Bringing back Deathwatch for the umpteenth time...

And not because they won the LVO! 

I've been getting back into painting Deathwatch with the rerelease of the index list before Christmas. The first new additions are a pair of Desolator Marines and a new Assault Intercessor:
 

It's been fun going back to my old roots with these and its such a simple paint scheme that I can kind of hammer these out fairly smartly. I'm basically a few models short of rebuilding the army into something I think will be quite fun to play with although likely a bit not good.

Once I've done a bit of paint stripping and some bits arrive from Germany, I'll be able to run two squads of DW Terminators, which are fun, as well as three different Kill Teams and a bunch of support stuff. If it's half decent, I'll probably pick up some bits to see if I can make it actually decent! 

Next Time

This was both late and short. Next week will be more workbench but with less real life and more hobby time, hopefully a bit more to show for it! 

Ready for a comp in July...

In January! What is this nonsense? This might mean we have time to...practice? Playing 140 point TY on a large table presents a series of new and interesting challenges but I think we're really looking forward to it.

To begin with, the M109s have been done and added to my burgeoning artillery park:

 They were pretty easy to do and having the top of the turret covered in stuff made for a slightly easier painting effort as it wasn't worth trying to make the camo go around them! There's also enough detail on the slab sides of the turret to not make that a misery either.

For grins, a WIP of the current state of my last four Bradleys. These have had their tracks and the one crewman largely done and now it's just the grind that laying in the details and the camo process to get them done and then just a repaint of a bunch of crewman and an entire infantry platoon...

Finally, a group shot of my contribution to the two-player nonsense that Blogger Tank and I will be running.

Tank will be bringing another 9 Bradleys, more M1A1s, some M106s, another pair of Cobras and a platoon of Chapparals to keep the nonsense away in classic Desert Storm US Sand to look completely different to my MASSTER camo! 

 Next Time

Brads? Deathwatch? Games? It's anyones guess!

Hive Fleet Fashion Faux-pas

 Hat tip to Blogger Scotty for the blog title for today. :) 

I took my House Cadmus stompy bois out for a run against blogger Pooch's sneaky Tyranids. I've got this theory that my knights specifically need high rate of fire support so I added in a squad of Grey Knight Terminators and an Exaction Squad, mostly looking to use their [Precision] ability to snipe out Broodlords, and a couple of assassins.

 Here's House Cadmus and its Imperial Agents allies:

 

 

and here's the green and purple of Hive Fleet Fashion Faux-pas ready to swarm over the board!

By the top of turn 2, I'd lost the Exaction Squad to Lictors, the Grey Knight Terminators to a brood of Genestealers and the Armiger Moirax to the other Genestealer brood. Oof. Definitely didn't feel like the game was starting as well as I'd hoped...

But there was some revenge as the two Warglaives sent the Winged Hive Tyrant into the ether and deleted some Tyranid Warriors with some close range melta gun shots. This became a feature of the game in some respects, as one of the few things with many wounds and no invulnerable saves, I popped six out of seven with cheeky melta shots in combat.

On my right flank, my one Helverin refused to die to Lictors and with some help from the Errant, eventually saw them off. Meanwhile, Pooch's Gargoyles and Termagants were happily sitting on the no-mans-land objectives ticking up points and I was too tied up trying to get out of my deployment zone.

In the end, I sent the Castigator into the middle of the board to a) see off the Norn and b) take the centre objective to start scoring it!

And for a solid four rounds of combat the Norn did NOTHING except pass it's invulnerable saves to avoid being sworded while flailing ineffectually at the knight. The Castigator at least spent that time blazing away at squishier targets including removing the Gargoyles and the Termagants while thumping the Norn and achieving bugger all. Finally, I sent in the Errant as well and Pooch's ability to roll 4+ invulnerable saves finally gave out. 

What did I learn? Knights remain tough as nails and even an inexperienced player like me can make them go. I have two data points that prove to me that the correct agents addition to the list is Sisters so a squad of Sisters of Battle, a couple of Immolators for them to ride in and Inquisitor Greyfax to lead them is likely the next purchase here. I also learned you can't arrest a Broodlord.

Pooch's army worked absolutely as intended, pinning me in my deployment zone and scoring as many points as possible very quickly but it also behaved as he explained - get well ahead and run out of steam in the late game as the powerful units get killed and hope you're far enough ahead.

In the end, I squeaked through by 7 points with my secondaries coming good late in the game. The Castigator was alarmingly close to dead, all the Armigers were gone and both my assassins arrived, did almost nothing, failed their charges and died!

Workbench? 

And despite all that, Blogger Pooch graciously and generously offered to airbrush the basecoats on my new TY vehicles to save me the misery of base coating them the old fashioned way (10 coats of airbrush paint applied with a brush) and hopefully that'll help me focus on getting Panzerschreck ready! 

So I have some M106s, M109s and some more Bradleys to do. I need the M109s for Panzerschreck, the rest is for other builds at lower points values. Given Panzerschreck is in July, I figured I'd start with the M106s since they're the least necessary! 

With M113 FIST for scale

These took a few hours from whoa to go, considerably quicker than spending oh-dearie-me hours just on the basecoats.  There has been a bit of a process to remember how the scheme works and how I get a consistent finish bit I think it's pretty good. I also had a crack at a slightly different method for the pseudo-chocolate chip on the crew. I'm not super happy with it but I like it better than my previous attempts so there's going to be some repainting in my future! 

Next Time

More TY and I've started on some Desolation Marines for my Deathwatch for 40K. They're exceedingly silly but should see the table reasonably soon.