Assembled Storm Eagle

With the May Day long weekend upon us, I have finally got around to completing the assembly stage of the Storm Eagle.

Long term readers will be conscious that it has taken me a long while to get this one done. This is because I encountered some non-negligible issues in the assembly of this model compared to most others I've ever tackled. The biggest one being that the edges really couldn't be persuaded to sit flush next to one another. 

I returned to the Storm Eagle this weekend after some time ignoring it (out of frustration). I knew that I had to patch up the gaps in the model and there were a number of options. Although pinning it closed in a corset fashion did cross my mind, I thought about using green stuff. But that really didn't appeal all that much after I discovered that I was running low on green stuff! Doh. So, I decided to opt for something that I haven't done in a very long time. I used tissue paper and a whole lot of super glue to patch over the gaps. 

Now, when the super glue hits the tissues, it can release some white vapour due to the chemical reactions taking place. I strongly urge readers to do this outside if you're going to go down this route. The chief advantage of this though is the ability to get a reasonable finish, coupled with the ability to use the old modelling knife to file down any "bumps" produced by the tissues. 

In the image below, you can see some of the tissue paper as the white colour near the cockpit. I think the patching job is reasonable, and once painted, its hardly going to be noticeable once I've applied some rusting and so forth the the edges anyway. Just the clear windscreen to get in place once everything's painted up. So, overall, I'm glad I've now got an assembled Storm Eagle, but I'm not keen to get a second one yet!

Which Legion is the Most Powerful?

Poll time ladies and gents!

In 40k, a recent poll of players unsurprisingly placed Eldar as the "most powerful" army out there, closely followed by Tau and then Space Marines and Necrons (for a variety of reasons, I would think). So I wanted to consider the 30k Space Marine Legions and their special rules and units here.

Which of the Legions do you think ranks as the most powerful?

Implicit in this question is the fact that the legions army lists are reasonably balanced in terms of points. So which legion possesses the most powerful special rules? Do the Iron Hands take it with their inviolate armour? Is the Night Lords predilection for causing fear driving everything before them? Clearly not the Salamanders, but do their terminators make the Salamanders the most powerful?

You can select multiple entries in the poll to the right. I've also included options for Space Wolves and Thousand Sons. Clearly we don't know their special rules yet, but feel free to guess or guesstimate where they would be on the scale of things relative to the other legions!

Comments welcome!

Deathstorm Drop Pod Basecoated

A bit of painting progress today, and the Deathstorm Drop Pod has received its inaugural base coat. The painting was done here using an air brush. Following a black undercoat, I decided to broadly follow the Alpha Legion formula that I worked out earlier and spray painted a layer of lead belcher and rune fang silver over the top of the black undercoat. For some of the regions I kept the layer light -- this can be seen at the top of the "fins" of the drop pod near the top where I haven't bothered with the gunmetal blue colour. 

Over the top of the silver layers comes the gunmetal blue from Vallejo. This only goes on the outside lower regions and the edges of the drop pod ramps. 

And that's broadly it for now. I'll be touching up the outline of the silver and blue on the interior in a future step and adding some embellishments to the painting at a later stage. But that's it broadly done at a basic level. 

Warhammer World: Bugman's Bar

Linking off the main gaming room in Warhammer World, I sated my appetite at the world famous Bugman's Bar during my visit there a while ago. In Games Workshop's own words: "Named in honour of the greatest dwarfen brew-master, Josef Bugman, Bugman’s Bar offers dining and comfort areas to suit your needs for a filling lunch, quick snack or coffee and cake."

In the pictures below, I hope I communicate the scale of the room. Its bigger than I expected -- much bigger to be honest. And plenty busy too with both staff members and the general public all appearing to use it equally. 

In some ways, it reminded me of a modern chain pub with reasonable quality food on offer as well as regular drinks. I've snapped the dessert menu in the images below as well as the menu on the Warhammer World web site already details the mains available. (NB: menu correct at time of photography, they might well have changed it by now!). I liked the cute little blurb about the meals as well as the names for each of them. For the record, I had the banoffee waffles for afters, otherwise known as the Ostland Outriders Grillcake. 

Beyond this, there's some limited merchandise to purchase here as well (stubbies and the like), and there's stained glass effect windows, plus big chairs and fires for one's inner dwarf to relax to. 

