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!

Iron hands Vs Orks. 1250 pts Tourney batrep

First of all I want to say thank you to Anders for his awesome article on the new Tyranid Codex, if anyone wants to write a guest article you're very welcome to shoot me a mail at hollstrom@mikepic.se and we can discuss it!

Now on to the Batrep!


So, my second Tournament battle was against the Orks Anders had just faced. Let's see if my small space marine army can survive the green tide of Da WAAAAGH!


We played the Scouring with deployment on the long table edges, The Orks won the roll off and elected that the Marines get first turn. Night fighting was on turn 1 as well.

my Army list for the tournament. <-

I deployed in the way I feel I SHOULD deploy this time (unlike in the last batrep, where I deployed like a total dumbass!), My Cenutrions in the centre, backing up my tactical squad and my honour guard.

Then my snipers deployed in a forest on my right, holding an objective and my Attack bikes on my left flank.

The Ork army I was facing included A warboss on a warbike with a power claw, cybork body and 'eavy armor (this is what I remember he had anyway). Two Deffdreads all kitted for melee. A Battle wagon full of shoota boys, a truck with 12 shoota boys, 10 gretchin with a mek with a shock attack gun, 8 lootas, a dakka jet and a single deffcopta.

A few more units than I field...

On turn 1 I dead great, the emperor was with me and we where chilling and shit!
My Drop pod landed in front of the warboss and battle wagon, after a long discussion and thinking I opted to shoot the battle wagon, instead of my intended target the Warboss. (I figured I could bring him to one wound, and if he charged my heavy flamer might finish him, and if not the ironclad would get to strike first).
But considering the battle wagon had a deff rolla and there was a deffcopta that could drive a rokkit in my rear armor, as well as a nearby deff dread. I figured I might have to go for first blood at least.
I shot the battle wagon, blowing it up. then I orbital bombarded, there where no real juicy targets so I shot it at the now disembarked Boys in a way that it would also hit the warboss. it was a direct hit and killed all but one shoota boy and put a wound on the warboss (dangit, I could have killed him!).

Next my centurions opened up and made scraps of the Deff Dread that was threatening my Ironclad Dreadbert.

My attack bikes single multimelta failed to do any harm (by missing) and the snipers did nothing of worth.

Orks turn 1 began and he moved his second Deff dread to his right flank, closely followed by the trukk.

The deffcopta swung around and took off a hull point of dreadbert, and the shock attack gun rollde double 2's allowing me to place the large blast. s4 isn't enough to really do much to his trukk/deff dread so I put it in the ruins on the lootas and killed one of them.

The warboss then charged and took another wound from overwatch due to the heavy flamer! He was now down to one wound but of course I totally failed to wound him in close combat and he killed poor dreadbert! Emperor, don't go! The battle has just begun! T__T

On my second turn I moved up my attack bikes to get within 12" of the Deff dread, to blow it up with the multimelta in Melta range. But of course I missed again!

The Centurions finished the job instead and wrecked it. My Drop pod failed to kill the lone Ork that actually passed his Ld test!

My tactical squad, holding on to an objective, fired their heavy bolter on the trukk but despite hitting with all three shots the trukk remained unscathed due to cover saves.

Snipers fired at the warboss, but failed to wound him. And the Honour guard simply moved up, trying to get to close combat.

The Orks Trukk moved up and spilled out Shoota boys near the attack bikes, the warboss also moved up into charge range of the honour guard, but was a bit hesitant to charge these elite warriros, especially since their champion has to declare/accept challenges meaning he would fight the warboss and possibly slay him.

Luckily the Dakka jet didn't appear on this turn.

instead the shock attack gun fired, direct hit and strength 7. killing every single Honour guard (two due to Look out sir!), leaving only the Chapter Master standing... Uh oh!

The warboss charged, my overwatch unfortunately missing. And since both struck on initiative 1, we pulped each other to death, in a pure epic fashion!

