Friday, June 21, 2013

Another Fabulous Friday


Remember these guys?  This week they were elevated to a new level of internet nerd fame with their own demotivational poster featured on Spikey Bits.  If you don't get the reference, it's about the GW vs Chapterhouse Studios case where it came up that GW polices internet forums looking for IP violations.

Anyways, onto other news.  Since I've added more authors over the past year and backed down to posting once a week, I have several things to cover.



The first is big news that maybe you've anticipated if you ever scroll to the bottom of the blog.  The Mandulian Chapel is proud to add its sixth author this week.  The man behind DaBoyz GT himself, Jay Woodcock.  Jay is also a solid competitive player who took his tyranids all the way to 4th overall in the Adepticon Championships in 2011.  He's been a close friend and mentor since I joined the 40k scene here in Rochester, as well as a teammate in our 3rd place ATC 2011 team.  Jay will be an occasional weekend author starting with an introduction tomorrow.  He's aiming to cover some new eldar content as he unpacks his old collection, as well as promote this year's GT.


Since the release of the new eldar codex, my mind has been racing along with a healthy portion of the hobby community.  Not because I want to "break the codex", but because I've been itching to break out the space elves again.  I haven't played the dark eldar much since the new edition as they broke my webway portal build and dark eldar on foot are too fragile in today's meta.

Next weekend is Parhammer '13 and the guys are starting to line up games and challenges.  Don't forget this event is open to players from Rochester, Buffalo, Syracuse, Binghampton, Erie, and everywhere in between.  All you have to do is RSVP with Crispy so we know you're coming.  You can contact him here or on our forum (The Grand Strategery).

Calypso2ts and I have arranged a game to test out possible lists for our monthly RTT in July which includes painting and player-scored comp.  Here's a rough list of what we will be throwing at each other.  Feel free to give feedback or place wagers on who will prevail.  We've also sweetened the deal with some terrain pieces for the winner.

My list (1500pts painting + comp)
Archon + shadow field, venom blade, haywire grenades
Baron Sathonyx
Farseer
Kabalite Warriors x15 + splinter cannon, blaster, sybarite w/ venom blade
Wyches x5 + shardnet, haywire grenades
Venom + extra cannon
Rangers x5
Beastmasters x5 + khymerae x12, razorwings x2, clawed fiend
Razorwing Jetfighter
Talos Pain Engine
War Walkers x3 + scatter lasers x6
ADL + icarus lascannon

Calypso2ts's list (1500 painting + comp)
Keeper of Secrets + greater rewards x2, ml3
Lord of Change + exalted reward, greater reward, ml3
Chaos Sorceror + ml3, spell familiar
Bloodcrushers x5 + bloodhunter
Horrors x10
Horrors x10
Cultists x16
Soul Grinder + DoS, baleful torrent
Soul Grinder + DoS, baleful torrent

Should be a very colorful and fun game.  Calypso's got the torrent flamers to give my foot units fits, but I have a bunch of poison for his big nasties.  The mission, deployment, and psychic powers should be the deciding factors.

Speaking of Parkhammer '13, in addition to open gaming in a great state park (we rented a large shelter), chili contest, barbequing, hiking, and swimming available, we're also running a small painting competition.  Participants voted the Tzeentch Sorceror Lord as the model and you've seen some of my progress if you've followed my articles over the past month.

I want to use this guy as a herald of tzeentch on a disc, but without buying a finecast disc.  After digging through my bits, I found a piece from my slaughterbrute sprue I thought would work nicely.  You know I'm big on having inspiration behind a painting project so here's mine:


I'm using the vortex from the mutalith sprue.  I started with black primer.


First I airbrushed some royal purple to break up the black and create some color interest outside of a monotone blue.


Next came magic blue.  I want the central orb to be radiating the blue light and the outer ring of spikes to remain black.


Then a 75/25 mix of dead white and magic blue.


Then a 90/10 mix of dead white and magic blue.


