Khornate Land Raider

Since I had good luck using it lately, I decided to ramp up one of my Land Raiders. I figured it should usually transport Khorne troops like Berserkers, Chosen and Possessed (and maybe Spawn too since I loved how they performed last game) so I went with a Khornate theme for her.

The dozer blades are from Kromlech. I love the look of them, reminds me of something out of Heavy Metal. I kept the spikes and skulls to a minimum, not wanting to go too over the top. The front Khorne symbol was cut off an old banner pole. I weathered and put a little battle damage on it as well.

I plan on trying the dried salt technique and some weathering powders to make her look beat up.

Time to prime!

500 Point ally game

Played a small game yesterday introducing a friend and my brother to the game. 500 Points armies. It was our Daemons / Chaos Marines vs. Tau / Space Marines. I made a couple quick lists for our side. With so few points we didn't have much on the board, although I was able to get Typhus, a horde of zombies and a couple Nurgle Spawn in. My bro had a Daemon Prince and two units of Bloodletters.

On the Tau side he had two units of Fire Warriors, a Broadside and Riptide. Space Marines was 1 Tactical Squad, Scouts, and a squad of Termies.

Mission was The Relic.

We set up terrain and rolled up Warlord Traits. Nothing too crazy. Typhus trait sucks!

We had to set up first and got first turn, with everything jumping off and making for the Relic. Zombies are slooooow. Spawn are FAST! All the daemons deep struck except for the Prince. He flew over to the right flank to put a hurtin' on the Riptide. Bad idea.

Their turn they shoot the Prince out of the sky and end up doing 3 wounds to him. They got lucky grounding him with a wound and then poured shots into him once he hit the ground. He was left with one wound, and we had to get him out of there so as not to give up first blood AND Warlord points. The rest of the Marines and Tau moved up some, with the Riptide flying away in the assault phase and the Broadside continuing to cover the back edge of their board.

Second turn we fly the Prince back to hide behind a building. He isn't gonna contribute much now. Zombies and Spawn move up, with the Spawn setting up an easy charge on some Scouts. Typhus starts slinging some psychic love around, dropping the T and S of the Scouts by one. Of course I forget this in the assault phase and we don't wipe out the unit for first blood. Psychic cards have been ordered, no more of that! The Scouts fall back and the Spawn prepare to die by mass Tau firepower.

Their go and they deep strike the Termies right beside the cowering Prince. Goodbye Prince and hello first blood and Warlord :( That sucked. Spawn die and a few zombies get dropped. Those guys turned out to be tough, getting a nice 4+ cover save most of the game plus their usual Feel No Pain. Typhus in one of their blobs made for some nice protection for him too.

Our go Turn 3 and we continue to crawl up the board getting closer to the Relic. I'm losing more and more zombies now...damn Tau shooting. If I can just get enough to swarm the objective and then pull back into cover we should be able to pull out a win. Bloodletters land over on the left flank to hopefully so some damage and...

DIE MISERABLY in the next turn. Only got a 1 on the run roll for them so they couldn't get into any cover. I know it's Tau shooting and all but I think I have completely lost faith in deep striking Daemons, at least when you can't bring a big horde of them on. The other Bloodletter squad do the same thing wen they come on...land, get shot, die. The Termies charge Typhus' unit of Zombies and for the next two turns he has to challenge the two characters in there. It holds him up long enough to make the push for the Relic harder. He's a beast in combat at least. That is, until he makes a roll on the Boon table and turns into a Spawn. Oh Chaos, you fickle bitch you. Too funny!

Last few turns I watch my zombies get pummeled down to nothing. If I had taken them in a maxed out squad of 35 I think we would have had it, as it came down close to us holding the Relic in the final round (I had only taken them in two squads of 22). The Riptide moseys along and makes it into our backfield.

