Palm Springs Open 2025

Palm Spring Open 2025 

Sup guys,

Well, its about time I resurrect this blog of mine, its been lets say a long time and I am not going to bore you with the details.  Suffice to say my last post was during an older edition of both 40K and Horus Heresy so yeah, pretty terrible.  Anyways, this last weekend was Palm Springs Open in which I took part in the Horus Heresy event.  This event is rather new for me with last year being the first time I went to it, the event has been around for several years now but starting last year, a 30K event has been added to it.  The 30K event, ran by my buddy from our club was super fun last year and since the location is relatively close to where I live, I had to make it this year as well.  

This year it was no different, the event was super fun, with playing games with amazing folks, chucking dice on beautiful tables and the models where in short incredible to look at.  This was also our send off for HH 2.0 as 3rd edition actually released the same weekend as the event.  This was my last chance to run my full drop pod Nightlords army so I made sure that I got everything done and painted in time for the event.  The event also gave me an excuse to finally build my Atramenar terminator squad using custom bits and the GW Tartaros kit.  I wanted to bring a fluffy list, looking for themed army for this final farewell to 2.0 and I think I achieved it or at least got close to it.  So here is the list I took - 

LA - VIII: Night Lords - Nightlords PSO 3K

## Allegiance

Allegiance: Traitor

VIII: Night Lords

## Rite of War

Rite of War: Drop Pod Assault^

## HQ [305 Pts]

Centurion [85 Pts]: Centurion

• 1x Legion Centurion [85 Pts]: Frag Grenades, Krak Grenades, Refractor Field, Bolt Pistol, Artificer Armour, Power Weapon (Chainglaive)

Sevatar [220 Pts]: Artificer Armour, Bolt Pistol, Frag Grenades, Iron Halo, Krak Grenades, Night's Whisper, Psychic Powers, Master of the Legion, Sworn Loyalty, Warlord

## Elites [815 Pts]

Contekar Terminator Squad [255 Pts]: Chainblade, Tartaros Terminator Armour, 5x Volkite Cavitor, Preysight, Escaton Power Claw

• 4x Contekars [40 Pts]

• 1x Dissident [65 Pts]

Contemptor Dreadnought Talon [305 Pts]:

• 1x Contemptor Dreadnought [190 Pts]: Atomantic Deflector, Gravis Power Fist with in-built ranged weapon, Volkite Dual-Culverin, Combi-Bolter

• 1x Dreadclaw Drop Pod [115 Pts]: Dreadclaw Drop Pod

Terror Squad [255 Pts]: Frag Grenades, Krak Grenades, Power Armour, 8x Volkite Charger, Preysight

• 1x Headsman [38 Pts]: Chainglaive, Artificer Armour

  Drop Pod (Pintle Mounted Twin-linked Bolter)

• 7x Executioner w/Chainsword [18 Pts]: Bolt Pistol, Chainsword

## Troops [940 Pts]

Atramentar Squad [266 Pts]: Tartaros Terminator Armour, Preysight

• 1x Atramentar Trucidor [47 Pts]: Volkite Charger, Thunder Hammer

• 1x Atramentar [40 Pts]: Minor Combi-Weapon - Flamer, Chainglaive

• 1x Atramentar [37 Pts]: Volkite Charger, Chainglaive

• 1x Atramentar [37 Pts]: Volkite Charger, Lightning Claw

• 1x Atramentar w/Heavy Weapon [45 Pts]: Heavy Flamer, Chainglaive

Atramentar Squad [269 Pts]: Tartaros Terminator Armour, Preysight

• 1x Atramentar Trucidor [47 Pts]: Volkite Charger, Thunder Hammer

• 1x Atramentar [37 Pts]: Volkite Charger, Lightning Claw

• 2x Atramentar [40 Pts]: Minor Combi-Weapon - Flamer, Chainglaive

• 1x Atramentar w/Heavy Weapon [45 Pts]: Heavy Flamer, Chainglaive

Tactical Squad [135 Pts]: Frag Grenades, Krak Grenades, Power Armour

• 1x Legion Tactical Sergeant: Bolter, Bolt Pistol, Power Armour

• 9x Legionary [10 Pts]: Bolt Pistol, Bolter

  Drop Pod (Pintle Mounted Twin-linked Bolter)

Tactical Squad [135 Pts]: Frag Grenades, Krak Grenades, Power Armour

• 1x Legion Tactical Sergeant: Bolter, Bolt Pistol, Power Armour

• 9x Legionary [10 Pts]: Bolt Pistol, Bolter

  Drop Pod (Pintle Mounted Twin-linked Bolter)

Tactical Squad [135 Pts]: Frag Grenades, Krak Grenades, Power Armour

• 1x Legion Tactical Sergeant: Bolter, Bolt Pistol, Power Armour

• 9x Legionary [10 Pts]: Bolt Pistol, Bolter

  Drop Pod (Pintle Mounted Twin-linked Bolter)

## Fast Attack [255 Pts]

Storm Eagle Gunship [255 Pts]: Legiones Astartes (X), Multi-Melta, Hull (Front) Mounted Vengeance launcher (Vengeance Launcher), Two Hull (Front) Mounted twin-linked lascannon (2x Twin-linked Lascannon)

## Heavy Support [685 Pts]

Fire Raptor Gunship [295 Pts]: Hull (Front) Mounted Twin-linked Avenger Bolt Cannon, Four Hull (Front) Mounted Tempest Rockets, Two Sponson Mounted Gravis Autocannon Batteries

• 1x Legion Fire Raptor Gunship

Leviathan Dreadnought Talon [390 Pts]:

• 1x Leviathan [290 Pts]: Atomantic Deflector, 2x Leviathan Siege Claw, Phosphex Discharger, 2x Heavy Flamers (2x Heavy Flamer)

• 1x Dreadnought Drop Pod [100 Pts]:

  • 1x Dreadnought Drop Pod

So here it is, full drop pod army so no deploying on the board until my opponent does but of course at the cost of having to deal with disordered rolls or master of signals but luckily for this weekend, all I had to deal with was bad disordered rolls as none of my opponents took a master of signals.  Bad rolls?  yup, rolled a 1 in two of my games on Saturday which really determined my games and if it wasnt for my opponents being cool about it, would have been a one sided affair.  The list is based around my first drop neutralizing any threats to both of my planes or my 15 terminators that would come in via deep strike to take advantage of Sevatar's warlord trait.  I could just imagine Sevatar being with his personal guard of Atramentar Terminators as well as a squad of Contekar to keep folks "eye on the prize" so to speak back up by a fast moving Fire Raptor and Storm Eagle.  The real meat of the list of course is the 2 dreads who need to do the heavy lifting on the first turn allowing my tactical squads to either support them or setup to get on objectives as soon as they could.  

The Atramentar are really just a fluffy choice but with Fear 1 and deep strike built in, could do some damage if I have them go after my softer targets.  No way would they have a chance to go after more elite units but like the Contekar, are really just big bullies and I would use them to bully tactical squads or anything with a 3+ armor save.  The list was just fun to play and with the rumors of version 3 not allowing more than 1 unit to deepstrike a turn is really a bummer as I would love to play this army in this new edition.  We will see if GW gives me some sort of DLC to run something similar or if the community will allow it but I will have to wait I guess.  Pics are of my army and I plan on getting in a little detail on my 3 games.

Until then

Completed Thousand Sons Rubrics

Hello everybody,

So I wanted to post pics of my completed squad of rubric marines.  I am currently working on a squad of Tzaangors in which I am using more airbrush for them then I did for the rubrics in terms of getting their skin painted in different shades of blue-grey.  The plan moving forward is finish these tzanngors and then move over to doing my exhaulted sorcerers or Rubric terminators next.  I really want to get this army done as I am excited about my next project in which I might cheat on my Thousand Sons and start it.  Truth be told, I cant stand painting Tzaangors, I really dont know why but I think it has to do with the fact that I have never painted anything like them before since i painted up a daemon army many years ago.

