Saturday, March 31, 2012

Chaos Space Marines army list for the Wasp Campaign

The fourth army list for the Wasp Campaign are my own Death Guard plus friends army  (comments and criticism welcome!)


jabberjabber's Chaos Space Marines (1500 points):

HQ:
Daemon Prince, Mark of Nurgle, Wings, Doombolt (160 points)
Daemon Prince, Wings (130 points)

Elites:
1 Chaos Dreadnought with Plasma Cannon, Dreadnought Close Combat Weapon, twin-linked bolter (105 points)

Troops:
5 plague marines, 1 flamer, 1 melta, 1 plague champion with powerfist, 1 icon (175 points)
5 plague marines, 1 flamer, 1 melta, 1 plague champion with powerfist, 1 icon (175 points)
5 plague marines, 1 plasma gun (130 points)

Dedicated Transports:
1 Rhino with Havoc Launcher (50 points)
1 Rhino with Havoc Launcher (50 points)
1 Rhino with Havoc Launcher (50 points)

Fast Attack:
6 Chaos raptors, 1 aspiring champion with power fist, 2 meltas (180 points)

Heavy Support:
1 obliterator (75 points)
1 obliterator (75 points)
Chaos Vindicator, Daemonic Possession (145 points)

Orks Army List for the Wasp Campaign

The third army list for the Wasp Campaign are from the waaaaarrrrghhh!  (comments and criticism welcome!)

Presenting cosec_x's Orks!, (1500 points):

HQ:
Warboss; power klaw (85 points)

Elites:
9 Nobz; 1 painboy, 1 power klaw, 1 big choppa, 1 banner, 1 kombi-skorcha (280 points)
5 burnas (75 points)

Troops:
Slugga Boyz; 19 boyz, 1 nob, power klaw, bosspole (160 points)
Slugga Boyz; 19 boyz, 1 nob, power klaw, bosspole (160 points)
Shoota Boyz; 20 boyz, 2 big shootas (130 points)
Ard Boyz; 11 boyz, 1 eavy nob, power klaw, bosspole (160 points)

Fast Attack:
Deffkopta; rockets (TL) (45 points)
Deffkopta; rockets (TL) (45 points)
Deffkopta; rockets (TL) (45 points)

Heavy Support:
Killa Kans; 2 killa kans, 2 KM blasters (110 points)
Killa Kans; 1 killa kan, 1 grotzooka (45 points)
Big Gunz; 3 zzap guns (90 points)

Transports:

Trukk (35 points)
Trukk (35 points)

TOTAL = 1500 points

Friday, March 30, 2012

Crimson Fists Army List for the Wasp Campaign

The second army list for the Wasp Campaign is the Crimson Fists Space Marine chapter. 



Presenting Chuck Thunder's Crimson Fists, (1500 points):


HQ:
Pedro Kantor (175 points)
4 Honour Guard; 2 relic blades, aux. grenade launcher (180 points)


Elites:
5 Sternguard Veterans; 1 power fist, 2 combi-meltas, 3 combi-plasmas, melta bombs (180 points)
5 Sternguard Veterans; 1 power fist, melta bombs (155 points)
Ironclad Dreadnought; power fist, seismic hammer, melta gun, heavy flamer, hunter-killer missile (165 points)


Troops:
10 Tactical marines; 1 flamer, 1 lascannon, 1 power fist (205 points)
10 Tactical marines; 1 flamer, 1 lascannon, 1 power fist (205 points)

Heavy Support:
5 Devastator marines; 4 heavy bolters, melta bombs (155 points)

Dedicated Transports:
Razorback; twin-linked lascannon, dozer blade, hunter-killer missile (80 points)

Thursday, March 29, 2012

Black Templars Army List for the Wasp Campaign

Here is the first army list for the Wasp Campaign.  Feel free to critique, but be nice :)

Presenting coffee_samurai's Black Templars (1500 points):

