Hobby Goals for 2015

It's a new year so it's a good time to set some goals for 2015:

Imperial Guard:

1.  Build 2 truck chassis for my Wyverns;  I currently use  a half-track for my Manticore based on Dave Taylor's awesome truck templates.  I have a pair of Katyushka-style missile packs that I mount on a pair of generic chassis that have been used for everything from a Hydra to a Death Strike.  Time to get with the WW II Russian theme and mount them on a 6x6 Truck.  I plan to use the Blood and Skulls industries large truck tires and a scratch built chassis.

2.  Build a couple of BA-10 inspired armored cars based on the same truck chassis to use as Tauroxes;  Kinda the same deal as above but putting a troop compartment and turret on the chassis to use as a Taurox.  I've built kind of the prototype here, it just needs to be a 6x6 and have a turret added.

3.  Build two more of the Ragnarok pattern Leman Russes to run around with Pask, because one of these isn't enough.

4.  Besides the above I might look at building a Russ that is not stock but not quite a Ragnarok, something that still says WW II Russian but will fit the 40K universe, like the Ragnarok.  Also looking at building some basilisks.

5.  Build a badass display board.

White Scars:

1. Repaint my Storm Raven for the scars.

2. Finish up a bike command squad with everything people love to hate:  Storm Shields, Apothecary, and two more Grav Guns.

Space Wolves:

Finish up two Iron Priests on Thunder Wolves.

Long Boats...IN SPACE!

I'm definitely digging the Storm Wolf/Storm Fang.  Now that GW has put out a few more pics and a 360 view, I think it's a given that I'll be getting one.  Too bad that I won't be able to use it at the NOVA this year.

Interestingly, there's a great deal of re-use of elements from other kits, such as the Storm-Talon canopy and partof of the engines, the Storm-Raven sponsons and ramp.  Really ties together nicely with the other Astartes flyers.

Astra Militarum codex first look

So I'll look at the new codex by way of comparison to the old codex,  Let's take my NOVA Open 2013 list as a starting point:


Company Command Squad                           50+55+45 =  150
   Chimera
    3x Plasma


Vendetta w/ HB x 2                                        140 x 2    =  280


Infantry Platoon
    PCS w/ 3 x Flamers                                                          45
    SWS w/ 3 x Flamers                                                         50
    4x Infantry Squad with ML                            65 x4   =  260


Veterans w/ 3x Plasma                                                  =   115


Manticore                                                                       =   160
Leman Russ Eradicator w/ 3x HB                                 =   180


Njal                                                                                =   245
Rune Priest                                                                    =   100
10x Grey Hunters w/ 2x melta in Drop Pod                 =   190


Aegis Defense Line with Comms Relay                       =     70


So a nice 1240 points of guard and 605 points of Wolves and Fortifications.  Fortunately, I didn't use any of the now gone options, so I can do a direct comparison:


Astra Militarum:


CCS, Chimera, 3x Plasma    60 + 65 + 45                  =   170


2x Vendetta w/ HB sponsons    (170 + 20)x2             =   380 (OUCH!)


PCS  w/ 3x flamers                                                      =     45
SWS w/ 3x flamers                                                      =     45
4x Inf squad w/ ML                                                     =   260


Veterans w/ 3x Plasma                                                 =  105


Manticore                                                                     =  170
Eradicator w/ 3x HB                                                    =  140


For a grand total of 1315 points, so 75 more points.  So to make this work I need to find 70 points (I was 5 points under after all)  I can get 40 points easily by dropping the HB sponsons on the Vendettas, now I just need 30 more points;  Well, the 100 point Rune Priest is primarily a Divination bot, but then again, I could swap Njal for a level 2 RP with Runic Armor and a chooser for 180 vs Njals 245; that leaves me with 35 points to play with.  Maybe a Priest to join the blob?  Many possibilities, also for the price of the upgrades on the level 2 RP, I could just use a Primaris Psyker
as another divination caster.  Heh, heh, with some juggling I could have a 5 divination psykers just using the AM and SW books.  That's a lot of chances to get the powers you want. 


This is all just minor tweaks to my list from last year; If I go for a complete overhaul, I'm sure I can do better.

Getting Lit-Up (Land Raider Edition)

Shortly after getting my illuminated Storm Raven done,
I started building my Space Wolves Land Raider with

the cool Forge World doors.  Shortly after starting it though, I decided that I wanted it to be lit up as well.  Whereas with the Raven it was easy to hide the batteries in the flying base, the Land Raider was harder to deal with.

