More 8th Edition Battles - Tyranids Galore!

More games of 8th edition today and this time with Dan. We've played with and against each other during the big games we've had at various times but this is the first time we've met up for a gaming session between the two of us. Insane really because Dan lives closer to me than anyone else I game with!! Anyway, Dan hadn't played 8th yet so we started off with a couple of 1K kill point games before ramping it up to 2K for a grand finale. Dan was playing Tyranids in all three games but with wildly different lists to try out as much as possible.

Before I go any further I just notice that this is post number 701! Shame I didn't notice before the last post but still that's an insane number considering how many words that must be in total!! Imagine what I could've achieved if I'd put that time into painting instead of blogging! Actually, probably better not to think about that.

Game One - Wolves vs. Tyranids
I had a mostly infantry list consisting of blood claws, wulfen skyclaws, long fangs and a ven dread. Wanted to test out a few things basically. First up how missile launchers perform in 8th and secondly how viable dreadnoughts actually are without a pod. Dan had Old One Eye, a couple of fexes, a tervigon with a blob of gaunts (20 devourer, 10 fleshborer - cunning!) and two squads of 'stealers.

I got the first turn and charged forward trying to stay far enough away to avoid a charge but not so far that I wouldn't get to charge in my turn. Needless to say I completely misjudged this. The carnifexes couldn't make it into combat but Old One Eye was able to get stuck into the dread and his monstrous scything talons made short work of the dread with the 3 damage per hit. The 'stealers covered a lot of ground with their advance then charge and easily wiped out the skyclaws with a few rending hits.

The wulfen then charged into Old One Eye but couldn't quite kill him before the fexes and 'stealers joined in. The blood claws waded into combat with the termagants but couldn't kill enough to stop the tervigon simply replacing them. Meanwhile the long fangs couldn't bring down the tervigon fast enough which meant the gaunts held up the blood claws long enough for the 'stealers to join in and seal their fate. When all the combats had been resolved Dan had achieved a tabling with his first game of the new edition.

Game Two - T'au vs. Tyranids
This is my first game with T'au in this edition and I thought I'd try out a mix of things that will probably make it into my larger lists. I'd got kroot, a strike team in a 'fish, Longstrike and another hammerhead and a twin-missile/flamer crisis team. Dan had two squads of 5 warriors each accompanied by a prime, 5 zoanthropes, 2 pyrovores and more 'stealers!

The Tau first turn was pretty ineffective with just one warrior dying. It was clear it would be slow progress using the Hammerheads to take them down one at a time. I forgot to bring my suits in on turn one too! The Tyranid shooting was effective in removing the kroot (thanks to morale) and then made short work of the pathfinders. Meanwhile the fire warriors disembarked and made short work of the 'stealers on the right and then a warrior unit with help from their 'fish. The crisis team appeared and easily wiped out some 'stealers on the left. The zoanthropes weren't bad but simply couldn't do enough damage to the hammerheads quick enough.

When the crisis team also dealt with the rest of the warriors (having survived combat and fallen back to do so) we decided it wasn't worth carrying on as the T'au would eventually be victorious but it wouldn't be a lot of fun getting to that point. One game a piece then heading into the grand finale.

Game Three - Drukhari (DE) vs. Tyranids
My Drukhari had been pretty underwhelming in my game against Matt's IK and Leman Russes. I'd changed my list up a bit but tried not to go too OTT as Dan was still getting to grips with 8th. The main difference was ditching the haywire blasters on the scourges in favour of regular blasters (although I've yet to convert them) and generally increasing the amount of darklight weaponry in the list. I'd got a raider with grotesques, an archon and Urien, three venoms with warriors, three ravagers, a razorwing jetfighters, a unit of scourges and two 3-man reaver squads. Dan had Swarmy with some tyrant guard, a blob of devourer termagants, a blob of hormagaunts and a broodlord. He then had two trygons and a trygon prime in reserve who would bring up a couple of 17-strong genestealer units (the only unit Dan featured in every list and for good reason). We played Retrieval Mission to keep things simple.

