Dark Angels Chaplain on Bike – Conversion

This is a piece from a little while ago. I wanted a unique character to lead my Ravenwing/Deathwing 1000 points list (see below). The only mounted non-epic character is a chaplain on a bike, so here we go.

The Interrogator Chaplain raises his power sword over the strangely wooden battlefield.

I removed the standard chaplain weapon and swapped it for a power sword from one of the various Dark Angels upgrade sprues. The key was very carefully cutting away the original weapon hand while retaining the extended wrist guard. Some further fettling to get a reasonable pose and 90% of the work was done. The other changes were a shoulder pad swap for one with Dark Angels insignia and adding a variety of small items (bags, skulls, keys, etc.) across the model. I didn’t add the halo from the Chaplain kit – I’ll fill in the gap on the back of the helmet before he gets primed.

On to the battlefield!

A photo from one of the three games we got through that weekend.

The Chaplain’s first outing was for a series of three games against the Thousand Sons. You can see the starting positions for one of the games above.

The list:

Space Marines
Dark Angels
Incursion (1000 points)
Company of Hunters

CHARACTERS

Chaplain on Bike (75 points)
• Warlord

Ravenwing Command Squad (140 points)
• 1x Ravenwing Champion
• Enhancement: Recon Hunter
• 1x Ravenwing Apothecary
• 1x Ravenwing Ancient

BATTLELINE

Outrider Squad (140 points)
• 1x Outrider Sergeant
• 2x Outrider
• 1x Invader ATV
1x Multi-melta

Outrider Squad (140 points)
• 1x Outrider Sergeant
• 2x Outrider
• 1x Invader ATV
1x Onslaught Gatling Cannon

Outrider Squad (80 points)
• 1x Outrider Sergeant
• 2x Outrider

OTHER DATASHEETS

Deathwing Terminator Squad (360 points)
• 1x Deathwing Sergeant
• 9x Deathwing Terminator
    • 2x Assault cannon
      2x Chainfist

Invader ATV (60 points)
    1x Multi-melta

All three games resulted in crushing victories for the Dark Angels! Admittedly this was not at all a competitive Thousand Sons build. We also learned that rolling double sixes to wound with a multi-melta when the Chaplain granted it Devastating Wounds is not something even a Daemon Prince can survive.

You may have noticed in the photo that not a single Ravenwing model is painted yet (and only 50% of the terminators). That is something I hope to get around to soon.

Corpus Brethren Lord Exultant/Chaos Lord – Conversion

The converted Chaos Lord (in grey plastic).

I’m working on a Corpus Brethren army, that I plan to use with Codex: Emperor’s Children or Codex: Chaos Space Marines depending on the playstyle I want (and what future editions codices hold).

As ever I’m converting a lot of the models, in particular the characters. This model is a mixture of the Chaos Lord (body, power fist), Lord Exultant (backpack) and Tormentors/Infractors (knife, head). Some creative cutting and a small amount of gap filling was all that was needed.

He will be joining the fledgling force I have glued (and in one case painted) so far. You can see my take on the colour scheme below, alongside an Ork.

A painted up member of my Corpus Brethren next to an Ork Boy (bonus points for guessing the origin of the claw sneaking into the edge of the shot).

This is one of several projects I have ongoing. I’m trying to prioritise this one in order to get a fully painted army onto the tabletop, but there are plenty of distractions!

More Plague Marines!

I’ve recently started altering the Plague Marine units in my lists to include a couple of models armed with the flail of corruption. These weapons trade the standard bolt gun for a double handed melee weapon. The flail grants d3 attack rolls per attack (so 2d3 on the charge thanks to the latest rules updates for marines of all flavours). These attacks at at high strength with decent AP and cause 2D each. Importantly any “leftover” damage isn’t wasted – like mortal wounds it carries over to the next model.

Putting two of these in my standard 7 man squads loses me two bolter shots but gives the unit something that will both clear chaff and threaten heavy infantry.

