Cyber Slayer WIP. 'S' Word Mentioned...

Those pesky Tyranids, wiping out all those rugged Squats. As you know, I've always had a wee thing for the Space Dwarfs, and I'd made a ratling sniper into a Squat version of Telion to use in my force. I've even included fluff as to how this squat came into being with my Chapter, after an unknown planet being raided by Chaos Marines was spotted although was not known by records or by sensors and that the Squats there had built a cloaking device to hide them from sensors from unwanted attention. One of their kind had betrayed them, and they were beset by Chaos forces. Saved from a terrible fate, the Squats, and their knowledge of technology, were taken to Mars to share their knowledge with the Adeptus Mechanicus. Several of these however wished to fight with the Krohmus Guard, hence why I have an old Squat sniper leading my scouts in battle with his keen eye. 

Well, its time to welcome another of these into the fold. Its time to introduce, the Cyber Slayer.

This is only a work in progress, but he's built and undercoated ready for a few licks of paint. I've given him boots from an old Catachan Jungle Fighter, a Grav-pistol to help convey the idea that the Squats have a decent grasp of technology, and a Chainaxe from an old Khorne Bezerker I had lying around. The spikey bits on the axe have been trimmed off, and I'll possibly paint some checks on the now flat panels. You may also note he now has grenades hanging in his beard, the axes that were there would have looked a little too fantasy. The grenades were a pain in the arse to get in place and I'm still not happy with the one but with my giant beast paws its as good as I can get it. His history and name have not been decided upon yet, but I'll see what I can come up with. Stats wise, I'm thinking of using Space Marine Captain stats, maybe with the Teeth of Terra. We'll see anyways! More progress posts in the week

The Damned Codex?

Tonights proving to be fruitful for us 40k fans... The Imperial Knight and now a Legion of the Damned Codex? I'm very excited about this! Just knowing more about them is awesome, but if theres more options in the too? *dribbles*

Imperial Knights. They're coming.

I'll just leave this here....

Saturday Salvo: Vs Chaos Marines, Xwing Wave 4!

Welcome to another Saturday Salvo, with some 40k and Xwing updates. Myself and Chris played some 40k last week, with the Krohmus Guard taking on long time rivals of the Khorne Warband Chris controls. 1500 points, and you can see the table below!

Moments of note... My land raider getting blown up on Chris' first turn, captain and termies not doing much. Sternguard failing to blow anything up, although they did dent a predator and Chris' land raider. T

The Scorpius Whirlwind is pure awesome, as long as you deploy it well. Getting those extra shots can be devastating!

Khorne bikers made a dent in my lines and I couldn't finish em off. The champion, while not overly effective, did kill several marines over a prolonged combat and survived. 

I need to better use the Chapter Tactics I choose... or at least remember to use them and anticipate when to use them better. Cause at the moment I don't use them well!

Missile Launchers are still good stuff. Power Armour hates Kraks. 

A debate I've had on occasion with Bam about overloading Tactical squads, he always upgrades his sarges, I rarely do. I think I'm gonna do it more often when against power armoured foes, it would help on combats having someone reliably kill enemies a bit more.

Aquire targets better!

In the end it was incredibly close, with me just winning 10-8. He'd killed my termies and captain later on and I just managed to instant kill his lord with a well placed krak. Good game though! 

Also, below I've started work on my first proper piece of terrain, which will be a sort of generator building. Its based on some polystyrene I've had for a while and the part on the left reminded me of a bunker/generator sort of thing. The bottle is some sort of fuel container, with a wacky thing on top possibly doubling as a void shield. I'm gonna add some small raders and more details to it, along with some small pieces of Imperial decoration and anything else I can find!

Another thursday has come and gone also with myself and my Nephew doing battle in X-wing. We attempted using all the ships I had, 5 Imperial and 4 Rebels, with plenty of upgrades. I think we had about 133 points each, with about 110 being spent on the ships. Bit ambitopis but we had a laugh trying to remember our upgrades and pilot skills!

We're both starting to see some decent combos of skills and upgrades, although remembering them isn't easy! R2D2 on Wedge has been useful, and I've found myself doing a lot of green moves because of it! 

