Gathering materials ...

... for my table in JB!

While my Hemlock and jetbikes are still WIP (I've been chipping away at these models, painting whenever I can find the time. The Hemlock is coming along nicely, and I hope to post pics up soon), I've also started to gather things for my new table in my new place in JB.

I've ordered one of those cool battlemats, and that's on its way here. I've managed to rescue some of the scatter terrain that I painted for Legio some years back, and that will be put to good use - maybe a bit of repainting to better match the mat. I also have a Fortress of Redemption on sprue, and will start assembling it next month. The idea is to use the individual parts of the fortress as stand alone terrain features (either as bunkers, buildings or impassable terrain). I've also ordered some ruins and a couple of hills - experimenting here and there. I think all the stuff I've ordered would be arriving over the next few weeks - exciting indeed!

And I got a 6x4 board from the local friendly hardware store to mount the battlemat. The board itself is cut into 3 sections of 2x4, for ease of transport and storage. And with a quick visit to ArtFriend I managed to pick up a couple packs of awesome Woodland Scenics trees. The idea is to assemble them, spray a black undercoat, and drybrush browns and grays for that fresh ashwaste look. I'd prefer mounting them on MDF woods bases, but I might just settle for hard card mounting boards instead.

Anyways, I'm stoked about table Mk.1 and look forward to finishing it and rolling dice on it.

In the meantime, I got some dice to roll tonight ...

Trip down memory lane - the Balau Sector

So it was that during the recent Eid holidays, I flew home for the celebrations and some good ol' wargaming friends turned up one night - complete with a few armies, rulebooks, etc.

So we headed down to the hallowed sweltering halls of the Balau Sector, scene of years of strife and furious dice rolling and serious hobbying. From the pre-40k days of Napoleonic and WW2 wargaming (back when the place was called the IX Coalition), to the heady days of 40k 3rd, 3.5, 4th ed and the first Apoc books (during which we didn't play a non-Apoc game for a whole year).

At the height of Balau Sector, between 2000 to 2007, it was common to see 3-4, sometimes 5 tables with 40k action going on. Balau regulars regularly terrorized tourneys with nicely painted but fearsome armies and it was a pretty fun time. Regulars would get into "training" to prepare for tournaments - complete with a fully-painted "aggressor" army to fight against.

Campaigns, megabattles (sort of a pre-Apoc Apoc) and Apoc battles were a staple, and some of the best campaigns I've ever participated in was played there. Check out Kai's campaign on this ol' skool site.

But time passes, things change, people grow and move towns/countries and gradually the Balau Sector went into decline, as all empires do.

Revisiting Balau Sector was full of nostalgic fun, and a little sadness. We could scrounge up 2 complete tables, with most of the other tables in disrepair. There was a shortage of scatter terrain and gone were the shelves and shelves of model armies. 

But there was still a bit of the wild fun atmosphere of unbridled wargaming excesses of the original Balau Sector vibe in the air. And with a series of loud whoops and laughter, and tons of thematic digging and teasing and ribbing, we actually had a quick game in which the Thousand Sons won decisively against a Tyranid horde, successfully rolling up the flank and breaking the bug army apart. 

It was very late night/early morning by the time we realized we were really sleepy and needed to crash - just like the gool old days of Balau. But we all agreed that there will definitely be occassional game nights in the future at the Balau Sector. 

Rolling dice rocks!

Serpent weapon swap again ... or back to the lances, perhaps.

 

Today

With the current codex, the Wave Serpent's role has reverted to its role back in 3rd Ed - as the best d**ned transport in the game! The amazingly broken previous codex' Serpent turned it into the best gunship/battle tank in the game, which is not quite right (though I enjoyed it tremendously). But really, the Wave Serpent is a transport vehicle, and I'm glad that it's gone back to its roots.

16 years after converting a couple of Falcons into Wave Serpents by lengthening the hull and adding bow shields (all based off plans found on some website somewhere), those very same Serpents are still in action. Back then they usually carried Howling Banshees and Fire Dragons. They remained exactly the same models until 2013, when I gave them a face lift - refreshed the paint job and changed the turret to scatter lasers (magnetized) from the original bright lances (glued).

Refreshed

Yes, I completely missed the era of the Forgeworld Wave Serpent bits, and have yet to get one of those nice looking current era plastic Serpents.

So, in between converting my jetbikes, painting my Hemlock and tweaking my army lists, I decided that the army currently doesn't need another twin-linked scatter laser in its arsenal. By some kind of miracle, I managed to find the original metal bright lance bits which were pried off the turret back in 2014.

3rd Ed memories

3rd Ed memories

And after that it was the easy matter of putting magnets onto the bright lances, and since the turret already has magnets on it, I just swapped away the scatter lasers. Now I just need to touch up the paintwork, and it's all set.

Hope to give an update on the Hemlock paintjob soon.

Keep rolling them dice!

Jetbikes are WYSIWYG again!

At last weekend's game 6 of my jetbikes had invisible shuriken cannon. That will not do. My Eldar may be my first ever 40k army and certainly not the best painted. But it is WYSIWYG.

