Some Random Painting

Figured I'd take some time out from "GW hate" (?) to actually do some painting... first up was a batch of 16 Tyranid Termagants with Spinefists... posing for a family picture with "Mum". 

Next is an interesting little project in the making... 28mm German Great War cavalry (from Old Glory) to balance out the Canadians I painted - whoa - over three years ago??? Yikes!

These guys were scored off TMP and as I didn't like the ugly sabres, I converted them to have lances, as apparently the German cavalry used lances right up until the end of the war.

The lances themselves are 18-gauge florist's wire, the lance-heads are plastic leftovers from a box of Wargames Factory Zulu spears. I greenstuffed the hands and voila. They are primed now and ready for paint.

Next up are some GW Orks for RT/Spacekrieg games. They don't quite fit with the RT Red Star Boyz as these models are more recent, but I like them a lot. I'm thinking that they might see service as Xeno mercs with Futurkom, or something.
 

 

Lastly, a few stands of robots from Khurasan to reinforce the 15mm Machine Army. These models are super-nice (as you'd expect from Khurasan) and will add some close-combat punch to the force. Don't those chainsaws look narsty???

Anyway, that's it for now. I'll leave you with a picture of Leonard enjoying the Optex portable photo studio!!

40K Tyranid Tervigon review

Last weekend at the Comic and Toy Show I impulse-bought the new Tyranid Tyrannofex/Tervigon kit as a reinforcement for Hive Fleet Nostromo. The new kit looked really cool and although I'd been jonesing for a Tervigon conversion kit from Chapterhouse for some time, that would've involved buying a Carnifex and then adding $25 plus shipping for the Chapterhouse kit. Although the plastic Tervigon was not cheap, it's a one-stop solution with typical GW plastic kit quality and copious left over bits for the bits god.
    

The Tervigon's assembly instructions were straightforward and the kit went up in a couple hours, if that. One thing I did do, following a top tip from this month's White Dwarf, was to leave off the legs from initial assembly and priming - easier to reach the greasy bits underneath when painting later.

The only conversion to speak of was to grind the spikes off her head and greenstuff in the smoother Giger-Alien head dome to match the rest of the models in the Hive Fleet.

I painted the model last night in the typical Nostromo scheme of Shadow Grey/Space Wolves Grey, Boltgun Metal/Mithril Silver, and Dark Angels Green/Snot Green, with Badab Black washes and 'Ardcoat gloss. I think it turned out fine and will be a good addition to the Hive Fleet - there are 18 more Termagants waiting on the painting table and these will certainly be needed the next time Nostromo rolls out large.

Magnetized Carnifex

Awhile back I'd picked up some Tyranid models in a trade - reinforcements for Hive Fleet Nostromo, my "Alien"-themed Warhammer 40K army.  The gamer I purchased the models from was an acolyte of the new mania for rare earth magmets - in particular, for magnetizing every possible part of a model that might conceivably be swapped for a different WYSIWYG "load-out".

This is actually not a bad idea on a Carnifex since it can be built as a shooty-fex or a close-combat-fex, depending on arm options. Above you can see the model with its greebly magnetized bits all removed (except for the tail spike which I forgot to remove - yes, it's magnetized as well).

 

Here it is in "shooty" configuration. As no ranged weapons came with the model I got, I rigged up a gun and left arm I had spare from another model with some magnets. Looks OK and works well.

I'm still kind of ambivalent about the whole magnet-mania that's so au courant right now in 40K modelling. One the one hand it appeals to my inner cheapskate/pedant, since all options can be modelled on a figure and swapped at will, enabling perfect WYSIWYG without having to buy multiple models. On the other hand, drilling and fitting the magnets can be a pain, and makes the models much more difficult to paint - all of the magnetized components have to be painted separately. And at the end of the day, it's easy to go overboard. For example, the Carnifex model comes with three different shoulder carapace options, corresponding to upgrades from Codex: Tyranids, and the previous owner magnetized all three option pieces. Although I generally subscribe to the idea that options should be modelled on the figure, I really would not be that fussed with using one carapace piece to represent any option, and just paying the option points and noting it in the army list. I don't need to see poison sacs modelled on the figure with magnets! And to me, all this faffing about with clipping magnets on and off and posing the arms makes the models seem more like action figures than accurate miniature representations of combat troops (or in this case, terrifying monsters). Although in this case I appreciate the previous owner's efforts, I don't think I'll often seriously consider magnetising options on my 40K models.  

"Nid Flu" Strikes Hive Fleet Nostromo

Two weeks ago Conscript Indo brought over his stunningly painted Nurgle army for a game of 40K.  I threw down with Hive Fleet Nostromo, the threat level was 1500 points.  A bit small for my liking as I prefer to bring out lots of gribblies and the Nids are quite spendy.  Still fun though, I had painted some new models and (surprise) they were about the only ones that did anything...

Here's some of Indo's Chaos Space Marines.  The paint work and custom bases are just gorgeous. 

 Chaos Dread and the Obliterators... those guys are nasty.

 Initial dispositions.  The game was a straight-up kill point match.

 Nostromo's MVPs... Hive Guard.  As you can see they are the old 1st generation Tyranid Warriors with Chapterhouse heads.  they did great, killing Indo's Daemon Prince in a single round of shooting.  Unfortuinately I think that represented Nostromo's only kill point scored...

 Beautiful Forge World Dreadnought.

One of Indo's typical rolls on the night :-)   Long story short, the Hive Fleet got owned big time.  Good to have them out again but 1500 points isn't their strong suit.  Stuff is just too expensive, it seems.  Anyway all good fun and great to see Indo's army on the table!

Troll Forged Alien Larva Brain

Troll Forged Alien with Emperor's Champion and Tyranid Zoanthrope

In my last post I wrote about getting some Daemon parts from Troll Forged Miniatures to use in a Daemon Prince conversion.  Actually, I'd stumbled across the Daemon parts while browsing for Alien-style models to use in my 40K Tyranid army, Hive Fleet Nostromo.

Turns out that Troll Forged makes a very sweet Alien-style monster (the "Larva Brain") that would make a nice Zoanthrope, or in my army, will stand in for the Ur-Zoanthrope, the "Doom of Malantai". 

The Troll Forged model is a very clean one-piece casting in white resin, with a small integral base, and includes a large GW-style round base.  It cleaned up easily with mild soap and water, and took primer very well.  The only small caveat I have with the model is that the resin is somewhat "bendy", and didn't really straighten out even when run under hot water.  But this was not much of a problem in the end as it's not noticeable once the model is positioned on the large round base.  The Alien represents decent value for money as well, retailing for $12 in the Troll Forged online store.

Elysian Fields (of Fire)

Last Thursday Greg brought out his Valk-heavy 1500 point Elysian Drop Troop army out for a game against Hive Fleet Nostromo, my Alien-style Tyranids. It was simultaneously the first outing for Greg's gorgeous army and for my new-to-me "Stalingrad" resin terrain, this time standing in for the embattled Imperial planet Toxo IV.

Greg's Valkyries and especially his Vulture (Vendetta?) certainly brought the pain with twin-linked Punisher cannons (20 shots re-rolling misses?!?!) but we had similar luck with bringing on reinforcements... "what did we say? All at once. What did we do? One at a time." 

The game ended on Turn 5 as a draw as we both held our own objectives, uncontested. A couple more turns of play would have been interesting - I had an undamaged Trygon set to eat some Guardsmen while Greg still had some mobile troops in Valks flying around. But it was great to see his lads out and to use the new terrain. Regarding the latter, I'm all about cost amortization, so look for many battles to occur in the sump factories of Toxo IV, the ruins of Grozny, and the industrial area of New Putingrad, as well as in Stalingrad ;-)

Oh My, That's a Big 'Un

...said the actress to the bishop... ;-)  Anyway, now that I've finished the base, I wanted to post a couple pics of the new addition to Hive Fleet Nostromo - the Hive Queen Bio-Titan.  I had always thought it would be fun to have a giant titan-like model for my Tyranid army, and I really like the Forgeworld Hierophant, but I just can't justify 220GBP for it...


Family portrait: (L-R) Trygon, Carnifex, Genestealer and "Mum"

Enter salvation in the form of an action figure (!).  I was at a local comic shop awhile back and noticed this amazing huge Alien action figure... inquiring, I found out that it was a McFarlane "Movie Maniacs" figure that's out of production.  Of course this is no longer a problem as we have eBay... $35 and a few weeks later a box arrives with the model.  Unfortunately it was the worst packing job I'd ever seen - a few bits of flat styrofoam and a couple pieces of newspaper, packed into a box that was two sizes too small and bulging out at the top.  Result: two busted off arms and after a fashion, a partial refund from the seller.  I pinned the arms, trimmed and textured the base and added some 'nid bits and Rippers, then painted it to match the rest of the army.  The Queen herself required no painting at all, she was conveniently pre-painted the same colour as the rest of my models!

So she will be an adequate stand-in for the Hierophant.  I've even converted, but not yet painted, two bio-cannons to plug into the chest, where the small arms are, to represent the ranged armament of the Hierophant.  Very convenient.  I'm looking forward to wheeling out this 800+ point monster in an Apocalypse game (or as we call them on Fawcett, "a pretty big game of 40K")

Alien Bio-Titan towers over Shadowsword super-heavy tank - Yikes!!

'Topes Lose

The Tyranid hive fleet Nostromo has been allowed to rampage across the galaxy once again thanks to the most recent Imperial effort. Local guard units had requested aid in mopping up operations after a hard fought but successful encounter. The Chapter that responded was inexperienced, only moderately successful on the battlefield and not up to the task at hand! After a bloody battle involving horrific casualties on both sides, the Tyranids controlled the majority of the pre-designated objective markers.

The current mood in the Chapter is grim with some openly wondering if Tzeench or maybe even Slaanesh are hiring. The Chapter has also noticed that their schedule for the next few months has cleared up considerably. When confirmation was requested for the cancellation of an operation in support of an Imperial planet fending off an Ork attack, the Imperial commander confirmed that “things weren’t as bad as originally thought” and “may even turn around in the next month or so!” He went on to say, “recent casualties have unexpectedly improved our food situation, so there really isn’t any need for your Chapter to show up. Thanks anyway.”

The Chapter has recently begun exploring other opportunities in bulk transport. Imperial Long Haul Transport Inc. has expressed interest in leasing some of the vast cargo space now available on the Chapter Battlebarge. The Chapter Master was quoted as saying, “We really think that this is an exciting opportunity that can really propel our Chapter into the big leagues of bulk transportation. The future’s never looked so bright.”

All kidding aside, the game was a bloodbath and thus a lot of fun and I was able to use some units that I've never used before. Some of them showed promise... before eating it hard! The most interesting units were the Sternguard and Assault Terminators. The Sternguard killed one Carnifex and reduced another one down to one wound in a single round of shooting, while the Assault Terminators killed a Trygon, but died to a man doing it. I think the big lesson is to consider how many wounds these units can realistically cause in a single turn. 8 wounds for two Carnifex are too many for the Sternguard and 6 wounds on the Trygon are too many for 5 Assault Terminators. Shooting needed to knock both those units down a few wounds before either of those units did their thing. In particular, I think causing a few wounds on the Trygon before assaulting would have made a big difference for the terminators. Although Greg is probably right when he said that Terminator are not worth their points. I certainly wouldn't take them in anything less than 2000 points.

Thanks to Dallas for hosting and everyone who came out.

Twin-linked Punisher Cannons are great, says Imperial pilot shortly before being eaten

After preparing a Tyranid army in near-record time, Dallas hosted a game of 40k this week, pitting his bugs against a mish-mash of my Imperial Guard. The game was based around one of the soul-less, abstracted non-scenarios from the current 40k rule book, "annihilation", in which victory depends on wiping out entire units from the other side. Each side would have 2000 points worth of stuff, which equals many, many bugs and lots and lots of Imperial Guardsmen.

To give the game plot some actual colour, the Imperial force was split into two - one component was comprised of the Elysian drop troops I have painted to date, and my regular blue mechanized Imperial lads would comprise a relief force. The Elysians would start on the table, holding an objective (Dallas' excellent Imperial Bastion), and the rest would be in reserve.

The Elysians amounted to about 700 points - three squads of veterans, included one loaded down with melta-guns (which are truly awesome - man, am I going to get some more of those guys put together). They were backed up by some fun flying/skimmer vehicles - a Valkyrie troop carrier, and a Vulture gunship mounting twin-linked punisher cannons. The relief force comprised a mechanized platoon with three squads in Chimeras, a squad of armoured sentinels with autocannons, a Leman Russ Vanquisher and a Leman Russ Demolisher.

