A bit of a quandry....

I love my Assault Terminators....I really love them. They are the most fun and most rewarding unit I run. They almost always find their way into any list I build for the Templar's. My concern is how do I get them into combat.

Looking at the last 5 games I played at onslaught I lost the Raider in games 1 in turn 2, game 4 in turn 1 and game 5 in turn 1.

It was immobilised game 2 in turn 3 but only after it had done its job delivering my Assault Terminators and game 3 it survived after my opponent fired a large number of lances at it

Was I unlucky? Yes, I think I was but its enough to give me pause for thought. The crusader is a cracking piece of kit, it holds all my Terminators, the Marshall and the Champion moves 12 per turn and with smoke it should survive just about everything thrown at it...but it didn't. Its early demise probably cost me game 4, had I got the Terminators into Mikes Deathguard and the Champion and Marshall into his Oblit's the game would have been completely different, now I'm not suggesting I would have won but I sure I wouldn't have gotten smashed.

It lays down an impressive amount of fire, Multi-Melta, twin linked Assault cannon and 2 Hurricane Bolter's. The assault ramp lets me assault in to cover attacking on initiative for my claws which is huge and means I can hit what I want hard and fast. Power of the Machine spirit means I can engage 2 targets in a single firing phase or one if I rattle forward the full 12". On the downside, if it get knocked out early on I'm left with the marines on foot whistling in the wind possibly out of position facing the slog on foot across the board and I'm almost 300 points down.

What are the alternatives?

I've run the Terminators 10 man on foot, 6 Storm Shields and 4 Lightning Claws with the Marshall and EC in there. Very resilient, very hard hitting, it rolls onwards with Righteous Zeal and a run move the potential to move 18" between 1 movement phase and the next. I like this, it also looks good on the table. The unit has the ability to suck up everything my opponent can throw at it and still keep coming. There are however, several downsides, the unit can be pulled around the table, never getting into assault where it need to be to do any good. It can be deep in your opponents half of the table and be too far away to respond to a threat, after all, running and Zeal movements are D6's. Its also easy to get lost, by that I mean be unsure what to do with the unit, where do you go with it? what do you attack? In the current environment mech is king. The unit can also be leaf blown off the table with quantity of fire.

Deep striking is a bit of an unknown to me, I've only tried it once and it failed, big time loosing the whole unit to a misshap in turn 2. The thought of doing this with 400 points of Terminators makes my bum hole tighten. This option is out....

Drop podding is another option. This would allow me to deposit a small 5 man unit more or less where I want them allowing them to assault the following turn assuming they survive or what I want them to kill has stuck about long enough to get smashed. This does also mean I have the ability to dump a unit on an objective to contest. However, again with some dodgy dice and I'm rolling on the misshap table, dangerous stuff. I'm also not too comfortable running a unit of 5 Terminators, maybe running them in a ration 1/4 Claws to Hammers or 2/3. They also come in like normal reserves, meaning I may not see a unit untill turn 5 which means over 260ish points have done bugger all, not a happy thought.

This might be worth a go, I would have to double up, running 2 units both in pods, meaning I would have to think about how to support those units as they drop in.

Food for thought perhaps.

Although I have started to play in tournaments I'm still a fluff bunny at heart, the Drop Pod assault list really appeals to me. My usual opponent keeps telling me I'm an idiot for entertaining the idea but still, I'm tempted, a good mix of fire power and drop podding nastiness make my knees weak.

Ill have a think about it and post a list or two in the next few days.

thoughts or comments? anyone?? hello???

Onslaught

Well, what a weekend, this was my 3rd tournament and by far the best. The venue was Cut and Thrust in Bristol a fantastic shop with awesome gaming facilities. If you in the area nip in and have a gander!!

It was 5 games over 2 days and 350 miles or so from my house so myself and Bradimus Prime had to set off at 4am to be there on time.

There should have been 50 players but after drop outs that shrunk to 42. I ran Black Templar, a kinda hybrid assault/gun line list, it did what I wanted it to but not anywhere near as well as I needed it to.

