We're Back! Sort of ...

 After a long long long hiatus, we're finally ready to get back into wargaming action - I think. A lot has happened in the past year, including moving to different town, packing away models, moving models, storing, looking for stuff in storage, fixing models damaged in transit and storage, finding out some stuff are somewhere other than where they should be, etc, etc, etc ...

Anyways, not to bore you with the minutae, but an old wargames buddy also happened to move to the same city, and we started to talk about 40k and the topic of Ravenwing came up. And I realized that I actually never did read the Dark Angels codex I bought last year. So I managed to dig up the codex (by accident actually, I really forgot all about it) and finally started reading it.

And what a read that was. I guess I'm one of the last Ravenwing players on earth to get excited about the new teeth this army has been given. I've been playing Ravenwing since 2003, and they did well back then, even coming in a decent Top 5 finish at a tournament in 2009 (which was the year I finally painted the army).

But the Ravenwing has always suffered from a severe case of chronic crapcodexitis, and any successes had to be hard-fought. When I first started playing the Ravenwing, they had a different Master of the Ravenwing, and he only rode in his Land Speeder with a 4+ invul save. Every biker had skilled rider and an always-on 6+ jink save (I think that was the first time I heard the term "jink" in 40k). Then Sammael came along, the bikers lost skilled rider, and the army got even harder to play.

When the Black Knights were first introduced, it did help a bit, as they now finally had a decent close combat unit. But the army as a whole lost traits that would help it survive because of its speed and manouver, as befitting an all-bike army. Then last year's codex came out. And it's brilliant!

Well at least on paper. I'll be trying it out this weekend hopefully. Looking forward to that.

And since my friend also plays Ravenwing, I'll be bringing my old Thousand Sons buddies over to have a go against his Ravenwing army. I finally unearthed them from the crypts last night, and thankfully there was only minimal transit and storage damage (Land Raider's smoke launcher and Ahriman's staff had to be glued back, and there's a tiny paint chip on the staff where it joins his right hand, but nothing too serious). I'm looking forward to see these guys back on the table this weekend, and share the magic of their modest 10+d6 warp-charge dice.

Because of the minor repair work I did last night, I also unearthed my complete and fully-functional modeling and paint toolbox, and I'm excited to get back into hobbying. Here's what I have in mind for the rest of the year:

1. Updated Ravenwing. For this I need to paint 18 Black Knights (including the Command Squad), Chaplain on bike (with a suitable-looking mace), a Dark Shroud, and 2 more Land Speeder Typhoons. 11 of those Black Knights and the Land Speeders have already been assembled and undercoated (which means they are also base-coated, ahh .. the wonders of a black-liveried army).

2. Updated Eldar. I procured all the models for this update almost exactly a year ago. I think I'll need to paint 1 Hemlock, 3 more Dark Reapers, 1 new Dark Reaper Exarch (because the old one is ... old), 2 more Warp Spiders, 2 more Swooping Hawks, and 6 more jetbikes.

I will be getting back to my Denerair Highlanders, but that's a huge project which my temporary quarters is not capable to handle. So that's going to be a 2017 project.

I'm totally looking to some furious dice rolling this weekend, and I'm lucky that the town's brand new game store is like 7 minutes away. Love it!

Let's roll them dice!

The Windriders in 7th Ed - Just as Awesome!

 

Back in 6th, the rebellious Windrider faction of Alaitoc was a pretty strong army, with its super-mobile super-fluid brand of warfare being able to always out manouver the enemy. With the entire army traveling at jetbike and fast skimmer speed, it's always able to achieve local firepower superiority by focusing its guns at just any given spot at any given time, while at the same time being able to get out of trouble - real fast!

