DaanofWar – Pagina 3

I’m Actually Gaming!

Wow. I totally forgot to publish the last post..

That’s embarrassing and basically means this one is going to be a long one. I also don’t feel like retyping the whole thing, so you’ll have to imagine a bit of a timeskip in between. Anyhow!

I played a game of Ninth Age recently. I got out my old Empire army for it, which had been gathering dust ever since the release of 8th edition made it obsolete. What is pretty cool is that it seems that the army has now become really poweful in the Ninth Age system. Check it out in the pics below:

Turn two. The first important combats are starting to erupt.

The game was against Dirk and his yellow Orc army (lovingly named the “Pizzkidzz”). The game was pretty fun as we quickly found out that the game is very, very much like old Warhammer Fantasy. The downside however, was that we spent so much time flipping through the pdf’s that we weren’t able to properly finish the game. Also, my detachments formations are still not legal (I have them in 3 by 3 blocks). All in all I can’t give the game a good verdict yet other than that it’s an admittedly more balanced version of Warhammer Fantasy that you can get for free and will probably remain relevant for a couple of years. Good for anyone with an old fantasy army, not so good for introducing new people to the hobby. Then again, the game itself is in a self-declared Beta stage right now so comparing it to fully supported games such as AoS and KoW may still be premature.

Close-up of the big savage orc unit. Tough to kill units all around.

In more recent news I’ve played the second game of the 30k campaign that’s still going on at the GameForce. Incidentally this game was also against Dirk.

The mission however, was not quite a success as we had to place objectives which one of us had to destroy and the other had to protect. I was assigned the protecting role, but was also informed that objectives had to be deployed before we were allowed to choose sides. This made setting up the objectives very difficult and I ended up placing them somewhere in the middle. When I then lost both rolls to pick a side as well as the roll for first turn I could only watch helplessly as 2 objectives got immediately taken out in turn 1. Dirk’s army spent the rest of the game running away. What also didn’t help is that I had chosen to field a contemptor while the boards we used had passages that were consistently too small for a dreadnought to pass through. Nevertheless, it was a short game and I still had fun throwing dice against Dirk’s nicely painted Death Guard.

Seriously though. I’m glad we’re not doing zone mortalis anymore next game.

Now! For the painting part of the blog post.

Two weeks ago I had this standing on my painting table:

It’s going to be a busy month.

Here’s what I managed to complete:

Can you read the text I wrote on his chest flag things? Pretty pleased with myself that I kinda pulled that one off.

Chaplain dude. Is this the time to start naming things? Maybe flesh out the fluff a bit?

And the first of the Skaven!! Unspectacularly they are rat swarms. Still took me long enough to paint up though. Warlock engineer is next on the list.

So that’s all for this post. I tried not to keep it too long this time. There’s a big forge world order coming in this week and I also finished the Legend

of the Age of Sigmar: Pestilens novel which I kinda wanna do a book review for. I already talked about the latter on the latest episode of Skavenblight Radio, but a more thorough review on here would probably be a good idea also. So! Fingers crossed for next week guys!

Victory or Death!

It Lives!

First out the gate I have to mention a new thing I’ve been involved in:

I’ve been talking to SkavenDan through UnderEmpire.net for a while and I basically agreed to become a co-host to the show. The first episode I feature in (Episode 12 – It Lives!) went live last friday and so far I haven’t heard too much complaints. Personally, I still have some things I’d like to work on, but I’ll probably get there with practice. Big thanks though, to SkavenDan for allowing me to join in on this and I look forward to the next recording.

Also, as you might have heard on the podcast, I’m going to start looking into Age of Sigmar soon. I don’t think I mentioned on this blog, but I moved house last summer. There’s still a huge chunk of unassembled and unpainted Skaven lying around and AoS might be the perfect excuse to get started sorting that out.

Just a small sampling of the unassembled hordes inhabiting our new attic.