Then the shoota boys put a wound on the attack bikes, and then charged them. 2 heavy bolters, a multimelta and 3 twin-linked bolters managed to only kill one Ork on overwatch. Then they killed two Orks in melee, but lost an attack bike and another took a wound.

With only my tactical squad, snipers and centurinos left in the fight (attack bikes getting bogged down in ork boys and therefore kinda useless) I decided to move the Tac.Squad up towards the central objective (which was worth 4 points, they were sitting on a two pointer). They did in the process get their meltagun in range of the trukk so they made it explode.

centurions caught wind of the deffcopta, and split fired between it and the lootas. faling to wound the deffkopta but killing another loota (or two?). The Snipers decided to finish off the deffkopta and actually managed to do so!

Then the Orks retaliated with the dakkajet coming in on a mighty WAAAAAAGH!

Its guns chewing through most of the tactical squad, leaving about 4 marines standing. The Lootas finishing them off. Almost! one brave Marine was still standing.
The Shock attack gun fired at the Centurions and managed to hit with strenght 8, killing one of them.

the fight of the boys vs the attack bikes ended with 0 wounds on both sides. What a stalemate! But it was more worth it for the Orks, tying up my fast attack so it couldn't move up and shoot at the shock attack gun.

The combined fire of the two centurions and the snipers flakk missile put two hull points off the dakka jet and immobilized it. The lone Tactical marine passed his Leadership test and moved up to cover in the centre.

The Dakka jeft flew on, and managed to kill 3 out of five scouts, killing the missile launcher!

The lootas then finished the job on the tactical marines, the boys killed the attack bikes, and the lone ork boy from the battle wagon hid behind a rock, claming an objective as well...

The shock attack gun once again hit the Centurions, but this time with a strength 6 shot, only causing one wound.

With not much left the centurions shot at the dakkajet, hoping to score a point for killing a fast attack before it moved off the board edge. It dove/dodged and didn't take the hits that got through. But we later read that Immobilized flyers can't evade so we recounted is as a kill.

the lone sniper tried to shoot the shock attack gun, but whiffed.

The ork boys moved towards another objective on my left flank, the one were my attack bikes deployed. the dakka jet flew of the board (and then we realized it was really dead!). the shock attack gun missed the centurions but the lootas killed the last scout. My Centurions moved up to try and stop the gretchin from scoring the central objective worth 4 points but fell an inch short from denying it, and failed to kill enough of them to stop them from reaching it! they would have had to kill two more, but alas one of the missiles scattered way off and Grav weapons only wound on a 6+ against opponents with no armour saves.

It was game over!

I had two centurions standing and I scored 4 points, 2 for killing two fast attacks (dakka jet and deffcopta), slay the warlord and First blood.

The Orks had a total of 13 points! from objectives held by the Gretchin, the lone Ork boy, the other ork boys, slay the warlord and linebreaker.

Good game that started out ridiculously well for me on turn one and then a few large blast ap2 shots later looked really grim, and then I lost with only two models still standing!

'New' Tyranids Vs Iron hands. Tourney battle 1250 pts - The Relic

So Anders and I once again play the Relic mission. But this time he's bringing the new Tyranid Codex and units! The Spore pod (spore pod prime!) down on the right side of the image is the Relic for this game. worth 3 victory points.

His army looked something like this.
a hive tyrant with boneswords and a venom cannon, with two Tyrant guards, A Tervigon, a Venomthrope, 2 units of termagaunts, an Exocrine, 3 hive guard, a Zoanthrope and a Hive Crone.

I brought my Chapter master with artificier armor, plasma pistol and Axe of medusa.

5 honour guard, with chapter banner and 1 power axe, the rest toting power swords.

10 tactical marines, heavy bolter, meltagun and a sgt, with a gravgun and meltabomb.

5 sniper scouts, one with a missile launcher+ flakk.