Just to recap, my current Windriders list has the following jetbike squads:

3 jetbikes, all with scatter laser
3 jetbikes, all with scatter laser

3 jetbikes, all with shuriken cannon

3 jetbikes, all with shuriken cannon

3 jetbikes, 2 with shuriken cannon

3 jetbikes, 2 with shuriken cannon

And why the eclectic load out? Why not all with shuriken cannon or scatter lasers? For the simple reason that I already have 4 jetbikes with shuriken cannon, and I only have 6 of the new scatter laser bikes, and 6 shuriken cannon bits from those new bikes, which I can transplant to retrofit my older bikes. When I do find 2 more shuriken cannon bits, I will find the 20 points and retrofit the remaining 2 jetbikes which are still armed with shuriken catapults.

And it does work out nicely that the scatter lasers are all mounted on the new jetbike models, while the shuriken cannon are all on the old jetbike models (you can tell by the varying bases that the old models themselves are from several different generations - I really should clean up and get rid of those old hex bases).

Since I already have 4 of the old jetbikes with shuriken cannon, I wanted all the shuriken cannon jetbikes to have the same kind of look, with the cannon barrel potruding from under the left side of the carapace. Incidentally, of the 4 original shuriken cannon jetbikes, only 2 had the old metal shuriken cannon bit, while the other 2 were converted from Vyper turret shuriken cannon bits.

The conversion itself was pretty easy. As usual, I never think about taking step by step WIP pictures, so I did the graphics below to give you a rough idea. The original plan was to remove the twin-linked shuriken catapults from the old jetbikes so that it's easier to work on the conversion, and then putting them back onto the jetbikes. But plastic glue will never cooperate with that crazy plan, so I had to do the conversion with those shuriken catapult bits still stuck onboard the jetbikes

So I took all the rescued shuriken cannon bits from the new jetbikes and cut the barrels off like so:

Then I cut the twin-linked shuriken catapults like so, finishing off with a good filing to round off the edges, as only the monkeigh have hideous sharp edges:

Then I simply glued the shuriken cannon barrel from the first step to the cut-down twin-linked shuriken catapult housing, and ,.. presto! (just realized that in the graphic below the cannon barrel is upside down - don't do this)

Repeat as necessary, which in my case was 6 times. The result is pretty convincing, and with a little bit of paint, would be close enough to the ol' skool jetbike shuriken cannon look.

Next, to paint the 6 new jetbikes, the 6 new shuriken cannon, and the Hemlock. And I've tweaked the list a bit. I've replaced the Falcon with a Wave Serpent to transport my Fire Dragons, and I've decided to swap the turret scatter lasers with bright lances instead. Thats's for another time.

Keep rolling them dice!

First game in fifteen months!

 

"You shall not pass!"

And it was a blast! ... almost literally.

I finally got around to updating my Eldar list after more than a year of owning the codex. I've done several different versions, but this is what I brought to battle last Saturday:

Alaitoc Craftworld Eldar CAD (1850 pts)

HQ:

Farseer - jetbike, singing spear, spirit stone of Anath'lan

TROOPS:

6 Windrider jetbikes - 6 scatter lasers (the original list was actually 2 squads of 3, but I decided to try a combined large squad instead)

3 Windrider jetbikes - 3 shuriken cannon

3 Windrider jetbikes - 3 shuriken cannon

3 Windrider jetbikes - 2 shuriken cannon

3 Windrider jetbikes - 2 shuriken cannon

FAST ATTACK:

6 Swooping Hawks - Exarch w Hawk's Talon

Hemlock Wraithfighter

HEAVY SUPPORT:

Fire Prism

Fire Prism

Falcon - pulse laser, scatter laser, shuriken cannon, holofield

ASPECT WARRIOR HOST:

8 Warp Spiders - Exarch w twin death spinners

5 Fired Dragons w Exarch

7 Dark Reapers w Exarch

I was against a scary Tyranid list with:

2 Flying Tyrants

2 Tyrant Guard

1 Xoanthroape (I think)

2 chunks/broods of Gaunts

1 Imperial container thing

1 Heirophant

We played Deadlock from the Maelstrom of War missions list. The bugs got first turn, so I deployed accordingly. And of course I managed to Seize the Initiative (which was the last 6 I was to roll for 3 turns).

All in, it was an amazing battle. I made lots (lots!) of nube mistakes, including: 1) being distracted by the Titan bug and splitting my firepower as a result, 2) forgetting to move stuff, 3) correctly assigning targets to units, then promptly forgetting about them and shoot something else instead, 4) overall bad fire discipline for the first 3 turns (not focusing on the correct priority targets).

The lack of fire discipline, in sharp contrast to the bugs' amazing hive-controlled fire discipline is telling. The Tyranids only lost their Warlord flying Tyrant and the Tyrant Guards,  half of the Gaunts and half of the Heirophant. I lost all 18 jetbikes, 1 Fire Prism, the Falcon, the Hemlock, the Farseer and the Fire Dragons.