The Tyranids had...well, lots of Tyranids - big ones, small ones, ones that eat vehicles, others that eat people, some that emit psychic blasts and a particular one that emits some kind of faintly toxic miasma. The one I focused a lot on was the Trygon, an evil, massively large and cool model that appears out of the ground and begins to wreck your sh*t. I am not knowledgeable enough about 40k or the Tyranids to detail the overall force properly, but think this entry from the blog gives a good idea of what was coming for dinner, so to speak. I can assure you it looked damn cool!

Dallas and Mike F. locked in as the Hive Mind, while I rolled with the Imperial side, and Brian H. was on hand to observe and mock all of us as needed.

The game was well-fought draw. I managed to wipe out six of Dallas and Mike's units, and they wiped out a similar pile of my lads. Here are some pictures. My favourite is the Trygon appearing behind the squad of Elysians - was a classic "I've got a bad feeling about this" moment.












(editor's note - Dallas has some great pics too - hopefully he can post when he gets the chance)

Most of the Elysians became calories for Hive Fleet Nostromo, but they gave a good accounting of themselves on the way out. The mechanized platoon did a reasonable job. The sentinels, useful throw-aways, did a great job in tying down a big squad of Tyranid warriors. The Trigon went on a tear, but I think it is fair to say Dallas and Mike were hoping it would eat more than it managed to before my panicked, curse-laden heavy weapon fire brought the thing down. On the other hand, they got to enjoy me freaking out about it, which is hard to quantify as a points value, but certainly can be fun.

Lesson for the Tyranids - don't spread out. You don't need a pincer movement to sit down for dinner. The bugs tried to come from some different angles, and it didn't pay off too well in the end. Another disappointment seemed to be the Zoanthropes (?) - the psychic blast bugs. They had to roll to pass a check to see if they could use their power, then roll to hit...it was a pretty big let-down at times for Dallas and Mike (and, of course, fun for me).

There were several lessons for the Guard. First of all, Veteran squads are awesome. I think I will make my Elysian troops pretty much a veteran concentrated force. Each squad counts as a troop choice. They have a BS of 4, can have multiple special weapons, and you don't need to waste points on junior officers and their flunkies. (Unless of course I got that totally wrong - you never know, as I freely admit to messing up when it comes to the Byzantine rules and regs of 40k codices).

Second, tanks are not as cool as they used to be. I remember a great section from the book "World War Z", where a veteran from the "Battle of Jonkers (sp?)" talked of what a let-down it was to see a tank plant a main round into the Zombie horde and nothing happened. That's what happened to the Imperial Guard in the game, where I would land tank rounds into the big bugs (Hive Tyrant, etc.) and they would simply take a wound. Yikes! It's not like the tanks don't have uses (and the Demolisher wiped out a whole brood of 'stealers in one shot) but I over-estimated the ability of tanks to take out the big bugs.

Finally, Valkyries are fun, and the Vulture with the Punisher Cannons is REALLY, REALLY FUN! It only got to fire one time (understandably, Mike and Dallas spent a lot of effort to bring that sucker down), but that was SWEET. I may need another one of those for the Elysians!

In terms of the overall game itself, playing 40k continues to be a struggle at times as the current rules compel the abstraction of fun while specifying absurdity in great detail. As a house rule, we did away with the utter stupidity that is "true line of sight". I think the next rule we will consider doing away with is the current treatment of blast weapons, in which you roll 2d6 and and a scatter dice, and subtract your model's BS from the result - EVERY TIME YOU FIRE THEM. It is utterly and completely ridiculous, and as a game mechanism, not that far removed from flicking a piece of paper on to the table to see where you hit. Considering the thin regard many current 40k fans have for the game mechanisms of the original Rogue Trader rules (in which nearly all blast weapon shots "deviated") I am surprised they tolerate this absurdity in the current edition.

I also broke a few bolts when I realized that close combat attacks on vehicles are ALWAYS on the rear armour. In hindsight, the rule makes sense - that's what you get for having tanks unsupported by infantry (not that I think a squad of guardsmen would have done much against the !#$!@#$ing Trygon, or that a huge monster is really "infantry", but anyway). I'll keep that in mind next time I roll the tanks.

Of course, no matter how much 40k rules suck, they never wreck cool models and fun opponents! The game was a hoot, and looked really cool. Thanks to Dallas for hosting a great game! I look forward to returning to the table with a full 2000 points of Elysians, completely kitted out with all of their Valkyries...