Summer

Dear Warpstone Flux Readers,

I'm taking my annual break from blogging over the Summer -- the Southern Hemispheric Summer that is. Therefore this will be my last posting until January 2010.

I hope you've all enjoyed the postings that have appeared here over the course of the year -- I've got a great deal of useful feedback from the FtW group. Many thanks!!!

To be clear: I'm not leaving blogging, I'm just going on holiday and taking a break!
See you next year and hope that you all have a happy and safe holiday season. :-)

Causing TOO MANY wounds?!

Today, I'd like to take a moment to talk about an issue that might affect a number of people's games. That is the issue of causing too many wounds in melee.

What? Causing too many wounds! Are you serious?

Why yes. Here's a situation that has happened to me, not once, but twice over this past year. Your opponent is fielding space marines or chaos space marines -- all with a 3+ save. On the other hand, you and I are fielding chaos daemons (example army list here). To be more precise, I'm going to talk about a squad daemonettes in particular, as this is the context that it happened in. Although I've talked about the relative merits of daemonettes before, the key to this particular situation is to note that daemonettes have the rending special ability and can therefore by-pass the marine's 3+ save with some fortuitous die rolling.

After having a lot (well ... a round or two, at any rate) of hand-to-hand combat, there are only a few miniatures left on both sides. Let's suppose that the opponent has two marines left, and the daemon player has several daemonettes remaining.

If our daemonettes manage to hit the marines a few times and then go on to cause 2 rending wounds, then there is assuredly only 1 possible result: 2 marine casualties.

But consider this. If our daemonettes cause an additional "normal" wound, then the two marines can allocate the wounds how they like. Unless my opponents and I have completely mis-read the hand-to-hand combat rules, the sensible opponent should allocate 2 rending wounds to one model (meaning 1 automatically dead marine) and the "normal" wound to the second marine. Chances are that the second marine will then make his ordinary 3+ save and survive. Hence by causing more wounds, we have placed ourselves in a worse situation than would have happened if we had only caused 2 full rending wounds....!

So as a chaos daemons player, I now tend to take daemonettes in slighter larger squads than I have been doing. If I'm going to cause more wounds than required, then I want to make sure that I cause many, many, many more wounds than are required rather than just a pesky extra wound or two. Perhaps a longer term solution would be for the next core rules re-write to explicitly talk of allocating "no-save" wounds before other wounds? (Although I'd be totally impressed if a GW staff writer was reading this and took notice!)

Shadow Sword: Part V. The Main Weapons

Having decided that I wanted to be able to field both the Shadow Sword and Storm Lord variants of this tank, I needed to be able to readily swap the main weapons around.With the Storm Lord, this is easy. The Vulcan Mega Bolter is able to slip in and out of the weapon housing with relative ease. For the Shadow Sword, however, the Volcano Cannon is not able to do so.

This is because the bit where the Volcano Cannon connects to the main weapon housing is supplied as a lock-in-place bit. To get around this, I have cut out a slot at the rear of the volcano cannon so that it can slide over the nub contained in the main weapon housing (visible just behind the magnet that holds the reversible hull bit in place). This should suffice to enable me to swap the main weapons over as required. However, I am considering further magnetizing the rear of the volcano cannon so that it doesn't sag due to gravity.

Plaguebearer with Icon and Blue Slime

Part of the plaguebearer command squad, the icon bearer often has a central role in my daemons armies. Being high toughness with the feel no pain special rule makes plaguebearers a high priority to hoist a chaos icon high. Indeed, since the new daemons codex came out, if I chose to field chaos icons, plaguebearers are my first pick in mixed armies to hold a chaos icon (although I do sometimes use a chaos icon with horrors of Tzeentch as well).

This plaguebearer was a bit of a painting experiment. As with the majority of the rest of my plaguebearers, I painted the plaguesword in a virulent, un-natural blue colour. To go with this blue-ick, I thought it might be neat if I could have some blue slime on the chaos icon, instead of the usual greens and yellows that traditionally go hand-in-hand with Nurgle miniatures.

The blue is achieved with a base coat of electric blue and a deep blue inking. This is complemented with some minor highlighting in places and a slimy-looking blue tongue in the plaguebearer's mouth, suggestive of the inner toxins that the minion of Nurgle has. I'm particularly pleased with the "glistening" quality that the blue slime has -- achieved without using varnish. The spokes of the icon were base coated in bleached bone, inked in chestnut and gently highlighted in gold in random places, suggestive of rusting and oxidation of a metal. The skulls (sort of embedded on to the metal spokes and attached by the blue slime!) were drybrushed in dheneb stone, inked black and highlighted progressively lighter.

The plaguebearer himself was done in traditional green colours: goblin green basecoat, green inking, green highlighting, gryphonne sepia washes of the legs, bum and face, highlighting in dheneb stone and cream on the face and a careful hand to pick out the eyeball and nails with a treble-zero size paint brush. The trickiest part was blending the horn in with the rest of the colour tones, this took a few washes of sepia and a bit of experimenting with different blends of bleached bone and dheneb stone.

As well as the plaguebearer, there is a mal-formed nurgling lurking on the base of this miniature (sitting on the foot of the plaguebearer in fact!). I use the word mal-formed as the Nurgling's arms are tentacles, he's missing an eye and he looks like he has a plaguebearer-style horn ... not quite the picture of a mini-Great Unclean One we're used to, but appropriately Nurglesque! The nurgling has received a deeper inking of green so that his skin colour is subtly different from the plaguebearers. The one good eye is picked out in white (again using the trusty treble zero paint brush) whilst there seems to be a stream of snot coming from one of his nostrils, here picked out in bleached bone. This close up also shows some of the sepia wash that was applied to the plaguebearer's legs: it looks a noticeably different tone of green / brown than some of the other regions, suggestive, perhaps, of wading through dirt.

Overall, I'm pleased with the result here. I was worried that the blue slime aspect would just look plain odd. But somehow, I think it blends in with the overall theme of the miniature very well by providing a good accent without dominating it.

Painted Night Lords Halberdier

The chaos space marine halberdier that I assembled a while ago has now been painted up in some Night Lords colours. Eventually, I'm thinking of having an entire squad of Night Lords like this one to form a chaos chosen elites squad.

The image here doesn't show the colours well -- the ultramarine blue that is highlighting the regal blue base colour of the shoulder pads (and elsewhere) seems to have a bright quality that the miniature doesn't really have in real life(!). That aside, most of the rest of the miniature's colours are a good fit to real life. I mainly modelled the colour scheme after the old chaos space marine codex: choosing gold for the highlight colour as well as the helmet. The halberd itself is one of the items that I decided to paint in an odd colour: frosty looking light blues and whites on the blade and metal portions. I'm not certain that I'll keep it that way: I may revert it back to metallic silver. Still, I've learned from this model and I'm hoping the next one will be even better (when I get around to it!).

Dynamic Necron

I have been exploring some "dynamic" conversions lately and got messing around with a plastic necron. I feel that Necrons have some of the most static poses in Warhammer 40,000, so I wanted to see if I could communicate a bit more dynamism by making as few conversions / clippings (etc.) as possible, without resorting to making the base the primary feature.