So they win with First Blood, Warlord and Linebreaker. We only managed to get one point by killing the Termie Lord. Nobody had the Relic as the last zombie holding it died. All in all, a very fun game. My friend who was playing for the first time loved it and wants to play again, so mission accomplished!

Nurgle Oblits

Finishing up some Oblits for my Death Guard. Still trying to make the flesh look all nasty, especially around the end of the arms where their weapons are constantly reforming. Pretty fun to paint!

Berzerker WIP's

Getting there...

My Love for You is Like a Truck! Berserker!

Trying out some Berserker paint schemes today. I had put them on the shelf as unusable in this edition, that is, until I tried them with Land Raiders. They work great as long as they get to go where they want...most of the time. They did very well in a recent game so I'm wanting to get them done finally, had them for years.

They're made with the regular Berserker torsos and Beastmen legs. They also would work as great Possessed Marines if I ever want to give them a go. I'll post more as I get them done. I'm hoping to finish up a squad of ten before moving on to some more Nurgle stuff.

It was nice not painting something all rotted for a change too!

A few more Death Guard

Got another squad done!

Chaos Marines / Daemons vs. Tau

Got in a game last night with my Chaos Marines and Daemon allies vs. Tau. We decided to go random with the mission and set up so I tried to take a pretty balanced force that could hold objectives well and still put hand to hand pressure on him; getting into a straight firefight with Tau is not advisable these days. My list was something like:

Chaos Sorcerer - Aura, Psychic Level 2
10 Plague Marines - 2 plasma guns
10 Khornate Marines in a Land Raider -  Extra Armor and Dirge Caster
10  Khornate Marines in a Land Raider - Extra Armor and Dirge Caster
3 Obliterators (Nurgle)

Allies
Demon Prince (Nurgle, Armor, Wings, Balesword)
10 Plaguebearers
10 Plaguebearers

He had two sets of 3 Suits (one with General in it), Riptide, 2 big blocks of Fire Warriors, Kroot Outflankers, 2 Broadsides, Pathfinders, Stealth Suits, some Drones, Hammerhead and Piranha.

I wanted any mission but Purge the Alien, as kill points are right up the Tau's alley what with all that shooting potential. So of course, what do we roll? Purge the Alien.

We rolled the weird diagonal set up and were fighting on a board with mostly ruins, woods and craters. I choose the side with some cover (the Tau would have very little of it on their side). I think he had a small building to the rear of his deployment zone and that was about it. I had some woods and a building in mine.

I set up both Land Raiders full of Khornate Marines and the Daemon Prince hiding behind them. The Plague Marines were to the right of them with their eye on a ruin to their front to go grab and put down fire from. Everything else was gonna deep strike in. He castled up his army with the Fire Warriors in front backed up by one group of Suits and both Broadsides. The Stealth Suits infiltrated down from my deployment zone and the Pathfinders grabbed a crater slightly ahead of their lines with the Riptide backing them up.

I went first and jumped everything off straight at the Tau lines. I knew I had to play aggressively to keep them from dictating the flow of the battle and concentrating fire. The Land Raiders went flat out and the DP flew over to hide behind a building.

Tau started shooting and only managed to strip a hull point off one Land Raider in their turn. I was primed to hit their lines hard next round. And hit it I did.

Ok, I hear talk that Dirge Casters are not so hot cause it's tough to get them in close where you need them most of the time. Not so much with Land Raiders. I drove into the Tau, unloaded both units of Khorne dudes into them, and only took a minimum of Overwatch shots from Tau outside the 6" zone of fun. It worked like a charm. These thing proved worth their weight in gold this game. I lost a couple of Marines and that was it. They butchered the Tau and consolidated into what little cover there was (mostly craters). Better than nothing! I would be lucky to have any left even though I had just took out a big chunk of his shooting ability.