Unfortunately, the Plague Marines box only comes with one of these weapons. In addition, I seem to have a thing for converting EtB and starter set models to see what I can get out of them.

This time I converted four of the seven Plague Marines from Dark Imperium to wield flails savaged from Chaos Marauders and Empire Flagellants. One of the remaining models is most of the way to being an icon bearer and another is no a plague champion. The only model not used so far is the original champion who’s powerfist is quite difficult to remove.

The parts in green were from left over EtB Plague Marines while the icon bearers arm is from a beastmen Gor box. A little bit of greenstuff to cover joins and extend a cloak was all that was left to do.

I should also give credit to Buttscribe whose site produces the datasheet shown above from battlescribe files.

Now I have quite a large stack of painting to do (again!).

+++The blood of convertors is the blood of the Imperium+++

Kill Team: Code breakers

Death Guard Vs Astra Militarum

We played the kill team arena mission codebreakers. Both sides have to “tag” objectives to control them – controlling half the objectives scores you one point a turn while controlling more than half scores you two points.

Astra Militarum (Cadians)

Sergeant with chainsword and las pistol (Leader)

Guardsman (Comms)

Gunner with grenade launcher (Heavy)

Gunner with flamer (demolitions)

Gunner with grenade launcher

14 guardsman

Death Guard

Plague Champion with powerfist, plague knife and bolt pistol (Leader)

Plague Marine Gunner with plasma gun (Demolitions)

Plague Marine Gunner with Blight Launcher (Heavy)

Poxwalker (Zealot)

4 Pox walkers

2 Plague Marines

The Cadian Astra Militarum deployed in two large groups with all of their special weapons (two grenade launchers and a flamer) plus their comms specialist and leader on the right hand side sending them down the long corridor towards the Death Guard’s rear objective.

The Death Guard likewise split into two groups, with a lone Plague Marine (made the chosen of grandfather Nurgle using a pregame stratagem) leading two poxwalkers towards the weaker group of Cadians while the Plague Champion took the remaining Marines and pox walkers to face the main Cadian attack.

On the left hand flank the Death Guard took the fight to the enemy advancing towards the Cadians near the objectives. The Chosen of Nurgle Plague Marine used his grenades to good effect and weathered a storm of enemy fire without injury.

On the right hand side the Imperials took the initiative and ran towards the chaos lines. Two pox walkers formed an effective barrier and contained the majority of the Cadians in the long corridor for much of the game.

For the first three turns the sides traded points from their side missions without threatening the main objectives aside from a lone Cadian who fell quickly in melee with a Plague Marine.

In the final turn both sides made rushes on the opposing objectives. In the Death Guard case this was a by product of collecting all of the bounty hunter points from the slain enemy models (from the bounty hunt side mission) but the situation was recovered by a cleverly disengaged guardsman. The Cadians made a more deliberate effort with a combination between a single guardsman and the orders from the sergeant leading to a very long run from the guardsman only to be stopped at the last moment by rapid fired plasma. The rest of the Cadians attempted to bring down the plasma weilding specialist in order to score their high value targets mission but despite 3 lasguns, two grenade launchers a flamer and a krak grenade he emerged with a single flesh wound.

At this point the Death Guard’s nerve broke but too late for the Imperials as the game ended leaving the final score at 10-8 to the Death Guard.

This game highlighted again the dangers of getting trapped in the tight confines of the arena maps. It also impressed on us how much fire power a Plague Marine can withstand, even in the open. The game was a tense affair with prolonged fire fights and brutal close combat ending with some desperate dashes towards objectives. Throughout the game there was never more than two victory points separating the two sides. All in all it was a great game and we’re looking forward to playing again.

Victory to the Death Guard!

Dice Masters: Battle for Ultramar – First Impressions

I’ve never played a dice masters game before. Today we received my order of the Warhammer 40000 themed dice masters campaign box Battle for Ultramar. We’ve played the intro game twice – more on our experience below.