HQ
Emperor's Champion; abhor the witch (110 points)
Marshal; terminator honours, power weapon, plasma pistol, melta bombs (130 points)

Elites
5 Sword Brethren Terminators; Power Fists, Storm Bolters, Tank Hunter, 2 Cyclone Missile Launchers (265 points)
5 Sword Brethren; Furious charge, 1 Pair of lightning claws, 1 Power weapon
(135 points)

Troops
5 Crusader Initiates; 1 power fist, 1 flamer (101 points)
5 Crusader Initiates; 1 Lascannon, 1 Plasma Gun (101 points)
5 Crusader Initiates; 1 Lascannon, 1 Plasma Gun (101 points)

Fast Attack
Land Speeder Typhoon; typhoon missile launcher (70 points)
Land Speeder Typhoon; typhoon missile launcher (70 points)

Heavy Support
Predator Annihilator; Turret mounted twin linked lascannon, side mounted lascannons, Power of the Machine Spirit (175 points)

Dedicated Transports
Razorback; Twin Linked Lascannon, Power of the Machine Spirit (120 points)
Razorback; Twin Linked Lascannon, Power of the Machine Spirit (120 points)

TOTAL: 1498 points.

Tuesday, March 27, 2012

Introduction: The Wasp Campaign

Over the coming months, our group will be taking part in "The Wasp Campaign".  We will be using Warpstone Flux to keep track of the campaign during that time using the "Wasp Campaign" label.

The campaign will be fought using Planetary / Might Empires tiles that I've been working on (and off) for a while.  The full map is displayed in the image below.  As can be seen, there are a variety of tiles and tile upgrades to be had.  The dis-joint region to the upper left is an orbiting Moon that can be accessed from the main planet via the space ports and the Hive Cities.
There are six players:
Chaos space marine (that's me); Blood Ravens; Black Templars, Dark Eldar, Crimson Fists, and Orks.

The general background for the campaign is as follows.

+++
WASP-987c in the ancient cartographs of the cosmos was known as 68-twelve-three in the Great Cursade, but simply Wasp to its human inhabitants. Brought to compliance by a Luna Wolves expedition, the planet and its moon had long been plagued by ork raids. When the Wolves all but destroyed the ork population and proved the worth of being something greater than a solitary outpost, the human populace readily accepted their part in the greater human empire. The orbiting moon was transformed in to a low-grade forge-planet and 68-twelve-three became a loyal outpost within Segmentum Obscurus.


During the Heresy, the planet declared for Horus after a short and swift internal civil war, and supplied materials for their cause. Following the defeat of Horus, the planet was swiftly brought back in to compliance by the Imperial Fists as part of Guilliman's plans to stabilize human space.


In modern times, the orks have started to plague the planet once more, having had a long time to build their numbers back up again: the home-grown waaaarrrrggggg is threatening the human inhabitants to a scale not seen since the Great Crusade. The Crimson Fists, as inheritors of the Imperial Fists' lineage, have dispatched a garrison to the planet to aid the rulers with the ork threat. But the forces of chaos have not forgotten about the planet either: they want it back as a vital world beyond the Cadian gate, believing that Dorn's lackeys never did fully rid the planet of the Horus supporters. Guided by their sense of duty and an accidental signal picked up by their astropaths and navigators, the Black Templars have also been drawn here. Although they seek the defeat of chaos, they also know of a looming dark eldar threat, are distrustful of the Fists' ability to carry out their duty following the ork over-run of Rynn's world, and are downright bristling (even hostile?) to the Blood Raven's following rumours of their recent actions aboard the Judgement of Carrion and elsewhere. In turn, the Blood Raven's arrival here has been marked by secrecy and stealth: their immediate path toward a Brass Keep deep in otherwise unoccupied territory speaks volumes of their purpose in contrast to the Crimson Fists or Black Templars. Can they be trusted? What is their true purpose? Supporting the human population and the Crimson Fists, or something more transmundane? And scenting blood, the dark eldar are drawn like moths to the flame. But do they also have a deeper purpose?: could that old tower on Wasp have been constructed by exodites millennia ago as one of the more crack-pot locals claims?
+++

In future posts, we will detail the rules by which we're going to fight over the terrain, perhaps post some complementary army lists and certainly tag progress of the players and the battles...