Titan Interior Painting

Despite being a bit ill recently (just a bad cold, so don't worry!), I managed to get in some painting alongside my daughter and got some of the interior of my Titan done.

For the interior, I wanted a colour-blindness palette of greens and reds. The logic here is that I wanted the screens to be emitting in an eerie green VDU (= Visual Display Unit) green colour of yester-year, alongside some red cylinders / tanks. Meanwhile on the HUDs for the gunners and the main pilots, I wanted something a bit crisper -- even reminiscent of the early Star Wars films on the Millennium Falcon. Hence a red background with a targeting display using whites. Most of the walls are going to be dark black, whereas some of the more luxurious elements will be leather green (like the house of commons seats in the UK or something like that). 

Here's the images. Comments welcome. My next job is to start to pin these sections together to make the main body of the Titan and then it'll really start to come together quickly after that I feel.

World Eaters 30k Army List: 1850 points Berserker Assault with Kharn

Background.

What is it that the World Eaters can do well that we can exploit when building an army list? Well, they are a close combat based army and thanks to their special rules, gain distinct bonuses in relation to the melee phase of the game. With incarnate violence, they have the potential to gain furious charge -- but only once they've already won in close combat. And with Blood Madness (because I'm thinking here of post-Isstvan), rage will point them in the right direction for this. 

List Building.

If we want to get in to combat, we need to be quick, or have transports to get us in to close combat with celerity. Drop pods would be nice, but if we're wanting to build for Berserker Assault, then its certainly transports. 

On top of this, we must remember that chain axes are free upgrades for tactical squads with the World Eaters. This makes for some very points effective troops. 

Take some apothecaries (I could use Gahlan Surlak here), and a reasonable HQ (I *want* Kharn) and we're done!

Let's see how these thoughts can come together.

HQ:

*Kharn the Bloody, with Gorechild (190 points)

*Primus Medicae, terminator armour with power fist (125 points)

Troops:

* Tactical Squad with extra Chain Axes, 1 Vexilla, Sergeant with Power Fist and Artificer Armour (185 points)

* Dedicated Rhino with Havoc Launcher (50 points)

* Tactical Squad with extra Chain Axes, 1 Vexilla, Sergeant with Power Fist and Artificer Armour (185 points)

* Dedicated Rhino with Havoc Launcher (50 points)

* Tactical Squad with extra Chain Axes, 1 Vexilla, Sergeant with Power Fist and Artificer Armour (185 points)

* Dedicated Rhino with Havoc Launcher (50 points)

Elites: 

* Red Butchers, 5 members, all with dual lightning claws, Devourer with chain fist (325 points)

* Dedicated Spartan Assault Tank with havoc launcher (310 points)

Heavy Support:

* Sicaran Battle Tank with lascannons, armoured ceramite (195 points)

Evaluations.

This does not have many bodies on the ground, but instead features a mobilized type of warfare. The observant might raise the fact that one of the restrictions for the Berserker Assault rite of war is that we cannot have more tanks or fliers than we have infantry units. Don't forget to count the HQs. They're infantry. And they're units. So we're good on that front, as far as I can tell. 

Kharn and the Primus Medicae join the Red Butchers and deploy in the Spartan to create a bit of a "death star" style unit. They need to be mindful of vindicator shells and the like though. The other squads mount their rhinos and all trundle forward as swiftly as possible to engage the enemy. It really is that simple. Not much subtlety here, but hey, this is the World Eaters, so what did you expect? The only question is how to play around with the Sicaran. I did wonder at replacing it with a storm eagle, and that is still something of an option here. 

Ice Planet

A complete set of Planetary Empires tiles done in an icy theme. These are to fit in with the recent acquisition of the Frost Grave mouse mat gaming board that I got from Deep Cut Studio. 

I'm also very happy for others to use this image in their own games if they wish.

Creative Commons Licence BY-NC-SA: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/

Orbital Assault 30k Army List: 1850 points

Background.

An orbital assault army in 30k is one in which all models must be capable of deep striking (and indeed must be deployed in that way). The army is therefore one of two things (or a mixture of them): a drop pod army where drop pods have been purchased in the place of dedicated transports like rhinos. Alternatively, they could be naturally capable of deep striking like assault marines. On top of this, terminators are immediately granted deep strike -- in 30k they do not automatically have this.

List Building & Evaluations.

I want to illustrate what is possible here. So I'm going to provide more than one list. This first one features ZERO drop pods. 

HQ:

* Legion praetor in tartaros terminator armour, thunder hammer, iron halo (165 points)

Elites:

* Terminator squad in tartaros armour, 10 members, 3 power fists, 2 chain fists, 5 combi-plasmas (395 points)

Troops:

* Tactical squad, 20 members, sergeant with power fist and artificer armour, legion vexilla (285 points).

* Legion Assault Squad, 10 strong, all with melta bombs, sergeant with power fist and artificer armour (325 points). 

Fast Attack:

* Storm Eagle with lascannons (250 points)

* 3 landspeedsers with multi-meltas, each with 1 hunter-killer missile (210 points)

* Primaris-Lightning Strike Fighter with twin linked frag and krak missile launcher, rad missiles, twin-linked auto cannon, phosphex bomb cluster (220 points)

I hope its clear that the storm eagle takes on board the 20 strong tactical squad, whilst the rest can fend for themselves. The list relies on applying pressure with the terminators, and with air support from the storm eagle plus primaris fighter. The land speeders aim to take tanks out whilst the assault squad back them up ably and takes objectives. I might be tempted to use a Caestus in place of the Primaris.

In this second list, below, we look at a PURE drop pod list, avoiding other fliers. And only taking the praetor in terminator armour as a singular threat who is able to join up with others as required.

HQ:

* Legion praetor, Terminator Armour, chain fist, iron halo, grenade harness (170 points)

* Master of signals, melta bombs (95 points)

* Master of signals, melta bombs (95 points)

Troops:

* Legion tactical squad, 10 members, 1 vexilla, sergeant with power fist, artificer armour (185 points)

* Dedicated transport drop pod (35 points)

* Legion tactical squad, 10 members, 1 vexilla, sergeant with power fist, artificer armour (185 points)

* Dedicated transport drop pod (35 points)

* Legion tactical support squad, 9 members, plasma guns, sergeant with power fist, artificer armour (320 points)

* Dedicated transport drop pod (35 points)

Elites:

* Legion veteran tactical squad, 9 members, 1 melta gun, 3 power axes, sergeant with power fist, artificer armour, all with melta bombs (280 points)

* Dedicated transport drop pod (35 points)

* Dreadnought Talon: 2 dreadnoughts with plasma cannons and chain fists (155 each)

* Dedicated transport drop pods (35 points each)

This list provides 6 drop pods, 2 of which are for regular dreadnoughts, and 4 for the tactical squads, support squad and veteran squad. The master of signals goes with the support and veteran squad to make the numbers up. On landing, they unleash their orbital bombardment, and / or give BS=5 to a nearby squad. The Praetor comes in via deep strike to pick off stragglers whilst the dreadnoughts give a fight where they're required. I personally wanted to try to take 7 drop pods, but to do so, I'd have to whittle down the support squad. Hence there's a need to be careful with the first wave and bring down the plasma guns, the veteran squad, plus probably one of the dreadnoughts to clear a landing zone upon getting on the board. Hopefully surviving the first turn of incoming fire, the rest will come in steadily to support them.

Warhammer World: Nurgle Diorama

One of the earlier areas inside Warhammer World features a number of dioramas based on Warhammer and Age of Sigmar. The main one that caught my attention was the Nurgle Diorara. Featuring an old, decaying and rusted castle, various armies of Nurgle - both daemonic and mortal - can be seen pouring out of the ageing gates and marching to war. I was very impressed by the gribbly variety of the miniatures and conversions displayed and the sheer scale of the diorama!

Armoured Spearhead 30k Army List: 1850 points

Background.

Today, I wanted to write up a generic army list for 30k that focussed on the Armoured Spearhead rite of war. The main strengths of the rite of war are that we can have lots of land raiders. But this comes at a price: everything must be transported and the enemy can gain extra game points by destroying every vehicle. But do they have the fire power to wreck lots of land raiders?

List Building.

The primary problem with Armoured Spearhead is the points level. At 1850 points, there's not too much room to manoeuvre. But are there enough threats if all there is on the board is land raiders? Do I have points left over for an allied detachment of something else? What about a Questoris Knights allied detachment? That might certainly be interesting! But not really affordable at 1850 points restrictions.

