Neu Aeldari Vs. Necrons

 

It was time for Mrs. Blackheart's Eldar-i to give the new Codex a try. 100PL vs. my Necrons. 

Wow, those Space Elves can shoot! And use cheezy psychic powers, and high morale, and don't get me started on the Avatar... 

The battle started off poorly for me and then went downhill from there. 

A standard cross the board and seize the three objectives type of mission. I even got to go first. Didn't do me a lot of good though.

All of the Aeldari units that got improvements, really kick butt. The Dire Avengers went to an Elite slot from troops, but their Avenger Catapults now have 3 shots. With the shuriken rule. Bad times indeed.

Fire Dragons are fast and extra-melty, Striking Scorpions are more stabby! Guardians with a 4+ save? What is the galaxy coming to?

Seeing the writing on the field, I decided to see if the Avatar was in fact, all that. I charged with a full 10-robot-thing squad of Praetorians, one of my favorite units. They did some good damage on the very molten god of anger issues. Just not enough.

New Avatar is still in the paint shop.

The retaliation was suitably impressive. Eight very dead Praetorians, with the last two being wiped out by the lurking Wraithlord. 

Fine. My Overlord decided to go all Leroy Jenkins and charge in. Of course, he didn't make it.

The Wraithlord shot him, charged him and thanks to some amazing saves, the Overlord survived, down to a single wound. Some days it's just handy to have a S9 melee weapon, and the Wraithlord was taken off the field. Next came the battle of Commanders!

The Overlord continued to have some super hot saves, and did not die! Sadly neither did the Avatar.

The next and last turn, my plucky Overlord finally fell and the game ended in a rout for the Necrons.

The 9th edition Codexs continue to increase the power of armies. I don't think it is too much, but rather making some units are strong as we feel they should be. The Aeldari will be a worthy opponent!

Go Fight Some Battles

Just Roll Better Than I did

 

In The Mouth of Magnets (repost)

 

Yuuup. All options magnetized.

With the release of the newest Tyranid Codex, I felt this great article was worth a re-vist.

Today's guest article comes from Matt on the joy of magnetic force. 

Greetings to you who peruse this blog.

I have come to this place to share my madness. I first delved into the 40k universe with the Blood Angels. One of my first purchases was a Predator tank and I wasn't content with either-or set up of the kit. I didn't want to have to choose between a lascannon or an autocannon. I wanted to be able to switch up as circumstances dictated. So, with the proper application of some extra plastic, a metal washer, and a rare earth magnet, I built a turret that could be opened up so that the cannon could swapped out. This magnet based project worked out so well in fact that you might say that I was instantly. . . attracted to the concept. My apologies, I won't do that again. 

Now then, over the years I have magnetized a fair number of things. Predators, Dreadnoughts, my Stormraven (removable wings for storage is extremely helpful), but because of the recent Tyranid release, today we will be focusing on the humble Carnifex. 

First a word on magnets. I use 3/16 inch neodymium disc magnets that have about 2 pounds of pull force. You can get a lot of them pretty cheaply online and they'll have more then enough power for this kind of thing. Once you've got your magnets, you'll need to find a drill bit that is as close to the diameter of the magnet as possible if not slightly larger (you want it to be snug). Most of the time the plastic will be so thin that you'll punch through with the drill bit, so the better the fit, the better the magnet will hold after its glued in place.  Also, establish a "master magnet". What I mean by this is take one magnet and mark one side with a marker or some paint. This will be the "connecting side", the side that you'll use to orient all other magnets to. That way you won't have a rouge arm that refuses to connect to its socket. Finally, you're going to want get a positioning tool of some kind. The back of a smaller drill bit works well for this. Stick your magnet to it in order to simplify the application of glue and the placement.

On to the main body. Assemble the torso section of the body and the heads and allow the glue ample time to cure. The parts need to be good and secure for the next step. Bore out the arm and head sockets with the drill bit. I do it by hand because drills can be too aggressive and can get away from you quickly causing undo damage and possible injury. Be sure to test fit the magnets before gluing them in place. Apply glue to the sockets and using the positioning tool, apply some glue to the magnet as well. Now place the magnet into the hole that you've made. This is where is becomes an exercise in patience since you need to hold the magnet there until the glue sets long enough for it to hold on its on and you can slip the positioning tool off without pulling the magnet right back out of the torso.