The game finished with just Wedge, Saul in his Ywing and Darth left. I managed to get a hit on Darth with the Ion cannon making him move onto an asteroid and making him vulnerable to fire next turn from both of my surviving ships. I'd suffered a lot of damage though! 

As if playing some more X-wing wasn't exciting enough, Fantasy Flight announced this. 

Hells yes! The E-wing looks amazing, can't wait to get one or two to try out and my Nephew is drooling over those new Tie Defenders. Should add some interesting tactics to the game! We can't wait to get our new purchases but now the excitement is even greater!

So far, I'm getting close to 40,000 views, and with that being a significant number I'm debating doing something to celebrate. I think a better header and logo is needed... but perhaps something else too... We shall see!

X-Wing, WIP Honour Guard and more

X-wing has taken up a good little roost in my large self, where myself and my nephew have had several games and really enjoyed it. So much so that he, and also Bam have ordered starter sets and will hopefully have sizeable Imperial fleets with which to crush me. Much thanks to Jason for getting us into this! 

I've got a nice little collection now, 2 X-wings, a B-wing and a Y-wing for the Rebels, and for the Imperials I have 3 Tie Fighters, one Tie Bomber and an Advanced Tie Fighter. This allows us to have some games with a bit of variety in and see what ships everyone likes. So far, I want more X-wings, although I'm slowly discovering just how good Ion Cannons are. 360 degree firing arc is very useful!

Ladies and Gents, this is Belle. It seems shes intrigued in X-wing too... although she was more interested in napping on the table. Gerrof Belle-end!

I'm still getting to grips with B-wings, but they do sponge up a lot of attention. My nephew tried the ships below against this with various character pilots, and I had trouble against him.

Tie fighters are just fast and their ability to evade can keep them alive more than their 3 hull points would suggest. Josh, my nephew quickly blew up an X-wing and from there numerical superiority won him the game. 

I dd cause a fair bit of damage, most of Josh's ships were damaged and close to being finished, but him having numbers made it hard concentrating fire as he dodged about the little bugger!

In the end I was wiped out. The Ties caught up behind me and just put the final nail in the coffin. Asteroids add a lot more to the game, and I think some of the damage to both sides was caused by flying into the rocks. No fun! I think it'd be cool if you got to roll a dodge dice too, just to add to suspense.  I think Josh is yet to get the best out of the Tie Bomber, judging when to use the bombs doesn't look easy so I dread to think how much more he'll kick my ass when he does learn to use them!

 Also, I took the plunge and decided to repaint an X-wing to see if I wanted to do the whole fleet. Its a WIP but I'm liking the orange and grey combo, and can see myself doing all my ships this way. I've ordered myself a few more ships too, 2 more X-wings and the Millenium Falcon, which I also plan on painting. I may got for something different on the Falcon though, as its a bounty hunter ship I think you can go a little more varied on the ship. Should be interesting to paint too! I've got these ordered in with Adam of Putrid Painting, there should be a link somewhere on this page as soon as I've figured out how to do it.

 Of course, I've been working on some Marines too, this time my Honour Guard. Built by kitbashing the Sternguard and Vanguard bits with a couple of others too, I really like how they've come out. They're not finished, but they're not table worthy and look from a few feet, which is important! More images when finished of these Krohmus Guard veterans.

I'm planning om doing a blog in the week too about the new White Dwarf and Warhammer: Visions. I've had my copies and I've a lot of mixed feelings, not just about the look and content but what it actually means by having this new format. I'm waiting til then as I'd like to get some feedback, so we'll see what the general consensus is before I go into it myself. Also....

Games Workshop have released some of the new Dwarf range, and the models look great. The Hammerers and Longbeards look great, although I'd hate having to paint them. This guy however, the Dragon Slayer, is quite possibly going to become one of my top ten favourite models of all time. I love the pose, and the detail in the face is just astounding. I'll be getting one either just to paint up or more like... Squat Cyber Slayer conversion! I'll hopefully be posting about a Necromunda inspired campaign I want to run at the Reavers soon, where I'll be giving members a lot of creative say as to what models/factions/gangs or anything that they want to use. Imagine a Cyber Slayer you can hire? I've already got some Cadians I've been working on I need to blog about and the idea behind the Necromunda campaign so expect plenty of blogs in the coming weeks!