The Return of the Thousand Sons...

With my possessed Rhino all but done I am ready this weekend to take out my Pre-heresy Thousand Sons for a drive once again. My next step is to make my army completely thousand sons as I am still using a squad of Nightlords for my third troops selection. I bought a Thousand Sons army off of a friend of mine that use to be the local GW manager. Alas he was transferred over to another store but at one of the last days he was at my local store, he held a Bizarre Bazaar. The army contained 2 squads of Thousand Sons, 4 of the metal sorcerer models, a landraider, 2 rhinos, Ahriman, and a lascannon Pred, all for 40 bucks. Since this was his first try at painting models, he warned me about how rough the paint job was.

He was right on that but the models were complete, and 40 bucks is freaking cheap for all of that; nothing a little simple green cant fix and with these models helped round out my collection. In addition to the 3rd squad, I will be including a Rhino for them which means forgeworld doors for it to match my other rhinos. This is the expensive part but I love how my other ones look with these doors. My local Battle Bunker is really far however during my work week, I do work close to it 3 days a week. I could probably make my way out there during a lunch break again but we shall see, I might just order them or even place them on my Christmas list. At the least this will allow me to paint up the squad for it.

This past Saturday my Thousand Sons had the pleasure to putting the hurt on the Emperor's finest, the Grey Knights. I played a very good player who though was playing a less the competitive army, still gave me a good game. Gearing my Thousand Sons for CC, they actually did very well against Grey Knight Terminators.

Gearing up the Aspiring Sorcerers with Warp time and including an IC in the squad actually makes them pretty survivable in CC especially when one of the IC's is Kharn. The game did go to turn 6 with me contesting his objective with a Rhino but again if used right the Grey Knights could be a very potent force.

Maybe not against some of the newer 'dexes but definitely against some of the older ones. Pics are of the army, on my next post I will list the army list, go over each unit, and go over the paint scheme that I used. Until next time

continuing on the path of Chaos...

After reading the last White Dwarf (October 2010), I am inspired now to try to play my pure Thousand Sons list again. Yeah, yeah, my Chaos space wolves are fun to play and all but I really wanted to get them more painted before taking them out again. I am annoyed with taking a mostly black primer filled army, though I have my HQ's and 25 marines done, I still have the rest of the blood claws squad, my rune priest, my 2 long fangs squad, my 20 dogs, and my dread to do. In the last White Dwarf, one of the editors talked about building his Word Bearers army.

Here is this guy who read some black library books and decided to take what he considered a "fluffy" Word Bearers army for as he put it, he wanted to bring some of their villiany to the tabletop. As we all know, running a Chaos Army nowadays is more something about the hobby then wanting to be competitive. Yes there are still competitive builds out their, but usually they involve a lash and spamming of oblits. Among the units that he used was a Daemon Prince, Possessed, and summon daemons. Many of the units in his army are considered some of the worst in the game and not very competitive yet this guy wanted to build an army that appealed to him and it shows. Of course some people will say that this is GW's attempt at trying to sell more spawn models, or possessed, etc but truth be told, these latest chaos models are some of the best looking that GW has released for Chaos. Their rules might not be up to par but I am a victim of wanting to play with models that I like the look of. The paint job is very good, not heavy metal good but definitely on par with some of the armies I've seen in my area. I really loved the way he brought his possessed and daemon prince together by giving them the same color of skin and incorporating possessed bits on his aspiring champs in his CSM squads. His vehicles were very well done, so good that I copied the way he did his rhinos, I built and am starting to paint a rhino just like his. My possessed squad needed a rhino and with my spare parts I created a rhino "worthy" to ferry my possessed around.

My possessed "gunner" i created with some spare possessed bits and gave him a plasma gun/pistol that I plan on using as a count as combi-plasma. I really didnt want to cut up a chaos terminator combi-melta for this and I have plenty of plasma pistol arms laying around that I decided to use that instead. The tentacles i got from spare spawn bits which I will paint to match the skin of my possessed squad to follow their theme. I am also going to build a new daemon prince following the white dwarf example and will be painting his skin exactly like the possessed to tie the too units together. I will continue to paint my space wolves as well hoping to possibly getting the 15 man blood claws squad done in the next week and a half.

Lately our local space wolf player has begun to play his wolves similar to mine which will provide me with great practice on how to take out this type of build. As if I didn't want to try something else I am also playing my Tau again. I have played about 3 games with them so far since I shelved them almost a year ago.. I just wanted to see how bad it is to play this army. So far I can honestly say that yes they need an update but I am 2-1 with them and the change of game has been really fun. I will post more info on my Tau army in my next post. Pics are of my pre-heresy Thousand sons Rhinos and my Possessed about 80% done.

Tournament Time...

2 Saturdays ago marked our local GW's Single elimination tournament. A 2000 points win at all costs tournament in which a loss means your out. The TO of this tournament did the same setup when he did the kill team tournament that he ran a couple of months ago. I wasn't expecting this type of setup, I at least wanted to be guaranteed 3 games and me being so new with my army, I wasn't expecting to win it. What I can say is that I prepared for Kill points and pitched battle as the TO told us that the tourney would be using these setups and my army was very stingy in the kill point department with my opponents needing to kill squads to give up one and only having 1 vehicle which was my venerable Dred. My list consisted of the following -
Wolf Lord on Jugger...ah thunderwolf with frost weapon, belt of russ, runic armor, bolt pistol
Wolf Lord on Thunderwolf with Thunder Hammer, Storm Shield, runic armor
Wolf Lord on Thunderwolf with Frost weapon, Storm Shield, runic armor, and saga of the wolfkin
All 3 had 2 wolf body guards and joined a 14 Wolf squad
Rune Priest with Murderous Hurricane and living lightning
Blood claw pack (13) with power weapon
2 Grey hunter packs with power weapon, plasma gun, melta gun
Venerable Dred with Assault Cannon
2 Long Fang squads, 1 with 3 missile launchers and 2 Plasma Cannons, 1 with 3 Lascannons and 2 heavy bolters.

