Battle Report: Vraks Unending Host vs CSM 1500 pts

This game was intended as a test of the second edition of the Imperial Armour Vraks battle-forged detachment "Vraks Unending Host" from my side, and testing some CSM HQs by my opponent, who usually plays Khorne Deamonkin.

My List consisted of four troup units of renegade infantry with three 20 man squads each. I swapped five gits per unit for a chaos sigil carrier and two heavy weapon teams each. This left me with 4x2 lascannons, 4x2 autocannons and 3x2 rocket launchers and 192 T3 infantry without armour but with flashlights. Three sentinels with heavy flamers did away with the points otherwise needed to buy each git a 6+ armor save, I did spent the points for militia training though. As my one heavy support choice I picked 4 quad-launchers with three crewmen each.

Knowing a week ahead what I'd be doing (since I didn't want to play something this unorthodox as a surprise), my opponent brought Fabius Guile, Arkos the Faithless, four bikers, one eight and one ten man squad (with the ten man squad being Fabius-buffed), twenty cultists, autocannon havocs, a mauler fiend, a Sicaran with heavy bolter sponsons and a lone baleflamer helldrake.

The shared idea was to have a giggle. Right on!

We diced off the random stuff, got maelstrom mission one. My opponent set up the terrain, I won the first player turn.

After setting up I discovered quickly that I deployed my lascannon units wrong, since they caused a traffic jam of units that couldn't run forward properly due to this. The Quad-Launchers killed all but one of the cultist units thanks to a lucky roll of the scatter die.

My opponent advanced, with the mauler fiend taking the first volley of fire and being wrecked in the second round. My quad launchers took out all the autocannon havocs, leaving the aspiring champion alone. My sentinels got blown up, all but one. I failed the roll for the return of the first completely wiped out infantry unit. HA!

The Chaos Space Marines then got into melee and slashed through quite a few units like a hot knife through butter.

After that can of woop-ass was cracked open, I had five units eligible for respawning on 2+. I made all those rolls and brought the units back from the flanks. That's a hundred wounds bouncing back! However, since those models moved, that means neither assaults nor as accurate shooting as BS 3 permits. A mistake, since I forgot to take my maelstrom cards into account, I could have not rolled for at least one of them to bring it over my table edge and seized an objective.

After turn five, I was behind on points and would have clearly lost the game had the dice ended it there. In turn six, the units that respawned in the previous turn were firing at full ballistic skill and wiped out the remaining CSM units.

While the movement phase took a bit longer (doh!), skipping the psychic phase and being done quite quickly with shooting meant that game progressed nicely.

The quad launchers played out significantly above average, wiping out cultists and havocs down to one dude each and blasting another marine unit to smithereens. My opponent also taught me the proper way to do multiple barrages, I had the hit mark wrong. Being able to cut down on scatter with hit blasts really helps.

The chaos sigils are worth much more than their point cost (3 base for the guy +5) and also worth more than the opportunity cost of special weapons. Being able to reroll failed tests is a great help with 4+D6 random leadership.

Overall this was a fun game, playing markedly different from what I'm used to. The list definitely has potential for entertainment. Motivated by this, I primed all the infantry models black and gave them a zenital highlight of desert tan on the following weekend and wrote this report. Right on!

Vraks Unending Host

Half a year ago I bought a lot of 200+ Warzone minis via eBay. These models are plastic and came on sprues marked with "Target Games 1998". The models are not quite as detailed as the Citadel plastic troopers, but they do come with basic armour, weapons and - quite convenient for the Vraks setting - rebreathers all around. A major advantage in my view is total lack of six aquilas per model.

My motivation was getting a bulk of GEQ minis to use as Renegades for the Unending Host. At 3 points per model, there are likely to be a lot of models to be fielded indeed.

After spending hours to clip all of the bits from the sprues and gluing the bodies to the bases, I took this picture as a starting point. That are 251 models to do, quite a daunting number.

My plan is to remove the mold lines and gate connections that I judge to be visible from above. Then prime black, apply a white zenital highlight, spray highly diluted colour for the gear and finish by picking out some details with the brush. 