HQ:

* Praetor, terminator, thunder hammer, grenade harness (165 points)

* Command squad, (4 members), terminator armour, 1 heavy flamer, 2 chainfists, 2 powerfists (220 points)

* Dedicated land raider phobos transport (250 points)

Troops:

* Legion Breacher Siege Squad, 10 members, all with melta bombs, 2 melta guns, legion vexilla, sergeant with combi-melta, power fist, artificer armour (355 points)

* Dedicated land raider proteus with exploratory augury web (250 points)

* Legion Tactical Squad, 10 members, additional chainswords each, sergeant with power fist and artificer armour, legion vexilla, nuncio-vox, melta bombs (220 points)

* Dedicated land raider phobos transport (250 points)

* Tactical support squad with flamers (100 points)

* Dedicated Rhino (35 points)

Evaluation.

I really wanted a 4th land raider in here, but that would involve re-thinking the command squad and taking extra troops. And I really want to have the terminators and the standard bearer in there. 

The main disadvantage here is so few infantry on the board -- only 30 of them which is low at this points level. Recall that the other day I fitted 70 power armour bodies in to an Alpha Legion list which is more than double this. But the advantages are obvious: 3 land raiders and a rhino. Plus one of those land raiders has the exploratory web for the proteus to mess around with reserves of the enemy which is always nice. 

Overall, the army will require a bit of finesse to play and expert placement of its critical components. But its fun and any opposing army will have trouble facing down 3 land raiders. Do they have the fire power to take care of everything?

The list can be upgraded with an achilles land raider perhaps, but I'd like to try to fit a 4th land raider in somehow, I just don't quite know what to cut to make it so. Perhaps taking a tactical squad in place of the breachers would be a good move, but I do like the breachers here! 

Alpha Legion 30k Army List: 1850 points Dynat + Coils

Background.

When I saw Extermination, I knew immediately that I wanted to use Dynat in an Alpha Legion army list -- pre or post Heresy. 

The main thing that attracts me to Armillus Dynat are his special rules. Firstly he can deep strike an infantry unit in to play. Secondly, he provides a bonus to damage against vehicles inside the enemy deployment zone and permits re-rolling of sweeping advances. These two can combine together very nicely. And that's before we even consider than the Alpha Legion could all potentially infiltrate in to position in the enemy deployment zone. The only real question to build an army list around Dynat is what Rite of War to take. I can see a number of possibilities here, but I'm going to aim for the Alpha Legion rite of war Coils of the Hydra. Equally, I'm not using it to take any units I couldn't already. I'm doing so just because I can. To mess with the opponent. Because I can. Or perhaps to leave the door open for units like the Raven Guard's Mor Deythan. They would really be good here, as would a close combat squad.

List Building.

With the above in mind, I need to take 3 infantry squads. This really means less points are available for the nice stuff at this level.

But the real challenge is thinking about what I want to deep strike and why. To combine with Dynat's special rules I want either something that's going to sweep in combat or something that's going to hurt tanks. Hence I opted for a melta gun support squad (I play against 40k lists, so armoured ceramite isn't such an issue), or terminators in tartaros armour (for both purposes).

On top of this, I wanted something that would be slightly unusual to play against. So I actually thought about taking some lascannon tarantulas. I'm still not sure about that, but it seems very Alpha Legion (setting up in advance and all). In the end, I opted for an all infiltrating army under the mutable tactics from the Alpha Legion -- that's unusual enough at least. Here's the list:

HQ: 

*Armillus Dynat, power dagger (205 points)

*Master of Signals, melta bombs, power dagger (95 points)

Troops:

* Tactical squad with 20 members, vexilla, sergeant with power fist and artificer armour (285 points)

* Tactical squad with 10 members, combat blades, vexilla, sergeant with power fist and artificer armour (205 points)

* Assault squad with 10 members, 2 plasma pistols, sergeant with thunder hammer, plasma pistol, melta bombs and artificer armour (330 points)

* Tactical support squad with 5 members, melta guns, sergeant with power fist, artificer armour and melta bombs (190 points)

* Recon squad with sniper rifles (150 points)

Elites:

* Terminator squad in Tartaros armour, 1 plasma blaster, 1 thunder hammer, 2 chain fists (220 points)

Heavy Support:

* Heavy support squad with missile launchers, augury scanner (165 points)

Plus a few points left over to scatter some power daggers here and there.

Evaluation.

