The State of my Armies - Grey Knight Edition

I started my Grey Knights army when they were revamped for 5th edition. At the time I wasn't aware of how powerful they were, I just loved the sculpts, and the new Dreadknight.

As I knew it was going to be quite a small army I took my time to do a high quality job on the painting front, and started painting every component individually. I think it took me about 3 months to finish five marines! Because of this, the army never really took off and has been languishing.

My GK force also includes Coteaz, and a Chimera, as the plan was to build a Blanchitsu style Inquisitor detachment too, but that's a pipe dream at the moment. Not photographed is the unbuilt Storm Raven, I'm undecided what to do with it at the moment. If there were rules for it in the Forgeworld Heresy books I'd repurpose it!

The main thing I need to do is re-base the force on 32mm bases, and at least get some silver only the Purifier squad!

Battle Report - Necrons v Grey Knights

Today my mate Ben came over for a quick 750 point game of 40k. He was bringing his Grey Knights, and was trying out the list he's going to use in a doubles game tomorrow. Since I'm currently trying to finish all the painting on my Necron army I thought I'd give them a go.

We set up a 4'x4' board in the Warrior Lodge and rolled the Crusade mission and the Vanguard Strike deployment type. After the five objectives were placed we rolled off and I got to deploy first.

The Armies
My Necrons were led by an Overlord with warscythe and resurrection orb. He was put in with a large squad of 20 Warriors. My other troops choice was a nine man unit of Immortals with Gauss Blasters.
The fun stuff was one Canoptek Spyder with five Scarab bases, and 2 wraiths, one with whip coils.

Ben took a Librarian, two 5 man Strike Squads, each armed with 2 force Halberds and a Psycannon. A unit of 5 terminators all armed with halberds and psybolt ammo. To round it off the was a Dreadknight carrying a Nemesis Force Sword.

Turn One
Starting off, my Spyder rolled well and out popped another Scarab base and they moved over the difficult terrain towards one of the objectives to contest it if needs be. The Immortals also advanced and fired at one of the Strike Squads, taking one of them out in the process.
The Strike Squad then returned fire and knocked one of mine down in return. The other Strike Squad took aim at the Wraiths but they passed all their saves which was a relief. Next it was the turn of the Terminators to fire at the Immortals, they had better luck and two more fell to the floor. They took their morale check and passed, but only a single Necron was reanimated.

Turn Two
Like clockwork the Spyder had another Canoptek baby, and carried on advancing. The Wraiths leapt forward, skirting around the board to try and meet a squad of marines. The Warriors who were camping on an objective opened fire at the terminators, but the Librarian was at the front of the unit and passed all of his saves. The Immortals, wanting revenge shot at the Strike Squad again, and once again blew one up. They failed their morale check and were about an inch from leaving the board completely.
The Strike Squad rallies and all units move forward towards me. The Dreadknight moves frighteningly fast towards the Immortals while the Terminators finally take out one of the Wraiths. One Strike Squad fails to destroy any more Immortals and the other one starts running around the bastion to redeploy and to move away from the remaining whip coil Wraith. The Dreadknight charges into the Immortals, none of their overwatch shots find their mark. He takes out five of them, they fail to wound him back so fail their morale check and get caught in a sweeping advance, bummer!

Turn Three
22 shots from the Warriors fail to wound the Dreadknight and this is the beginning of the end. The Wraith chases the Strike Squad but can't catch them up in time. The Spyder made another Scarab then they scuttled off to engage the Terminators in close combat. No overwatch wounds were dealt, but they activated force weapons and hammerhanded the whole unit to death, that didn't go to plan!
The Librarian and his unit moved up onto an objective, and he attempts to smite the Spyder, but his high toughness saves him. The Strike Squad stop moving long enough to blast the final Wraith off the table, and the Dreadknight crashes into the Warriors and the Overlord. He takes 4 down straight away, and I was building up for three strikes with the warscythe, except I rolled three 1's! The Warriors did manage to take one wound off the Knight before he once again swept the whole squad off the board in it's advance.

Thoughts and shit
So, it sounds like a total wipeout, and it was! But it was a hell of a lot of fun to play, short but sweet (short for me, sweet for Ben) and I learnt quite a bit from it. Things like I should've taken Tesla on the Immortals instead of the Gauss. The other major mistake I made was shooting the Warriors at the Dreadknight and using the Scarabs to assault the Terminators. I should've done that the other way round really, things might've lasted a bit longer.

Cheers for reading, I know it's not the usual narrative battle rep but thought I'd get it written up promptly as it was a great game. Let me know if you've got any more thoughts on where I went so very wrong!

Video update, and accompanying photos.

I just uploaded the latest video in my grand return to youtube. I say grand, it's not that grand, although I am enjoying making them! Without further ado, here it is...

And here's a couple of photos from it. As I mentioned in the video the base for the Dreadknight is from Roy at Fantascape, who makes amazing resin bases.

Warllama Weekly Issue 6

17th - 30th December 2012

Yes there will be the photos of the leaked White Dwarf Dark Angels a bit later on in this post, I'm sure everyone has seen them by now so they can be left until last. To kick things off I thought I'd update you on how the competition to hit 100 followers is going. I'm up to 59 and am amazed at how many people stop by to have a read of my little slice of cyberspace, thank you all!

Towards the start of the first week I had some free time and got the first two members of the Dark Angel tactical squad. The armour doesn't quite 'pop' as much as I'd have liked but I think I cracked how to paint the chest aquillas and bolters to a decent standard. I'm looking forward to finishing the rest of the squad very soon.

Just before christmas I had a game with my Grey Knights against my friends necrons. We set up my wall of martyrs on a 4x4 and went at it. My game was even more off than usual with plenty of rulebook referencing and a poor showing from my silver astartes. I kind of came to the conclusion that I'm not using the basic strike squad correctly. I have been just throwing them forward as they're armed with the same assault weapons as palladins and terminators, forgetting that there's no invuln or better stats than an average marine. The next time I get them on the table I'll be hanging them back to provide covering fire for my palladins instead. To help with the gaps in the army though I bought a box of five purifiers. I'd already armed my strike squad and termies in a sub-optimal way just to get the maximum variety and painting opportunity, so I've gone for possibly the most beardy loadout I've ever done for these guys.

For Christmas my kind and wonderful girlfriend got me a few GW treats, the Necron and Chaos marine codexes and a bastion. I'd had the codexes in dubious quality before but nothing beats flicking through a real book, the artwork looks so much better and the full colour of the chaos book is lush. I managed to get a fair amount of work done on the bastion and will try to get it finished ready for next weeks weekly.

I'll be following this post up fairly quickly with a 2012 in review post which should be quite interesting to see what I've achieved and setting out what I'd like to achieve in 2013.

Now for some Dark Angels goodness and a bit of commentary to go with it, enjoy...

 This chap looks both amazing and slightly off. The ornamentation on his armour and banner is brilliant but I can't help feeling like his pose could've been a bit more dynamic. He could end up looking a little static next to the highly posed Deathwing.

 This cover looks fantastic and I'm really looking forward to reading this. I've never spent much time reading about DA except for their handful of appearances in the Horus Heresy but those insights into their background really whet my appetite.

 This is the Dark Talon and the Nephaiam (?!) fighter look sweet. Will have to take a serious look at the rules to see which option I want to build first as I'll only be getting one kit (to start with)

 These Black Knights and the command squad that goes with them are really nice. I like that there's finally something other than bolters attached to the bike and the standard bearer's banner seems like it'll be great fun to paint.

Saving the my contoversial until last it's the Land Speeder Vengeance. People seem outraged at this model, in particular the first circular turret and gunner. I personally love it, it looks like a beast! Seems like a lot of people failed to suspend their disbelief when they saw this and started arguing about how impractical it looks, who cares it's a bad ass tooled up skimmer for a science fantasy wargame.







Thanks for reading and have a fantastic new year!

Warllama Weekly Issue 5

Monday 10th - Sunday 16th December 2012

Let's start off with the big news first, I've actually finished painting a whole miniature! As I think I mentioned in last weeks update I was experimenting with layering rather than just basecoat-wash-edge highlight and I'm quite pleased with the effect. I think I still need to improve with the smoothness of my brushwork but I've got four more Deathwing to improve on.

I've also started working on a couple of regular Dark Angels. Because my Necrons are painted in Caliban Green with a stark edge highlight of Moot Green I needed a different technique to paint this dynamic duo. I basecoated them green, slapped on a heavy dark wash then started drybrushing. First with Warpstone glow and finally Moot green. Then I tried something I haven't done before and put a glaze of Waywatcher Green all over it. This did mute the colours back down and I think I'm happy with it but I might experiment with a heavier drybrush before glazing on the next one. I'm also hoping that this extra layer will prevent the drybrushed paint from wearing off when handled.

Also on the painting front (kind of) I got the FW etched brass and resin rear door for my Chimera so I got it all primed and ready to rock'n'roll at some point in the future. I was gearing up to get back to my Grey Knights when Dark Angel fever has hit. It'll be the first time ever that a new codex has come out and I'll already have some miniatures painted and ready. Some of the rumours of new units like Knights and Fliers sound amazing, I've got my fingers crossed for the 5th Jan!

The final news of the week was that my Warmongers Secret Santa arrived! It was from a chap called Christopher Chestnut, who you will find on Twitter here. It was a huge parcel so I had no idea what would be inside. As I tore the wrapping paper off the first thing I spotted with the pinata, then the book emerged. The Fall of Damnos from the Space Marine Battles series! I'd been wanting to read this for ages being an Ultramarines fanboy. I don't get much time off over Christmas, exactly 35 hours between leaving work on xmas eve and starting back again on Boxing Day, but I'm hoping I can start it soon. With the pinata I didn't have anywhere to hang him so he was rather unceremoniously stood on the floor and beaten senseless until he surrendered his chocolately innards, nom nom! Thanks mate.

Hopefully next week I'll get those DAs finished, and I've got a game scheduled for Wednesday night, it'll be great to roll some dice again. Hope you're all getting on with your xmas shopping and are feeling ready for the festive holidays! Laters.

Miniature Monday - Grey Knight Paladin with Daemon Hammer

Wassup gang! So it's officially been ages since I actually finished a miniature. This guy has been a long time coming as I think I'd run out of steam. I think he's been worth the wait but would love to hear what your thoughts are. On a side note, he's probably the last model I'll paint in the old GW paint range!

Nemesis Dreadknight now complete!

This model is epic in real life! In the photos on GWs website it looks a little strange but with it finished in front of me it's actually hard as nails. There were a few mishaps in the construction, I didn't realise the top piston bits couldn't be attached after the two halves of the body were glued together. Also the body of the pilot doesn't fit in if you haven't glued him in before construction. Oh well.

As with the Strike Squad I refered to a list from Wikipedia, this time of moons and comets orbiting Saturn and found the name Janus which I really liked so painted that onto all the parchment. It was only when I got to one of the pilots arms that the word Janus was sculpted on there! It must've been meant to be.

The base as you can see is unfinished. I can't find a large one that fits in with the others I'd already got for the troops. I've started experimenting with leftover bits from a rhino kit but am going to leave it for a while before I glue anything down.

Cheers for reading, laters folks!

Miniature Monday - Finished Strike Squad

I finished my first Grey Knight Strike squad late last week so here are a couple of photos. The first is of the final member of the unit and the second is a group shot of them all together. Can't really think of much else to say!

Miniature Monday - Yet more Grey Knights!

Yo yo everyone! Hope y'all not too bored of the drip-feed of painted models yet. Well this week I have a special treat in store, I managed to speed up my painting process and actually got 2 marines finished. So without further ado here's the psilencer dude and his mate falchion man...

Miniature Monday - Grey Knight with Nemesis Daemon Hammer

This weeks #miniaturemonday was the second member of the Strike Squad. I'd really hoped to get the speed going on my painting but he ended up taking all week again. The way that the hammer comes separate to both the arms makes assembly really difficult (putting it mildly) and I wish there could be more variety in pose.

This one is called Tucana, other than that I still haven't worked on any fluff for the squad or the army, one day I'll get round to it!

Miniature Monday - First Grey Knight.

This is my entry for #miniaturemonday on Twitter. For those not in the know it's a hashtag thing where people post up their latest work for everyone to see. It gives you a great opportunity to see what others are working on, get inspired and to keep up the enthusiasm.

This chap is the first marine I'd painted in months, I think he's turned out nicely, he took long enough! I tried using some of the 'Eavy Metal techniques from an issue of White Dwarf but slightly modified. One area where I am struggling with is highlighting the red. I really like the flat dull look of Mechrite Red but I've got no idea what to use to compliment this.

As time goes on I'll be working on some fluff for each of my Knights. At the moment all I've got is that he's called Auriga (I used a list of constellations on Wikipedia for inspiration) and that his personal heraldry is a diagonal split between red and white.

Please let me know what you think, if you have any tips for my red issue, or anything else at all. Hopefully I'll have the next one finished soon.