I left sprue attached to the backpacks to serve as holder. The backpacks will receive basically the same treatment as the body, but will get a darker colour.

So far the plan, let's see how it goes!

Eldar Craftworlds Seer Council

For quite some time I wanted to get a Seer Council on Jetbikes going. The conversion did look so daunting, in particular regarding the green stuff clothes that I shelved this and didn't touch it.

Just before the new Craftwords release announcement I had picked up six old style Eldar jetbikes off eBay at half of list price. I also had a single jetbike left from doing the Guardian and Shining Spear bikes. That meant I needed to find the bits for the riders!

From left to right, we have some prospective riders. A plastic farseer came with the lot for my wraith knight recycling, a couple of metal Eldar psychers from eBay, a shuriken cannon rider body. Two spare heads from the new Skyrunner clamshell and finally the first warlock I painted, since that model doesn't really fit in with the models I painted later.

Motivated by some newfound confidence, I grabbed my clippers and mutilated the metal models. The hobby saw did part of the job as well. My plan was to use the regular jetbike rider legs and arms together with the psyker torsos and a bunch of spears to make the riders.

After a significant amount of time spent making sure that the torsos did fit on the legs and looked somehow plausible, I pinned the torsos to the legs. Deliberately, I didn't attach the riders to the bikes yet. I also left the center and the rear parts of the bikes separate to make it easier to paint. I put magnets into the torsos and the spears to counter the expected breaking of these parts.

As next step, I rolled out some green stuff and cut it to approximate size to make hakama-style pants covering up the plastic legs. It took quite a bit of effort for me to get these bits into place and have them look half-way believable.

Then I clipped the pins that hold the consoles with the handlebars to give them less grip, fit them into place without glue and glued the arms between the handlebar and the shoulder.I glued small plasticard triangles to the bracers of the plastic arms holding the handlbars for use as an armature for green stuff sleeves. It's starting to look like something deliberate!

I put the spears and riders on a buch of rod-magnets and the bike hoods, centers and rears on paperclips stuck in cork for painting. I primed rider, spear and center in black with a white zenital highlight. Hood and rear I primed white. Hood and rear I airbrushed, the remaining bits I painted with a regular brush, trying to maintain the previously created shade. There isn't anything regarding the painting that I didn't already show in previous posts for this army.

Instead of converting the bike hoods for the theme, I cut up a bunch of decals from the big Eldar decal sheet to make seven distinct hood logos. The Farseers got modified hemlock decals in the style of their chest armor design. The warlocks got the white decals of the sheet and custom variations of the same.

Battle Report Mechanicum vs Eldar 4000 points

Yesterday, a battle was fought between forces of the Mechanicum and my Eldar Iyanden Warhost. We agreed on a 4000 points game. Here are the Armies:

My warhost consists of:

• a Windrider Host as a core choice, 
• two Wraithhosts, 
• a lone Wraith Knight, 
• an Avenger Shrine and 
• an Aspect Host with two units of Dark Reapers and  some Warpspiders as auxiliary choices as well as
• a Seer Council (here proxied with Shining Spears).

Key command benefits are 6" guaranteed run distance, battle trance and spirit mark v2.0 for the wraith as well as +1 BS for the aspect warriors.

The Mechanicum force consists of a new formation that combines:

• a trio of knights (two errants, one warden), 
• a Skitari formation that consists of Rust Stalkers, Snipers and Tropers, Lancers and a Dune Crawler, 
• a Mechanicum force with two units of heavy weapon servitors, two units of two big robots with herder each and an HQ.

Key Command benefit is that all upgrades a free of point cost.

In addition, there is a force of Iron Hands with:

• a Master of the Forge,
• three Tactical Squads with some Plasma and Grav weapons,
• two Contemptor dreadnaughts.

We set up two tables with a bunch of ruins. Given the time challenges of the game size, we didn't bother with eleborate mission parameters and just went for "Destroy the Alien". ;-]

The IOM forces won the deployment roll-off, deployed first and elected to take the first player turn. The crafty Eldar forces managed to steal the initiative! The Rust Stalkers scouted 9" forward.