My First game was against an Ork player. Again all I can say is OMG!!! My opponent brought a tough list with 2 15 ork commando units, one led by Snikrot. I gave him first turn as I wanted to see what he was going to do and I wanted to deploy my Long Fangs in the best position that I could. He deployed his hammer unit of Nobs with his warboss in the center of the table. This was the unit that I need to make disappear as I know the power of the unit. Big mistake my opponent did was not to deploy them in his battle wagon opting instead to have them go on foot. He put his big unit of burnas in the wagon which I immobilized in turn 2 thus causing my opponent to have to footslog it.

After taking out his nob squad and then the unit of 3 killer kans, the rest was clean up. The only threat my opponent had was his 2 commando squads which didnt come in until turn 3 and were thus left with taking out just a long fang squad that I let him have. My Wolf lords performed exactly like they had in my last 2 games, just destroying everything they touched. By turn 4, my opponent conceited the game and I scored a mighty 8 kill points and he scored 1. Another victory for my chaos space wolves.

Next game was against the guy who ended up winning the tourny who played a blood angel army that amongst my opponents would be the toughest I would face. The game was pretty even with both of us having a very good hammer unit that if used properly could change the outcome of the game. I started very strong by killing 1 of his Baal Preds and stunning his landraider. He responded by taking out my blood claws and a grey hunter unit with my rune priest. This was just dumb, as he lost 3 jump troops including his Sang priest due to murderous hurricane. My opponent just rolled incredible and I just rolled horribly. This one assault squad accounted for both my Grey Hunters squad and would have kept going if I didn't split one of my lords from my hammer unit to deal with them.

I wasn't the only one rolling badly, my opponent actually ended up immobilizing his landraider and his other Baal Pred. Even though I had lost 3 of my units, it still was a close game until I made a huge mistake. I didn't account for the 2 inches that a unit gets for disembarking from a vehicle, that 2 inches gave my opponent's death company and chaplain to reach one of my lords dogs as I had broke from cover trying to assault another one of his assault units which I couldn't reach due to a bad fleet roll. After the assault phase was done, I had lost all of my dogs as he got his death company and his assault squad in assault with me and put 2 wounds on my 2 lords. My lords fought back and cut down almost half of both huge squads but were eventually brought down. If my 3rd lord was still in the unit, the assault would have definitely gone my way. The game went on until turn 6 with me almost tying it but again due to a low fleet roll, couldn't get to his last baal pred with my remaining Wolf Lord. I lost 7 to 6. Ah well, it was a good game but it goes to show that my army is not unbeatable. Its definitely a hard list and one that is fun to play. It was a great tournament and even though I didn't win I was awarded a Black Library book and an audio book. Pics are of my almost finished Thunderlords and 5 of my 15 Bloodclaws.

Test 2...

Well I got the chance this Wednesday to try out my army once again before the big tournament. As I mentioned in an earlier post, my lovely wife allowed me to purchase 2 6 by 2 tables which when put together form a nice 6x4 gaming table, of course after I lay down my battlemat and some terrain. As our living space is limited, the only place to play confortably is in our patio and as the temperature had dropped significantly would be nice to play outside after work. Wednesdays is our weekly gaming/painting meet between my wife and my best friend to talk strategy, paint some models, and play some games. We rarely play 40K until our weekly Saturday club meetings at our FLGS so this was definitely a chance I couldnt pass up. My friend is also going to be in the tournament and will be taking a tough as nails Chaos list. This list consists of 2 squads of terminators, a chaos terminator lord, deamon prince, and a greater daemon. Along with these hard hitting units he is also bringing with him oblits, a defiler, landraider, and vindicator. I love this list as having all of these options makes it hard for an opponent to know what to shoot at first I mean do I go after the defiler, the vindicator, the daemon prince, or the landraider; not to mention the rhinos full of chaos space marines and chosen. This is where long fangs just shine, with their ability to split fire I could potential take out 3-4 vehicles a turn or put a lot of wounds on a daemon prince. My friend deployed first with his most hard hitting units in the center getting ready for the charge. I deployed my super unit in the center to soak up some damage with my long fangs squad deployed on each side of my deployment area (we were playing kill points/pitched battle like the tourney).

My Grey hunters were also deployed in this way along with my blood claws and Dread. What we both didnt expect was that I would steal the initiative and take out his defiler and vindi in the first turn!! My super unit did what they do best and took out some rhinos, the land raider, and some terminators. His daemon prince actually did pretty well against my lords actually killing one of them and killing all of my dogs. This I expected as a slaaneshi daemon prince with warp time is still very deadly. By the time turn 5 came around, my friend only had his greater deamon and a rhino filled with 9 chaos marines. I cant say that I should take all the credit as my friend was for the most part rolling pretty bad, especially his reserve rolls with his greater daemon not coming out until turn 5 and his terminator lord with his retinue not coming until turn 4, still my list performed brilliantly and I will definitely go on record with saying that as it stands now, the Space Wolves are without a doubt the strongest codex out there. Now to see how I do in the tournament as I will be facing blood angels and definitely space wolves. Wish me luck...