Monday, November 30, 2009

Plaguebearer with Icon and Blue Slime

Part of the plaguebearer command squad, the icon bearer often has a central role in my daemons armies. Being high toughness with the feel no pain special rule makes plaguebearers a high priority to hoist a chaos icon high. Indeed, since the new daemons codex came out, if I chose to field chaos icons, plaguebearers are my first pick in mixed armies to hold a chaos icon (although I do sometimes use a chaos icon with horrors of Tzeentch as well).

This plaguebearer was a bit of a painting experiment. As with the majority of the rest of my plaguebearers, I painted the plaguesword in a virulent, un-natural blue colour. To go with this blue-ick, I thought it might be neat if I could have some blue slime on the chaos icon, instead of the usual greens and yellows that traditionally go hand-in-hand with Nurgle miniatures.

The blue is achieved with a base coat of electric blue and a deep blue inking. This is complemented with some minor highlighting in places and a slimy-looking blue tongue in the plaguebearer's mouth, suggestive of the inner toxins that the minion of Nurgle has. I'm particularly pleased with the "glistening" quality that the blue slime has -- achieved without using varnish. The spokes of the icon were base coated in bleached bone, inked in chestnut and gently highlighted in gold in random places, suggestive of rusting and oxidation of a metal. The skulls (sort of embedded on to the metal spokes and attached by the blue slime!) were drybrushed in dheneb stone, inked black and highlighted progressively lighter.

The plaguebearer himself was done in traditional green colours: goblin green basecoat, green inking, green highlighting, gryphonne sepia washes of the legs, bum and face, highlighting in dheneb stone and cream on the face and a careful hand to pick out the eyeball and nails with a treble-zero size paint brush. The trickiest part was blending the horn in with the rest of the colour tones, this took a few washes of sepia and a bit of experimenting with different blends of bleached bone and dheneb stone.

As well as the plaguebearer, there is a mal-formed nurgling lurking on the base of this miniature (sitting on the foot of the plaguebearer in fact!). I use the word mal-formed as the Nurgling's arms are tentacles, he's missing an eye and he looks like he has a plaguebearer-style horn ... not quite the picture of a mini-Great Unclean One we're used to, but appropriately Nurglesque! The nurgling has received a deeper inking of green so that his skin colour is subtly different from the plaguebearers. The one good eye is picked out in white (again using the trusty treble zero paint brush) whilst there seems to be a stream of snot coming from one of his nostrils, here picked out in bleached bone. This close up also shows some of the sepia wash that was applied to the plaguebearer's legs: it looks a noticeably different tone of green / brown than some of the other regions, suggestive, perhaps, of wading through dirt.

Overall, I'm pleased with the result here. I was worried that the blue slime aspect would just look plain odd. But somehow, I think it blends in with the overall theme of the miniature very well by providing a good accent without dominating it.

Saturday, November 28, 2009

Painted Night Lords Halberdier

The chaos space marine halberdier that I assembled a while ago has now been painted up in some Night Lords colours. Eventually, I'm thinking of having an entire squad of Night Lords like this one to form a chaos chosen elites squad.

The image here doesn't show the colours well -- the ultramarine blue that is highlighting the regal blue base colour of the shoulder pads (and elsewhere) seems to have a bright quality that the miniature doesn't really have in real life(!). That aside, most of the rest of the miniature's colours are a good fit to real life. I mainly modelled the colour scheme after the old chaos space marine codex: choosing gold for the highlight colour as well as the helmet. The halberd itself is one of the items that I decided to paint in an odd colour: frosty looking light blues and whites on the blade and metal portions. I'm not certain that I'll keep it that way: I may revert it back to metallic silver. Still, I've learned from this model and I'm hoping the next one will be even better (when I get around to it!).

Friday, November 27, 2009

Dynamic Necron

I have been exploring some "dynamic" conversions lately and got messing around with a plastic necron. I feel that Necrons have some of the most static poses in Warhammer 40,000, so I wanted to see if I could communicate a bit more dynamism by making as few conversions / clippings (etc.) as possible, without resorting to making the base the primary feature.

