First game in Japan; Javier's Blood Angels

On Saturday I met up with Javier at the Jinbouchou store for my first game of 40k since landing in Japan.
He arrived with his beautifully painted Blood Angel army, putting my mostly unpainted Dark Eldar to shame. I got some shots of his force, because you all crave as many pictures as possible. I know I do!

Death Company

Just a quick update today.
I painted this guy up for a friend. Pictures are a little blurry, sorry!

Post Apocalyptic Pictures

Well, the last reactor has gone nuclear, the last plasma gun has cooled, and the last chainsword has been dislodged from the last head.
Had a great day yesterday, and our little 40k game was certainly apocalyptic.
Most importantly, my Phoenix got to shoot something (killed a mighty 8 chaos marines before we had to call time) and my Shadowsword got to kill something (mostly our own guardsmen when it exploded), so I was pleased!
Here are a few photos I took:

Overview of the Imperial side's forces all unpacked. You can see, from closest to furthest away, my Iron Hands, Raven Guard, a chunk of the Imperial Guard armour, the bastions, more Guard tanks, Tau, and right at the back are the Blood Angels.


We also had a few members of the Ultramarine first company.


Last but not least, Operation: Human Shield


Spies were sent to scout the enemy's forces, but only this blurry picture made it back to us


Both sides line up ready for the carnage


Things start badly for the Imperium. Orks and Chaos advance as our left flank vanishes under the initial fire storms. Our right flank remains smug under a shield generator. We also start the battle long trend of welcoming lovely chaps wearing terminator armour to view the rear armour of all our tanks. They are quite insistent that we show it to them, as they stroke their melta guns and cackle to themselves.


That's Wazdakka in the red, and that's a Vortex Grenade he's just thrown at us.

The battlefield clears out a bit after the middle stompa goes nuclear


Robo-Lysander and a sternguard squad, moments before they are mobbed by orks. When we finished the game at the end of turn 3, Lysander was still surrounded by baddies, swinging his thunderhammer at them.

Other highlights that I failed to get pictures of include:
Our disruptor beacon working like a champ and sending Abaddon, 5 terminators, several squads of obliterators and 2 demon princes off to the wrong side of the battlefield.
Alistair's colonel furiously punching an obliterator to death with his power fist before consolidating calmly into a bunker.
A combined outflanking force of Kroot and Grey Knights pouncing on a large group of Necrons.

Err day we be Lamentin'

Nothing too exciting happening on the painting front. I'm slowly chipping away at the Skaven. I'm also gearing up for an Apocalypse game in a few weeks. I'll be joining the Imperial side of things with my Iron Hands, so expect some lists and pictures of the boys in black in the near future.

Today though, rather than the boys in black, I figured I might do some musing on the boys in red.
And by red, I clearly mean yellow.
Yellow with black and white checks.

I've never been a terribly big fan of the Blood Angels. I blame the last vestiges of faction loyalty from my nerdarific childhood. Back when me and my brother were first getting into the hobby, we both had space marine armies (of course). He had Blood Angels, while my allegiance was with the Ultramarines*. This is probably the same reason why I always favour Dark Elves over High Elves in Fantasy**. I digress, however.

When the book came out, however, I dabbled in it with some proxy-counts-as marines***. I ended up getting distracted by the Eldar (a story for another time), but the book itself was great fun to play with.

I've also long had a desire to paint up a yellow army, but have never quite had the nerve to go for it. Imperial Fists, Craftworld Iyanden, Bad Moons, all awesome factions. Lamenters are sweet, too. I especially like their whipping boy status. It's cool that despite being the finest genetically engineered super soldiers that mankind can produce, luck can still screw them over, repeatedly. I've always had a thing for the underdog, I suppose.

One day, I'll step up and paint myself a Lamenters army (possibly inspired by Aventine's dudes), but for now I just like to kick about the occassonal list. Which is really the point of this whole post.

Pretty much just theorycrafting with a little bit learned from my battlefield experiences with the book, so I make no promises about it being anywhere close to playable. Ready?


----------------------
LAMENTERS, 1500 POINTS

HQ:
Librarian, Jump Pack, Sword and Shield
Reclusiarch, Jump Pack

ELITE:
2 Priests with Jump Packs

TROOPS:
10 Assault Marines, 2 Flamers, Fist on the sgt

10 Assault Marines, 2 Meltas, Fist on the Sgt

5 Scouts, Pistol/Blade, 1 Missile Launcher, Fist on Sgt

7 Death Company, 2 Power Fists, 2 Power Weapons, Rhino

FAST:
2 Flamestorm Baals

---------------------

The idea behind this army is that it's an entirely deepstrike/outflank/reserve force. The HQs and Priests obviously run with the assault squads, drop down, then eat things. The baals outflank and set stuff on fire. The scouts outflank too, hopefully fisting an oportune target. The launcher is there so they can sit on an objective and shoot, or else keep out of the way if it's a KP mission. Death Company simply drive straight at the enemy and hopefully distract them long enough for the rest of the force to do it's thing.
Like I said before, it probably needs a decent amount of work to be viable on the tabletop (it lacks some serious anti-tank, for one thing), but I reckon it would be a pretty fun force to play.




