WIP Raven Guard Scouts

I wanted to take a break from working on all these bikes, so I moved over to the Scouts and Sergeant Telion. Most of this squad is in much need of re-painting as the majority of them were painted over a decade ago when my skills were seriously lacking (not that they aren't now). I'm adding in a few of the new plastic snipers to add some variety to the old metal ones that only came in two poses. Originally, the snipers were painted in a traditional camo color scheme, but I rather like the bold blood red cloaks.

By this point you know I'm not taking an all bikes list. In addition to dreadnoughts I'll also be fielding a full sized sniper squad lead by Telion. These guys will likely camp an objective which will hopefully reside in some cover that can be buffed not only by their camo cloaks but also bolstered by the Master of the Forge (read: potential 2+ cover save). Even though marine scouts took a hit to their stat line in 5th, the sniper rifle received a boost; a roll to wound of 6 counts as rending AP 2. Nice! Add in Telion's ability to allocate wounds from his gun and a heavy bolter scout with 2+ poison blast and you've got a great fire support squad.

After the scouts, it's back to finishing these final 3 dreadnought arms:

Then a drop pod, and of course... more bikes:

Critiquing NOVA Army List #1

A while back, I posted the first army list I was considering for the NOVA Open GT. I'll repost the list since I'm hoping to provide a brief rundown on each of the selections (and I haven't had a chance to snap any new pictures to accompany the post).

To quickly recap, I started this blog to help motivate myself to finish fully painting my primary 40k army, the Raven Guard. Sometimes we all need a little extra motivation, so not long after starting the blog, I signed up for the NOVA Open. Admittedly, I didn't know much about this GT at the time but a friend of mine had attended it the year before and said it was awesome, not to mention it's within driving distance from where I live. So I said to myself, why not, this will make a nice goal for having my army completed and something fun to look forward to. I didn't realize how competitive this event was nor how competitive 40k had gotten in general during 5th edition. I logged most of my games during 3rd and 4th editions, and have been in & out of the hobby since then. Needless to say, I'm not feeling as prepared as I should be for an event like NOVA, but I'm hoping to change that in the next several weeks leading up to the tournament.

I've always been into tactics/strategy and am excited to put those to the test in a tournament setting, but if you're one to distill everything down into 2 categories I'm definitely more of a collector than a lister ;)

2000 pts is more than what I usually play with and more than any local tournament I've ever played in. I've participated in a few apocalypse level games and definitely enjoyed playing with units I otherwise wouldn't have been able to fit in a lower point game. So how did I arrive at list #1 pictured above? Let's start with the HQ's. The Captain on bike enables bike squads of 5 or more models to be taken as Troops choices. This one is simple; bikes = mobility and only troops can count as scoring. If there's anything I've learned in my limited experience with 5th edition it's that mobility is key. The Master of the Forge I had converted on a bike back in 4th edition, and having never seen another one in real life I thought this would be a cool theme decision to include one in this list. I'm also a big fan of dreadnoughts (who isn't!?)  so the ability to include more with the MotF is awesome. I realize this isn't the most competitive of selections but again, I don't build lists solely for that purpose. I aim to have a fun themed list that can also perform well on the table.

I should also mention I make a lot of my selections based on what I currently have. I can't afford to go out and refresh my entire army with each edition of the game or every time a new codex is released and the meta changes. Thus this first list had choices like Assualt marines and a couple Scout squads. My Raven Guard in 4th edition made a lot of use of these units. They were both fluffy and more effective back then. Simply put, Blood Angels do Assault/Jump marines better and Scouts got their stat line nerfed in 5th. The Vindicators were in there because I had 3 from the line breaker apocalypse box and strength 10 AP 2 can be a beautiful thing to have on your side. But this first list isn't very cohesive. It's a conglomeration of things I have, some things I wanted to feature, and some things I thought would be effective at tying it all together. I've since learned that several things in this list needed to change.

Not long after making this first list, I started 2 others (again based mostly on theme and units I already had at my disposal). The second one was more focused on bikes and dreads and eventually evolved into the list I plan to take to the tournament. The 3rd was a Shrike infiltrating terminators list, but this just wasn't my preferred style of play. Through testing, studying, math-hammering, etc I've learned I need to take a lot more bikes if I want them to be effective and also survive. Also, power weapons on the sergeants don't make up for the fact that ordinary bikers don't belong in close combat. Flamers aren't the best choice on bikes either as they entice you to get too close in order to use them. Most lists you'll find on the Internet take melta weapons on bikes as they do quite well with the current conditions of 5th (lots of vehicle spam). Depending on your local meta, plasma can also be a very lucrative choice on bikes. There's many different opinions out there, so I recommend trying them out and deciding for yourself.

I wont be posting my final list till just before the tournament next month, but lets just say I'm hoping to bring plasma back! I'll leave you with a picture I saw on Kirby's blog and White Scars, both great sites in general and especially for learning more about biker-based tactics and lists.

When Hobbies Collide

So I didn't reach my goal for the weekend, but I have a really good excuse... I'll get to that in a second. I did manage to get more work done on the Raven Guard Captain and Champion on bikes. The biker command section of the army is starting to come together and I can't wait to see the whole bike gang in its entirety.

Here's a closer look at the Champion; I chose this shoulder pad so it would resemble the hooded Captain he serves.

