Hobby Forge

So, the cogs are whirring, bellows are pumping and an infernal heat is being created in my hobby room.

I've gone and gotten hobby black lung I think, 3 weeks of assembling OnG.

It's also come to my attention that I've never actually posted a picture of my Eldar as an army.







I'll be having another game with the Eldar tomorrow; probably going to get some serious playing around with a new 1750 configuration; no seer council. Oh the humanity. I'll take Eldrad and Banshee's instead, because they are awesome.

Onwards and upwards!

Oh noes, Fantasy Orc invasion

I've been slightly waylaid by a massive amount of Orcs and Goblins since the new release of Warhammer Fantasy 8th Edition.

Here's some pictures of the task I've currently gotten myself into. This doesn't include the 3 Battle for Skull Pass Night Goblins I've also put together.

Yeah.

Grimgor iz da best. Currently I'm in the middle of assembling everything; I went with a horde army to mix it up a little - Eldar don't play anything like Orcs, Eldar being a finesse army, and Orcs and Goblins being a more of a sneaky smash you in the face.

Anyhow; I'm considering some options for my Eldar; Gunboat Serpents didn't really cut the mustard, and I'm very surprised. On paper they are amazing. Might just stick with the tried and tested TL Scatter Lasers.

Oh yes, long story short, there will probably be some Orc and Goblin stuff popping up here from time to time.

Games for the Game God

Victory for the Victory Throne!

Played 2 games today; one at 2500, another at 2000 both against Space Wolves. One Victory at 2500, one loss 7-5 kill points. Trying out a few new things, namely Warp Spiders, and getting familiar with old things - Eldrad, Dire Avengers and Banshees.

As always the Banshee's never fail to perform. Infact they probably tend to over perform. I was running them in squads of 10, though I can see why people run them in squads of 8. Doom makes them awesome.

The only reason why I ran shee's over Harlies is because Harlies #1; can't but a dedicated transport. (Night Spinner is pretty aite) and #2, they are more expensive.

Shees are trading an extra attack, which may not seem like a lot, and even though with Doom, Rending and wounds against T4 models, the consistent power weapon attacks seems to really help.

I was considering dropping the Night Spinner for some Reapers, but that would remove the fluff from the Army. At 2500, 7 tanks, 4 gunboat serpents; 2 Fire Prisms; 1 Night Spinner. Quite frankly I'm not too impressed with gunboat serpents. On paper they seem to be pretty alright. In the field, they should be good, but I can't help but feel underwhelmed by them.

The Night Spinner is the same. Though; the dangerous terrain tests are nice to knock off a couple of models, as is the rending. Since Doom specifically lets you reroll *any* wound roll.

Eldrad; as expected was fantastic. I forgot how good he was thanks to always running a seer council. In the 2500 point game, I took an Autarch over a second Farseer. Autarch came on from reserve attached to a 3 man bike squad and charged into combat.

Long story short, the whole squad copped instant death and died on the turn they arrived.

Ah well.

In other news; don't take gambles :v. It cost me the 2000 point game; it was tied for KP's. 5-5. He had a single wolf priest with 1 wound left; pouring all kinds of fire into his squad had killed the rest.

I charged him with 6 bikes and 2 Warp Spiders - Normally for any Marine that would be the end of it.

Nup.

Out of all the hits and wounds; 1 wound was made, and it was saved.

Wolf Lord proceeded to flatten the spiders and the bikes fled off the table.

Cool lost 2 Kill points, and the game ended.

Reflection;

fffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffff.

Oh yeeeaaah

I plan on contrasting the sword more, and I've redone the cape, since I don't think a starscape looked good, even after a fair bit of experimentation.

More Eldrad!

Work and Uni have kept me busy, so progress on Eldrad has been really slow.

Not that I'm in a rush anyway; but I'll have to get cracking if I want to paint up Grimgor Ironhide too.