*What can I say, I prefer blues to reds.
**There is also the scientifically proven fact that High Elves are pointy hat wearing ponces and totally lame.
***Yes yes, I know.

In space, no one can hear you paint yellow badly

You know what?
Yellow armies are awesome.

Bad Moons. Craftworld Iyanden. Imperial Fists. Marines Malevolent have a cool scheme. I have a soft spot for Lamenters, too. You have to love any force who's history is comprised entirely of horrible things that have happened to them.
I'm a big fan of the BA codex, and their figures (Space Hulk too), but I'm not in love with the chapter enough to really want to paint any. None of their successor chapters do it for me either. Except the Lamenters!
I've never painted yellow before, so here's my first attempt.
Work in progress, obviously.



I've been working on this Raven Guard guy too. I won't tell you when I started him though, it's embarrassing.


Finally, some progress on the first of my Blood Bowl team. I think I'm going to do the outside of his cloak white.

I've not been very productive lately. No reason in particular, but bouncing between so many different projects doesn't help.
Here's a few things on my desk i'm working on at the moment.


Chaos Blood Angel Counts As Assault Marine Sgt, or Raptor Champion, depending on what mood i'm in.

Gene Priest got some paint as well. I think the white might need a few more coats still.


I've also started on a bloodbowl team! Not terribly exciting, just a chaos warrior with the weapons hacked off. Going for a tzeentch themed team, so blues as opposed to my usual love affair with purple. Yes, I know, it's a massive change.


At last, a sure fire method of speed painting 10 dudes at once!

Welcome to a kind of amalgamation post that was written in various places over various weeks!

I've mentioned previously my work on the "counts as" blood angels.
Well, while this originally started as "make an Emperor's Children army using the BA codex", it's slowly turned into "make a new army using the BA codex that just so happens to share a bunch of miniatures with my EC".
So, I worked up the background in the previous post. If I have a lose alliance of chaos baddy types, each with his own style/tactics but likely to send allies and such to help the others, well, that seems like justification enough to run different codex lists but with the same basic troopers and vehicles showing up.

Anyway, I'm putting together the forces of Nam'Tar, the Fleshcrafter, mad doctor and warped genetic scientist. I'll be using the blood angels book, with sanguinary priests as his gene-priest apprentices, and death company as the weird mutant hybrids he creates. Nam'Tar himself will be a librarian, or maybe mephiston, depending on how many combat drugs he pumps into himself!

Here's the first draft of my list:

Nam'Tar, the Fleshcrafter
(Librarian, Jump Pack, Blood Lance and Unleash Rage powers)

Gene Priest
(1 Sanguinary Priest, Jump Pack, Power Weapon)

Tactical Squad
(10 Marines, Meltagun, Missile Launcher, Power Fist, Rhino)

Assault Squad
(10 Marines, 2 Flamers, Fist)

Assault Squad
(10 Marines, 2 Meltas, Power Sword)

Batch 001
(8 Death Company, 2 with Power Weapons, 2 with Power Fists, in a rhino)

Baal

Vindicator

1500 exactly

I tried it out for the first time tonight. Here's what critics had to say about the battle. Wait, no, it's just me again.

Played my first game with the BA codex against Necrons. Annihilation/Dawn of War. I went second and held everything in reserve. My 2 assault squads (with Librarian and Priest attached) would deep strike, my Baal would outflank, and the 2 rhinos and vindicator would rely on being fast to get them into the action.
All of the Necrons were in play when my forces began arriving, with 2 large units of warriors in the back right of the field, the monolith smashing down in the centre, and the various destroyers kind of hovering about the middle. I decided to focus my attack via the left flank, hopefully cutting down the small destroyer units first for easy kill points (well, easier than wading through hordes of warriors at least).
The rest of my forces that arrived a little later (Death Company and Vindicator) moved up the right flank as the remains of my initial attack wheeled around the monolith, forming a pincer movement against the warrior blocks.
The main brunt of my attack had been halted by a Destroyer Lord charging the Assault Squad with Priest, tying them up long enough to pop my bubble of Furious Charge/Feel No Pain, but I still did pretty well, the game ending with a draw, 5 KP each.
Here are some things I learnt from the game:

1) Blood Lance wasn't as good as I thought, but it'd probably be better against non-Necrons.