This is the result. The only conversion work that I've done here is to clip the right leg off at the hip and re-position it so that it stretches out behind the miniature (rather than the usual "two feet on the ground" necron pose). The second step was to glue the arms in an unusual place -- above the head. These two things combined results in a very dramatic pose. It positively looks like this necron is sprinting along! Either that, or he's just tripped himself up and is about to fall face first in to the dirt!

Thursday, November 26, 2009

Gallery: Chariot of Tzeentch In Action

This is a bit of a "picture of the day" style post. Here we have my Chariot of Tzeentch atop a Khornate skull pile, deep in chaos wastelands. Enjoy :)

Tuesday, November 24, 2009

Shadow Sword: Part IV. Storm Lord Enabling

I want to get the most out of my Shadow Sword. To do this, I want to be able to configure it in multiple patterns: with many of the various side sponson options (etc.). But more significantly from a hobby point of view, I want to be able to configure it as both a Shadow Sword tank and a Storm Lord tank.

To be able to field the tank in both configurations, the critical piece of plastic that I needed to think about was the one that attaches either at the back of the main weapon housing (see picture to the left), or at the front of it. This bit is reversible. On one side, there is a metal-like standing platform for troopers to use stubber guns from the rear of the tank (in the Storm Lord configuration -- as seen in the upper left image), or when reversed it spaces the front of the hull and the main weapon housing (see image below).

My solution has been to magnetize this critical bit of plastic, along with the main weapon housing. The reversible bit has three magnets on it -- two one one end and one on the other end.
This arrangement provides a strong stable link for the reversible plastic bit at both ends of the main weapon housing. In addition, I also glued further magnets to the appropriate parts of the main hull (front and rear) to provide stability at both ends of the reversible bit.

I think this part of the Shadow Sword has been the trickiest to figure out so far. I've now only got the main weapons to take care of and some additional sponsons to build, ...and then I'm essentially done with the construction and ready to paint the beast.

Monday, November 23, 2009

Statistics / Gaming Note about Plasma Blastguns and Destructors

Plasma blastguns and plasma destructors are typically (but not exclusively) mounted on titans. They are the superheavy variety of the not-so-humble plasma gun and plasma pistol.

Blastgun Statistics.
Both superheavy plasma weapons can fire with two different profiles, depending upon the user's tastes. The first profile is known as "rapid". For the blastgun and you get two S8, AV2, 7" blasts. The second, known as "full", gets you one S10, AV2, 10" blast. Additionally, should it actually matter in Apocalypse, the latter has a larger range than the former.

But what I want to comment on today is the mathematics behind these two profiles. If you do not want to hunt after two very separate targets, then it is always preferable to choose the "full" profile. This is because the area of effect is proportional to the radius squared. In the full profile, we get pi x (10)^2, which is about 314 square inches. In the rapid profile, we get 2 times pi x (7)^2, = 2 times pi x 49 = 309 square inches.

So not only does shooting two separate shots mean that you get a lower strength, you also drop a few square inches of effect!

But then again, let me immediately note that in the insanity that is apocalypse, this shouldn't matter too much!, but its just something to be aware of. (You'll also note that I've avoided speaking of the relative merits of the Melta Cannon versus the plasma blastgun!).

Plasma Destructor.
On the other hand, the warlord battle titan mounted plasma destructor is able to fire two 10 inch blasts in full mode, and three 7 inch blasts in rapid mode. The difference between the two is a whopping 166 square inches -- this is much more significant than the plasma blastgun variety (should you be fielding a warlord titan!). For me, it always has to be the full mode here, assuming of course that the battlefield is jam-packed to apocalyptic proportions.

Sunday, November 22, 2009

Lash of Submission Armies in Decline?

Here's a (not very random) question (given BoLS recent article on the state of the metagame) for everyone out there: are you seeing less and less of "Lash of Submission" type armies?

I am, and I wanted to know if you are as well?

