Strength 10

Yesterday I went to a Strength 10 Chapter get together and had a blast!  I got to play on some great terrain, and met some great folks.  Looking forward to the next one.  I brought my Dark Eldar and got in a team game (DE and Necrons vs. Space Marines and Space Wolves) and a 2000 point game against CranberryMuffinMan (Space Marines).  The xenos pulled out a close victory in my team game thanks to the Necrons.  All I can say is my Wyches didn't run off the board as fast as they could have and the Necron Overlord just dominated assaults..  Until that dreadnought charged in.  My 2000 point game against CranberryMuffinMan was a good time!  He ran 2 bike squads with a 10-man Assault Terminator squad, a 10 man squad of tooled-out Vanguard Vets (lots of power weapons and shields!), Khan and Tigerius.  It was a hard-fought battle between 2 very maneuverable opponents.  The DE were eventually able to eliminate the bikes and vanguard vets, so we called it there.  The rest of the game probably would have been spent scooting and shooting the terminators, and I was going to capture one objective for sure.

All in all, it was a good time!  Now it's time to get ready for the Feast of Blades style tournament at Ares Wargames this Sunday (May 6).

Army Builder custom output requests?

Anybody have any?  A while back I put up a post talking about custom Army Builder outputs and got a little interest.  If anyone wants to see some specific output from AB, let me know in a comment!

Fat boys

I finally wrapped up my Dark Eldar Grotesque conversions using Ogres.  They've got big, fat bodies with little pea-size heads due to the current blend of hypersteriods in use by my Haemonculi.  They'll get it right, eventually.  I suppose I should make a Grotesque with a ridiculously huge head and little stick legs, just to show them over-correcting the dosage.  Anyway - pictures, or it didn't happen, right?

 Before finishing and basing:

After finishing and basing:

The third butterball from the left will be an Aberration (unit upgrade for Grotesques).  He will either pack scissorhands or a flesh gauntlet.  The dude far left is a Grotesque with a liquifier.  Anyone who's seen a Talos Pain Engine kit will recognize many of the bits used.  They're not pretty, but they will work.  A box of Ogres costs not quite twice as much as a regular Grotesque model, but it was worth it.  If I didn't have leftover bits from the Talos kit, it would have been a more difficult conversion.  If you look at the bottom picture, you will see a guy second from left - I tried to make him a mask using green stuff, and well..   Let's just say he made a good test model.  These guys are coming soon, to a 6" x 4" table near you!  If you live near Albuquerque, New Mexico, that is.

A random picture from our 2000 point ETC style tourney at Ares Wargames back in December. More events can be found at Bolters con Queso. Here are my Dark Eldar versus Duncan's Black Templar:

I wound up losing that one, curse those Dreadnoughts and their Heavy Flamers! And yes, that is a real picture of Duncan. 

I'm having a good time with the Dark Eldar though adapting to playing a non-MEQ army for the first time has been a bit challenging.  They're fast, fast, fast and fragile, fragile, fragile.  Raiders are made of paper mache soaked in gasoline.  I've been running a lot of raider-borne Wych squads with attached Haemonculi, but I'm having limited success to date.  The fact that most of those poor outings are due in no small part to tactical blunders committed by yours truly is beyond doubt, though I do wonder at times if I'm using the wrong tool for the job.  I like having the pain token granted by the Haemonculus but I do miss that extra special weapon (A raider holds 10 models, 9 Wyches and a Haemy in my case - 10 Wyches are required to get 2 special weapons so mine only get one).  I may try a suggestion from Geoff over at Warhammer 30,000: running 2 large Wych squads, each with 15 models one of whom is a Hekatrix with an Agonizer and 3 Wyches equipped with Shardets and Impalers.  I've always been a fan of the shardets, and being that I usually ask my Wyches to tar pit enemy units in drawn-out assaults they would help in that regard.  The only thing I wonder about is if the rules governing assaults in 40k will allow me to move my shardet wyches into base-to-base contact with more than one model when I charge.  A cursory perusal of the "Moving Assaulting Units" rules leads me to believe that I can put them into base to base contact with multiple models provided they are not the first model that I move in the assault.  According to my reading of the rules, the first model moved needs to be placed into base to base with a single enemy model.  Subsequent assault moves must get my models into contact with unengaged enemy models - but they don't say that I must get them into contact with a single unengaged enemy model (unless I missed it somewhere?), so I guess technically I could put my model in contact with however many unengaged enemy models there are within my assault range. I wonder if I could get my shardet Wyches into contact with one unengaged model and one engaged model?  Hmm, more questions for the local rules gurus.  Duncan, are you listening? 