This is the result. The only conversion work that I've done here is to clip the right leg off at the hip and re-position it so that it stretches out behind the miniature (rather than the usual "two feet on the ground" necron pose). The second step was to glue the arms in an unusual place -- above the head. These two things combined results in a very dramatic pose. It positively looks like this necron is sprinting along! Either that, or he's just tripped himself up and is about to fall face first in to the dirt!

Gallery: Chariot of Tzeentch In Action

This is a bit of a "picture of the day" style post. Here we have my Chariot of Tzeentch atop a Khornate skull pile, deep in chaos wastelands. Enjoy :)

Shadow Sword: Part IV. Storm Lord Enabling

I want to get the most out of my Shadow Sword. To do this, I want to be able to configure it in multiple patterns: with many of the various side sponson options (etc.). But more significantly from a hobby point of view, I want to be able to configure it as both a Shadow Sword tank and a Storm Lord tank.

To be able to field the tank in both configurations, the critical piece of plastic that I needed to think about was the one that attaches either at the back of the main weapon housing (see picture to the left), or at the front of it. This bit is reversible. On one side, there is a metal-like standing platform for troopers to use stubber guns from the rear of the tank (in the Storm Lord configuration -- as seen in the upper left image), or when reversed it spaces the front of the hull and the main weapon housing (see image below).

My solution has been to magnetize this critical bit of plastic, along with the main weapon housing. The reversible bit has three magnets on it -- two one one end and one on the other end.
This arrangement provides a strong stable link for the reversible plastic bit at both ends of the main weapon housing. In addition, I also glued further magnets to the appropriate parts of the main hull (front and rear) to provide stability at both ends of the reversible bit.

I think this part of the Shadow Sword has been the trickiest to figure out so far. I've now only got the main weapons to take care of and some additional sponsons to build, ...and then I'm essentially done with the construction and ready to paint the beast.

Statistics / Gaming Note about Plasma Blastguns and Destructors

Plasma blastguns and plasma destructors are typically (but not exclusively) mounted on titans. They are the superheavy variety of the not-so-humble plasma gun and plasma pistol.

Blastgun Statistics.
Both superheavy plasma weapons can fire with two different profiles, depending upon the user's tastes. The first profile is known as "rapid". For the blastgun and you get two S8, AV2, 7" blasts. The second, known as "full", gets you one S10, AV2, 10" blast. Additionally, should it actually matter in Apocalypse, the latter has a larger range than the former.

But what I want to comment on today is the mathematics behind these two profiles. If you do not want to hunt after two very separate targets, then it is always preferable to choose the "full" profile. This is because the area of effect is proportional to the radius squared. In the full profile, we get pi x (10)^2, which is about 314 square inches. In the rapid profile, we get 2 times pi x (7)^2, = 2 times pi x 49 = 309 square inches.

So not only does shooting two separate shots mean that you get a lower strength, you also drop a few square inches of effect!

But then again, let me immediately note that in the insanity that is apocalypse, this shouldn't matter too much!, but its just something to be aware of. (You'll also note that I've avoided speaking of the relative merits of the Melta Cannon versus the plasma blastgun!).

Plasma Destructor.
On the other hand, the warlord battle titan mounted plasma destructor is able to fire two 10 inch blasts in full mode, and three 7 inch blasts in rapid mode. The difference between the two is a whopping 166 square inches -- this is much more significant than the plasma blastgun variety (should you be fielding a warlord titan!). For me, it always has to be the full mode here, assuming of course that the battlefield is jam-packed to apocalyptic proportions.

Lash of Submission Armies in Decline?

Here's a (not very random) question (given BoLS recent article on the state of the metagame) for everyone out there: are you seeing less and less of "Lash of Submission" type armies?

I am, and I wanted to know if you are as well?

...For the un-initiated, a Lash of Submission army is a Chaos Space Marine army build that seeks to exploit the Slaaneshi psychic power of the same name. Usually, there are two daemon princes (or sorcerers) who use this ability for multiple reasons: to bring opponent's squads out of heavy cover, bunch them together to make sure a big whopping splat template hits the lot of them (e.g. from a supporting vindicator), push them further away to deny them the charge (and ensure one's own troops are the ones doing the charging), and all sorts of similar shenanigans. Typically, the chaos player will back this tactic up with a few plague marine squads to sit on top of objectives when required.

When was the last time your saw, or ran, a Lash of Submission army? Is this a local, or more global phenomenon?

Winners of the November Army List Challenge

It's a tie!! For the first time in the history of these monthly army list contests, the final result is a tie. The dual winners are Gamers World and Suneokun with 36% of the vote each! Congratulations to both of you!!!

Gamers World had Space Wolves grey hunters in drop pods with a rune priest and long fangs, whilst Suneokun had an insane Guard option to try to get as many objectives as possible! Great way to exploit a loophole in the scenario :)
And finally, it would be remiss of me not to mention that Cawshis Clay claimed a very respectable 28% of the vote with his Tau rescue and recovery force.

I think this will be the last army list challenge of 2009 as I will probably be going away in December. The Warpstone Flux Army List Challenge will return in 2010...

LotR: The Shadow Lord -- A Possible Lesser Daemon Miniature

I entered this miniature in a local painting contest. He did well, but not enough to claim the prize!

The miniature is one of the newer LotR ring-wraiths: The Shadow Lord. Although it wouldn't be allowed in tournament play, I thought that the ring-wraiths would make absolutely splendid generic lesser daemons for a chaos space marine army that has no overall allegiance to the major chaos powers.

The painting was fairly straight forward: following a base coat of regal blue, the miniature was washed heavily (darker toward the lower portions of the cape) and highlighted subtly to lighter tones of blue higher up. A few parts of the cape are picked out in space wolf grey. The silver metallic parts are painted in boltgun metal, washed in black and highlighted in a very thin white line. The bronze colour metals were base coated in shining gold, inked with chestnut and highlighted in bleached bone. The more leather areas were done in bleached bone and washed darker using sepia. Finally, the sword followed a wet blend technique that I first piloted on a bloodletter who was wielding a frost brand.

The base (made from the citadel basing materials box) was painted in a desert colour scheme which does much to complement the colder feeling that the wraith exudes. Overall, I'm very fond of this miniature and pleased with the way he came out.

Battle Summary: Death Guard vs. Death Guard! (767 points)

This was a fun, yet peculiar game that I wanted to share with you. Basically, I loaned out some of my miniatures to an opponent who didn't have too many points worth of marines. We ended up deciding that my opponent would call all of his marines = death guard, so there were plenty of "count as" marines on his side of this table.

Both of the army lists were identical:

HQ = Daemon Prince with Wings, Mark of Nurgle, and doom bolt (160 pts)

Troops 1 = Plague champion with power fist along with 6 other plague marines (1 melta gun, 1 flamer) in a rhino with a havoc launcher (266 pts)

Troops 2 = Plague champion with power fist along with 6 other plague marines (1 melta gun, 1 flamer) in a rhino with a havoc launcher (266 pts)

Heavy Support = 1 Obliterator (75 pts)

The game board was only 4 ft x 4 ft as the points value was rather low. The scenery was a desert world, with a few ruins scattered around the place (4+ cover save).

