Come the Apocalypse

A couple of weeks ago I experienced the insanity and hilarity of my first Apocalypse game with the awesome guys of #WS10. The event was set on Port Maw and while I'll be focusing on my game, there were two others as well as the simultaneous games happening in America and Australia. All using the same scenario and the results of each battle were combined with the others to form a final result so not only was it a frantic and fast paced battle where a lot of things were blown up, it was also very important to achieve objectives and spend victory points wisely as the points earned in one battle can be the difference between victory and defeat for the whole scenario and the thought of letting down that many other players is quite... Motivating.

Triumphant Return

Why hello there! Yes I know, it's been a very long time and for that I apologise but I've had a lot of non-hobby related things going on recently so certain things have had to be pushed onto the back burner and in order to make time for my hobby, blogging is one of the things... I'd be lying if I said that things weren't still crazy but I'm managing them better than before.

I won't bore you with pages and pages (that comes later) but I will give you a quick overview of everything that has gone on with the promise of more in depth reviews later on.

The Return

Hello everyone, been a while. Real life; sometimes it's a real drag... Why can't we just be paid to sit at home and do what we love? Ok so maybe unemployment benefits aren't the way to go but still, a guy can dream. Be warned, this may turn into a long one and it'll be all words so if you want pretty pictures then you may want to pick another post as I've been off the blogging scene for a while.

Where to start... Ok so quite a few big things have happened to me recently in terms of the hobby and they both involve new armies so I guess that's where we'll start.

Never fear fellow Warp lovers, I'm not in any way, shape or form giving up on my Daemons or my CSM. They are still my favourite armies and they always will be so there will still be posts relating to them and my progress with those armies. That said, I am a bit of a traitor to the denizens of the Eye as my first new army is... Tyranids. Oh yes, the big bad bugs have invaded my hobby space (aka my bedroom) in a big way. Now why Tyranids I hear you cry? (Ok I don't but I can pretend you are so I am). Well as I sat down to paint yet another Black Legion marine I realised I'd had enough of them for a while and I needed some colour. I looked at my Daemons but recently inspiration has been lacking (I guess they're too busy waging war in the WHFB world to take the time to inspire me) and I did used to have some Tyranids (waaaaay back, many many years ago) so I decided to buy a Zoanthrope and the Hive Mind had it's talons into me.

The Plague Host

Edit: I started writing this about three weeks ago but forgot to publish... Oops.

Over the weekend (and the preceding week as I was off work for two days) I've been a rather busy little bee and not only started but also finished Typhus! I have to say that I'm so happy with him and how he turned out; in fact I surprised myself with just how well I managed to paint him (not to toot my own horn or anything).

Voila! One host of the Destroyer Hive.

I was going to paint him a while ago so I had done my usual paint scheme research already (moving house just screws everything up). What this meant was that I could start painting straight away. I chose the pre-heresy Death Guard scheme for two reasons. The first reason is a fluffy one in that that after being infested by the Destroyer Hive and becoming a mortal (ish) herald of Nurgle I very much doubt he'd have cared all too much about how his armour looks so it never made much sense to me that he would have re painted it. The second reason is that I saw a few pictures of both this model and the Forge World Typhon and thought that the Death Guard colour scheme was so much cooler than the green one.

To get the green trim I painted the whole model with Death World Forest. Then dry brushed with Elysian and Nurgling Green with copious amounts of Agrax Earthshade between layers.

Since this model there has been a lot of work done in terms of my hobby (and the rest of my life but this is about the hobby) including the beginnings of a new army... Which is something that anyone coming here from my Twitter links will already be aware of but for those of you who have stumbled onto my page it will be a mystery... Unless you stumbled onto a later post and then made your way back to this one. In which case you ruined the surprise. But anyway, hope you like Typhus!

Lord of Heresy

It has certainly been a very busy hobby weekend for me! I don't know where the inspiration came from but I'm just not questioning it as I've gotten so much done and I'm still in the mood for more (unfortunately real life intends to get in the way of my inspiration kick and I've got to resist the urge to book time off work.

To kick things off; voila! One Sorcerer of Tzeentch in Terminator Armour. In keeping with my green spot colour you'll notice that his staff is green and all the eyes are green too. The green of the staff was achieved with a little Waywatcher Green over silver (I wanted a noticeable but subtle colouring).

I'm actually most surprised with how the rock he's standing on turned out as I wasn't sure if I'd be able to make it match the Agrellan Earth I used for the base. It was quite simple to do; Baneblade Brown with an edge highlight and drybrushing with Flayed One Flesh. I was shocked myself when it worked first time.

While I'm loving the look of the cape/cloak/whatever I'm debating whether to repaint the fur. My original plan was to have it looking like a Fenrisian Wolf's fur but I don't think the effect is right. The idea behind this being to express the hatred between the Space Wolves and the Thousand Sons (according to my army fluff all of the Sons of the Cyclops were originally Thousand Sons) by proudly displaying a trophy from a battle but it's starting to look to me like he picked up a worn out rug and threw it on so that may be up for a repaint in future.

Everything else I've done on the model has been covered in other posts so I won't bore you with repetition but instead I'll just say that I've really enjoyed painting this guy and a lot of care went into him and this post has taken exactly the length of my commute to write. I'm off to a good start to the day I think.

The Birds and the Bees

The past few days have been pretty big for my hobby drive and to show for it I've got a few things to show you...

Oh yes ladies and gents, I finished the Heldrake and 10 Horrors! I'm also very near to completion with my Tzeentch sorcerer in Terminator Armour, started playing around with a few ideas for the Tzeentch Herald I don't like (I like the individual components I used to make him but I'm not keen on them all together), worked on an Abaddon conversion, fixed my Exalted Seeker Chariot (the clam pack Herald looks much better on that) and a few other bits too.

Starting with the Heldrake I think my favourite part of him is the wiring under his neck. Something clicked in my head this week and I knew exactly what I wanted to do with him and how he was going to look and this is the result.

I've been using green as a spot colour for my army and helping to tie my more colourful units into the army (i.e. My cultists. The issue I had was that the green on the Heldrake needed to look more functional than decorative and the yellow highlights I was using for the infantry, while effective, didn't create the right effect for me and so for this I decided to not use any yellow whatsoever but used Gauss Blaster Green instead and I'm very pleased with the result as it looks like some form of energy source.

I have a few plans for the base that may or may not require a hot glue gun but that's for another time I'm afraid.

These guys were looking like they might be a problem for me because of my mental block with them last time and this time I couldn't get motivated to paint them at all. The problem being that I don't enjoy painting that much pink. A little bit on a Slaanesh Chosen is fine but that much... I'm not a fan. I decided to shake it up a little and embrace change so I painted them blue and green which was obviously a good idea as I finished in around a week!!

I decided not to do my usual fire with these guys as I wanted to try something a little different. It was my main thought while I was painting the Horrors and I still hadn't come up with a solution when I'd finished everything else so I dug around in my head a little. I had originally planned to paint these Horrors in purple (can't quite remember how they ended up blue) so I decided to create a little homage to the original idea and have purple flames. 

Their feathers were actually inspired by a suggestion by @wilsongrahams on Twitter while I was painting a Tyranid Termagant (more on that another time) who suggested that I look through the Lizardmen army book for some colour scheme inspiration. While I didn't find anything in there I liked for my Tyranids I did quite like how the feathers were done so I went back through my pile o' White Dwarf magazines to the issue from the Lizardmen release and lo and behold there was a quick and easy way of doing the feathers in a way I liked. Basically they were base coated in Ceramite White, given a Lamenters Yellow glaze and then Waywatchers Green was applied in thin coats to create a blend effect. 

So there we have it. After posting this I plan to get some household stuff done (boring) and then crack on with my Tzeentch Terminator sorcerer. I just need to finish his gun and his staff and he's done (I may have gotten impatient and already based him...). So if all goes to plan then I may be powering through another chunk of my armies today.

The Silent War

I realise I've been rather quiet since 7th edition came in and that's because life has been getting in the way again. I have done some painting and played a few games which I'll summarise here.

My very first game of 7th was with the awesome guys at #WS10, specifically Liam and his Blood Angels. Naturally I went with a Daemon/CSM list that contained all four Greater Daemons and a total of 22 Mastery Levels. To cut a long (several hours long in fact) story short it was the least bloodthirsty game ever. First blood didn't get taken until Liam's second turn and that was the only full unit on my side to die. On his side I took one unit with my Great Unclean one.   That's it. Sure there was the odd model here and there but full squads? Just the two. Now it probably didn't help that we were constantly checking the rules for changes and we did get into a few tactics discussions along the way but even so I took 30 minutes for my first Psychic phase. I think the problem was that I tried to use all of my powers instead of picking and choosing the most relevant to each situation and also my experience with Summoning for Daemonology, while effective, was nowhere near as game breaking as the forums and YouTube videos had led me to believe. Cursed Earth was amazing and should be taken if possible. That +1 to Daemon Invulnerable saves was a life saver and it meant that nothing I summonned scattered. I also took a Tau tactic (gun line) and applied it to my Pink Horrors. I spread them across my  deployment and had them direct their powers practically everywhere on the board. I think that could have been very effective later on in the game as more enemies were on the board and is definitely something I'll try again.

My second battle was a test for my third as I needed to see what my half of the list could do (it was a doubles match). I've become renowned within #WS10 for my use of Daemons and Psykers and in all fairness I've definitely earned that reputation. As a result I decided to go with pure Chaos Space Marines and only took one Psyker (what? I can't completely ignore my playing style). In my test run I was tabled in turn 5 due to my own impatience and recklessness so all I had left on the table was my Helbrute and Abaddon. I have to say that Abaddon certainly proved he's worth the points as although he's only slightly above average in terms of shooting he REALLY shines in combat. In my test he single-handedly took down a 10 man unit of Chaos Space Marines (my opponent), a Rhino (unfortunately empty), an Obliterator and his Warlord who happened to be on a bike. In the doubles game he took a hull point from one tank and killed Coteaz in hand to hand (I deployed them so they had to foot slog) My Terminators on the other hand proved to be little more than expensive meat shields and I think I can probably get another bodyguard for a lot less points. Terminators are good but not the way I used them so for Abaddon's guard I'll try something else.

I have to say that I really enjoy 7th so far. Couple of niggling rules issues aside (mostly with how my Psykers generate powers) I think it's been really well put together and somehow seems to work better than 6th and I know at least a few of #WS10 feel the same way.

For now though I'll say goodbye and goodnight but I've got lots more to share over the next few days so please do stay tuned.

Nerdvana part 2

I didn't want to add all the pictures to the last post because let's face it, it's pretty long already. So now you get Nerdvana part 2 which (aside from this paragraph and the odd comment) will be almost entirely pictures from the day so enjoy! Oh, in the miniatures gallery I may be in a couple of the pictures too. Try not to enjoy those ones too much.

The fight against Stuart:

Most of my army started in reserve btw

Before the Skull Cannon fired...

After the Skull Cannon fired...

Soul Grinder go bye bye :(

Edit: I posted this last month but it didn't upload and I've only just noticed.

Nerdvana and the Great Game parts 3 and 4

I'm acutely aware that this post is really very late (the event happened over a month ago) but life has gotten in the way of anything even remotely fun and interesting so now I write my blogs on the commute to and from work. Well at least I do now that I'm no longer needing to power nap there and back.