Now that the whole idea of an advancing storyline and ‘pointless’ gameplay have had some time to sink in I’ve re-examined my initial reaction. After reading some of the books I think I might actually enjoy AoS a lot. To me it seems like AoS is increasingly intended for people who enjoy gaming from a background perspective. I ramble about this in the podcast a lot as well, so I’ll leave it from the blog and just say that you should expect to see more Skaven models on round bases here soon.

Now for the real progress! The first 5 Dust Vultures have been painted and are looking mighty fine if I may say so myself.

Shit pictures, but you get the idea.

I’ve got the first battle for our local Horus Heresy campaign coming up next week, so next post will probably contain a small battle report with more painted miniatures. It’s a small 250pts zone mortalis style battle against Night Lords so should be fun to see.

Victory or Death!

The Dust Vultures – Raven Guard, 8th Battalion, 4th Company

8th battalion, 4th company of the XIX legion or the ‘Dust Vultures’, as they came to be known during the early stages of the great crusade, trace their origins to parts of the original XIX legion during the unification wars. Infiltration, patience and swift action were trademarks of the style of warfare employed by the legion that was orignally known as the hidden hand of the Emperor.

The 4th company gained their monniker during deployments alongside the Luna Wolves legion under the command of Horus. Their ability to infiltrate and lie in wait at key locations proved invaluable to the Luna Wolves commanders. These commanders frequently sent out the ‘Vultures’ well before sector attack strategies were being formulated. The 4th company would then arrive in stealth and autonomously deploy squads at strategic locations. Their survival skills and independent operation allowed them to gather intelligence, disrupt and identify critical enemy sites for long periods of time.

At the time the main body of the assault force arrived, the world’s defense infrastructure would be severely broken, allowing for an alpha strike to take entire continents nearly unimpeded. The vultures, having usually expended most of their resources during these long waits, would often be found lagging behind the main assault lines mopping up survivors and discouraging retaliation.

Some Raven Guard during the Horus Heresy

At the time when the XIX legion primarch, Corvus Corax, was discovered, the legion entered a period of reorganization to suit the new Primarch’s needs. Many companies similar to the Dust Vultures were disbanded and sent on nomadic crusades. During these changes, the 4th company happened to be deployed in the Kehrfells system and escaped scrutiny as their extraction was deemed too hazardous.

A decade later, when the reformed Raven Guard finally arrived in the Kehrfells system, they found the local xenos civilization significantly weakened and the system was taken by Corax within weeks. Impressed by the patience and planning displayed by the 4th company, Corax allowed the terran-born vultures to remain active among the new legion.

During the following years, due to their involvement in the warrior lodges, the Dust Vultures would later also be selected to participate in the Battle of Gate 42. Major losses were suffered by the company during this battle. The surviving remnants however, would later prove to be extremely loyal to their primarch and of great value during the tragedies following their deployment at Isstvan V.

The beginnings of greatness!

So, there you have it. I will be building a Raven Guard force for the coming months to participate at a 30k campaign at my local store. Expect painting progres, battle reports and fluff development of this brand new company of Raven Guard marines!

Victory or Death!

28 Years of DaanofWar!

The Porcelain Protectorate.

This is just a short post. Don’t have much to show for aside from the above Expemplar Cinnerators which I finished up last night. I’m intentionally postponing basing my menoth. I’m afraid I’m going to choose something crappy and ruin it and draw all the attention away from the color scheme.

I now only have 4 models left to paint. 3 Wracks and the Testament. Hopefully I’ll be able to finish the army somewhere around next week. So look out for more flowery images then.

Maybe you already got it from the title but.. it’s my birthday today! I got a set of awesome “planet” glasses (one glass for each of the planets in the solar system) from Joyce and I bought myself a ‘new’ 3ds xl. So I might just spend the coming days playing monster hunter and sipping some sweet coke from Uranus instead.

“Uranus”. Get it?

Death to the False Emperor!

New (read: Old) Projects!

