Dark Angels Army for Sale (pic heavy)

I've thrown this army up on eBay for anyone who's interested. I started collecting this army after the Dark Vengeance boxed set tempted me into building a DA force. I've just never really felt the love for it. Maybe it's the Space Wolf player in me that's not happy but for whatever reason they're the last army I think of when I'm writing a list for a tournament or a casual game. As such, I've never used them at an event.

The auction includes the following:

• Sammael (finecast) - painted to table-top standard
• DV Librarian - primed black
• DV Chapter Master - primed black
• DV Interrogator Chaplain (limited edition one) - primed black
• Librarian on bike converted from DV librarian - painted to table-top standard 
• DV Bike Squad - primed black
• 2 x 10-man tactical squads from DV - one assembled but unpainted, one part painted
• Three MM attack bikes converted from DV bikes - primed black
• RW Command Squad - primed black
• 6x Black Knights - primed black 
• 3x 6-man RW Bike Squads from old Battleforce - two squads painted to table-top standard, one primed black
• DV Terminator Squad - primed black
• DW Knights - primed black
• Land Speeder Typhoon - part painted
• RW Darkshroud - primed black
• RW Nephilim Jetfighter - part painted
• Landspeeder - unassembed (not pictured)
• DV Teriminator squad - unassembled (not pictured)

If nothing else it makes space in my cabinet for my new Tyranids!

Blog Wars X - Only 90 days to go! (and Ravenwing ruling)

It doesn't seem like five minutes ago that I was wrapping up Blog Wars 9 and yet BWX is rapidly approaching. I know three months sounds like a long time but I'm sure to those of you trying to paint up your models it doesn't! Especially when the list submission deadline is fast approaching.

For those of you who haven't got a ticket yet, I've sold 36 of the 50 tickets so you don't have long to secure your place. Check out the BWX page for more details and to find out how you can get your ticket.

Now is an excellent time to send me any questions you have about the tournament. That goes for anything that you aren't sure about, be it proxy models, general rules queries, directions, accommodation, scoring, scenarios, food, whatever! Don't leave it to the last minute and hopefully we can avoid any issues on the day.

Ravenwing Strike Force
Whilst we're on the subject of rule queries I think I need to address Ravenwing. Unfortunately I think the Deathwing rules are as intended by GW (which sucks) but the Ravenwing formation is clearly wrong. For those of you who aren't familiar with the DA codex, the Ravenwing Strike Force requires one compulsory HQ and a further 2 optional HQ choices. That would be fine but it also requires that all models in the Detachment have the Ravenwing special rule. That means there's only Sammael who can be fielded. Makes no sense to have the two optional HQs then!

Here's what I propose as a solution: Sammael is a compulsory choice for this detachment. You can then take any other HQ but they must take a Space Marine bike (for the stated points cost). That means you could take an combination of Librarian, Interrogator Chaplain or Techmarine. The Librarian and Chaplain lose the Deathwing rule and all three gain the Ravenwing rule. In practice this makes little difference to them.  The Chaplain is still Fearless and has Hatred thanks to Zealot. The librarian loses Hatred and Fearless but getting Ravenwing more than compensates for this.

What do people think? I thought it only fair to make Sammael compulsory since he's the Master of the Ravenwing and strictly speaking the only legal choice. I didn't think it was fair to get Deathwing AND Ravenwing rules. I'm open to suggestions on this though and I'll be guided by the general consensus. Of course, there's nothing stopping you taking a second detachment of Deathwing or whatever.

Anyway, get back to painting and I'll see you all in November!

My Complete 40K Collection!

In case you were wondering, I'm still alive. I'm not exactly sure why I haven't found time to blog recently. I'd love to say it's because I'm making huge leaps in my hobby progress but that sadly isn't true. Most of the problem was catching up with a couple of seasons of Walking Dead but anyway.

Over the bank holiday weekend I decided to take stock (literally) of my entire 40K collection. I wanted to rearrange the cupboard I keep everything in so I decided to empty the whole thing out and lay out everything I own on my gaming table.