 While it would be easy enough to hide a battery pack in the hold of a Land Raider, I had painted the interior of mine so I would be lighting the interior; a big old battery pack sitting on the floor would be pretty ugly.    I found these battery holders on e-bay:

Each one holds 2 CR 2032's which provides 6.5 Volts or so -- perfect for my uses.  Now where to mount it?  I need the batteries to be accessible so they could be removed/changed without too much fuss.  Ultimately, I decided to hollow out a space on the underside just enough so that the tank would be resting on its treads not on the battery pack. 

I decided to use 4 yellow LED's to light the interior, with 2 on the Mechanicus shrine, one lighting up the control panel opposite the opening side door and one for general lighting.  I used perf board to build a small lighting board for the interior lights to keep everything in the right place.

The headlights are four 3mm white LED's.  For those who are electronically inclined, I wired the yellow LED's in as 2 series pairs each with a 560 ohm resister, for around a 6 mA current draw for the interior.  The headlights are each wired individually with a 1k resister, for around 2 mA each.  I should be able to get around 10 hours of battery life.

Here's the installation

And all lit up

 And the interior

NOVA Open 2013-Wrap Up

The NOVA's done now.  Overall I went 3 and 4 and finished 88th out of 223, which is pretty good for me. 

I'll give brief run-down of my games, with one rant about sportsmanship.

Game 1: Opponent: Chaos Demons with CSM allies:  Loss
This was a kill points game against the soon to be all to familiar lineup of Fate Weaver, and a various bunch of greater demons and plague bearers. Nuff said.

Game 2:  Opponent: Necrons :  Win
Objective game against a Crypek, Overlord with 20 warriors and 4 units of 20 of warriors with attached res-orb lords.  I won this game by distracting my worthy opponent with the Grey Hunters to pull him off an objective while getting grav-chuting troops on.

Game 3:  Opponent: Eldar/Dark Eldar: Loss
The Relic/Objective game that I should have won; One lucky bit of shooting with a Vendetta caused 3 Hqs

"Die, Xenos Scum!"

(including Eldrad) to run off the board, all I needed to do was to shoot one lousy ranger off an objective to tie on the objectives which would have given me the win on other mission points;  Poor tactical decisions on my part:

1. I had rolled a 7 for Njal's Weather effect: should have separated him from his blob to try to run him to within 12" of the hapless ranger to hit him with the Chain Lightning effect.

2. I should have used all available firepower on the ranger before worrying about a unit of jet-bikes on the other objective.

KNOW the rules!  I forgot that a hovering Vendetta can fire BOTH door guns if it moves 6" or less.

Great opponent who was able to laugh about it when several hundred points of his army hoofed it off the board.  Thanks for a great game, Lance.

"Fire for effect!"

Game 4: Opponent:  Tau:  Win
This was an objective game with vanguard deployment.  I faced this game with some trepidation when I saw

3 Riptides, then I looked at his list and saw only 2 units of Kroot as his troops. (Eradicator bait!)  Shadow Sun, and a Farsight bomb.  The NOVA terrain makes deep-striking that Farsight bomb a tricky proposition, I deployed first and I deployed my army in such a way he wouldn't have many good shots on my Manticore. As a result, he deployed Farsight and friends on the board using a sea of drones to shield them, near the table edge...very, very close to the table edge.  For a change, I let the generic Rune Priest keep his codex powers, Living Lightning and Jaws of the World Wolf, while Njal rolled on the Divination Table.

Turn 1:  I went first.  I shot the Manticore: 2 rounds centered on the sea of drones, 7 drones die triggering a pinning check and  a morale check;  pinning check; passed, morale check, failed.  Distance to board edge:  my opponent looks and says "I don't even need to roll it"  The rest of the game was spent whitlling down what was left of his army (the Rune Priest did not get a single Rip Tide with JOTW, but he did keep them distracted).  By the end of the game, all that he had left on the board was one heavily damaged Riptide.

Game 5: Opponent: Chaos Demons/CSM: Loss
OK here's where I rant a bit.  My opponent brought Fateweaver; Fateweaver can get powers from all of the disciplines, my opponent DID NOT bring a rule book or other reference such as the psychic power cards with him, nor did he bring a small blast template; he borrowed mine.  Mind you, this was day 2 of  a 3 day tournament; surely, he must have noticed by then that he might need these things.  If I ever play this guy again, I'm going to be a prick about this.  Anyway, he tabled me.  Also I must say that this guy had the FUGLIEST counts-as army my eyes have ever had the misfortune of seeing, and no I'm not talking about the fish army.