Hey Everyone!

We’re not dead yet here at DaanofWar! In fact, remember that Drake McBain from last post? Well, I ordered him an army:

There’s a full Press Ganger unit already basecoated, with some Kayazy Assassins, Wrong Eye & Snapjaw, an Underboss, a Bull Snapper and nana nana nana nana… Ragmaaan!

But before I finish those guys I’ve decided to get my Menoth force out of the way first. I’ve spent the first part of the evening soldering some custom chains on my Wracks and hopefully do some actual painting later tonight.

This is all the stuff I still need to do for Menoth. And also glue an arm back on my Talon, which is just for me personally I guess.

It’s going to be a busy week, but I’m going to try and keep this blog updated on my progress! The McBain army is intended to be used in tournaments in the near future so the sooner it’s done, the happier I’ll be.

Death to the False Emperor!

I played Chaos Space Marines… before they were popular!

Long time no blog, folks. I would apologize for the lack of updates, but that would mean I’d have to repeat myself for about the hundreth time. So, I’ve decided not to. Instead of apologizing, I’m going to give a bit of an update about what happened during the past couple months.

In case any of you were wondering what happened to the campaign that I was blogging about: it ended a while ago. I didn’t really play any more battles in it either since the campaign took a bit of a break after the guy who ran it handed it over to someone else. It was during that break in the campaign that me and my girlfriend decided we wanted to start renting an appartment. This effectively took me out of the hobby for a couple of months and I completely missed the end of the campaign.

Not to worry though! A new campaign will be starting up this friday. I already had some great idea’s for a new armylist. The armylist needs a lot of things that were not a part of my previous list. The whole rhino setup I used to have is simply not effective in the new edition. Also, with the new Chaos book there are better uses for my points. For now I’ve decided on a strategy that uses big 20 man chaos space marine units with plasma that are led by fearless HQ’s. I’m also going to use two small units of melta-raptors and 20 cultists, divided into 2 units of 10 or 4 units of 5 (haven’t quite decided yet). Don’t know what else I’m going to use to flesh out the list yet, but this is going to be the basic framework. The following pictures show some of my attempts to modify some of my old marines to fit into the new list.

Go, Bitz Box Go!

That’ll be all for now, folks! I’ve spent to much time on this blog already and not enough time working on the army. I’ve also made a renewed effort to practice the guitar more often and I’ve been hooked on Pokémon White 2 as if my life depended on it.

If only Warhammer was more like Pokémon… (I would be able to fix my army on the way to work)

Death to the False Emperor!

Glimpse into the Golden Age: Battle 7

Apologies for the long wait (it’s almost been a whole month..), but we’re finally back with the 7th battle of the ongoing campaign: Glimpse into the Golden Age. My opponent, Rob (Grimzilla on the forum), had apparently taken some crap before the battle about the list he was using. His previous list was something along the lines of 2 necron fliers and 3 annihilation barges, but today he was going to try a new list. His new list consisted mainly of a unit of 7 necron lords. The rest of the list was filled up with 2 mandatory warrior units and a C’Tan. The unit of 7 lords was something he was curious to try. A unit like that is so hard that it has the ability to kill virtualy every unit it comes into contact with. The question of course, is whether it will be able to kill enough of those units to earn their points back.

I myself am using the new chaos dex for the first time. I made the list in a hurry and all I could say about it at that poin that I was kind of dissapointed that the daemon prince and defilers got more expensive. I also didn’t like that my cheap and effective daemon weapon option for the lord was gone.

After turn 1: My daemon prince is trying to distract the lord unit while my rhino unit and defiler go for the (comparetively) squishy C’Tan and warriors.

The mission had us deployed in wierd, vertical lines throughout the battlefield and it also prevented Rob’s lord unit from deep striking anywhere else than the deployment zones. This was a great advantage to me since he was kind of relying on his teleportation ability (which worked like deep strike) to get to the important combats.