The mission was annihilation. That's six killpoints each side.

Early Turns.
The set up is by table quarters, and we both set up with one troops squad in cover of some ruins and the other rhino hiding behind it (my opponent is emulating my set-up almost perfectly). The HQs start behind cover, with no line of sight and the obliterators are reserved.

The early turns feature a number of volleys from the havoc launchers which ultimately cause a wound each on each daemon prince. The rhinos in the cover continue to sit there whilst the other rhinos charge toward each other ... and the lurking daemon princes.

Middle Turns.
My daemon prince tears down his rhino. His obliterator comes in to play and destroys my rhino in exchange. Both plague marine squads get out and rapid fire one another. In the subsequent turn, they engage in melee. His daemon prince proves to be the difference and finishes my squad off. Meanwhile, my daemon prince slays the obliterator.

My obliterator comes in to play and destroys his daemon prince, whilst his surviving plague marine squad rapid fires my daemon prince back to the warp. A few choice plasma shots from my obliterator finishes his surviving squad.

Late Turns.
The havoc launcher from my opponent's rhino that is still in cover finishes off my otherwise pesky obliterator. At this stage, there are only two rhinos (plus their squads) left in the game.

We make a "gentleman's agreement" at this stage -- there will be no more shooting (too many of Nurgle's good guys have already perished and Nurgle wants survivors). Therefore, the game will come down to the two rhinos attempting to ram each other.

Despite some neat moves on turns 5 and 6, turn 7 sees my opponent execute a perfect ram maneuver to seal the victory by 1 kill point ... my rhino is smoking between his rhino and a hard place!

It was a fun conclusion to what was a brilliant game!

Noise Marine Assembley

As well as a number of other concurrent projects, I'm also building up a small number (six!) of noise marines. This one is the first that I've assembled.

The major issue I've found with assembling these guys are the sonic weaponry. Simply put, they don't fit snugly enough to the chaos space marine's abdomen. On this miniature, I've had to file away the belt buckle to near-oblivion. Even with that done, there are some micro-issues with the pose. The miniatures right arm (on the left hand side of the picture!) doesn't connect smoothly with the torso -- it is at an angle to the torso despite my efforts to file away the belt buckle and everything else that might be pushing it away from the body and causing this. Secondly, although the opposite arm sits flush with the torso, it is located a bit further back than I would have expected for a standard noise marine.

As a result, I'm going to be doing a little bit of green stuff work around the shoulders of this noise marine to correct for the sonic blaster not fitting more flush with the body. I'm going to try to choose front torso's a bit more carefully now that I know the problems with assembling noise marines!

Can Noise Marines Hurt in Vacuo?

Go with me here ...

Noise marine weaponry fires, well, noisy shots that literally tear apart their targets by vibration.

Noise requires a medium to travel through.

Therefore, if one is fighting in power armour in hard vacuum, can Noise Marines actually do any ranged damage? :-)

Or do their weaponry have a psychic component to them as well that would still deal damage in vacuo?

Poll Open for the November Army List Challenge

The entries are in and the poll is now open! Whose army list is the most effective that also best tackles the theme of the November Army List Challenge? Here are the entries:

1. Suneokun -- Insane Guard Option

Primaris Psyker - 70
Primaris Psyker - 70
Plt #1 HQ, 2melta, 2GL - 60
6 Squads with melta plus Commissar with 2 powerswords - 415
7 Chimeras - 385
Plt #2 HQ, 2melta, 2GL - 60
6 Squads with melta plus commissar with powersword- 405
7 Chimeras - 385

Total 1850 (6-14 killpoints depending on setup)

This armylist exploits a loophole. Above you state that a returning unit will snatch an objective on a 4+ if not contested or in combat. You didn't say you could only take one!

The 14 Chugs motor forward and cause havoc with all those S6 Multilaser and heavy flamers. The Infantry HQ (with a Psyker each) lay down some serious S6 hits (and melta too) from inside the Chugs. The guards squads are organised in anticipation of the opponent, with a core of two large commissared uber units.

One shields, the other joins up 3 plus objectives and then goes home. The commissar grants 'stubborn' so any close combat unit will be tarpitted.

The Chugs don't give away killpoints, but can drop off a squad to 'return' for far away units.
Against close combat opponents the Chugs plus guardsmen will simply attrition the opponent to death and focus on his troops.
NB: Reason for being there. Don't want to be, this is a last ditch evacuation strategy by the PDF ... who have been led to the markers/anomalies by their psykers.


2. Cawshis Clay -- Tau Rescue and Recovery Force (Hostile LZ lv3):

Crisis Shas'el TLMP, PR, Stims, HWTLock
-2 BG w/ TL MP, Flamer
x3 8 FWs w/ Shas, Devilfish w/ SMS, DP, MT, TA
x2 20 Kroot Warriors
8 Pathfinders w/ Devilfish w/ SMS, DP, MT, TA
SkyRay w/ SMS, DP, TA, MT
x2 Hammerheads w/ Rails, MT, DP, TL

The Tau recovery operation on this dying planet depends on 2 things: Devilfish units devoted to capturing or contesting objectives and massive blocks of Kroot to grab 1 or 2 objectives before going off world.

The Pathfinders and Heavy Support/HQ will work to destroy, disable and slow down any enemy APCs. Markerlight support will lead in railgun barrages to drive the enemy off key objectives.

As the Tau doctrine is to conserve (Tau) life, I imagine that the kroot will be expendable in the early turn infiltrating obj grab (since each unit has a 50% chance of porting and spreading out enough to grab objectives). They will take heavy fire and then my Armored Core will appear and fire back.

Least that's the plan.


3. Gamers World -- Space Wolves:

HQ
Rune priest with term armour, wolf tooth necklace and wolf tail talisman, chooser of the slain, master of runes, saga of the beast slayer- 205
Troops

10 grey hunters x3 with 2 flamers and drop pod- 555
10 grey hunters x3 with 2 melta guns and drop pod- 570

Heavy support.

6 long fangs, 5 missile launchers- 115

Yea, I come in way under points but th idea is still there. When placing the objectives I make sure to place some of them close together (seven inches or there abouts), then when i drop pod down I cover the objectives with my grey hunters and teleport back up, the rune priest and grey hunters provide cover and defence (with powers like tempests wrath and murderous hurricane) before hopefully leaping up into my strike cruiser. so basically I drop down pic up something then get back up there.

The aesthetic is that we have found a chapter relic and need to retrieve it before the planet goes BOOM! so we send down a pick-up froce accompanied by the man who found the chapter relic (the rune priest) and some guys that have been operating on the planet in covert for some time (long fangs). Anyway. i know my list is under points but comment away on it!

Two Blue Horrors, One Scenic Base

Where once was one, now there is two.
Where once was pink, now there is blue.
++ Canticle of Change, Codex: Chaos Daemons

If, like me, you recall the heady days of Realms of Chaos books, then you may also recall that pink horrors have an unusual magical final line of defence. When the die, they simply bubble, melt, and split into two fresh (but a little more sulky) blue horrors.