3 centurions, 2 grav-cannons a TL-Lascannon, omniscope and 3 Missile launchers

Ironclad dread with 2 HK-missiles, heavy flamer and meltagun, in a Drop pod

3 Attack bikes, 2 Heavy bolters and one Multimelta

There was a couple of things we got wrong in this game, the biggest one is that we have always thought Instant death took away all saves except cover saves (!) wich is pretty huge.
I didn't know I could move and shoot with slow and purposeful as if stationary, thus severely shortening the range of my grav-cannons in this game.

I got first turn + night fighting and I have never deployed worse in my life! I dunno what the heck I was thinking. My centurions were off on the right side, far back in a ruin, not in range for anything, my tacticals were far back in the centre, which was so stupid because I already knew I was gonna have a hard time to even get to the relic against the Tyranids. my snipers were in a good positions in a ruin to my left, backed up by my attack bikes.
But on top of my poor deployment I decided that hey! lets just move the attack bikes further up on the left flank in behind a building so they can't do shit for a turn, waggle my Centurions up to try and get in range/LoS so at least the lascannon+missile launcher can fire and hey, lets move my only close combat unit into the central ruin so they will be even slower! And then I moved up my tactical squad, out of cover and into the open.  Then instead of drop podding my Ironclad near his warlord to try and go for first blood/slay the warlord I drop him near the exocrine and zoanthrope and do one wound to the Exocrine...

in total I killed two Termagaunts on turn 1 because everything pretty  much had 3+ cover saves.

Tactical genius achieved!

On tyranid turn one he managed (due to us not knowing how Instand death worked!) kill 5 tactical marines in one blast from the venom cannon, then he killed the dreadnought with the exocrine taking one hull point and then the Zoanthrope one shotted it with a s10 ap2 Lance shot! Giving him first blood and breaking Dreadberts run of staying alive for 3 turns and smashing things up :(

on my next turn I instead of keep the bikes going towards his table edge, I doubled back and shot the 2 Heavy bolters and multimelta + TL-bolters into the gaunts that had moved up to the Relic. Missing horribly!

I dropped the Orbital Bombardment on the Hive tyrant, killing a tyrant guard. in hindsight I should have nuked the Venomthrope. That would have made shooting the rest of his army so much easier.

My centurions did very little on turn 2 as well, which is really bad. I need them to start wasting enemies turn 1....Not turn 3!

The Tyranids then opted to kill one centurion and take the Relic. And then just generally moved up the board, the Tervigon spawning even more termagaunts. The Hive Crone came in and killed two honour guard in the ruins with his vector strike! 

The Iron hands answered by letting the rookie bs3 scouts fire at it, one sniper and the flakk missile actually hit. the sniper failing to wound but the missile not only put a wound on him, it also grounded the foul beast, taking another wound from it! the halved tactical squad shot at it bringing it down to one wound left that the Chapter master saw fit to take with is plasma pistol, slaying the Hive Crone. Thank the Emperor!

The tyranids retalieted by charging the honour guard through the ruins with a group of fresh termagaunts, stalling the Chapter master from getting to the Relic. Needless to say the Honour guard decimated most of the gaunts, but as they are fearless in synapse they didn't move. the Gaunts with the Relic started moving away from my lines to steal it away.

My Honour guard and chapter master cut their way through the last gaunts and moved to try and catch up to the relic, but was intercepted by even more gaunts with the tervigon right behind them.

the attack bikes tried to drive past and go for line breaker to give me at least one victory point for the tournament, but the hive tyrant chased them down and crushed them.

I think I had lost my centurions around this point to the Exocrine and Zoanthrope duo.
My snipers tried to make the gaunts drop the relic but even though I got a precision shot in, it failed to wound. 

At the end the snipers were all that was left and we decided that the game could end now with Anders getting all the Victory points possible from the Relic mission and me getting 0.

Not a great start to the tournament for me but at least it was cool to see the new Nids in action. Not a bad codex, with lots of cool combos possible. Not an OP codex either wich, as always, leave the internet trolls raging like it's the end of the world. I like it. though Venomthropes are such a pain!

