More Double Trouble Army Shots (Matt Calow)

Before I get onto tonight's instalment of pictures. I've emailed everyone about the event on Saturday and I need replies from all of you ASAP. If you haven't replied please do so, I'd really appreciate it. I'm still working on my Dark Eldar in amongst printing out all the relevant bits and pieces and making the objective cards. I'll hopefully find time to throw up some pictures and a brief army list run-down on Friday but otherwise you'll have to prepare to be underwhelmed on Saturday when you see my army in the flesh!

Right, just a brief update tonight. You may remember a little while back that Matt Calow was 3D-printing some custom pieces for his Space Marine army. Well the most impressive bits for me were the dozer blades for his vindicators. Matt has sent some more pictures in of these now they're painted. Still not seen a full army shot though.....

From Matt: "You may recognise the display board from last time. The fires are a new addition though. My Predators are also coming along nicely, no further progress on the Techmarine yet, but hey; I've still got a week right? Well 6 days... shh." (even less now! -ed.)

I'm sure you'll agree that these are really impressive and make for a very unique set of tanks. I only own one vindicator but seeing these is making me tempted to get a second just to buy a dozer blade from Matt (I don't know if he sells them or not?!?). Matt has also been doing some 3D printing for me but you'll have to wait until Saturday to see what he's been up to.....

The Inaugural Double Trouble Pie Charts Post!

Those of you who've attended Blog Wars or else read this blog for a while will know that there's been a bit of a tradition that once all of the armies have been submitted I put together a few pie charts to break down the armies. Well, it seemed only right that the tradition continue into Double Trouble so here goes.

As ever, thanks to all of you for submitting your lists in advance of the event. I have to say having a lot of them in Battlescribe format made things pretty easy. Obviously I rely on the datafiles being correct but they're generally pretty good and a damn sight easier than me trying to know every codex inside and out (I used to be able to!). It also helped that we're only talking about single detachment 750pt armies! There are a few reasons for me asking for lists beforehand. Firstly, it means that hopefully when you play your games you aren't finding errors which need to be corrected. This would be particularly bad if they were only spotted later in the tournament. Secondly, it gives me an idea of who's actually coming to the event. Some people buy tickets well in advance and forget all about actually booking time off work etc. Finally, it lets me produce the pie charts that you'll be able to enjoy today.

The Pie Charts
First off the traditional faction breakdown pie chart:

This one was always the most colourful at Blog Wars and Double Trouble is no exception. On the face of it there seems to be a really good mix of factions represented with nearly all of them getting at least one army. However, there are notable absences from Astra Militarum (I'm shocked as I think they'd be great at 750pts), Skitarii, Chaos Space Marines and Necrons. It's pretty power armour-tastic though. When you combine all the armies into either "Space Marines" or "Everything Else" it looks like this:

Before you say anything, I know that I didn't really need a pie chart to show 50% but screw you, I like pie! I really hope all the armies have something to deal with power armour because you can expect to see at lot of it! This prevalence of power armour could be one of two things, either it represents the general popularity of the Adeptus Astartes or perhaps that they're pretty flexible and well suited to the tournament. It's probably a combination of both. Either way, there's actually a good variety of different armies in there. Surprisingly there's only one lot of White Scars and several chapters are represent in one way or another. Not to mention a couple of 30K armies.

When we add in the Mechanicum stuff and compare that to the number of Xenos and Chaos armies we get something like this:

Not surprisingly there's a hefty chunk of Imperium right there. As you know, there's no CSM so all of the Chaos chunk comes from Daemons (well one Khorne Daemonkin army). Up until I had a last minute drop-out, all 4 Chaos gods were represented. Sadly, Slaanesh is left wanting but who knows, those Eldar might oblige.