Dan should've gone first but I managed to Seize. I brought down the Scourges and Dan realised too late that he'd left the broodlord exposed on his left flank. He quickly succumbed to blaster fire despite Dan attempting a command re-roll of his invulnerable save. Meanwhile the rest of the army focused in on the Swarmlord and managed to kill off the tyrant guard and lay in a couple of wounds on the big guy. The flyer also killed off a hive guard.

Dan brought in all three of his tunnelling trygons. This was made difficult by how spread out my army was which severely limited his options for deployment. Only one Trygon out of three (and neither genestealer unit) managed the 9" charge and Dan needed a command re-roll to get that! It made short work of a ravager though. The scourges glory was shortlived as the devourer termagants cut them to ribbons. The hormagaunts ripped through the grotesques' raider but Swarmy was left impotent as a result. He piled into the grotesques but couldn't strike. The grotesques then cut through plenty of hormagaunts. The trygons and genestealers were left in a vulnerable position and the ravagers simply backed off to finish off a trygon whilst the reavers, venoms and kabalites worked on the stealers. With no synapse they took further losses to morale too. The reavers charged in and finished them off.

The trygon prime headed forward now and killed a raider and consolidated into the occupants. It wasn't looking great for the Tyranids at this point with just Swarmy, two depleted units of gaunts, the trygon prime and two hive guard left. It got even worse when I decided my best option was to fall back out of the combat with Swarmy and with the Prime. This proved fatal for Swarmy who was cut down by the vemons and ravagers. The gaunts took heavy casualties and found themselves out of synapse meaning they quickly vanished thanks to the razorwing. One of the ravagers also managed to line up for shots on the hive guard who were then charged by the remaining arena champion from the reavers who finished the last one off.

That left the trygon prime all on his own against the vast majority of the Drukhari army. When he failed to down a ravager it was clear the beast wouldn't get long to regret it and we finished the evening as we started, a tabling!

Conclusion
There's no doubt the first game would've been totally different if I'd held back. The long fangs would've got a couple of turns worth of shooting into the tervigon before the gaunts got into range. Equally the speed of the genestealers would've meant that they'd hit first and be dealt with before the carnifexes would get involved. Still, it isn't very wolfy to stand back and shoot and it made for a dramatic game that was over quickly and gave us enough time to get three in.

I think Dan was expecting Orks in the second game so he'd intentionally not brought big monsters to the party. That proved frustrating for Longstrike who was forced into taking out a single warrior per turn rather than inflicting more dramatic damage on a big monster. Still, the single shot from the railguns doesn't feel particularly effective and I think you'd need to use Longstrike to make it even close to viable. Not writing them off after just one game but still, not blown away.

Pathfinders are interesting. Markerlights are quite different now but a single hit is a nice bonus. With everything being able to split fire, a unit of Pathfinders can get you a marker hit on several different enemy units. The markers aren't spent anymore either and nothing says a unit can't benefit from its own markers now (unless I've missed something). It isn't really worth getting 2-3 hits either and cover isn't what it was so 4 hits are barely worth it. Getting 5 hits would be nice but you'd need 10 pathfinders (on average) to get this. Basically think of them as the equivalent of some characters in other armies. Light up as many units as you can with just a single hit.

Having plenty of darklight weaponry is definitely the way to go with Drukhari. Ravagers are pretty much a must-have and I really liked the flyer too. I thought it'd be pretty tricky to use as you can't fly it off the board and have to start it on the table now. However, with no more fire arcs (and therefore the opportunity to fire backwards) it was really easy to both keep it on the board and keep it firing. Flyers are going to be excellent even if they're now easier to hit.

Speaking of things that can fly. In both the Drukhari game and the T'au game it was abundantly clear that being able to fall back and still shoot with the FLY keyword is huge. Falling back at the right moment is generally pretty brutal if you've got enough other units in firing range but when your ravager can simply fall back from combat and open up at full power it becomes a pretty terrifying prospect.

