Necron Time - 1 Tomb World - 3 Overlords

So this coming Saturday sees the return of the Necrons.

Now my good friend Stu is very happy about this as he has been emailing me almost daily with new rumours/pics/updates - you can tell he likes them. He of course is going to be playing them again and he in the past few weeks has had a couple of good games with them for nostalgia sake.

Between Stu and myself we have a lot of Necrons already, all the basics and a few toys from the previous run. Well with the release of the Necron pics a couple weeks ago then the official release over the weekend I myself are liking the looks of the too. I was planning on buying the codex straight away but I do that with all the 40k books, now however I am going to be buying some models too and we have Cody also getting ready to open his wallet for the ancient empire.

Yesterday we had some usual Sunday gaming with some 3 player 750 point games for a laugh then it was 1850 Dark Eldar vs Blood Angels with Cody playing DE and Stu and Womble using the BA. Throughout all this dice rolling and name calling we discussed the results of 3 of us buying Necrons and decided it is a very good thing.

I have wanted a 'house' army for a while now. My regular gaming mates leave all their toys at my place anyway as it's where we game. They have their own shelves and draws for their armies they commonly use so any of our gear is free to be used amongst us. I have wanted to take this a little further and all pitch in for an army that anyone can pick up and play with a variety of options. We made a few second hand Ork purchases and I have quite a bit of random Imperial guard models but we never really got inspired to create this communal force... until now.

New Codex, new models, good large base of models to use which two of us own already. Yesterday I decided we need a nice paint scheme which we can use across the whole range, Stu is happy for normal metal Necrons, Cody doesn't care as long as they 'look cool' and I of course want to do something a little different from the codex standard. This results in me painting a handful of Necron Warriors in test schemes we all agree on. Yesterday I painted a black bodied/orange head and shoulder plated warrior but he was too 70's apparently ;) so moved to standard boltgun metal with a green wash but with the green tubing was going to be 'too green' so now have a boltgun with sepia and devlan mud wash to be looked at tonight while we play D&D. We did agree to go with black/dark green armour plating like the GW ones for Stu so the worn washed metal is my contribution and it should look good. I suggested a spot colour of individual choice to denote who 'owns' particular units and Stu suggested painting the heads/faces in the chosen colour which will work well without detracted from the overall unified look.

So I'll get a pic of the test mini we are happy with after tonight and then it's the wait until Saturday when we descend on GW Wellington for new toys. The HQ models have already been 'baggsed' with Stu claiming Imotekh, Cody the new Overlord and me being left with old man Trazyn - I'm ok with that though as upon closer inspection he has an Eldar rune he has poached on his belt so seems fitting.

So as Saturday approaches and we get to see what Mr Ward has done to the Necrontyr... ahem please share any suggestions you may have for the Tomb World's awakening

Cleatus the Cultist?

Got your attention?

Had a fairly productive weekend painting wise even if I didn't actually play any games.

Got another 10 Sisters of Battle done so painted this inbred little fella. I have plans for him and his 'kind' as they make great cultists/warrior acolytes for an Inquisition army or whatever you'd like to count it as.

The model is an old GW chaos cultist which I have a few of thanks to Gromm/Emmett giving me his Thousand Sons army many moons ago. He used the cultists as Sorcerer thralls in the old chaos codex, y'know the good one ;) The cultists have been sitting in the box of random imperial and character models with a simple coat of scorched brown the only thing on them. Being partially inspired by the washed out tones of the locust in Gears of War(which after not playing all week I finished yesterday - now they can look forward to tomorrow). The ragged cloth is Tausept Ochre and Iyanden Darksun with Devlan Mud washes. Quite like how he turned out so when I get another batch of SoB complete I may paint another to break up all the red armour.

In RPG news the boys start on the next chapter of Shackled City tonight with the Demonskar Legacy - once they get their xp from last week they should all be 8th level or very close and what has made life easier for them is the return of Womble/Aaron a longtime bud who has been off gaming for a few years because of work hours but hes back and rocking a drunken master Monk which balances the party nicely - welcome back Womble!

Reasons not excuses!

I have not posted for a couple weeks and the above is part of the 'reason' why.

After my original Xbox 360 suffered from the RROD a few months ago I have been patiently waiting for the right combo to be released for its replacement. With the release of Gears of War 3 I got the wonderful limited edition set as pictured above. However it is not GoW3 that has caused my blogging and painting to suffer but the fantastic Space Marine by THQ and Relic.

I like a lot of other 40k players I know have thoroughly enjoyed this game. I liked pretty much everything about it. They captured the 40k experience so well, the setting, graphics, story and music. I played it through solidly on Hard and finished it a while ago. So that would be the end of it right? No I then started multiplayer and other than being able to chat away to my mates in Auckland while playing I have really enjoyed it. I don't even mind the lag which maked the slow Thunder Hammer a bit arse. I have tinkered with the customizer a lot and settled on a gold armour with 'blood raven red' trim just like my custodes while my chaos skin is alpha legion.

But I really must get back to some serious painting, Wil is settled in Ottawa and I need to get his Sisters of Battle off to him. I have many many Orcs and Goblins to repair and paint so I can actually have a fantasy army done and Space Marine itself has inspired me to have a marine army of some sort for myself... sigh... So I shall do my best to ration my spare time better, I still want to finish GoW3 but that can wait a little bit until job1 - SoB are done.

To think that mid November Assassin's Creed Revelation and Skyrim are coming out Jebus. Alison tells me I'm forbidden playing Revelation unitl she finishes it first, something about not wanting the ending spoiled for her pssh! She did come home with the official Space Marine guide for me on Friday though as after flipping through it thought I would like the concept art section - she was right. Hmm Marines, traitor guard, Grey Knights, more Eldar... what to do... hard life this gaming carry on

Wryth's Week in Wargaming

Heres an update on what I've been doing wargame wise in the last week or so.

Above is the first 'Custode' Grey Knight Terminator I've started on for my Inquisition GK army. It's not quite done and as the photo shows I have to tidy up some edges but overall I'm happy with the worn golden shade to the armour. It was achieved with a boltgun metal and Mithril Silver base then successive layers of Golden Sepia wash and a little Devlan Mud. Not sure how I'm going to base the army yet but it may be amongst some arcane ruins or an old temple complex Coteaz and his forces have seen fit to cleanse.

This fella is a test paint for my possible Orc & Goblin force and I thoroughly enjoyed working on it. I know I would have potentially about 100 of these to paint but it was suprisingly fast to paint and not fiddly at all. The dirty golden hoods would be throughout the whole army as I see the potential force being comprised of travelling mercantile Orcs and Goblins capturing, training and selling off a menagerie of exotic beasties to other factions in the warhammer world. The yellow will represent their obsesson with gold/wealth. Already have ideas of a large wagons being dragged by Arachnaroks and Giants.

In actual game play I had a couple games last weekend against Dave from Feilding who I met at CTA. He brought along a very nasty dual Stormraven Blood Angel build. Game 1 was against my standard tournament Eldar build and I took control of the table soundly. A couple of bad morale checks from Dave saw his jump pack combat squads flee the table from mass fire and Dante's command squad not moving from their dropped position due to Nightspinner attacks saw a combined round of shooting and Harlequin assault wipe any threat off the board.

Cody played him next with his Dark ELdar but unfortunatly didn't do so well. I wasn't watching the game but as far as I can tell the Blood Angels massacred the DE.

I threw together a fun CSM force after that and even though I lost in the end I destroyed a satisfying amount of Daves force. After that quick game we had time for one more bash so out came the WIP Coteaz/GK list. Ryan has been helping me work on the list and via email had provided me with a very nice build with most of the toys I like in. The general strategy for the list is to create a nice 24" bubble of death for the opponent which worked wonderfully against the Blood Angels! Dave had no idea what hit him when my DCA/Crusader squad barrelled out of their Land Raider into Dante and co and the other DCA/Crusader unit aboard the reserved Stormraven flew in later in the game to wipe out his objective camping combat squads. The Callidus Assassin is proving a nice one shot nuisance for the enemy but usually getting killed by mass fire after the fact. The rest of the build works well though so I think I'll keep at it and see how it performs in the long run.

Other than all those games on Sunday we had an enjoyable D&D game monday night with the boys dealing with a Dragon, insane Bard and a Cryohydra in good order to carry on with the 4th main part of the Shackled City campaign.

I have been distracted as the weeks gone on though as my new limited edition Gears of War 3 xbox arrived =D oh xbox how I missed you so. I'm quite impressed with Gears 3 but thats no suprise however I have popped in Space Marine and my god what a bloody fun game that is. They have captured the look and scale of 40k so well and after a rocky start I've even been having a good time playing multiplayer too - gotta love the customisation tool set. A modified Black Templar for the loyalists and a sweet Alpha Legion skin for Chaos!

Anyways on the painting table now is a metal Wraithlord bound for Oz, a hadful of random Imperial Guardsmen as I experiment trying to find an Imperial colour scheme I like and more newly arrived Sisters of Battle for Wil!

Oh well a little more Xbox then back to painting right...

Post Homecon

I had a fantastic weekend of gaming in Wellington.

Firstly I had 2 very entertaining games of 40K vs Ryan and his GKs while I playtested a couple variations of my hybrid GK/Coteaz list. A highlight was in the first game both our Dreadknights getting into assault with each other and with similtaneous rolls taking each other out via their force weapons. I also started putting a GK Brotherhood champion in with the mixed DCA/Crusader squad. Rerolls to hit in that squad is very nasty and the Brotherhood champ is great for picking off IC's and MC's.

On Saturday I made my way to Pete Dunn's house with transport kindly provided by Ryan(he wanted to see if WHFB was for him) and had two awesome days of Fantasy games.

I may not have placed overly high up the ranks(I came 8/10) but I won half my games! I got to play against some very good opponents Tim, Tom, Neil, Peter, Pete and Ben with some very nice armies and talk about the game system and various army books with people who know what they're talking about.. most of the time.

However after even the first days games I felt that the WoC are not for me, they are a very good army with plenty of variety but the march across the board and hit stuff style of play just didn't entertain me enough. So after skimming the Ogre book, reading the Tomb King book in between England beating up Argentina Saturday night and a few more chats on Sunday with the lads I think I'm going to try Orcs and Goblins next.

They are the army I originally played with when I started Fantasy many many years ago with a school friend who had gotten the old box set with the High Elves and Goblins and large cardboard stand ins for Grom the Paunch on his Chariot and the Griffon. They have a balanced up to date book, they have an extensive model range I can have a lot of fun with, they have monsters(yay) and if your game plan falls apart just blame the stupid animosity rules and keep on laughing. I have quite a large collection of the greenskins dumped into boxes so with a bit of sorting and care I may be able to get something up and running...or fleeing as is most likely!

So a big thank you to Pete for the invite, use of his Chaos models and his fantastic hospitality in his home. I may not have 100% settled on a fantasy army yet but at least I'm eliminating some and narrowing the options.

Homecon Chaos take 2?!

Ok so after Jack's advice and thinking a litle bit more about what I'd like the army to do I have come up with the following, comments please as usual

Sorcerer Lord, L4, Infernal Puppet, Talisman of Preservation, Stream of Corruption 370

Exalted Hero, Tzeentch, BSB, Shield, Ironcurse Icon 155
Exalted Hero, Tzeentch, Disc, Charmed Shield 5, Book of Secrets, 3rd Eye of Tzeentch, Talis of Prot, Biting Blade 215

20 Chaos Warriors, Tzeentch, FC, Shields, Standard of Discipline 385
30 Marauders, Khorne, FC, Flails 200
30 Marauders, Khorne, FC, GW 200
5 Chaos Hounds 30

6 Chaos Trolls
5 Chaos Knights, Khorne, Muso 240

Warshrine 130
Hellcannon 205

Total 2400

Keeps a mobile disc riding character to steal spells but has a better stat line so can threaten the rare lines more.

The warshrine will augment a unit where it needs too and the 6 trolls will indeed be more effective.

Got rid of the collar of Khorne as it did offend the fluff enthusiast in me! Tjough I am now missing the dispel scroll which can always be an bonus in games!

Chaos for Homecon me thinks

Well Homecon next weekend will help me decide if I'm going to invest in Warriors of Chaos as my main fantasy army.

The host Pete is kindly letting me borrow his models for the two days and I will bring a few along to supplement what I need.

Hopefully I will like them enough to get stuck into them with the paint as I don't have a fully painted army for fantasy. Personally its sucks big time considering how I usually clean up in the presentation category in 40K.

So heres my thoughts for a list which should function well and has a little bit of everything I'd like to buy and paint up.

Sorcerer Lord, L4, Infernal Puppet, Charmed Shield, Stream of Corruption Talisman of Preservation (shadow magic) 375

Sorcerer, L2, Tzeentch, Disc, Talisman of Prot, Third Eye, Dispel Scroll 225
Exalted Champ, Tzeentch, BSB, Collar of Khorne, Enchanted Shield 185

24 Chaos Warriors, Tzeentch, Shields, FC, Standard of Discipline 449
30 Marauders, Khorne, FC, Flails 200
30 Marauders, Khorne, FC, GW 200
5 Chaos Hounds 30
5 Chaos Hounds 30
5 Marauder Horsemen, Slaanesh, Muso, L Armour, Spears, Throwing Spears 96

3 Chaos Trolls
5 Chaos Knights, Khorne, muso, standard, Banner of Eternal Flame 270

Hellcannon 205
Total 2400

Everything should perform some role in most games, the trolls are a personal want as I'd love to get the plastic River Trolls and have some fun. The second Mage is so I can make a cool conversion I have in mind and the rest is what I see tearing through a dead forest leaking shadows and darkness from their skin. When I actually paint up a test model it'l make sense.