Hobby Update: Cultists, D&D, KR Cases, BFG, Kill Team

If you haven't noticed already, It's starting to become a long period between posts. I expect this to continue for the next few months while we move into our new house and plan wedding, but after all that hullabaloo service should be back to normal :-D. Until then I'll probably do a few Hobby Update posts like this one.

Cultists

I managed to grab a few hours last weekend to finish off one of my two squads of chaos cultists. Pics below:

Sect Momus - Chaos Cultists

Xenophon Momus - Chaos Cultist Champion

As you can see its not the usual quality of both painting and photography! After all, they're only cultists, and I have 30 of them to paint. Eventually I may go back over them and highlight but at the moment gaming standard will suffice. To be honest, I was still quite impressed what a simple layer and wash (well more like a dip really, as its all one shade) can accomplish in almost no time. It also means more time to paint more important models! Next on the desk will be one of the Chaos Space Marine squads I think.

Dungeons & Dragons

We've started a new D&D campaign using the playtest rules and I'm painting up a new model. My character is the mighty Thrulk the Barbarian.The model is from Avatars of War found here. I'm taking my time with him, especially the flesh (there is lots of it!)

We've had one D&D session so far and the new rules are pretty awesome. Much, much simpler than 4th edition, and focussed more on the 'what do you want to do?' aspect of RPGs rather than just a constricting narrative miniatures game that I found 4e to be. Although I don't think the difficulty is quite balanced yet, we struggled to survive a couple of Orcs but the Cleric managed to one-shot an Ogre...

KR Cases

I've decided to fully convert my old GW cases to new shiny KR ones. This, astonishingly, has been put forward by my fiancée who wants my armies out of the way in the new house! The card cases fit snuggly in an Ikea Billy bookcase if anyone wants to know.

I won't post a review (I did that previously), but I will say again that these cases are simply awesome. The custom cut ones are worth the extra few pounds, especially for vehicles. You can fit so much in! Check it out, 3000 points of vehicle heavy Blood Angels in 2 cases (plus an extra one for my Stormraven that I've had for a while):

KR Cases - Left has custom foam, right has core

Battlefleet Gothic

I won't lie, I'm disappointed in Games Workshop for suspending their Specialist Games line. I totally understand it from a business perspective, but they must still be making a little bit from the models - enough to keep the line selling and the fan boys happy perhaps. Of course this started a panic buy from the community and now hardly anything is available. Luckily I managed to place my order for a few bits before the rush! A few bits for BFG, mainly a Battle Barge and some Cobras to add to my fledgling Imperial Fleet that I still haven't got round to finishing. I'm going to have to try and have a few more games of BFG soon.

Kill Team

The new update for Kill Team (v1.7) was released a while ago, but I'll post the update log here for anyone doesn't check the forums or the Facebook group (which you can join here by the way, and is the easiest place to post your questions or comments - or just share your tactics and teams).

Kill Team v1.7 Update:

• Added Blasts and Real Terrain rules
• Added 'purchasing grenades' rules
• Clarified mission VP/EXP with Squads
• Clarified optional Injury rule with Squads
• Replaced Hostage mission with Breakthrough
• Replaced Grab & Run mission with Seize Ground
• Adjusted bonus EXP rewards for missions
• Only Special models may now become the banner bearer in Last Stand
• A load of rewording for clarification

A few updates have been released for the Kill Team lists, so check them out and see if your army has been updated  Of special note is the update for Tau (new codex) and new Black Templars and Deathwatch lists.

You can find all of the unofficial Kill Team rules here.

Thanks for reading, and happy hobbying!

- Darth Meer

Storm Reavers Chaos Bikers Unit Painted

Storm Reavers Chaos Biker Unit - Achlys' Marauders

Chaos Bikers are awesome both in-game and model wise. Unfortunately they are a bitch to paint! They have been the bane of my existence this last couple of months, I'm sure everyone has their 'painting dread' that they leave on the desk for an age in the hope it finishes painting itself. Anyway, they're finally done. That's it, no more bikes! Too... much... trim!

Achlys’ Marauders Background
One of the original Storm Hawks that fled through the warp gate at Vardia, Achlys had resisted the extreme mutative effects of Chaos for many decades of service in the Storm Reavers. That was until the battle of Davkon V against the Iron Warriors, where Achlys squad was slaughtered by sustained Havoc fire. Achyls turned and ran from the battle, infuriating Lord Moros, and inciting the wrath of the gods. Achyls was sealed within his armour and to his bike for all eternity, cursed to feed only on the tainted fuel of his motor and to feel only the cold steel of the bike's chassis. Although Achyls has been given command of another unit of bikers, he has vowed to Lord Moros to never again run from the enemy - if he does so, Achyls may face the terror that is spawndom.

Forge World Chaos Havocs
And here's the next project for my Chaos army! The autocannons are from the Forge World legion set, and are really, really good. Only a little liquid green stuff (I like to call I liquid awesome) to tidy up small gaps and miss-casts.

