

Tactical Squad
5 Marines
Sergeant with combi-melta
Razorback with Twin Heavy bolters

Land Speeder Squadron (2 vehicles)
2x Typhoon missile launchers and Heavy Bolters

Land SpeederSquadron (2 vehicles)

2x Typhoonmissile launchers and Heavy Bolters

Land SpeederSquadron (2 vehicles)
2x Typhoon missile launchers and Heavy Flamers

--1850

Given that the tactical squad along with Razorback really hasn't done much even when I played at NOVA we can drop that unit along with the tactical squad for some plain scouts. If I do this, it frees up 65 points. Now in addition to this, I have fallen head over heels for a Thunderfire cannon. It has so much utility and boosts for my army that just make it essential to my play style. Ideally I would like to plug one into my army, but as of right this moment I don't have enough points. So I am going to have to lose something, and the first thing which comes into my mind is a land speeder.

If the speeder is dropped that frees up another 90 points and the TFC costs 100 so I'll have to dig into my remaining balance and have 55 points left over. Shit, there is no good way to spend 55 points in my current build. If I had 60 I could split a large bike squad into two small squads but that requires me to lose a piece of wargear and in my opinion everything is pretty bare bones right now. In addition, one lone typhoon isn't really my thing. I'm not sure why, but I just don't like it lol

So If I were to drop that lone typhoon that frees up another 90 points for a total of 145 points. Now this is where it gets interesting. With this figure I can try out some crazy units which I never use which could be exciting and there could be some hidden gems which I just have not had time to explore.

Right now I am leaning towards two units... Scout bikes and Land speeder Tornadoes. Why? Well I own 12 scout bikes and I never really get the opportunity to play them. Land Speeders because I acquired two land speeder husks and with a little bit of care and surgery they can be turned into a brand new unit. More importantly they cost the same amount of points (roughly).

Scout Bikes (5 man)

Powerfist

Cluster Mines

--145

Land Speeders (2 vehicles)

2x Multi-meltas

2x Heavy Flamers

--140

So what does each unit offer?

Games Workshop's Scout Bikes

Well the scouts provide me with infiltration and scout move denial (I am looking at you Grey Knights) along with the ability to pull off a first turn change and stun lock multiple tanks in one go. Also, if I have the unfortunate experience of having to go first, this unit does give me a viable threat before the rest of my army moves up. Because of that threat, my opponents will second guess forcing me to go first, because I generally don't like to in most tournament games. Finally, I can mine an objective or mine the terrain my TFC will be in to make it more resistant to assaults. This unit does give me loads of flexibility at the cost of reliable anti-tank and durability.

The speeders on the other hand provide me with flexibility. Being able to pursue and anti-tank role or an anti-infantry role is awesome. Currently my typhoons fit that role (in my opinion a bit better) but these are still adequate for achieving that objective. Also, they can be used in blocking, last turn objective contesting, and providing cover saves for my other speeders. Since I am losing some speeders, making up some of the lost flexibility is desirable.

But both units have a fatal flaw in my opinion and that is resiliency. The way the scout bikes are currently armed is for them to go wild and destroy something first turn. Or if I get second turn, go wild and destroy something later in the game. Either way I don't envision that unit surviving much longer then 1 or 2 turns on the table. The speeders are the same way. Typhoons have the ability to hang back and use terrain to block shots on them keeping them alive (assuming I can neutralize long range firepower quickly or roll cover saves). Tornadoes on the other hand do not have that luxury as they have to get in close to do their duty. This makes them very prone to everything.

So which unit do you think is better? Or do you have another idea? Let me know!

Post Mechanicon Part 1 of 2

2011-11-14T13:00:00.003-05:00

Originally posted on Khepri's Eternal Legion

A huge group of the Beltway Gamers decided to take the leap and head up to Mechanicon for the Warmachine events, and jonesing like a junky for a fix I signed up for the 40K GT event.

A few weeks passed and I realized days before the Mechanicon weekend I had not played a single game since The Battle for Blobs park!! With a busy work schedule and a couple personal projects keeping me busy I checked the rooster of scheduled events and found the Friday Night Fights Imperial Armour event, for $15 dollars I could get 3 games in, some great practice, and maybe win a Forge World event with my standard bike list…

Going to keep the Battle Reports short and sweet this time around…

Round 1 vs Space Wolves (Ted Nagel)
Deployment - Spearhead

Mission - Table Quarters

Secondary - VP

Bonus Points for all Elites alive (150)

My Space Marine Bike list vs Space Wolves Thunder Puppies + Bikers. Fun but unfair game, Ted was a great opponent but was limited by the mission terribly. I was able to control his movement with the TFC’s and won the day when his TWC unit ran off the board right after coming on from reserves.