Next up, let's look at the detachment types in use. Remember you could only use a single detachment or formation:

That's a whole heap of CADs! It's surprising really when you consider how many different formations and detachments are out there. I suppose the heavy focus on Maelstrom could be a factor here with plenty of Objective Secured in play. I'm surprised that when you total it all up the split between Detachment and Formation looks like this:

Can't say I'm really complaining because I'm not a big fan of Formations but it's suprising we didn't see more of them. I'm assuming this is down to the force selection restrictions. Firstly, a lot of formations would either by way over 750 pts or too far under. Secondly, the maximum of two of a certain unit means others simply can't be made at all. Still, there were some formations I expected to see that didn't make an appearance.

Finally, let's look at Forge World usage. This is the first time for a while that I've allowed Forge World units to be taken. It's certainly the first time since they were officially legal in 40K. I think the last time I permitted their use was something like BW2!! I'd expected quite a few people to take me up on the offer:

Not exactly ten-a-penny (especially not at FW prices!) but as you can see a quarter of the armies will have some sort of Forge World unit. There are three 30K full FW armies with two Legiones Astartes and one Mechanicum force. The "single units" title is slightly misleading, some armies have more than one FW unit in there but basically the majority of those armies is still codex.

Right, I'm well and truly stuffed with pies now so I think it's time to call it a night. I'll be back later in the week to show you my feeble efforts at getting my Dark Eldar ready for the event and to talk you through my list. Speaking of which, Luke Fogg has done just that in a video you can see here.

I'll also be posting a few more pictures I've had through. There's still time to get your army featured so send me some pictures if you'd like that to happen. Not long to go now!

Double Trouble - More Armies and Details of Friday Night

First up, John Purves sent some pictures in of his Ultramarines force. He'd originally planned on a totally different list but has painted like mad to change it after play testing. I'll let him explain:

Some army progress shots for you!   

That was my original army list, which I painted up after signing up for double trouble. I then had a trial game against some Eldar, (minus the bike mounted command squad) and the two squads of bikers were tabled on turn one by 2 wave serpents and a 5 man squad of warp spiders, which was disappointing. That list was:

HQ: Librarian, Mastery Level 2, with force stave, on a bike
Elites: Command squad on bikes, 5 grav guns, 3 storm shields, 2 power maces
Troops: Bike squad, 5 bikes - 1 combi melta, 2 meltas. Bike Squad, 5 bikes - 2 flamers, 1 combi-flamer
Fast Attack: Stormtalon with Skyhammer missile launcher.

The only thing painted before signing up was the stormtalon.      

That's the current list.

HQ: Chronus in Predator with Lascannon Sponsons; Telion
Troops: 10 Scout snipers; Tactical squad (grav-gun, Imperial Space marine) in Razorback with T/L Assault Cannon
Fast Attack: 2 Stormtalons with skyhammer missile launchers.

Since changing my mind about 4 weeks ago (I've been at sea for three of those!) I've had to paint Chronus, a Predator, Telion and 5 scout snipers.

Only a bit of light touch-up work to do on the scouts and the army is ready!

I'd love to tell you that John's list was one of few marine lists but....

Anyway, moving onto another marine list. Dave Weston has recently finished work on his ravenwing and has put up some shots of his entire DT force. He's also added some shots of his full Dark Angels army in another post. Here's a couple of choice shots but you should definitely check out his blog anyway.

Elsewhere Rob Hill has recently posted about his Mechanicum (FW) army with some stunning shots of the force. Judging by the pictures we've seen so far the painting competition will be a of a very high standard. Again here's a couple of shots from Rob's blog but check it out properly for yourselves.

Finally, Luke Fogg is running a little X-wing event on Friday (there'll be people playing 40K warmup games too I'm sure). He's posted some details on his blog where you can also see some shots of his Howling Griffons which are making an appearance at DT and have been featured in this series already. You don't need to bring any X-wing models but comment on his blog if you're making an appearance so he has a rough idea of numbers.

That's it for tonight. Over the weekend I'm hoping to post some pictures of the progress (!) I've made on my own army for Double Trouble. Incidentally, as it stands we've got 32 players after a couple of dropouts and a couple of non-responders. That means I've been able to do the table draw for all three rounds with a random number generator (no, I'm not telling you) but also that I can get some pie charts made and posted up. Keep your eyes peeled for them!