A Little Winter Break

Dear Readers,

Its the mid-year Winter break for me. The downside of this is that I probably won't be responding to comments or posting new materials for about a month to 1.5 months. Rest assured that normal service will resume in late July/2009. In the meantime, the Warpstone Flux archive can be accessed through the links on the right - particularly the "vault" sections and the recently added search capability.

Before I go away, I wanted to thank my readers (especially those of you who keep on coming back!) for all your input. The FtW community is awesome!

To be clear: I'm not leaving blogging; its simply that real life demands mean that I have to take a break, much like my previous 1 month long Summer break.

Cheers, Kev (jabberjabber).

Painting of a Melta Gun Plague Marine

A little while ago, I assembled a Death Guard plague marine using forge world parts with a converted left-handed melta gun. Today, the final painted result!

I'm pleased with the outcome here - it certainly communicates the rusted and decaying feeling of the Death Guard forces that I'm wanting to characterize (i.e. over the grossness and icky factor). Following a black undercoat, the figure was basecoated in a light brown colour and inked with chestnut tones. I then drybrushed with a (dirty) combination of greens, creams, browns and a hint of yellow (all at random, without washing my old brush inbetween different colours and non-sequentially!).

The drybrushing done, I went on to highlight the armour rims with bleached bone and painted the weaponry in red (with orange highlights). I'm pleased with the outcome of the melta gun - noticeably more black looking near the "nozzle" indicating recent usage. Further highlights included attention to the pipework, odd metallic bits and the pitted parts of the chest armour.

Don't gasp - but this miniature is also based! The small metal bits are off-clippings of plastic sprues and the cap of a glue tube painted up. The base is covered in fine black lode stone and some static grass has been added. I might drybrush the stones a bit more yet.

Points Evaluation of Kharn the Betrayer

Is Kharn worth while taking? Can a chaos marine lord of Khorne do any better? How do they compare?

Kharn is one of those characters that doesn't seem to see too much tabletop play these days. Without the 4th edition "assault consolidation in to other units", and a lack of full-blooded Khorne bloodletters, the World Eaters and Kharn are not the army that they once were. But let's have a look at how Kharn stacks up against other chaos lord builds anyway, in a similar way that I did a while ago with Typhus.

Points Comparison to a Chaos Lord.
The basic Chaos Lord comes in at a low 90 points cost. Kharn has a few things in the statistics department beyond a normal Chaos Lord: +1WS, +1S, +2A.

Firstly, let's give the Lord the Mark of Khorne (+1A) for 10 points. And because this is just an exercise in comparisons, let's give it to him again - 2 marks of Khorne for 20 points, for +2A (yes - it's illegitimate, but that's not the point). From the old codex, +1S cost 10 points as well. The increase in WS is a little harder to articulate a points value for, but let's just say its also 10 points.
Hence, our imaginary chaos lord costs 130 points to get the same statistics as Kharn.

We also need to make the Lord have the Khorne berzerker special rules (furious charge and so forth). I'm going to assume that this might be rolled in to the double mark of Khorne (indeed, it cost less in the old codex where the mark of Khorne came with the bezerker rules). Otherwise, it might cost say ...5 extra points? Kharn also needs an invulnerable save. This is a little bit like getting a mark of Tzeentch, so we'll add on 15 points. That brings the total to 145 points.

Now let's have a look at some wargear. Our chaos lord will need a plasma pistol (15 points), gorechild (probably in the region of 20+ points) and the blessings of Khorne (about 5 points). That takes us up to about 185+ points.

The only remaining question is how does "the betrayer" special rule alter this? I suspect that it is considered a disadvantage that could lower the points cost. If we say it lowers it by about 15 or 20 points, then we get back to Kharn's actual cost.

Summary.
Hence, Kharn is probably about points-value / worth neutral versus a (illegitimately constructed) chaos lord equivalent. Compare that to Typhus who is a clear bargain!

However, Kharn still has a great place in a number of close combat orientated builds and World Eater armies. He can really dish out some hurt, but the player must be careful to separate him from his attached squad prior to combat to avoid the worst side of his betraying nature.

Where does Chaos Marine Equipment Come From?

A little while ago, Alvin asked on Glued My Fingers where readers thought that Chaos Space Marine equipment might come from.

I thought I'd briefly follow that question up with a number of possible alternatives. Here's my (highly) non-exhaustive list.

(1) It's original. Some marines in the traitor legions still wear the same old power armour that they were issued with during (or prior to) the Horus Heresy.

(1b) It has been warped -- related to the above - some marine armour has been warped in the Eye of Terror (or similar locales), resulting in a bizarre appearance. Or, maybe the chaos powers have "materialized" some armour for a chaos sorcerer.

(2) Forged. The power armour has been forged somewhere - perhaps a forge world that a traitor legion has captured; perhaps by Iron Warrior legion artificers using raw materials (etc.).

(3) Stolen. Whether through raids or otherwise, the armour (or raw materials) has fallen in to traitor hands.

(4) Reclaimed / Recycled / Piecemeal. When Borther Gavatus fell, Brother Bubonicus couldn't let the only intact shoulder pad go to waste.

(5) Summoned / Magic! Slightly related to warped (above), some parts of the marines armour might be the result of the dark gods ... I'm thinking here specifically of Lucius' shrieking armour. (Also: remember those tables in the Realms of Chaos books for gifts of the gods?).

Anything else, anyone?

Random Musings

A few weeks ago, I entered a small (one day) tournament at a local gaming store. I took my Death Guard force with a couple of modifications - a second daemon prince of Nurgle with doombolt in place of the dreadnought; making all 3 plague marine squads identical (1 melta, 1 flamer, champ with power fist, rhino plus havoc launcher); and ditching the havoc launcher on the predator.

My opponents were necrons, marines and eldar. The missions were non-standard however. In addition to primary objectives (typically the same as the standard missions - i.e. killpoints and capturing objectives) there were also secondary objective (e.g. kill the opposing HQ worth the most points; get your HQ next to an objective, etc.). Whilst I got every primary, I lost out on many of the secondary objectives since I wasn't really ready for those surprises!! (That and my opponents were really good!) I might have to have a think about how to alter my list if I take part in such non-standard missions again. At least the upshot of the tournament is that I know my Death Guard build and tactics are effective for standard tournament level games!

Plague Marine Challenge Result

Thanks for all your entries and thoughts about the plague marine challenge from the start of the month - some very inventive entries there! I was particularly impressed by the imperial guard entries (Straken and plasma vets) - I've not read the new codex in that amount of depth yet, so was really interested to see that combination in action.

However, I think that the winner has to be erfunk with his triple flamer of Tzeentch entry! At 105 points, erfunk uses breath of chaos to fry the plague marines away in two rounds (almost one round in fact!). It has some poetic justice to it as well - who better than Tzeentch to see off Nurgle?

Its also made me think further about the devastating power of Breath of Chaos. Perhaps that is something that I should be taking on my daemon prince(s) when I know I'll be facing a mirror match. At any rate, I'm all excited about flamers of Tzeentch in daemon armies once again!