Getting Pulled in to many Directions

Hey guys, here with another post in my recent flurry I though I would like to share with you a few of the projects I am working on currently.

Blood Angels - I am currently working on completing a bit more then a full company of Blood Angels.

Maybe I should explain how I am painting this army. First of the Blood Angels are going to be my tournament army, at least for a good while so I really want them to shine. So I am painting them in stages. Basic (which is probably more along the lines of Table Top). Then I add the decals. Then I smooth out the decals and do some final high lights. Then scratch and chip. Then weathering. Then finally basing. I always base last because I tend not to paint my bases. Instead, I use fine gravels, turf, flock, grass, and sand to create the effect I am going for. Anyways, a lot of steps. The pic to the left is of what they look like after stage 1.

Next I will move onto decaling, then to highlighting and so on. Current I do not have anything totally completed but I do have all of Squad 2 base painted and decaled. I have most of the base work done on Squad 5 and the first half of Squad 7 done through the first stage. I also have the interiors of 2 Rhinos mostly done with the exterior of one started too. Next up for BAs is squad 4 plus 2 attack bikes. WIP pics below.




Renegades - Next up is my FW Renegades army. Right now I own a 35 man platoon, an armored fist squad, a HQ with a few heavy weapons teams, some berzerker ogryn, a custom unit of disciple of Xaphan made out of the Enforcer torsos, and a some other odds and ends. Here are pics of a Leman Russ Demolisher and a Chimera that I am currently working on for them.



Red Corsairs - When I signed up for Armies of Parade I thought I was going to be able to use all my cool converted and painted Apoc stuff for my chaos army. However that is just not the case. They are looking for stuff form 1 specific codex from small army sized up to 1 force org worth that fits on a custom display base you have to supply yourself that is 2ft x 3ft in diameter. That means I have some stuff that I need to get painted. Here is a wide shot of just about everything I have (painted or not) for my Red Corsairs army.


Tau? Yup, I have a secret stash of Tau set aside for that day when I am sick of everything else and want to work on something else. Here is a pic of the the box full of suits and vehicles.


I also am playing in a Fantasy Escalation League right now that is getting ready to come to an end. I recently just finished assembling my Hell Cannon for my Chaos Mortals army. It is a cool model and just begging to be worked on. Here is a pic so you can see for yourself.


I also have several armies for other non-GW games that need work most notably my Skorne from Privateer Press's game Hordes. Add in school work and a full time job and you can see I am getting pulled about.

What do you guy think I would work on? Please vote in the poll and let me know your opinion.

Well until next time.

Rapid Fire 40K Tournament (Part 1)

The Rapid Fire 40K Tournament that I have been mentioning over the last several post was this past Saturday. It happened at Game Vault in Fredricksburg, Virginia. I thought it was a fun tournament with an interesting format. A Rapid Fire Tournament is played using 500pt armies built using a short list of restrictions. Additionally, instead of their being rounds you just keep playing games as quickly as you can for a set time limit and then prizes are award for Most Battle Points, Longest Winning streak, Best Painted Army, and Best Conversion. There were also two door prizes.

Restrictions:

• 1+ Troops Choice, 0-1 HQ, 0-1 Elite, 0-1 Fast Attack, 0-1 Heavy Support
• No 2+ saves and no models with more then 2 wounds
• No vehicles with combined armor value equaling more then 33 (Front+Side+Rear)

I played Chaos Space Marines and my entire army was comprised of Troops choices. Here is my list.

6 Noise Marines w/ 5 Sonic Blasters and a Blast Master........185pts

10 Chaos Space Marines
- w/ Missile Launcher, Plasmagun, Icon of Chaos Glory.......185pts

5 Chaos Space Marines w/ Meltagun, Icon of Chaos Glory......95pts
Rhino (attached to 5 Chaos Space Marine Squad) ....................35pts

Battle Reports

Game 1 vs Brian's Necrons
My first game was very challenging as I faced 2 units of Necron Warriors each backed by a Tomb Spyder. Luckily the mission was Capture and Control (3 objectives) using Spearhead for setup so I had a few turns to shoot at the spyders and warriors before they got up close. Turn 1 I managed to plunk a Spyder for 1 wound with a krak missile and knock over a few warriors. In answer his warriors opened up on my Noise Marines doing enough wounds to take advantage of my in ability to roll armor saves (something that plagued me all day) leaving me with just 1 Noise Marine with a sonic blaster at the end of round 1.

