Apocalyptic photo bomb!

Starting a Tyranid force

So I got a Tyranid Army.

First I bought the Deathstorm box, adding some Marines to my Iron hands (carefully cutting away most Blood angel iconography!)
Aaaand then I got an offer to trade all my Orks for a huge (and largely unpainted) Tyranid army, for roughly the same amount of $ as I had spent on my Orks, great!

It took me weeks to decide on a colour scheme for these guys, then one day I asked myself. What colours are the official ones for the Zerg from Starcraft? I googled a few pictures and went, hell yes, I can go for something like that. The Zerg are purple and brown, sort of fading from one colour to the next, Tyranids have a much sharper contrast were the carapace ends/begins. I also went for an earthy brown heavily highlighted with orange. The dark purple is actually mixed with the same orange for highlights too, but I haven't really done that for most of the smaller 'Nids yet.

My Tyranids are actually extremely close combat focused, with only some dakka on my Flyrant (becaise landing and not being able to assault gets you killed), and one of my Warrior groups has a barbed strangler, because pinning is amazing before an assault.

So far I got

1 Flyrant

2 Tervigons~70 Termagants

30 Hormagaunts

9 warriors

13 Genestealers

1 Broodlord

1 Spawn of Cryptus

1 Zoanthrope (in metal...)

2 Carnifexes

3 Raveners (also in metal)

I love Carnifexes, even though 4 wounds kind of hurts them, but 2x Scything talons and adrenal glands + toxin sacs makes them really scary in assault. usually hitting on 4+ wounding on 2+ with rerolls to wound (and s10 on the charge) and the extra attack from two pairs of talons should make them pretty killy against most targets.

I really really want some Tyrannofexes too, but their weapons seem kind of meh on paper, but boy are they cool, and I could use some shooting in my army I bet.

I will probably, as it stands now before I've playtested my army, be using the Endless Swarm Formation from Leviathan, because I love hormagaunts and they can get back in the game on a 4+ if they get wiped out. So 3 'small' units with toxin sacs should be pretty useful.

Can't wait to try my army out and see what I should get for them next.

(and what should go in those tyrannocytes that I really really want?)

I live, again! (+Dark Eldar pics)

Just like those pesky Necrons, I'm back and at it again!

I have a ton of pictures from painting, batreps and.... Well that's pretty much it.
This post however is mainly me giving the ol' blog (and myself) a kick in the bottocks to get things going again.


The biggest news is probably that I traded all my Orks in for Tyranids.
Partly because I wanted to play Tyranids and I didn't use my Orks very often, especially since I felt my playstyle with them took a bit of a pounding with the new codex (which is good, it's just now what I wanted). But also for the fact that I feel like I won't have time to collect and play four different armies! Also most of my Orks were bought used and painted by other peeps, and it didn't feel 100% my Ork army, the way I wanted it.
Might restart my Ork army at some point in the (far) future. Right now it's Space Marines, Tyranids and a small force of Dark Eldar that is getting my love.

Speaking of my Dark Eldar, their new codex is amazing! I think I love pretty much everything in it so far. They did a great job balancing it and keeping things fun. And oh man, that Voidraven Bomber is haaaaaaawt~!

Here's my test on making Grotesques out of Skaven Rat ogres. I think I'm gonna use a Talos head for to give it some more Dark Eldar-y details, but it does look very Grotesque-ish with its sewn together skin and arcane.... scarifications... Eww.

 

My colour scheme for my Dark Eldar is Yellow and black, with a dash of green here and there for that poisonous effect.

White Templars vs Necrons 1000 pts picture batrep. 7th Edition.

A small battle between my White templars and Andreas.K's Necrons
I had a crusader squad in a rhino, 10 man, sgt with a lightning claw and stormbolter and an Initiate with a power axe and one with a  meltagun. Another crusader squad, 5 initiates, one with a lascannon and one with a grav gun with five neophytes as cannon fodder to protect them.
A stormtalon with skyhammer missile launchers and the TL-assault cannon.
last but not least I had a razorback with a TL-lascannon driving 5 honour guard with the chapter banner and the Chapter master himself,  kitted out with 2 lightning claws and artificer armour (I forgot he had the armour indomnitus, so that was around 60 pts down the drain).

I was up against 2 groups of immortals with tesla weaponry, lead by an overlord each.
two annhilation barges and a doomsday ark.

the mission was Big guns never tire, with deployment on the short table edges.

Necrons got turn 1. they moved up pretty agressively.
One barge shot and wrecked my Rhino through the ruin so the crusaders disembarked behind it, in hindsight they should have deployed out in the forest. The Doomsday Ark couldn't see any targets and so moved into position on his left flank, which meant it didn't have its disgusting 72" range this turn!

Nothing else happened basically so it was my turn. I moved the Crusader squad up into the forest (see?)
The razorback, it's path now blocked by the smoldering wreck of the Rhino. elected to go left instead and fire on the annihilation barge with it's twin-linked lascannon, I however failed to damage it.

the crusaders with the lascannon hung back in their crater (we had decided to treat all craters as difficult terrain instead of using their rules from the book). They also fired on the Barge and managed to only glance off one hull point. The Crusader squad ran up through the woods but didn't manage to quite get to the crater.

In return the barge fired on the razorback, also peeling off a hull point, the immortals moving up, one group coming around the corner of the bastion in the middle (it was just impassable terrain for some LOS blocking)
their relatively short range meant they could do little else this turn.

The Doomsday ark however caught sight of the crusader squad coming out from the treeline and fired its 72" range gun... that has strength 9 and AP 1....!!!! What the hell!?
It rolled a solid hit and the explosion got all but two of the hapless marines....

Those two poor bastards where however in range of the immortals now and so got blasted to bits. Ouch!

the Barge fired again on the razorback but only managed to peel off another hull point! One more to go.

The immortals simply continued to move up towards me, the unit by the bastion moving in to grab the objective on my right flank. It was gonna be a toughie to get them off it now.

My stormtalon came in from reinforcments, luckily and fired on the annhilation barge (the other barge had just been sitting on the objective in his deployment the whole game. it wasn't even bloody needed!).

The combined fire of a razorback and a stormtalon was enough to bring the first annhiliation barge down so the crusader squad with the lascannon fired on the imortals and actually managed to kill a few, and two of those didn't come back up. 

My Chapter master and honour guard had disembarked earlier and were now moving up, hoping to get a rather long charge off to assault the immortals coming towards them. Luck was not with me however and I failed their charge distance.

So on the necron turn he actually charged me, however as luck would have it my chapter master killed his overlord and the honour guard put a few immortals to the test by putting them in the ground. They failed their morale check and fled.
well, they tried but my finest warriors of the White templars ran them down. I needed this!

funnily enough the overlord got back up, all alone, caught between the honour guard and the lascannon crusader squad.

The necrons did however bring the stormtalon down with massive amounts of firepower.

In response the lascannon crusader put a giant hole in the back of the overlord, killing him again...But he got back up! Again!
he moved towards the crusaders, hellbent on showing them what happens if you lascannon a Necron Overlord. But he died from the overwatch. And this time he stayed dead.

My chapter master, called in an orbital bombardment on the remaining immortals on my right flank in an attempt to get them off the objective they were sitting on, but alas the bombardment scattered and only killed two. they did not get back up from that though!

The Crusader squad realized too late that the battle was nearing its end and that they should move to take the objective in front of the bastion, so they ran out of their beloved crater and towards the ruins with some covering fire from the razorback.

The chapter master and his bodyguard moved up to reach on of the enemy objectives past the bastion hoping the battle would end before they got hammered by the second annihilation barge and doomsday ark.
Alas on their way there the honour guard fell to mass fire, leaving only the chapter master making a mad dash towards the objective. 

If they game would end now I would get 3 more victory points. But it didn't. If I had remembered to use the armour indomnius's once per game 2+ invuln save he might have survived the onslaught of the barge and the immortals. But I didn't so he fell and the game ended a crushing 2-7

It was a good game, and the second time I've ever met Necrons. My thoughts are: they are disgustingly dangerous.

Also this was the first time I fielded my White templars. They are my assault focused Space Marines. They're fun but not that great as they lack any meaningful long range anti armour weapons.

 FOR THE EMPEROR!

7th Edition: Rules that have changed!

I will be taking a closer look on all the 'smaller' changes that were made in 7th edition, this means I won't be talking about the bigger changes like Unbound or the Psychic phase.

First off, night fighting has been changed to if it's on (turn 1) it gives all units stealth. No more max range or shrouded at one range band and stealth on another. No more if not night fighting on turn 1 it comes at turn 5. Now it's just plain and simple, if on: Turn 1 = all units have stealth! Easy to remember, thank the Emperor!
(Poor dark eldar, but it's believed that their new codex is coming soon).

Templates on building firepoints or vehicles that are open topped hit the occupants now. D6 hits with the template weapons Strength and AP. This is something I've heard people asking for like forever so it's nice to see it included. My Sternguard vetarns with combi-flamers and a heavy flamer are rejoicing and can't wait to drop pod and torch some Ork Trukks.

And they shall know no fear no longer gets the extra 3" regroup. Nice as it felt a bit cheap to get it as well as just getting to move and shoot etc like normal. Made ATSKNF a bit too good.

Sniper got a slight buff so they are now strength 4 on vehicles instead of 3. Meaning they can glance Armour value 10 now. I like it as it means that at least they can try to shoot out vehicles and when my Space Marine Sniper unit with a missile launcher fires at a vehicle, maybe the snipers get to shoot as well instead of just the missile launcher.

Assault vehicles got a little better as they can assault out of their vehicle even if it got shot to hell/blown up. The only time they cannot is if they arrived from reserve/outflank etc. My mental image of how this would work is a bit strange (guys charging out of a vehicle after it got blown up with them inside!) but I'm not complaining. Every little buff to assault is good at this point!

Area terrain got rolled into difficult terraint so now Difficult gets you a 5+ cover save.
Charging through difficult now reduces your charge range with -2 inches, a lot easier to remember than the old rule!

Jink got a major change, it now gives 4+ cover instead of 5+, but you have to choose to jink or not and if you jink you can only fire snap shots! A risk/reward kind of rule, I love it!

Split fire and Counter-attack does no longer require a Leadership test, nice improvement making these rules both better and faster to play with.

Smash now only lets you do one attack, instead of halving the number of attacks rounding up. Easier and Monsterous creatures got a bit of a nerf. Which is good because I felt like many times it wasn't even a question wether they should Smash attack or not.

Flying monsterous creatures can't charge while swooping (not new?) but they can also not charge right after they change into gliding, meaning they will have to wait a turn to charge. This is nice as before you would get a flying hive tyrant in your face, it would shoot the living daylights out of your poor unit, blast it with psychic powers and then charge and clean up the left overs.

Walkers have hammer of wrath now! a slight boost to assault oriented walkers like Ironclad dreadnoughts, deffdreads and the upcoming Gorkanaut.

Armourbane now says roll an additional d6 for armour penetration whereas the old rule said roll 2d6 for armour penetration. Almost the same but I guess you can now stack d6's for armour penetration with armourbane.

There's no more Git 'Im boss or whatever it was called in challenges. Now instead if one of the units that the challengers were with has no one else to fight, they will actually start hitting the opponents challenger instead!
As before they just stood there looking on, and every 5 on-looker would give his sides challenger a free re-roll.

Also in a challenge if one side defeats the other challenger and causes excess wounds, these wounds go onto the unit! So a sergeant challenging out a nasty enemy character and so getting annhiliated won't do much to stop the 'nasty enemy' from killing the sergeants men with the excess wounds it caused.

Ultramarines + Iron hands 625 pts each vs Orks 1250 pts

Just some pictures. 

Cassius was a beast and murdered his way across the table. the rest of the space marines just died however. ...

the ultramarines scrapped with the ork boyz, but the battlewagons deffrolla avenged them, rolling over 4 tactical marines and my warlord!

Not as fabolous as the one Rhino that shot the Ork Warboss on a bike to death with one burst from its storm bolter! :O

a cluster fuck of units!

poor snipers....

Orks Vs Tyranids 2000 pts picture "batrep"

My good ol' orks were dusted of for this battle.
The Ork Codex is from 2008, vs the tyranids who just got updated... Sounds like a match made in heaven no?

To make things even better I'm so far away from a competetive build with my Orks as I possibly can be :P

First turn went great! ... For the nids.
I lost all but one loota, failed both Don't press dat! rolls so my tanks just stood there.

Then my wierboy tellyported my burnas out of one of the tanks and into the enemy lines and got blown to bits by the exocrine. Oh yeah, Anders was running the Formation that allows him to re-roll hits with his exocrine and biovores so they where super deadly and killing Orks fitted them like a glove! :'D

My warboss and his retinue did manage to kill 2 carnifexes, who had blown my killa kans to bits, and slay the hive tyrant warlord in a prolonged duel. mostly thanks to the painboy giving him Feel no pain and the warboss's cybork body.

Looking back I feel this was one of those rather dull battles where th outcome was almost entirely determined before deployment. There was little I could do to win really, and a horrible first turn didn't help.

Still, it's always nice to play a game of 40k, and I can't bloody wait for the new Ork Codex rumoured to come out soon!

WAAAA-AAARRRRGH D: