Warhammerzlol!

After having a couple of chats with Kerley and Jamie, we decided to throw ourselves back into fantasy. With the recent 8th ed release, it's a good opportunity to give it another go. I managed to bag a bunch of used lizardmen off of Jamie, as this army looks like it has an interesting playstyle that I will enjoy. We're planning on regulary playing together to learn the new edition, and get decent with our armies, and then hopefully go on to enter and win the spring or summer Throne of Skulls tournament! It's little things like this that get me excited about army building and painting projects, and I'm feeling pumped for this.

The Throne of Skulls requires you to enter with a fully painted army (I think at least 3 distinct tones, so no spraypaint badger armies!) that is 8th ed legal, and 2k points. The event is held at Warhammer world, in Nottingham.

Me and Kerley had our first 8th ed fight earlier, with Jamie watching and painting up his skaven bummers. we did 1.5k. Kerley took a shooty high elf list, with roughly the following:

Shooty lord man thing on a horse with a bolt thrower, reroll IWIN button, lance and maybe some other things
Shooty hero noble on a horse with tripple pew and a lance, 6+ regen thing
lvl 2 mage with the stick of moar magic
white lion chariot
2x 20 seaguard, with full command
25 phoenix guard, full command, and their cheaty rubbish ward save thing that's powered by dead kittens

When we were totting up the VPS, it turned out that Kerley accidentally added it up a bit wrong and was 200 pts odd over. No biggie, we were chatting about new rules and stuff while writing our lists and not really paying attention. He felt a bit embarrassed about it, bless him ;)

I was a bit limited by the models I had on me, so I made a list out of all the stuff I got off of Jamie:

Scar-vet, gambler's armour, great weapon, in 19 temple guard, full command
scar-vet, enchanted shield, light armour, in 26 saurus warriors, full command, spears
skink priest, diadem thing, in with 10 skink skirmishers
skink priest, on his lonesome
10 skink skirmishers
6 chameleon skinks
6 chameleon skinks
5 cold one cavalry

This list is quite different from what I was thinking from my Skulls list, but it's interesting to play around with certain restrictions, like a limited palette of modes, not of your choosing. Kind of like drafting in M:TG.

The game swung back and forth like a wibbly bitch. Kerley won the roll and went first. We bunched the infantry in the centre, and all the loose stuff on the flanks. I ate away one of his sea guard with the 2 chameleons and the bare 10 skinks, while he smashed into my saurus with his other 2 blocks and mounted characters. The cold ones somehow ate up the chariot, after taking a bit of character shooting. The magic phase was notably different to the previous edition, which I really like. I got put off by high magic, munchkin lists in 7th. There was some unlucky charge rolls, some jammy armour rolls, and lots of high numbers by me. I somehow managed to cinch the lead, with the flanks dominated by the skinks. marching and multi-shooting with poisoned weapons is just damn nasty if you're an elf.

Long story short, I have quite the respect for the little blue T2 guys, and need to do a bit more testing with them. Hopefully soon, those 2 stegadons will be showing up... So yeah, I'm quite enjoying 8th ;)

Dipperton

I had a read of a really interesting article on Bell of Lost Souls the other day, by Mr Jawaballs, reviewing The Army Painter's Quick-shade stuff. I'd seen this stuff before, when it first came out, and a friend of mine picked up the strongest of the 3 to get his dark elves done. Back then, the product seemed a bit poo, being 18 quid for a tin and leaving everything an ill shade of brown.

From reading Jawaballs' review (http://www.belloflostsouls.net/2010/08/hobby-jawaballs-product-review-army.html) I was quite impressed how he used it, and looked up a few vids on youtube. This inspired me to head out to Krackers and pick up a tin of the light stuff.

This little AOBR tester dude was sprayed black, airbrushed Shadow Grey, then base coloured with macharite red, shining gold, chaos black and graveyard earth, taking all of 10 minutes. Then I painted on the Soft Tone stuff with a shite brush, waited for 4 odd hours, then painted on some matt varnish.

I was dubious until I did the matt varnish, now I'm 100% sold! All the rest of the SWs are getting this treatment, minus the vechicles i reckon. Hopefully I can wack out a painted army very quickly.

On a similar note, I'm gunna test out a revised list. Don't know if this is overkill or not! 1.5k points:

Rune Priest, terminator armour, jaws, hurricane - 120
4 Wolf guard, 4 terminator suits, 4 shields, assault cannon, wolf claw, chain fist, drop pod - 277

Rune priest, lightening, jaws - 100
8 Grey hunters, melta, mark, banner, drop pod, guard, fist - 228

10 grey hunters, 2 plasma, drop pod - 195

10 grey huunters, 2 melta, mark, fist, banner, drop pod - 240

3 Vindicators - 345

Eat THAT!

Stuff

Being a bit sporadic with posts it seems. I have painted up some fenrisian wolves, bought an airbrush kit and learning to use it, and did a hive tyrant for kerley's birthday. Doing some legion of the dammed for a friend at work in return for a spider tank and a vivarium. And also having an upheval in the work department. I found a pretty cool list which has given me a few things to think about, I like the thoughts behind the vindicators (logan and the land raider can bum off tho!): http://lkhero.blogspot.com/2010/03/my-current-army-list.html

Drop army w/thunder wolves, rawr!

Finished painting my first drop pod, took about 5 hours (or rather, Deathproof, an episode of Heroes and Goldmember). Wasn't sure how to do the weathering so I sponged on some black, then some silver & brown. That only leaves 4 pods to go! hurrah!

I'm plotting out an army list revision. I've found a couple of white lions from the chariot kit on ebay, which I should hopefully be able to make into thunderwolf cavalry. I've seen some conversions like this and they look a little wanky, so I'm gunna try and green stuff and do some clever conversions. We'll see!

Anyways, army list! At the core of my builds, I like to have 3-4 units of grey hunters, all with a different build. Then a unit of guard terminators with a rune priest in a pod, and lastly some fun bits to play with. This time, the fun bits will be thunderwolf cavalry and maybe some wolves. I was thinking that the last two units were a little wanky till I thought about the range they threaten. Sure, they're movement 6, but they are fleet and can charge 12", so they have a sexy 19-24" threat range. That's better than bikes, given the right opportunity!

So...:

9 Grey Hunters, Mark, Melta, drop pod, Wolf Guard, Power fist - 233

10 Grey Hunters, 2 plasma guns, drop pod - 195

5 Grey Hunters, flamer, mark, drop pod, Wolf Guard, Power fist - 168

5 Grey Hunters, flamer, mark, drop pod, Wolf Guard, Power fist - 168

4 Wolf Guard, 4x Terminator armour, 1 Chain fist, 1 assault cannon, 1 Wolf claw, 4 storm shields, drop pod - 277

Rune Priest, Terminator armour, Jaws, Wrath - 120

4 Thunderwolf cavalry, power fist, storm shield, plasma pistol - 270

8 Fenrisian wolves - 64

That makes 1495, so I could maybe throw in a weapon upgrade or somthing. I dunno. Looking forward to playing this, tho! The plasma pistol and odd setup for the Guard are mainly for wound allocation, which I am a bummer and like to exploit. Rawr!

Song of the Earthserpent

So I've been collecting a space wolf army for a couple of months now. I've had about 5 or 6 games with them and really enjoy their style, a lot different from codex marines, sisters and guard (well, obviously guard..!) and I'm trying to paint all of them to a decent standard.

I've gone for deep blue, the foundation fenris grey for the main armour, highlighted with a 40/60 mix of bleached bone and shadow grey. The metallics are mainly shining gold, with a bit of light silver, and the red pads are mechrite red. So far I've done 1 1/2 units of grey hunters, and I've just primed 5 more and a pair of drop pods.

The list is built around flexable units of grey hunters in drop pods, and one or two TDA wolf guard with rune priests, also in pods. I've experimented with bikes and a dreadnaught but not really liking the outcome. They feel more like a points sink while the hunters and guard do all the heavy work. I'll post a list at some point.

As these guys are of a different paint scheme to the GW space wolves, I'm using these as another chapter. I'm not thinking of sucsessor or great company, (as I think both do not suit the space wolves) but as another chapter with similar make-up. The name I'm thinking at the moment, is the Song of the Earthserpent, and I have a few things running through my head, like homeplanet destroyed by a void whale they're now hunting, or a lean towards the Iron Snakes. Really liked that novel, damn you Abnett, I've collected 2 marine chapters and guard because of you!