...For the un-initiated, a Lash of Submission army is a Chaos Space Marine army build that seeks to exploit the Slaaneshi psychic power of the same name. Usually, there are two daemon princes (or sorcerers) who use this ability for multiple reasons: to bring opponent's squads out of heavy cover, bunch them together to make sure a big whopping splat template hits the lot of them (e.g. from a supporting vindicator), push them further away to deny them the charge (and ensure one's own troops are the ones doing the charging), and all sorts of similar shenanigans. Typically, the chaos player will back this tactic up with a few plague marine squads to sit on top of objectives when required.

When was the last time your saw, or ran, a Lash of Submission army? Is this a local, or more global phenomenon?

Saturday, November 21, 2009

Winners of the November Army List Challenge

It's a tie!! For the first time in the history of these monthly army list contests, the final result is a tie. The dual winners are Gamers World and Suneokun with 36% of the vote each! Congratulations to both of you!!!

Gamers World had Space Wolves grey hunters in drop pods with a rune priest and long fangs, whilst Suneokun had an insane Guard option to try to get as many objectives as possible! Great way to exploit a loophole in the scenario :)
And finally, it would be remiss of me not to mention that Cawshis Clay claimed a very respectable 28% of the vote with his Tau rescue and recovery force.

I think this will be the last army list challenge of 2009 as I will probably be going away in December. The Warpstone Flux Army List Challenge will return in 2010...

Friday, November 20, 2009

LotR: The Shadow Lord -- A Possible Lesser Daemon Miniature

I entered this miniature in a local painting contest. He did well, but not enough to claim the prize!

The miniature is one of the newer LotR ring-wraiths: The Shadow Lord. Although it wouldn't be allowed in tournament play, I thought that the ring-wraiths would make absolutely splendid generic lesser daemons for a chaos space marine army that has no overall allegiance to the major chaos powers.

The painting was fairly straight forward: following a base coat of regal blue, the miniature was washed heavily (darker toward the lower portions of the cape) and highlighted subtly to lighter tones of blue higher up. A few parts of the cape are picked out in space wolf grey. The silver metallic parts are painted in boltgun metal, washed in black and highlighted in a very thin white line. The bronze colour metals were base coated in shining gold, inked with chestnut and highlighted in bleached bone. The more leather areas were done in bleached bone and washed darker using sepia. Finally, the sword followed a wet blend technique that I first piloted on a bloodletter who was wielding a frost brand.

The base (made from the citadel basing materials box) was painted in a desert colour scheme which does much to complement the colder feeling that the wraith exudes. Overall, I'm very fond of this miniature and pleased with the way he came out.

Wednesday, November 18, 2009

Battle Summary: Death Guard vs. Death Guard! (767 points)

This was a fun, yet peculiar game that I wanted to share with you. Basically, I loaned out some of my miniatures to an opponent who didn't have too many points worth of marines. We ended up deciding that my opponent would call all of his marines = death guard, so there were plenty of "count as" marines on his side of this table.

Both of the army lists were identical:

HQ = Daemon Prince with Wings, Mark of Nurgle, and doom bolt (160 pts)

Troops 1 = Plague champion with power fist along with 6 other plague marines (1 melta gun, 1 flamer) in a rhino with a havoc launcher (266 pts)

Troops 2 = Plague champion with power fist along with 6 other plague marines (1 melta gun, 1 flamer) in a rhino with a havoc launcher (266 pts)

Heavy Support = 1 Obliterator (75 pts)

The game board was only 4 ft x 4 ft as the points value was rather low. The scenery was a desert world, with a few ruins scattered around the place (4+ cover save).

The mission was annihilation. That's six killpoints each side.

Early Turns.
The set up is by table quarters, and we both set up with one troops squad in cover of some ruins and the other rhino hiding behind it (my opponent is emulating my set-up almost perfectly). The HQs start behind cover, with no line of sight and the obliterators are reserved.

The early turns feature a number of volleys from the havoc launchers which ultimately cause a wound each on each daemon prince. The rhinos in the cover continue to sit there whilst the other rhinos charge toward each other ... and the lurking daemon princes.