The Daemon army was quite easy as I used just washes on them except for my daementtes in which i used an airbrush for their skin and then used washes on their armor and claws.  I keep telling myself that I cant start my new army until I get this one done but now I am like, if i get done with these tzaangors, then i can cheat and start building them.  We shall see however.  Let me know your thoughts on these.

WIP Thousand Sons Rubric Marines

What is up everybody?  Hoping everybody is keeping safe from this Corona Virus outbreak.  If you would have asked me a couple of weeks ago that the US would be in total shut down due to the corona virus, I would have laughed at you.  But here we are hunkered down in our homes trying to keep safe.  The only good thing about this is the time we have with our familes and our hobby.  No more excuses everybody, we need to get cracking and get some models painted.  So I wanted to share this quick post on my work in progress Thousand Sons.  So with the Coronoa Virus situation going around, a lot of us are getting more and more hobby time and I for one want to take advantage of the situation.  These past few days my wife and I have enjoyed playing some old school Xbox live games, watching Netflix, playing video games, and getting some more hobby time in.  I am finally able to concentrate on my 2020 army now, the Thousand Sons.  About 2 years ago for Christmas, I was gifted by my wife several of the new Thousand Sons kits.  

I have always been a Thousand Sons fan since back in the 3.5 codex days and have a sizeable old Thousand Sons army.  Once the new kits started coming out, i instantly fell in love with this and decided to make the hard decision of replacing my old rubric marines with these new kits.  I plan on keeping these old ones and maybe use them for bigger games after i rebase them.  I am planning on keeping my custom made sorcerer to go along my new exalted sorcerers and of course my old Ahriman metal model to go along the new Ahriman model.  

I plan on running a heavy character army for all that smiting spam goodness but will be taking several units of rubrics instead of cheap Tzaangors.  Dont get me wrong, Tzaangors will have a place in my army and I will still be bringing a 20 man unit.  For their cost, they are pretty good and make a mockery of cultists.  I have already started working on my first 10 Tzanngors and have already built my 3 exulated sorcerers.  Those models are just amazing, the amount of bits you get allows you to build truely unique characters for your army.  Once I get some paint on them I will show those off next.  Until next time.

The Dark Mech Continues...

Greeting all,
So in this post I wanted to continue going into my dark mech again.  i got to tell you all, i have been having so much fun with the army that at this point I dont care what people tell me.  The community I play in is all in with the ITC and so most games are played using their missions and even so I dont care.  I have played 3 games now and all 3 were great games with fun opponents, all 3 i actually pulled wins out of against space marines and blood angels which is pretty crazy considering how overpowered they are at the moment but I have to tell you, all were close games and if I made a big mistake, i would have lost them.  The power of the army has got to be the "base" of my army which centers around the Master of Possessions and both the infernal power and cursed earth psyhic powers.  Around her I have 2 forgefiends with hades autocannons and 2 units of 2 obliterators.  Giving her the daemonsmith warlord trait adds to the magic causing exploding 6's on all daemon units that are 6 inches away from her.  This has caught a lot of my opponents by surprise as now you got forgefiends even with their crappy BS getting some additional hits on even average rolls.  Now the key is getting both psychic powers off as having 1 fail really knocks down the power of their firing.  Now dont get me wrong, even with one power, the 2 forgefiends are still pretty potent and it was evident in my games when i could only get 1 power off.  What i did notice however is that infernal power seems to be the key power, rerolling 1s on hits and wounds is very good.  Dont get started on the oblits, these guys are amazing and with the master of possessions even better.  Their only issue is the lack of range, if they just had a 30 inch range or even 36 inches, these guys would be more of an autotake.  In my 2000 pt list, i take 3 units, a 3 man unit and 2 two man units that I deepstrike with a cheap termi lord for the re-rolls of 1 on hits.  These guys allow me to reach out and touch anybody on the board and helps keeps my opponents honest.  

Now lets talk about the units im disappointed with, im going to start a little controversy but the first is the Lord Discordant.  I absolutely love this model, love the potential it has but unless im running more than 2, they will never get to the opponent.  I run 1 and that is probably my issue but wow, unless i run it as Alpha legion, its not going to get anywhere before dying.  I love the model so i will keep running it along with 2 maulerfiends which is the second unit that I just really want to love.  I run 2 and just like the lord discordant, they just die without doing anything.  I really wish they increased the movement speed of it to 12 like it used to have to match the disco lord and maybe give it 14 wounds like a defiler but i still think it wont be enough.  What I will try to do is to run 3 with 2 rhinos full of berserkers and a heldrake basically a threat overload list to see if that works better.  So far they havent done much but again, because i love the models, i still want to continue to run them.  I might switch out the list to include some Chaos wardogs to see with their increased speed and resilence, i can get the rest of the army to hit home.  i did have some success my last game with the Lord Discordant by keeping him close to home against another daemon engine army that was running 3 vemon crawlers with a lord discordant so almost a mirror match however he was also running a mini possessed bomb with all the characters and so his shooting was pretty limited.  I definitely outgunned him and it showed as I had him tabled by top of turn 5.  In this game the Lord Discordant buffed my forgefiends betting them to fire their 16 strength 8 ap 1 shots with better accuracy combined with the Master of Possessions daemonsmith warlord trait and his infernal power spell.  I used the maulerfiends as blockers and by turn 3 rushed them and the lord discordant to kill off the remaining vemon crawlers and his lord discordant and they also helped in mopping up the possessed bomb.  Fun game and it taught me that maybe not charging headlong into the enemy especially since im only running one of them might be a good idea sometimes.  Pics are of a small game I had (1000 pts ) in which I ran a spearhead detachment made up of the following models

++ Spearhead Detachment +1CP (Chaos - Chaos Space Marines) [60 PL, -2CP, 1,000pts] ++

+ Configuration +

Legion: Iron Warriors

+ Stratagems [-2CP] +

Field Commander [-1CP]

Specialist Detachment [-1CP]: Soulforged Pack [-1CP]

+ HQ [14 PL, 248pts] +

Lord Discordant on Helstalker [9 PL, 160pts]: Autocannon [10pts], Mark of Slaanesh, Master of the Soulforges

. Helstalker: Techno-virus injector

Master of Possession [5 PL, 88pts]: 2. Daemonsmith, Cursed Earth, Force stave [8pts], Infernal Power, Mark of Slaanesh, Warlord

+ Heavy Support [46 PL, 752pts] +

Forgefiend [8 PL, 128pts]: 2x Hades autocannons [40pts], Daemon jaws [8pts], Mark of Slaanesh

Maulerfiend [7 PL, 122pts]: Lasher tendrils [12pts], Mark of Khorne

Maulerfiend [7 PL, 122pts]: Lasher tendrils [12pts], Mark of Khorne

Obliterators [12 PL, 190pts]: Mark of Slaanesh, 2x Obliterator [12 PL, 190pts]

Obliterators [12 PL, 190pts]: Mark of Slaanesh, 2x Obliterator [12 PL, 190pts]

++ Total: [60 PL, -2CP, 1,000pts] ++

Super elite army at a 1000 pts, but it was super fun to run and something I wouldnt mind running more of.  I absolutely love small games as they force you to make hard decisions, games are fast, and it allows you to test out unit/units quickly before you try them in larger games.