So on to the distraction. There's few things I geek out about more than Warhammer 40k, but one of those things is music. You might say I'm an addict. If I go more than 48 hours without a guitar in my hands I start to show signs of withdrawal. Ever since I learned to play guitar I've wanted an Orange amp. My first amp is a 120 watt solid state Crate 2x12 and it's served me well over the years, but nothing can recreate the rich tones of an all-tube amp, except a tube amp ;)

Here it is! The latest addition to my musical arsenal. Noise marines be damned, they haven't heard overdrive like this before! Ok maybe they have, but this little rig is awesome and is currently commanding the majority of my attention. For the fellow gamer/guitar players out there, I highly recommend the Orange Tiny Terror (it's a piece of the pie without selling the kitchen to afford it, if you know what I'm sayin'). Till next time, cheers!

WIP Raven Guard Captain on Bike, Champion on Bike

Here's my assembled Raven Guard Captain and Champion on bikes. While the basecoat was drying on these guys, I started painting Telion and the 3 remaining snipers from his squad. My goal for this weekend is to finish off the sniper squad and be well on my way painting the full biker command squad.

I have a nice bit that I'm painting up now to cover the dark angels emblem on the chest of the captain. All in this squad will bear the Raven Guard logo before they are finished.

All that remains

So here's my top priority models at the moment:

- Captain on bike (bike is assembled and mostly painted; need to attach & paint the captain)
- 10 more bikes (4x plasma guns, 1x thunder hammer, 1 champion)
- Sgt. Telion & 3 more Sniper Scouts (all primed and ready to paint)
- 2 Dreadnought arms

I've debated whether or not to include a Vindicator or Landspeeder in the 2000 point list, so I've built several of each and started to paint them just in case. But the more I think about it, each of these units seem to be more effective in multiples and at the moment I don't have the points to include more than 1 of each. I'd like to keep the focus on bikes and dreadnoughts so there's not much I can swap out without impacting each of those. I'll leave the final tweaks up to some playtesting though. I'm trying to finish up painting the Master of the Forge and will post new shots of that model soon.

And We're Back...

Finally, Comcast came through and we now have Internet at our new place. I've been out of commission the past few weeks dealing with the recent move and all the fun stuff that goes along with that, but happy to say the bulk of it is over! Still a few odds and ends to sort out but the new place is starting to come together nicely and I should be back on the hobby table soon. We're about 2 months out from Nova so if you haven't ordered your ticket yet, you better act quickly! Few spots remain and you don't want to miss this, or the opportunity for a good challenge ;)

I'd like to have my army finalized and fully painted in the next month to avoid any frantic hobby sessions at the last minute and to ensure I have enough time to get a feel for my tournament list. I'm not expecting much in terms of win/loss record, but I am expecting to have a great time (and part of that means not getting my ass handed to me every round). I'll get a list of what remains to be assembled or painted together so I can come up with a reasonable plan of action for the month. The last thing I want is for my hobby to feel like a chore, and it hasn't yet, but I do have a tendency to start on too many projects at once. Now is the time to focus in on my 2k point list and get in as many games with it as I can. Anyone else starting to feel the pressure? Time to stop reading 6th edition rumors and bring it back to basics (and reality!)

Citadel Finecast

Last Saturday, I managed to pick up a couple of the new Citadel Finecast models; a Harlequin Shadowseer and Harlequin Death Jester.

With these two models I'm able to finish off my Harlequin Troupe, the latest addition to my Dark Eldar army. I tried to get these a couple of weeks ago when I ordered the Troupe box set (ahead of the price increase and switch to resin) in hopes of snagging some of the last metal miniatures from GW, but these two were already sold out. It's all good though because now I have a nice comparison between the old metal and new resin harlies.

The good news is that Finecast is better than what I was expecting - I thought it would be exactly like Forge World resin which can be prone to some extreme mold lines and loss of detail when extra material unfortunately seeps into the wrong parts of the mold (the quality of the production process just isn't as high with FW as it is with other/newer GW lines, at least from what I've seen). I still need to finish a few things before posting the rest of my FW order from a couple months ago. I finally picked up some much needed tools over the weekend that should make working with resin models much easier. More on those later.

Anyway, back to the Harlequins. The new Finecast models can be assembled pretty quickly. There may be slightly more cleanup required with the back of the hobby knife depending on the mold/model, but everything glues together faster than metal. The downside is this stuff is fragile! The top of my Shadowseer's staff seemed a little bent/loose on the spru, and sure enough after I cut it off and started to clean around the edges the skull fell off. Nothing a little greenstuff can't fix, but have to remember to be really careful with the thin pieces; they can't withstand any flexing to and fro and have very little give. On larger pieces/models I don't see this being an issue, just the small ones that are attached to the spru edges you have to watch for.

All in all, I'm impressed with the level of detail they can achieve with the new material. I'll have more as I start to paint these guys and also as I finish up the metal Harlequin counterparts and remaining FW models. I'm very happy to finally be working on a squad of Harlequins - these are the models that had just been redone when I started getting back into the hobby a few years ago from a long hiatus. No one put it better than my wife who, after several rounds of drinks at a nearby Chili's drunkenly blurted out to the guy working that night at the now closed GW store, "these new Harlequins are off the chain!!!"

Wow, that was 4 years ago!

I think he thought she was mocking him and the new minis, but she wasn't. I looked up and smiled and said "Yes, yes they are." :-)