ELF!

Hey guys this ISN'T the run down of how I got on at the tournament, that will follow, this is a quike way to get this picture to adam while keeping the rest of the world informent about what is up next for me. Warhammer fantacy 8th edition is out on the 10th of july and I am finally going to start playing it. The plan is to build a high elf army for it and have some of it ready to play with before it comes out. So with out further delay, here is the first modle for the armt, a sea guard with spear and shield. This is basicaly the colour scheme i'm going with but I do still need to finish the basee

Welcome back. How goes it?

With just a fewhourstill the tournament and I thought I'd give a sneak preview of my list and some (but not all of my tactical idea's with them)

Hive tyrant

heavy venom cannon

lash whip and bone sword

hive commander

adrenal glands

acid blood

paroxysm

leach essence

2 tyrant guard

These guys are the hardcore combat unit in the list, marching up the table creating havoc and causing a big distraction while my stealers do the real work. I have also used then to bait a trap, if my enemy has a unit that wants to get up close to my tyrant (such as jonny's tripple deep striking storm troopers) I plan my tyrant's movement so when the enemy hits him the Ymgarl genestealers will be there to ambush them from hidding, and there is virtually nothing that can deal with both units at once.

8 Ymgarl Geanstealers

Love the special rules these guys have, there deployment is unique and they can charge the turn they arrive. Then when they charge they can mutate to suit the target. +1 to attack, stength or toughness.Toughness is good if you need to stall for half a turn to avoid being shot in the next shooting phase, strength is good where wounding is more important than getting through armour and attack when you really need to rend. I use them to suprise and ambush my opponent, or to support units in trouble.

2X 9 genestealers with a broodlord

I always out flank these guys, yes it may be a bit random but at least one usualy hitshome and kills most of what they get close to. They usualy die, but not untill they kill loads and cause massive disruption. If they are compleatly out of possition they can hold an objective, plus genestealers not moving will confuse people.

14 hormagaunts with toxin sacs

Thanks to hive commander these outflank. They cause more distraction and disruption thanactualt damage, but they can kill light troops thanks to way too many attacks and re-rolls. Don't forget there bounding leap which make them surprisingly fast and can catch people out.

16 termagants

Cheap and cherefull. Hold objectives, soak up casualies, give warriors a cover save, bulk out the army. Do I care if they die, only if they are the only option for holding an objective

4 warriors

Scything talons

deathspitters

One barbed strangler.

These are a jack of all trade, masters of non. They can hold objective, shoot stuff assult and most importantly they give synaps. They usualy stand behind the guants and advance or hold as neccessary to do what every I need doing, usualy in terainand or on objectives.

Tyrannofex.

Rupture cannon

Cluster spines

desicator lavae

He has a strength 10 assult 2 weapon. So he's an anti-tank unit. Nope. I want my opponent to THINK he is there to kill tanks so he will get targeted, where as in reality he is there to soak up fire and only takes out tanks if he gets lucky. He takes a lot orf fire to kill and by the time he is dead the rest of my army will get there, assult and kill. If he stays alive till the end he will find an objective and contest it. Trygon prime with adrenal glands

DO NOT have him deep strike into the midle of the enemy army. He is too scary and only has a 3+ save and will die before he does diddly squat. I put him near a flank of my opponents army androll that flank. This work particularly well if the bulk of the stealers hit the other flank leaving my oponent in a nid sandwitch with no where to run.The other thing he can do is come in to plug a hole in my synaps network. Once he servives the turn he arrives he charges the hardest thing in range and kills it with strength 7 Monsterous creature attacks.

Overall plan

The tyrant, guard, warriors, termaguants and tyrannofex deploy in the centre of the table close together making the most of terrain. The tyrant and the t-fex push forward and get to killing. The guants and warriors either hold or attack depending on the opponent and the mission. Then turn 2, just as my opponent thinks he has the upperhand. BANG! Most of my reserves arrive and smash there targets, disrupting what ever plann opponent has. Most good opponents will have some kind of game plan and this ambush really disrupts that and makes them have to rethink there plan, usualy without the unit(s) they were copunting on having. To finish off the big monster finish the killing and keeping the opponent occupied while the gaunts, warriors and possibly tealers depending on the situation run for objective and go to ground or hide to deny kill points.

This tactic has beening doing the busness in my practice games and I'm now winning more than I loose. Would have liked a few more practice games but I'm reasomably confident of doing reasonably well in the tournament tomorrow. Here's a pic of the whole army and I'll let you know how I get on.

quick update ( TRYGON )

Just a quick update (a much longer one will follow soon) to show where I'm at. It's been a busy month preping for the tournament, I've got another full brood of 'stealers painted including a broodloed but much more exciting is a fully magnetized trygon/trygon prime/mawloc. I've painted all the bits for him to be a trygon prime as that's what I'm running in the tornament and will add the other bits later. It was really tricky to get some of the smaller joints such as the tail magnetized and the jaw was really fidley but eventualy got both of them to snap fit without magnets after some cutting.