Blue tint to my Iron hands

Decided to repaint my Iron hands a bit, giving them a blue seconday colour, mainly chaning the power weapons from silver to blue.

I even replaced all the reds, like in their eyes.

1250 pts Picture batrep! Iron Hands vs Tyranids.

Trying out some 1250 pts lists for an upcoming tournament, I brought my Iron Hands:
5 Honour guard, 4 with power swords and 1 power axe + the Chapter banner (giving re-rolls to morale/pinning tests as well as +1 attack).
10 Tactical marines, flamer, heavy bolter and a combi-flamer for the sarge.
3 Attack bikes with Heavy Bolters
A drop pod with an Ironclad Dreadnought
3 Centurions with 2 Grav-cannons and the sarge had a Twin linked Lascannon and an Omniscope. all three had missiles launchers as well.

The Nids had about the same list as in previous battles (Tervigon, Flying Hive tyrant, termagaunts & hormogaunts, hive guard etc) But this time no genestealers, and instead 3 warriors, one with a corrisve blast weapon of some kind. a Trygon as well.

the game was Big guns never tire with Dawn of war as a deployment. Night fighting was on first turn.

I got first turn and dropped the Dread right behind the Tervigon, shooting off two wounds out of six directly!
My Chapter master tried to call in an Orbital bomardment on the clumped up Termagaunts and warriors but it scattered and nearly hit the drop pod!
Anders was not aware that Chapter masters had this ability, so maybe it was for the best that it missed.

The Centurions, having night vision thanks to the Omniscope, shot of a lascannon at the warriors, causing one to die outright (instant death due to the high strength of the lascannon). Though the Grav cannons were out of range because they had moved, and I forgot to fire all three missiles launchers.

The scouts moved out of the ruins to get a better view of the oncoming enemy.
The tactical marines, deployed on the right flank, did likewise and moved towards an objective with the Attack bikes moving up and putting some fire on the hormogaunts.

The Tyranids mostly advanced up, the flying hive tyrant was indeed not flying this game but he nevertheless made his way towards my lines, hidden (for now) behind the bastion.

the warriors fired and managed to kill a single Honour guard, failing his 2+ save and his Feel no pain as he threw himself infront of their sargeant to save him.

The tervigon charged the Dreadnought, opting to use a smash attack instead of using all of its normal attacks, he actually penetrated the armor, clipping of the Dreads Power fist! (we did an error here and had them both attack at the same time, my dread was really supposed to go first but it didn't matter really)
In return the Dread took another two wounds from the Monsterous creature! 1 left!

On my 2nd turn the Honour guard moved up to take some cover behind the bastion, awaiting the inevitable charge of the Tyranid swarms. My Centurions split their fire as one of them could see the Hive tyrant. Firing 5 shots with its Grav cannon, hitting with all of them it then failed to wound with all shots (needing 3 or higher to succeed!), the grav amps that the cannons get allows them to reroll to wound though. 

But alas! I agian rolled 5 dice all under 3, so not a single shot wounded! I then remembered his missile launcher, fired it and hit. but again failed and I needed a 2+ this time! What the hell man?

The other two centurions killed off the warriors, not having the same bad luck as their comrade.

On the right flank the Attack bikes and tactical marines decimated the hormogaunts down to a single model who scurried off after facing all that firepower.

The fight between the Tervigon and the Dread continued, but at this point someone had pointed out that Dreads ignore the Unwieldy rule of weapons so he got to strike first, one less attack though since he had lost an arm. But he still managed to strike the Tyranid down. My Ironclad Dreadnought is somewhat of a champion by now!