Deep strike in to position either the melta guns or the terminators for some early turn fun. The rest of the army can infiltrate in to position once the enemy is set up. That's the point of running an infantry heavy list. Depending on the enemy, it might be better to get one of the tactical squads deep striking in, although fundamentally, they're there for objective taking.

The back field is made up of both the recon squad and the missile launchers aided by the master of signals. Realistically, they're not back field, but more infiltrated in to the enemy deployment zone hopefully. And the master of signals is there for BS=5. Amillus can provide similar effects, but I think I'd want him hiding in the 20 man tactical squad most of the time.

The assault squad meanwhile provides rapid moving pressure to ensure early assaults and key units are tied up. Overall, I'm confident of seeing off tanks in the early turns of the game and mopping up key elements by grabbing first turn and doing some careful positioning to pull off an alpha strike (pun not intended).

To modify it, I might take Mor Deythan in place of the recon squad, or be tempted to increase the size of the terminator squad. I've avoided vehicles, but could be tempted by Sicarans, Storm Eagles, Death storm drop pods (seriously!), contemptors and other assorted nastiness. Chaplains, Apothecaries, and librarians actually tempt me too here. Automatically exploding tanks is possible too with the Alpha Legion consul, but only if playing relic related narrative campaigns or missions. In any regard, there's a whole load of power armour on the board here, and that's a real under-stated strength of this list. 

Overall, a fluffy and effective list that still gives opponents a chance I think. Comments welcome. 

Lava Planet Tiles for Planetary Empires

More tiles for Planetary Empires today. This time, instead of a Martian or red planet theme, its more of a Mustafar inspired planet. A lava based world with a lot of the hot magma bubbling to the surface where the crust has been battered from orbital fire, and it flows in rivers along what was once presumably lovely countryside with fluffy bunnies happily bouncing along. 

These are approximately half of the tiles that I intend to do for the lava planet. The other half is in progress. The painting techniques used are fairly standard in terms of dry brushing and black ink for shading. For the lava painting, I used a wet blending technique that is very similar to how I paint the hellblades on bloodletters -- building up from a deep red colour through to orange, yellow and a splash of near-white at the very hottest points. The overall effect is a striking one: the dull greys and blacks giving way to a vibrant lava colour that flows across the land and seeps upward through a brittle and thin crust in a variety of places, overflowing the ruined buildings picked out in a bone colour across the battered land.

Red Planet Tiles Finished

Following on from yesterday's post about some test tiles that I did for an upcoming tile based tournament that my former gaming group are having, I managed to finish off the basic "Red Planet" set of tiles. 

I'm imaging that this is a small rocky terrestrial class planet somewhere on the outer edge of a habitability zone. Not too unlike Mars perhaps, but smaller. Arguably.

As readers will be able to pick out from the image, I've used Mighty Empires tiles in combination with Planetary Empires tiles here. The river is a bit of a dead give-away really. But then again, I hope that the overall effect has been to successfully hide certain Might Empires features through the cunning use of applied paintwork. In particular, I think one would be hard pressed to identify the grain field in the tiles if you didn't know what you were looking for. 

The rivers have been done in a green colour to reflect an alien world. Or possibly pollution. I'm good with that either way. On a base of dark green, I lightened the colour with a wet blend up to approximately striking scorpion greed as the highlight colour along the edges of the bends. I think the effect has worked nicely overall. The central tile features a silvered wall which will no doubt be fought over hard. It could also double up as a small airfield for a planetary assault to take place.

Red Planet Test Tiles

Back Down Under, my former gaming group is holding a tile-based gaming league using the old rules for Blended Empires detailed here. However, the old board that I created for that league seems a bit dated now (as does this larger one which was a later iteration from this one). And here in the UK, I'm sure that my tiles will come in useful for future series of games that we're planning.

Hence, I wanted to paint something new. So the first thing I thought of was doing a Red Planet style set of tiles.

Here are the pair of test tiles.

The painting recipe was simple enough. A black undercoat was followed by a mechrite red base coat. Following a dry brushing of blood red, a black wash was applied to ensure that the recesses became darker. Then, subtle layers of dry brushing and weathering were applied in progressively lighter colours, through from red, even slightly pink to a yellowed bone colour. Finally, pure black lowlights were selectively applied in one direction from the raised rocks. This gives a three-dimensional feel to the overall piece and suggests light coming in and striking the rocks. 