Round 2 vs Space Marines / Vulkan (Lost name)
Deployment - Pitched Battle

Mission - Kill All HQ& Troops (no points for any alive…)

Secondary - VP

Bonus Points (None)

Hybrid Foot / Droppod list. Got given first turn so castled in a corner using storms for cover and bubble. This surprised my opponent and put him on the defensive. Turn 5 ended with Vulkan alive (1 wound) and one tactical squad member on the table, I had lost 5 models.. Mission ended as a draw… WTF?

Round 3 vs Tau (Paul, lost lastname)
Deployment – Pitched Battle (Night fight turn 1)

Mission - Double VP for all units fully wiped, normally otherwise.

Secondary - (None)

Bonus All troops left alive (150)

Modified Crisis Suit Spam list. Took first turn, spread out over the board. Forced him to limited movement or risk dangerous terrain tests with the crisis suits. Alpha strike from Scouts escorted Broadsides off the board, killed his Crisis Suit Commander turn two and the following rounds took down a hammer head before finally being killed. Scouts were MVP’s by far. Solid victory.

Ended with Solid performance from bikes, 3 great practice games. Took Best overall and Best Sportsmen

Guess what just got dropped off at my door?

2011-11-11T18:30:00.003-05:00

WWWWWOOOOOOOOOO!!!!! DICE!!! YEAH!!!

Just got these bad boys in today at 2:00 pm. The guys over at chessex told me it would be six weeks to finish them off and ship them out, but it was all finished and done in less then a month. Honestly, they look great. I am very impressed with the ivory dice. The burgundy ones in look a little more purplish in my opinion then the original picture, but eh whatever. I know you all will love them!

It is going to take me a few days in order to split them, package them, and ship them out (especially when I work all weekend...) but with that being said, they should hopefully be in the mail by Monday or Tuesday.

First wave of Egyptian Bases are in!!!

2011-11-11T12:57:00.002-05:00

Orinally posted on Khepri's Eternal Legion

Guys and Gals,

The first wave of bases are in! They look amazing (I am slightly biased of course)! I actually pre-sold enough of the 40mm bases that I only had 3 of the 11 styles left for photos (Terrible problem ‘eh?) but another waves of them are already in the mail to me.

My partner Jeff sent out a set of the first run to Matt at MiniWar Gaming and there is a rumor floating about that they are going to be using them for the in-house Necron army and we might get featured on their website!

Painted photos up this weekend for these guys.

And of course links to the auctions!
Base (Single) Listings

Bases (Multiple) Listings

Mention WhiteScars and get 15% off!

Food for Thought: Matt Ward

2011-11-09T13:34:00.002-05:00

Believe it or not, I do check other blogs and forums in order to analyze current and proposed trends in the warhammer 40k world and usually I am amused by the complete lack of common sense and internet rage that seems to exist in certain places. But a re-occurring theme which seems to have me baffled. Why do so many people "hate" Matt Ward?

A prime example is this article I found here on Warseer. I am sure there are many more examples and parodies available all over the place. This dislike has compounded even more with the release of the Necron codex and quite frankly it is stupid.

Personally, I don't get it.

Is it the fluff? If it is, there are plenty of examples of really bad fluff originating from the earlier years of the game. Likewise, I view fluff as mythology, so any extraordinary events can be explained away as oral tradition in the 40k world. Everything in the game that revolves around the storyline is telling a story that have developed over millions of years, so the stories change, get modified, get exaggerated, etc. I think it is what makes the game very interesting.

Is it the rules? Everyone claims that the Grey Knight codex is broken beyond all belief but it is not the only codex he has written. Likewise, Grey Knights might be all over the place, but they still are not winning major events like everyone predicted they would. Finally, Grey Knights really aren't that scary. They have nifty role defining abilities, but they are far from broken.

Is it just a bandwagon effect where people jump on to be "cool"? If I a had to make a guess this is probably the real answer. The people who are generally the most ignorant have the largest voices about things they don't like. Since they speak out the most, they have followers who emulate them in order to be perceived as cool. Really it is kinda sad.

At any rate, I want to hear what everyone thinks about this. Maybe you can logically explain it to me.

Really I am just looking for a logical explanation why everyone dislikes this man so much.

Various Pictures at Da Boyz

2011-11-04T01:54:00.000-04:00

Loot!

First round of the team event against Blood Angels


Second round of the team event against Space Wolves

Winning: The Toledo Tools!!!

The table after round two of the GT against Space Wolves

More pictures of the event are available here: