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:

White Templar progress. Chapter master

Here's my Chapter Master for the white templars.
I have decided to repaint my Iron hands Honour guard into white templars and later get a Master of the Forge as the HQ for them instead.

My WT leader sports two lightning claws and artificier armour, he's a pure close combat beast.

The only ranged weaponry he has is the orbital bombardment and an auspex!
Characters with no ranged weapons might as well have an auspex, its 12" range and ability to lower the opponents cover save might come in handy...maybe.

I might give him the Armor Indomitus, at least in some games. a 2+ invuln every now and again might keep him alive against MC's and other nasties.

Everybody be hating on the Taurox, so I fix!

Loltraktor > Taurox. 

there I fix'd.

If I was to play Tau. Skimmerbonanza!

15 Pirhanas

2 Devilfishes APC's

and 2 hammerheads (accidental skyrays in picture)

the APC's will of course contain firewarriors and an HQ choice to make this skimmerfest a legal army to play.

White Templar progress #2

At first I painted all the loin cloth thingies white (building up from brown, while the armor goes from black to grey to white).

But later I realized they should be black, if they should be reverse colours from Black Templars. Also it looks a lot better as there isn't really that much black on the models, but a ton of white.

I switched the power sword to a power axe, +1s and ap2 is a better buff and he will likely survive until he gets to strike so it's all good.

Still thinking of switching the plasma gun to a melta gun or a flamer.

FOR THE EMPEROR

White Templars progress #1

So I started work on my White Templars, here's the Captain...

...Well, here he is, I switched out his torso and helmet. SO much better!

Here's the Crusader squad...

After I primed them I (of course) changed my mind. One thing that makes Crusader squads unique is the ability to go chainsword+bolt pistol instead of just Bolter so I switched out all their arms!
I even had to fix an extra left arm from a pair of arms meant for the gunner on an attack bike to make it work with the bits I had. 

Then I finally repainted their arms and started giving them some colour.

Of course on the first guy I did the shoulder pad all wrong, carefully filling in the trim with black. Only to then realize it should be white...

Switched the heavy weapon for a power sword (same amount of points!) for some extra punch in melee.
What's extra juicy is that because that guy isn't a character like the sergeant, he can't be challenged out and dealt with! Nifty.

White Templars. A bunch of total badasses, and quite literally the reverse colour scheme of the Black Templars.

FOR THE EMPEROR!

Clan Foraks new Allies: The White Templars!

For some time now I wasn't quite happy with having a home-made Tech marine
So I started thinking of how to make him into a Captain instead, and if so what weapons he should bring.

Theeeen I started thinking maybe I wanted to be able to use the Relics from the main Space marine book. Which I can't with Clan Raukaan. And also if I had another chapter my Marines wouldn't be all black and retardedly boring to paint. So I was looking up if I could ally Raukaan with 'vanilla' Iron hands so I wouldn't have to keep track of two different chapter tactics, and also I could then tackle painting Brazen claws. That would be a cool dream/nightmare to paint but it would look really cool.
But you can't ally like that because they have the same chapter tactic. Bummer.

This Allied Detachment will consist of a Captain, 5 Sternguard and a tactical squad.

So I started looking at other successor chapters and chapter tactics, because I didn't want to pick one of the way too common founding chapters. Some that I like the most are the Silver skulls, Storm lords and yeah...Brazen claws. But looking at chapter tactics Storm lords use the White scars one and that won't benefint me more than to give me hit & run. Sortof not worth it. Silver skulls could be quite good because of the Ultramarine chapter tactics. Well, at least the tactical squad doctrine.

Then I started looking at Black Templars. Now I do like their feel and their chapter tactics a lot. In fact it was one of the possible chapters I chose from when beginning to play Space marines. But they are also nearly entirely clad in black so I googled to see if they had any successor chapters. Two were rumoured to be of Black Templar descent. The Red Templars and the White Templars. Now I didn't want red space marines, it just looks like blood angels, but the White templars would contrast nicely with my Iron hands without looking too far off, being almost exactly reversed in colours!

Then a thought hit me that sealed the deal. Black templars (or White ones in my case) have access to crusader squads and 3 characters! As an Iron hands player I have access to zero special characters, and what I like about IC's is those that either switches around unit types or gives buffs to the army. And bott IC's of the Black Templars do give buffs, and the Emperors Champion is just a total badass.

Altough Black templars are reknown for being an assault oriented army and I'm building a more shooty army with my Iron hands I thought this might be a bad idea too. But after reading a lot of tactica and stuff about the 6th ed Black templars it seems they are quite good as a shooty army now as well.
For example, unlike the other vanilla space marines, Black templars can take a 5 man crusader squad and still have both a heavy and a special weapon. As well as a combi-weapon on the sword brother (their sergeant). That's a lot of firepower on a small squad.
And in the other direction they can take a Crusader squad with 10 space marines and 10 scouts (initiates and neophytes), for a rather cheap price, if you don't equip them for close combat they are a formidable unit to bunker down on obectives with, heck they're good at that even if they only have bolt pistols and chainswords.

So White Templars it is! They have almost no fluff what-so-ever apart from their homeworld being Sanctum.

So my guys are a Crusading Templar chapter that focuses more on ranged combat.

FOR THE EMPEROR!

Maximum Raukaan!

So I wanted to try to maximize the benefits of Clan Raukaan in an army list. What they do is that they can put Dreadnoughts of any kind as Elite or Heavy, they can also field two techmarines for pretty much any HQ and three for a Master of the forge.

Now the Master of the forge also grants the ability to field dreads as elite/heavy but I brought one anyway because it fits the whole Iron hands theme, but you can just substitute him for something else. Altough in a shooty list the conversion beamer is pretty much the only long range weapon the HQ's can have.

Onto the list!

1 Captain with artificier armour, Traitors bane and a storm shield.
a five man Command squad with an apothecary and company champion, 3 grav-guns, riding in a Razorback.
This is my warlord in his sweet ride. Would have been nice to fit a Techmarine in the razorback as well, but he just won't fit!

1 Master of the forge with the conversion beamer and the Ironstone.
Sitting back and holding the line, repairing walkers and buffing their IWND, and blasting fools with the conversion beamer.

4 Techmarines, all with the Servo harness. I could go for 5 but I don't see it as necessary.
Sprinkle them around the army to repair vehicles, sticking some in the tactical squads to buff their combat abilities some with their weaponry and 2+ armour.

2 Dreads with assault cannons and power fists. following the Rhino or the captains razorback around as bodyguards.

2 Ironclad dreads in drop pods, with 2 hunter-killer missiles. Dropping down on the enemy to take out their heavy vehicles.

1 ten man sternguard veteran squad in a drop pod, loaded with combi-flamers and heavy flamer, dropping in on turn 2 or later to clean up infantry. (and allow me to alpha strike the two ironclads on turn 1)

3 nine man tactical squads, plasma gun and sitting in Rhinos. Nine in size so the Techmarines can fit in there.

1 Stormtalon gunship with Typhoon missile launcher. To come in and shoot stuff or provide AA support.

3 more dreads, two with twin-linked autocannons on both arms,  Venerable so they don't blow up as easy
and one of them with a missile launchers and plasma cannon for some blasting, extra armour to stop it from being stunned.


so that's 7 dread, 2 dropping down turn 1 to cause havoc and 5 to stand back and light the enemy up!
lots of techmarines to keep everything alive and a solid core of tactical marines in transports to take and hold objectives. The sternguards should help taking enemy held objectives as well!

Pretty gross. And to be honest, kind of one sided and boring to collect (unless you're REALLY into painting dreadnoughts) And if you want to go for a better shooty list I'd suggest thunderfire cannons, devestators and devestator centurions instead of all dreads.

For the emperor!

An update on painting my Iron hands

Yesterday I was browsing through the successor chapters of the Iron hands, because nigh all black isn't that exciting when colouring. But I only really liked the Brazen claws and Sons of medusa. But I'm not that keen on an all green space marine army, or painting the half red half blue pattern of the brazen claws either.

I had seen some artworks were the Iron hands shoulder pads had metal coloured trims and I decided to try that out as you can see below:

I think it really lifted the look of the Iron hands, contrasting against the black armour nicely, making them look more painted and less 'just primed in black'.

Don't think I've posted pictures of my chapter master painted before so here he is!
I'm thinking of turning the cloak grey or something as I think it adds too much blue-

and the plasma pistols glow looks more like it's been dipped in goo. Eew!

added some more paint splashes to my centurion devestators as well, mostly the blue spot colours, and some glow on the grav-cannon and grav amps (also blue). The grav weapons glow green on most pictures in the codex but in my mind that will always be the colour of plasma.

Sternguards assembled! This guy is packing grenades all round his belt! xD

Might help me to remember I can use them... But it probably won't.