Some more of Eldrad

Slowly painting him up, I can see this taking a better part of a fortnight non stop painting, and more since I'm back at uni as of Monday.

Then again, it doesn't have to be done by October so I'm in no rush.

I've also been toying with the idea of running some Reapers and Banshees in conjunction with 2 Spinners, Eldrad and a Seer council in 1750. Might be a tight fight, but it could fit. If not I'll drop the reapers and save on some points. I'm just worried I may be trading off long range AT.

Eldrad, he is totally rad.

WIP of Eldrad I'm working on.

The idea is that it will be a GD entry this year, but I'll have to wait until he is complete to really pass judgment on whether he is worthy or not.

Something I think I'll work on is his Sash, I might darken the recesses again to really make it pop.

I also chose Eldrad over any other model just because 1; hes bad arse on the tabletop. Sure he might be a little bit expensive, but comparatively and for what he does, he cannot be beat. The ability to use a second power is fantastic. He can do the job of 2 Farseers for the price of one.

Anyway, back onto delicious hobby goodness. I'm pretty happy with the robe, though I'm afraid it may look too stark, however Eldary. Another one is the Wraithbone on his chest, which I am afraid may not have enough contrast. Things like this won't be apparrent until the model is mostly completed however.

I used a mix of Black + Shadow Grey with increments of Shadow gray and then Space Wolfs Grey for his robe, slowly building up colour, the wraithbone was a bit more simple with Tau Sept Ochre and Bleached Bone and adding white.

The cloak was the same deal, with Liche and Warlock Purple being blended up and then adding white to the mix to really make it pop. For the back of the cloak I'm considering using a similar design from the Celestial Wizard from the Heavy Metal Empire Wizard challenge, though probably not so much for stars but more a purple blue backdrop with some colour.

Lords of Terra

First off, an apology. I know I said that I'd be keeping this up to date during my holidays, but time just disappeared.

A combination of a new job and getting ready for Lords vacuumed up all
the time.


This weekend, I had the great pleasure of participating in the third annual Lords of Terra tournament. Lords of Terra as some of you may know is an invitational event with invites going to the top players in Australia, though there is also an open category.

I had an awesome time there, every game I had was an absolute blast. Best tournament ever, though it was my first tournament.

I would rather not go into great detail of the games that I won as I think it would be against the spirit of the tournament that I experienced, however I did finish within the top 10.

A big thing that I would like to highlight are soft scoring in a tournament. I believe that these are probably the best addition to any tournament, despite the cheese-bearding about them on the internet.

In my opinion, soft scoring brings out the best in players, in firstly giving yourself incentive to challenge yourself with not using an easymode instagibbing list. They also encourage a more friendly and positive approach to the tournament.

I definitely recommend that everyone tries a tournament with a high percentage of soft scores atleast once, as they definitely in my opinion to an excellent tournament and tournament environment.

Slowly but surely!

I'm finally on holidays.

I've set myself a massive painting queue so far, the top of which are some Shining Spears and an Autarch on Jetbike with Laser Lance.

Instead of going with the red of my Saim Hann, I think I'll break it up with dark blue bikes, along the lines of the Night Lords. Probably have a red stripe or a Black / Bright blue stripe, that remains to be seen.

Either way, a continuous stream of updates should now proceed as I have plenty of hobby to photograph.

In other news I have dropped my Seer Council from my 1750pt list and replaced it with Shining Spears + Autarch, followed by a footseer casting Fortune from a Falcon.

I lose out on Destructors and WS5, but I have I5 and S6 PW attacks with Withdraw.

Hobby plan for July

Hey guys,

Sorry for no update earlier in the week, I'm in the middle of exams and I've got a cold. Not a good mix, let me tell you.

Regardless, I've been planning on what hobby I plan to do during my time off from Uni. The list is somewhat substantial and includes practically everything left to paint in my 1750 Lords of Terra list.

This includes;

1 Farseer on Jetbike
1 Wave Serpent with TL Cannons
1 6 man squad of Fire Dragons
1 5 Man squad of Dire Avengers
5 Objectives
2 Warlocks on bike
6 Guardian Jetbikes

Not too much, but I can definitely see this taking some time throughout July. I definitely plan to take the time to make sure everything will, as usual, challenge myself as a painter to achieve the best results.

I'm also considering taking Shining Spears over a Seer Council, and throwing in an Autarch. PWs with withdraw, they still have the saves of a Seer Council with Fortune, except that when the Farseer is fortuning them, he can't turbo boost. I'm considering, that if I make this change I'll be taking the Farseer on foot, and stick him in a DAVU Falcon and see how that goes.

Now I've just got to figure what to drop in exchange for the points, as the Autarch is an extra hundred points 30 odd points over the difference provided by dropping the seer council. He adds a lot to their effectiveness however.

Expanding my Blogroll

So guys, as you can see I've recently stepped into the larger blog network. I'm asking if anyone would like to see their blog included in my blogroll, please leave your blog URL and name in a comment at the end of this post. I'd also appreciate if you could include this blog into your blogroll too.

Cheers.

10K point Apocalypse Game, Eldar + Guard + 'Crons vs Emperor's Children

I had the great pleasure to play in a 10k Apocalypse game the other day.

I had ~5700 points of Eldar, paired up with another fellow who was fielding 2.5k ea of Crons and Guard.

Our opponent was fielding 10000 points on his own, of Followers of She who Thirsts. It was fantastic.

I was running a real fluffy Saim Hann list, Mech Eldar and Jetseer, with a small contingent of extras / outriders.

Our table size was 12x6ft. ie 3 normal tables.

Unfortunately of all the days for my Camera to not work, it chose that day, so unfortunately there are no pictures :(.

The Strategic Assets we chose were Blind Barrage and Recon. The Chaos Strategic Assets were Flank March and Disruptor Beacon.

The formations I took were;
The new WD Saim Hann Doom Serpent Squadron, giving me a S D hit, Infiltrate on some Prisms and Vypers and Stealth.
Wind Rider Host - giving Flank March and Strategic Redeployment
Aspect Assault Wave - S7 Energy fields baby!

The only non formation units I took were some Shining Spears, Dark Reapers, Harlequins, Falcon and Rangers. Though they were all explained fluffily except for the Spears and Falcon, which really needed no explanation. The Harlequins were there to combat the great enemy, Rangers being eyes for the Saim Hann Warhost and the Dark Reapers had been maneuvered into advantageous positions.

We started at 8, giving us an hour for deployment and finished at 5. 8 Hours of nonstop carnage. It took roughly an hour a turn, and up until turn 4 it was an extremely close game with kills being matched for kills, squad by squad in an never ending dance of counter attacks, assaults and revenge.

The Chaos force was divided into two 'wings' - Mechanized and Deep striking units in one - Daemons, Raptors, a small Nightlord Contingent. The other was a ton of Noise Marines and Havocs that didn't have Transports purchased for them.

The Necrons and Guard were a mix of Tanks for the Guard, Russ, Chimeras and Valks. The Necrons was Destroyer and Lords, backed by 3 Monoliths.

As I mentioned, the game was absolute carnage, turn 3 and 4, once everything was on the table was an absolute shit storm.

It ended turn 4, with strategic redeployment and some dickery 'Cron teleporting 3:1 objectives. Victory for the Saim Hann!

So; long story short, what would I do differently next time?

Not play Apocalypse in a store, just because playing to a time limit definitely limits the potential factor for fun.

Highly Mobile Armies are a must, just considering the vast distances that may need to be crossed.

Definitely play somewhere you can crash for the night if playing a larger game, to get the full potential of the game.

House rules and objectives (such as +1 shots to units within 48) can make the game that much more ridiculous.