Codex: Daemons has a few words to say about this when describing horrors of Tzeentch. They specifically say that the splitting in to two will never be represented on the battlefield for sanity sake! And I fully support this having played the Realms of Chaos version!

The Codex goes further though. Instead of actually having any splitting rules for horrors, it suggests that one might like to add two blue horrors to a single round base to add variation to any pink horror squad. I took this idea very literally, and this is what I came up with.
Here, two blue horrors that were formerly on separate bases have been attached to a single scenic resin base. Originally, I was worried that such a miniature would look very crowded. But the complete opposite is true. The miniature looks just fine. And when used with a larger pack of horrors, it does indeed add significant variety to the squad. And it also looks cool -- my opponents really like checking this miniature out!

Strigoi

A collector's item from the Vampire Counts range of Warhammer Fantasy. I've always liked the look of this model and when I saw it used in a conversion in an old blog, I knew I'd have to track one down!

This model has been painted using reds and oranges as the theme colours; befitting a vampire who's had a good drink lately. Some of the model has been drybrushed to give it tones and highlights, whilst other parts have been overpainted and blended to a higher degree. The variant painting styles seem to have worked nicely with each other to give a pleasing effect overall.

The contrast of the red flesh tones with the steel-like claws and white teeth and eyes is also a neat result. This is in contrast to the muted leathery tones of the rope and clothing that the Strigoi is wearing. This is one vampire not to bump in to on a dark night in isolated rural areas...

Possessed Chaos Space Marine on Resin Base

Perhaps some folks don't regularly field them on the battlefield (there are some -- good on you!), but my word -- the bits that make up possessed chaos space marines are sure good for conversion purposes!

I glued together this possessed chaos space marine purely to see how dynamic one would look. My intent is to probably save most of the other bits for conversion work. The marine is based on a back-2-basix resin base and has a 100m sprinting pose about him. One curious feature about this pose is the length to which the left arm dangles below the feet -- he's a very mutated marine! I'm looking forward to painting this one up!

Reminder for the November Army List Challenge Scenario

Just a quick reminder that the November army list challenge is on and still open for entries for another week. Details can be found here. Can you beat Suneokun's list? Good luck!

Army List: 1500 points of Khorne and Nurgle CSM

I've been toying about with a Khorne plus Nurgle Chaos Space Marine army list recently. I wanted something that was playable, fun, but remained mildly competitive (without putting too much hurt on newbies!). Here's the list that I came up with:

Chaos Lord in Terminator Armour, Mark of Khorne, Chain Fist, Combi-Melta, Icon (155 points)

4 Terminators, Icon of Khorne, 1 combi melta, 1 heavy flamer 2 chain fists (190 points)

7 Plague Marines, including 1 plague champion with a power fist, 1 melta, 1 flamer, 1 icon, with Rhino with havoc launcher (271 points)

7 Plague Marines, including 1 plague champion with a power fist, 1 melta, 1 flamer, 1 icon, with Rhino with havoc launcher (271 points)

8 Khorne Berzerkers, including 1 skull champion with a power fist, 1 icon, with Rhino with havoc launcher (263 points)

5 lesser daemons (65 points)

5 lesser daemons (65 points)

5 lesser daemons (65 points)

2 Obliterators (150 points)

Total = 1495.

The general idea here is to "take a chance" and deep strike the HQ along with his retinue of terminators somewhere useful on the board and use them as a summoning base for the obliterators and (some) lesser daemons as they become available. Meanwhile, at least one of the plague marine squads will hang back (in an objective based game) whilst the Berzerkers go forth to tackle and problems that arise. The lesser daemons are used in a dual role: back up for other squads (as required) and late-game objective contesting and capturing squads (since they're troops). With 6 troops selections, this build doesn't have much of an excuse for not covering as many of the objectives in a game as possible.

This list is one that works very well ... or not at all. I've been toying with converting this in to a dual Slaanesh-Nurgle army list by including some noise marines to provide a much superior heavy fire support element that is well matched to the obliterators and thinking about having a predator in place of some of the lesser daemons.

Chaos Marine Halberdier

This is a fellow that I constructed just recently to explore how well the relatively new warhammer fantasy chaos warrior metal pole-arm weapons blend with chaos marine parts.

The answer is rather well...!

The glove size and the halberd itself are a good match to the chaos marine's scale. It takes a bit of work to chop up the plastic arms to a good length and the metal glove part (which would ordinarily plug in to a fantasy miniature). Once done, I pinned the two together and assembled the rest is the usual fashion (including a metal melta gun here!). My plan is to use this miniature as part of my plotted Night Lords Chosen squad at some point in the future. I intend to have each miniature (apart from the standard bearer which is already assembled) wield one of these nasty looking blades! The base needs some attention first, though, before I get around to painting him up.

Painted Hive Tile

Having assembled the hive city tile from Planetary Empires, it didn't take too long at all to get painted up to table-top ready quality. The aim with this tile was to make it blend in with other Mighty Empires tiles that I have already painted. Hence it needed to follow a broadly green-ish theme. This is not an ash waste-land or a desert region!After undercoating black, I painted the main hive city in boltgun metal and the outskirts of the city in a combination of goblin green blended to graveyard earth brown. The towers were inked black and the grassy regions inked brown. After drying, portions of the hive city's towers were picked out in silver once more, but not all of them -- I wanted to suggest that some of the structures were newer than other bits. The "windows" (if indeed, that is what the are!) were picked out in skull white and overpainted yellow. The pipelines at the base were done in red to contrast this.

Meanwhile, the grassy areas were drybrushed using a blend of dheneb stone (principally to thicken and lighten the other colours) with green and yellow. I'm pleased with the overall result here and will be using it with my other Mighty Empire tiles regularly.

Planetary Empires: Hive Tile Sprue and Assembly

The hive city tile is a special order piece from Games Workshop online. The tile comes on a smallish size sprue that has a number of different components on it; ranging from the tile base itself to various layers and the towers of the hive, as illustrated below.
The assembly of the tile is straight forward, but I would caution readers to dry fit (i.e. fit the bits together to see where they go!) before any application of glue. Some of the spires of the hive are similar and it isn't immediately obvious which tower should be placed where. There's a danger that a smaller tower will be placed where a larger-based one is intended to go, meaning that when the larger tile needs to be glued in to place, there is nowhere appropriate left for it.

The hive itself is built in a wedding-cake style: one layer placed on top of another, and capped off by the hive's towering spires. Having glued it together (below), I feel that there might be some room to add a couple of bits of greenstuff to tidy up some of the flat wedding-cake portions that aren't covered by the upper tiers. I'm looking forward to painting this one!

November Army List Challenge

Okay - its the start of the month again, and its time for the next monthly army list challenge on Warpstone Flux! This one is played around a new scenario... let me explain...

