City Terrain Wrapup and beyond...

Hard to believe that its been almost three months. Back in early February of this year, Hyv3, Calypso2ts, and Crispy approached me about becoming a contributing author to the Mandulian Chapel. While I was honored that they asked me to contribute, I was both excited and nervous about the prospects of writing for this blog. I was excited that they all felt that I had something worth contributing to the greater community but at the same time I was nervous because I was not sure I would find enough stuff to talk about each week that would keep you, the reader, interested and engaged. Boy has that changed. These past three months have been a blast and due to the blog I have found myself taking on more hobby related projects and pushing myself to try new techniques in modeling and terrain building. With that being said, this week I will be wrapping up the “Creating City Terrain” series by showing you how to create unique terrain elements out of items that you can find relatively cheaply and easily. Hopefully my articles have inspired you to go out and build terrain pieces for your own collection, or for your gaming club or store.

List Building Anxiety - Daemons Edition

No matter how I put together an army list with the Daemon codex, somehow I feel dissatisfied with the result.  I feel like it is missing something or there are so many options I want to include that just cannot make the cut at the 1500/1850/2000 point levels.  With the previous codex, this was less of an issue.  The choices were straightforward, the units for the most part fulfilled a single role - assault the enemy - with a slight exception when Flamers/Screamers were revised.  From an overall hobby standpoint this presents a bit of a quandary though - and one that has reflected itself in my painting - or maybe I should say the schizophrenic nature of my painting.

...What units do I need to finish to bring to the tabletop?  I have at the moment somewhere between 6-8 different units all at different points in their painting lifecycle.  My zombies need a drybrush and sealing, my Daemonettes need their basecoat finished, Seekers need detail work while a pair of Soul Grinders languish without highlights.  Part of my painting motivation comes from playing, and at the moment I have no clue what units I am going to bring to the next tournament (or next game for that matter).

Daemon Codex - 1500 Tournament Redux

I had the chance last week to take the new Daemon codex out for a spin at a local tournament.  I did not, unfortunately, get a chance to take pictures due to time constraints - so I am going to provide my opponents lists, my strategy and some overall thoughts on the list.  The rounds were originally projected at 1.5 hours, but moved to 2 hours - which turned out to be a blessing.  I wanted to test some of my evaluations - and did so in a fairly restrictive environment.

Unlike many tournaments, this one included...wait for it...composition scores.  Without going into too many details, the composition requirements penalized taking Death Stars, repeated units/wargear or min/maxing selections.  20% of the score was also attributed to lists defined as 'excessively devoted to winning at all costs' which I took to mean, those looking to game the system.  As such I chose a diverse Daemon list - and took an initial comp hit of 10% for bringing a greater daemon.  My list for the event was...

Creating City Terrain: Tank Traps

So far in the Creating City Terrain series I have shown you how easy and affordable it can be for anyone to make their own terrain suitable for use in their warhammer 40k games. To date I have showed you how to create city ruins (part 1 and part 2), rubble, and tanglewire. Today I want to walk you through one of the simplest city terrain projects yet, tank traps. Tank traps, in theory, are designed to slow down or halt the advancement of vehicles by creating a barrier made of concrete, steel, or wood. The most common images of tank traps can be seen by looking at pictures or film taken during WW2 with the most iconic being the tank traps employed along the Atlantic wall and the traps setup along the Siegrfried Line. The concrete barriers setup along the Siegfried Line were often called Dragon's Teeths due to the square-pyramidal shape that they were constructed in. The idea behind the tank traps were to impede the progress of tanks and funnel the vehicles into killing zones where they could be destroyed with anti-tank weapons. Mines, pole, and barbed wire was often placed in and around the tank traps to slow down infantry that often accompanied the tanks.

The Grand Strategery Revealed!

If you've been following this blog over the years, you've witnessed several evolutions.  It all started with my Tyranid army and a desire to become successful with them.  After that came Grey Knights and Dark Eldar.  More recently, I've added four friends I've made within the hobby as authors and the blog was reborn as The Mandulian Chapel.