The trygons were a bit of a mixed bag really. I hadn't particularly thought about it but the way I advanced my army made it really difficult for Dan to even find space to bring them in. Makes me wonder about drop pods too. Having to stay 9" away is a pretty big footprint and a savvier player than me would make it really difficult for you to bring them down anywhere useful. Shooting units probably fare better coming in this way though.

I still think Tyranids can be great in 8th edition though. Drukhari will always be a tough matchup as the amount of poisoned and darklight weaponry they can pump out is disgustingly good against monsters. Hordes would be a tricky prospect mind you and they'd do reasonably well against the Drukhari vehicles. Ultimately I think a balanced list is the way to go. You need some big guys to bring some hurt in combat but hordes, genestealers and big shooty beasts have a role to play. I'm looking forward to getting my Tyranids painted (more on that soon).

Finally, I promised review posts for every faction in the indexes but since GW announced this week that there'll be "10 new codexes by Christmas" it seems daft to spend time reviewing when a lot of it will be obsolete pretty quickly. Instead I'll just review each book as it comes out and stick to posts like this based on actual gaming.

Dark Eldar (or is that Ynnari?) for the Doubles - Part 4 - Finished (sort of)

Just packed up my army for the doubles at Warhammer World this weekend. I should probably be getting some sleep in preparation for a long day's gaming tomorrow but I wanted to show you how I've got on with my Dark Eldar painting project for the event. I'd got the following in various states of painted that I hoped to have ready in time:

• Archon
• 15 Kabalite Warriors
• 4 Venoms
• 10 Scourges
• 7 Reavers

Well, after a bit of a test session on Wednesday (which I had hoped to blog about before now), we decided to ditch the Archon and one of the Reavers (along with his cluster caltrops) in order to squeeze Maugan Ra in as my HQ choice. I wasn't too bothered by this as my Archon was the only thing I'd managed to get "finished" for Double Trouble. I'd have been annoyed if I'd put hours into him in this project only to write him out of the list. I can cope with one Reaver not being involved! 

Anyway, apologies for the crappy pictures but it's late and I couldn't be bothered to set things up properly. Maybe I'll get round to some better pictures at some point. Here's a summary of what I've been doing since the last post. 

I've rolled out the orange and red wings to the rest of the Scourges. Painting the black bits back in on the orange took far more time than it should've last night but I'm happy with how the wings have turned out. It did mean that I didn't get time to do the vials/pipes properly or paint their armour properly but hopefully the bright wings will distract people from that! I never got round to getting the airbrush out for them so opted for a bit of a Jokaero Orange basecoat then 3 thin coats of Troll Slayer. Probably would've been quicker with the airbrush but that would've meant painting in the garage rather than on my knee in the lounge and "spending time" with my missus.

I updated the paint job on my fourth venom (it had previously been painted with Liche Purple which didn't match the rest). Once they were all done I added a couple of transfers to the flags and glued in the gunners. Out of interest, did anyone else find the gunners were leaning back quite a way or is this just because I've used the ones from the Raider sets instead of the wyches? I ended up filing their feet down so they stood up straighter.

I've tidied up all of the Kabalites with purple shoulders and knees to match the gunners and Reavers. I unfortunately haven't had time to do ANY of the line highlighting on them, the Scourges or most of the Reavers. It's a shame but hopefully I'll find the motivation to come back to it later.

Well I'll be taking plenty more shots of them at the tournament tomorrow so hopefully you'll get a better look at their paintjobs then. For now it's midnight and I should really turn in. I'll try to get battle reports for the tournament up early next week. I should have more time for blogging over the next few weeks as I won't be frantically painting. I do want to get the Blood Bowl teams ready for the next session mind you...

Dark Eldar (or is that Ynnari?) for the Doubles - Part 3

Well it's been three weeks since I last posted anything!! I've been pretty busy getting my Dark Eldar ready for the doubles but I'm still worried I won't get them finished with just under two weeks to go. Hopefully I can get a lot done on the bank holiday weekend but there's still a lot to do. Anyway, let's see what I have managed to achieve.