Overview of the Scenario.
The star that this planet is orbiting is liable to go supernova any moment soon! When it does, every bit of biomass on the surface of the planet will perish and the planet will get wiped out by the resultant shock wave. Luckily for you, your strike cruiser is orbiting at a safe distance away from the planet and stands ready to teleport your army back on board to safety. Your army is presently on the surface of the planet though. They are racing to recover artifacts before the star goes supernova.

The game starts with 9 (yes, nine!) objectives on a 6x4 ft board with random scenery. The objectives are placed alternately by each player during set up and cannot be closer than 7 inches to each other.

At the end of every game turn, roll a d6 for each unit. On a 4+, they can elect to teleport back to the orbiting cruiser (their friends have succeeded in getting a teleport lock on them!). If this option is taken, they are removed from the board and the controlling player scores one point. If the unit is also fully controlling (not contesting!) an objective (i.e. no enemy unit within 3 inches of it) and is not engaged in melee, then that objective will teleport back with them as well -- score one further point.

Whenever the game ends, the star goes supernova and everything remaining on the board perishes. The winner is the one with the most points (i.e. living units that have teleported back and objectives).

Rules.
(1) Design a 1850 points (standard mission) army from any codex to collect the objectives, engage the enemy and teleport out of there!
(2) Special Rule for this scenario: The maximum number of killpoints for your army is 14. This is to ensure that each player cannot outscore their opponent simply by choosing more units!
(3) Post your army lists as a comment to this posting and suggest why they're well suited to this mission and scenario in particular. Why is you army on a planet that is about to take a close up view of a supernova?!
(4) On Nov 14th 2009, I'll start a voting poll that will be open for 1 week to vote for what Warpstone Flux readers 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) Winner will be tallied and announced on Nov 21st.

Remember, the real aim of these challenges is to help others design effective army lists that are both themed and effective. There are no prizes beyond honour and kudos!

Must-have units: Plague Marines and Plaguebearers

In what promises to be another great post, Ron at From the Warp is putting together a list of the FtW group's must-have units. Since Warpstone Flux is mostly about Chaos, I wanted to give two choices: one for the chaos daemons codex and one from the chaos space marines codex.

Firstly to the chaos space marines. My must have unit there are plague marines. For my long time followers, this probably isn't too much of a surprise to you! Their survivability is legendary for their points costs. I've talked extensively about their advantages, thinking of them as terminator-kin, various special weapon set-ups, and firepower draw-backs. Their utility to the codex has been shown time and again on the battlefield for me, in numerous roles. One of their chief roles is to "objective grab" -- they persist for such a long time that they're hard to pass by without thinking of them in that role.

Continuing with the general Nurgle theme, in the daemons codex, I usually always take plaguebearers. They form part of my first-wave and usually take an icon with them to ensure that second wave daemons have something to deep-strike off when they come in to play. Their survivability (in common to the plague marines) is very good. With a chaos instrument, they can tar-pit and bog down opposition units for turns on end. In addition, they have poisoned attacks which means they can take on monstrous creatures and stand a chance of both doing damage to them and bogging them down for a few turns. On the negative side, they are on the slow side with regards to movement. But with a reasonable deep strike, they probably don't need to be moved around too much anyway.

I'm looking forward to reading about everyone else's choice!

Chaos Objective

This is one of a small number of chaos objectives that I built a while ago for use in games. I can't say it's very original in design or execution, but it does fulfil a dual role in both of my chaos space marine and chaos daemons armies.

It is principally an icon taken from the new plastic bloodletters sprue, affixed to a small circular base, and given a (very) rough paint job with a chaos star icon. It works, it is functional (i.e. it doesn't tip over readily) and represents the theme of my armies well. However, I'm now looking for better ideas for chaos objectives. I'm thinking along the lines of a roughly carved stone (styrene) with a chaos symbol etched in to it -- a little like what was depicted in the old Realms of Chaos books. I'll have to get around to it at some point! Anybody got any further suggestions as to what might work well for objectives in both daemons and chaos marine armies?

Purple Daemonette

This daemonette follows a purple colour scheme that was commenced with a basecoat of hormagaunt purple followed by liberal inking in a blended purple and black ink. The flesh areas were then shaded progressively lighter to an almost grey colour -- this can be seen clearly on the forehead region which really doesn't look as purple as the bulk of the rest of the miniature.

The clothes were basecoated in goblin green and inked a deep green colour in the recesses of the folds, before highlighting back to a tone lighter than goblin green on the raised portions. The green gives a jagged contrast to the purple tones of the flesh (not quite as bad as blue and green!) but still suitable for a daemonette of Slaanesh. The armoured portions were based around boltgun metal silvers and highlighted to skull white levels around the rim. The lining of the skull white is probably a bit too thick; I need to get a new fine detail 000 paint brush. The final details included adding dots to the eyes and completing the claws in a two-toned cream and white combination.

The base of the miniature is simply plasticard cut in to a regular shape and painted up to look like a street scene.

Golden Demon Next Year

Well, I didn't make the final cut for Golden Demon this year with my various entries (plaguebearers, great unclean one, lava screamer, a bloodletter and a LotR wraith that I've not posted about yet!).

Next year I'll be more prepared! :)

However, one thing that I did notice was the relative number of entries in each category. As I might have expected, the most frequent entry was in the single miniature category for both fantasy and 40k.

What was a bit of a surprise to me was the scarcity of the following: 40k squads, 40k monsters, fantasy regiments, and Lord of the Rings categories.

Although also few in number, the duel and large model categories were fantastically well painted.

I'm not sure whether this is noticed elsewhere on the planet, but it certainly indicates that (e.g.) Lord of the Rings might be moderately easier to get placed in than others?

Group Photo: 1500 points of Mixed Daemons

Following on from my army list posted yesterday, here's the big group photo of my mixed daemons horde!

At the front and centre are the Herald of Tzeentch on a Chariot with a bunch of screamers.

To the left of them are the Khorne contingent: a Herald riding a Juggernaut surrounded by bloodletters with wicked lava-like hellblades.

To the right, are the putrid Nurgle elements: a Great Unclean One surrounded by plaguebearers.

At the back and centre, we have a large Soul Grinder, lurking in the same way that skyscrapers don't.

To the left are more Tzeentch elements: this time a squad of pink horrors with the Changeling.

To the right are the Slaanesh daemonettes cavorting around a daemon prince.

Army List: 1500 points of Mixed Daemons

This is the mixed daemons army list that I've been playing around with recently. It consists of all four of the major powers in (approaching) equal quantities. I've taken it to tournaments and had reasonable results with it. It's not supposed to be "killer" or "top tier", but it is competitive without being overwhelming to newbies. It is somewhat changed from my usual "friendly" style list. I've linked to my random tactical thoughts on a couple of the choices that I've made, for reference. Comments welcome!

HQ:
Great Unclean One of Nurgle, Cloud of flies (165 points)
Herald of Tzeentch on a Chariot, with Bolt of Tzeentch (95 points)
Herald of Khorne on Juggernaut (105 points)

TROOPS:
11 bloodletters of Khorne (176 points)
11 plaguebearers of Nurgle, icon of chaos, instrument of chaos (195 points)
11 daemonettes of Slaanesh, transfixing gaze (159 points)
9 pink horrors of Tzeentch, chaos icon, bolt, The Changeling (195 points)

FAST ATTACK:
5 screamers of Tzeentch (80 points)

HEAVY SUPPORT:
Daemon prince with flight and iron hide (170 points)
Soul grinder of chaos with phlegm (160 points)

Total = 1498 points.