Middle Turns.
My daemon prince tears down his rhino. His obliterator comes in to play and destroys my rhino in exchange. Both plague marine squads get out and rapid fire one another. In the subsequent turn, they engage in melee. His daemon prince proves to be the difference and finishes my squad off. Meanwhile, my daemon prince slays the obliterator.

My obliterator comes in to play and destroys his daemon prince, whilst his surviving plague marine squad rapid fires my daemon prince back to the warp. A few choice plasma shots from my obliterator finishes his surviving squad.

Late Turns.
The havoc launcher from my opponent's rhino that is still in cover finishes off my otherwise pesky obliterator. At this stage, there are only two rhinos (plus their squads) left in the game.

We make a "gentleman's agreement" at this stage -- there will be no more shooting (too many of Nurgle's good guys have already perished and Nurgle wants survivors). Therefore, the game will come down to the two rhinos attempting to ram each other.

Despite some neat moves on turns 5 and 6, turn 7 sees my opponent execute a perfect ram maneuver to seal the victory by 1 kill point ... my rhino is smoking between his rhino and a hard place!

It was a fun conclusion to what was a brilliant game!

Monday, November 16, 2009

Noise Marine Assembley

As well as a number of other concurrent projects, I'm also building up a small number (six!) of noise marines. This one is the first that I've assembled.

The major issue I've found with assembling these guys are the sonic weaponry. Simply put, they don't fit snugly enough to the chaos space marine's abdomen. On this miniature, I've had to file away the belt buckle to near-oblivion. Even with that done, there are some micro-issues with the pose. The miniatures right arm (on the left hand side of the picture!) doesn't connect smoothly with the torso -- it is at an angle to the torso despite my efforts to file away the belt buckle and everything else that might be pushing it away from the body and causing this. Secondly, although the opposite arm sits flush with the torso, it is located a bit further back than I would have expected for a standard noise marine.

As a result, I'm going to be doing a little bit of green stuff work around the shoulders of this noise marine to correct for the sonic blaster not fitting more flush with the body. I'm going to try to choose front torso's a bit more carefully now that I know the problems with assembling noise marines!

Sunday, November 15, 2009

Can Noise Marines Hurt in Vacuo?

Go with me here ...

Noise marine weaponry fires, well, noisy shots that literally tear apart their targets by vibration.

Noise requires a medium to travel through.

Therefore, if one is fighting in power armour in hard vacuum, can Noise Marines actually do any ranged damage? :-)

Or do their weaponry have a psychic component to them as well that would still deal damage in vacuo?

Saturday, November 14, 2009

Poll Open for the November Army List Challenge

The entries are in and the poll is now open! Whose army list is the most effective that also best tackles the theme of the November Army List Challenge? Here are the entries:

1. Suneokun -- Insane Guard Option

Primaris Psyker - 70
Primaris Psyker - 70
Plt #1 HQ, 2melta, 2GL - 60
6 Squads with melta plus Commissar with 2 powerswords - 415
7 Chimeras - 385
Plt #2 HQ, 2melta, 2GL - 60
6 Squads with melta plus commissar with powersword- 405
7 Chimeras - 385

Total 1850 (6-14 killpoints depending on setup)

This armylist exploits a loophole. Above you state that a returning unit will snatch an objective on a 4+ if not contested or in combat. You didn't say you could only take one!

The 14 Chugs motor forward and cause havoc with all those S6 Multilaser and heavy flamers. The Infantry HQ (with a Psyker each) lay down some serious S6 hits (and melta too) from inside the Chugs. The guards squads are organised in anticipation of the opponent, with a core of two large commissared uber units.

One shields, the other joins up 3 plus objectives and then goes home. The commissar grants 'stubborn' so any close combat unit will be tarpitted.

The Chugs don't give away killpoints, but can drop off a squad to 'return' for far away units.
Against close combat opponents the Chugs plus guardsmen will simply attrition the opponent to death and focus on his troops.
NB: Reason for being there. Don't want to be, this is a last ditch evacuation strategy by the PDF ... who have been led to the markers/anomalies by their psykers.