Forge World Chaos Havocs

A Note On Kill Team Support

Most of the people who this matters to will have probably already read my note on the Kill Team page, but I just want to reinforce it here. Development for Kill Team will not stop, but will slow down. A lot. Life is taking me in new and wonderful places, but as everyone knows this can leave little room for hobby. The hobby time I do get will be spend mostly painting (my way to relax) or socialising/gaming with friends. The time I used to use for working on, and answering emails about, Kill Team has been replaced with work and other things. I would like people who have questions to post them on the forums, and hopefully the community will be able answer and work out house rules for things I overlooked. If this is popular, I will compile a list of community house rules and incorporate them into Kill Team. I have enjoyed the last year of Kill Team development, but it has reached a point where the rules are stable enough that I can take a back seat. But please, please, please do not let this mean the end of your Kill Team enjoyment!

Darth Meer

Chaos Sorcerer Conversion - Plastic Kitbash

Chaos Sorcerer Conversion with Wings!

I've been wanted to convert a plastic Chaos Sorcerer for a while now but didn't seem to have the inspiration until recently. This beast is actually very simple to kitbash! The legs, arms and gun are from the new Raptor kit, the torso and wings are from the Possessed box, and the head, torso, staff, and miscellaneous gubbins are from the Terminator Lord sprues. Bung them all together with magic glue (Humbrol Liquid Poly actually) and viola!

I will be Jump Pack-ing him around the table in future games, but if this turns out to be folly the wings can simply count as 'excessive decoration'.

Some more shot below. Only minor green stuffing was required - mostly due to the MASSIVE Sorcerer head preventing the shoulder pads from sitting correctly. I've also repositioned his left foot slightly so he's pushing off the rock.

A simple, but effective alternative to the Finecast model I say. I'll be painting him up soon and writing up some more of my oh-so-popular background! Oh, and I'll just leave you with this parting shot or something I may be talking about a little but in the future...

Pew pew pew!

Darth Meer

Storm Reavers Chaos Helbrute Painted

Storm Reavers Chaos Helbrute

Meet Varea Metalla, the newest painted member of the Storm Reavers warband (see here for the army background). I've only been taking him in bigger games lately as he tends to die quickly unless the opponent has other threats to focus on, but I wanted to paint him up as I love the Dark Vegeance model - so much detail!

Paint wise, I wanted to go for quite a 'choppy' look when highlighting so the metal looks as though its chipped and scratched. The flesh red is simply Mephiston base, Carroburg Crimson shade, layer on the Mephiston, then an organic highlight of Evil Sunz.

Chaos Helbrute - Close Up

"Varea Metalla was once Brother Nisus, a well-respected veteran of the Storm Reavers Chapter. Nisus met his fate during the Vardia campaign against Chaos and was entombed in a mighty dreadnought. However, it was on his début battle in his metal sarcophagi that the Storm Hawks were overrun by daemons and fled into the warp with Chapter Master Falco. Nisus battled his way through the daemon hordes and followed his brothers into the warp rift. But when he re-appeared in material space, like his Storm Hawks brethren, Nisus was not the same being. Twisted by the warp and driven mad, Nisus became Varea Metalla, his metal body chained until his crazed fury can be unleashed on the eve of battle once more."

Darth Meer

Chaos Lord Painted and Storm Reavers Background

Here's a photo of my newly painted Chaos Lord, complete with my colour scheme for the 'Storm Ravers' traitor chapter.

Chaos Lord Moros, Master of the Storm Reavers

Here's a bit of origin background for my home-brew traitor chapter. They're basically my old Storm Hawks (see my downloads for their codex) gone bad - I thought it would be a nice touch to continue their story:

"Once known as the Storm Hawks, a loyalist space marine chapter, the Storm Reavers began their descent into heresy on the world of Vardia during the close of M41. After a long campaign against the forces of chaos to free the Vardian sector, the entire Storm Hawks chapter met their enemy upon the capital planet itself to finally bring the campaign to a close. Although Captain Aphael of the Blood Angels requested the Storm Hawks to hold until they could be reinforced, Chapter Master Falco was impatient and over-confident and ordered the assault.

What the Storm Hawks did not know however, is that the Chaos insurgents upon Vardia were already in the process of breaching the warp and summoning a vast horde of daemons. Although the Storm Hawks were swift, without the aid of the Blood Angels they were still too late. The warp gate was opened and hell was unleashed upon the system.

Most of the Storm Hawks chapter was destroyed within the first moments of the warp breach, but a handful survived along with Chapter Master Falco deep within the catacombs of the planet. There must have been a chink in the defences of Falco's mind, or it could have been his proximity to the warp breach, but at some point the master of the Storm Hawks was possessed by a mighty daemon known as Moros.