Definitely next time I'll be playing around the 6k mark a side I think though.

Shining Spears vs Banshees

Recently I was able to use both Spears and Shees in a game for the first time in a very long time for the shees, and first time ever for the Spears.

In a nut shell, colour me impressed with spears and Autarch, though the Autarch is crazy on his own with it. With Withdraw he really shines.

Spears while expensive, compared to banshees without doom, they are utterly insane. Shees with Doom will cut swathes through any unit too. It is hard to say which is better / preferable as they both fulfill a similar / the same role, just differently.

On one hand, the shees have the model count and the sheer # of PW attacks. They also have Fleet and are generally mounted for added protection. Their threat range is slightly dependent and slower than the spears however. They are also more susceptible to shooting attacks due to their lower toughness once they are outside of their transport.

Spears on the other hand have a massive threat range, are slightly less susceptible to shooting as the turn they aren't moving into assault have a 3+ cover save, or are out of LOS. They can essentially be the same as a small squad of Marines.

Spears also have great synergy with a tarpit unit like the Seer council with Withdraw, being able to withdraw and move behind cover and charge again. The Shees however can remain in combat but suffer from the lack of Doom, relying on the Executioner to give the guaranteed wounds.

Being S3 is the major letdown for the Banshees, while the Shining Spears need to be constantly charging to be of any use.

That said, both of them together running behind a Seer Council, oh boy. Cut swathes through MEQs.

2500 Game 2/6/2010, Saim Hann VS Iron Warriors

So I had a friendly game today against a friend who I haven't had the pleasure of playing before. It was 2500 points. I'll get a copy of his list tomorrow when I see him again.

I ran with some new things since I had the points to spare - namely 10 'shees and Exarch with executioner, Shining Spears + Exarch w/ Withdraw + Autarch.

I was really surprised and flabbergasted at the 'killy' of the banshees and spears.

I took serious casualties on them during their first assaults due to them completely annihilating whatever they charged and being left open to a turn of shooting and counter charging. Regardless they made their points back, if only just.

The game played was Capture and Control, Spearhead deployment. The game unfortunately ended in a Draw - With both of us having troops his objective, and I only had the Elites to contest my own objective.

It came down to VPs, and the difference was <10% too.

All in all it was a very close game throughout the six turns it went over. Turn for turn, kills were matched point wise via counter assaults and shooting.

Apologies for no Battle report, I have a bad memory, I can only remember movements :(.

What did I learn from this game? Don't ever under-estimate a units potential, especially one which is your own.

What else did I learn? Written and video references work a treat for battle reporting. I should fine a venue which allows for Video captures :d

My list was;

Farseer
Runes of Warding
Runes of Witnessing
Spirit Stones
Fortune
Doom
Eldar Jetbike

Warlocks
5 x Warlocks
3 x Destructor
1 x Enhance
1 x Embolden
Eldar Jetbikes
(Seer council)

Autarch
Laser Lance
Eldar Jetbike
Mandiblasters
(Attached to the Shining Spears)

Shining Spears
Exarch
Withdraw

Banshee Squad
10 Banshees
Exarch
Executioner

Wave Serpent
TL Shuriken Cannons
Spirit Stones

Fire Dragons
6 Fire Dragons


Wave Serpent
TL Missile Launchers
Shuriken Cannon
Spirit Stones

Fire Dragons
6 Fire Dragons


Wave Serpent
TL Missile Launchers
Shuriken Cannon
Spirit Stones

Guardian Jetbike Squadron
6 Guardian Jetbikes
2 Shuriken Cannons

Guardian Jetbike Squadron
6 Guardian Jetbikes
2 Shuriken Cannons

Guardian Jetbike Squadron
6 Guardian Jetbikes
2 Shuriken Cannons

Dire Avengers
5 Dire Avengers

Falcon
Missile Launcher
Holo-fields
Stones

Fire Prism

Fire Prism

WIP; New Farseer / Autarch on Bike 2

Here are the pics of the completed Farseer / Autarch on Bike.