We traded wounds back a forth for a few turns after that though I failed to damage either of the Tomb Spyders anymore until turn 4 when some how, luckily, I managed to wound and kill both during the assault phase (Tomb Spyders are Toughness 6 so I need 6 to wound with my Strength 4 Marines, not an easy task). Turn 5 saw us rushing to the objectives. I had 1 squad of Marines on one objective fighting 4 Necron warriors and my Rhino on the other contesting against an almost full squad of warrior. We rolled to see if the game ended at the end of the turn and luckily we rolled high enough to get another turn. Some who I manage to finally kill off his 4 remaining necron warriors holding one of the objectives. Then he goes, choosing to shoot my 4 remaining marines on the other point as in the 3 previos turns of shooting at the rhino so far he has only managed to blow off the bolter. He fails to do any wounds and the game ends with me holding one objective, he and I contesting an objective, and the third with no one on it. 1 Win for Jay (barely).

Game 2 vs Hunter's Imperial Guard
I have to say, Hunter was a really great opponent and I happen to know even though he did not do very well during the course of the tournament, he still had a great attitude and enjoyed himself and if there had been a best sportsmanship award for the event he would have had my vote. Hunter was playing a fairly irregular IG list, using several small expensive specialist squads (2 Storm Trooper squads and a hardened Vet squad) supported by 3 sentinels and a Chimera. Our game was dominated by my superior long ranged fire power and me out manuevering him in several places. This game was also Capture and Control using Spearhead (again with 3 objectives) and I managed to wipe out most of his army through good manuevering and creating fire lanes on one half of the board while keep is Chimera occupied with the Noisemarines on the other side. In the end I had 2 objectives to his 1. 2 Wins for Jay.



Game 3 vs Bill's Tzeentch Daemons
Bill is a long time friend of mine from the Iron Fist League and he has always had interesting, competitive, well painted (when he has had time to paint them) armies. His Daemons were no exception, putting out shocking amounts of shooting and taking best painted at the tournament. This game went very quickly and ended up with me completely masacreing Bills army. What was my secret you ask? Well it was my first time playing against the 40k Daemon list and while discussing how his earlier games had gone Bill mentioned that his army was horrible in assault and people had been beating him by assaulting him. Sigh, normally I would not have jumped on this key bit of info but I already had 2 wins under my belt and wanted to keep up the streak and though I appologized for using the key piece of info against him I still feel a bit dirty though I would have figured it out fairly quick anyways (I hope). 3 Wins for Jay.



Game 4 vs Perry's Eldar
Perry had a good list. 3 Warwalkers each with a shurken cannon and a scatter laser, a good sized squad of guardians with a star cannon and a warlock with embolden, 5 rangers, and a small squad of Dire Avengers. This game ended up being my first Kill Points game of the day and through some poor deployment by me and the amazing amount of fire power his warwalkers put out my first loss of the day too. We were playing spearhead again, I put my squad of 10 marines on one flank (closest to the war walkers and star cannon toting guardian squad and the rhino and Noisemarine on the other closest to his rangers (his dire avengers were in reservers). At the end of the game he had wiped out my 10 man squad, my 5 man squad, and my Noisemarines, almost exclusively with the warwalkers, and I had killed the rangers and dire avengers. If I had thought about it more I would have stacked everything on one flank and concentrated on taking out the warwalkers early. Then used the rhino to screen me from the rangers and focused on killing the guardians. But instead I went after the rangers thinking there AP1 possible shots were the biggest threat and ignored the warwalkers till it was too late.


Well that is it for Part 1. I will post about the other 5 games I got in as soon as I get an oppertunity.

Until next time...