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.

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. 

Space Wolves again...and Grey Knights??!!

Sup guys.  Wow have the releases been hopping lately from GW.  This last weekend we saw the release of the new Space Wolves codex and coming up on the heels of its release the rumors are telling us that Grey Knights are next.  Rumor no more as various websites and 40K talking heads have confirmed the rumor not to mention a buddy of mine just shot me a pic of next weeks White Dwarf with you guessed it, Grey Knights on the cover.  So before I start with this whole Grey Knights mess, I wanted to give my first impressions of the Space Puppy book.  On first impression the book is great.  It manages to keep a lot of the flavor of the old dex and bring the costs in line with other newer space marine books.  Instead of the beefed up chapter master, they get the beefed up thunderwolf lord with access to runic armor and storm shield at a points discount.  Not just that but thunderwolf cavalry are now cheaper and thus easier to take in lists that will not sacrifice a lot making them perfect bodyguards for your lords.  The new flyer is also very good with the transport one being the true winner allowing you to take 16 models or 8 terminators and still providing great supporting fire once the cargo has been delivered.  The new murderface Dread has great rules and wont cost you an arm and a leg to use.  I can only hope when blood angels are redone they get a special dread too.  The supplement just improves on the rules and gives you the type of flexibility that I as a CSM player can only dream about.  You want to run 6 wolflords, go for it.  You want to run a scout army, do it.  Space Wolves always get great books and this is no exception.  Yes grey hunters got nerfed a bit but you have to realize that they were way under costed compared to other marines (hint, hint CSM).  They were brought in line with other imperial marines and for the most part the strength of the codex and supplement really hides this short coming.  About the only bad thing I would say about the space wolves release is the Grimnar santa sled.  I don't know if someone at GW is hooked on history channels Vikings but making a chariot look like a mini viking longship complete with shields on the side is just horrible.   Overall though the pups got a pair of great books. 

And now Grey Knights??  Wow what a surprise this was.  Right on the heels of the Space Wolves release we get codex Grey Knights.  No models for this release just updated rules which is ok in my book.  There are several armies that need to be updated and a quick rules update to an army that already has great models is good for the hobby.  Release new models with white dwarf rules and your good to go.  Now as expected the grey knights are indeed getting the nerf treatment with the rules leak that I have seen so far.  Removing all inquisition models, most of the special characters and rules, changing psycannons to salvo weapons, losing psybolt ammo are few of the nerfs that are coming.  Along with this a price reduction on all models and some new items including a force weapon gun, awesome formation and maybe the calls of this book sucks could be premature.  We only have a couple of days left until the book is released and so everything will be confirmed. 

Pics are of my almost complete Storm Raven for my blood angels/space marines.  I am hoping to get this army done by October.

40K in the era of 7th edition

Sorry for taking forever to update my blog, real life and trying to get a game in using the new rules have caused this enormous delay in me updating.   So after reading numerous blogs,listening to a lot of podcasts, you would think that the release of 7th edition was the death knell of 40K.  Before i start with "guys its only been out for several weeks now" I want to remind everybody that the calls of the end of 40K has happened with the last 3 editions but some how after several months of playing everybody starts to calm down and just plays the game with the knowledge that GW didnt blow it.  Now dont get wrong, i think a huge opportunity was missed here with GW missing the boat on several items that really need to be in all honesty, nerfed.  2 plus re-rollables, no cover save rules, etc. A lot could have been done to make this the best edition out there.

Some positives that I have seen so far, several of the universal rules have been tightened up or improved on, charging through terrain only reducing your move by 2 inches, malestorm objectives if done right sound like a lot of fun.  The new psychic phase sounds like a blast however I can see where this might become cumbersome if you are playing a psycher heavy army.  To the naysayers that this new phase is terrible I say give it a shot.  In my opinion, it is a heck of a lot harder to get psychic powers off, its no longer the near automatic action that its been for the past 2 editions.  Now players need to choose what powers they really need to get off and throw enough dice to make sure it goes off.  Will psycher heavy armies dominate this phase?  Of course they will and they should as they are a psychic army.  Before anybody starts complaining weigh the actual numbers.  In order to get a power off such as the current red headed step child, Summoning, you need to harness 3 warp charges.  Now you can try to just roll 3 dice but chances are that the power will not go off.  Yes you might have hot dice sometimes but chances are the power will not go off.  So far this might be my favorite edition yet.  I will be playing my first game of 7th in the next couple of days as my league starts, I will let you guys know how it goes...

On the painting table at the moment is 2 tact squads, 1 storm raven, and 1 drop pod.  Pics will be coming soon.