Greetings Not from LVO 2020

Hello everybody, so this is going to be my pity party, due to unforseen circumstances, I will not be attending LVO this year.  To say that I wasnt excited to go would be an understatement, I was totally ready to go and had finished painting the last units for my Dark Mechanicus which was going to make their triumphant return this year from a 2 year hiatus.  But alas they will not, all the hard work I put in wasnt wasted as I needed to get them done by it does feel a little like a waste of time.  The list I was going to bring had the following -

HQs - Lord Discordant, Chaos Lord, Hellwright, and Master of Possessions

Elites - 5 man terminator Melta squad, Helbrute

Troops - 15 Chaos space marines, 30 cultists

Flyer- Heldrake

Heavy - 2 Maulerfiends, 2 Forgefiends, 4 Obliterators

Additional support would come in a Chaos Knight detachment of an Atrapo and 3 Wardogs in case somebody wanted to bring along a super heavy detachment to play against.  The list would provide me with a fun flexible force full of theme and able to take on all non tournament list comers.. lol.  Of course even with the updates that Chaos got, Daemon engines are just sub par in the meta right now.  The lower point cost does make it more affordable to take them and so I can spam them a little bit, the one exception to this is the Heldrake which now being a heck of a lot cheaper makes it very tempting to take with its ability to tie up key units in the early game.  I did a list with wardogs that made me having 6 tough units rushing an opponents line along with a heldrake giving me a chance that at least 3 units will make it to cause havoc in their lines. 

Maybe next year I will bring the same army as right now im in the middle of painting up my updated Thousand Sons army.  I have been dying to finish updating this army that my lovely wife bought me a couple of years ago at Christmas.  So we shall see, until next time I will keep an eye on updates coming from the event hoping that they have a fantastic turnout and everybody has a fantastic time.

WIP in progress - Iron Warriors Warband - Dark Mechanicus

Sup guys, 

So here is my next update for models that are WIP.  They are almost done and I am happy with the result thus far.  These models are for my so called Dark Mechanicus army, an army that i started back in 6th edition comprised of as many daemon engines as possible.  I decided to build this after i saw the first warpsmith model and forgefiend models and yes even though they were really not great in game, i loved the models so much that i purchased 3 more and got the idea of doing an army of these.  Back in those days since we didnt have any specific legion rules, I decided to paint them in a paint scheme that I had started back in 5th for a small space wolves army.  Enter 6th edition with the introduction of more daemon engines which i fell in love with with their unique designs as well as the warpsmith model that I decided to start a chaos dark mechanicus army and used the same paint scheme since its something i had never seen before.  I used the army extensively in 6th and 7th and even won a tournament or too with it.  I'm proud to say that I have also won 2 painting competitions with it and I jokingly mused to one of my buddies that I can sell this army as a painting award winning...lol.  I was quite humbled by the experience to be honest as I didnt think the scheme was all that ground breaking but I will take it.  Below are the pics of my almost done Lord Discordant and done 4 obliterators.  

This pic was snapped during a recent game with them.  It was a fun 3 player game with one objective in the middle that was the only way you could score.  The game ended with the Sister's player taking it all but not before my Dark Mech took a huge toll on both his army and our Death Guard opponent.  

Here my Oblits and Forgefiend under the command of my Master of Possessions maintain a steady stream of fire on both my opponents.  I really love how the Master of Possessions buffs all daemon engine and daemon unit with her spells, she is now an auto take in all of my dark mech armies.  Let me know what you guys think.

Faith and Fury

Sup guys, so today I wanted to get started on chatting about Faith and Fury and how it relates specifically to the Nightlords legion.  I'm just going to straight out and say it, it's about freaking time!! These new rules are fluffy as fuck and are game winning.  Now of course this means that everybody and their mother will be running a detachment of Nightlords now but that is ok, the 8th Legion welcomes all.  I can also take solice in the fact that my patience and loyalty has been rewarded finally.  I cant be accused of being a bandwagoner as I have been playing the army since the days of the famed 3.5 codex.  As I stated before, the rules in Faith and Fury bring a heck of alot of flavor to the 8th legion.  I just wish that it also gave you access to additional rules when you run an entire Nightlords army similar to what space marines are getting.  What it does give is a toolbox of tricks that a Nightlords Commander can use to effectively shut down armies and allow the rest of the army to get where they need to be in order to claim objectives, get into assault, etc.  I had a great player once tell me that GW made Chaos armies to be good at assault which you see with the amount of strats and warlord traits that focus on making your army better in close combat.  The new Nightlords strats really emphasize this but do it in a fluffy way that really brings the flavor of the Nightlords out.  I have just played a couple of games now with Faith and Fury and I can say that they make a huge difference to how I play it.  Now my focus is on getting as much command points as possible to fuel the army which I wish was easier for Chaos as things are so expensive at the moment.  I know that with Chapter Approved this will help a little but really other than cultist spam, Chaos Space Marines really dont have enough units that are cheap enough to say run multiple battalions without sacrificing something.  Lets go over the meat here, the Stratagems

1.  In Midnight Clad - Same as before and as useful as before.  -1 to hit against an infantry unit is just great.  I usually combo this with another -1 with Miasma of Pestanlence to provide a heavy hitting unit such as a termi squad.

2.  We Have Come for You - Wow is this awesome, Nightlords finally got the ability to tie up an infantry unit after charging them.  This is huge, i cant stress how important and game changing this is as you can effectively shut down an opponents shooting phase in a turn.  Where i do see the limit of this strat is the fact that you cant lock down vehicles, that would have been amazing but a little over powered if you ask me.  I did face an opponent with a lot of dreads and this strat really didnt come into play

3.  Vox Scream - Another game changer strat, the ability to shut down auras is crazy good.  It is a little expensive at 2 but i do reconginze the need to have it at that cost.  The fact that you can use any Nightlord unit is what makes this crazy good.  I use a Fire raptor with this since it can be anywhere on the board at a moments notice but can see use of a heldrake as well for a cheap alternative.

4.  From the Night - this can be a such great Stratagem if it didnt require you to be on terrain.  I see the point as this is to mimic Nightlords coming out of the shadows but unless you have a lot of terrain on your table, might not come into play.  giving you 2+ on your charge roll and giving you +1 to hit in melee is really good. 

5.  Prey on the Weak - Ok so I am going to mini rant here.  There was several outlets out there that said that this Strat wasnt worth it or was super situational.  Are you kidding me, this one I have found to be one of the most useful of all the new Strats.  In every single one of my games i have used this more than even We Have Come for you or even Vox scream.  This on a fire raptor or leviathon Dread (both with leadership 9 by the way) as well as havoc squads makes this amazing. Think of it as another Prescience giving you a plus +1 to hit that you can have on another unit, couple that with Veterans of the long war and it can be devastating.  and of course Nightlords drop leadership so it really comes into its own in Melee.

6.  Raptor Strike - Nightlords get to act like Blood Angels now, at the cost of  1 CP, you get to charge 3D6.  Simple yet very effective, really good on a warp talon squad giving you the ability to shut down over watch to multiple units and then being able to tie them down in combat with We have come for you.

7.  Hit and Run - Another great one, the ability to fall back and charge another unit in your turn is amazing.  Something to help in tieing up key opponents during the fight phase which can also be game breaking. 

8.  Flay them Alive - Another fluffy choice which is way more conditional than Prey on the Weak but one that can all but guarantee a unit to lose models with careful Nightlord unit placement.  the key of course is to cause multiple units to have to take moral checks causing opponents to have to choose who they want to save.

As you can see these strats bring a lot of flavor to your Nightlord armies and is something I have been waiting for a long time.   The one critisim i have is of course the army being very CP intensive.  This forces the player to have to take multiple battalions or try for a a brigade which in some cases causes you to focus on just some key units.  Chapter Approved definitely helps with this but I really wish that some of these were just inate Nightlord abilites.  I mean how cool would it have been if you auto tied up infantry units in CC if the opponent loses a leadership roll or you get 2+ on charges if you charge out of a ruin?  Something to think about for sure.