I'm very proud to announce our next evolution on behalf of all of our authors:  Our common beliefs and desires within the hobby have further united us and we have formed a new gaming club!  We have chosen to be known as The Grand Strategery as it is a term closely tied to a 40k term, with a comedic twist.  Here is our mission statement:

"The Grand Strategery is a gaming club that promotes tabletop wargaming throughout the Central and Western New York region. Our club's goal is to engage players interested in both casual and tournament play with an emphasis on demonstrating exemplary sportsmanship, diverse hobby skills, and community involvement. We celebrate all aspects of the hobby and seek to inspire others to do the same."

We have ambitious goals to help unite the various communities and groups in Western New York, support all events and venues, as well as host some of our own.  To help facilitate this, we have also created our own forum which can be found HERE.  We'd love you all to join us there for daily conversations about lists, theory, hobby, and other topics that we're passionate about.  There is even a sub-board for blog related requests and feedback.

That's all for today, but it's a big milestone for us.  We greatly appreciate our followers, fans, and those that have commented regularly and engaged us in discussion.  The forum gives us all a new venue for engaging our readers and we're hoping our club will grow further.

CSM Hobby Update

Just a quick hobby update from my cave.

I'm taking a new approach to this army project, getting 3 colors on everything so I can play with it while I finish it up.  Here's an update to "mini-mauler", my conversion to use as a nurgle lord on a palanquin (or juggernaut lord counts-as to fit my army appearance).  He's entirely from the fantasy chariot kit with minimal conversions.  Up to this stage, he's airbrushed only and awaiting washes and detailing.

Tyranid List Ideas & WIP

     Ever since the team tournament last month, I’ve been itching to try out a unit of Dakka-Fexes. I’ve had a single one for a while now, but with my recent WIP projects moving along, I think a unit  may be ready for the field soon.

     I’ve been running a 5-man unit of Shrikes, or the Swarmlord with a small bodyguard. Either way, you’re paying out a ton of points, and I’ve been meaning to try something different. My new points sink seems to be these Carnifexes. I know, those 2 Carni’s cost more than either of the two options above, but this is how I add to my collection (wait until I feel the need to build up a bunch of Screamer Killers!). I’m interested to see how they handle in comparison. On one hand, the Shrikes and Swarmlord do take down most things they hit, but they have to get into combat to do so. The Carni’s have the added utility that they don’t have to reach hand to hand, they have guns.

The 231st Host

 The Word Bearers of the 231st Host

This week I thought I would take a break from terrain construction (don't worry, I am still working on some new pieces for future articles) and delve into some of my current modeling projects that I have going on with my Word Bearers army. But before I show off my current works in progress I thought I'd go into when and why I chose to go with the Word Bearers. I started collecting chaos marines in 2005-2006 or so when then Chaos 3.5 codex was out. At that time my main focus was with my Tau and Necron armies so working on chaos was a side project.

Daemon Codex - Daemonic Heralds - Nurgle, Slaanesh

This post rounds out discussion of the heralds and the specific Psychic disciplines for Nurgle and Slaanesh.  An analysis of the Khorne and Tzeentch heralds can be found here.

Herald of Nurgle

I want to like the Nurgle Herald, but the problem really is he is a bit too slow.  I would be glad to drop him out of an enemy Psyker failing its Warp Storm 'Posession' but with Slow and Purposeful and no way to really speed him up it is a tough sell.  I think there is a place for him as a very durable, up close and personal Deep Striking unit and the loadout needs to reflect this.  That means, in spite of only being Leadership 8, I think the Nurgle Herald needs to snag two Biomancy Powers in the hopes of grabbing anything except Haemorrage.  At the least, not being able to run means there is never a decision on whether to run or shoot him.

Best Practise: Sculpting with Glues for Nurgle Conversions

Inspiration is always a driving factor in my quest to explore new techniques in modeling and painting.  I'm constantly inspired by the new plastics that GW is releasing.  However, they don't come cheap so to balance out my addiction for new plastic, I'm always searching for inspirations that are also cheap.  Time is also scarce these days so speedy techniques are also inspiring to me.

I've always been shocked by the painting quality and speed of the most prolific artists on CMON and around the blogosphere.  It seems logical that the people making a business out of commissions would have some of the best techniques.  The key is spreading the knowledge.