Reavers
These guys have probably had the most love since they're easily my favourite Dark Eldar models. The scourges are probably a close second but there's just something awesome about these jetbikes that made them the first thing I wanted to paint:

There hasn't been a ton of progress on them since the last post but they've all now got gold helmets and I've added some 'ard coat to their facemasks. I'm pleased with the results and with the exception of perhaps doing the engines in gold too (like you can see on the one in the middle in the top picture), I'm happy to field them like this. They're not finished but they're good enough for the event at least. If I get some time (unlikely) I'll come back to them for the finishing touches but with time running out I really need to get on with the rest.

Venoms

This has been most of my work for the last couple of weeks. I had one of the four venoms up to a reasonable standard so I set about working on the other three.

This is pretty much where I left off when I was trying to paint them this time last year for Double Trouble. I didn't get much further than doing the cockpits in an attempt at green OSL and then in Lothern Blue stripes down the middle. 

And here they are now. There's quite a bit of change I hope you'll agree. I've continued the random purple panels from the Reavers. I'm not convinced it really works on the Venoms though and I'm wondering if I should've just painted the same panel purple on all of them. Too late to worry about that now. Anyway, they've all had highlights of Xereus Purple followed by Genestealer Purple. I've added gold round the cockpits to tie in with the Reavers and painted all the skulls in. The final bit of work was to paint the flags Mephiston Red. If I get time before the event they'll get a transfer on the flag and a few transfers elsewhere. It'll probably be a night before the event kind of thing if at all. Still I'm happy with the progress. Again I might do the engines in gold to match the reavers (assuming I get time to do them even) but the only other thing I want to do is paint in the skulls properly. The gunners also all need doing but I'll do them along side the Kabalites. Speaking of which...

Kabalite Warriors 

There's three squads of five to paint here. There's a single test model in amongst them that needs some tweaking too. I've decided to do their helmets, shoulder pads and chest plates in purple to tie into the vehicles better and just lift them up from being just line highlighted. Thankfully a lot of the basecoating was already done from a good while ago so they just need the purple painting in and line highlights across the board. That's easier said than done of course but I'd have no chance if they weren't even painted at all.

You can see I've also started on the gunners for the venoms too. I'm hoping to get the bulk of the warriors done by the weekend so I've got all of next week to work on the scourges.

Scourges

Again, there's some paint on these guys from my token efforts before Double Trouble but little else. However, my wife suggested orange wings for the "bat wing" ones and red for the feathered ones. I decided to try out a test model of the orange to see how I liked it. 

The lighting isn't great but you get the idea. First off, painting orange is a fucking ballache without an airbrush (like I had for my Knights). For subsequent models I'll try and mask and airbrush them to get a much smoother finish on the wings. What do you think of the orange though?

Conclusion

I think there's actually a reasonable chance of me pulling this off but it'll still be a slog for the next couple of weeks. I did manage to fit in an evening of Blood Bowl the other night to start our league of though so I'll try to post up about that. Matt's coming over soon too to actually get in a couple of test games with our list so we at least have some idea what we're doing. 

Thinking I should bring these guys to Double Trouble 2 as I had fun using them last time and at least I won't be so ashamed of them this time!

Right, best get back to painting. Will hopefully have another update for you soon.

Dark Eldar (or is that Ynnari) for the Doubles - Part 2

You'd be forgiven for thinking that I've not actually made any progress on these guys. Well, it doesn't really feel like I'm much further along. It's frustrating me how long these are taking which is counter-productive because I'm then struggling to motivate myself to make progress. I'm only putting in an hour or so each evening at the moment and clearly that isn't going to be enough to get that to-do list down to size.

Don't get me wrong. I'm pleased with the work I've done so far on these things. Well, to a point anyway, I still find painting difficult because I'm just not very good at it. I just don't seem to get the same results as other people do and they're doing it in half of the time. I'm not saying I should just be able to pick up a brush and win a Golden Demon but I don't even feel like I get the paint the right consistency or something. It's funny that I'm back to painting an army for a tournament again when I specifically said I was just going to paint whatever I fancied!