So April 6th (told you it was overdue) saw the #WS10 gaming group descend on Warhammer World along with several other gaming groups from around the West Midlands for a huge play off. Originally intended to be an inter-group tournament, people on the teams being unable to make it meant that the teams would have been uneven and the event turned into an almost free play against anyone available which ended up being a lot of fun. I was able to play a grudge match against Stuart's Astra Militarum (under the 5th edition codex as the new one wasn't released) and then played against someone totally new who used the mortal enemy of any daemon: Grey Knights. 

Before I get into the details of the matches I have to say that I was both impressed and a little underwhelmed by by the place at the same time. I'll get the negatives out of the way first because there aren't that many; firstly I always thought the place was bigger (still pretty big but much like my models I always thought it would be bigger, maybe I have a thing about size) and secondly I did expect the shop to have things the normal shops don't have what with it being in the middle of the production centre. Probably a good thing though as I'd have spent far too much money. So now the negative thoughts are out of the way, time for the positives!!! Even if I expected it to be bigger the place was still pretty damn big. The gaming hall had so many tables in it it's almost unbelievable and once we got there and the day progressed I was surprised to see that there were still available tables considering how many people there were in the gaming hall. 

Another awesome feature of Warhammer World was the miniatures gallery which is basically a room with the walls lined with display cases that are (usually) filled with all the minis in the GW range. I'll include some pictures of this a little later but I should warn you that I just took pictures of the models I liked so there's certainly nothing of the Imperium in there (though it's been so long I can't actually remember exactly what I snapped besides the obvious). 

The whole point of the trip though was the battling and boy did I battle! The first match I played was against Stuart and his Imperial Guard/Astra Militarum. As with our first match we decided to forget objectives and funky deployment zones and just decided to smack each other around to see who can kill the most stuff. I much prefer that to counting victory points and holding objectives as it's far more pleasing to Khorne. Now I know I should give a blow by blow here of what happened in each turn but it was over a month ago and I've been to bed since then so instead I'll do Stu a favour and link you to his pretty awesome report of our battle (you're welcome dude). http://listenupmaggots.wordpress.com/2014/04/21/ws10gamings-visit-to-warhammer-world/

Just as a quick summary though, the first turn saw me keep a decent percentage of my forces in reserve so what was on the board did get smacked pretty hard. Oh I should say that my list for this was quite experimental as I chose units that a) I've never played before and b) don't get played often in the YouTube videos I watched (and I watched a lot). I borrowed a Soul Grinder from Nick (cheers dude!!), I used Daemonettes, my Skull Cannon and switched back to my good old Great Unclean One. I don't care if he stinks like a slaughterhouse in the middle of a hot summers day, I love that little rotting pus sack. Even without Iron Arm he was still stupidly hard to wound (love it). My Skull Cannon was fantastic and wiped out a whole unit on it's own in one hit which was awesome. The Soul Grinder was pretty damn cool too so I'll be looking at getting me one of those I think and even my Thousand Sons were pretty awesome; they holed up in a building and what couldn't be reached with a Bolter got blasted by psychic powers which was then backed up with the Pink Horrors. So much psychic death!! My Heldrake and Daemon Prince worked together to vector strike many many units and my Daemonettes with their Herald (wielding a lash of torment) glanced a chimaera to death and then charged the surviving crew. The Warp Storm Table as always provided some support which was pretty cool and I realised that I dislike plasma weapons immensely as I didn't get a single shot off with my plasma gun on my CSMs. Oh yeah, the score for my Daemons v Stu's AM currently stands at 2-0 to me. 