Hobby Progress: Nids and O&G

     Hobby progress over the past few weeks has reached a snail's pace as I've jumped into a kitchen remodel. With a little bit of time here and there, I've been plugging away at my Savage Orcs, but I've hit a bit of a wall. I'm not satisfied with my current method for painting bone. Here's what I've been doing lately: Paint the bone area w/ Bleached Bone --> hit the area with Agrax Earthshade --> pick out details with Bleached Bone. Simple, I know. I've been doing it for a while now, but it looks too dirty, and not up the the level the rest of the model is (at least I think so). Below is a picture of how it turns out. 

     I suppose it doesn't look bad, but I just felt a little bit disheartened when it didn't turn out the way I wanted. Also, I have around 50 guys to do this to. It's a little discouraging when you have a pile of dudes to paint and you aren't 100% on how you want to do them. How do you guys do Bone?

     Anyway, below the fold I'll show off my Savage Orc Hero, and a couple of Tyranid projects that I've been working on the fight the Orc burnout. 

Creating City Terrain: Tanglewire

Concertina wire, also known as razor wire or trip wire has military applications dating back to World War 1 when soldiers would take barbed wire and string it along the trench lines and in the no-man's land to make it difficult for enemy troops to quickly charge their trenches. At first it was strung up between posts or stakes but during artillery barrages the wire would become a mass of loose and tangled wire which provided to be more hazardous to enemy troops trying to overrun the trenches. The troops learned this lesson and started to deploy the wire in loose coils to hamper enemy movement. After WWI concertina wire became massed produce for military use. The wire was harder to cut and came compressed in flat coils that could quickly setup by a few men and did not require posts or supports and is still in use today. In the 41st millennium, concertina wire, or tanglewire, is still in use by defenders as a quick and easy way to block open avenues of attack in clogged city fights. As per the rule book, tanglewire counts as dangerous terrain and confers a 6+ cover save to untis behind the barricade. In this article I'd like to walk you through how to create your own sections of tanglewire to use with your terrain to add an extra element of realism to your table.

Daemon Codex - Daemonic Heralds - Khorne, Tzeentch

Last week I discussed half of the HQ selections for the Daemon Codex by looking at the Greater Daemons. This week I want to look at the other portion - excepting named characters - encompassed by the Daemonic Heralds.

Batrep: GK & SM vs IG - Team Event

This was our (Crimthaan & hyv3mynd) second game of our local Adepticon team primer.  Game #1 and our lists can be found here.  After a major victory, we moved on to face a double guard team.  The same team that Grubnards and Sinistermind battled last round.  Their lists were approximately:

Incident on Nadine Prime

I played an 8000 point game this past weekend with a friend of mine and we decided the matchup was going to be my Word Bearers versus his Grey Knights. Since we were playing with a double force org chart we decided to limit special characters to 1 per player. I had the option of either running Abaddon or Ahriman but since this was a battle versus Grey Knights I thought it would be iconic to run Ahriman with some Thousand Sons. Plus, I've had the Ahriman model sitting in by "to-paint" pile for 5 plus years and I figured this was the perfect excuse to get him painted up.  Paul decided to use Mordrak accompanied by his Ghost Knights. I typed up this report in a twofold manner, meaning that it is a turn-by-turn report with narrative elements, maps, and pictures added in to help you follow along with our game. I hope you enjoy reading the report as much as I had playing the game.

Daemon Codex - Greater Daemons

Now you see that evil will always triumph

 because good is dumb

I discussed some of the overall implications associated with the Warp Storm table and Daemonic Instability last week here.  The natural point to discuss the Daemon Codex from that analysis is in the HQ department.  There are two distinct types of Daemon HQ's - Heralds and Greater Daemons.  A discussion of both requires a discussion of the associated gifts, psychic powers and of the Loci for the heralds which naturally leads to  a discussion of the other Force Org selections.  To keep the initial impressions simple, I am going to start with the Greater Daemons - unnamed for this post - and then move on from there.

When I consider an HQ they generally have two important properties: force multiplier or combat monster.  The Daemons codex is no exception - other than there are more opportunities for HQ's to be force multipliers, even at the Greater Daemon level.  For this analysis I am going on the assumption that the book Psychic Powers are superior as buffs - which they are - to the ones in the Daemons Codex.  The place in my opinion for the Daemon powers are after you get that book power you want - maybe Iron Arm, Invisibility or Precognition. In order of their appearance in the codex, the first greater daemon is...