The end result is a easy to transport modle and more importantly I effectovely get three modles for the price of one, and at £30 a pop that is worth it.





That all folks. Hope to get some plans for tournament tactics up on thursday night

Tale of 4 gamers. Month 3

It is finished! Not the army, just the tyrannofex. Really chuffed with how he’s turned out, the paint scheme brings out the conversion while hiding the joints and keeping an organic feel. Plus he looks really menacing. Only used him one in a game so far, the game didn’t quite go to plan, I tried to out whit a drop pod marine army by reserving everything. Unfortunately everything arrived too late and it was a bit of an uphill struggle just too pull out a draw. As for the T-fex, well he immobilised and then later destroyed a Vindicator but didn’t have any time to do any more so really the jury is still out on him. Watch this space. Hopefully his toughness 6, 6 wounds, and 2+ save should give my army a much needed bit of resilience.

As for my other games recently, well, that’s why I need some added resilience to my army. I’ve been wiped out twice in the last two games by Adam’s pesky Dark Eldar under the command of Prince Jeremarkus, Archon of the Kabal of the Weeping thorn. The first game (one of the dark eldar missions from the battles book) was rather embracing, I went first and did ok blowing up a raider and getting the part of my force that started on the table into position to strike on turn 2. Alas, turn two was not to be. The murderous scum all disembarked in charge or rapid fire range and proceeded to decimate my army. Killing the gaunts with splinter fire was only the start. The archon and his incubi charged my tyrant and the warriors were charged by wytches. Both of my units under preformed and some bad save throws left me with nothing on the table. Ouch!!!!! The second game was better, my reserves actually arrived but the dark eldar are so fast that they were able to wipe one part of my force before moving on to destroy another. But all is not lost. I did redeem myself with a convincing win over jonny’s guard (Two- nil on objectives and the only models he had left were a medic and cornel shraken), plus I have a plan to deal with Adams dark eldar. Of course, I won’t be putting that up hear just yet cos he WILL read it and WILL come up with a way to deal with it (plus I have no idea if it will actually work).

Overall I’m really pleased with how the army is developing, it’s fun to play, look nice and I’m getting some reasonable result (I haven’t lost at 1000pts to anyone except Adam, though there have been a fair few draws ). There’s still a lot to learn, as with any new army, but I up for the challenges ahead. I started the force by just building what I likes/thought would work but a theme is starting to develop and I plan on expanding on it. I’m building the army to represent the force that attacked Ichar IV, when the many tendrils of hive fleet Kraken converged on this imperial hive world that had previously been the sight of a massive genestealer infestation. The imperium thought the infestation had been dealt with; when Kraken arrived they were proved wrong, very wrong.

So what we have is a powerful tyranid force (hive tyrant, tyrannofex and warriors) that attacks from the expected route, only for a force of genestealers (and possibly other out-flankers) to emerging from unexpected places. So my force fits nicely but to continue the theme I need at least another unit of ‘stealers to go with the other two I’ve already got. So that’s what I’ll be adding next.

I have also got wind of a tournament coming up at the start of June, 1750pts for gamers from Colchester, Chelmsford and South-end stores at warhammer world. I’m planning to bring my nids along; there play style is fun and all that out flanking will catch many people off guard. But for that I need 1750pts of nids and I have under 1500pts. So this month is going to be a big one for painting, as well as the genestealers I’m also going to add the biggest beastie in the codex; a tyrgon prime. He’s hard hitting, fairly resilient and adds to the alternative deployment style of the list but most importantly he gives synapse, and not slow walking synapse from my deployment zone, no, he will pop up right in the heart of the enemy to support my out flankers.

Any way got to go. So much to paint so little time.

Tale of four gamers. Kraken rising

Greetings reader(s). I’m guessing you’re here to see the latest of my conversions, painting and gaming. You have? Excellent! Well read on.

First things first, the tyrannofex is built. I did pretty much everything I said I would in the last blog so I’ve got the 6 legged, hunched over heavily armoured form that the fluff talks about. For the thorax swarm I went for devourers mounted on the front of the thorax near the head, with toxin sacs as ammo feeds. I had to mould some extra ribs onto the front of the thorax both to give extra size and accommodate the thorax swarm. Over all I’m pleased with how he’s turned out, it looks like it should do from the fluff and although it does look a bit carnifexy at first, a second glance will make it clear it is a tyrannofex. I’ve got some WIP shots bellow and will get some painted ones up when it’s done.