On the rebound...

Hello everybody,

So again i am going to start up my old blog.  Its been what a year almost since i posted, i have numerous drafts of posts which i never completed and so i decided to just delete these old ones and start over so to speak.  So the purpose of this blog is to track what I have painted, share some pics of my work in progress and discuss thoughts on 40k and other games in general including video games.  Work has been cray busy but I have finally changed roles and hopefully will have more time to both hobby and play some games.  Recently I joined an RPG club and actually have been playing lots of RPG's, meeting new friends and experiencing new games that i would have never would have tried.  I have been part of a gaming club as well giving me numerous opportunites to play 40K and other miniature games.  So lets start with what I have been painting and what i have completed over the last 4 months.

- 10 New Nightlord Raptors

- Nightlord Jump Pack Lord

- Nightlord Terminator Lord

- Nightlord Havocs 

- Nightlord Leviathon

As you can see, I have been adding a lot to my Nightlord's army, adding in Models to bolster my current force.  I really hope that Chapter approved drops the points of regular CSM's, Warp Talons, and raptors.  Dont get me started on the new Faith and Fury book, that will definitely add some much needed omph to chaos space marines to hopefully get them closer to the power level of normal marines.   Hope you like the the pics.  This is hopefully going to keep me on track as well as track my hobby progress. 

Next up on the agenda is 4 of the new Obliterators, 1 Lord Discordant, and a Brass Scorpion.  These i might need to get done as i wanted to take them to LVO next year which is coming up really fast.   

I told myself that i wanted to use my dark mechanicus army next however with the new book, my Nightlords will become even more fun to play. 

LVO Narrative Bound...

Sup everybody, so we are less than 2 weeks away from the grand daddy of them all (for me anyways) the Las Vegas Open.  This is the 4th year that I will be going as I made everyone since Frontline gaming started these events.  Today's LVO is definitely different from past years, its gotten bigger and better and with GW support now, something that I look forward to year after year.  So this year like last year I will be competing in the narrative event.  This year marks a big difference as the Narrative guys will not be running it, instead it will be run by a group out of my home state of California and by the sounds of it they are bringing their "game world" to LVO and so have plenty of history, characters, etc to bring it to life.  The way I understand it, this group has been playing using the same solar system/game world and so the planet that we will be fighting on has plenty of history that hopefully will make our experience unique and awesome.  I definitely will miss the Narrative guys this year as I always enjoyed their special brand of gaming from the amazing tables that they built to the awesome stories they told.  Here were guys that were really in it for the fun so much in fact that I might make it over to wargamescon this year just to be a part of it and to join my chaos brothers in battle.  I am hoping that some of the hounds make it out this year to LVO but by the sounds of it, I might be the only one that will be showing up.  This year however marks another crazy event, my 2 friends for years will be joining me in the narrative event joining the forces of Chaos.  That will definitely make it a hell of a lot of fun and only wish that the hounds could come out as well to join in the fun.

With regards to painting, I only have 3 raptors to paint as I really want to try out the plasma pistol squad of death.  Depending on how it plays out I am preparing to build another unit of plasma pistol raptors as they are cheap now, being able to shoot in combat and quite easily can put wounds on units thus causing morale tests to be taken at much lower leadership scores.  I am still going full bore on my morale reducing army as I really think that this type of list has a lot of legs.  I really need to build more units with banners of despair as well as to take units that cause units to lose leadership more.  I really want to cause issues with morale even if I only cause 1 or 2 wounds on a unit.  I am dropping Belakor for LVO as we cant take any named characters.  If I can, I am going to try to build a unit of havocs with lascannons as lascannons in 8th are freaking good.  Wish me luck guys.  Pic is from GW's Legion preview of the Nightlords.  some pretty cool simple conversions for sure and ones I might want to copy.

its been an age...

Hello everybody, sorry again for the lack of posts on my blog.  Life has been rather challenging lately with work becoming almost unbearable and life in general becoming more and more busy, busy that something had to give and unfortunately my blog is one of the things that had to suffer.  Mark my words my intention is to post a lot more frequently moving forward as the reason for this blog is as a platform to bounce off ideas as well as to keep track of my painting projects.  The good thing is that I have kept up with my painting duties and over the course of 7 months I have painted a full Ad-Mech Army, added another knight to my knight stable, and painted several units for my Chaos Nightlords army.  I have also been to several 8th edition RTT's where I have learned how much I so love 8th edition over 7th edition.  40K for me lately even in the competitive sense has been so much fun and exciting that I will probably start to play in more competitive games moving forward.  7th edition for me was the edition of the Narrative as playing in narrative games was the only way I found fun games of 40K.  Now I am finding that even though players bring out super tough lists, its still fun to try to beat them with what I bring.  Both my main armies, Chaos Space Marines and Ad Mech now have the tools to deal with practically all armies I have faced.  So with that lets start off my return post with talking about my recent RTT I went to.

The army I wanted to try out was a return to using my Nightlords Chaos space marine army.  With the advent of the new codex, my favorite traitor legion was given a legion trait that to some is close to being useless.  Sure its not Alpha Legions' -1 to hit but being able to reduce leadership by 1 with Nightlords units (up to 3) and then using the morale phase to do your dirty work seemed very interesting to me.  In addition this was super fluffy for my legion of choice, a thinking man's army if you will as positioning of your units is key to getting the most of this legion trait.  The other thing is with the new chaos codex, even if your "fear tactics" don't work out, your army is still good enough and powerful enough to fight any army.  I plan on taking this army to LVO's Narrative event and so wanted to get as much practice with this fear mechanic as much as I could. 

Below is the list I took to the tourney -

[b]++ Outrider Detachment +1CP (Chaos - Chaos Space Marines) [65 PL, 1219pts] ++[/b]

[b]+ Flyer +[/b]

[b]Chaos Fire Raptor Assault Gunship [19 PL, 290pts]:[/b] Hellstrike missiles

. Reaper batteries: 2x Reaper battery

[b]+ No Force Org Slot +[/b]

[b]Legion:[/b] Night Lords

[b]+ HQ +[/b]

[b]Chaos Lord in Terminator Armour [6 PL, 128pts]:[/b] Combi-melta, Mark of Nurgle, Power sword, The Murder Sword

[b]+ Elites +[/b]

[b]Chaos Terminators [28 PL, 486pts]:[/b] Mark of Nurgle

. Chaos Terminator Champion: Combi-flamer, Power sword

. Terminator: Combi-plasma, Power axe

. Terminator: Combi-plasma, Power axe

. Terminator: Combi-plasma, Power axe
. Terminator: Combi-plasma, Power axe
. Terminator: Combi-plasma, Power axe
. Terminator: Combi-melta, Power axe
. Terminator: Combi-melta, Power axe
. Terminator: Combi-bolter, Power maul
. Terminator: Combi-bolter, Power axe

[b]+ Fast Attack +[/b]

[b]Chaos Spawn [6 PL, 99pts]:[/b] 3x Chaos Spawn, Mark of Nurgle
[b]Raptors [6 PL, 123pts]:[/b] Mark of Nurgle
. 2x Raptor
. Raptor Champion: Bolt pistol, Power sword
. Raptor w/ special weapon: Meltagun
. Raptor w/ special weapon: Meltagun

[b]Raptors [6 PL, 113pts]:[/b] Mark of Nurgle

. 2x Raptor

. Raptor Champion: 2x Plasma pistol

. Raptor w/ plasma pistol: Plasma pistol
. Raptor w/ plasma pistol: Plasma pistol
[b]Warp Talons [13 PL, 270pts]:[/b] Mark of Nurgle

. 9x Warp Talon: 9x Lightning Claw (pair)