I was pretty surprised that I struggled to fit the whole lot on the 6' x 4' surface and you can see that towards the end I was having to squeeze things in pretty tightly to make it all fit (the Tau were the last out of the cupboard so they're particularly crammed in). Anyway, having everything laid out like this made me realise two things. Firstly that whilst I've painted a decent chunk, there's still a depressingly large amount of black undercoat on display, particularly in the Ork and DE portions of the table. Secondly, there are quite a few bits that don't see use. My entire Dark Angels army for example. When the 6th edition book came out along with Dark Vengeance I was inspired to start and Angels of Redemption army but the way the codex was written made me fall out of love with the army pretty quickly. I want a bike heavy army to feel fast as it charges into combat. With the bolter banner the Ravenwing just become a mobile shooting platform. Couple that with the Darkshroud and they just don't feel like bikes should. Of course, there's nothing forcing you to take either the banner or the 'shroud but they feel like obvious choices. Finally, I think a Deathwing army will always struggle in these days of massed firepower so I'm unlikely to ever use them. I don't like to sell models I've painted but frankly they're just collecting dust.

I could say a similar thing about parts of my Dark Eldar army too. I can't see me using either Hellions of Wyches for a long time as they're frankly (and disappointingly) useless. Similar story for Wracks as well. I think parts of my DE army need to be boxed up in the hope that they'll come good again.

There are actually some things I'd like to add to the collection to make my armies more diverse. For starters, I'd love to add some more TWC to my Space Wolves including Harald. I'd also like some more drop pods (which I own but haven't built) to go along with some more dreadnoughts including Bjorn and Murderfang. The Orks could do with some meganobz plus the bikers I own but haven't built (and perhaps even some FW bikers too). My Dark Eldar could use a Voidraven, which I again own, (there's a trend here) another razorwing plus the kabalite warriors need sorting out to get rid of the now defunct trueborn.

That's quite a bit of work in itself. Fortunately my Tau are pretty complete (since I own pretty much everything in the book) and there's only a couple of things there that need painting. What's upsetting is that although my Space Wolves and Tau are "painted", I'm really not ready to call them finished. The Space Wolves need some work, some extra models for the Grey Hunters and Blood Claws. The Tau need tidying up and highlighting before adding some sept markings and transfers.

So then, the thrill of seeing my whole collection laid out together quickly gives way to feelings of remorse at their lack of completion. I mean, there are very few (if any) models that I'd be prepared to say were completely finished. Suffice to say I need to change this. I think the first thing is to get rid of the Dark Angels though. Once that's done I'll sit down and make a detailed plan of what needs doing and try to work through it piece by piece.

It's at this point I should say I'll be taking Orks to Blog Wars so they'll be getting my attention for the next couple of months. Upsettingly I've only got 7-8 weeks to get them up to scratch! Whilst we're on that subject I need to post about a couple of Blog Wars related issues that I need to discuss with you guys but that'll have to wait for another day.

Battle Report - Chaos vs Angels of Death - 3000pt Doubles

You might remember that last month Dan, Jamie, Matt and I had a big doubles game which saw the Imperium of Man take on the Tyranid horde. The teams were shuffled around this time with Jamie and I fielding the Angels of Death (BA/DA) against Dan and Matt's forces of Nurgle (CD/CSM). In the spirit of a friendly, fluffier game, I'd be fielding a pile of ravenwing bikes but without the somewhat obligatory darkshroud and banner. My list consisted of Sammael, three units of bikes, two attack bikes, a land speeder, a big unit of black knights with an allied SM detachment featuring a libby on a bike, tactical squad in a rhino and a stormtalon (represented by a nephilim). It's a real shame I can't justify the real Nephilim but with the 40pt price difference and lack of Hover there really isn't any contest with the talon.

Jamie's half of our army consisted of a reclusiarch, sanguinary priests, jump pack assault squad, 5-man assault squad in a razorback, tactical squad in a rhino, death company and DC dread in a stormtalon, attack bike and a baal predator. The chaos forces consisted of two flying princes, plague drones, plaguebearers with heralds, great unclean one, Cypher with a big squad of CSM, plague marines, bikes, Typhus, soul grinder, obliterator and a defiler.

We were playing the Scouring with Dawn of War deployment. Jamie and I got the first turn so we deployed our bikes spread out with the theory being that if our opponents tried a refused flank deployment we'd have the speed to cover the ground. We also combat squaded everything we could. Whilst bigger squads would be better at tieing up enemy combat units we'd lose less when being shot at. Additionally there'd be less chance of our firepower being wasted on smaller units. Well all that and the fact that we'd got to try and cover as many objectives as possible to spread out the Chaos forces and hopefully weaken them.

Our opponents didn't try the refused flank and instead deployed their forces to match ours. Cypher and his large unit of nurgle CSM infiltrated near the centre of the board. They'd need to be dealt with early on. This was obvious bait but we couldn't afford to ignore them. Similarly the defiler and soul grinder would be a big problem for our foot troops. We were able to get a melta in range straight away thanks to scout moves but despite penetrating it's armour the daemonic invulnerable save prevented any damage. The bikes holding the melta would now surely feel the wrath of the great unclean one. Pretty much everything else focussed on Cypher and his unit. Sadly Cypher was giving his unit a 3+ cover save which was often 2+ with Night Fighting. Still, the combination of black knights (who helped out with their rad grenades) and ravenwing bikers the squad was cut down to size. We'd failed to kill anything for First Blood though.

Looking across the board we were concerned we'd over commited our bikes too early as we were well within range of everything in the Chaos horde. Unsurprisingly the GUO killed off the small squad of bikes who'd failed to destroy the defiler. The plague drones and daemon princes shot forwards with the drones engaging a squad of bikes in combat whilst the princes used their breath of chaos (I think) to kill off a pile of bikes. Meanwhile the chaos bikes, defiler and soul grinder cut swathes of bikes down. The bikes then charged their opposite numbers and caused them to fall back. I can't recall the exact number but I think we lost something like 18 bikes in the first turn alone!

Luckily both of our flyers arrived but thanks to classic cheesy play from Matt the flying daemon prince claimed a cover save from touching area terrain which was then boosted by Shrouded. The daemon prince was at least grounded but it still had a couple of wounds left. Meanwhile the BA attack bike and assault squads from the rhino and razorback tried to destroy the chaos rhino but failed. The jump pack squad tried the same with the baal predator lined up to flame the occupants. Once again the meltaguns failed to destroy their target. The predator had now nicely lined itself up as the GUO's next victim and the assault squad was forced to charge the rhino to destroy it. Meanwhile one of the DA attack bikes came on behind the defiler and penetrated it's armour with it's multimelta. Once again the defiler made it's 5+ save. Another ravenwing combat squad tried the same with a melta to the face of the soul grinder and once again the 5+ save was made. After an abysmal turn of shooting out only hope of causing any damage was the black knights charging Cypher and his unit and catching the DP in a multi-charge.

Sammael decided to take on the DP on his own whilst the Cypher challenged the black knight huntmaster. The prince struck out at Sammael but luckily he survived on a single would and was even more lucky when he managed to wound twice and kill off the prince! Meanwhile the knights killed off the remaining CSM in Cypher's squad. It was all down to the huntmaster now who miraculously managed to kill off Cypher too giving us 3 VP into the bargain. I wasn't convinced this was enough to turn the game around but it was certainly a big blow to our enemies. Even better when they realised they'd forgotten to the deploy the portalglyph (that Dan had converted up from some false teeth!).

Now we were in trouble as the Heldrake arrived. The combination of Heldrake and Daemon Prince saw off the black knights, librarian and Sammael with just their vector strikes and flamers. At least this left the DP out of combat and on the ground. The drones finished off their bikes and moved to take on the DA tactical squad who were tucked up in their rhino. The GUO easily smashed his way through the baal predator. The plague marines in the rhinos now targetted the blood angels. The bikers helped them by charging the jump packers. The defiler had forgotten all about the attack bike behind it but fortunately for our opponents the nearby squad of plaguebearers was able to get into combat with the bike.

Another attack bike was able to outflank right behind his comrade but suffered the same issue with defiler AGAIN making it's invulnerable save. The flyers teamed up to try and down the heldrake but failed. The stormraven disgorged it's occupants with the death company charging the daemon prince and the DC dread taking on some plaguebearers.

The chaos forces struck back with the soul grinder charging the DC dread. The drones weren't able to destroy the DA rhino but stripped two hull points from it. Our right flank had pretty much completely folded and things weren't getting better as Typhus arrived from deep strike to wade in to the combats in the centre of the board. The obliterator came in too and destroyed the BA rhino.

Victory seemed nearly impossible at this point but we still had some hope as thanks to the Scouring the land speeder and stormtalon would be scoring. The DA tac squad hopped out of their rhino to try and cut down the drones but could only kill one and suffered a charge from them as punishment. Luckily they were able to win out though and cling to their objective. That was until the heldrake came into contest it.

In the last turn we tried some desperation tactics and used the speeder and talon to contest our opponents' objectives whilst we tried to destroy the heldrake to reclaim our objective. It was too little too late though as the soul grinder took down the speeder (having dispatched the DC dread. Still the game finished 14-9 which was a lot closer than it felt.

Conclusion

To me our defeat game down to our inability to destroy vehicles even with half range melta. The soul grinder and defiler passed five or six 5+ invulnerable saves so they kept on shooting and whittling down our forces. Neither rhino fell to melta preventing us from charging the occupants. Not destroying these vehicles was huge but made more so by the fact that it left us exposed to reprisals.

Both Typhus (who was deep striking) and the GUO are pretty easily avoided with an army as mobile as ours but thanks to getting bogged down a lot of the time they were able to get stuck in. The other key factor was the widespread high toughness. Our army wasn't high on numbers due to the relative expense of bikes but their weaponry was better at dealing with high toughness than ours.

There could be a debate about whether we should've taken first turn or not. Being able to directly counter the powerhouses of the chaos forces would've been useful and we'd have been able to use our speed to dictate the terms of the battle. Not only that but we'd have been able to cover the objectives in the later turns with less chance of reprisal. Trouble is, with a bike army you really feel like you need to go first to make the most of the scout moves and ensure those Jink saves are available.

I can't say I especially enjoyed this game at the time. There were several instances of our tactics falling flat thanks to poor dice on our part or jammy dice on theirs. If we'd even killed one of their vehicles in that fateful turn 2 then things may have been very different. I must apologise to the group though as I was pretty mardy towards the end of the game.

Anyway, hopefully things will be much more fun in our next big game for which we'll be upping the ante to 4,000 points to see the Imperium (Matt/Jamie) face off against the Greenskins (Me/Dan). The Orks will be fielding a couple of stompas and our scouts report they'll be facing off against a baneblade, warhound and imperial knight. I'm (for the most part) enjoying these big games, not only because I love doubles but also because we're trying to minimise the amount of dirt/cheese in use.

Dark Angels Nephilim Jetfighter - Airbrushing Progress

Apologies for the lack of activity recently. I've spent a couple of long weekends in Ireland with the in-laws and it feels rude to sit there blogging! Anyway, hopefully I'll get back up to speed this week.

You may recall that I recently picked up an airbrush set from eBay. In my first airbrushing post I showed the kit I picked up and my early efforts with it. You can view it here. The first thing I tried was to simply basecoat a vehicle with it to see how even the coverage was, play around with paint consistencies and try my hand at masking. I was fairly pleased with the results but the main thing was that I learned a lot about how to use the airbrush.

We've recently played a 3,000pt battle of Angels of Death (BA/DA) against the forces of Chaos and I wanted to use this an excuse to get my DA painted up. This gave me an opportunity to try my hand at "blending" with the airbrush. I use the inverted commas because it isn't the same kind of process as wet blending with a regular paintbrush. When you see the images of the Nephilim Jetfighter it often features a white to blue fade effect on the wings, as you can see below in the image taken from GW's site:

Now, I'm sure there was probably an article on the GW website claiming this was done using wet blending but having tried it out with my airbrush I'm convinced the Eavy Metal team must've used an airbrush too. Anyway, I mixed up some Calgar Blue with Ceramite White to create a pale sky blue colour. This was then liberally sprayed over the wings of the flyer. Once this had tried I thinned down some pure white and simply sprayed it over the top taking care to only apply a minimal amount over the wing "tips". That's it. Simple as that. Here's what the flyer looked like after those two coats:

I then carefully painted the black back in around the newly sprayed area. I'm blown away by the result and how easy it was to achieve. I could've perhaps masked the white area and sprayed the black on but I didn't dare mess up my clean white wings.

Obviously the rest of the model needs a lot of work yet but needless to say this has filled me with confidence for using the airbrush so expect to see it used a lot more in my upcoming hobby work.

First Attempts at Airbrushing!

I recently picked up a compressor and a couple of airbrushes from eBay. I'd done quite a bit of research about what type of compressor and airbrush combo to go for. The general consensus seemed to be that a piston compressor with a cylinder gave the right balance of reliable, constant air flow whilst keeping the price down. I plumped for this little number from eBay at £60 with two airbrushes (neither of which I'm using at the moment but they might come in handy later).

On eBay it's referred to as the AS186 and I think some sellers provide it without the cylinder. As I say the cylinder is a good idea though as you get a more consistent pressure whilst spraying. Anyway, the listing showed two different brushes but when I opened the box one of them didn't match the pictures plus the case of the other was damaged. I managed to persuade them to give me a partial refund with which I was able to pick up this airbrush:

A lot of sellers refer to this as the HS30. Basically it's a cheap knock-off of the more expensive named airbrushes like Iwata and Badger. Of course it isn't going to last as long and probably isn't as well made but it cost me around £10 which I was more comfortable paying when I wasn't sure how much use I was going to get from it. In addition I picked up a cleaning station for a tenner that doubles up as a holder and allows me to blast through some cleaning solution in between colours whilst filtering some of the vapour that is generated.

I've watched rather a lot of videos on YouTube about airbrushing including OrcPainterNerd, MarneusAugustusCalgar and Wargamers Consortium amongst others. Most recommend having a go on some paper first to practice the action and get the mix right. I had a bash with some thinned down Mephiston Red and sprayed some pretty patterns on some paper. Generally I wanted an idea of how the spray pattern changed depending on proximity of the airbrush to the surface and how far you need to pull back the trigger to get a good flow. I'm led to believe that better airbrushes have smoother actions and more control but to me my cheap little brush seemed pretty good.

After that first session I took the airbrush apart to clean it. I know you don't really need to but I wanted to see how it went together. A couple of bits were a bit tricky to re-assemble but generally it's a pretty simple construction so taking it apart once in a while for a good clean should be do-able.

I've had a rhino lying around for a while now that was originally assigned to my Space Wolves but when 6th edition pushed people away from mech I tossed it in the direction of my Dark Angels for the odd occasion I might want to run a rhino with my bikes. You may remember that I've been painting my Dark Angels up in a similar scheme to the Angels of Redemption. You can see my test model below and I must confess I haven't painted many more models since him. I do have a couple of bike squads up to table-top standard but my motivation to paint them waned when I quickly got bored of the new DA codex.

Nevertheless it was a good excuse to give the airbrush a go on a nice big model first and also an opportunity to try masking and seeing how well that works. The rhino was already sprayed with Chaos Black so this would be a good test of how well the airbrush could cover with lighter colours. To start with I sprayed one half of the model with Caliban Green (incidentally I'm using Vallejo Airbrush Thinner to "water" down). I then added some Warpstone Glow to the mix and tried to spray a thinner coat in attempt to shade. I think I probably got a bit carried away though so the shading is kind of lost.

After that I left it to dry for a bit. Not sure this was necessary mind you as I think it was dry by the time I'd washed out the brush. I then used some conventional masking tape (B&Q's finest) to mark a line down the centre of the tank. I toyed with the idea of taping some newspaper over the green bit to avoid overspray but I wanted to test out the accuracy of the airbrush so I decided not to bother.

I sprayed a coat of Rakarth Flesh over the other half doing my best to get an even coat and get into all the nooks and crannies. Once the tape was removed the "final" finish was revealed. I use the inverted commas because it's actually barely started. I want to spray on some chapter heraldry and then go to work with a regular brush to add details. I'll come back to the airbrush at the end though to add some weathering.

As you can see from the picture below I probably should've taken more care to smooth down the masking tape as there are small leaks where it wasn't down enough. Additionally I probably should've employed the newspaper idea as I've gone over the other side of the tape a bit. This is probably just me being overzealous rather than the brush being inaccurate. These will be pretty easy to touch up with a regular brush though and I'm happy with the finish and the time it took me to achieve it. There's no question that, even including setup/cleaning of the airbrush, it was much quicker than using a big brush. I'd have never gotten the finish as smooth either. Not bad for a first attempt I reckon.

Couple of things I've learnt so far. Firstly it's a good idea to mix more paint than you'd think. It's annoying to have to mix more when you're in the middle of a colour and you can always pop it back in the pot since it'll barely affect the mix. If you're worried I'm sure there's empty pots lying around that it could go in. Secondly an old brush seems to be the best tool for mixing the paints. I was trying to use the pipettes but they're too much of a faff and you end up losing half of your paint inside. The old brush is great for getting the paint into the airbrush cup too. Finally, it's a good idea to have plenty of kitchen roll to hand. Very useful for cleaning out the cup (I'm using Medea Airbrush Cleaner), test spraying before committing and generally avoiding mess.

Overall I'm pleased with my purchase. I know I've got nothing to compare it to but it's actually much better than I thought. Obviously I'm just doing block colours here so I'm not really testing myself too much. When I start to work on my Dark Eldar I'll be trying some fading and more intricate masking and stencil work. Anyway, I hope this stuff will be interesting and at least I'm getting some hobby content on here for a change! I'll post again once I've done the stencilled chapter logos etc.

If anyone is thinking of getting an airbrush feel free to ask questions in the comments and I'll either answer or point you in the direction of a good youtube video!