Brass Monkeys 2013

Recently I hosted an informal tournament for my friends as an excuse to get together and show off our toys.

We played 6 games each, one of each of the 40k scenarios with the player with the highest Victory points at the end the winner.

Mike and Gary in their Imperial fist v Slaaneshi battle

Jakes Necrons about to table me!

Dark Angel victory v Tom's Chaos fighting over the Emperors relic

My Dark Angels on parade

Achilles Tank and Angels of Vengeance 

Land raider Redeemer, Scout Snipers and Techmarine

Interrogator Chaplain Belphegor

Dark Angels Tactical Squad, Land raider Helios and Predator

Gary's Lord drops in to kill a deadly razorback

Land raiders advance

Chaos flier desperately dodges AA fire

Belphegor gets himself in a sticky situation and batters his way out

Things are desperate, send in the rhino

Scouts hold off the attack

Gary's Lord looking down the barrel of many guns

Daemonettes causing havoc in the church, diverting defenders away from the objective

Krieg troops ready to battle the chaos invaders

Death riders ready to charge

Artillery blunted the chaos attack

Burning Rhinos

Cavalry to the rescue

Are Earthshakers sky fire?

The big fight starts

Chaos marines on the wrong end of spikey things

Commissar making his last stand

The sky darkens and lightening rips my army apart

Flames of War

Once again I've been busy on all front, but have been playing a fair bit of flames of war. Most recent games have been with my new late war Estonian SS. It's a list off the FoW website and took my fancy as it was a little different.

I wanted to do a winter themed army and painted the models up as a Feb/March 1945 theme. The Estonians are cut off with what German support is left, the equipment and uniforms are a mix as the stores are low so i've used lots of different camp types.

The Estonians use most German rules except storm trooper (the few German units do get it) this is replaced by extra defensive rules such as re rolls on company morale checks and and extra ambush.

Estonian SS Fusiliers dug in

German StugGs counterattacking with pioneers

Bran Redmaw

I was asked to do a conversion for Bran Redmaw, a werewolf type character from forgeworld. The figure was never released, but is alter ego the giant wolf was.

The giant wolf is a standard forgeworld figure, a special edition one, and Bran Redmaw is converted from a space marine commader

Warlord Games Germans

Commision painting now..

One of my recent commissions was for some 28mm Germans, multi part plastic ones from warlord games. They are very nice figures. My client wanting something different opted to have them painted in SS style and heres how they come out. As they aren't SS figures a bit of artistic licence was used.

Happy New year, and Dark Angels :)

Christmas and all that is over and now it's time to stop eating and exercise again, but first the new Dark Angels codex comes out; which having Dark Angels I amd very excited about.

Having looked through all the rumours online I am concerned that most of the focus is on the Ravenwing and Deathwing, not that I don't like them, just that my force is built around (so far) 2 Tactical companys, scouts and reserve companys. I'm eager to see what thay have done with the options for these and the standard characters in the book. Also please let scouts be a troops choice.

My gaming club (clapham wargamers) has started a new year 40k escalation starting at 600points, first games were last week with my Marines struggling to win. Out of 4 games I had 2 total defeats, one loss that wasn't as bad I was expecting and one very nice victory (space wolves remember not to huddle together with plasma cannons pointing at you)

I'm working on mainly a tactical company for the force, but have also ended up with a useable 600point Ravenwing force I can field.

Ravenwing force, Librarian and Chaplain converted from Dark Vegeance figures

Tactical Marines and commanc, again all from the DV boxset with a couple of conversions

Deathwing, left squad standard DV box and other squad have been changed around a bit

Standard Tactical Marines from the boxset

Chaplain conversion

Non standard Deathwing squad

Slightly changed Tactical Squad, Head swap on sgt and plasma gunner body from the bike squad

I have another tactical squad to paint up, then it will be some new stuff from what ever is released over the next couple of weeks. Likely additions will be Azrael with command Squad, and some more transports

Apoc Game Dark Angels v Tyranids

 

 

 

 

Dreadnought Babel leading the assault

Tyranid monsters burst from the ground, the 3rd Company's Assualt Marines move to cut them off

The Dark Angels counter attack taking back the ground and clearing it of xenos

Belphegor supported by Babel clear out the last stealers from the cratered area

More Monsterous Creatures Burst out of the ground on the right flank

Oculum Nebulae moves against the xeno's support troops

The aliens commander finally appears

Sorry for the fuzzy picture, charging Carniflex make the ground shake

Having cleared out the Genestealer infiltrators the Techmarine Surveys the carnage

Oculum Nebulae is attacked by the winged super hive tyrant

The 'Nids are cleared from the right flank as well

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New Chaos Codex

No not brought it yet but had a chance to flick through it and play quite a few games against a friends chaos army.

I was surprised it didn't suffer from 'codex creep' as so often in Games Workshop new editions, a lot of nice fuffy bits; my favourite of these has to be that there's a chance someone will be eaten by a possessed transport.

I'm a tad disappointed that the codex doesn't really allow for much in the way of my two favourite units, Iron Warriors and Alpha Legion. With Iron Warriors yes you can add Imperial Guard allies and there is the daemon engines but I would have hoped for some way to make the Chaos Marines more Iron Warrior-ish; maybe allowing more heavy weapons or Havocs as troops. Same with Alpha Legion, there is not the cultists but nothing to make the troops different, I would have liked infiltrate at least.

Anyway many battles have been fought between my Dark Angels and Chaos recently, and so far it's a 5-0 (I think) win in my favour. I've built a couple of different lists, and by far my most successful is the defensive list made up of many tactical troops, I've learned to love the Razorback and now getting as many as I can, the heavy bolters or Lascannons are always useful.

Here's some pics of recent battles

Dark Angel Devastators

Razorback eye view

Dark Angels Storm Eagle

Tom my Chaos opponent is convinced the Storm Eagle turns up at the worse (or best for me) time everytime I use it. I does me proud screaming onto the battlefield and destroying the Chaos attack just as it seems to be breaking through the lines. So far I have had most success using it as a gunship, at 326points though its a lot of my army to keep in reserve.

2000pts of Dark Angels

 This is my latest new list, a bit more aggressive than normal with Ravenwing and Deathwing in larger numbers (thanks to Dark Vengeance)

Interrogator Chaplian Belphegor and Death Wing

Ravenwing

Deathwing and Ravenwing attack

 The attack by the Ravenwing and Deathwing stalled due to the tight terrain in the centre of the battlefield, this was turn one and they only advanced another 10inches for the rest of the game

Ravenwing make it through the Chaos lines soon to be killed though

Deathwing avenge the Ravenwings death cutting their way through the chaos counter attack

Second game of the day, the Deathwing once again leading the attack

In the second game the deathwing lead the attack again, some how resisting the best efforts of the entire chaos army to kill them.They killed a Chaos Terminator squad, a Raptor sqaud a couple of rhinos, a Chaos marine squad and Khorne beserkers. Their attack was finally stoped by the Chaos Lord turning into a daemon Prince who killed off the rest and tore the redeemer to pieces. Fortunately the battle was over and I won holding three objectives to two.