A similar process is used for magnetizing the heads, but you will want to clip of the little plastic peg on the back of the head before drilling out the hole.

As for the back plate (I'm working from memory here so bear with me), there should be a little indentation on the inside of the piece, it should be thick enough there for a magnet without having to bore all the way through. Positioning the magnet on the torso above the head socket takes a little estimation. If you cheat it slightly low that should help hold the back plate down tight against the torso.

The arms are where things get really tricky. Each of the arms has a ball joint that needs to be shaved down a little for the magnet to stick properly. Preposition each arm to find the pose that you like and to determine how to trim the joint so that the arm holds that position after the magnet has been affixed. Since the cannon arms join together you need to set them so that they want to connect to one another. On mine, I also pinned the connection between the arms and bonded them together with green stuff for a stronger joint. If done properly, the cannon arms can attach and detach from the torso as one piece.

And there you have it. With a little extra effort and about thirty magnets, you too can have a highly mutable Carnifex. Now take the lessons that you've learned today, get out there, and start gluing stuff together.

Matt has a full brood of three Carnifexes completely magnetized. The flexibility it gives him is amazing. For his next magnet project we will have pics as the build progresses. Probably.

The Hive Mind Adapts

Chaos Knight Sprues

 The new Spikey Big Boys have arrived! In their special box set for now, but a wide release in a few weeks. The big question is what are the new sprues like? Let's find out!

The Abominant Knight has the same three base sprues as the Desecrator plus one new one:

Which has the new main gun, the lash-whip close combat weapon, the tail(!) three new facemasks, a hatch, a tilting plate, and the cool chaos vultures that hang out on the carapace.

It will make for some fun mix-and-match builds. Although, the Abominant Knight  has no options in the Codex, which is a bit weird, but not a deal-breaker by any means.

The Wardogs have all the options! Three brand new chaos-y sprues let you build any of the prue Chaos versions. The two "Imperial" versions are in the Codex, but you really can't build them with just the Chaos bits. 

Gatling gun, Melta cannon, Power Fist, and Big Chainsword (yes they have cool Chaos names, but this is for clarity). For the carapace you get a choice of Havoc Launcher or Heavy Stubber. Two full Chaos heads, and two faceplates. Your squad of Wardogs can have three basic weapon choices: All melee, all shooting or a mix of the two. Nice flexibility. Again, I'm not sure why their isn't just one Wardog squad to arm as you see fit, but I guess the Chaos Knight Union has some bylaws about this.

Overall the new models are very nice and will be fun to mix with some older Knight and Armiger kits to bring them over to the Chaos side. 

Let the Galaxy Burn

With Carapace Vultures

Rise of the Orks Gameplay

I got a few plays of GW's Rise of the Orks in, and I like it. It's a easy to play solo/co-op Tower Defense game. The player(s) get five Terminators and must kill all the oncoming Orks before they destroy the shield generator. 

The board is a little bland, but it clearly conveys all that is needed: The Ork entry points, the Terminator's starting bunker (where they can go back to to heal), the shield generator control panels, and the special supply card pick-up points. The Terminator figures are very nice, and push together with ease. They are molded in their respective Chapter colors, and in good poses.

The Orks arrive in waves, all coming randomly from the draw pool, and are placed randomly at one of the six entry points. There are several different types of Orks: Boyz, Nobz, Kommandos, Burnas, and Meganobz. Some characters as well: Mek, Big Mek, Painboy, Weirdboy, and the Warboss. The type and numbers of Orks in the draw pool is determined by your difficulty level.  

Each of the Terminators have a unique weapons loadout and special ability. If the Orks destroy all the Shield control station, they win. If the Terminators get knocked down too many times, the orks win. 

If all the Ork tokens are removed from the board, and the draw pool is empty, the Terminators win.

It plays very quickly, requires some strategy, and a bit of luck. Definitely falls into the fun filler game category. A good choice if you want to play something 40K themed, but don't want a large time/effort commitment.
 

Go Roll Some Dice

And Purge Some Xenos