The possessed Chapter Master requested his brothers join him in fleeing through the warp gate, he persuaded many that there was no other way to survive, and that they would take the fight to the enemy. Those that were left were soon overrun by daemons, but those that fled with Moros found themselves corrupted irreversibly by the warp. The Storm Hawks were propelled through the warp until they found themselves in the Eye of Terror, the journey twisting them so much that they held hardly any resemblance to their noble origins.

Lord Moros and his now named 'Storm Reavers' have left the Eye of Terror in search for recruits and commit to a never-ending war in order to gain glory and slake the unquenching thirst of their gods."

Darth Meer

First Game With New Chaos

I had a game (finally) with the new Chaos codex last night, against the new chaos codex! 1500 points. Guess what, Chaos won... Blood was certainly spilt for the Blood God, fortunately more of it was my opponents. In fact, I wiped him off the table! I didn't even think my list was that good to be honest, as I just grabbed a load of random bits of things I wanted to use and put them in the army. I wanted to give you a brief rundown on my feelings on my first game with the new codex. Fist of all, lists:

HQ
- Chaos Lord - Pair of Lightning Claws, Terminator Armour, MoK
- Sorceror

Troops
- Chaos Space Marines x15 - CCWs, Champion w/ Power Fist, MoK, IoW
- Chaos Space Marines x10 - Plasma Gun, Autocannon, Champion w/ Power Maul
- Chaos Cultists x25 - 11x Autoguns, Champion w/ Shotgun

Fast Attack
- Raptors x10 - 2x Meltagun, Champion w/ Pair of Lightning Claws
- Chaos Bikers x5 - Plasma Gun, Champion w/ Power Sword and Meltabomb
- Heldrake - Baleflamer

Heavy Support
- Forgefiend - Hades Autocannons

My opponent had a noise marine based list. Don't ask me what the acronyms stand for, I'm just copying from his email...:

HQ
- Chaos Lord - 5+i, PP, PW, VotLW, MoS

Elites
- Helbrute - Plasma Cannon

Troops
- Noise Marines x9 - CCW, Votlw, Rhino, IoS, PW+DS
- Noise Marines x10 - 8 SB, VotLW, Blastmaster, PW+BP
- Noise Marines x10 - 8 SB, VotLW, Blastmaster, PW+BP
- CSM x10 - VotLW, CCW, 2x Plasma Gun, Rhino, PS+BP

Heavy Support
- Havocs x5 - 3x Autocannon, 1x Lascannon
- Havocs x5 - 3x Autocannon, 1x Lascannon


The mission was The Scouring and we played the diagonal deployment. I will add that I rolled Infiltrate for my warlord trait, but forgot to actually deploy any infiltrators... although I did seize the Initiative! I won't go through the game itself, just how each unit did.

The Heldrake was awesome. Well worth the 170pts. I suppose it depends on if you have dedicated AA units (Tom only had 2 units of autocannon havocs which missed a lot). The S6 AP3 Torrent flamer is amazing at clearing out squads of marines, and laid waste to most of 2 squads of noise marines and a havoc squad during the game! He did day that he was going to add at least a defence line to his list after the decimation the Heldrake caused.

Cultists with the Endurance psychic power = win at holding objectives. They were shot down to about 10 by the end of the game, taking most of the brunt in the first couple of turns. Feel no Pain definitely helps against those sonic blaster ignore cover weapons! My loudout may not be the most efficient (was basing it off what models I had), but it was still fairly cheap and looked pretty chaotic.

Big blobs of CSM without Rhinos work if you're fairly lucky (and your opponent deploys fairly close to his deployment line). He had 3 turns of shooting at the MoK squad and whittled them down to about 7 (under half) due to his blast master AP3 blasts. But they had Mark of Khorne and Banner of Wrath so charged 10" into a full squad of marines and munched them down like Donkey Kong on a banana. I think this unit will be hit and miss though, depending on how much shooting it attracts during those first few turns.

Forgefiends are OK, not sure if they're worth their points though. It did wreck a Helbrute first turn due to hitting with 6 of its shots and using daemonforge to re-roll armour pen! But then it proceeding to not do much the rest of the game, except for glance a rhino to death over a few turns. I suppose its another random chaos unit! BS3 does hurt its damage output, I will have to have a few more game with it to see if its worth taking in future.

Raptors are great, very cheap for a Jump unit. Although they really need to get the charge off (or take MoK - but that will increase the points). The meltas didn't come into play so I can't comment on their loudout. Although I will say the boon Icy Aura did end up killing more marines than the champions lightning claws...

Bikes were killed turn 2 so didn't really do much, but they were a cheap distraction unit and did they're job, taking the AP3 shots away from the Raptors.

That's about it, overall I think the amount of stuff on the board at 1500 overwhelmed my opponent a little bit! He focussed on killing the Heldrake, Bikes and Cultists too much and let my assault units run across the board to hack him up and take objectives. I was worried about all those AP3 ignores cover guns at the beginning of the game, but thankfully blind luck prevailed!

Final score 7-0 VPs.

Darth Meer