Over on the other side of my lines my Plague Marines trucked up the field, trying to reach the ruins in front of them. The Riptide had moved a little closer to me so my Sorcerer cast Puppet Master on him. This is one evil little psychic power. I had him target the Pathfinders beside him (cause FUCK marker lights!) and they proceeded to get blasted and the survivors high tailed it out of there, running all the way back to their lines and off the board for the rest of the game. That helped a lot.

Tau turn they take out one unit of Khorne Marines and kill a few from the second squad, not too many though. The Land Raiders move up to squash any Overwatch next turn, and the Daemon Prince flies into a ruin to try to get a flank charge off next turn. The Suit unit is in a tough spot...they can't escape both the Khorny Marines and the Prince, so they fly forward of their lines a little, still in easy charge range of the big guy. The Riptide backed up to stay away from my Sorcerer so as not to get hit with psychic powers again. So far so good, the Tau are reacting to my moves and clearly moving to get away from threats instead of positioning for good shooting.

Next round the Prince flies into the Suit unit and destroys all of them with the Balesword (yay Instant Death) and what's left of the Khorne Marines charges a Broadside, taking no Overwatch as the Dirge Casters keep doing their thing. They slap fight it for a few rounds before taking it out in a sweeping advance later. This teaches me that even against Tau, I should have given their Champ something. These guys are not Berserkers after all and need some kick to them. Even a power sword would have been handy vs. that 2+ save. Luckily the amount of dice being rolled against it finally got some wounds through.

The other Land Raider backs up to go help the Plague Marines, as I figure the Tau General's unit is coming down near there soon. At this point, neither my Plague bearers or Oblits have come on.

Tau continue to blast me in their round, with their General's unit coming down to target my Plague Marines. A huge unit of Kroot also show up in my backfield to help. I'm feeling nervous but T5 plus a few Feel No Pain rolls keeps casualties to a minimum. I do lose both plasma guns to focus fire though. He pours fire into the forward Land Raider and strips a few more hull points off it. Armor 14 is seriously hard to chew through. He concentrates some more fire on my Plauge Marines and takes a bunch out, and puts a wound on my Sorcerer. He has a whole mess of Kroot behind him so it's looking like he'll die soon.

Next round my Plagebearers come in with one of them Misshaping. He gets to place them so they go into my back corner and are effectively out of this fight. The other one drops in near the Tau flank, hoping to go for Linebreaker. I wanted to see how going to ground with them would go. The Daemon Prince flies over to the General's unit and wipes the out, the Balesword just wreaking havoc. The Land Raider backs up some and Sorcerer dude hops in, safe from immediate harm.

More Tau shooting, although there's not much at this point as both Suit units are dead, one Broadside is tied up and about to be dead, and most of the Tau are way off on the left, out of most range. He does finish off the Plague Marines and the flanking Plaguebearers though.

Another mishap with the Oblits as they come on this round (I rolled very high with two of my deep strikers for scatter) so they go back in the corner as well. They get a few shots off on the Kroot. That's some Linebreaker for them so I wanna try to scare them outta there. Khorny Marines finally finish off a Broadside and prepare to die from shooting next turn. Game is really winding down at this point and I'm up 7 or so to 3. I continue to build kill points up which is a definite surprise. Figured it would be the other way around.

Tau go and shoot the piss out of Khorne Marines, killing them. They finally manage to glace my forward Land Raider to death but the damage is done; the Dirge has done it's duty. Pathfinders run off the board. The Stealth Suits come out of hiding but are way out of range.

It's pretty much over when my Land Raider tank shocks the Kroot and they fail their test and run off the board. We called it at the end of turn 5.

So a fun game as I actually managed to get into hand to hand, last time I played him I took a Khorne themed force and got shot all to hell. The MVP was the Prince as he took out 6 Suits. I can't say enough good things about the Dirge Caster, at least on Land Raiders. Taking out Overwatch robs the Tau of one of their greatest strengths IMO. This gives me incentive to work on them this week for sure.

Next time I'll be trying out a Nurgle / Slaanesh Daemon list. I may be spoiled on no Overwatch though!