Col Iron Hand Strakov.... err.. Straken

Here's my version of Col. "Iron Hand" Straken, ala Vostroya.  I call him Strakov.  I've had this guy around for a while now but hadn't posted him, though I did enter him in a contest over at Miniature Wargames Conversions.  Ron's excellent Cadian Straken over at From The Warp inspired me to do a post on this guy, finally.

I started with the Vostroyan officer with a Power Sword and Plasma Pistol. To represent his bionics I replaced one foot with a with the foot of a necron warrior.  For his power sword arm, I used the bionic arm from the Space Marine captain sprue.  I cut off the chain-sword blade with the original Power Sword blade from the Vostroyan offfcer model.   Since Straken also carries a shotgun, I added an Empire repeater handgun to represent the shotgun; I think it gives a nice Steam-punk look that I've always associated with Vostroyans.

 

And finally a few pics of the Colonel all painted up.

Simple Avenger Conversion

Simple conversion done by my local Black Shirt over at the GW in Sterling VA.  It's just the Ork Bommer with a centerline Punisher cannon and Las-cannon from the Stormraven kit.  Simple but effective :)

He left off the tail stabilizer because it has too many "Orky" bitz.

Hydra Number 1 Completed

Here's the first of two hydras, painted and ready to sweep the skies of the enemies of the Imperium.

 I covered the design and construction here and here.

I used my usual sequence of paint colors bestial - graveyard - khaki and I used the "Jeff Rust" recipe from Pirate Viking painting for the tracks.

These tracks look so good to me now that I'm going to have to go back and re-do the tracks on all my other vehicles.  

Tank Hunting in 6th Ed Part 2

Continuing from my previous post, lets look at the small blasts like the Devil Dog's Melta Cannon, or the Plasma cannon/Executioner Cannon.  Here are the pictures for hitting Land Raider and Rhino sized targets

So Land Raider sized targets are hit on deviations out to 4" while Rhinos are hit on Deviations out to 3"

So for Landraider sized targets:

Phit = Prob Direct Hit + Prob Deviation * (Prob Dev lt= 4)

For BS3 this is 

       Phit = 0.333 + 0.667 * ((0.03 + 0.06 + 0.08 + 0.11 + 0.14 +0.17) = 0.72

For BS 4 this is

Phit = 0.333 + 0.667 * ((0.03 + 0.06 + 0.08 + 0.11+ 0.14 + 0.17 + 0.14) = 0.81

And for Rhino sized targets:

Phit = Prob Direct Hit + Prob Deviation * (Prob Dev lt= 3)

For BS3 this is 

       Phit = 0.333 + 0.667 * ((0.03 + 0.06 + 0.08 + 0.11 + 0.14) = 0.61

For BS 4 this is

Phit = 0.333 + 0.667 * ((0.03 + 0.06 + 0.08 + 0.11+ 0.14 + 0.17) = 0.72

The Devil Dog is looking better and better -- at 12" you're looking at a 72 % chance of hitting a Land Raider, a 58% chance of Penning it and a 50% chance of killing it outright for an overall Pk of 22%  compared to a Vendetta firing all 3 lascannon with an overall Pk of  12%

Against Predators you have a 61% chance of hitting, a 72% chance of penning and a 50% chance of killing it for an overall Pk of 22%

Tank Hunting in 6th Edition

One of the big changes from 5th is that blasts now hit tanks at full strength as long as the template touches the hull.  Everybody knows that this makes blasts better at hitting tanks but how much better? I've yet to see anyone quantify this.  I decided to run the numbers for two common targets;  a Land Raider and a Rhino (the Rhino encompassing all of its variants -- Predator, Vindicator, etc)

WARNING MATHHAMMER AHEAD -- If you find that probability and statistics cause you to experience headaches, nausea or ED, you may wish to skip this post.