. Warp Talon Champion: Lightning Claw (pair)

[b]++ Battalion Detachment +3CP (Chaos - Chaos Space Marines) [17 PL, 250pts] ++[/b]

[b]+ No Force Org Slot +[/b]
[b]Legion:[/b] Night Lords
[b]+ HQ +[/b]
[b]Be'lakor [12 PL, 240pts]:[/b] Death Hex, Infernal Gaze
[b]Sorcerer in Terminator Armour [8 PL, 130pts]:[/b] Combi-bolter, Force sword, Mark of Nurgle, Miasma of Pestilence, Warptime
[b]+ Troops +[/b]
[b]Chaos Cultists [3 PL, 40pts]:[/b] 9x Chaos Cultist w/ Autogun, Mark of Nurgle

. Cultist Champion: Shotgun

[b]Chaos Cultists [3 PL, 40pts]:[/b] 9x Chaos Cultist w/ Autogun, Mark of Nurgle

. Cultist Champion: Shotgun

[b]Chaos Cultists [3 PL, 40pts]:[/b] 9x Chaos Cultist w/ Autogun, No Chaos Mark

. Cultist Champion: Shotgun

[b]++ Total: [113 PL, 1999pts] ++[/b]

Other than the fear mechanic going for it, the army strengths laid with a drop component that I hoped would overwhelm the enemy as my back forces move forward to score objectives.  The spawn would be my throw away unit as Belakor would help out the cultists survive just a little longer with his presence to hopefully discourage enemy units from hitting my back units with the raptors, warp talons and terminators deep striking where I need them most .  Now onto the my 3 games -

Game 1 - Against a Primaris army with the primaris super tank.

Wow what an opponent to face off against my new Nightlords list.  The primaris army was one thing but the Primaris super tank was a thing to behold. The drop tactics coupled with extensive use of Veterans of the long war gave me the Momentum to pin my opponent down on his side of the table.  And then the super tank "spoke" and then I know why that thing is worth 700 plus points.  It downed my fireraptor and killed all of my warp talons in 1 turn.  We then proceeded to smash each other until time was called on Turn 4 and we ended up with  tie.

Game 2 - Against Tyranids.  So this was my first game against the new tyranids book.  Again another great opponent and one who knew what they were doing.  He mixed and matched 3 different hive fleets which gave him the upper hand in the first couple of turns.  I decided not to drop my termies, raptors, and warp talons until Turn 2 (I went second) as I wanted him to spread out a little bit. Once they came in they completely overwhelmed his flank as the concentrated firepower of the termies and raptors coupled with the fire raptor taking out units of the smaller bugs overwhelmed my opponent.  Belakor went toe to toe with the swarmlord and with a lucky deathhex casted on him killed him in one turn.  This was probably the best that Belakor did as in the my other 2 games he really didn't account for much.  He then led the charge with my warptalons providing them with re-rolling 1's on hits as he allows this for friendly daemons and the warptalons are considered daemons.  I ended up winning this game 17 to 16 so close game as he really racked up the secondary mission points as I delayed the arrival of my units from deepstrike.  Really good game and probably the second best game of the day. 

Game 3 - Against Tyranids again.  So my 2nd game against the new tyranids.  This game was completely one sided for me as my Nightlords deepstriking bomb really took the wind out of the sails of my opponent.  He took more of a nidzilla list with lots of big bugs along with 3 flying hive tyrants.  He separated all 3 of them instead of running together which was all I needed to single them out and gun them down.  He was able to assault my fire raptor with one of his hive tyrants and with good rolling put 10 wounds on it.  I then proceeded to fall back with it and gun it down with both the fire raptor and 2 units of cultists who took his last wound.  Other then that his army was slow and I was able to just gun them down before they got to me and rack up points for both the primary and secondary objectives.  We called it by turn 3 as there was really no way for him to come back. 

So I went undefeated with my Nightlords, 2 wins and a Tie but since this was using the new missions from ITC I placed 5th due to points.  The "fear" tactic really didn't come up at all as my opponents were either fearless due to synapse or super high leadership with re-rolls due to my first opponent being a space marine player.  I still don't want to give up on this type of list but might modify it and even drop Belakor as he pretty much stays behind and really doesn't contribute much.  I might go with more longer range fire power in order to have my backfield support my advance units more like the Sicarian battle tank I just finished pictured on the right.  This is really the weakness of the army as once I drop all of my elements if an opponent is ready for it they just have to weather it and hit me back.  Still the army is super fun to play, fluffy and definitely unique in todays local meta.

No Way 8th edition

So not going to lie, I have gotten pretty lazy in the posting department.  I have been swamped with real life issues but in the end I will say that laziness is the real reason I haven't posted in a while.  So I had started this long sequence of articles to cover the traitor legions book but since the announcement by GW last Saturday that 8th edition is coming, I decided that I will curb that post until their new rules come out.  Instead I am going to talk about what we know so far with regards to rules in the new edition of 40k. 

Before I begin I will tell you that 7th was starting to get a little stale for me.  Not in the army building department as I consider myself a whizz in chaos space marines (at least what I want to play anyways) but the abundance of rules, formations and let's admit it, the brokenness of some of the armies made it so that all I ever wanted to do was to play in narrative games.  I still do some tournaments however they are local ones as it gives me a chance to play several games at once with people that I know.  Big tournaments I tend not to go to as I really dont want to deal with armies that make the fluff bunny inside me throw up a little (im looking at you tau/eldar armies, superfriends, etc).  But enough of that lets dig into what we know of 8th edition.
I was fortunate enough to see the live Q and A session that GW did this last Monday.  To say it wasnt exciting is an understatment,  there was some key points that GW made which is making 8th edition sound like everything is getting thrown out and a new system is being created which is clearly borrowing from AOS.  This is good and bad as I really dont want the game to be entirely AOS in the future.  So lets take a look at these key points.

Armor values are now gone -
wow is this a major change, so all models including vehicles are getting toughness and wound values.  The era of armor values, the era of single shotting a tank are now over.  Dreads are now viable not to mention my maulerfiends.  Knights will now be as tough as Wraithknights etc, etc.  This is huge people and something which will help us see more vehicles on the battlefield. 

Shorter game lengths -
Ok this is awesome.  I have always preferred small games as I really want to get in as many games as possible during gaming sessions.  The 3-4 hour games just wears thin on me and smaller games kind of fixed this.  Smaller games however have the issue of limiting you what you can take so I would prefer games that play just as fast as small games but still allow you to take all the toys you can or at least give you the option of taking more then you could in say a 1000 point game but still have the game length of say 90 minutes.  This I believe should be a priority as its hard to get new players interested in the game if it takes you over 4 hours to play just one game. 

Flat to hit charts -
This is just cool and borrows heavily for AOS.  All models regardless of opponent WS hit at a certain number.  We have seen the charts for space marines already and so for both shooting and melee, will hit opponents on a 3+.  No more comparing weapon skill just roll your to hit number and you are done.  This also makes it easier for new players as they just need to remember there models stats to get started instead of trying to compare a WS chart.

Movement stats -  the return of the movement stat for all models.  This I will be honest im not sure about.  Its easier to memorize flat stats for types of models but now we will have to remember stats for all races and models.  Some examples that were leaked by GW was Terminators moving 4, space marines moving 5, etc.  I will need to see how this goes once the edition comes out.

Armor save modifiers - ok so this is new to me.  I know that it was around for 2nd edition and was part of Necromunda and now part of Shadow wars Arrmeggedden.  What i like about this is that all weapons will now seem to have a difference between them and also all will have a chance to hurt models.  No more tanking on 2+ as bolters will now add a 1+ modifier and so will need to save on a 3+ instead.