Monday, March 26, 2012

Open Backs ... on Plaguebearers

Although daemons of Nurgle are mostly straight forward to paint (green hues, sores, pustules, drybrushing, highlighting, and so forth), one aspect that I regularly wrestle with painting is the open backs on Nurgle daemons.  Many of the modern Nurgle daemon range sports open backs where the spine is visible from beneath the skin (what could be more chaotic, right?). 

I think the aspect that I most have trouble with is the colour tones.  I want to reach for the bleached bone and get going on the bone bits that are protruding, and then accentuate them with gore.  For the most part, this is not a bad approach and it produces good results I think, but it's not quite to the same standard that I managed with my (long-time to paint) highlighted plaguebearer.  I think that some of the reason here is to do with the highlighting of the surrounding regions: perhaps more needs to be made of the skin flaps around the open back area.  Rather than using gore tones or highlighted skin colours, I'm tempted to just go for dimly highlighted necrotized fleshy areas.  Most of the highlighting on this chap is probably too high toned.  Although the result looks grand on the tabletop amongst a pack of plaguebearers, there's certainly more that could be done.

If anyone has any tips about painting up open flesh areas in a Nurgle-esque kind of way, then I'd like to hear from you.  Particularly if you've avoided green tones!  What works for you?  A gradual dull fade of the flesh colour (i.e. dark highlights), or something else.

Sunday, March 25, 2012

Bye bye Goblin Green, Skull White and Others...


The big news of the past few days has been the release of the new set of 145 paints from Games Workshop.  I am actually sad that they have ditched the names of the older paints.  It really represents a complete re-booting of the entire line.  Gone are the days of skull white, to be replaced by white scar (but isn't the white scar symbol red and yellow on a white field? - confusing new names are already confounding me!).  Chaos Black - nice to have known you.  And Gobbo (Goblin) Green's alliteration is also facing a demise.  Indeed, I think I counted over 14 different greens in the new range of paints.

Whilst the choice is much larger and the different classes of paint are a good idea (base, replacing foundation; layers for colours; and a new range of washes / inks), I will certainly miss the old names! (and it'll take a bit of time to get used to the new names and the correspondance of colours to the old ones).  I guess I got sold on the old brand names a long time ago and this new re-boot isn't exciting me as much as it should because of this.

That said, what I am excited by is the specially formulated "dry" range that is intended for pure drybrushing effects.  No more mixing colours with dheneb stone to get a thicker mix. 

But perhaps I should just hop to the other side and go for Vallejo paints from now on?  I've only heard good things about them, but haven't used them very frequently so far (i.e. never painted a whole miniature using Vallejo yet).

Friday, March 23, 2012

Badland Column -- An Experiment in Hot Wire Cutting

Having seen (and played on) a number of gaming tables that feature desert scenery, I noticed that many of them have styrene columns present.  These columns are representative of badland terrain and looked to me to be a perfect chance to try out some hot wire cutting.

To create this type of scenery, I got hold of some styrene (the normal type, rather than the heavier duty pink or blue type in this case) and glued mis-happen shapes of the styrene on top of each other using PVA glue.  The second image shows this initial styrene tower well: there's nothing at all fancy, or good about it: the basis is very simple and the shapes of the pieces are random.

To create the badland column look, I used a hot wire cutter on the styrene.  Hot wire cutters are available in many online stores and are easy to find.  Basically, they use a low voltage current to melt / burn away the styrene in to the desired shape.  But read the cautions that come with them: hot wire cutting needs to be done outside as the melting / boiling styrene generates nasty toxic fumes that you really don't want to be breathing in if even half the chemistry is correct.

Essentially, the look I went for was a rippled effect down the column, increasing and decreasing in radii at various points, but generally broadening out at the bottom.