Using a technique I picked up on C'Tan's blog, I made a glaze of 90% water and 10% magic blue and applied it with the airbrush to smooth out some of the white over spray.


And here's the happy herald on his new ride.  I still have to glaze and highlight the disc, but it's not bad for 2 hours worth of airbrushing.  I also finished his staff with a marble pattern and touched up all the NMM.

That's all from my corner of the world.  Stay tuned for Jay's intro article and coverage of our first event as a new gaming club.  After that, we have our monthly RTT on July 13th which I hope several authors will cover in battle reports.  Grubnards and Crimthaan are also hosting an all night lock-in at Millennium Games on July 20th using the 4 way free-for-all format that we've played over the past two years.  August, September, and October will probably shift towards painting and practicing for the DaBoyz GT!

6 comments:

  1. I mentioned this on the boards - but that is the most unique disc I have seen crafted - very well done.

    Also, I have my bets on who will win our game - but they may be a bit self serving.

    I will be rolling the Keeper and CSM Sorcerer on Telepathy to try for Invisibility or Hallucination. Terrify and Puppet master are also decent, but those two are the most powerful. I know I will need to deal with the Farseer. The Lord of Change gets to snag the Grimoire and will go Divination with an eye for Forewarning, Misfortune, and Precognition. Scryers Gaze will mean I reserve the Grinders and Deep Strike them point blank Turn 2 - and maybe the Crushers too.

    Overall I am trying to mirror the Daemon list I used to run that gave opponents 1 turn to knock down some seriously buffed threats before being faced with assault.

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    1. Yeah the psychic power rolls will be pretty key. You have 9 powers on HQ's but a pretty elite army. If you get the right powers to stack blessings, a lot of your army will become immune to almost all damage. You already have the benefit of av13 5++ as most of my shooting is poison or str6. FMC's are always a wild card based on whether they pass or fail the key grounding tests.

      The keeper and crushers worry me the least because of the amount of poison shots I have and a few CC tricks up my sleeve.

      Anywys, looking forward to the game. We don't face off nearly enough. Back to painting!

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    2. I would actually prefer to play a more horde style army - maybe with a pair of heavy hitting units like the Crushers or Screamers - but that painting you mention at the end of your post!

      I have my model done for the week - but I cheated a bit by finishing off one that I had already started. Right now I am doing more painting of rooms than of 40k models - and installation of wood floors.

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    3. Do you think you will get use out of all 3 MLs on the Keeper; I usually consider ML3 to be marginally more useful than ML2.

      You mention that Terrify is decent but I consider it to be almost useless for a Daemons army. What do you do with it?

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    4. The reason to take ML3 is that it puts the chance to snag Hallucinate or Invis at 80% rate. It also provides a nice bump to Deny the Witch against most psykers - moves to a 4+.

      I like Terrify for its ability to cause low leadership models to flee - Dual Dakkafexes head for the hills at a good clip from it. It also enables units that want to just grind a unit down in CC - think a 30 man pack of zombies - become sweepable. I have had the most problems in general with large fearless units in 6ed.

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    5. Yeah terrify is a great power, just not usable against some armies. Daemons are not fearless and auto-pass morale tests. Most marines won't care about it unless you hit them close to a table edge.

      Against tyranids, CSM, and some MC's it can be a game winner. It actually won me a tyranid vs tyranid game when a unit of zoans rolled it. My opponent had several 30 blocks of hormagaunts. Since you cannot assault the turn you rally, I was alternating units and was able to ignore 60 bodies and focus on the rest of his army. He also had a max unit of warriors which got enfeebled and a carnifex with STC, which I puppet mastered and ID'd a handful of warriors.

      The thing about telepathy is the primaris is also VERY good, so even if you roll terrify against an ATSNF army, the swap is worth it.

      Psychic choir nids/daemons/eldar are becoming very powerful as psychic defense becomes more passive with each new release. Only space wolves and tyranids can block blessings now and maledictions are becoming more potent with developing synergies.

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