Free Core rules - enough said, who would have thought that GW would be giving us free rules?  This I dont mind them borrowing from AOS as free core rules just like with other games out there will make it easier for new players to get started.  The days of buying 150.00 of rule books at least to get started is over.

As stated, i dont want just 40K to be all AOS, I'm ok with borrowing from it but I still want 40k to be different enough.  All in all I am super excited about the new edition and cant wait to get my hands on it and start gaming.

Traitors Hate

Greetings all,
So Traitors Hate.  GW Surprised a lot of us with a new Chaos supplement that actually was specific to chaos space marines and not Chaos daemons.  I was at wargamescon when the rumors started to hit.  Of course you dont believe these things until your buddies start sending you pics of the cover of the supplement with Kharn on it.  To say I was excited is an understatement.  Finally GW was going to release something for us long "suffering" chaos space marine players to at least be able to compete with the other armies in the game.  For once, we are finally going to get a Chaos "decurion" and not just a series of formations like we got from the Crimson Slaughter and Black Legion books.  So what did I think about it you may ask?  When I started hearing about the contents I will admit I wasnt thrilled.  Everything seemed just Meh but once I got the book in my greedy little hands, it did something that I didnt anticpate.  It excited the crap out of me.  The formations were good, not great but good.  It allowed us to take out our old models off of the shelf and once again bring them on to the desktop.  These formations really were built with a dark mech/iron warriors frame of mind as we finally got a way to run an army of Oblits, an army of tanks, or an army of daemon engines.  Warpsmiths appear to be the common denominator in these formations which depending on if you ask the internet, just plain sucks.  I fortunately am not one of those naysayers, I love the unit and always bring one or two in my Dark Mech armies.  The fomations also give me something for my nightlords; the raptor talon being just amazing for them.  The core choices appear pretty good as well with the Chaos Warband being one that I cant wait to try as it makes all units ob sec.  Due to this book, I am again putting down my admech, (lol, i know) and working on my Nightlords to get them up to snuff with the new formations.  I also want to see how I can incorporate my Dark Mech with this new book along with the daemon engine pack formation from the black legion book as that is one of my favorites.  Below are my favorites from the book  -

In no particular order

1.  Raptor Talon - We finally get a formation that makes both raptors and most of all warp talons into something that could do well when taken.  The big thing of course is the fact that on deepstriking, you can charge.  This is a huge boon and something not to be overlooked.  The fact that the formation also contains a lord could make this a hard hitting formation.  The fear bonus is just that a bonus that will only come into effect again a 3rd of the armies that you face.

2.  Hellforge Pack -  Another daemon engine formation but one that actually allows you to take up to 5 engines and allows the hellbrute.  The bonuses such as making one engine the alpha engine and giving them a 4+ invul to allowing daemonforge to be used more than once is pretty good.  The warpsmith as the tax is ok, he can repair the engines if need be and adds a fighty character to a unit.  I just wish that it also gave the bonues of allowing an engine to use the warpsmith's BS or WS just like the daemon engine pack but i guess you cant have it all.

3.  Cult of destruction - Finally we get a formation for oblits.  The bonus of allowing the unit to shoot twice is very good but somewhat limiting by the Oblits rules of having to use a different weapon every turn.  If this allowed them to shoot whatever weapon twice, this formation would be amazing.  The other amazing thing of course is the fact that you can take up to 5 units of oblits.  if the formation granted fearless to them or allowed Multilators the abilty to run and this formation would move from good to great.

4.  Terminator Annillilation Force - Just like with the Oblits, we get a terminator only formation of a Chaos lord and 3-5 squads of termies.  This is something I wanted for a while now as it allows me to create a super elite army with tough as nails units.  I know that for a lot of folks, terminators are really subpar but their ability to fight in both the shooting and assault phase makes them very flexible.  Their ability to be armed with anti-tank and anti-troop weapons also helps and a 2+ save is nothing to sniff at.  Their best ability however is their ability to deepstrike which combined with the formations targetted for annillilation rule makes the formation a great choice.

If anything this book really brought out the excitement of using your old chaos armies.  Sure this book doesnt make them top tier but at the very least gives chaos players more options and hopefully will aid in encouraging more old chaos players to dig out their old armies.  

Fun with Ad Mech

Hi guys, ok so yes I havent been following my own advice with trying to get an article done weekly, My bad for sure.  At the end of the day as always I blame work and life in general.  Its been almost 5 weeks since my last post and in that time I got a Rogue Trader tourney in and a couple of small games in as well.  LVO 2017 is fast approaching and the plan this year is to bring the glory of my chaos armies, my Nightlords.  Our resident Nightlords teammate wont be making LVO next year and so I will be playing the Nightlords in his place.  The Dark Mech is fun but the army especially in the narrative format suffers from being a little slow or shall i say being too balanced.  With the team aspect, its more beneficial to build armies that cater to one style of play and help coordinate with your team.  But enough of that, the title of my post is havjng fun with ad mech and so I want to talk about my experience with playing my new ad mech army. 
When GW dropped the ad mech as a playable army I was extatic.  Finally I can play a fully realized ad mech army with its own unique units, rules, etc.  I am hoping that the next step will be for GW to release Dark Mech which will be fantastic.  I started collecting my ad mech army over the course of 8 months starting small and eventually collecting enough to run a war convocation.  I havent built the full war con just yet focusing on building my kastellan robots, kataphron destroyers, tech preist dominus, infiltrators, and skittarii rangers and vanguard.  Along with my knight atrapos I was able to have enough to field a nice little 1850 list for a Rogue tournament in my local area which was first major outing with the army and wow was it fun.  The army plays like no other with tough units that can put the hurt on units.  In one game just a unit of 3 kataphron destroyers put like 15 wounds on a blood thirster and took him out like a chump before he could do any thing.  I ended up going 1-1-1 which was ok but my lost was to a space marine battle company with his ob sec I really couldnt compete.  I killed a lot of his army but all he needed to do was have scoring units in the right places and since the mission was objectives there was nothing I could have done.

I plan on bringing the same army for the next Rogue Tournament which will be in a couple of days.  I am hoping that with the experience that the first tourney provided me as well as the couple of practice games im able to get in, I will have a better outing.  Speed seems to be a weakness though and with the ITC, a fast army will help in winning the all important maelstrom missions.  I love the Knight Atrapo but I might downgrade him to just a standard knight warden so that I can possibly fit either another Kastellan robot squad or a squad or squads of infiltrators.  These units will hopefully allow me to flood the field with more units and have a better chance of winning some objectives.   We shall see however..

The eve of battle...

Sup guys, so here I am in Austin Texas attending my first war games con.  Long ways from my native California but I couldnt pass up another opportunity to meet up with my team again and see an old friend.  I met up with the organizers of the 40k narrative event, said Hi and begged them to allow me to register so as I could get some more sleep which they okayed (whew).  The flight was pretty uneventful and marks the first time that I have flown to an actual 40k event.  The event promises to be full of surprises and fun which is all I want in an event of this size.  I kind of wish we were allowed to take at least an 1850 list but we were limited to just 1500 points which for my army limits my choices some what.  I do love playing at 1500 points though and I won't be the only one that will be limited.  It appears our enemies for this run will be a group of space marines with an allied Tau force.  I have a lot of experience playing against both so hopefully that will help me with my games tomorrow.  Tau in smaller point games can be downright deadly as they can bring a lot of killy power compared to most other armies.  This is what I will be looking out for tomorrow as Tau can make us all have a bad day.  I was able to sneak a peak at the tables and they look amazing.  I can wait for our games to begin and hopefully we can be 3-0 after this con.  Next up will be the LVO and for me I will be dusting off an old army of mine, one that slowly but surely I have been adding to them and re-basing them.  One that by tomorrow, I will have their primarch in hand thanks to my friend. Ave Dominus Nox....