So after almost a year of not touching this army (played all sorts of others - IG, Rangers, Thousand Sons, etc), I decided to take it for a spin in the new edition last night. I didn't change the list, and it was made up of:

- Farseer Lahn, on jetbike with singing spear
- 2 Warlocks, on jetbikes with singing spears. Each Warlock attached to a Jetbike squad
- 6 Jetbikes - with 2 shuriken cannons
- 6 Jetbikes - with 2 shuriken cannons
- 10 Guardians - with starcannon platform
- they ride a Wave Serpent with twin-linked bright lances and holofield
- 10 Dire Avengers - including and Exarch
- they too ride a Wave Serpent with bright lances and holofield
- 3 Vypers - each with scatter laser and shuriken cannon
- Crimson Hunter exarch!
- Fire Prism - kitted with holofield
- Fire Prism - also with holofield
- Falcon - because I really like the model - pulse laser, scatter laser, shuriken cannon, holofield

The first game was against Alvin's rabid Blood Angels Death Company in the second Maelstrom of War scenario: Contact Lost. The Death Company army is lethal, very ill-fitted to capturing objectives, but more than able to wipe out enemy forces. In fact, the only reason why the Eldar won was because they were able to score VPs through capturing objectives, and the game ended at the bottom of Turn 5. The Eldar survived with only 4 models left alive - 2 Vypers and 2 Jetbikes. Insane. Then again, I did make the horrible Eldar nube error of closing with the Death Company, instead of using my speed to keep my army out of his reach. I guess I was more out of touch than I thought, having not touched this army in so long. Once again, I noticed that my dominant psyker - the Farseer - sucked up all the power dice and dominated my Psychic Phase. The new jink rule was a minor irritant to the Eldar, but otherwise, not really a major problem.

The second game was against Doc Selvam's White Scars with Space Wolves allies. The army had 2 Land Raider Crusaders and a couple of flyers. We played the third Maelstrom mission: Tactical Escalation. This time, I was relearning fast how to handle the army, and while we had to stop the game after Turn 2 (I had a dinner appointment), I was able to blow up one Land Raider and wipe out the passengers - a Space Wolves squad and Jnarl.

The third game was against Patrick's nice looking Wraith Eldar army. We decided this civil war started because my Seers thought that Patrick's armor should be yellow instead of blue. From the get-go, we could sense that it's going to be extremely difficult for Patrick. Except for his Wraihknight and Crimson Hunter, everything moves on foot at 6". We again played Tactical Escalation, and it was unfortunately pretty one-sided as my skimmer army was able to run circles against the infantry-based Wraith army. One thing we realized is that it's extremely hard to use Harlequins now. Veil of Tears is a warp charge 1 psychic power, forcing the Shadowseer to compete for power dice against Eldrad and a Spiritseer. He failed Veil once, but I didn't take advantage of it because I was busy wiping out the Wraithknight. The next turn, he passed Veil with two harnessed Warp Charges, but I threw all 10 of my Deny dice and managed to come up with two 6's. And the really well-painted Harlequin squad was shot to ribbons because of that. Really sad. In this game, I also managed to get Invisibility, which the Farseer used on himself and his squad, but it wasn't tested (would have been great to get this power against the Blood Angels). The lesson Patrick learnt was that he needs Wave Serpents for his Wraithguard.

It feels like my old Windriders of Alaitoc list is more or less still pretty deadly in 7th ed, with the main rules changes to jink not really impacting it that much. It does make it more interesting - there was once when an enemy Crimson Hunter was about to unload on my Fire Prism. Of course, I jinked. The flyer hit my tank with all his weapons - but failed to even glance my tank. Wasted jink there. As I noticed with my Thousand Sons, the army's dominant psyker will dominate my psychic phase, and there will be less spells cast. I'm still curious how crazy Invisibility would be for the Eldar.

Next fortnight I'm going to try one of my less (or even zero) psychic armies - either the Rangers, the infantry IG, the mech infantry IG, or the armored company IG. Let's see what happens then. So far, I'm loving the 7th Ed Maelstrom games.

Keep them dice rolling ...

The Evolution of Farseer LahnSeiraPartecion of the Alaitoc

I have been wargaming for many years before I got sucked into the realm of 40k back in 2000. It all happened rather quickly. Went to an awesome gamestore in Singapore. Admired the nice demo table with painted Dark Eldar and Black Templars on it. Played a nice beginnner's 4+ game, and went home with the Eldar Battleforce and Codex.

When I got home, I quickly assembled and painted the contents of the battleforce. It was an awesome value - 20 Guardians, 1 Vyper, 3 Jetbikes and a Falcon. When some days later I finally got my 3rd Edition rulebook from Ebay, I learnt very fast that I needed a HQ - in particular, I needed a Farseer.