Sven Distractsson

Game 6:  Opponent:  Tyranids:  Win
Objective game vs Nids.  two flying Hive Tyrants, 3 tervigons and a bunch of gaunts.  Again I kept the codex powers on the generic RP while taking divination on Njal.  Again the JOTW RP kept my opponent distracted. Two of his Tervigons corked up on turn 1, the third on turn 2 or 3.  I managed to keep my opponent distracted while sneaking onto objectives. MVP of this game:  the HB gunners on the Eradicator rolled an improbable number of hits just about every turn.

Band of brothers

Game 7: Opponent: Chaos Demons: Loss
 Objective game.  Refreshingly, my opponent did not bring Fateweaver, just two Heralds of Khorne, a Herald of Slaanesh, lots of Flesh Hounds, Seekers, and plague-bearers;  Two high points of this game:  The first was slaying his warlord with the CCS plasma gunners after stripping away the accompanying flesh-hounds with Manticore and Vendetta shooting (improbable number of LOS and cover saves made)

 The second was an epic 3 turn melee between the other Herald of Khorne and his Flesh Hounds and Njal's 20-man blob fortified with a 4++ and prescience.  Khorne ultimately called the Herald and company back to the Warp for punishment, leaving Njal standing alone.  (My opponent rolled box-cars on his check after losing combat.)

This is another game probably could have won some simple moves that I didn't think of:  using Njal to grant 4++ to the other blob while using the generic RP to give a 4++ to the SWS, and attempting to charge a unit of plague bearers on another objective.  Oh well, it was a hell of a good fight!

Game 8:  Opponent Ringer:
Since I was out of contention for my bracket, I had no opponent, so I just watched some of the other games.

Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed this year's NOVA Open, and will be back next year.  The staff does an outstanding job of making things work, and they have some of the best terrain I've ever seen at an event like this.  Congratulations and thank you to Mike Brandt and company to another great NOVA.  I think next year I'm going to enter the narrative event and also volunteer to help with terrain.

1850 RTT at Huzzah Hobbies (8/18/13)

I entered my NOVA list in an 1850 RTT this weekend at Huzzah Hobbies in Ashburn VA yesterday.  In prep for the NOVA, we were using terrain and missions from the NOVA primer.  I ended up going 1 and 2, vs Space Wolves, Demons and Eldar. I did however walk away with best painted! (I'll take that!  and a $25 gift certificate) 

First a bit of a plug for Huzzah; they're running the only regular 40K RTT series in Northern VA that I know of -- the third Sunday of every month.  Any given month they use the tournament packet for whichever is the next big GT coming which in addition to helping out folks who are planning to go to that GT get some practice, also gives folks a chance to test drive the next GT.  Huzzah gives a 10% discount on GW product.


The first game was 5 objectives Vanguard Strike deployment vs Drop-Podding Space Wolves with Logan, 2 Rune Priests, a unit of Long Fangs and Grey Hunters.  I won that one when my opponent lost mission focus and kept dropping his pods on my home objective, allowing my podding Grey Hunters,  and Vendetta-riding SWS and PCS to take the other two.

The second game was vs Demons; Fateweaver, 2 Flying DP's, screamers and pink horrors, ignominious loss.   Very nicely painted army -- probably my main competition for best appearance, from what I saw.  It was the highly converted nature of my army (the Manticore and the KV-2 Russ) though, that made the difference.

The third game was Iyanden Eldar with a Wraithknight as his Warlord and another Wraithknight, Wave Serpent spam and Warp Spiders, lost this one, did manage to down one Wraith Knight (not the Warlord) with Missiles (the RPG's will not be denied!) and all but one of the Wave Serpents.  I don't know which I hate more, Wraith Knights or Wave Serpents.  Having faced those damn things now, I don't want to hear any complaints if Faeit's rumor about Baneblades being in the IG codex turn out to be true.

All in all a good tournament, my opponents were generally cool, and learning (on my part) did occur.

NOVA bound

 After getting my employment situation straightened out (found out in May that I was due to get laid-off in

July, ended up being un-employed for all of 2 days -- whew!) I've decided to attend the NOVA open this year.  Now what to take?

Well, I'm not the type to FOTM so it will be IG and SW.  Yeah, I know, that's so early 6th ed.  I'll probably get rolled by all the Tau, Eldar, Tau-Dar, but what the hell; I can laugh at all the Tau players next month once Sternguard start crushing Riptides under their own weight with combi-grav guns.

So here's what I'm thinking about:

IG (Primary Detachment)

     CCS, 3x Plasma, Chimera

     Vet Squad, 3x Plasma

     Infantry Platoon

         PCS with 3x Flamers

         4 x  Infantry Squad with Missile Launcher
          (because RPG-7's look cool)

         SWS with 3x Flamers

     Vendetta with HB Sponsons

     Vendetta with HB Sponsons


     Manticore

     Leman Russ Eradicator with HB Sponsons

SW (Allied Detachment)

     Njal in Runic Armor

     Rune Priest (Living Lightning, JOTW)

     10 GH with 2x Melta in a Pod

Fortification:

     Aegis Defense Line with Comms Relay

Njal is of course there to make the weather lousy for my opponent.  The other Rune Priest is there to either cast JOTW if I keep his codex powers or to cast Prescience if I go for Divination.  The lone squad of Grey Hunters is there to pod in if the opportunity presents, or just to add some resilient troops.    I decided to go with a Manticore since rocket artillery is cool (and very Russian).  The Eradicator is there to ruin the day of anything relying on cover (like Pathfinders).

The nice thing about this list is that it really doesn't require me to do any major building, just a bit of touch-up on some existing models, convert up a Nova Cannon for my Ragnarok Russ and paint up the ADL and the comms relay.

Of course, knowing me, I'll get an 'inspired' idea the weekend before which will require major 11th hour hobbying.

Armies on Parade 2013

I entered Armies on Parade this year mostly just to round out the number of contestants to three.  Ended up coming in second which is fine with me since really all I did was to take my existing board and add a Skyshield  landing pad with and a Vendetta.  I then added a few Vostryans, and a 'greatest hits' of my vehicle conversions, the result can be seen below:

 

Here's the first place winner, a nicely done Space Wolves army with an awesome display board:

 And the third-place winner,  a Nid army using the old BfM terrain:

 That's all for now

A Trio of Rune Priests

 While I do love the metal Rune Priest model, I'm not so keen on equipping him with a plasma pistol.

  Since I strive to keep things WSIWG, my options are to either perform a bit of surgery or to build an appropriately equipped PA rune priest.  The metal rune priest that I have is already painted so I decided against surgery -- Conversion time!

I really like the big fur-lined cloak from the Warriors of Chaos as an accessory for a SW HQ so I used that as the basis for the two PA guys.

The first one started out as a Games Day conversion contest piece that I did years ago.  I took a new look at it and decided that he needed a bit of help.  I had originally used CSM legs for him, but decided to replace them with legs from the SW kit.  I carved out back of the cloak to fit the backpack, added in a SW torso front and added some green-stuff fur on the top and a SW axe and a bolt pistol.

The second is almost entirely a chaos warrior, with strategic bits added to make him look wolfier and hide the obviously chaos bits.  The Staff is a Grey Knights warding staff with the head of Njal's staff added for the right look.  I'm particularly fond of this head since it reminds me of Merlin from the old film Excalibur.  This guy really captures the shaman look.

The last one is mostly a straight up SW terminator with a head from the Thunderwolf Calvary kit.  The honking big axe is also lifted from the Thunderwolf Cav kit. 

Thunderwolf Cavalry

I finally decided to add some thunderwolves to my small Space Wolves army.  I don't know how often I'll actually use these guys but they were fun to build and paint.  I especially had fun with "Frisbee Wolf".  A small magnet in the roof of his mouth holds on to a loop of paper clip in attached to the drone.

I Magnetized the left arms of all these guys so I'd have the option of whether to give them shields or pistols; 'Frisbee''s rider got magnets on both sides so I could choose whether to use  a special CC weapon or not.

Space Wolves Dropping In

The Drop Pod is one of my favorite models; when GW starting making them in plastic I was thrilled since I didn't see myself dropping the money to buy a significant number of Forge World DP's.  I love the interior detail of these models so it's a shame when I see folks gluing the doors shut because they don't want to take on painting the interior.  But actually, painting the interior is pretty easy if you plan ahead.