The Journey of Allies

One of the major flaws that I fell prey to in the transition from 5th to 6th edition was relying too much on things outside the Troops slot.  In my 5th edition lists I regularly ran 5 or 6 troops, a couple squads of wracks, a couple squads of wyches, and sometimes even some warriors.  It was up close and personal units coming from a webway portal.  Because of various changes, the list wasn't viable any longer, those troop units didn't accomplish what I wanted.  With an even bigger emphasis on objectives, this left me further behind the proverbial eight ball.

This became overly apparent last month when I went to Sudbury for a tournament; a win, a loss, and a draw saw me place in the middle of the pack.  The problem with my list was I had two 5 man warrior squads in venoms, and allied wraithguard as troops.  The warriors were often focused and easily mitigated because of a lack of target saturation.

So this left me with a challenge, return to a troop-centric army that could be competitive.  My first thought was "I dont' know if I can do that with Dark Eldar for my playstyle."  Again, a very 5th edition reaction.  But I thought about why 6th is better than 5th, and one of the main selling points I've used to get people back into the game.  6th edition has Allies, so an army has a multitude more permutations to how it can be run; it is part of what seems to balance 6th edition in my mind.

So I'm going to take a page out of Skari's book.  I'm going to play a Dark Eldar Allied list for a series of 10 games, and then evaluate how they did.  I've already got some ideas on what I want to try, but here is my criteria for allies:

• Allies must contribute something that the Dark Eldar list cannot already do.
• Allies are not a bolt on, they have to provide some sort of synergy with the Dark Eldar list.
• Allied lists will be judged on how the Dark Eldar performed and how the Allies performed and compared to how I have seen the Dark Eldar forces perform previously.

I'm considering two forces.

The first is going to try and resurrect the webway portal list using Eldar allies.  The force will consist of a small unit of Grotesques in a raider with WWP carrier, with 3 units wracks entering from the portal(s).  The key to this will be manipulating the reserves with an allied Autarch accompanying some Warp Spiders, with Rangers filling the troop selection and camping any objective it can.  I think this will be the most ideal list, fast moving with a lot of table control if I add a beast pack, and some Ravagers or Flyers.  I'm considering the Voidraven Bomber for this list just to finish up the conversion.

The second list will try and increase the effectiveness of a wych cult list.  We all know wyches are absolutely decimated by shooting, even if it's just overwatch, each hit is almost always a kill; so lets try and elminate that problem.  Looking at the Chaos forces, they both have ways to mitigate overwatch; Chaos Demons have psychic powers in the Slaanesh discipline that really hamper a unit and it cannot overwatch.  This would provide more control over what units can overwatch, especially versus Tau, but being a random chance to get the power isn't the greatest.  Chaos Space Marines bring the Dirge Casters on vehicles, giving a 6" no overwatch bubble.  The problem with this is they need to be closer, and not all vehicles can take them.

I think Chaos Space Marines will win out here for dependability.  Likely a two 5 man CSM units in rhinos with Dirge Casters, throw on a Sorceror who will hopefully get some debuffs from Biomancy.  I'd love if the Dread could still take upgrades, or even the Maulerfiend, but the only walker that can is the Defiler, and with 4 HP and a large blast template, it could be a good distraction to get the Raiders in closer.

I will likely start with the Chaos Space Marine list, because I have almost all the models I need for it.  The Eldar allies, need the Autarch and Warp Spiders at the very least.  They may just turn into a hobby project to convert some Dark Eldar versions.

Eldar Allies just got a whole lot better.

As a Dark Eldar player, Allies were pretty limited for me.  You have a few armies that you can take as Desperate Allies, but there is so much extra micromanagement, and they don't really serve any purpose other than unlocking access to certain units in that army.  Eldar were the only Battle Brothers that we had, the big problem was that they didn't synergize with my play style as well, and were overcosted in a list that was already very points heavy with Grotesques and Pain Engines.  Granted, a farseer for psychic defense was nice, but where did you go beyond that?

All that has changed though.  I had a chance to run a 1555 pt game this weekend running a Coven list with Eldar Allies.  It was the standard foot bound Grots, this time adding Urien and a Spirit Seer, two 5 man wrack units in venoms, 2 Talos and a Cronos, along with two units of Wraithguard and a second Spirit Seer (I was using 2 because of what's been leaked in the Iyanden book, just waiting on it to show up).  It was facing a very mobile Tau army that included 3 Riptides.

I had some thoughts going in on how some of the things would synergize, but I was quickly amazed at how far beyond my expectations the psychic powers performed.  I figured this would be a good test of the resilience of this list because the Tau army has access to a fair number of high strength low AP weapons,  that high strength tops out around 7 or 8  now on average instead of 10.  It was very quickly frustrating for the Tau to have to rolls 4+ or even 6+ to wound vs the large array of high toughness creatures, and what little headway they would make was quickly negated.

Why?  Spirit Seers = pure gold.

One of the two Spirit Seers ended up with the Destructor/Renewer and Enhance/Drain, the second one had Protect/Jinx and Embolden/Horrify.  I'll be honest, I was going to ditch Embolden/Horrify for the Primaris Conceal/Reveal, but since he was in a squad of Wraithguard and lined up to march through ruins I thought it wasn't going to be worth it.  That was the best decision I could make.

Renewer was used over the course of 5 rounds to heal a wound each time since I went second.  1 to a Grotesque, 1 to a Razorwing flock, and 3 to the various Pain Engines.  This was pure gold, and if I could get that on two or three Spiritseers, I don't even know how you would kills some of these squads.  Destructor could be helpful if you get up to terrain and want to soften something, but I think Renewer is the break and butter power there.

Enhance/Drain never got used, I think it would probably have seen use more for the debuff than for the buff, pushing enemies closer to needing 5s to hit in close combat.  In most cases I think both powers should be close to the same, with the major difference coming in making them fail initiative tests easier.

Protect/Jinx was interesting, and also the only power I failed my psychic test on, perils once, and just a normal fail twice.  So one round it gave the Wraithguard a 2+ save, which is nothing to sneeze at for a model that is T6.  The other round it reduced a Riptide to a 3+ save, making it much more vulnerable to the torrent of splinter fire.  I think both of these are very strong powers, but I  think where it will really excel is allowing a squad of wyches to hit a squad of terminators harder than before.  An Agonizer Hekatrix, and the pile of attacks against a 3+ save Terminator is going to be great.

Embolden/Horrify was almost thrown onto the scrap heap, mostly because Embolden isn't going to do much for Dark Eldar who can gain Fearless through Pain Tokens, or the Wraithguard that are already fearless.  Horrify though, is absolutely amazing.  -3 leadership is a huge debuff, and has so many uses.  Couple that with the Torment Grenade Launchers on a Raider and you can put units at -4 vs tank shocks, or shooting.  This was used very effectively to shoot a unit of Firewarriors and make them run off the table in a couple instances.  Even better, although Eldar lost the protection of Runes, a quick cast of this on an enemy psyker means they aren't getting off all those powers.  Better still, my beast pack was left without any beastmasters, and inevitably failed it's leadership, a fall back into the 18" range and Embolden put them right back into the fight.

I think the Wraithguard add another tougher dimension to the army, and instead of two squads I think I could be better served by 1 squad in a Waveserpent, but to better enhance the overall army, I may be just as likely to stack with as many Spirit Seers as possible and as cheap an HQ as I can get once I get a hold of the Iyanden supplement.

The game overall was going to be a loss because of some sneaky kroot and good gameplay, but it definitely gave me a lot of perspective to go back and re-tool my army to add some more mobility and maybe get a little closer to the old Dark Eldar playstyle.

SkaredCast Battle Report

So I saw that Skari was going to be up in my neck of the woods for work and looking to get some games in.  So I got in touch with him and we managed to get together and do some games in my basement; the lighting isn't the best for the camera, but go take a look and enjoy.  Remember to hit up Skari's blog and take a look, he's been great at churning out lots of content every week.

Archon Showcase

Just a quick update on the video front.

I had converted and painted up this Archon a little while ago.  I then built a quick backdrop using one of the tutorials from Ichiban Studio, instead of just a single flowing piece I made a small diorama box.  Took a couple quick videos and pieced it together in Adobe Premiere Pro and did a voice track, since my girlfriend has an Adobe subscription for school it's a free added benefit for me.

I like the way it turned out, both the video and the model.  I'm going to give a few more small videos a try in it before I switch off and try Vegas Movie Maker.

Webway Woes

One of the favorite themes of the Dark Eldar army has always been the strike from the shadows type raiding mentality.  Nothing embodied that more for me than the WebWay Portal.

Shortening the commute to the battlefield

Even back in the days of late 3rd edition when I started to play with the idea of the Dark Eldar, one of the biggest complaints that people had with the army was that they were so fragile.  It was an obvious flaw, but I quickly realized that they were only fragile if you got a chance to hit them.  This was incredibly obvious in close combat, where the high initiative value often meant there were less enemies when it came time for them to swing back.  So what if we could do the same thing in the shooting phase?  Behold the WebWayPortal.  This allowed you to keep units in reserve, and then deploy them when the portal became active, preventing units that you wanted to get into assault from being shot.  At that time it was a much bigger gamble, as you had to declare what units were coming in from the portal, and they could only come in once the portal was active; if the portal carrier died, those units were lost.  It was why you almost always had to take 2 portals, but with a late deploy you take advantage of the reserve rolls and make a focused late push.

When the new book came out it changed up the portal strategy a bit.  Now you couldn't hold units for a late portal deployment, they made normal reserve rolls and the portal merely acted as a table edge.  The plus side to this, is you gained a bit more flexibility in putting units where they needed to be.  Infamously, this lead to bait and switch tactics where opponents would avoid the portal and push towards objectives in my backfield, only to have a unit come on from the board edge and take them out.

Now with 6th edition, I'm left wondering if someone really got mad at our portals.  Reserves come much faster and more consistent so that portal has to be down turn 1, we can't get quite as deep into the opponents backfield with the new movement and disembark rules, and even if we do get the portal setup there is no more assaulting the turn we come in from reserves, and only half the army could be in reserve.  On top of all those nerfs, the addition of Interceptor weapons mean even if we do manage to come in from the portal and expect to shoot, the major advantage is gone, we cannot avoid being shot at.

We are at that point now in 6th edition where people have begun to accept that the ally rules add such a great dimension to armies that there are any number of combinations that could produce unexpected results.  As such I've seen more talk about trying to incorporate the webway portal in again.  While I believe that I could work the portals in to have units of warriors, wracks, or jetbikes come out of the portal to shoot/turbo boost, the only real benefit I see to using the portal over putting them all in a Raider is that you could have more than 10 guys; i.e. 10 wracks and 3 haemonculi for 5 liquifiers.  The only tactical option that comes to mind is to use the webway portals for board control, try and drop 2 or 3 of them at the mid-table range to cut the table in half.  The problem being, how much will you have coming from reserve that will need 3 portals.

I really enjoy the webway portal, and will continue to see if I can work it into my army, but I think it has slowly lost all of it's benefits over time.

Games Nook Tournament

So last weekend I managed to make it to Sudbury for the tournament at the Games Nook.

My original travelling partner had to cancel because of personal reasons, so my girlfriend offered to go along, because she felt bad for me.  So over the course of 5 days last week, we gave her a quick crash course on 6th edition, and built a couple different lists for her.  I dismissed her Eldar because she didn't have a defense line, or any consistent way to deal with flyers(turned out it wouldn't have been an issue), so with a choice of Chaos and Tyranids, she opted for a psychic heavy Tyranid swarm and off we went.

The event was a little different, a custom mission where you basically made a V pointing toward the defenders side, with a 12" no mans land on either side of the V.

I forgot to bring out the camera for the first game, after making sure to pack it, and bring it to the store.  So video is limited, but I tried to fill in as best I could.

We both did pretty bad, 3 points for me and 1 point for her out of a possible 24.  The dice didn't seem to be with either of us.

The Grotesque conversions went over well, even though one didn't have his stomach gem in, and even though the army wasn't based, I manged best painted because of a technicality.  The other two armies that were better painted had one that was out of contention because it was a pro-painted army, and the other army won best general I believe.  Since they don't like having players double up prizes, I got the prize.

Changes, and the obligatory "what I've been doing post"

So I've had a couple projects that I've wanted to get posted up here for a while, but I started a new job last week.  That meant a busy few weeks closing out the new job, building training documents, and bringing the replacement up to speed.  Then of course the fun of learning a new job.

Plus side, hopefully more time and income for wargaming, starting this weekend.

On of the toughest problems for me currently is my location.  There isn't really a FLGS that runs any tournaments, and being in a remote location it's atleast 3 hours to drive to anywhere else with a decent population that may run something.  So I lurk around on a few boards, watching for stuff that is upcoming and try and see if I can fit it into my schedule.  Luckily, this coming weekend there is a small 1250 point tournament happening in Sudbury and with a slightly later start time, a friend and I plan on making a day trip to compete.

One of my biggest problems with buying into any giving any tactica advice is two fold.  First, I don't get nearly as many games in as I would like to give a thorough evaluation of my lists.  The games I do get in are predominantly the same 4 or 5 armies/lists.  Second, I don't always play the same as most people; I rarely step up to a table and use the optimal strategy to win.  As a matter of fact, I often set goals for myself and work to achieve them.  The goal may be something like seeing how well the beast unit can take out that chimera, or leman russ, just so I can plan to do it later and get a better understanding of the army.  Alot of that comes from me wanting to put a false idea into my opponents head, and make them see something as more or less of a threat than it actually is.  The very Dark Eldar-y nature or feint and strike, it's why I love to use the 'worst' or under-powered armies, because they often still have some very deadly and overlooked combos.

So the plan for this weekend is to try and bring the camera and get some video, and try one of those 'weak' lists, the Dark Footdar.  The plan will center around the Archon (who by the way has a nicely new converted model that needs to be showcased), and a squad of between 6 and 8 grotesques depending on my points distribution, followed by a small 3 man bike squad and a beast pack.  There should be atleast 1 talos.  The real decision is deciding on 10 man warrior squads with lance/blaster, or trying to push more towards the coven list and build some wrack squads into venoms.

Dark Eldar Archon Artwork

So hopefully in the next couple weeks, I'll have a few HQ models to showcase.  As I mentioned there is a new Archon model, inspired by the artwork from the rule book, built up from one of the old Drazhar models I had.  Somehow I had 4 copies of the model, and only 5 arms.  I've also made some progress on my Baron conversion, I made an attempt at my own greenstuff cloak which I'm not entirely pleased or displeased with.  Finally, I've had a Duke conversion sitting on the shelf for a while and it may even get some paint.

Like a Baron!

So I haven't gotten nearly the number of games in to keep going with my tactics articles, hopefully that will be remedied a bit this weekend.  So what have I been doing? Sitting on my butt? Ya, mostly . . . but I've also been doing some painting and conversion work.  One of the units I've been working on getting ready for play is my Hellions.  They aren't quite done, but expect some pics coming soon.

I've also been doing some minor conversion work.  While looking for some bits for another project (that got pushed to the back of the workbench) I came across an old partial conversion that I got from a friend in a trade.  It was meant to be a hellion skyboard for an Archon in the previous edition, simply a part of an Eldar Vyper with some small conversion work.  Problem was it got broken and never completed.

"Hey, I need a Baron Sarthonyx to go with my hellions, and joing my beasts.  He needs a cool skyboard!"  As the though went through my head the bits started flying.  A couple evenings worth of work I got what you see below.

Comin at you

So as you may be able to see, the central board is made from the rear half of a Eldar Vyper.  One of the wings was broken, so I trimmed it down to the body, did some slight re-gluing and then filed it flush.  The new wings are the bottom part of some left over Raider rudder blades.  The guns were just the barrels off a couple extra splinter rifles that come with the raider kits.  You can't see it in the vents, but the reason they are so centrally located is because of the location of the vents and corresponding jets on the front and back of the board.  Finally the board needed a bit of greenstuff to hide the center line (this was done previously by whoever started the board, but I wanted some slightly different details, so it was removed and redone).

Quite the "pigstikka"

So I had an awesome looking board, now I just neede a Baron to ride it.  Since I had been working on 10 out of the 15 total hellions that I had, I tried putting one of the half assembled hellions on.  He just didn't quite  have the look I wanted.  I started going through other bits, and came across the legs to one of the Venom passengers.  A quick pop off of a Hellion body from the legs, some dry fitting with Blue-Tac and I had something that looked like the start of something.

Next I needed a Hellglaive.  My first though was modifying the powerspear from the Scourges set, but the pulled back nature didn't flow with the pose.  While I was digging for that bit though, I noticed the spear from the Raider passengers.  This was a wicked looking hook, and had some promise.  I built out the glaive blades by trimming down the top side of the spear head so it was flat and then adding a second spearhead .  I did this with another non-wielded spear, and then trimmed down the handle on both spears and glued them together.  A quick check of the Baron's wargear, a pistol arm, and some more Blue-Tac and the model concept was dryfit together.

Looking down at trouble.

I still want to add a flowing component to him.  I'm going to steer clear of the superman capes that seem so prevelant.  My goal will be one of the sleeveless trenchcoats similar to the old incubi that came with Vect's Raider.  It should be a good test of my sculpting skills, but I may take a few days to do some testing with tissue paper to see how I want it to flow.

Rise of the Talos

With a change in edition, there needs to be a change in strategies, I've played the game through a little better than  four iterations of the rules and learned quickly that even though it looks like a small update, it's always a whole new game.  With that in mind, my first couple 6th edition games were ran with an old style list.  Webway portals, heavy on assault and short range units like wyches, wracks, and beasts; and of course Ravagers, and a Talos for theme.

The approach of death

Obviously, the list fell completely flat, but I needed to see how bad it was before I could re-build.  One of the things that has been echoed throughout the Dark Eldar community, is that our vehicles didn't get nerfed as badly as others with the addition of Hull Points.  To an extent I agreed with this, Raiders and Venoms were already fragile and once they got into those rapid fire and melta ranges they died, this remained the same.  The one thing I did notice was my Ravagers were getting destroyed much easier.  Sitting at a further range, I often took more heavy shots with the ravagers, resulting in stuns and weapon destroyed results  with the occasional destroyed result; often the Ravagers would still be alive at the end of a game.  6th edition though, the stun locks, or multiple stuns turned into Hull Point death, and the move and fire at full range of rapid fire weapons put more things in range sooner.  The Ravagers were still quite good at anti vehicle, but they just weren't lasting long enough to work as that anvil unit.

Bash Brothers chillin

My first instinct was to try and rely on Flyers, we have some very good ones.  But I quickly realized that two things, they weren't going to be available enough through out the game to bring to bear effectively enough(2/3rds or less of the game turns), and they were just a gimmick effectiveness for now; as more armies got flyers, or figured out how to torrent of fire them down they would be just as vulnerable.  So I was concerned for a bit, but then I noticed how well my Talos was performing, twin-linked haywire blasters had him tag teaming vehicles dead via hull points with a scourge unit with two more haywire blasters, and once he got that first pain token, he was much harder to kill.

'Come at me Bro'

So as part of my Apocalypticon build, I had gotten another Talos kit, mostly for some more bits, but also to throw together another Talos with these observations in mind.  The last few games, the Ravager has sat on the shelf, and the heavy slots have been filled with 2 Talos, and usually a Razorwing.  Surprisingly these guys have absolutely preyed on vehicles that take any damage(finishing them off quickly stripping two more hull points), laughed at overwatch as they crash into assault with hammer of wrath, and dominated the table.  In combination with a few other changes, that I'll detail in a later post, I think the foot bound Taloi are here to stay, and spark the Dark Footdar revolution, I definitely believe they give the Ravager a very viable run for that 'king of the heavy' crown that it once had.

Dark Eldar don't like to fly

So with the decision of a 10 hour drive to Apocalypticon, or a 80 minute flight for slightly more than what I'd have to pay in gas, it was a no brainer to fly.  Of course this was my first time flying with miniatures, and a lot of them, so I wasn't sure what to expect or how securely packed was well enough.

So I ended up packing as much as I could in my ArmyTransport bag, and then got 2 additional Rubbermaid bins that were 12x9x12-ish.  The first bin was primarily for the titan, but after seeing how well other things fit, I grabbed another.  After some indecision, a combination of soft foam and bubble wrap was used to pack the models into the bins.  The flight down was rather rough and very damp, upon arrival.  So I expected to have to do some repairs when I arrived, not nearly to the scale that I encountered though.  Many of the models took quite a beating, luckily it was mostly bad bonds letting go, or breaking at the bond, not many snapped or broken pieces.

Mostly the lower leg and back of the shoulder

One of the other things I noticed as I was pulling models out of the ArmyTransport was that some of my wyches looked like the paint had been removed.  On closer inspection of the faded red, I realized what my problem was.  The wyches seemed to be the only models affected, which I assume was because they were the only models that traveled with me that recieved a gloss coat, followed by a matte coat.  The way the Charadon Granite and grey highlighting looked under the clouding made them look bare.

So my first instinct was to take the heat gun to them, and fix up the finish.  The heat gun worked great, the finish came right back to where it was . . . . the problem was the 'melting' point of the sealer was basically the same as the plastic, so the model I tested it on became very malleable.  I knew I'd end up loosing details, and potentially whole models that way.

Not bad for a frozen wych

So off to the internets.  The clouding is usually caused by trapped moisture (makes sense with the wet arrival and high altitude), a couple places suggested either extreme heat or cold as a solution, or just re-seal them and that will often correct it.  I tried the extreme heat, so I gave a kick at extreme cold next.  I stuck a few of the wyches in the downstairs freezer for a couple days.  Most of them came out looking better, only 2 of them are noticeably gray still.  I'll try and re-seal them some time of the next few days, and hopefully that will bring them back.

* I apologize for the lack of pics, I thought I had some good before pics, but they too ended up being cloudy . . . maybe it's contagious.

Tormentor Titan update 3

So I was hoping to get this posted before I left, but some last minute issues with the assembly, and airbrush problems left me with more to do than I had time.

"Wow, What is it?" - most common phrase to refer to the titan

Still, I managed to get it assembled, and at least a basic colour set put down.  The guns still need alot of colour, but it gives a general idea of the look of the model.  So my logistical problem came when I realized that he was going to be too big for carry on, and too big for any of the containers I had.

19" titan + 15"x12"x9" container = problems.

I get a "We'll be back" roll, right?

So with a little help, I managed to split him right where the torso meets the leg plates, then recessed a 1/2" rare earth magnet in each side.  Double win, he travels a big safer and now he pivots nicely at the waist for improved effect.

Preying Mantis Style

The guns we mounted on pins, that slide down through the tubing of the arm that slides into the torso, so they hold the blades up in place.  The head has a nail with a 1/4" nail recessed into it, with another 1/2" magnet on the neck area of the torso to hold it on.  A couple of the leg blades came off on transport home, but you can still get the idea.

Standing Tall

A very last minute addition, as in throw the bits in and finishing upon arrival, were the eye gems.  I had originally cast these to be glued to the body, but realized they'd look better in the eyes.  They may have to be pulled and re-slotted after a bit of work, but the concept is wonderful.

Here's looking at you.

So that is how the build finally shaped up.  When I got down to Welland, I stopped and had a quick visit with Kris from Riders of the Cosmic Serpent & MiniWarGaming.  After a quick inspection and ensuing titan battle, he convinced me that an Eldar Phantom Titan would be a better choice, and more aesthetically fitting, than being a Chaos Reaver.  Since the model was quite a bit bigger than I expected, equal at the head/shoulder, and not quite as high on the back fins, it wasn't a hard stretch.

So off I went to Apocalypticon with an extra 1000 points because of that decision, bringing me to just over 9500 points, and it was a decision that I would not be displeased with.

Apocalypticon 2012

So my plan was to get a couple updates done last week, but I ran into some building and equipment issues trying to get my army ready for Apocalypticon.  I hope to get some pics up of the mostly complete titan, it got quite a bit of "what is that" attention.  I'll also get a pic of the the scratch built Raven, it was much harder to spot, but got equally as much attention.  Because it was one of the last things to be completed, it was only primed black, and didn't get the mounting done.  But the priming made it look very much like an unprimed resin model, so alot of people thought it may be a Forgeworld piece.

The game was a blast, and should be the content of posts for a little while to come.

Tormentor Titan update 2

Just a quick update on the titan.

I added the jump jets, and protective plating, I built the guns that were supposed to be Splinter Cannons on my home brew datasheet.  The arms are to the point of complete, I'm contemplating how/if I want to make them removable.  It has sort of taken a back burner the past week because of my newest delivery. . .

So at this point, the plan is to hit Apocalypticon in Hamilton in just under a month with approx. 7500-8000 points in tow.  Hopefully I have more soon.

6th Edition planning and insights

So FINALLY, I'll get to try some 6th edition and I'm really looking forward to it.

Currently I've read the book a few times, and picked out insightful ideas to try.  First thing I'm going to do is try and modify my webway list.  This shouldn't be a huge deal for me because most of what I had coming out of the portal was shoot then assault type units, like the Talos and Cronos, and Wracks.  I'll maybe put the scourges in the webway instead of deep striking for a little more control.

One thing that I usually ran was two 10 man squads of wyches one from the webway and one from a raider.  These are getting a couple slight changes, one unit will become warriors coming out of the webway.  That second unit in the Raider though, they are going to take a single upgrade and be run in the exact same 'take on anything' role as before.  Now most people have given up on assault because of snapfire, especially for light armoured units like wyches, but I found a gotcha.

Better than a Holy Hand Grenade

That brings us to our single piece of wargear, the Phantasm Grenade Launcher.  In case you don't know what it does, it is an upgrade for the squad character, the Hekatrix in this case, and it makes the unit count as having both offensive and defensive grenades.  5th Edition = meh, who cares, 6th ed though? Portable cover save vs snapfire.  One of the new quirks to 6th is a change to Defensive Grenades.

ShootingA unit equipped with defensive grenades has the Stealth special rule against all attacks targeting them. so long as:

• They are within 8" of the unit firing at them.

• They have not gone to ground

So what does this mean? With your average assault range being about 7" with the fleet reroll, you are going to want to be within 8" anyhow, so when you declare a charge you get a 'who can get the most 6s' roll off.  So this means you could get a 6+/5+FNP for your wyches.  

I'll give it a try this weekend and report back.

My 6th Edition rant for the pile

So I got to go over the 6th edition rules and FAQ quickly, I'll give it a couple more intensive reads later.  Overall, I'm disappointed with the rules changes, but have a hard time being surprised at such bad design.

I think the thing that frustrates me the most is how every new or interesting change that seemed to add balance, was followed by a line like "except for models with and they shall know no fear", or "except for drop pods".  Just put a giant disclaimer at the front that says BUY SPACE MARINES OR DON'T PLAY!

Anyhow, I'll have to do some playtests, but I'm absolutely certain that my lists will be changing dramatically.  So I'm just going to go over a few observations that I've made for my Dark Eldar army, mixed with a few general observations and opinions I've read/heard else where.

• So lets start with the obvious, WWP Assaults are dead, FAQ double slaps us, no assault out of a WWP(no surprise), but also no allies out of a WWP.
• Assault is going to be harder to get into with random charges and overwatch
• Wyches are much less viable, slightly less threat range on average, subject to shooting if they come from WWP/reserve, and then subject to overwatch with a very real chance that they fail the charge and get shot again.  Wyches + shooting = dead wyches.
• Beasts threat range greatly reduced, and will be more vulnerable moving across the table.
• Flyers are slightly less effective shooting, no more single turn alpha strikes with all the guns and missles.
• Warlord rules don't do much for our army, most of these abilities we can get from upgrades/combat drugs/pain tokens
• FNP nerf hits us hard, with 5+ and 6+ nerf armour saves, the 4+ FNP was what most units survived on.
• Jetbikes got better, with a 4+ cover save all the time thanks to jink + skilled rider they may be viable shooting units again.
• Gunboats are back, splinter racks will become valuable now
• Raiders didn't really get as nerfed as other vehicles with Hull Points.
• DE Archons/HQ should excel at character hunting/challenges, huskblade/soul trap was made for this.
• Drazhar became very powerful with how difficult 2+ saves are
• Incubi will excel at what I'm going to dub the "Aspect Trick"
• Opinion seems to agree wound allocation slows the game down drastically, so points levels will likely fall back to 1500pts

There are a few others that I'm going to test a bit first, but I want to explain one thing I mentioned near the end, the "Aspect Trick".  Incubi, and all Eldar Aspect warriors for that matter, have a "character" that fights at a different initiative value than the rest of the squad, this allows your character upgrade to be the ultimate CC sniper.  This takes advantage of the new close combat wound allocation, and some sneaky charge movement, as I said, I've only read the rules once so feel free to correct me.

Aspect Trick: Move the Klaivex into B2B with high threat target, making sure not to touch any other models.  Klaivex strikes at I6, while remainder of Incubi strike at I5.  Thus when Klaivex makes attacks at I6, he should be the only one attacking at that Initiative on your side.  Wounds don at I6 can only be taken from models in base to base with models striking at I6, thus the high threat target the Klaivex maneuvered into B2B must die.  Bonus: If the Klaivex rolls a 6 to hit, he may use the Precision Strikes to allocate to another model in the combat, and still snipe his B2B target.

I expect this to be a HUGE advantage if the squad makes it into CC with anything with limited power weapons.  The problem I see arising, is a lot of units, the power weapons go to the characters, and they will get a "look out sir" roll.  But something like the grey hunter squad with a couple meltas and a power weapon, this will be gold  And don't we all expect to see more of those grey hunter squads in 6th?

Tormentor Titan update

With 2 updates in a week I've obviously gotten more done on the titan.  Legs are greenstuffed and connected to the torso, upper torso is done except weapons, back fins are on and arms are in the production phase, you can see the mock-up put on with blue tac in the pics below.  I figure it's also a nice change from the current uproar of 6th washing across the interwebs.

Tormentor head on

After I got everything together I thought the legs were a little large at first, but after it's all together they've grown on me.  One of the problems I ran into is balance and that the legs are just connected with styrene tubing and seem a little flimsy.  I believe the model could hold its weight just standing on the shelf, but I expect it would seem breakage during table play.  So I've currently put him on a small plywood base, with a 1/2" tube propping up the model(about a 1/2" off the ground currently); the plan is to replace the tube with a clear acrylic rod.

Side profile

I'm going to go back and add some additional tubing to represent hydraulics where the lower legs meet the upper legs, and possibly where the upper leg meets the torso.  The lower part of the torso still needs to be detailed with protective plates and jump jets in between the legs. I'm probably putting some sort of belt piece as well to divide the torso.

The plan for the should mounts are to make them look slightly like the new heat lances, I found some nice mechanical pencils that have a similar shape so it should make it easy to convert up.  The CCW currently is a foam board mock up.  The plan for this is probably going to be a single piece of styrene sheet for the whole shape, and then build up with smaller shapes of styrene sandwiching the main blade.

Titan update

So the I've finished the 4 legs, gotten them cleaned up and prepped to remold the tips of the legs after putting some solid pins in there.  I found the leg tips were pretty flimsy, and sparse, so I cut them back far enough to pin in the pins.  Most of the spiked fins were also pretty deformed or flimsy, so I removed most of them, I'm thinking I may just remove them all and either put individual bits on all the legs, or cast the fins by themselves.

Four legs, pinned and ready for Green stuff

While resin was curing and in between leg cleanup, I moved on to the torso piece, and upper legs.  I had originally decided that I was going to use a ball type joint on the upper leg to connect to the torso as well.  I expected to cast and mold that as well, but as I was looking a little closer at the Forgeworld Eldar titans I noticed they usually used a flat connection.  So I picked up some 7/16" Evergreen tubing and I'm just going to connect using the tubes cut to size.  The torso had holes pre-drilled to fit the ball joints, so I just expanded them slightly so the tubing will fit.

Torso with a small mistake

I had used a series of PVC pike connectors to build the torso, it is a larger 1" piece, with a smaller connector fit inside, and half of a third smaller connector within the second one.  You can see the second connector with the leg holes, and you can see the third connector through the holes, and the small stop piece at the bottom.  This gave a nice little tapering effect towards the bottom, I just needed to expand the top a bit so I could make it resemble the Kabalite Warrior torso.  So as I was cleaning up, I found an old Tylenol bottle that was the right size, I had to expand the opening, and then slipped it on the top of the PVC connector.  This gave me a nice thickness for the torso, as well as a flat top with a slight indent to attach the head at a later point.  A short set of 1/2" tubing was added to either side of the medicine bottle to give the torso the width I wanted from shoulder to shoulder.  Now it was ready to be built up and get some definition going.

The first though was going to be heat and mold styrene around the frame until I got the shape I wanted, and then add detail to it until it was passable.  But since the gaming table doubles as the work area and is shared by my girlfriend and her daughter there are often lots of odds and ends kicking around for inspiration.  So the kid was working on trying to build items with the intent of going larger and larger to an eventual cosplay outfit.  One of the materials that she was using extensively was the sheets of flexible craft foam.  I was moving it out of the way and noticed how it flexed nicely, was of a decent thickness, and was easy to work with, so I asked to borrow a couple sheets.

Torso back with spinal plates

The torso plates were laid down from bottom up using the foam, because of the natural stepping nature of the frame I didn't have to do all the way to the top each time.  The one problem I had, is I got a little too anxious with foam and started forming the torso before I remembered that each band was supposed to taper up in the center where the hole was.  Still, the foam has worked great, it's given me a nice light frame that has been easy to work with.  The only real problem I've had is some shaping problems with edges, and stray bits and bobs can leave impressions in the foam.  After the torso was built, I cut away a section down the middle of the back and inserted the layered spinal plates, and guards on either side of that.  I think it came out quite nicely.

So the next step is going to be building the back fins, and deciding on what I want to do with the torso piece.  I had originally thought of casting the torso as well, but I realize that it may be too heavy to sit properly on the legs once everything is assembled.  So I've been throwing around a couple of ideas.  The other problem is how to prepare the foam for detail and paint.  I should be able to use a glue/water mixture to seal it like a foam terrain piece, or maybe even a sealer, but one of the things I've noticed when I get some resin spill over onto any newspaper is it soaks in and hardens almost like a fibreglass (which it should since it is basically the same product); so I may mix up some resin, and paint it onto the foam to harden it.  This may also be revisited for the flyer build as well.

On a seperate note, I may be moving soon, and I've heard there is a decent sized Apocalypse game being planned for the middle of this month, so I may try and hurry this to a standing frame with temporary weapons to try out.  As far as the MiniWarGaming Apocalypticon event, as I expected, they don't want to sent a precedent of having to manage house built rules, so if I get it built and am able to attend it will likely proxy as a Chaos Reaver.

A little more success, and some hope.

So I did some work to put together a slightly better rig to hold my leg molds, a pair of leftover pressboard shelves cut to size with a series of clamps along the out edges.  With that done, I mixed up another batch of resin, and set to work trying again.

This time the leg came out much better, and overall the part came out looking more like I expected.  The sharp edge of the leg was a little dull and jagged, this is in part because this is where the split for the mold was made.Also, the blades along the outer side of the leg didn't get as much definition.  The blades were very much expected, I didn't put in the proper venting for them when I made the mold.  I figured I could always just add those pieces on later if I needed, with the number of extra bits in the Raider and Ravager kit I should have enough to finish one titan at the very least.

Titan Leg V2

The bottom tip of the leg saw a little air get captured, so it resulted in a bit of deformity; no big loss though, because one of the things I had wanted to try was putting a metal rod into the leg when I was pouring the resin so there was a little more rigid structure for the titan to stand on, I can insert the rod where the deformity is and the green stuff over top.

The next leg is in the block curing now, I had did a little more research and it was suggested that putting talc powder on the inside of the mold helped the resin reach all the nooks and crannies, so that is the experiment this time, hopefully it will help show an improved result.

If I can get 3 more legs of the above quality, then I'll play with adding the rod for the next 4.  But first, time to get the body finished and get some more silicone rubber to cast the part.  I'd say to expect more updates, but I'm sure we all know I'm lazy and they may be not come soon.

Work has begun.

I'm still working on the flyer, mostly trying to figure out how to get the nice rounded organic feel to a lot of it without leaving it to the symmetry of my sculpting skills(since they don't much exist).  So I started doing some more scratch work on another project I've wanted to try.

The Tormentor Titan

The one thing that bothers about playing Dark Eldar, is as you scale up, there isn't really anything to use.  Apocalypse formations are limited, specialty units are virtually non-existent, and the few Forgeworld offerings are more 40K bolt-ons than Apocalypse vehicles.

So I did some digging into the dark corners of the internet to find out about where the army stands in Epic.  There isn't really anything in the official Epic rules for Dark Eldar, but there is a community who put together rules to expand the game and include Dark Eldar, along with other "lesser races" in the form of the Epic Raiders fandex.  So obviously the cover is as far as I needed to look to know I wanted the Dark Eldar Tormentor Titan.

I've played around with some rules ideas to guide what I want to build, but I'm going to keep those to myself until the project is done and I can fit them to the model.  I've finished the leg model, and have an idea on how it's attaching to the body assembly, so I picked up some Mold Max 30 silicon rubber to cast the part.  I hadn't used the product before, but I liked it being a mix by weight product which made it more exact with the use of a kitchen scale.  I built a mold box, and set the leg into clay, along with some bolts for alignment keys, and cast the first half of the mold, planning on doing a 2 part mold.  There wasn't any real problems, everything went smoothly.  I hit the local Michael's and got some mold release, removed the clay, and hit the part and mold with some mold release.  I then poured the second half of the mold.

Problems occurred!  The mold release either didn't properly cover, or reacted with the silicon mold compound, there was no release between the mold halves, I had a part encased in a block of silicon rubber.  So I went about splitting the block and getting to the part.  I managed to extract it and was basically left with a split mold.  From reading I knew this wasn't going to be as durable or reusable as a 2 part mold, but I figured I'd give it a try.  Now usually I'm using much smaller molds, and often they are placed snuggly into boxes of some sort, but this mold was a bit larger, so I tried using some boards held tight with some elastics and straps.  Once I started pouring the resin, it was obvious these weren't tight enough, because resin seeped out the sides and bottom.  I tightened things as much as I could and finished pouring the mold.

It didn't turn out terribly, I got a lot of flashing and bubbled edges because of the seepage, but it could be salvageable.  I noticed that the mold itself has a couple of major bubbles on the one side, likely the second half, but they should be fixable, the biggest issue with this cast is that the top ball joint and edge of the leg only had the resin harden on the mold while some of the resin seeped out, making them hollow.

Bubbles in the mold

Rough edges because of seepage

I'm going to build up a proper box that I can place the mold in and tight more uniformly and try again.  The goal is to get 4 good legs out of the mold, and then see if I can manage 4 more.  As was pointed out to me, if I'm going to spend the time and money to cast and mold one, I may as well do 2.  So hopefully over the next little while I can refine my process and get the 4-8 legs I need and move onto finishing the body assembly.

Dark Eldar vs Eldar Corsairs

So a bit of shared content that's going up a bit late, I did a battle with Kris from over at Riders of the Cosmic Serpent.  We were testing out the Eldar Corsairs list from the latest Imperial Armour book.  Mostly because it gives him a reason to play with the planes in normal games.  Overall it wasn't that bad, the army felt alot like the normal jetbike/grav tank army.