My second match of the day was against the dreaded Grey Knights. Now I could have refused to play and I was given the choice but I wanted to play to see what I could do after warming up against Stu. Now before I go into this, I must remind you that my list was very experimental without much real thought about taking on more competitive lists and the list I took on was very much tailored to a tournament style of play. I was more concerned with learning the capabilities of my units than with playing to kill but even so I don't think the game was that much of a crushing defeat and in fact I walked away from that table with my head held high and I learned a lot about my own units in the process. For starters I learned just how truly devastating the Skull Cannon can be after it managed to scatter and struck my Daemonettes and Herald which inevitably killed the entire unit just before they could charge anything. :( *sigh*. I guess Khorne's hatred for Slaanesh won out over killing a blob of Grey Knights. I got them eventually with my Heldrake which performed admirably and killed something each turn from the moment it flew on the table in turn 2 to the moment it finally got blown up in turn 4. My Thousand Sons weathered a lot of firepower as well, though my Aspiring Sorcerer did fall prey to one of those psychic missile things from his flier. Which he had two of but kept one for anti air and one for anti infantry. He had two dread knights too and my soul grinder took one on and while it did get blown to bits it had done enough damage to take the knight down with him. Not ideal as I still had two fliers to deal with but I was pleased that he was one evil hard to kill thing down. My Horrors did reasonably well too considering that Grey Knights have a nasty habit of denying the witch a lot and they took out a few models too. In the end though I did get completely hammered when he trapped me in a corner with nothing but two units of Horrors and their accompanying Herald. No amount of Divination and Warp Storm was going to win it when it got to that point but I waited until the very end so as not to deny my opponent the sweet joys of totally tabling me. Which he did.

This game taught me more about what my units are capable of than my victory did as I saw what happens when Daemons are overwhelmed and what a single mistake can cost in terms of winning and losing. The first mistake I made in that respect was that in the turn that my Great Unclean One hit the board I should have deployed the Portalglyph but I forgot and almost lost the opportunity to do so in the assault phase.  Another such mistake was that I constantly forgot to cast prescience on my Horrors so while I did get an extra dice worth of shots I think I would have done more damage overall with re rolling failed hits. I also learned that the Daemons are horribly susceptible to the weapons that the Grey Knights have as my Daemon Prince and Plague Bearers discovered when they were wiped out all too quickly. My Thousand Sons again held up quite well but in turn 4 they got in the way of a charge and were killed outright with a multiple charge. I'd seen those in the videos online but it was interesting to see how it works in practice, even if it was against my beautiful Daemons.

Of course with the new edition coming out and the new psychic phase (which I've already talked about) and the new Unbound army concept I'm pretty sure that the way I play is going to change and that most of my learning and experimenting will go out of the window while I figure out my style. I imagine I'll stay Psyker heavy but who knows? I guess we'll find out...

Edit: I've found some images of my battle with Stuart so I'll post those soon :)

Hel Rising Pt 3

Welcome back to the final part of my three part look at the new (well not so much now but hair splitting much?) Helbrute dataslate. In the first part we looked at the rather versatile Helcult and the potentially devastating Mayhem Pack came in the second part which leaves this part to be dedicated to the Helfist Murderpack. Let's just ignore the name, it's not great but the formation is pretty funky as we'll see.

Age of the Psyker

I'm aware that a few of you may be waiting for the third part of my Helbrute series (which I will finish soon I promise) but I have to report my thoughts on the new Psychic Phase that has been confirmed as an addition to the game we love. I'm aware this is probably old news to most of you but I guess you could call this an editorial on the subject.

Hel Rising pt 2

It has taken me a while but here I am bringing you part two of my three part analysis of the Helbrute dataslate and there's also my recent hobby escapades to revel in but that's all for another time. The focus of this post is the Mayhem Pack which consists of three Helbrutes and while that just seems like a pointless waste of time (I know Helbrutes on their own aren't the most amazing of units) read on and we'll discover together why they become pretty damned awesome.

Hel Rising Pt1

Today sees the release of Dataslate: Helbrutes and while I don't really do reviews as such I felt like I had to look into this one as it directly affects one of my favourite models in my CSM army. For the record, ONE OF my favourite MODELS. Not units as they weren't really usable up until today but I loved the Dark Vengeance model and I love the new multi-part kit.

The Great Game Pt 2

Well it's over a week late but here it is anyway. On the 7th (which was my birthday by the way) I went back to see the #WS10 warmongers for an evening of fun and warmongering. Now last time I posted about these guys I realise I forgot to say who they are so here is the list;

Nathan (@NinjaNathUK)

Adam (@geekphotoguy) who took all the photos you'll see in this post

Pete (@Petehumpage) who is also the host of the war council lol

Nigel (@NigelSBartlett)

Stuart (@CaptainHelvetos)

Graham (@wilsongrahams)

Nick (@Slaaneshfiend) The man that introduced me to the rest of the guys

Mark aka Sponge (@79sponge)

The Rubric Effect

It has once again been a while but I've started a new job so getting used to that has been a bit of a struggle as well as having to deal with everything else but I have managed to do some painting! I've managed to finish a basic five man squad of Thousand Sons which, in the spirit of my Black Legion Company dream, have been painted to match my Sons of the Cyclops scheme. I said it when I painted the Sorcerer and I'll say it again here; I do really love this colour scheme. The reason for this is that not only is it very different to how most people paint their Thousand Sons but also the black armour allows for the blue and gold to really pop as spot colours. 

Fighting the Good Fight

Tonight marked a very special occasion for me in that I finally got to test out my strategic and tactical abilities on a battlefield against an opponent that wasn't me and what made it so fantastic was that I won!

My list tonight was just 700 points so pretty basic and consisted of:

HQ

A Great Unclean One: lv1 Psyker (got Iron Arm), no upgrades

A Herald of Khorne (no upgrades)

A Herald of Tzeentch: lv3 Psyker, Locus of Conjuration

Elites

3x Bloodcrushers

Troops

10x Pink Horrors: lv1 Psyker

10x Bloodletters

The Great Game

In anticipation of upcoming battles I decided to test out what my units can do and while I was limited by time I managed a few tests with my 4 Heralds.

Working the Forge of Souls

It has certainly been a while since my last post (again) but there's a reason for that which is that I've been very focused on my painting. This focus has meant that since deciding my New Year's Resolution to paint a unit a week I've actually been able to do it so yay me.

This boost in my progress means that I've got plenty to show you and I'll start by showing my Blue Scribes kit bash which was more of a pillaging of the leftover bits and pieces from the Burning Chariot kit. Without further ado...

We Could be Legion... Maybe

With my new Heldrake to do I realised just before New Years Eve that I've fallen into the exact trap that I said that I wouldn't fall into many posts ago; I swore I wouldn't start one project until I'd finished whatever I was working on a and now I have more unpainted than painted. Oops. How do I plan to remedy this I hear you ask? Well I'm going to shame myself into getting on with things by listing all the things I've got to do. I'm then going to go on and decide which projects I can do now and which projects require things I don't yet have which will then lead into another list (yes I like lists) of things I need to finish what I have so no I'm not saying I can't buy anything new but the only things I will buy are things to help me finish what I have so tools and paint mainly.

The project list is as follows:

1x Heldrake

5x Thousand Sons

6x Khorne Berzerkers

16x Cultists

1x Rhino

30x Chaos Space Marines

5x possessed marines

2x Chosen

1x Abaddon the Despoiler

1x Be'lakor

2x Plague Drones (+1 repair job)

2x Bloodcrushers (+3 riders)

4x Seekers of Slaanesh

1x Herald of Tzeentch

1x Herald of Slaanesh

3x Beasts of Nurgle

1x Blue Scribes kit bash

I'm also incredibly tempted by the new Tyranid models because they are awesome plus the Dark Elves are cool and if the rumour mill is correct then the Wood Elves are due an update and I do love the Dryads... Must... Exercise... Restraint...

Edit (7/1/14): I have now added the stripping and painting of 30 Tau Fire Warriors, 1 shield drone, 1 marker drones, 2 gun drones and an Ethereal to this list because I was weak and scored a bargain on eBay. All that for just over £15!