Footnote: My preferred first wave of deep-strikers are the Herald of Tzeentch, the plaguebearers of Nurgle, the daemonettes of Slaanesh, the soul grinder and the screamers of Tzeentch.

Finished Soul Grinder

It took a while to paint (and then to photograph and post!), but here is the finished soul grinder.As can be seen, I've generally stuck to the Khorne themed Soul Grinder throughout the painting scheme. I started with the legs some time ago in a red colour with magma / lava like highlights. Having inked the torso of this chap, I then set about gently highlighting each ridge line progressively lighter. The brightest tone on the torso reaches about blazing orange.

For the (pneumatic?) piping, I went with a contrasting green colour that can be seen at the joints of the soul grinder. The sword follows the bloodletter style of my daemons in a fiery manner. The texture of the sword doesn't take too well to this painting style though -- I had trouble trying to get this looking right. Other small details included the facial region (eyes, mouth, etc.) and highlighting the black claws with boltgun metal and silver colours to suggest long service wear and tear.

Overall, this has been a good project and one that I would repeat. However, if and when I get another soul grinder, I shall probably use a completely different paint scheme, just for variation.

Result of the October Army List Challenge

...And the winner from this month's Army List Challenge is: Heinz!

Congratulations mate! Good win with your Nurgle plus Daemonic Possession Death World list!

Not a Golden Daemon Finalist

Having done well in painting competitions this year, I thought that I'd give Golden Demon a go for the first time ever. I've entered in a number of categories and the first round is already over.

This Great Unclean One of Nurgle got cut at the first hurdle, however.

Still, I've got a number of other entries left in the competition. I'll find out next weekend whether they'll survive the next hurdle. Until then, I'll keep their identities under wraps...

Shadow Sword: Part III. Hull and Sponson

The Shadow Sword is starting to really take shape now, after a little bit of a hold. In this update, I wanted to show how it is coming together. The lower portion of the main hull has been glued in to place with the two side tracks and I'm beginning to see the shape of the final piece.Of particular note are the chaos star symbols on the front of the tank (just below the lights on either side of the track; and on the central front bumper region). They replace the usual double-headed eagle of the Imperium the are usually moulded on in these locations. To get rid of the imperial markings, I used sand paper in the end! Yes, I know it is somewhat crude, but it did the job in next to no time. The only issue was to try not to rub off the small bolts whilst eliminating the eagles. This was achieved by cutting up a very small bit of sand paper and wrapping it around the tongs of a pair of pliers and carefully rubbing the right place. Although one or two of the small bolts did get rubbed half-way down, I think the job is reasonable. The finish on the sanded surface is somewhat rough, but I believe that the glued on chaos stars will hide the roughness when combined with the paint job. Indeed, some roughness might even be desirable -- a direct effect of heretics scratching off the Imperial symbols in favour of chaotic ones!

Also in the image is the first of four side sponsons that I'm building. This particular one is the heavy bolter variety, and like the side armour: it is magnetized to attach to the side. The sponsons are rather tricky to glue together such that they can still freely pivot. This particular one has seized up, despite my best efforts. It can still track up and down, but just not left and right! I will be adding the las cannon to the top of the sponson at a later date. I'm not sure whether to assemble a pair of the other three as flamers or not; I'll have to think about it.

A Few More Tables

Some additional tables that I managed to get some photos of from Gen Con earlier in the year.
The first one is a basic board, but consisted of a number of exquisite looking buildings that my photo doesn't do the correct justice to. There were small notices on the sides of these buildings that warned local citizens against mutants and told them of the signs to look out for!
The second one, picture above, looked very Khorne-inspired: a dark and brooding table that oozed with skulls ready for the skull throne. Enjoy!

Plotting Chaos Chosen Load-out

I'm trying to come up with a competitive load-out for some chaos chosen that I'm thinking of assembling. I want to use the Night Lord's standard bearer in the squad and (as a consequence) have the entire squad as Night Lords.

With Chaos Chosen, my thoughts are that their equipment depends critically upon what battlefield role one wants to choose for them. Since it's Night Lords, I wanted a squad that are able to significantly disrupt the back lines of the enemy. Hence their mission is to infiltrate and cause havoc to any heavy support choice.

I started thinking that I'd go down the shooting route (as opposed to the more expensive close combat route) and therefore, I needed meltas for destroying tanks and massed fire for taking out embedded devastator-like squads.

Here's what I came up with:

8 chaos chosen, including 1 aspiring champion with power fist, 1 icon of chaos glory, 2 melta guns, 1 plasma gun, 1 flamer (229 points)
Dedicated Rhino transport with havoc launcher and combi-melta (60 points)

Its slightly expensive, but gives flexibility from the turn that the infiltrate on (i.e. the havoc launcher), and then can get close up to use the melta guns (including on the rhino) to get rid of pesky heavy vehicles, and perhaps tap plasma or flamer hits as required. If they get out to go for a close assault, the champion has a power fist to help out and the icon will (potentially, depending on the rest of the army) bring down lesser daemons and obliterators. Maybe the plasma isn't required for this kind of build? Regardless, its very balanced and a distinct early threat that can draw fire away from the rest of the army.

October Army List Challenge: Poll Open

The poll is now open to vote on which army list should win the October army list challenge. The theme for this month's challenge was to design a 1000 point army to claim objectives on a death world (automatic S2 hit every game turn to infantry and automatic glancing hit to vehicles as well). Which list wins? Time to decide!

List 1. Heinz:
Auto S2 + glancing hits are negated best by Nurgle and Daemonic Possesion!! ^^

Daemon Prince (165)
Mo Nurgle
Wings
Nurgle's Rot

1st Plague Marine Squad (231)
Champion w/ PF, Combi-Flamer & Icon
Melta Gun x2

1st Rhino (70)
Daemonic Possession
Dozer Blade
Combi-Plasma

2nd Plague Marine Squad (226)
Champion w/ PF, Combi-Melta & Icon
Melta Gun
Flamer

2nd Rhino (70)
Daemonic Possession
Dozer Blade
Combi-Plasma

Defiler (150)
Heavy Flamer
DCCW

Obliterator (75)

T6 on the Prince means no wounds from noxious fumes. Rather, his rot will stack nicely with the fumes to thin out hordes. Prince should try to assault any low T infantry.

The Plague Marine squads are general purpose squads with a mix of melta and flame weapons. The short range is not a liabilty due to the low visibility. Should be able to handle anything. T5 + FnP should minimise any casulties from the noxious fumes.

The Rhinos have possession to ignore the auto glancing hits. The dozer blades will be useful for crashing through the dense terrain. Combi-Plasma on the rhino because overheating doesn't affect vehicles. No chance is still better than the minimal chance on plague marines. Also, it's cheaper than paying 15 points a pop! Not likely to need many AP2 shots because of the plentiful coversaves and since there won't be many of any targets that require AP2 love like terminators or other FnP models.

Defiler has battle cannon to shoot in the rare case there is LOS for such range. Otherwise, it's job is to assault anything that has powerweapons or such that would negate the plague marines' advantages. Heavy Flamer will be useful in the dense terrain. Of course it is also possessed to ignore the auto glancing hit!

The obliterator teleports in guided by one of the personal icons to where it's needed. Slow and Purposeful means it isn't really slowed by all the difficult terrain. It's 2+ save and being in reserve should limit it's vulnerability to the fumes.

It's low model count won't be a problem in dense terrain as it favours superior quality rather than numbers. You just can't really bring the numbers to bear effectively.

This list is also able to be quite fast with transports, winged prince and a fleeting walker. With it's smaller size and manuverability, it should be able to concentrate it's focus to butcher more numerous opponents piecemeal.


List 2. Suneokun:
Tyranids ... Right at home!

Broodlord (flesh hooks, feeder tendrils, toxin sacs, plus Retinue of 8 with implant attack, toxin sacs and flesh hooks (280)

Genestealers (8) - flesh hooks and toxin sacs (160)

Genestealers (8) - flesh hooks and toxin sacs (160)

2 Carnifex (T7, I2, W5, Tail Scythe, spineback, Crushing Claws, Barbed Strangler, Toxin Sacs, Tusked) 404

Total 1004

The Genestealers are the only ones hit by the toxic atmosphere (hence the toxin sacs are more of a theme than anything) as well as the additional S5 attacks are helpful against the other 'tough lists' arriving on planet.

The short visual range means that the uber-Carnies and Broodlord can get into combat ... with spinebanks/flesh hooks all round they'll hit first and rending/monstrous strength will negate many FNP/Armour saves. As a bonus the retinue have inplant attacks with their feeder tendrilled boss's reroll to hit - meaning monstrous creatures/characters should watch out. Just two 6's will kill much of anything with no save (beyond invulnerable)...

The Stealer Horde holds things up (everything gets move through cover) while the Carnies pile in to finish the job!

With a high chance of a 12" charge - why'd you bring melta?

Toxin Atmosphere Planet of Death - who else do you think lives here?

The Nids.


List 3. Big D:
1000 Pts - Eldar Roster

Troops: Wraithguard (11#, 381 pts)
10 Wraithguard @ 381 pts (Fearless; Wraithsight; Wraithcannon x10; (pp.46 & 62 Eldar))
1 Spiritseer (Warlock) (Psyker; Fleet; Spiritseer Upgrade; Rune Armour; Shuriken Pistol; Witchblade; (p.27-28 & p.60 Eldar))

Troops: Wraithguard (11#, 381 pts)
10 Wraithguard @ 381 pts (Fearless; Wraithsight; Wraithcannon x10; (pp.46 & 62 Eldar))
1 Spiritseer (Warlock) (Psyker; Fleet; Spiritseer Upgrade; Rune Armour; Shuriken Pistol; Witchblade; (p.27-28 & p.60 Eldar))

HQ: Farseer (1#, 118 pts)
1 Farseer @ 118 pts (Psyker; Fortune ; Guide ; Fleet; Independent Character; Ghosthelm; Rune Armour; Runes of Witnessing; Shuriken Pistol; Singing Spear; (pp.26, 28 & 60 Eldar))

HQ: Farseer (1#, 118 pts)
1 Farseer @ 118 pts (Psyker; Fortune ; Guide ; Fleet; Independent Character; Ghosthelm; Rune Armour; Runes of Witnessing; Shuriken Pistol; Singing Spear; (pp.26, 28 & 60 Eldar))



Total Roster Cost: 998

This strike force would contain two units. Each a ten man squad of Wraithguard with Warlock to make them troop accompanied by a Farseer with Guide, Fortune, Runes of Witnessing, and a Singing Spear.

These two units would be immune to the S2 hit each turn because of mixed toughness. With the excess of cover saves and short range fighting the Fortuned Wraithguard would be hard to put down with shooting and would deliver back a hurting on their shooting phase. These two units are able to take out anything in the game with ease and would handily claim the objective.

Tutorial: How to Build Beasts of Nurgle

Beasts of Nurgle are non-trivial to assemble. This posting is intended to be a guide to constructing them and I hope that it helps some other people out there who have looked at the parts and wondered how they all fit together. The idea for this post originally came about as I was being asked this very question by a couple of other players.

Starting Off.
In total, there are seven (Nurgle's magic number!) different metal parts to contend with. There are also no instructions about how they fit together provided - I guess one is supposed to look carefully at the images in codex: daemons and see how it all might work. The real problem is seeing which one goes where and how they inter-connect.

In the picture below, I've laid out the seven parts. I'm going to piece the beast together using glue and milliput (a type of greenstuff that I favour using). I've already trimmed the pieces and removed the excess metal flashes - this is necessary before you start to put the beast together, otherwise the parts won't fit snugly.
The parts (as labelled) are:

1: The back
2: Lower body, Left
3: Lower body, Right
4: Tail
5: Leg elbow
6: Tongue
7: Main part of the head

Lower Body.
After sorting out these seven bits, the first thing to do is to assemble the lower body. This is done by joining parts 2 and 3 together. Below, I've pictured the lower body being assembled on a standard warhammer 40,000 40mm circular base to give an indication of the scale. I've also left the other bits in place so that it is obvious which pieces I've used. Gluing the bits to the circular base may also be a good idea at this stage.The Tail.
The tail (part 4) is a large piece that fits on to the rear of the body and snakes around to the front. It also contains the claws of the beast's left foot.
Leg Elbow.
The next part to work with is part 5 -- the elbow, or knee of the leg. It attaches on to the side of the beast's lower body (part 2) and connects up with the tail (part 4). I found a liberal blob of greenstuff really helped at this stage to smooth over the connections!
The Back.
One of the trickier bits comes next: the back (part 1 as labelled above). The first step here is to figure out which way around the back is supposed to connect up to the main (lower) body with. This can be done by inspecting the socket of the lower body and dry-fitting the back to ensure you've got it correct. The back must be strongly glued and greenstuff-ed in to place at this stage.

In the picture below, I've now rotated the view of the camera, but you can still see parts 6 and 7 waiting for their turn in the background. I'd strongly suggest waiting until the back has firmly set in place before attaching the other two parts to the rest of the body.
The Head.
Whilst you're waiting for the back to dry off and become a solid addition to the rest of the body, you can work on the head. Although it may not look like it at first glace, the tangles of tentacles that make up parts 6 and 7 join together to form the head of the beast. They connect up in a relatively simple manner: just ensure that the tongue sticks outward and it should be easy from therein. As a hint: look for the teeth (above the tongue) to guide you as to which way around things are meant to be. The eyes of the beast are very recessed areas just above the teeth. Finishing off!
The final step is to attach the head (now in one piece) to the rest of the body. Don't attempt to do this until both halves of the miniature that you've assembled in the previous steps are solid (i.e. the glue and greenstuff are dried off).And there you have it: a completely assembled beast of Nurgle! Painting still required...