Previous sets of dice masters have involved random distribution of cards and dice in sealed packs. A major change for the Warhammer release was the move to campaign boxes and faction expansions with set content. This was a big motivation for me considering starting the game as I have really gone off random distribution card games (Fantasy Flight Games have spoiled me).

Dice masters is a bit like a hybrid of magic the gathering and roll for the galaxy. It combines pregame deck building and in game dice drafting while both players attempt to eliminate the other by reducing them to zero life.

While I’ve played magic the gathering and many other competitive card games before my partner hasn’t. She has always been put off, in part, by the complexity (or rather time requirements) of preparing a deck. It was nice to see a game where, at least initially, only a small number of choices of which card to include are required.

On with the game: the tutorial game is 50% the size of a regular game having less life and fewer cards in each side. The suggested set up has a fairly fast hitting Ultramarines combo facing a Death Guard pair of plague marines and a very expensive Typhus. So far we have played once each way with the more balanced Ultramarines scoring a major victory in both cases. I think in a full game this will be very different but it’s a shame the designers didn’t write a more balanced tutorial.

The game play is fairly easy to understand after a couple of turns, but even in this mini game there were some opportunities for very tactical decision making. There are several places online that do a very good job of explaining the rules so I won’t go into more detail here. The rules can also be downloaded for free from the WizKids website.

We both enjoyed the game, although I think I enjoyed it more both due to my past experience of this kind of game and my love of the Warhammer 40000 universe. The game play is fast and exciting with no stage feeling to bogged down.

I think the deck building aspect will keep me interested for quite a while despite the low number of cards per deck. I plan to stick to Warhammer sets but I don’t think there is any reason you can’t take Iron Man and Typhus in the same deck. One of the main reasons I got the game was because I’d heard that a Dark Angels set is coming with the next round of releases so I’ll certainly be adding that.

I have read that some people has encountered quality control problems, receiving sets missing one or more components or with crooked dice. The box we received was perfect. It was interesting to note that one of the cards shown in the tutorial game does not exist in the set but there is a card with a different name and identical rules text.

In summary, our experience so far has been very good. The quality of the set is (perhaps surprisingly) very high. The game play is fast and fun as well as evocative of the setting. The designers Mike Elliot and Eric Lang have good form for writing great games so this is what I expected. I’m looking forward to playing more games and will likely expand our collection with the next campaign pack (Eldar Vs Deamons) and of course the Dark Angels. I’ll update this once we’ve played a few more games but so far I thoroughly recommend it.

Fists of Flame (Vanguard Detachment)

I’m going to start with one of my favourite recent detachments for Warhammer 40000. While it’s not a full list on it’s own, this small detachment adds some serious anti-horde fire power.

Army: Dark Angels

Detachment: Vanguard (Min. 1HQ, 3 Elite) – 398 pts

HQ: Primaris Lieutenant (Master crafted auto bolt rifle) 74pts

Elites: Aggressor Squad (Aggressor Sergeant, 2 Aggressors, flamestorm gauntlets) 108 pts

Aggressor Squad (Aggressor Sergeant, 2 Aggressors, flamestorm gauntlets) 108 pts

While I’ve put Dark Angels (because I play Dark Angels) this works with any space marine force, arguably better with some chapters.

The key here is controlled aggression. I use then as a huge speed bump against hordes (Tyranids mostly in my case). I deploy the squads out at the front of my lines and dare the enemy to charge them. When the enemy do get close I move as close as possible to them to ensure they are within the 8″ range of the flame gauntlets when they charge.

The Lieutenant isn’t just a HQ tax, his reroll wounds is a bonus to units which hit automatically.

In my recent games the big problem army for my Dark Angels has been a Tyranids army with some huge units of Hormaguants. In fact the Tyranids went undefeated in our recent mini tournament. Something like the list above can help blunt the devastating massed charge that has signalled the end for Imperial Fists, Death Guard and Emperor’s Children in the above games.

***”For the Lion!”***