To paint the final product, I used some textured brown paint as the basecoat, and gave the structure a generous drybrush of a brown-orange mixture to create the highlights.  Although some of the styrene structure is obvious when looking closely at the piece, the paint job (particularly the texturing) is very good from just a metre away.

Thursday, March 22, 2012

Cancelling the Army List Challenge for this Month

Well, I'm putting the old Army List Challenge on hold for a little while.  Despite having a terrific run over the past few years, I think its ran out of steam a little bit.  So, I think it's time to retire it for some months. 

That said, if anyone has ideas for future challenges, please let me know via email or commenting on this thread.  More than happy to hear from you.

Saturday, March 17, 2012

Wargames Gallery: Imperial Fists Advance

Tracking across a heartless Tyranid infested landscape, the Imperial Fists approach the chaos-held bastions.

I liked the paint scheme of these vehicles very much.  Not only is yellow a tough colour to work with, but the attention to detail on these vehicles is awesome.  Check out the battle damage in particular, as well as the muddy shading on the lower regions.

Thursday, March 15, 2012

Review of the Chaos Decimator Daemon Engine Rules

The Chaos Decimator is a cool new addition to the Forge World collection (image left is from Forge World).  In short, it is a daemon engine available to both Chaos Space Marine and Daemon armies that uses an elite slot.  Apart from obviously proxy-ing for a dreadnought, Forge World has released a set of experimental rules for the beastie.  I have a few mixed thoughts on the rules.

Firstly, the main advantage of the decimator is its regenerative ability.  To wipe it off the tabletop, an explosion is the only effective killing method.  Anything short of that risks a regenerative roll.  Although that roll can fail permanently (and not be re-rolled on subsequent turns), I wonder if 155 points a little on the high side for this beast?  To compete with the other armies out there, I wonder if 10 points cheaper might be a better way to go.  Once the upgrades are factored in, the "typical" decimator build would probably be a butcher cannon plus a mark of chaos - totalling an extra 35 points for a grand total of 190 points.  That kind of points level puts in in league with HQs of a greater daemon nature ... and just a little below some of the cheaper land raiders.

In terms of the marks of chaos, despite them all having the same points cost, I think what you get for the abilities has a startlingly large range.  The mark of Nurgle gives a tremendous boost to the unholy vigour rolls (allowing re-rolls) and seems vastly more powerful than the Slaanesh mark which simply purchases assault and defensive grenades.  Those grenades are a bit "shrug" for my liking in comparison to the Nurgle mark!  I think the Khorne mark should probably have been in keeping with all other Khorne marks and given +1 base attacks.  The Tzeentch mark is interesting (re-roll ranged to hit rolls of 1 and bonus strength to heavy flamer attacks) and is about in the middle of the bunch for me.

Hence whilst being very cool, I think the rules may need to be tweaked a little: less points basecost; get the marks of chaos costing different points and make them more in line with the regular codexes.

Other than that, this adds another important cog to the chaos daemons codex.  I could imagine fielding a few of these, coupled with soul grinders and several blight drones of Nurgle in the fast attack slot to create quite a unique and scary army.

Wednesday, March 14, 2012

Extension for Army List Challenge

We're extending the deadline for the March Army List Challenge to 19th March 2012, @1AM GMT due to a lack of entries for this month.

If anyone has suggestions for future challenges, please let me know via a comment or email to warpstone flux --at-- gmail . com.  Perhaps someone out there has better scenarios than I can think of?  (I hope so!)

Tuesday, March 13, 2012

40k on the BBC website

Well, here's an article that we don't see very often: the BBC talking about warhammer:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-17274186

There's some very interesting snippets and quotes in there.  Particularly relating to hobby costs -- see the bits toward the end by Mark Wells.

Saturday, March 10, 2012

What Colour is Ceramite?


Ceramite -- the stuff that all categories power armour is made out of, and carapace armour to boot.  A composite ceramic metal.  Very good heat insulator (and therefore resistant to energy weapons).