But thanks mostly to Eldar speeed and agility, and the fact that I managed to regain proper fire discipline late in the game, Eldar won 12-10, including Slay the Warlord and Linebacker. The Tyranids' 10VPs include First Blood, Slay the Warlord and Linebacker.

Some observations:

1. Warp Spiders rock! (I guess everyone knows that) Awesome manouerability. Awesome manouverability (it's so good I had to say it again). Awesome firepower. Iron Resolve. It is indeed the best all-around Aspect Shrine in the Eldar war host.

2. Dark Reapers rock! When I finally figured out that using their multi-shot S5 missiles for AA is more effective than the single shot S8 missiles, the Warlord Flying Tyrant was easily put to sleep.

3. BS+1 and Shrinekeepers for the Aspect Host is just amazing!

4. Swooping Hawks are still very much relevant. Pin-point Deep Strike accuracy, grenade packs, good firepower against low T troops make them still a much-loved Aspect Shrine. I didn't get to try out Intercept. Perhaps in another game against an army with a flyer. Note that my read of the new FAQ limiting squads to only 1 grenade per assault doesn't apply to the Hawks' Intercept ability, as RAW it says each model may make a special attack in the movement phase that hits on a 4+, with the Haywire rule. I'm hoping they don't FAQ that.

5. Large jetbike squads are just not practical. It was a headache to deploy and move them. My old Windrider lists all had 6-man jetbike squads in them, but the new models are larger/longer than the old ones. I'll stick to the original MSU squads.

6. The Hemlock is a scary attack aircraft, it's no wonder it costs so much in points. Casting Psychic Shriek and then bombarding the enemy with D-weapons is just awesome. And I've yet to see the effects of the Mindshock Pod.

7. For psychic powers, I think it pays to mix disciplines, and forego the free Primaris. I went for an all-Telepathy mix (and did not get Invisibility out 5 tries), and found that I really miss some of the other powers.

8. I'm not sure yet how to "hide" the Farseer. 

9. The Fire Dragons were unproven in the battle as I didn't have any tanks or mechs to shoot at. So we'll hold onto them for now. 

10. There is a thought in my mind to trade the Falcon and Fire Dragons for 2 bright-lance Wave Serpents. I save 25 points, and if I take only 6 Dark Reapers, I can take a Warlock to ride with my Farseer. I trade off sure-kill tank-killing capability for flexibility, as I will have one extra AV12 fast skimmer tank for the enemy to worry about, and I get an extra psychic power die, and Conceal and another Rite of Battle power. I probably should try it out and see what happens.

Anyways, it was really really good to get back to rolling some dice in the grimdark, and I'm totally looking forward to the next game. Meanwhile, I'm halfway through retrofitting 6 of my old jetbikes with shuriken cannon (bits from the jetbike sprue), and once that's done, I'll painting the new converted weapons, the 6 new scat-jets, the Hemlock, the 2 or 3 new Dark Reapers and the 2 additional Warp Spiders. Looking forward to that.

Keep them dice rolling!

Awesome new jetbikes.

I finally got around to assembling these jetbikes - after more than a year. These are excellent models! Just amazingly well done GW. Design is awesome and the quality of the kit is just perfect.

The Eldar have long been overdue for new jetbikes, and these are just perfect. The only trouble is, they look so much nicer than my old ones, and I don't really feel like replacing 12 painted (and some converted) jetbikes ... I'll cross that bridge when I get to it.

And I'm fitting all of them with scatter lasers. And thanks to the kits, I have 6 shuriken cannons to retrofit into my existing jetbikes. So my Windrider-themed lists will have 6 squads of jetbikes: 2 squads with 3 scatter lasers each, 2 squads with 3 shuriken cannons each, and 2 squads with 2 shuriken cannons each. Pretty cool.

Anyway, tonight I'll open the Hemlock box ^_^

Keep rolling them dice.

Reapers ... Assemble!

Finally assembled the 3 additional Dark Reapers, including Exarch, that I need for my updated Eldar lists. And I just realized that the squad itself is quite ... um ... diverse (or motley). The squad has: 3 metal Dark Reapers from 2nd Ed (coneheads), 2 metal ones from 3rd Ed (skull heads), and now 3 more of these new dudes (fairy heads?). I should just consolidate into the new look actually. I'll paint these up first and make a call on this at another time.

I also discovered that I have 2 unopened boxes of jetbikes. That's handy, because one of my new lists needs 6 scatter laser jetbikes. So these will be assembled next - maybe in the next couple of days.

I spent the weekend doing a bit of shopping. I got me a Hemlock (to complete my new lists), a box of Black Knights, a Darkshroud, an OOP Chaplain on bike, and 3 more bikes from the old Dark Vengeance box. I am stoked. The Hemlock gets assembled after the jetbikes. Hopefully this week too.

I'm hoping for a game this weekend. Perhaps to try out my updated Eldar lists. Here's hoping for the best.

Keep them dice rolling.