2) Unleash Rage (gives the librarian and the unit he's with Preferred enemy, i.e. can re-roll misses) is excellent!

3) Death Company are great. They ripped through everything they got into combat with, and feel no pain kept them alive throughout it all. I had wondered if 8 was too many, but I think it's enough that I can lose 1 or 2 and still be able to eat up most anything I charge.

4) Vindicator, as is usual for the thing, turned up late and didn't kill much. I still love it though!

5) This army is fast. Most of my army started on the left side of the battle, but I pretty comfortable made it to the opposite corner to dish out some slaaneshi fury.

6) Tactical Squad kind of sucked. I brought them on in the wrong place, so they spent most of the game driving around the board (really fast) not doing much. Tempting to swap them out for a 3rd assault squad, but I think the bolters would be pretty useful against CC heavy armies. I also don't want to specialise too much. We'll see.

Right, enough of all that jabbering. Picture time!

Started work on my Vindicator, finally!



Also a work in progress shot of Nam'Tar himself. He's actually just about ready for paint right now, but no pictures just yet.


His arms. The chainsword/narthecium is imposing enough to work as a force weapon, I hope. I also worked up a needle pistol.


Did I post any pictures here of my colour scheme for these guys? No? Here we go. Not too sure about the black being highlighted up to purple, I may just go back to straight grey.


Finally, a Gene-Priest. I've added a kind of robe/skirt of flayed skin around his legs using greenstuff since this picture.

A Brief History of Chaos

or, how I learned to stop worrying and start worshipping Slaanesh

Aside from Orks, the faction I've played the longest in 40k is Chaos. It started back with the 2rd edition Chaos Codex, a massive beast of a book; If you could not best your opponent on the tabletop, a blow to the head from this book would surely grant victory. Perhaps my memory has embiggened it just a touch, but it certainly captured my imagination. My chaos army was a renegade chapter named the Warp Falcons, lovely purple fellows, and they had units aligned to each of the chaos powers. I seem to recall my stars being the plague marines, who were, at the time, single pose plastics. Good times.

3rd edition came with new miniatures for each of the 4 chaos powers, and the noise marines drew me in. After all, what's cooler than sonic weaponry? Answer: nothing. My Emperor's Children were basically an entirely new army, and as I was purchasing them I made sure to order plenty of extra sonic weapons. I still have some in a bag today, somewhere. These guys were horribly painted, but I loved them, and they served me well on the battlefield.

When the 4th edition codex arrived (well, late 4th, proto 5th), I reorganized them accordingly. The ability to upgrade most of your army to carry sonic weaponry was sadly gone, however so were the restrictions on mixing your gods. The Emperor's Children took this opportunity to strike a deal with a sorcerer of the Thousand Sons, and a few of the soulless warriors joined their ranks. My first trip to the doubles tournament provided the inspiration needed to repaint them. This is, quite predictably, a job still ongoing.

Recently, after a good few months of playing Iron Hands and Orks, I've gotten the urge for Chaos again. I took them out on the battlefield a few days ago, where they squared off against my brother's Salamanders. A draw, but considering my horrific reserve rolls left me with a good portion of my army entirely absent, clearly a moral victory! (what do you mean I always claim moral victories?) Anyway, the army is pretty good at what it does, nasty up close but with enough long range fire power that I don't need to struggle across the table to be effective. The chaos book is still very solid, even if I am ignoring a bunch of units because they don't really fit my theme (berzerkers, plague marines, defilers...actually that last one is more because I'm not a fan of the model). However, with the Blood Angel codex imminent, I've been doing a lot of thinking about switching over to the new list. Should I? Shouldn't I? If I do, I can play with things like the new drop ship, and dreads that wouldn't try and kill me, and land raiders that can hold more than 10 dudes. But I'd also lose stuff like my kickass lord, and sonic weapons, and my thousand sons squad. I've been flipping back and forth on the idea for a while, but there is one thing that draws me to the idea the most; the new BA codex just looks more fun. It might perform still, but the chaos book doesn't pack the tricks and options the newer books give you. I'll wait and try a few proxy games until I make my choice, of course, but the appeal of a fast-moving deep-striking out-flanking force is pretty strong. I've got some good ideas for "counts-as" death company, too.

Having looked briefly through the BA book, here's what I'm thinking of for my proposed core.

Sanguinary Priest with power weapon and jump pack;
joining a 10 man assault squad with 2 flamers and a power fist sgt,

2x 10 man tac squads in rhinos, with meltas and multi meltas, one with a fist and one with a sword

Vindicator

Las cannon Predator

This is, with a couple of exceptions, doable with minimum amounts of new miniatures needing to be scavenged/constructed/converted, and by my estimation comes out at around 1100 points, which should provide a solid core, but still have room to add some new toys. We'll see what happens.