The list looked like this;

Black Templars 1750

HQ

Marshall (185 points)

Terminator Armour 25 points

Chainfist 30 points

Storm Shield 15 points

Adamantite Mantle 35 points

Emperor`s Champion (140 points)

Accept any challenge 50 points

Elite

Sword Brethren Terminator Assault Squad (556 points)

2 with lightning claws 86 points

4 with Thunder hammers 172 points

Furious Charge 10 points

1 Landraider Crusader

Blessed Hull 25 points

Dozer Blade 5 points

Smoke Launcher 3 points

Venerable Dreadnought (163 points)

Multi-Melta 10 points

Heavy Flamer 10 points

Extra Armour 5 points

Smoke Launchers 3 points

Venerable 20 points

Furious Charge 10 points

Sword Brethren Terminator Squad (265 points)

3 Terminators 129 points

2 Terminator Cyclone Launchers 138 points

Troop

Crusader Squad (148 points)

4 Bolt Pistol + Chainsword 64 points

1 Lascannon 31 points

Rhino 50 points

Smoke Launcher 3 points

Crusader Squad (148 points)

4 Bolt Pistol + Chainsword 64 points

1 Lascannon 31 points

Rhino 50 points

Smoke Launcher 3 points

Crusader Squad (145 points)

4 Bolt Pistol + Chainsword 64 points

1 Lascannon 31 points

Rhino 50 points

These are brief run downs of the games

Game 1 V's Mike Collins Space wolves

Mike is on the Welsh 40k team and it showed but I had a great game, he was running with a Thunder Lord and 4 thunder wolves, I had never encountered these before and I have to say I should have mashed them but alas it was not to be. Turns 1-3 I had it all my own way but then the raider got popped and the termies got pinned, bad news, the ven dread got stuck in and held up 2 thunder hammers and a powerfist for 5 assault phases before I failed to do anything with the assault marines and I lost them on the grind, turns 4-6 went very very badly and I lost 3 KP to 9.

Great opponent, great game. After the game Mike was kind enough to give me a "where I went wrong" rundown which was great. I hope I get to play him again.

Loss

Game 2 Dan Edom's Eldar

I thought I was going to have trouble with this army, I always seem to struggle with Eldar lists however, the dice gods spanked him up, down left and right. I dealt with his Fire Dragons early on and popped a transport or two in the early game and he failed to do anything, nothing, nadda.... I took his objective and he failed to take mine, he killed 1 terminator and immobilised the raider but that was it, I in return killed or destroyed about half his army. His dice hated him that day, he either hit nothing or hit and failed to wound or pen. It was not a great game, the poor guy wasn't able to put up any resistance. Another great opponent, fingers crossed ill get a game with him at caledonian uprising in January if he goes, I hope the dice gods smile on him.

Win

Game 3 Rob Madley Dark Eldar

This was table quarters with 5 objectives.

I wanted to play Dark Eldar, my LR Crusader had Blessed Armour and I hopped this would save my Bacon. Not so, Rob is a great player, he outplayed me all game, grabbing 3 objectives early on and then applying pressure on the objective I had meaning that I could never get out of my table quarter. the highlight for me was the assault terminators smashing into 18 Helions and and winning combat by 16. The ven Dread once again showed its worth absorbing 8 lance hits and then tying up a beast pack. the game ended 2 objectives to 1. Rob is a very careful player, great at manoeuvring, he out played me turns 1-6. Yet another guy I would willingly play again.

Loss

At the end of day 1 I had played 3 cracking opponents and had lost 2 and won 1.

Day 2 comes around and I have a nice surprise, in the morning before the pairings are anounced Im asked to leave my army out over the lunch break as I had been nominated for best painted army!!

Game 4 Mike Foulks Chaos Space Marines

Hows this for starting a game with confidence, before I met my opponent Brad says to me "He running a lash list, I think your gonna have bother with it". I had only faced lash once before, with mech guard and I had smashed it in 4 turns, to I thinks to myself "nothing to worry about".

WRONG

Turn one my Raider got popped after absorbing 10 Lascannon shots from Landraiders and Oblits then my Termies ended up getting shoved into a nice, easy to plasma cannon pile then shoved back towards my table edge. I managed to kill of a unit of Deathguard, a squad of Oblits, 3 Chaos Terminators and a Deamon Prince. I managed to hang onto one objective but Mike had 3 at the bottom of tun 7 and I suffered my 3rd loss...I think I was as unlucky as anything else, Mike at one point apologised to me for the dice he was rolling, I think he felt the same way about this game as I did on my second. Great opponent, hope to play again at some point.

Game 5 - Andrew Brampton Imperial Guard

This was a beautifully painted army, loads of freehand work on the Chimeria top hatches. Stunning. This one was kill points and table quarters. Things went well for Andrew turn 1. Once again I lost the Landraider but this time to a Manticore direct hit .... once again the Termies were walking. That's as well as it went for him, I popped 3 chimeras turn 1 and then 3 more turn 2 also immobilising a Russ, the termies went forward and dealt with the infantry scoring me a total of 9 Vp's over 6 turns. By the end of the game he had 1 immobilised Russ and about 10 infantry left. I won convincingly 19 VP to 3. We had both done so badly we were playing for fun and that it was, a great game against a very sporting opponent.

This was great fun, I came in 25th and won Best painted army - players choice. I was well made up with that.