Turn 2 for the Tyranids saw the Hive tyrant moving around the bastion to fire 12 rerollable shots at the Honour guard, getting almost all of them to wound I then made all but two armour saves, but Iron Hands having a 6+ Feel no pain (an extra 'save' basically), I actually rolled two sixes! So no Honour guard fell to the shooting. The Hive tyrant wasn't done however and charged them, Apperantly monsterous creatures, due their Smash ability, always have ap2 (meaing they ignore up to 2+ armour saves!). My Chapter master went first however but failed to wound the damn beast (I did forget the extra attack from the Chapter banner, do'h). The foul xenos then easily slaughtered all but one Honour guard and the chapter master.
I failed their morale test and they fell back, towards the Centurions.

the Hive guard managed to put another hole in the Dreadnought, resulting in a crew shaken result.

The Trygon however failed to appear, luckily for me I felt. Even though it was looking pretty dark for the Tyranids at this point. Having lost the warriors, tervigon and the hormogaunts while I had only lost most of the honour guard.

Turn 3 for me meant opening fire on that damn Hive tyrant with the centurions, putting 10 Grav cannon shots, 1 lascannon and 3 missiles into him. Killing him outright. These guys can really hunt Monsterous creatures, holy Emprah!

The scouts did their best and shot at the termagaunts, killing one despite having a missile launcher and 4 sniper rifles.
The Attack bikes moved up, targets set on the Hive guards, while the Tactical Marines secured their objective.

On Tyranid turn 3 the Trygon still didn't arrive! Things were looking grim indeed for the Tyranids as to add some icing on the cake the Hive guard failed to take away the Dreads last Hull point too.

The Termagaunts surged back into the ruin to claim the objective there, as we realized the Hive guard, standing on the third and last objective, couldn't score points from it as they aren't a scoring unit type!

Turn 4 had the Centurions and snipers shoot at the termagaunts to no great effect, because like a total dummy I forgot the three missiles launchers the Centurions had, I could have fired a total of 4 small blast missiles into that horde of xenos!

Not that it mattered as the Dreadnought charged and killed three of them, they in return being unable to hurt the metalclad champion opted to flee, to let the Hive guard try and shoot it down instead.

The Attack bikes tried to do something about the Hive guard but only managed to do a single wound on them.

Tyranid turn 4 finally saw the Trygon appear, but as you can't charge out of a deepstrike it just sort of stood there for a turn, making its shooting attack but failing to kill any of the Marines.

the Hormogaunts failed to recover from fleeing from the Dreadnought but luckily stopped 2 inches away from the table edge, some luck there at least. 

But again the poor Hive guard failed to kill the dreadnought! (even though I had forgot all game that he had It will not die so he could have regenerated back hull points!)

On my Turn five I lit up the Trygon with both the tactical squad and the Attack Bikes who swiveled around to face this new threat, I wouldn't be able to kill it but if I put enough wounds on it now I could perhaps stand a chance in the coming melee. I did actually manage to out 3 wounds on him, wich was more than we figured would happen.

The Dreadnought chased down the Termagaunts and eradicated the whole swarm, what an MVP!

I begun to move the Centurions towards the Trygon in case there would be more turns I hoped to be able to shoot it down if it chewed through the Tactical squad, the scouts moved up towards the ruins were the termagaunts had been to try and claim the objective there.

On the Tyranid turn 5 the Trygon charged the marines and killed all but three of them, and they managed to get another wound in using their grenades.

It turned out this was to be the last turn as the dice gods decided it wouldn't go on to turn 6.
Victory for the Iron hands!

FOR THE EMPEROR!

My space marines. Update #5

Setting up the Centurions

this ís how they 'should' look like, with their full leg guards. In my opinion it makes them look too stocky,square and stiff. (they should have gigantic shoulder pads as well!)

This is completely without the leg armors on the front. I was gonna go for this but it makes the torso look very top heavy.

So I added these waist pieces back on, as a happy middle ground.
Now you can more easily see the marine in the Centurion suit, plus I get to keep the cool details on the waist pieces and the model doesn't look as evenly thick, wich just looks bad.

Before the game I added some finishing touches like the cables, primed them in black and filled in most of the steel colours to make them look a little more tabletop worthy!

Decimator Protocols is quite possibly the most badass name on a special rule ever!