Well, a few more do to for a full planet of tiles. I might keep this one to a smaller size though. A Moon, or small terrestrial in a system for instance. 

Horus Heresy Review: Sokar Pattern Stormbird

Background.
Designed to bring troops to a landing point and force their insertion through any means, the Stormbird is an amazing craft that hails from earlier designs during the Unification Wars on ancient Terra.

As a Lords of War, the Sokar Stormbird is understandably humongous. As is its points cost and dollar / pound cost! 

Strengths.
With 12 Hull Points, the Sokar Stormbird is going to be hanging around for a while.

But even before that, any incoming shots have to get through a pair of void shields (AV=12) that can also be extended around any troops that are nearby or disembarking.

Better yet, even when the void shields become collapsed, the Stormbird still has an invulnerable save on top of everything else!

The transport capacity is prodigious. No less than 50 models! And these can be replaced with dreadnoughts, as well as capacity to take a single rhino as well. Oh, and that rhino can carry its normal complement inside as well. The rhino counts as 12 models for carrying purposes. Therefore, you get a rhino and 10 marines for 12 inside the Sokar. Not bad at all really!

As if all that is not enough, the weapons are positively amazing. If upgraded, every turn, it can have an orbital strike with an unlimited range to bring in from orbit since it acts as a relay point. A massive blast with indirect fire and D-class is nothing to sneeze at. The macro bomb cluster is also a nice upgrade. But even the base weapons are deadly: 5 lots of turret lascannons and six dread strike missiles can take care of many things in the game, even posing questions for titans.

Weaknesses.
Erm. The rear armour is AV=12?

Builds.
Sokar Stormbird with Orbital Strike (1000 points).
Orbital Strike is so good that I recommend its always taken (unless you're really looking to save points, but we are talking about a Lords of War here, hence you should be sinking a lot of points in to the "miniature", right?).

Horus Heresy Review: Xiphon Pattern Interceptor

Background.
The Xiphon is a beautiful model and exactly what I imagine a mid to late crusade era Astartes aircraft should look like: sleek, elegant and rather deadly.

To be clear, I think that the Xiphon is probably one of those entries in the army list that leads people to think that Forge World models might be too powerful. But overall, I think the price (in terms of points) is actually about right.

Strengths.
Coming armed with a pair of twin linked lascannons at its base level is outstanding. But its even better than that. The missile launchers come with the ability to force a jink or cover save re-roll as well as being at AP2 and force d3 rolls on the vehicle damage table (pick the highest). This means that the Xiphon is a flying tank killer - plain and simple (and a flyer killer too, understandably). It will do the job and do it very well - and fast too.

With armoured ceramite and the agile special rule (3+ jink), it also has at least some defences as well.

Weaknesses.
Two Hull Point. Armour like a rhino. Points near a land raider. If I were playing against one, this would be the first thing shot out of the skies on turn one. Therefore its absolutely critical to place the Xiphon well or it will be going away very quickly.

Builds.
There are not many options here. But here's some concepts to build around.

Xiphon with ground tracking auguries (215 points).
Something of a baseline build. I could also see the Xiphon being played "naked" as well.

Xiphon, ground tracking auguries, chaff launchers, armoured cockpit (225 points).
The maximum upgrade. Got to wonder at this point if a land raider might be more plausible.

Horus Heresy Review: Deredeo Pattern Dreadnought

Background.
The Deredeo has been out for a while now, and although I've visited it before and made some notes when the experimental rules came out, I'm returning to it today in the full light of the rules presented within Tempest.

The Deredeo is, simply put, a heavy weapons platform that has its history in the Contemptor class and the earlier styles of Terran and Martian designs. Personally, I don't like the design all that much, but I can see its battlefield potential as much as anyone else.

Strengths.
With helical targeting, the Deredeo is fantastic at taking out aircraft with its weapons. Given the weapons, its also fantastic at shooting, well, nearly everything in the game to be honest. Monstrous creatures? Yep. Terminator equivalents? Yep. Its got it all.

The entry level Anvilus auto cannon battery is S=8 with plenty of shots and sunder. The reasonable range means it can reach across the board to ensure they reach the desired target.

The Hellfire Plasma Cannonade is AP=2 at just one pip less in strength and has two modes of firing: sustained, which provides a good number of shots, or maximal, which gives a big pie plate. And terminators are fans of pie, so I hear.