Nurgle Herald Painted

Another potential herald of Nurgle to add to my plaguebearers today. This fellow has been basecoated in dwarf flesh colour and deeply inked in chestnut to create the base flesh tones. The model was then drybrushed to lighter and lighter shades of cream using various colours ranging from dehneb stone through to pinks and oranges. The belly of this chap has the Mortarion tripartite of skulls on the front which were highlighted in bleached bone to a lighter tone than most of the rest of the body to help them stand out.

In keeping with the majority of the rest of my plaguebearers, the plaguesword is painted in an unnatural shade of blue with a drop of red blood (from somebody else!) hanging from the top of the blade. I was tempted to paint the blade in a more traditional rust colour for this miniature, and I may yet change my mind on this. I just don't think the blue colour is working as effectively as it did for my other plaguebearers: principally because this miniature is much larger and this blade significantly different / stands out compared to the others.

The base has a grid of plastic stuck to the bottom of it. I've painted this in boltgun metal and highlighted with a thick line of pure white, but only of two of the four sides of each individual square in the grid. This gives the suggestion of glinting metal that the herald is stepping over. Additionally, it also has some hirst arts bits (to the rear), black gravel, and a small clump of static grass glued on as the final touch.

Reminder: October Army List Challenge

A quick reminder that the October army list challenge can be found by following this link. Will your forces be able to recover the cache from a Death World?

Chariot of Tzeentch, Part III -- Painted

Chariot of Tzeentch, Part II -- Herald and Disk

For the actual herald and his disk, I wanted something that was in keeping with the older Realms of Chaos stuff -- a disk that was more like a circular flying creature than a screamer or a floating (unintelligent) platform. To create my vision, I used a standard 40mm circular base and got to work with a whole load of milliput (greenstuff).As can be seen, the disk has a mouth sculpted at the front (pure greenstuff) coupled with a pair of peering eyes either side of it sourced from circular globes that come as part of the chaos spawn boxed set. At the sides of the disk, I added a couple of protrubers: a pair of horns from the chaos spawn set and a metal pair of Keeper of Secrets horns that come with one of the alternate heads on the Keeper.

The herald itself is a standard pink horror of Tzeentch. The arms of the horror have all been drilled and pinned however. For the outer arms, I decided that I wanted them to be spread to either side of the miniature: they are ultimately going to be holding some reins that will attach to the screamers on the decorative base of the whole chariot.
Although the other arms were all standard, I did add one additional arm that comes out of the pink horror's mouth! This arm is a pointing arm and adds to the chaotic (random) appearance of the daemon. Additionally, when I paint the chariot, this arm is going to be blue, to be in keeping with my earlier miniatures colour scheme.

The final additions consisted of placing a rune of Tzeentch in the centre of the disk near to where the herald is standing; adding some swirls (with a crafting tool) around the rune and stretching to the outside of the disk; and adding a magnet to the underside of the disk (buried in the milliput) to help with both balance (i.e. low centre of gravity) and attaching chains that the herald will use to "drive" the chariot with. I'll show the painted result of this conversion soon.

Chariot of Tzeentch, Part I -- Assembling the Base

Over the next few posts, I'll be writing up my scratch-built Herald of Tzeentch on a chariot that I built a while back and took to a recent tournament with me. For the chariot of Tzeentch, I wanted to build a convincing looking pink horror being pulled along on a disk by a pair of screamers. To this end, I started to build a base for the herald from scratch.
For the base, I simply used a thick rectangular cut of black plasticard and added a layer of textured (white) plasticard on top. From therein, it was a case of thinking about how the chariot might be constructed. I knew that I wanted to have two screamers on the base, so I thought about some ruins. My previous work with the Hirst Arts range came in handy here: I cast several pillars from their range and added them to three corners of the build. On one of these pillars, I wanted to rest a screamer. On the rear pair (as pictured above), I wanted to (somehow!) rest the disk and herald.

The second screamer was going to be a problem though. In the end, I elected simply to drill in to the plasticard base and insert a flying base stand for the second screamer to rest upon. That way, I could take the screamer off for transport and also use it on a different flying base as an individual screamer as required.

For the rest of the base, I scattered around a large number of debris items and fine, small grit to be suggestive of some ancient temple ruins.
The second picture shows how the screamers fit in with the base in the grand scheme of things. They rest toward the front of the rectangular base, with one balancing on the intact pillar.

In the next part, I'll detail the herald itself and how I solved where it would fit in to the scenic base I'd built. If I'd have been thinking more clearly about this, I might have build the herald FIRST, rather than the scenic base...

The Girl with the Blue Hair

A little addition to my daemonettes today: a girl with blue hair and some work on converting a base.

The miniature is a standard plastic daemonette, but on the base, I placed her on top of a wrecked rhino door (painted in a dull green colour) alongside some general detritus: a wire mesh and a loop of twisted florist wire. The base gives a wrecked city feeling to the daemonette that offsets from the blue of the hair.

Painting the daemonette began with the exposed flesh regions: base coating in a light brown colour, inking in chestnut and then steadily working the colour up toward a more bleached bone plus denheb stone mix highlight. With the flesh painted, I tackled the clothing and hair next -- this time choosing blue as the contrast colour. After inking the recesses in a dark blue stain, I gently drybrushed the vestments with silver to suggest a shiny corset. The hair on the other hand was painted up to space wolf grey using steady highlights.

The fine details were painted on last: including the white eyes and the tattoos on the right thigh and Slaanesh symbol on the forehead. Overall, I'm pleased with the outcome of both the paint work and the base on which the miniature is situated. The daemon is really offset well by the base in this case with the contrasting colours doing all the work for me.

October Army List Challenge

Overview.
On a forested death world, not too dissimilar to Barbarus, lies an ancient cache. The Mechanicum suggest that it might be components of a STC. The Eldar think its a huge source of wraithbone. But the atmosphere of the planet is too thick and poisonous to be sure that the intelligence is correct. Your team must go to the surface in person and recover the cache. But others are bound to be doing the same.

Rules.
(1) Design a 1000 points (standard mission) strike-force army from any codex to explore the surface of the death world and claim the objective. You can expect other teams of similar points value to be trying to do the same.
(2) The action takes place on a death world. At the end of every game turn, all members of your team will take an automatic S2 hit as the acrid atmosphere takes its toll. Additionally, all vehicles will take an automatic a glancing hit as the acid eats in to their hulls.
(3) The death world is heavily forested by acid-resistant plants. Line of sights are going to be small range! There may also be wandering monsters to take care of.
(4) Post your army lists as a comment to this posting and suggest why they're well suited to the mission.
(5) On Oct 14th 2009, I'll start a voting poll that will be open for 1 week to vote for what Warpstone Flux readers consider to be the "most effective army list that also best articulates the theme" (whatever readers interpret that to mean) out of all entrants.
(6) Winner will be tallied and announced on October 21st.

Remember, the real aim of these challenges is to help others design effective army lists that are both themed and effective. There are no prizes beyond honour and kudos!