Wednesday, September 14, 2011

How white is bone? Deathwing painting help please!

Hey everyone,

I really need some help and thoughts with respect to painting up the bone armour of the Deathwing. I have thus far painted most of my models in three stages:

- Bone white spray
- sepia wash
- highlighting with Menoth White base.

Now I started to paint up the next layer of highlighting with Menoth White Highlight and had a pause. Do you think it is too bright of a jump or should I continue to do this with the other Deathwing models?

L-R: Bone spray, sepia wash, menoth base, menoth highlight


It is possible of course for me to mix the base and highlight colours to have something in between but that carries the penalty of mixing paint to the same level for 27 terminator figures. I'm not sure if I have the patience for that haha.

Please pass on your thoughts so I can decide how I'll brighten up my models (or not).

Much appreciated.

Pete

Sunday, September 11, 2011

Bringing out the Dark Kin from Commoragh

Hi everyone,

So now that my Deathwing force is well into the painting stage, is complete at 1500 and just needs a couple of units to make it to 1750 (see other post), I'd like to talk about another army entirely.

Deathwing are, to me, the epitome of a durable, slowly moving elite force. There aren't many of them so you have to concentrate your attacks carefully but they will weather a storm of fire, never run since they are fearless and will often surprise you with just how long they can plough through the opposition when the chips are down. You can trust in your 2+ armour and 3+/5+ invulnerable saves all while gunning the opposition down with storm bolters, assault cannons and cyclones, or pulping them in assault with lightning claws, power fists and thunder hammers.

If Deathwing are the proverbial brick outhouse, now I want to have a try with the glass cannon that is the Dark Eldar army.

This might just be the most awesome cannon ever :-)



I've really enjoyed the tactical challenge of having to carefully consider each and every move I make with my small, elite Deathwing force and from all counts, playing a mechanised Dark Eldar force brings many of the same thinking challenges. Knowing that you are very vulnerable to shooting and assault from pretty much anything in the game makes me feel like I'll have to have razor focus all the time. Now that can be a tiring way to play but it is exhilarating too.

So having read a few tactica articles on Dakka and considered the kind of army I'd like to play here is my 1500point army list.

HQ
- Haemonculus.
- Haemonculus.

Elites
- 3 Trueborns with blasters in a Dakka Venom (two splinter cannons)
- 3 Trueborns with blasters in a Dakka Venom (two splinter cannons)
- 5 Incubi in a Dakka Venom (two splinter cannons)

Troops

- 7 Wracks with an Agoniser wielding acothyst in a Raider (flickerfield, aethersails, shock prow).

- 7 Wyches, haywire grenades, razorflails, Hekatrix with agoniser in a raider (configured as above)

- 7 Wyches, haywire grenades, razorflails, Hekatrix with agoniser in a raider (configured as above)

Heavy Support

- Ravager, 3 Dark Lances and Flickerfield
- Ravager, 3 Dark Lances and Flickerfield
- Ravager, 3 Dark Lances and Flickerfield


NB: To bring this up to 1750, I'd probably add another Haemonculus and ten Kabalite warriors in a Raider.

Rargh! We've come for your souls.



Army Selection Thoughts

Despite the tasty selection of characters in the codex I decided to start off with cheap Haemonculi to bring some paint tokens. With one token I get FNP, two tokens give me furious charge and three make me fearless. The first one is really key for a fragile dark eldar army and will make my Wyches even nastier in assault. I'll probably put one with each wyche squad.

For the elite selection I knew I wanted some nasty shooting and assault ability. The blaster trueborn are a tried and tested way to kill off tanks and terminators. Putting them in a dakka venom lets me move 6" and fire 3 blasters plus 12 poisoned splinter cannon shots out to 36". If I need to move 12" I still get to unleash the dakka since poisoned weapons always count as defensive. I added Incubi because the models are really nice and they will let me take out armoured foes or those with FNP that I don't want my wyches tied up against.

For the troops I started with wracks who bring their own pain token. With poisoned weapons they can put a nice hurting on an enemy in assault. I see these as being effective troops to tie up the more basic enemy forces that I don't want my wyches engaging or to sit on an objective if needed. The wyches are nasty assault units that can kill off enemies with the agoniser, threaten tanks with haywire grenades (possibly on turn one if the opponent deploys on the 12" line) and tie up big assault units because of their CC invulnerable save.

All of my raiders get a flickerfield (5+ invul) since they'll be in danger most of the game, aethersails to make sure I get a turn 2 assault, redeploy rapidly or tank shock at speed, and a shock prow in order to make tank shocks. It not only adds a threat to armour but lets me tank shock units to put them in a good position for controlling the number of models who can hit me back.

The ravagers are tank and heavy infantry hunters. Because they can move 12" and still fire all three weapons I think it will be very tough for a foe to stop me getting side armour shots. Also it lets me redeploy a lot of force very quickly that can reach out and touch hard at range.


The downside

So while this is an exciting army idea I hope to get started on soon, the inevitable downside is pricing. GW has made it quite costly to mechanise your army and having to shell out some £20 for each raider, £18 for each venom and £30 per Ravager makes it a big investment, even before I put troops in them.

Still it's a nice project to look forward to.

Thoughts, criticism and jokes all very much welcomed

Pete :-)

Thursday, September 1, 2011

Taking the Deathwing up to 1750 points

Hi everyone,

So my Deathwing army painting is progressing at a decent pace now that I've gotten myself settled in Bratislava and been able to unpack. One of my new coworkers at the language school is also a 40k player and will be introducing me to the gaming club here soon.

The army as it is so far.


I'm happy with the way that the models are turning out so far. I need to test out some highlighting as I'm not sure how much more I want to brighten up the bone armour and how extensively. Should I just do edge highlights with a brighter shade (I used Menoth White Base so I can do Menoth White Highlight next) or should I look to brighten up the armour more in general? Not sure on that one yet so I'll be doing a test on one of the grunt models before I apply it to Lysander/Belial/etc.

Now the army comes out to just over 1500 points with upgrades and I hear that a lot of people here game at 1750 so I want to increase my army size a bit. With 215-230 points (depending on upgrades) to play with I have some options. I don't really want to add more terminators since the current lot are such a mix of styles (GK, SM and SW) and I like the variety. Plus I already have 27 terminators to paint and I don't need more ;-)

I've been thinking about one of the new venerable dreadnought kits and the techmarine with servitors. I know the latter is not a power unit by any means but I've always liked the model and now that it's in the easily-assembled Finecast format, it's something I can consider. Superglue still hates me but the lack of weight on the Finecast means even I can assemble the models.

Some groovy venerable dreadnoughts



A good picture of the Finecast techmarine from the always excellent 40kbitz blog. Go and follow it ;-)



Any thoughts or advice for boosting the army? I'd like to keep everything in the same bone-white though I don't mind painting Ravenwing in that colour if land speeder is the way forward.

If only Sammael on Jetbike was available in Finecast, he'd be on my list for sure :-)

Thanks for reading,

Pete

PS: The other option is to leave the army at 1500 and move onto my new crush of a Dark Eldar Skimmer army. More to come on this soon ;-)

PPS: I got my new Windsor and Newton brushes as a birthday present to myself (27 years young and still playing with toy soldiers).
Deathwing Lysander approves of my new brushes!

WFB Orcs and Goblins using just a sprinkle of GW for flavour. Pt 3: The army list

Ok, time for the final part of my making an Orcs and Goblins army post series.

Here is the model list from the last post. Now it's time to point it up roughly and see what it comes to.

- Warboss on boar
- 40 Black Orcs
- 10 Boar Boyz
- 75 Orc Boyz
- 60 Night Goblins
- 2 Speak Chukkas
- Giant
- Arachnarok spider


Lords
1x Black orc warboss on boar = 160pts


Core Units

25x Orc Boyz with shields, boss, musician and standard = 175pts

25x Orc Boyz with shields, boss, musician and standard = 175pts

25x Orc Boyz with shields, boss, musician and standard = 175pts

20x Night Goblin archers, boss, musician and standard = 90pts

20x Night Goblin archers, boss, musician and standard = 90pts

20x Night Goblin archers, boss, musician and standard = 90pts


Special Units

20x Black Orcs, shields, boss, musician and standard = 295pts

20x Black Orcs, shields, boss, musician and standard = 295pts

10x Boar Boyz, Big Uns, Shields, boss, musician and standard = 255pts

2x Goblin Spear Chukkas = 70pts


Rare Units

1x Arachnarok Spider, flinger = 320pts

1x Giant = 200pts


Total army points as shown = 2390pts



So there you have an army that comes out to just about 2500 points. I don't know WFB that well but I understand that magic plays a solid part in it these days so perhaps some points tweaking to include some shamans would be a good idea.

That's all from me for now. If I get the time and funds to kickstart this project I'll be sure to keep you all in the loop with how it goes.

Thanks for reading.

Pete :-)