I really did not like the antler-sporting seers of 3rd Ed, and as my personal resources at that time were far more restricted than they are now, went about to kit-bash my own Farseer (clearly being broke is a great mother of innovation). One of my brothers had a spare mage model from the old Talisman box, and with bits from the Guardians, head from a Vyper gunner, and various other bits (the shuriken catapult was pieced together from 6 different bits), I managed to come up with my very first Farseer, christened Farseer Lahn.

This very first Farseer Lahn was running around with his tiny but ever-growing Guardian force. Off Ebay and friends, I managed to get more Vypers, jetbikes, and most crucially, Rangers.

In 2001, I entered my very first 40k tournament in Singapore. And very quickly had to convert my Farseer on jetbike. Technically, the model used was actually a metal Warlock. I cut him in half, and glued the top half onto jetbiker legs. I repositioned the right sword-arm, and added a straight piece of paper clip into the base of the witchblade's hilt, turning it into a singing spear. I cut off the pistol-weilding left hand and replaced it with a jetbiker's left hand, to suggest the seer casting a spell. I covered the legs with tissue paper and glue so that it doesn't look like Guardian armor. Finally I added a Dark Eldar top knot onto his helmet. This, together with the runes on his jetbike, made for a conversion that I was happy with (at the time), and I was really glad when everyone else accepted it too.

 

I found that Farseers on jetbikes are just amazing, especially with Mind War. And that's how the rest of his name came about - LahnSeiraPartecion, which in Imperial High Gothic roughly translates to Lahn the BrainSmelter, more or less. And even though today he barely touches Mind War at all, the name remains.

So this very first Farseer Lahn on jetbike served me well for 6 years, leading his Ranger War Host in countless desperate battles in the Balau Sector, as well as in tournaments and campaigns throughout the region. Soon after this conversion, one of my brothers got me an Eldrad model for my birthday, but I never really finished painting him. Eventually, when fellow Legio Officer Khairul got into 40k and needed an Eldrad model urgently, he used mine (and painted it too).

In 2007, the new Eldar Codex came with some awesome Farseer models. And my favorite was the metal seer brandishing his singing spear while casting some inisidious spell on unsuspecting mon-keigh. But I still wanted my Farseer to be on a jetbike, yet I really did not want to cut up this particular model. So I cut up the jetbike in two, and pinned each half to the Farseer model, making him look like he's standing on his converted jetbike, casting Mind War at some hapless meltagunner. This was the first time I used green stuff for something more than just filling gaps, and I was quite happy with the result. It wasn't that much green stuff - the gems and runes on his jetbike's carapace, some runes on the rear of his jetbike (along with some Eldar and Tau bits), and some work to make it look like his cape was lapping over the jetbike.

This incarnation of Farseer Lahn actually started to learn other spells, like Doom, Guide and Fortune, but Mind War was still his favorite.

Then 5th ed came into the picture, and coupled with the fact that I really want a more purist Ranger Force, the time came for Farseer Lahn to park his bike and start footslogging like the rest of the guys. Around 2009/2010, I primarily used two kinds of Eldar lists - a purist-ish Alaitoc Ranger Force with no vehicles, and a more competitive combined arms force with huge hitting power in the form of Howling Banshees and Striking Scorpions in Wave Serpents. At that time, I used an older metal Farseer model with witchblade (he kept his trusty old singing spear in the garage, netxt to his jetbike), who used to ride around with the Howling Banshees, and occassionally, Jain Zar herself.

At some point during the very short life of 6th Ed, Eldar speed and skimmer technology came back into vogue (actually, they were never out of vogue). I just loved fielding gaggles of jetbikes, Vypers, Wave Serpents, Falcons, and Fire Prisms. So Farseer Lahn went back into battle atop his trusty old jetbike. In fact, the old orginal model converted for the farseer became one his trusty Warlocks on jetbike, leading a Guardian jetbike squad (another squad is led by another more recent Warlock on jetbike conversion). I do also field an all-foot Ranger Force (with the exception of one flyer, called in for air support), and that army is still led by Farseer Lahn on foot with his trusty witchblade. While since 6th Ed he has stopped using Mind War (and now in 7th he's actually looking forward to use Invisibility alongside staples like Guide and Prescience), he still carries the BrainSmelter moniker.

Although, now he has a hankering for his singing spear, even when he's on foot ...