Meanwhile the Aiolos missile launcher gives a huge ranged weapon that can do significant damage to space marine equivalents. Hitting side armour is just icing on the cake. One can see why both traitors and loyalists alike pressed more of these in to battle after Horus turned.

Weaknesses.
This is fundamentally not a close combat dreadnought. That said, it is still a dreadnought with an invulnerable save and good frontal armour.

My suggestion is to run a Deredeo with ranged terminators -- upgraded with Atomantic Pavaise, it can grant a bonus to the invulnerable save of regular terminators nearby which is very nice, but also costly.

Builds.
A pair of the more obvious builds here.

Deredeo, Anvilus autocannons, Aiolos missile launcher, armoured ceramite (240 points).
Drop the armoured ceramite if you must, but this is something of a baseline build.

Deredeo, hellfire plasma cannonade, atomantic pavaise (270 points)
I like this one - lots of plasma goodness, teamed up with protective invulnerable saves.

Storm Eagle Issues

I started building my Storm Eagle many weeks ago, but haven't had too much time to dedicate to in in-between getting some games in with my Alpha Legion, and other painting activities. Over the weekend I managed to get in some serious time with the Storm Eagle though, and have progressed from the fuselage very significantly. Indeed, all that I nominally need to do now is to finish off gluing the weapons in to position. 

However, in building the Storm Eagle, I have faced (and still face) a number of difficulties. I'll pre-face all my comments below by reminding readers that I'm not a noob at conversions or building kits (even scratch built ideas of my own). So when I say that I've faced difficulties and problems, these are real for me, and I would also contend, are an issue for the casts that I built this particular kit out of. 

The first major problem is illustrated below. There is a slight misfit in the plastic components to the resin components. Indeed, in the instructions, it strongly suggests that the plastic components will need to be trimmed to size for compatibility with the resin ones. This is such a shame really. The issue here is that the front end of the craft is not flush with the resin (it sticks slightly upward). I put this down to some of the resin not being 100 per cent flat when I started assembling it. I tried with hairdryers and hot water to make it so, but even I'm not perfect it turns out. I also think I should have trimmed the bulk head down a little bit before assembling. Too late now. But this is salvageable for me with either some more hair-drier activity, and some greenstuff. I can handle that, but I wish I'd have known before getting in to it. 

The second major problem is the casting itself. This is ably illustrated below.

Notice where the corners of the undercarriage are. I had to grind out the corners as they were literally filled with resin -- so much so that the other components would never have fitted otherwise. And having ground them out, you can see that the assault ramp no longer sits flush with the undercarriage. This has been a real issue from the start of the build. (Looking toward the top of this image, some of the pinning I used to get the pieces together is also apparent).

Finally at the rear of the model (again underneath), there is filled in resin in the flying stand slot (top of the plus shape) that I need to try to take care of. Simply a pain! And one that I had not noticed at all until I tried to insert the flying stand!

Overall, this is not a kit I can recommend to beginners. Even with my experience, I feel I've not done the kit justice. I also feel like I could have spent a lot longer trying to iron out the issues with some of the resin pieces and come up short still.

I intend to finish the kit off later in the week (hopefully; time permitting) and get the weapons in place and try to get everything looking a bit more flush by fair means or foul.

Battle Report: Eldar vs. Alpha Legion (1000 points)

This is a video battle report -- one of the first I've ever made. The game is a Crusade Mission (with 4 objectives) and secondaries of Slay the Warlord and Outnumber (i.e. have more units left than the opponent at the end of the game). It is also part of a local league that we're playing out, hence victory is only decided on the primary objective and the secondaries give points in the league table at the end of the day. 

I am playing my Alpha Legion force, the army list for which is described here. The Eldar force is described in the video.

We're playing on the Deep Cut Studios gaming mat, for those interested. The terrain is deliberately a little bit on the sparse side -- I'm aware that a few buildings would not have gone too amiss here.

Okay - hope you enjoy the video and please be kind if you're going to comment - editing skills are being learnt and we probably mince our words rather a lot (I know I did when talking about scouts vs. infiltrate -- to be clear: Skorr is providing the infiltration via selection of warlord traits here for a few units and the Alpha Legion mutable tactics is giving scouts; the eldar similarly are infiltrating via warlord trait).