7th Edition 40K

Wow was this ever a surprise after hearing all of the hooplah that 6th edition would be here to stay.  I guess all of the issues that 6th edition had going along with all of the negative publicity 40k has been getting from the internet community finally got GW to listen to its fan base and release an update to its cash cow. In truth, 6th edition has been a great edition.  All 6th edition books at the beginning were balanced.  The problem started with the release of Tau and Eldar as GW through everything out and reversed course with the balance of the game.  Sure there are several issues with the rules but really the death knell of the edition came with these 2 books.  I'm sorry but when players who never looked at Tau before started bringing along grey plastic riptides to the table, I knew that something was going on.  And then Eldar hit, and with it wave serpents and battle bro shenanigans.  This to me brought about the end of the edition.  What about dataslates you may ask?  Well these weren't so bad until you got the tau and 2nd Nid one.  I like many hobbyists eagerly await the changes that are coming with 7th if and only if they heeded the players warnings and  actually try to bring some balance to the game.  Some of the early rumors such as changing up the allies chart, new psychic phase, etc. Sound pretty good.  Unbound of course sounds ridiculous but the in game benefits that a battleforge army gives you might be enough to offset the advantages that comes with  being able to take anything.  I guess in less then a week we will find out for sure if this was just purely a money grab by a company that lost a lot of money last year or the beginning of a mindset of a company that takes the criticism and responds by providing the gamers and fans what they want, a fun and balanced game for all.

Spreading the 40K love

Hi guys, sorry its been a long time since my last post.  This last season has been a busy one especially for us hobbyists who in this time we need to put aside our hobby to help with the preparations to make the holidays the best ever.  My hobby has certainly suffered but no matter how busy I was with setting up the Christmas tree to hanging lights on our house, I always made a point to get some hobbying in no matter what.  We then come to the title of my post, sharing my love of 40K with others in particular people who have never played the game.  40K as it stands is a real complex game for people who have never played  a war game however for our hobby to expand and survive we as players need to bring in new people.  We as gamers should be responsible to teach and grow our community and whenever somebody new expresses interest, we as gamers should try to cultivate that interest.  The purpose of this post is to share my ideas on how to do this, not as a be all, end all guide but to share my experiences in trying to bring my love of the game to somebody new.  Over the course of my 40k "career", I have had numerous friends, family member, etc ask me what the heck is warhammer and why I'm I so passionate about it.   I explain its the lore, the armies, the painting the playing that I love and with each different person asking, I have tried to find a better way to explain the hobby without overwhelming my audience.  Recently I had 2 such people express interest in what I do, one person with little or no experience to gaming in general and the other with a lot of gaming experience but not war gaming experience.  The challenge was how do I share my love of Warhammer without overwhelming them and hopefully getting new converts to the game.  Below are some basic ideas on what I did to inspire this
1.  The use of painted models - Nothing brings out the wow factor in our hobby like painted models.  Its one of the reasons why I try to play with painted models all the time.  Painted models is what brings our hobby full circle, what really brings the game to life.  People interested in the game will really be drawn to painted armies playing on painted terrain more so then grey models or black painted ones. Anytime somebody asked me about the game, it was the painted models that drew their attention.  People might be intimated  by the idea of having to paint their entire army, this is where you bring up the idea of painting techniques, ways to paint models fast and easy.  I always tell those interested that I could show them how to paint models and will go out of my way to support them. 
2.  The Fluff -
      Depending on what you are trying to sell, a good backstory always makes a good selling point.  As it stands, 40K has one of the best back stories that any sci-fi fan can grow to enjoy.  I have seen people get into the game by having a 40K player recommend a book to them or by just talking up the back story.  Its definitely one of the reasons that brought me into the game.  Reading the fluff of a traitor legion called the Night Lords back in the old index astartes  articles got me into wanting to build my first Chaos army.  The different types of armies each with their own back story makes for a game that can  entice any sci-fan.
3.  Videos Games - Let me tell you a little bit about myself.  I was a gamer first before getting involved with 40K.  The guy carrying his big ol PC to his friends lan party, that was me.  Around 6-7 years ago game developer Relic dropped a little game called Dawn of War.  After reading some previews about the game and catching a segment on xplay, I just had to have this game.  I bought the game and just had a blast with it along with friends when low and behold as my wife and I were walking in our local mall I spotted something familiar standing outside a games workshop store.  It was a space marine statue, one of the guys from dawn of war the game I loved, I instantly dragged my wife into the store and the rest as they say is history.
In closing, as I stated at the beginning of this poat, its are responsibility of us gamers to grow our hobby.  Getting new people into the game will ensure not only that we will have new players to play against, but that our hobby will last for years and not grow stale. 
Hobby progress - i am currently working on a dark mechanicus wing for my chaos space marine army.  I am about 80% done with painting up my warpsmith, put together a forgefiend, a defiler and 2 heldrakes. I had an old dred that I will be using as a helbrute. I also startes revamping my old Tau army and have redone all 34 fire warriors, my 4 crisis suits, and my 2 commander models. I still need to get my vehicles done for them as well.