2. Cawshis Clay -- Tau Rescue and Recovery Force (Hostile LZ lv3):

Crisis Shas'el TLMP, PR, Stims, HWTLock
-2 BG w/ TL MP, Flamer
x3 8 FWs w/ Shas, Devilfish w/ SMS, DP, MT, TA
x2 20 Kroot Warriors
8 Pathfinders w/ Devilfish w/ SMS, DP, MT, TA
SkyRay w/ SMS, DP, TA, MT
x2 Hammerheads w/ Rails, MT, DP, TL

The Tau recovery operation on this dying planet depends on 2 things: Devilfish units devoted to capturing or contesting objectives and massive blocks of Kroot to grab 1 or 2 objectives before going off world.

The Pathfinders and Heavy Support/HQ will work to destroy, disable and slow down any enemy APCs. Markerlight support will lead in railgun barrages to drive the enemy off key objectives.

As the Tau doctrine is to conserve (Tau) life, I imagine that the kroot will be expendable in the early turn infiltrating obj grab (since each unit has a 50% chance of porting and spreading out enough to grab objectives). They will take heavy fire and then my Armored Core will appear and fire back.

Least that's the plan.


3. Gamers World -- Space Wolves:

HQ
Rune priest with term armour, wolf tooth necklace and wolf tail talisman, chooser of the slain, master of runes, saga of the beast slayer- 205
Troops

10 grey hunters x3 with 2 flamers and drop pod- 555
10 grey hunters x3 with 2 melta guns and drop pod- 570

Heavy support.

6 long fangs, 5 missile launchers- 115

Yea, I come in way under points but th idea is still there. When placing the objectives I make sure to place some of them close together (seven inches or there abouts), then when i drop pod down I cover the objectives with my grey hunters and teleport back up, the rune priest and grey hunters provide cover and defence (with powers like tempests wrath and murderous hurricane) before hopefully leaping up into my strike cruiser. so basically I drop down pic up something then get back up there.

The aesthetic is that we have found a chapter relic and need to retrieve it before the planet goes BOOM! so we send down a pick-up froce accompanied by the man who found the chapter relic (the rune priest) and some guys that have been operating on the planet in covert for some time (long fangs). Anyway. i know my list is under points but comment away on it!

Thursday, November 12, 2009

Two Blue Horrors, One Scenic Base

Where once was one, now there is two.
Where once was pink, now there is blue.

++ Canticle of Change, Codex: Chaos Daemons

If, like me, you recall the heady days of Realms of Chaos books, then you may also recall that pink horrors have an unusual magical final line of defence. When the die, they simply bubble, melt, and split into two fresh (but a little more sulky) blue horrors.

Codex: Daemons has a few words to say about this when describing horrors of Tzeentch. They specifically say that the splitting in to two will never be represented on the battlefield for sanity sake! And I fully support this having played the Realms of Chaos version!

The Codex goes further though. Instead of actually having any splitting rules for horrors, it suggests that one might like to add two blue horrors to a single round base to add variation to any pink horror squad. I took this idea very literally, and this is what I came up with.
Here, two blue horrors that were formerly on separate bases have been attached to a single scenic resin base. Originally, I was worried that such a miniature would look very crowded. But the complete opposite is true. The miniature looks just fine. And when used with a larger pack of horrors, it does indeed add significant variety to the squad. And it also looks cool -- my opponents really like checking this miniature out!

Tuesday, November 10, 2009

Strigoi

A collector's item from the Vampire Counts range of Warhammer Fantasy. I've always liked the look of this model and when I saw it used in a conversion in an old blog, I knew I'd have to track one down!

This model has been painted using reds and oranges as the theme colours; befitting a vampire who's had a good drink lately. Some of the model has been drybrushed to give it tones and highlights, whilst other parts have been overpainted and blended to a higher degree. The variant painting styles seem to have worked nicely with each other to give a pleasing effect overall.