Turn 1.1 Eldar forces advance on the entire front, skewing left to meet the Mechanicum infantry advance. A unit of Rust Stalkers and the majority of models from a second Rust Stalker unit fall to S6 monofilament and shuriken cannon fire. S6 does the job primarily because the Stalkers are T3 with 2LP each.

Turn 1.2 Sees a clash of the heavy units commence. A Knight Errant shoots and charges a unit of Wraithguard, takes one Overwatch D-Hit and a result of 6 on the D-Table for 6+D6 hull points lost with no saves allowed. Ouch!
Unfortunately it turned out later that my oppoonent wasn't aware that he should have charged in first with another unit to avoid the overwatch fire on the knight.

The other Knight Errant charges one of the Wraithknights. Even though the Wraithknight gets to hit first and has an edge over the Imperial Knight with a Master-crafted weapon, it barely survives and only scratches the opponent.

The Johnny 5 revival unit brings it's torsion weapons to bear on the wraithknight with the ghost glaive. Those are AP3, bring enough strength to wound well and do D3 wounds instead of one wound. This takes five wounds in one round of shooting.

Turn 2.1 The Eldar cast invisbility on the left wraithknight and the wraithlord, since both of them are down to one wound. I consistently forgot FNP and IWND rolls for my knights. The advance of the Mechanicum infantry on the left is halted

The remaining Wraithguards with D-Scythes move and run into range of the master of the forge and inflict an overload of D3 D-wounds on the unit as well as graze the Warden.

The heavy weapon servitors with the torsion guns are taken down by a ridiculous amount of fire made necessary by all mechanicum forces having both Shrouded and Stealth this turn.

A lone Wraithguard manages a 10" (8+2) charge on the Knight Warden just ahead of the knights in the picture above. The Warden elected not to waste overwatch due to the long odds of the Wraithguard's charge. The strikes of the Ghostglaive destroyed the Imperial Knight. The resulting explosion killed the wraithguard and took a wound from the knight with the heavy wraith cannons.

The invisible Wraith Knight and Wraith Lord take the remaining hull points of the Knight Errant and weather the explosion.

Turn 2.2 Mechanicum forces advance, the big robots wipe out units left and right in melee. Marines wipe out the Wraith-Scythe unit. I missed out on taking a picture during this player turn.

Turn 3.1 One of the almost-dead Wraithknights dies in Overwatch fire. I forgot FNP again.

Turn 3.2 Heavy weapon servitors finish off the last wound of the Wraithknight on the left. Big robots wipe out a unit of wraithguard on the left and damage a wraithlord on the right. Some warlocks on jetbikes die due to being too dumb to jink in time. ;-]

We called the game at this point. While there was only one knight out of six left standing, there were more troops left on my side with the mobility needed to evade and kite the remaining hard hitting, but slow remaining mechanicum units.

It was impressive to see what the mechanicum infantry can do. Interesting special rules, powers and weapons combined with dynamic BS/WS boosts and other effects like spreading cover boni around has a lot of potential. Even more interesting is that all these are deliberate choices rather than silly random tables!

Eldar Iyanden Warhost on Parade

It has been a while since I took a group shot of my Eldar army, so I got my minis arranged on a table in the local gaming club and took a lot of pictures. Unfortunately, I only have a halfway-decent phone-camera so I took a lot of pictures hoping to get a few that were useable. That being said: here we go!
 

Still to be done are a bunch of falcons, a warp hunter and some fire prisms. Also, I got some shadow spectres and a jetseer council to do.

The last time, there were a couple less minis on the field. The shot below is from August 2014.

A bunch of phoenix kings walk into a bar with some scrubs...

For an upcomming game, I'm planing to field a bunch of reapers. Two OOP metal exarchs from eBay as well as 10 old metal reapers which I painted last year that are well in need of a second chance at a half-way decent paint-job. When prepping those models for painting, I dug out a bunch of other models that were still blank. The paint scheme for those is different, but any batch priming, sealing or shading makes things go smoother than individual bits and bobs.