Turn 3: Rhino unit with lord kills the warrior units and makes contact with the C’Tan. Epic combat between chaos lord with murder sword and C’Tan begins.

The lord unit managed to take out an obliterator and a daemon prince while my rhino unit and defiler took out the 2 warrior units and the C’Tan. The C’Tan combat was unusually epic though. The C’Tan was locked in a challenge with my lord and between his initiative test forcing bolt, my activated murder sword and his wound regenerating ability, the combat lasted at least a full 4 rounds. In the end my lord died to an initiative test right before he was about to knock of the C’Tan’s last wound. The defiler came in afterwards and cleaned up the mess though.

C’Tan kills chaos lord. Defiler is not amused.

Once the C’Tan was dead, all I could do was grab as many objectives as possible and keep his lord unit from doing anything. I had to use some tricky tactics but with his assault rolls sucking balls I managed to accomplish all of this and bring it home for the win.

This fine tactic is called my ‘lets grab this objective but keep just out of range of those necron lords’-maneuvre.

So, since it took so much time to post this report you might have guessed it already: there haven’t been much other battles for the campaign since. I never heard the full story, but some people wanted to quit the campaign while other people then also didn’t want to keep it going anymore and basically: drama.

Oh well, at least nobody can say that we didn’t see it coming.

Hopefully this won’t be the last campaign batrep, but if you’ve been following along, just letting you know it might be. I’ve had a lot of fun and the goal we had in mind in the first place (getting experience with 6th ed) has been accomplished pretty nicely. I’m going to try and keep the blog posts coming though. I’m slowly but steadily finishing my raptors as well as reading the new chaos codex, so I might blog some stuff about that in the near future and until then…

Death to the False Emperor!

Glimpse into the Golden Age: Battle 5

So, last friday, another battle for the campaign went down. It’s kinda scary because we’re about over half-time with the campaign and it’s still going! I’d have to knock on wood, but it almost seems like this one might actually be able to make it to the end…

The battle I played was against Remco (Confessor Theodoris on the forums) with his sisters of battle. His list is kind of famous at the club for doing well in tournaments and stuff “despite” it being a sisters list. This kinda put me on my guard and also pretty much halfway into writing down a loss.

Totally unnessescary of course as the battle turned out to be just a plain ‘ol draw. Well, not quite plain as it was a really tense battle in the end which could have swung a lot of ways before the final dice was rolled.

Turn 1: The big trench in the middle is supposed to represent a river (something that was required for the mission). We obviously didn’t have a lot of river terrain at the store.

The battle started out bad for me as my defiler got shot down right away and my lord got killed by Saint Celestine (which I believe his unkillable special character was called) a couple turns later. My rhino unit compensated a bit by surviving an outflanking sister unit and killing them off in revenge, claiming a special mission objective afterwards (you needed to get two of those for 1 vp). When my deepstrikers came tried to use a termicide unit (3 guys with combi meltas) and an obliterator to kill off his two nasty S8 AP1 tanks, but I only managed to kill one before I lost both units. I used my daemons to kill off celestine and her unit of flying sisters.

Celestine is apparently best dealt with though superiority in numbers.

At the end of the battle my only shot at a draw was to hold on to my home objective, as I wasn’t going to be able to get him off of his, and score 2 mission objectives, for a single vp, to counter his ‘first blood’ vp. I also had to hope Celestine stayed dead of course…

End of the battle: I only had a single daemon claiming that objective… Thank the gods for fearless units!

So a draw it was!

In other news: I am getting the new Horus Heresy book from forgeworld. I’m not planning on starting a pre-heresy force in any sense of the idea (at least not before I win a fucking lottery or something), but just think of all that juicy fluff, people. Oh that juicy fluff!