Anyway, I think the Reavers look good enough so let's have a quick look at what I actually have done:

After a discussion with friends I decided to repaint the seats in grey (Mechanicum Standard to be precise). Jamie made a good point that they look like leather but stand out too much, detracting from the rest of the model. Anyway, I decided to paint the armour on the riders in purple to match the carapace sections. Their suits underneath are still black though so I think that works well. I've also picked out the skin on those with bare arms and I'm reasonably happy with the result. There were two of the seven that hadn't got the controls painted in on the bikes too so they're now done. I've also painted all the little dots on the cluster caltrops not that anyone will ever notice!

Last but not least, the eagle-eyed amongst you might've noticed I've changed the faceplates to black in the end. I'm waiting for some paints to come into my FLGS but once they do the helmets will be gold I think which will help to tie them into the Scourges who have gold faceplates. I'll try and mute it down a bit with washes so it isn't bright shiny gold but I think it'll just add a little something. I'd considered purple or silver/steel for the helmets but I want to see how gold works out. Once that's done the facemasks will get a couple of coats of 'ardcoat to give a high shine. I'd like to maybe drybrush a bit of the cyan up the middle of their facemasks to give the impression that the blue is reflecting in them. Probably won't work out like I see it in my head though.

Whilst I wait for my order of paints to come in, I'll probably move onto the Venoms. I'm sure progress will be quicker with them since well, vehicles always go quicker. There's a couple of decisions to make there too though. For example, do I keep the flag/trophy poles or remove them. I've seen both and can't make my mind up. Removing them means less painting at least!!

Dark Eldar (or is that Ynnari) for the Doubles

My posting is pretty sporadic recently but I've been working towards getting my Dark Eldar ready for the 40K Doubles at Warhammer World in April. That's about six weeks away and I have an insane amount to paint between now and then. Matt and I have decided to take a Eldar/Dark Eldar army under the new Ynnari rules. Some of my stuff is at least partly painted but basically I need to paint:

• 7 Reavers
• 4 Venoms
• 10 Scourges
• 15 Kabalites

That's just stupid isn't it?! As I say, some of the stuff is at least started but it's going to take a pretty huge effort to get everything ready. We'll probably need to have a backup force in case I don't manage it but I'm trying to be as optimistic as possible!

Anyway, my efforts so far have mostly been directed at the Reavers. I've got the carapaces all done and I'm moving to work on the riders as a break from the highlighting I need to do on the bodies of the jetbikes. 

I don't have much time to blog about my progress but I'll try to throw up little updates like this from time to time over the next few weeks. Wish me luck!

Dark Eldar for Double Trouble WIP - Part 2

Well firstly, apologies for the sporadic posting of late. It's a combination of factors as ever. I'm trying to put my free time into painting instead of blogging. The other big thing is that I'm really struggling to get excited about new releases of late. The weekly release cycle has taken some of the intrigue away and I find it tough to get enthusiastic about a couple of new models for one of my armies here and there. GW have got themselves into a bit of a hole at the moment from where I stand. With the exception of Chaos and Sisters, they haven't really got any armies at moment that require a massive overhaul of rules and models. I'd argue that sisters don't need much work on the rules either.

It's ironic really that we were all clamouring for rules in WD again, more regular releases and more stand alone games. Now that we're getting that it's having the opposite of the desired effect on my enthusiasm. The models for Deathwatch look great but I can't face another board game with unpainted models. Perhaps that's because I'm so in love with X-wing and the pre-painted models there are more than good enough. I suppose the key is that I don't want to add more grey plastic to my collection. I want a cupboard full of at least gaming standard models that I can look forward to using in battles. To that end, enough rambling, let's look at my progress on the DE so far.

I'm really torn on the colour scheme still so I picked up a line drawing of a Kabalite Warrior and had a play with a colouring app on my phone to try and come up with something original. I created an interesting mix of off-white and purple that looked really good on the picture. Trouble was, I wasn't blown away when I tried to apply it to a real model:

Now, obviously it's tough to tell from just base coats but I'm just not really feeling the love for it. I do, however, still like my original paint scheme plan as shown on my now several year old test model on the right. I therefore tried to apply it to a reaver jetbike to see how I felt about it.