The contrast of the red flesh tones with the steel-like claws and white teeth and eyes is also a neat result. This is in contrast to the muted leathery tones of the rope and clothing that the Strigoi is wearing. This is one vampire not to bump in to on a dark night in isolated rural areas...

Sunday, November 8, 2009

Possessed Chaos Space Marine on Resin Base

Perhaps some folks don't regularly field them on the battlefield (there are some -- good on you!), but my word -- the bits that make up possessed chaos space marines are sure good for conversion purposes!

I glued together this possessed chaos space marine purely to see how dynamic one would look. My intent is to probably save most of the other bits for conversion work. The marine is based on a back-2-basix resin base and has a 100m sprinting pose about him. One curious feature about this pose is the length to which the left arm dangles below the feet -- he's a very mutated marine! I'm looking forward to painting this one up!

Saturday, November 7, 2009

Reminder for the November Army List Challenge Scenario

Just a quick reminder that the November army list challenge is on and still open for entries for another week. Details can be found here. Can you beat Suneokun's list? Good luck!

Friday, November 6, 2009

Army List: 1500 points of Khorne and Nurgle CSM

I've been toying about with a Khorne plus Nurgle Chaos Space Marine army list recently. I wanted something that was playable, fun, but remained mildly competitive (without putting too much hurt on newbies!). Here's the list that I came up with:

  • Chaos Lord in Terminator Armour, Mark of Khorne, Chain Fist, Combi-Melta, Icon (155 points)

  • 4 Terminators, Icon of Khorne, 1 combi melta, 1 heavy flamer 2 chain fists (190 points)

  • 7 Plague Marines, including 1 plague champion with a power fist, 1 melta, 1 flamer, 1 icon, with Rhino with havoc launcher (271 points)

  • 7 Plague Marines, including 1 plague champion with a power fist, 1 melta, 1 flamer, 1 icon, with Rhino with havoc launcher (271 points)

  • 8 Khorne Berzerkers, including 1 skull champion with a power fist, 1 icon, with Rhino with havoc launcher (263 points)

  • 5 lesser daemons (65 points)

  • 5 lesser daemons (65 points)

  • 5 lesser daemons (65 points)

  • 2 Obliterators (150 points)

    Total = 1495.

    The general idea here is to "take a chance" and deep strike the HQ along with his retinue of terminators somewhere useful on the board and use them as a summoning base for the obliterators and (some) lesser daemons as they become available. Meanwhile, at least one of the plague marine squads will hang back (in an objective based game) whilst the Berzerkers go forth to tackle and problems that arise. The lesser daemons are used in a dual role: back up for other squads (as required) and late-game objective contesting and capturing squads (since they're troops). With 6 troops selections, this build doesn't have much of an excuse for not covering as many of the objectives in a game as possible.

    This list is one that works very well ... or not at all. I've been toying with converting this in to a dual Slaanesh-Nurgle army list by including some noise marines to provide a much superior heavy fire support element that is well matched to the obliterators and thinking about having a predator in place of some of the lesser daemons.
  • Thursday, November 5, 2009

    Chaos Marine Halberdier

    This is a fellow that I constructed just recently to explore how well the relatively new warhammer fantasy chaos warrior metal pole-arm weapons blend with chaos marine parts.

    The answer is rather well...!

    The glove size and the halberd itself are a good match to the chaos marine's scale. It takes a bit of work to chop up the plastic arms to a good length and the metal glove part (which would ordinarily plug in to a fantasy miniature). Once done, I pinned the two together and assembled the rest is the usual fashion (including a metal melta gun here!). My plan is to use this miniature as part of my plotted Night Lords Chosen squad at some point in the future. I intend to have each miniature (apart from the standard bearer which is already assembled) wield one of these nasty looking blades! The base needs some attention first, though, before I get around to painting him up.