I’ll also be getting the new chaos codex of course. But so far I find most of the models ugly. Especially the dragon. It looks really wierd and not at all like anything that would fit into my chaos army as I built it. Wtf is it even? A mechanical dragon? It doesn’t have a crew as far as I can see… Is it some sort of daemon? Why would it wanna help chaos marines? Is this something that one would see regularly among a random chaos marine warband or is it tied to a particular legion? It’s just too much nonsense for me right now.

Left: Awesomeness. Right: Dafuq..

Oh well, I guess I’ll read all about it next week and in the meantime…

Death to the False Emperor!

Glimpse into the Golden Age: Battle 4

Back again with another recap of yesterday’s battle.

This week’s fighting was done against Dirk (Papa Papaja on the forum) and his nurgle chaos marines / daemon allies. Despite using lots of proxies and unpainted models (what kind of horrible, horrible person would do such a thing is beyond me), Dirk’s army could have actually been pretty fun to play against. It had lots of big nasties, healthy heavy support and enough solid troops. If only it hadn’t looked like a big, confusing pile of crap… *sigh*.

For clarification purposes: the upside-down spider is a wrecked soulgrinder, the unfinished hellbrute is a great unclean one, the dreadnought is a greater (summoned) daemon, the blue/orange rhino is a plague marine rhino and the green terminators are actually obliterators….

Hopefully having sufficiently illustrated my distaste for unpainted/proxied models, I’ll explain a bit about the battle itself. The mission was “The Relic” and the mission said we could only use forests as terrain. The only time this really mattered was when Dirk’s daemon prince landed in a piece of terrain that made him hit himself for 1 wound (that was pretty funny). The battle went back and forth a lot of the time and although Dirk had some bad luck with his daemon prince and greater daemon. Only the great unclean one seemed to be performing as it should and totally murdered one of my marine units, an obliterator and half of my termies. My terminators were pretty useful in taking out the greater daemon and a plague marine unit.

When the game ended at turn six I was extremely relieved, having only a single troop model left (that was holding the relic) while my termies were desperately holding off the great unclean one and a full plague marine unit.

Sometimes, dumping a unit of 10 terminators on a table is worth it for the psychological bonus alone.

If you’re wondering whether I actually got any painting done after all those promises I made last week…

Erhm…

No.

…

Death to the False Emperor!

Glimpse into the Golden Age: Battle 3

So, round 3 of the campaign totally went down last night.

I played against Koen this round, who was also sporting his chaos marines. The third mission was Big Guns Never Tire which means heavy support can claim objectives and are worth an extra victory point if you kill them. Koen used two defilers and a squad of 2 obliterators while I used 2 squads with 1 obliterator each. For our other units, Koen used a lash sorcerer, a regular squad with plasma and some khorne bezerkers. I used two regular squads with melta’s in rhino’s, a termicide unit, 5 lesser daemons and a daemon prince.

The battle as a whole was really wierd and had many wtf dice roll moments. A single chaos space marine squad killing off the daemon prince with a single rapid fire bolter volley was one of them and the khorne bezerkers killing off two out of three terminators with boltpistols was another. Luckilly, there were some good rolls for my side as well (the chaos marine unit running away after 2 plasma cannon shots and being able to blow up both defilers in 1 turn), so the battle ended in a draw with both armies almost completely wiped out.

Battlefield overview at turn 2. Interesting to note is the empty area in the center of the table where my daemon prince used to be.

I was pretty happy with the result anyway. My plan was to keep my obliterators on the objective and have my other guys disrupt and distract Koen’s army. So it was nice to have a plan actually work for a change. The downside was that pretty much everything had to die for that to happen. I’ll have to work on that.

Units that can shoot, ie.: obliterators, are apparently the shit in this edition.

Now, with the campaign update out of the way I’m going to try and get an actual painting session in tonight. Among the list of things to do are: glue back some bits that fell off the sorcerer and terminator lord, glue new bases underneath the raptors, assemble abaddon, paint the storm laser for the decimator and get serious about painting the raptors. If I can get all of this done, I’ll be a happy gamer. But first:

Death to the False Emperor!