Ill go through how the army performed in another post later on, may be after the weekend.

Von Muller

More of the same

Well, if anyone still reads this blog you may be interested to know, I am in fact alive.

I've been painting like crazy tying to get a 1750 Black Templar army painted for a tournament in Bristol this coming weekend. When I agreed to go 2 weeks ago I had a mountain of minis to paint, 15 marines, 2 Rhino, 1 Terminator, venerable dread and a land raider....At the rate I usually paint that's enough to keep me going for 3 months.

Well as of last night I have everything done bar 5 marines and they are at the 50% done mark, I'm rather pleased with myself if I'm honest at the speed at which Ive completed the project and I'm mostly happy with the resulting paint jobs.

Ill post my list and the horrors I faced after the weekend but for now Ill drop some pics in of the stuff I got painted in the last weeks.

The free hand is not something Ive ever really tried before. I am VERY happy with the way this has turned out. Not bad I think for a first attempt. I'm running 3 squads in Rhinos with Pistols and swords with a Las Cannon in each for long range firepower to support the cyclone Termies. I hope its enough.

The Raider is not finished yet, I need to damage the hull up a bit like I did with my Rhinos to make it fit better with the rest of the army. The Land raider is the only way the disconcerting Assault Terminator should travel.

This Pic is before I gave it its first coat of sealer, I used Purity seal which then went all frosty on me, the result inst all that bad as the dull coat managed to repair most of the damage. I will never use GW Purity Seal again. It almost destroyed 10 hours of work on a forge world mini. You may notice that the banner with the dead dude strapped to it is missing. I really didn't like it on this fella so I decided to leave it off. I may use it on a 2Nd raider at some point.

I hope you like what you see.

Von Muller out

Not so fine, fine cast Emperors Champion

Look at me, another week and another post.

A Black Templar army has to include an Emperors Champion as part of its force Organisation. There`s no way round it he is a have to have in the list. But why would ou not want him? He`s fantastic for the points, all 90 of them with vows that effect your army even if he get vaporised.

The only vow I use is Accept any Challenge no matter what the odds at the princely sum of 50 points. This give your ENTIRE army the preferred enemy universal rule, yes that's right if it aint a vehicle you get to re-roll failed to hits in assault. This means that your Lightning Claw terminators re-roll hits and wounds which then re-roll to wound, even your dreadnoughts get the re-rolls!!

I wanted the Champion to stand out from my Templar so after doing some looking on the web I came across a couple of guys that painted theirs white or with large amounts of white on them so I thought I pinch the idea.

The shield is from scribor and the cloak is just some very thin greenstuff with some jeweller`s chain.

Its worth mentioning that this is the 11th EC model i bought, all the others had large imperfections on them and even this model has a whacking great fissure running horizontally about 50 mm long just below the breastplate. I gave up taking it back in the end and made do deciding it actually looked OK so I didn't bother to fill it with greenstuff.

Thanks for reading

Rick

Project Mechanicus Scenery

Hello again you horde of avid readers (if only)

Its been a week or two since my last post but after a stint under the surgeons knife I managed to get this piece done during my sick time when I could sit down.

Me and Brad have decided we need to update our scenery as most of it is spray painted black and dry brushed silver or grey. Now I have an airbrush it makes getting nice even coats on large areas fairly easy once you have the paint mix right.

I find that I prefer to work with very thin paints in lots of light layers, I get best results (so far) watering GW paints 1 part paint to 8-10 parts car windscreen washer fluid and Vellejo paints 1 part paint to 5-8 parts car windscreen washer fluid depending on the paint thickness. I've yet to find a GW foundation paint that will go through the brush without clogging it up.

I base coated this with chaos black first then built up layers of Scab Red adding Blood red for coats 3 and 4 spraying at 45 degrees down onto the building then finally giving the whole model a final highlight of the final red mix with 1/1 Orange again sprayed at 45 degrees. Once that was dry I then sealed it with a thin coat of Satin Varnish to stop the paint rubbing off.

The whole building was then washed with Devlan mud, Badab Black then Vellejo Smoky Brown Ink all thinned 1/1 with car windscreen washer fluid ( I love this stuff for paint thinning). It was just a matter then of picking out rivets, dials and the Mechanicus symbols and all the other bits etc to finish it all off.

The flooring is a sheet of 4mm black plasti-card with the GW movement tray making up the chessboard style flooring. The rubble is sand and PVA glue mixed and some cut and trimmed sprue for fallen girders.

I'm pleased with this building , other than the Space marine statue its really the only piece of scenery I have done. The airbrush is fantastic for this kind of work, I have a large corner building to do in the same style so I think I may do a step by step for anyone that is interested.

Thanks for reading if anyone does (excluding Dr Titch!!)

Von Muller