Been a while...

Hello everybody, it's been a very long time since my last post.  I could say that life has got in the way, work, etc which in a way is true but really when I started this painting blog I wanted to make a commitment of doing an article at least once a week.  I am going to try again as by writing I am able to keep myself inspired to paint and to bounce ideas, to keep track of my projects and have a way to better store my ideas.  In a little over a week, I once again will be joining my team, the hounds of abbadon for another trek through narrative 40k at wargames con.  Again I am busting out my Dark Mech CSM list but this time I added in 2 units of CSM in rhinos and a termicide unit with combi-meltas.   For the first time I will be taking a CSM formation, the daemon engine pack to finally see if slugging out 8 strength 8 shots at BS 5 will be worth it.  This formation is right up my armies alley as it allows me to really bring the engines without limiting my army to much with regards to heavy support choices.  Since we are limited to 1500 at wargames con, I had to sacrifice my knight as the group has decided to ban super heavy vehicles unless your primary army was made of just knights.  This sucks but I can see the reason.  The list I am taking is pretty straight forward -

Daemon Engine Pack -
Warpsmith
Forge fiend with dual hades autocannons
Maulerfiend with Lasher Tendrils

Crimson Slaughter CAD

Sorcerer of nurgle with palaquin  (Arch Magos)
2 CSM squads in Rhinos
Heldrake with baleflamer
Termicide squad with combi meltas
3 man squad of Obliterators of Nurgle
Maulerfiend with Lasher Tendrils

The list is pretty similar to what I take normally with the addition of CSM squads instead of useless cultists and a Termicide squad which I nicknamed the Forge guard as I heavily modified the unit to make them look more Dark Mechanicus like.  I was thinking of maybe taking the chosen of Abaddon formation to take the full unit of terminators with a sorcerer lord attached.  By doing this however I would need to drop the daemon engine pack which right now with our 1500 limit would limit my army's shooting power.  I still got a couple of days to think about this as adding more warp charges sounds really appealing.  I'm sure no matter what I decide to take, I will have a fun time with the guys.  For the glory of Chaos!!!

the road to the LVO 2016....

Sup guys,
Again, true life has gotten in the way of my hobby.  Work has been absolutely killing me since mid-November and of course a little game called Fallout 4 was released around the same time.  I have had to focus a little bit on my hobby which of course painting is taking center stage.  I have little time to get actual games in which worries me as the LVO is rapidly approaching and I need to get some practice in.  I have been able to go to the local GW a couple of times as my club has been on holiday from playing 40K lately which has helped.  The guys at the GW store are great players and I have seen first hand the power of forgeworld units and unrestricted 40K.  For all of those people stating that the new Tau are not 1st tier, sorry to disappoint you but they are.  I played several games against them, 1 player using 2 storm surges and 1 player using what I would call a fluffy list but using the Hunter Contingent detachment and both were tough games.  The game against the 2 storm surges I tied with my dark mech by not making any big mistakes.  The game would have been mine if it wasnt for the 2 storm surges.  I had nothing in my list to take those out short of mass assaults with Maulerfiends or long range lascanon shots with my oblits.  The game against the Tau Hunter Contingent wasnt even a game, I tried out my Khorne Daemonkin army against it with some minor changes and by the end of the 2nd turn, I was done to 2 units.  This list was super surprising as my opponent's list focused on tau firewarrior shooting.  I mean the guy only had like 4 suits, 2 crisis suits, 1 riptide (you heard me 1!!!), and a ghost keel.  This list I sorely underestimated and it showed with how badly I did. I talked to my opponent after and he shared his thoughts on the list which opened up a lot to how I might change my Tau army going forward. 

So after all that, lets talk about this post, the preparation for LVO 2016.  As stated in an earlier post this year, I have already picked up my tickets for the LVO's narrative game.  This event will kickoff with an awesome cocktail hour killteam and will continue with 3 days of narrative gaming.  So what am I bringing you might ask, I'm sticking with my dark mechanicus themed chaos space marine army, pretty much keeping the same list that I brought to the last LVO however I am adding in an additional Maulerfiend, a new mechanicus themed Oblit squad, and a new Chaos Knight.  During the last LVO, we were allowed come the apocolypse allies and so I took an imperial knight that I put together 2 weeks before the event.  The knight pretty much played as his own man as I couldnt cast any support powers on him or interact with him with my other units however he was definitely an allstar, tying me the final game against an eldar army that was really blowing me out of the water.  With the changes by the LVO vote to allow forgeworld experimental rules in, chaos knights are now allowed and thus I can finally bring a knight that is actually a lord of war for my army.  Once forge world released the Ceratus Knight Atropo, I couldnt resist and pulled the trigger and ordered one as this knight really captures that "Dark Mechanicus" theme that I was looking for.  The kit is quite extraordinary, it goes together quite well but there is a lot of "pre-work" that needs to be done in order to get it ready for it to be built.  Flash and mold release was all over the pieces, some pieces worse than other but nothing really ridiculous.  By taking the time to prepare the model, you shouldnt have any issues with it.  Once I got it cleaned and flash free, the model took me about 4 sessions to put together as I decided to also magnetize 3 parts of the model, the 2 gun ports/arms and the torso to make it easier to travel with and offer some more pose-ability.  All I need now is to get some primer on it and then the painting process can begin.  My dark Mech themed obliterator squad I finished around November and have already seen table action.  Basically I ordered a squad of mechcanicum Mirmodons as they would fit the style of army I have and go hand in hand with my Arch Magos.   These models were fun to put together the only challenging piece were the bending of their external cables using hot water.  The pic above is of my army for this year's event.  I am hoping like last year, it will cause some surprises as my list is very heavy in daemon engines.

Send the 8th....

"Ave Dominus Nox", "We have come for you".   To all Nightlords fans, these 2 sayings bring smiles to our faces.  If you have been following the trends, it seems that for the last couple of years, that my favorite of all traitor legions has seen a resurrgence in popularity, in part definitley to the excellent black library novels written by ADB.  As some of you might now, the Nightlords have been really close to me as they are my first foray in running a chaos army, in some instances they are my first true army that I collected.  While its true that I did start with black templars, I really didnt get the army completed until I had a large Nightlord army all ready to go.  This was the army that I had fully painted (at the time), the one that I got to cut my teeth on in 40K, and the one that I experienced play through the last 3 codexes.  I got to experience the high points (codex 3.5) through the low points (current codex) and the inbetween ones.  While I admit that the current codex is pretty good, the benefits really come in with the use of the new daemon engines and new units.  My Nightlords for the most part do not use any of the new units, I purposely kept them this way as I wanted the army to play to a certain style.  The usage of raptors, CSM, bikers, termies really do not play well in this current meta so my army has sat on the shelf for the better part of 2 years.  Unlike my other armies, this one I have never gotten the urge to sell it or trade it, always looking at them lovingly and waiting for the day that I pull them out to play once again.  With the advent of Imperial armor 13, the release of Night Haunter and Sevetar, I decided that the time was right for me to pull them out once again but in a slightly different form.  What I decided was to bulid a 40K army that could also function as a 30K army if I wanted to.  Since the Nightlords really didnt align to a particular chaos god or faction, the transition between both games would be fairly easy.  I would spinkle in (at least in the beginning) forgeworld models that could be used in both games thus making it a much more economical way of enjoying both play types.  I also decided to update the army a bit by repainting some of my older models and rebasing the entire army with the new 32mm bases.  This has been a hassle but I must admit, the models look way better on the bigger bases as they make them look more imposing.  I have already started this process and have about 40 models on the new bases which to be honest wasnt as bad as I thought it would be.  It helps that I had no intention of keeping the old bases so if I had to cut the models off of them, I didnt feel bad.  I started building my Sicarian battle tank and I must say, it wasnt as hard as I thought.  The tank itself is made up of 4 big pieces along with the turrent and sponsons making it a quick model (once properly cleaned) to put together.  I also picked up Sevetar and let me tell you, this is an amazing model.  The amount of detail on the model, the pose, the custom base make for an awesome looking model.  I plan on using Sevetar as my chaos lord for games of 40K and will be one of my leaders when I play 30K.  Eventually i do want to pick up the Night Haunter himself once I have a standing force ready to play.  Now for some pics.  The pics are my WIP Tactical squads, as you can see for the most part most of the troops are painted however I am repainting an old Rhino and my pride and joy, the Sicarian battle tank.  Hopefully I will have this army done in time for my next tourney.

40K gaming with your significant other

Sup guys, so a lot of us have significant others who because they love us, tolerate our geeky hobby of playing with man dolls. Some of us actually have significant others who actually enjoy the hobby with us, sharing in our passion for the game, the lore, and the models.  For the rest of us, we have significant others who fall inbetween these extremes, they are not into the hobby as much as we are however occasionally they might enjoy to "dip" their toe into the water so to speak and actually join us in some hobbying.  From painting, modeling, to actually playing games, they join us as in some small measure, they might actually enjoy it, that or they love us so much and see that we need to get a game in and happily offer their help.  My wife falls into this category, she listens to me as I excitely tell her of new releases, of changes to rules, etc.  She provides feedback when I ask it about my painting including bringing me down a peg if I start calling myself the greatest painter ever, etc.  The other night, she asked me If I would be interested in playing a game.  I jumped at the chance as again the more interested I can get her into my hobby, the closer I get her to jump into it with both feet in.  In preparing for the game I decided to focus on the following items to make it enjoyable for her and thus make it enjoyable for me.

1.  Play a small game - The last thing you want is for a game to last 5 hours which will not do you any favors with keeping them interested.  Small games will make it easier for them to grasp the rules and thus keep the game moving.

2.  Keep it simple - You really dont want to overwhelm your significant other with a ton of rules causing not only confusion but an unwilliness to keep playing the game.  Lets be honest, 40K has a steep learning curve, we want our significant other to grasp the basic rules and so feel that they are understanding the game and contributing to your enjoyment as well.  No psychic powers, no flyers, etc for your first game.  Concentrate on the basics of moving, shooting and assaulting.  Slowly introduce rules such as morale, psychic powers, etc once they feel a little confident in the rules.  Keep senarios simple, no malestrom for now, maybe just do kill points for your first few games, etc.

3.  Dont run a tourney list - Ok so this can be interpeted in several different ways.  What I am referring to is to play a list that you would take to a FLGS to play a friendly game, not what you would take to a no holds barred tournament.  This goes without question, the last thing you want to do is to table your significant other by turn 2 using your optimized list.  Tone it down a little bit, run a list that is both fun and capable of being challenging for your significant other.  Since the game as a steep learning curve as we mentioned above, take it easy on them.  If they make a mistake offer them a mulligan.  Dont be a dick, make it enjoyable for the 2 of you and you will be surprised by having them ask to play more games with you.

So how did the game went you may ask?  Not bad, I did get my teeth kicked in as she decided to play my Tau farsight list which does amazing in smaller point games.  I played my dark mech with 2 daemon engines, no psycher support (to keep it simple) 2 blobs of cultists and a warpsmith as my HQ.  She took a commander, 2 squads of suits (one 3, one 2), some marker drones, and a squad of 2 broadsides with missiles.  As you can see, I was outgunned from the start with only a forgefiend as my long range firepower.  He managed to gun down one of the squads of crisis suits early on but then felt the wrath of the broadsides in return.  I wont even mention the maulerfiend who just got gunned down at the beginning of turn 2 by the same squad.  Once those 2 elements were down, it was just a slow death for my cultists and HQ.  Yes the game was a little one sided which was my fault but as it was more of a teaching game, encouraged her to get the rules right and allowed her opportunity to recover from mistakes if she misplaced models, etc.  I took pics of the game which are the pics shown.  All in all, the game was super fun and something that hopefully fosters her desire to play the game more.  Who knows, maybe she will want to start an army...

Games Workshop and why I love you so...

Sup guys.. Right on the heels of my last post regarding Khorne Daemonkin, I wanted to go ahead and start talking about something else that I believe Games Workshop is doing right.  After many years and wishes, GW has finally graced us with the presence of an actual adeptus mechanicus army complete with multiple codexes and several different kits that not only look awesome but actually fit the motif for mechanicus.  About a year ago, several internet celebs actually spoke about GW bringing out several mini armies complete with their own codexes and mini's.  When I first heard of this I thought that this was more wish listing but now after seeing Harliquins first, Skittarri and now Mechanicus cult, we are seeing that these rumors are actually coming true.  As you guys know, I am a huge mechanicus fan and these new kits and rules are a dream come true.  Yes I prefer a Dark bent to my mechanicum forces as evident by my "dark mechanicus" themed army but now we actually have rules and kits to actually play mechanicum forces.  Everything that has come out thus far have been amazing except for the old school robots which I am still deciding on if I like them or not.  With Skitarri we got the common mech foot soldier with the vanguard and ranger kits, a "stalker" tank, and some elite units that fit the theme so well that they seem as if they were always part of the 40K "model" universe.  This week we see the release of the cult mechanicus which included more troop choices, some more melee units with the electro-priests, and finally an HQ unit with the Dominus.  Of all of the new models I have to admit that my favorites are the Stygian walkers, the rangers, and the new Dominus.  The Dominus just reeks mechanicus with his many limbs, power ax, and servo skulls attached to him.  I am definitely going to be picking him up as soon as I can, paint him up in my dark mechanicus colors and have him join my arch magos in my dark mech army as either another warpsmith or sorcerer.  With the great rules and models however I do have some complaints.  My number one as you have probably guessed is what happened to the chaos love with these new units?  We all know that the dark mechancius exists and GW should have allowed chaos players to take any of these mechanicus models as battle brothers or at least as allies of convenience.  A new army list that allows you to take daemon engines as heavy support along with a dominus or warpsmith as your HQ would have been amazing.  For now all of us chaos players can do is to take them as count as and try to fit them in our armies after we have chaosified them a bit.  My second complaint is whats the deal with bringing out 2 books for these releases?  All of these units could have been put into the same book thus eliminating the need to have to wait for each book to come out or forcing us to have to carry 2 books every time we decide to play the army, of course the big compliant is more of a money one as even though these books are cheaper than full sized codexes, your still shelling out almost 70 bucks to just start playing the army.

I do have hope in forgeworld though, last week at their open day event we saw a chaos knight shown.  It appears to be an upgrade kit to the standard GW knight kit like their Magera kit that came out a couple of months ago.  From the early pictures, the kit looks pretty detailed and will look great in any chaos army.  Of course their are many out there that converted our knights to have a more chaos feel to them and with this release means is that we will finally get rules for chaos knights.  I am really hoping we dont have to wait for an imperial armor book for these rules however and they release the rules as a free download similar to what they have done with several of their kits.  

In the world of 30K, I am awaiting the arrival of the Dark Mechanicus.  They have already graced us with a Dark Mechanicus character kit which I absolutately love built and painted for my dark mech army but what I am really waiting for is models for the rank and file.  Dark Mech troops, possessed Thanators, etc as well as the rules to use any of the daemon engines that we have models for already such as maulerfiends, forgefiends, etc.  As I stated earlier, GW we would be happy with you just allowing all new mechancius units to be taken in Chaos armies as battle brothers.  This would go a long way to rejuevenate chaos for a lot of players and make people like me extremely happy.