But: what colour is it before the astartes paint it?

In some of the Horus Heresy novels, I think it is noted as being a kind of grey, dull colour (particularly the loyalists who escaped on board the Eisenstein and removed their previous heraldry).  So, is it grey?  Much like the standard plastic colour that marines come in? Or something else (silver?).  

Does this impact how we might paint battle damage? i.e. should sculpted holes from bolt rounds be painted grey rather than silver as I've been doing for a while?  or something else?

Looking forward to hearing your thoughts!

Thursday, March 8, 2012

LotR Lego

How have I been missing this?  How cool is this!
Will LEGO take some of GWs profit when The Hobbit comes along?

Wednesday, March 7, 2012

Reminder: March 2012 Army List Challenge

The March 2012 Army List Challenge is still open for entries.  Can you take on the challenge and design the best army list that can function in the pitch black?

Good luck!

Tuesday, March 6, 2012

Tyranids from Galactic Cannibalism?

Theoretical: The space between galaxies is expanding according to Hubble's Law. But more than that, the expansion rate is accelerating. Hence the distance that you think you need to traverse to get to another galaxy now will be even larger in the future.

Hypothesis: Codex: Tyranids suggests that the Great Devourer came from the voids between galaxies.  i.e. they have traversed this great distance.  Whilst not impossible in a physical sense (i.e. they'd take less than the age of the Universe to do so), it is probable that they came from only the nearest galaxies if this is true.  Hence it may be physically difficult to accept that the tyranids are attacking the Milky Way from multiple angles (out of the plane of the Milky Way's disk, and along the plane) as that would suggest multiple tyranid origins (i.e. they're come at us from different galaxies on opposite sides of the Milky Way).  So, I'd like to propose a new hypothesis: tyranids come from Galactic Cannibalism.  We know that the Milky Way is gobbling up the Large and Small Magellanic clouds as well as the Sagittarius Dwarf galaxy. Hence I'd like to propose that the tyranids originated in one of those gobbled up galaxies.  This solves the issue of the tyranids coming at us from multiple directions with grace -- the destruction of their original galaxies would sling shot those original stars throughout the Milky Way with ease. And Occam's razor suggests it is the better (simpler!) explanation :)

Saturday, March 3, 2012

Power Claw Daemon Prince Finished


The painted, based and completed daemon prince with power claw!  A long time coming perhaps, but am very happy with the result!

Thursday, March 1, 2012

March 2012 Army List Challenge: Pitch Black

Welcome to the March 2012 Army List Challenge.  If you've not had a go at these before, the idea is to design a themed army list from the codex of your choice to take on a specific challenge.

This month, the theme is pitch black. You are fighting a standard (randomized) mission, but the atmosphere of the planet is thick with smog / tyranid induced fungi spore blooms / volcanic detritus / iron filings from too many necrons being blown to smithereens (delete as appropriate).  Every time any unit shoots, they must roll a 2d6 to determine the range they can see to (a little bit like an extreme night fighting scenario).  Spot lights and so forth don't help. Nothing pierces the gloom. Weapons that do not require line of sight are unaffected ("guess" weapons).

So, will you take an all assault army? Will you rely on guess weapons?  Or do you have a different tactic all together?  (extra kudos for the latter!)

Rules
(1) Design a 1500 points army list from any codex to take on this challenge.
(2) Post your army lists as a comment to this posting and suggest why the army list is effective and themed to the scenario.
(3) Entries close at 01:00 GMT on Mar 14th.
(4) On that same day, I'll open a poll for Warpstone Flux readers to judge which army list they consider to be the "most effective army list that also best articulates the theme" (whatever readers interpret that to mean) out of all entrants.
(5) The winner will be tallied and announced on Mar 21st (and entered in to the hall of fame!).
(6) One entry per person please.

Remember that there are no prizes for these contests, beyond kudos, honour and entry in to the hall of fame.

Good Luck!

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