    Wednesday, November 4, 2009

    Painted Hive Tile

    Having assembled the hive city tile from Planetary Empires, it didn't take too long at all to get painted up to table-top ready quality. The aim with this tile was to make it blend in with other Mighty Empires tiles that I have already painted. Hence it needed to follow a broadly green-ish theme. This is not an ash waste-land or a desert region!After undercoating black, I painted the main hive city in boltgun metal and the outskirts of the city in a combination of goblin green blended to graveyard earth brown. The towers were inked black and the grassy regions inked brown. After drying, portions of the hive city's towers were picked out in silver once more, but not all of them -- I wanted to suggest that some of the structures were newer than other bits. The "windows" (if indeed, that is what the are!) were picked out in skull white and overpainted yellow. The pipelines at the base were done in red to contrast this.

    Meanwhile, the grassy areas were drybrushed using a blend of dheneb stone (principally to thicken and lighten the other colours) with green and yellow. I'm pleased with the overall result here and will be using it with my other Mighty Empire tiles regularly.

    Monday, November 2, 2009

    Planetary Empires: Hive Tile Sprue and Assembly

    The hive city tile is a special order piece from Games Workshop online. The tile comes on a smallish size sprue that has a number of different components on it; ranging from the tile base itself to various layers and the towers of the hive, as illustrated below.
    The assembly of the tile is straight forward, but I would caution readers to dry fit (i.e. fit the bits together to see where they go!) before any application of glue. Some of the spires of the hive are similar and it isn't immediately obvious which tower should be placed where. There's a danger that a smaller tower will be placed where a larger-based one is intended to go, meaning that when the larger tile needs to be glued in to place, there is nowhere appropriate left for it.

    The hive itself is built in a wedding-cake style: one layer placed on top of another, and capped off by the hive's towering spires. Having glued it together (below), I feel that there might be some room to add a couple of bits of greenstuff to tidy up some of the flat wedding-cake portions that aren't covered by the upper tiers. I'm looking forward to painting this one!

    Sunday, November 1, 2009

    November Army List Challenge

    Okay - its the start of the month again, and its time for the next monthly army list challenge on Warpstone Flux! This one is played around a new scenario... let me explain...

    Overview of the Scenario.
    The star that this planet is orbiting is liable to go supernova any moment soon! When it does, every bit of biomass on the surface of the planet will perish and the planet will get wiped out by the resultant shock wave. Luckily for you, your strike cruiser is orbiting at a safe distance away from the planet and stands ready to teleport your army back on board to safety. Your army is presently on the surface of the planet though. They are racing to recover artifacts before the star goes supernova.

    The game starts with 9 (yes, nine!) objectives on a 6x4 ft board with random scenery. The objectives are placed alternately by each player during set up and cannot be closer than 7 inches to each other.

    At the end of every game turn, roll a d6 for each unit. On a 4+, they can elect to teleport back to the orbiting cruiser (their friends have succeeded in getting a teleport lock on them!). If this option is taken, they are removed from the board and the controlling player scores one point. If the unit is also fully controlling (not contesting!) an objective (i.e. no enemy unit within 3 inches of it) and is not engaged in melee, then that objective will teleport back with them as well -- score one further point.

    Whenever the game ends, the star goes supernova and everything remaining on the board perishes. The winner is the one with the most points (i.e. living units that have teleported back and objectives).

    Rules.
    (1) Design a 1850 points (standard mission) army from any codex to collect the objectives, engage the enemy and teleport out of there!
    (2) Special Rule for this scenario: The maximum number of killpoints for your army is 14. This is to ensure that each player cannot outscore their opponent simply by choosing more units!
    (3) Post your army lists as a comment to this posting and suggest why they're well suited to this mission and scenario in particular. Why is you army on a planet that is about to take a close up view of a supernova?!
    (4) On Nov 14th 2009, I'll start a voting poll that will be open for 1 week to vote for what Warpstone Flux readers consider to be the "most effective army list that also best articulates the theme" (whatever readers interpret that to mean) out of all entrants.
    (5) Winner will be tallied and announced on Nov 21st.

    Remember, the real aim of these challenges is to help others design effective army lists that are both themed and effective. There are no prizes beyond honour and kudos!
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