First Dark Eldar List

It seems like one day I'll be done assembling these models.  Then of course I gotta paint 'em. Here's an initial 1500 point list using darn near every Dark Eldar model I own:

HQ: Haemonculus (3)

Haemonculus

Haemonculi (2)

Liquifier Gun x 2

Troops: Wyches (9)

Hydra Gauntlets x 1, Haywire Grenades

Take Raider

Enhanced Aethersails, Flickerfield

Upgrade to Hekatrix

Haywire Grenades, Agoniser

Troops: Wyches (9)

Hydra Gauntlets x 1, Haywire Grenades

Take Raider

Enhanced Aethersails, Flickerfield

Upgrade to Hekatrix

Haywire Grenades, Agoniser

Troops: Wyches (9)

Hydra Gauntlets x 1, Haywire Grenades

Take Raider

Enhanced Aethersails, Flickerfield

Upgrade to Hekatrix

Haywire Grenades, Agoniser

Troops: Kabalite Warriors (10)

Splinter Cannon x 1

Heavy Support: Ravager

Night Shields, Flickerfield

Heavy Support: Ravager

Night Shields, Flickerfield

Elite: Kabalite Trueborn (5)

Blaster x 2

Take Venom

Splinter Cannon

Elite: Kabalite Trueborn (5)

Blaster x 2

Take Venom

Splinter Cannon

The Haemonculi will be used primarily to provide Feel No Pain to my Wyches as they fly across the table in their paper-mache, napalm soaked Raiders. If any happen to survive the fusillade of fire sure to come, they can use their liquifiers on any infantry foolish enough to be nearby. The fact that they don't have fleet bothers me, but I guess that doesn't mean the Wyches couldn't just leave them behind and go after a target beyond 12". The Ravagers are there to do what one would expect - blow up stuff. The Trueborn will get close to stuff, then blow it up. The unit of warriors is kind of on the fence. They can sit back and hold an objective, but I'd rather they had a Dark Lance over a Splinter Cannon. I'm not sure about these guys. Once I get them painted and think of a suitably menacing Kabal name, I'll take them out for a spin. I was thinking of going with the "Homely Harlots" for the Wyche cult until I think of something better.

Army Builder Custom Output

   I like Army Builder, I really do - but I quite often find myself either not needing all of the output it can provide, or wanting to paste an army list up on a forum for comments.  Take tournaments for instance.  Most tournament players will know that garden variety Space Marines have And They Shall Know No Fear, Combat Squads and wear Power Armor.  Army Builder provides excellent output detailing every little fact about each unit in my army - the problem I have with that is redundancy and the fact I have to carefully read each entry (especially in the case of squad leaders) to see their wargear.  Nothing against reading, mind you.  Pictures are worth a thousand words, so take this basic Army Builder output:

And compare that picture with this one:

Both are for the same units - two assault squads (one in a Rhino) and one Stormraven.  I've omitted the point costs because I don't want to get sued.  In my output I get the unit stats, and stuff I bought for the unit.  Note that looking at the bottom picture I know right off the bat that both Sergeants have Power Fists.  I can learn that same information looking at the top picture, but it will take a little longer.

    I also brought up posting army lists to forums for comments.  Forums are places where unit point costs should not be posted.  They also support BBCode.  That being the case, I created another custom output that displays units and their upgrades without point costs in BBCode.  Here are the same three units from before:

[b] Troops: Assault Squad (10) [/b]
Chainsword x 7, Bolt Pistol x 7
Meltagun
Chainsword, Meltagun
Meltagun
Chainsword, Meltagun
Sergeant
Bolt Pistol, Power Fist x 1
Rhino
Dozer Blade, Storm Bolter

[b] Troops: Assault Squad (10) [/b]
Bolt Pistol x 7, Chainsword x 7
Meltagun
Chainsword, Meltagun
Meltagun
Chainsword, Meltagun
Sergeant
Bolt Pistol, Power Fist x 1

[b] Heavy Support: Stormraven Gunship [/b]
Searchlight, 4x Bloodstrike Missiles, Twin-Linked Multi-melta, Twin-Linked Lascannon

Granted, it's not as nice looking as the pictures but you can post it on a forum pretty easily and have your squads appear in bold font.  BBCode does not preserve white space (i.e. spaces and tabs in front of text) so my nice indents are gone.  I'm still working on this custom output, I just wanted to provide an example of what is possible. 

   The built-in help inside Army Builder provides excellent information on creating custom output.  I'm more than willing to provide my custom outputs to anyone who may be interested. 

2011 'Ard Boyz List

Here's my 'Ard Boyz list. More later..

HQ: Mephiston, Lord of Death

HQ: Librarian in Terminator Armour
    + Storm Shield

Elite: Terminator Assault Squad (7)

      2 Terminator with Lightning Claws

      3 Terminator with Thunder Hammer & Storm Shield

      1 Sergeant + Thunder Hammer & Storm Shield

      1 Land Raider Crusader + Extra Armor + Multi-melta + Searchlight



Elite: Furioso Dreadnought
    + 2 Blood Talons

Elite: Sanguinary Priest (2)

      2 Sanguinary Priest in Power Armour + 2 Power Swords



Troops: Assault Squad (10)

   7 Assault Squad

      1 Assault Marine with Meltagun

      1 Assault Marine with Meltagun

      1 Sergeant + Power Fist

      1 Rhino + Dozer Blade + Searchlight



Troops: Assault Squad (9)

   7 Assault Squad

      1 Assault Marine with Meltagun

      1 Sergeant + Power Fist

      1 Rhino + Dozer Blade + Searchlight



Troops: Assault Squad (9)

   7 Assault Squad

      1 Assault Marine with Meltagun

      1 Sergeant + Thunder Hammer

      1 Rhino + Dozer Blade + Searchlight



Troops: Assault Squad (10)

   7 Assault Squad

      1 Assault Marine with Meltagun

      1 Assault Marine with Meltagun

      1 Sergeant + Power Fist x1


Heavy Support: Stormraven Gunship (1)


Heavy Support: Devastator Squad (7)

   Missile Launcher x4