As for painting, well the Ymgarl genestealers are pretty much done just need some final work doing on the bases of some of them but I’ve also stuck up some pictures of the finished one. As you see I’ve gone for the more dramatically posed space hulk stealers as the base model to show them emerging from terrain as per there special rule and then given then tentacles in place of mouths. The fluffs shows then morphing different upgrades mid battle so I’ve modelled them with different options such as extended carapace, slashing claws (multiple scything talons on each arm!!!) and tentacle limbs (loads of green stuff) to show this. To further set these blood drinking, genetically unstable killing machines apart I’ve given them blue carapaces as they are not actually part of any known fleet and can also colour shift (if you confused read the fluff). I did the blue with an astronomican gray base coat and then an asurmen blue wash, Simples! They’ve done me proud in recent games emerging from nowhere to kill such things as chaos marines on an objective or inquisitor lord’s retinue with ease.

I’ll talk more about games at the end of the month but for now I’ll leave it as since my last blog I’ve played 4, won 3 (Vs Orks, Chaos and witch hunters) and drawn one (Imperial fist with Kantor, technically drew on objectives, but I was soooooo getting whopped on damage). Can’t really complain out that sort of results.

Got some more games later today hopefully and need to finish that tyrannofex.

Fair ye well.

tyrannofex plan

As those of you who were paying attention last week will remember I said I’d post my plans for a tyrannofex conversion up here soon. Well here we go.

I’m starting with a carnifex and using mostly just that kit to build it with the following list of changes.

-Sitting the sine bank carapace over the regular one to add bulk and show cluster spines.
-Breaking and pinning the rear legs then adding green stuff in the gap to make it more hunched over.
-Mounting a pair of modified stranglethorn cannons on the chest to show a rupture cannon
-Using Scything talons for the middle and front legs
-Bits of extra armour and green stuff in various places for effect.
-Something clever for thorax swarm (TBC)
-Stick it on a large oval base

Have already started some of the build and will have W.I.P. shots up soon.

Tale of 4 gamers Month TWO

So another month down and it’s been an interesting one; cool conversions, Adam changing his army and battle missions providing a whole new tactical challenge. Only finished 4 models this month; 1 warrior, 2 tyrant guard conversions and a broodlord for my unit of ‘stealers. I’ve already talked about my tyrant guard conversions in my last blog so I won’t bore you with the details, but I have put some photo’s of then fully painted below.

As I said Adam has changed his army. For various reasons he’s had to give his orkz a break for a while and has gone for the evil, malicious, cruel (not to mention fast and deadly if played correctly) Dark Eldar. See his blog for more details on that and his plan to torture and enslave his way across the galaxy.

For me this month has been more about gaming than modelling (at least in terms of what is finished enough to put up here). Been using some of my very unfinished Ymgarl genestealers to make my list up to 1000pts and had some very challenging games, particularly with the new battle missions. (Note that I’m not going to go into detail about test games at home that were extensively proxyed) I’ve had a couple of goes at the “infestation mission”, firstly against an imperial fists army lead by Pedro Kanto then against Adams heavily mechanised Dark eldar. The fists stole the initiative and massacre all my 32 gaunts in one turn thanks to his vindicator and sternguard. Thankfully my tyrant stunned his vindicator and my warriors tied up his sternguard long enough for my stealers to show up. Once they were there they chomped through most of his army and then the tyrant guard chased kantor off the table after he killed the tyrant in an assault. Nids one, biomass nil. Against the dark eldar thing didn’t go quite so well. Adams speed caught me out and killed my warriors early on with his archon and incubi. My stealers and tyrant did manage to hit back and kill them but then my tyrant died thanks to two perils of the warp in two turns. Although we technically didn’t finish the game it was clear that he would have won. Infestation is a fun mission but I think at 1000pts the armys (cirtainly my nids) are too small to have the flexability for battle missions. Finally I had a straight up annihilation against Jonny’s guard. A close fought game that thanks to cornel shraken and three squads of deepstriking storm troopers felt like an uphill struggle all the way. But I did manage to pull out a 7 / 7 draw.

What of the future? As I mentioned above I’ve already started work on some converted Ymgarl genestealer using the space hulk stealer models and loads of random bits and green stuff. Time and availability of certain hobby supplied have got the better of me this month, but rest assure that they will be included next time around. But they aren’t the biggest planned conversion for next month. That would be the TYRANNOFEX. Going to convert him out of a carnifex and have a general plan which I may divulge in another blog. Several reasons for including him. Firstly the rupture cannon gives me some much needed ranged anti tank, secondly six wounds 2+ save he will be able to shrug off loads of fire, which he needs to be able to do cos once the rupture cannon starts blowing stuff up he is going to attract a lot of attention, which is a good thing as all that fire bouncing off his armoured shell won’t be directed at more vulnerable parts of my swarm. Thirdly, my army is starting to get themed around the fluff on the battle of ichar IV fluff in the codex which speficaly mentions tyranofexes (along with loads of stealers) so he fits their nicely and finally, he should look awesome.

That all for now. Updates on themeing my army and tyrannofex plans will follow soon.