Painting this convinced me to stick with my original scheme but I thought it'd be good to try and apply the same blue stripe to the entire force. Here's what it looks like added to one of my more painted Venoms:

The paintwork needs a bit of tidying up here but I'm happy with the general effect. I'll then try and continue the ice blue stripe down the middle of the warriors' and scourges' helmets. I think the purple needs to come through a bit more strongly too so I went for random panels on the reaver canopies to break them up a bit and make them more individual:

I'm pretty happy with the way this comes across. You'll notice I continued the blue strip onto the rear fin as well. Not decided what I'm doing with the reavers' helmets yet. Think it'd look too much with the stripe continuing through. As you can see I've also started on the seat cushions and painted in the controls. I'm toying with bringing in some of the off-white on the weapons but will have to see how it looks.

My problem now is that all of the colour scheme indecision has put me quite far behind schedule. I was hoping to be sat here with finished reavers at this point but I still haven't got anything off the table. Here's what I've got to get done in the next 9 weeks:

• 3 Venoms with crew
• 5 Reavers
• 10 Scourges
• 10 Warriors
• 1 Archon

That's 29 models so not far of a model every two days!! Not saying I've got no chance but...

Anyway, hopefully your Double Trouble armies are coming along better than mine. If you haven't got your ticket yet there's still time. Head to the DT page now for more details.

Dark Eldar for Double Trouble WIP - Part 1

In my last post I listed out some of the armies I'm thinking about for Double Trouble. I hope that I only need one of them! I'll therefore be aiming to get my Dark Eldar finished ready for the event. As with my Imperial Knights project, the need to get them ready for a tournament will be my motivation to get them done. Anyway, here's a shot of how the models looked before I started:

As you can see they're assembled but barely painted. There's some colour on one of the venoms and patches on the reavers and warriors but the other venoms, scourges and archon are just undercoated.

Before I can get any paint on them there's a few things I want to sort out though. You may remember I did some conversion work to give haywire blasters to 4 scourges in each squad. I'm looking back at that post now and wondering why I didn't just take the front bit off the gun and make my life easier!?! I took this opportunity to use some basing beads to make these guys more stable. The beads are basically just lead shot that I bought from eBay a little while ago. A liberal amount of super glue into the base is all it needs. Makes a massive difference to stability. I still use pennies for my non-slotta bases mind you because the costs are lower (1p per base funnily enough). Really wish I'd done this before gluing the models into the base but nevermind.

Anyway, the archon currently has the wrong weapons. I've therefore carefully (not easy with finecast) broken off both arms and replaced them with a splinter pistol and agoniser. I was tempted to try and magnetise him but I wasn't confident that finecast would cope with the necessary drilling. Here's how he looks now (there's paint on the agoniser because a hekatrix lent it to him):

Next up I wanted to add a bit of variety to the reavers. I'm keen on keeping all of the visored helmets but I've thrown in a couple of hand weapons to break them up a bit. I'll also differentiate more with the paintwork. The caltrop model is the one with the ponytail to help me identify him quickly.

Finally, whilst I initially thought the ball-top flying bases were an amazing idea, I find that on some of the models they don't give a very tight fit. I was considering adding layers of paint to make the ball a more snug fit but in the end I've decided to file down the ball and add a 5 mm magnet to the top. This makes a really stable join. I lose some of the poseability but I wasn't really making use of this anyway. I've done the same to the venoms too:

That's all the preliminary work done now. I've really got to decide what colour to paint them! I was extremely tempted to go for orange again after the success of my Imperial Knights and also thanks to inspiration from Rovient's stunning collection over on Tale of Painters:

I was originally planning on making them purple though and I'd still like a purple army. I'd love to think they'd end up looking something like Stahly's (also on Tale of Painters):

You may remember I painted up a test model a while ago. Holy crap! That post was July 2012. That's a depressing thought. No excuses this time. I'm getting them done! Anyway, I like the scheme I painted four years (!) ago but I'm not convinced it stands out enough on the table top. I'm thinking I might merge Rovient's bold block colours with Stahly's clean line highlights. Perhaps some bold purple panels on the venoms?