Pretty happy with the way it came out, given me a lot of insight for the next one, if I do one. Most notably, more tools! What I wouldn't have done for a protractor, steel ruler and some kind of model spirit level.

All in all I'm rather pleased with it. One of the shuriken catapults is not in line with its counterpart, but not noticeably when the canopy is on.

At the bottom are two pictures of my current Farseer on bike. I've got to get a different camera, even with shots being in-focus either detail is missed or it ends up slightly blurry.

Games this week.

So far this week, I have myself lined up for 2500 on Wednesday, 1750 Thursday and 10,000 on Friday.

Packed week.

Since it is at a GW, I don't think I can take pictures, but I'll do my best to provide pretty illustrations of some variety.

This will be a good opportunity to get some Battle Reporting practice in, so yeah - stay tuned. I know I've got a terrible memory, so I'll be writing things down for even more accurate goodness!

In other news the Autarch Farseer is progressing nicely, almost finished, some sanding to do. I'll probably paint him as the last model in my 1750 list for Lords however, just as I have other things to paint, and I have one to already done.

WIP; New Farseer / Autarch on Bike

Another weekend has passed, another opportunity got Hobby.

I've been working on this guy for most of the weekend, slowly getting him done and put together in my time. He will be replacing my Farseer hopefully, though said said, I am still very pleased with my current Farseer on bike, hes just starting to get a bit worn and torn from his rigorous tabletop attitude of trying and deliberately failing dangerous terrain tests.

Anyway, this model will also be filling in for an Autarch with PW when I need one in my seer council, as both my Autarch models have Lances, just because lances are sweet lookin'.

I've used a kit-bash from about 5 kits, thank god for bits boxes.

Bike and Torso and Left arm are from the Shining Spears kit - two boxes gave me a spare bike and Exarch (max in a squad is 5).

Sword arm is from the Autarch on bike box, awesome box - some of the stuff in it is sweet, however fiddly.

The robes for the legs and cape are from the High Elf Mounted Mage kit.

And of course the obligatory WIP shots. Still parts to be worked on, most notably the rider himself.









Here is an unfortunately slightly blurry old picture of my current Farseer and part of the Seer Council.

As I've said there's still work to be done, especially on the robes and sanding some greenstuff down.

Seer and Spear Council

So I have an Autarch with Lance on bike. The model is really sweet, though I didn't put those back banners on as they are cool bits to have ;).

I also picked up 2 boxes of Shining Spears.

So, I'm playing around with the idea of running a 'dual council'. Unfortunately the Spear Council is from memory 235, not including the Autarch. That totals just over 300 points for the secondary council. The trade off is making the seer council either 10, or having a soft super counter assault unit.

4 more warlocks are 12 extra attacks, plus 4 more heavy flamers. Whereas the spear council is 18 attacks of S6 PWs and +1 reserves.

They are very vulnerable to shooting unfortunately, unlike the seer council, where it takes multiple shots to start knocking them down.

I might keep it to large games where the option to run a 10 man Seer council and 5 spears is viable. Perhaps 2250-2500.

Tips and tricks for painting

While I apply these to Eldar, they are applicable to other armies, very easily. I'm sure many of you already know about these, or already do them.

There is a short list of things which you can do to really make your painting pop. Whether you choose to do so on all of your models, some of, or none is entirely your choice. Personally I tend to implement these on leader models, such as Exarchs, Farseers, Warlocks and Autarchs etc.

Something I'd like to cover first are eyes.

I know many people have trouble with just getting the paint neatly into the eye socket without it going everywhere. I did too. The easiest way I've found to do eyes is with a watered down paint into the socket.

First off, once that dries, it won't look any different, maybe a little bit neater. This brings to bear another technique that is common on higher painting circles, such as Golden Demon. This technique is Black Lining.

So you get the eye, and with some very watered down black paint with some wash (I use about 2:1:1 Water to paint, and wash. There is no ideal uniform ratio for any paint consistency, it just depends on your paints and you.) and you'll want to get it within the recesses. Try to not get this part onto the 'body' of the eye as it can lead to inconsistency in the colour spread of the eyes.

Finally, outside the eye socket you cab highlight the outer rim of the eye socket to the brightest colour that you have on the face.

WIP Wave Serpent.

I've been working on this for the last few days. Playing around with Freehand.

You'll notice from the pics there was a dragon. He looked silly. I called him Gary.

Gary looked out of place, so Gary is gone now.

I replaced him with lots of scales. Forget ever doing that again, and if I do, they will not be the same colour as the tank.

Got some valuable practice on techniques and colours I'm not really familiar with on this. Experimentation is key!















The finished result (Turret needs to be primed, but its been really wet around here)



The thing I'm probably happiest with is the Energy Fields on the left Wing, and the gems. The eyes came out nice, that is about it really.

I actually can't wait to start on the next one, but until this rain lets up I'll be drilling slate, for my other dragons. Woohoo.

Some more pictures

Today I've got some pics of my jetbike squads and fire prisms. This should hopefully give more examples of freehand. Yay for crazy amounts of freehand being acceptable on Eldar.



Jetbikes




First Prism


This is one jetbike squad and one prism, I'll have the other prism up tomorrow some time.

The Prisms came first, and where I tested out new techniques for flames and lightening. The prisms were really the first play I tried pushing my freehand, steering away from 2d single colour things. I think the freehand on the bikes came out nice, though probably could use some cleaning up on the serpents.

Some pictures of the army.

I'll get some more photos up in due course.

Anyway, apologies for the sometimes poor quality, I can't work the camera properly.

Here are some of the pictures of the Eldar I've painted so far. It's probably about a third of the total amount of Eldar I have painted, and a sixth of what I have to go.





Half of the seer council. Just the 2 warlocks aren't currently painted. I don't have a good picture of the Farseer currently. They're all nowadays slowly starting to accumulate battle damage.

Definitely considering buying some storm guardians and doing a new SC, even though the warlocks, in my opinion, on bikes totally look pimp.






Here are some of my Falcon. As you can see the weapon options need to be finished, and should be done when the rain lets up so I can file and undercoat them.

The falcon was my first real experiment with large mural-esque freehand. Everything before hand really was just simple stuff.

Tomorrow I'll upload the other batch, including 2 prisms and 6 bikes plus the WS I'm currently working on.

3+ Saves

Today I played a game against a new marines player.

He had footslogging BAngles;

Astorath
Sanguinary Guard x 6
15 DC with packs
10 AMs with packs
20 Tacs
5 Devastators, 2 Las 2 Plasma
2 DC dreads

I won in T3 as he eloped, but for the first two turns of shooting, despite the fact I was putting in 20-30 wounds a turn thanks to the silly amount of pie plates I had (2 Prisms + 2 Gunboat Serpents + Falcon with EML + Destructor Wash) He would only take 2-5 wounds total.

I guess its normal, but seriously some ridiculous rolls. I don't know whether I need some more AP3 weapons, since only when I unleashed the Dragons and smaller pieplates did the casualties flow.

The game was 2000, though I used my 1750 list, with some extra goodies, like an Autarch with Mandiblasters + PW, and gunboat serpents.

Not really note worthy, Annihilation, Spearhead deployment. He was a new player to 40k 5th ed.

But yes, to the topic at hand; damned 3+ saves!

First Dragon Squad finished!

Next time I'm going to start up from Tausept Ochre as opposed to Red Gore. Probably adds 1 too many layers of paint.



First 6 Dragons done.

Edit: I can't fix the page clipping the image, infernal contraption. If you click it you'll see all 6.

I also took another front on pic of the exarch.