After spending what seems like an eternity cleaning and prepping the models, I primed them black with a strong white zenital highlight, both using Vallejo Airbrush primer. There rest of the way, I painted using Vallejo Model Air and Game Air colours with a regular brush.

I'm particularly happy with the result of Vallejo Game Air Black mixed 1:1 with Vallejo Airbrush Thinner and painted in several layers over the black to white primed bits to keep the recesses but change the colour of the entire area, darkening at as I went. Some of the reapers I consider a problem since there is colour in there, but hey, the others look fine. Might be useful to distinguish squads.

Here they stand after all the base colours, as well as varnish and oil shade applied. Only gems and bases to be done!

Making that post - even though it is just for myself really - motivated me to push through the last bit. Three layers of sand to tank brown, followed by Tamiya clear red for the gems and my usual alibi-base decoration.

Wraithknight with Ghostglaive

A short while ago I picked up a used Wraithknight, which I actually primed and painted yellow for a fellow local gaming club member. Since the model was completely assembled, it wasn't really possible to do get proper access to many parts. In addition, there is the obvious factor of learning faster than I can finish an army project. Of course, finishing an army is also made difficult by me being easily distracted by other models and having fun playing games, which cuts into my hobby time. But I disgress. This is the story of this "little" guy.

With paint being on him pretty thick and a number of sins visible in  his plastic, painting over the original paint job wasn't an option. So I set to taking apart the model, which had been lavishly provided with plastic cement bonds, before sticking it into methylated spirit to destory the bonds of the Vallejo primer, Vallejo VMA paint and whatever the additional colours the model received are. After letting the model soak for quite a bit, I got busy with a brush and followed up with sandpaper and scraper.

Because I had to cut apart quite some bits, like shoulder, neck, hip, ankle joints and a bunch of armour plates, there was material missing. You can spot parts of a cheap ballpoint pen replacing the shoulder joints, adding stock to the neck and providing mounting spots for the armour plates.

Using cork, paperclip and superglue to make small bits reasonably easy to handle and rod magnets to hold the magnetized bits, I first sprayed black primer, followed by white primer as a zenital highlight before applying the yellow and blue base coats.

This is the current status, before applying varnish, oil shade, decals and basing. I'll add a shot of the finished model when it's done.

PS: With shade, very basic basing, decals and jewels, together with my first and second knights (from the left) as well as the wraithguard reinforcements.

Wraithguard

A few months ago I picked up 14 metal wraithguard along with some more warp spiders. These model up my wraithguard contingent to 35 models, with another five models being wraithblades.

After removing mold lines, I cut slots into a bunch of 40mm bases with my dremel and mounted the bodies on them. When deciding on how exactly I'd mask the heads to get a clean paintjob sorted. The best masking is of course to paint things separately, With neck, wraithbone vane and collar being attached to the heads, that wasn't an option for me. So I grabbed my hobby saw and got busy! This went remarkably well, aside from some very authentic but minor battle damage on some of the vanes when I slipped with the saw.

After sanding the bottom of the bases even and sticking them on self-adhesive magnetic foil, I got busy with primer. I tried black with a white zential highlight. There is a risk of the yellow running into green, but I'll accept that.

The yellow basecoat was followed up with dark grey on the gun, joints and hoses and white primer on the loincloths. The heads I had stuck on toothpicks and painted them separately.

Here the models stand before varnish, shade, base deco and decals.

Eldar Windrider Host

Eldar Jetbikes and Shining Spears

Rounding out my Eldar army,  I needed to sort some jetbikes. Previously, I hab painted some, but had no base concept and no riders sorted. Plus, the flat yellow paintjob just didn't look good enough.

Recently I had picked up a shining spears kit. Thinking at kill two birds with one stone, I ordered another upgrade kit and 3x3 jetbikes. That also fixed me up with some spare bits for the very second hand bikes I already had.