Think I'll do a reaver as a new test model. Gives me chance to do the rider as a test for the infantry scheme and the bike as a small scale test of the vehicle scheme. Hopefully it'll take me less than four years!!

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.

Dark Eldar Scourges - Simple Haywire Blaster Conversion

As I said in my appeal post I think the best option for weaponry for Scourges is the haywire blaster. I intend to run my two squads with five members and four haywire blasters. This comes in at a very reasonable 120 pts. Here's a quick rundown of why I think the haywire is the best option.

Scourges are T3 with a 4+ save and therefore not the most durable unit in the game even when FNP kicks in. That means two things, firstly, you want to keep them at a decent range to avoid return fire and keep them away from charges. Secondly, you want to keep them as cheap as possible. This is generally a good idea in a DE list as everything is flimsy so piling tons of points into one unit is a waste.

Obviously you want to replace their shardcarbines with something else why take them? The shredder and splinter cannon are fine for anti-infantry but your DE army in general doesn't struggle with that. What you need is anti-tank. Blasters and dark lances are too pricey so that leaves the heat lance or haywire blaster. Coming back to what I said about range you might think there isn't much to choose between the two but remember the heat lance is only S6 so you need to be within 9" to have a hope of doing something to a vehicle. I'd have no issue putting Reavers that close but not Scourges. Outside of 9" you're needing 6s to glance AV12+ which would be penetrating hits for the haywire blaster. Obviously you can't one shot a vehicle with a haywire but with the change to the damage table a heat lance isn't much more reliable. To me then, the haywire blaster is the only option.

Again, as I've said before, the trouble is you only get one per box. Here's what I've come up with as an alternative. I wanted to create a gun that looked as close to the real thing as possible. There are some great conversion ideas on the net using the heat lance with extra blades but I wanted something that was more convincing. For this I used the haywire blaster barrel from the Talos/Cronos kit (I have four spare since it's a twin-linked weapon and I put heat lances on my Talos).

The barrel is simply cut from the mounting as shown.

My first idea was to use the stock from the heat lance. I carefully cut around the, err, sticky out bit (?!?) under the barrel before cutting the barrel from the stock itself.

It's then very straightforward to mount the haywire blaster barrel on the stock. Bear in mind you need to carve the gem from the underside of the haywire blaster barrel though before it will fit. 

Here's a side-by-side comparison before I glued the barrel in place. You can see it's pretty much the same length and apart from a longer "sticky out thing" (that's what she said) it's barely any different. This would be perfect apart from there only being a single heat lance in the box too. Short of getting hold of more, I need an alternative. Nick commented on Thursday's post to suggest using the stock from the shredder.

I unfortunately couldn't keep the "sticky out bit" (which is probably a handle) in one piece but, as you can see below, attaching the barrel to the shredder stock would be simple and would give a gun of about the same length. I think the difference is more noticeable though and the converted gun reminds me of the M4A1 from Counter-strike!

 The other issue is that the gripping hand for the shredder sits underneath the weapon making the difference more noticeable. The heat lance has the same top mounted handle making it less obvious.

Here's the three for comparison. Shredder stock at the top, heat lance stock in the middle and original haywire blaster on the bottom. Sadly I think I won't be happy with the shredder as an option so I'm going to need to either get hold of some more actual haywire blasters or at least some heat lances. In the meantime I've got enough to make two extra haywire blasters so I've got enough for a squad. I decided to pin the barrels onto the heat lance stocks for a bit more durability.

Here's the final shot of the original weapon on the right with the conversion on the left. When they're painted up and sitting across a table from you I defy anyone to spot the difference. By the way, the thing that looks like it's hanging from the converted blaster is part of the wings that the camera has made look like part of the gun.

Ultimately I'll probably try to get a full squad worth of proper weapons (I'd only need two more) and then two more heat lances and then have two squads made up entirely of the same version. That way I doubt anyone would notice and I'll have a subtle way of telling the squads apart. What do you guys think?