Ordo Hereticus

Combat Patrol!

2011-09-29T23:16:00.000-04:00

So my local game store will be running a small combat patrol league in the coming month. we will be using the adepticon 2011 rules for combat patrol so you can look them up to see exactly what they are, here i will just go over the basics. the force org is 1-3 troops and 0-1 of everything else, plus an extra 0-1 swing spot that can be used for an extra fast, heavy or elite choice. after that there are no mosterous creatures, no psyker powers that involve a roll, no 2+ or 2++ saves, no model with 3 or more wounds unless they are a troop or have the swarm rule, and no vehicles with any armor value over 11 unless it is a dedicated transport or troop in which case it can have a 12. so those are the basics the only things we are change is we are allowing the latest codexes (so grey knights and current Sister are in) and we are playing at 600pts instead of 400pts. ok now that we are done with rules lets talk about what to bring.

so i thought long and hard about what army i should even play. i have Sisters (as we all know), IG, some space marines, enough stuff to cobble together some kind of grey knight list (just so i could have assassins), tau, and chaos. looking at all the choices i had i came to a few conclusions. first i have way to many side project armies, second i figured i should play an army i have mostly modeled and painted. so that brings me down to IG, Space marines, Sisters and Tau. now i decided against Tau mostly because though they are painted i didn't paint them and i am planning to strip the models sometime soon. i got most of my current tau (about 50%) from a friend who decided he didn't want to play them and well he will probably be in the league too and i would feel uncomfortable using his army as is against him. then i figured no space marines because i'm sure there will be plenty of them in the league and i didnt want to rush painting them.

so that left me with IG and sisters. i really thought about this and although IG would be alot of fun, especially since all i really have is infantry so i would just field tons of guys, i think the sisters would be interesting and let me play with some models i usually don't. i am sure you all figured it out based on the picture at the beginning of this post but i said to my self "well this is suppose to be a fun casual kind of league might as well use the one model that i always want to but can never fit in because it sucks in big games... its time to use the penitent engine."

so i decided to play sisters and to fit at least one engine into the list. after playing around with it a bit and talking to a few people at the shop i came up with this.

Troop 1: Battle Sisters- 10 sisters, 2x flamers, combi-melta

Troop 2: Battle Sisters- 10 sisters, 2x flamer, combi-melta

Fast Attack: Dominion Squad- 5 sisters, 2x meltagun, combi-flamer, melta bombs
dedicated transport: Rhino

Heavy Support: Penitent Engine

Swing Slot-Heavy Support: Penitent Engine

total: 600pts

yup i got two engines in =) which makes me very happy. I might squadron them i am not positive yet i will think it over since i have until next week to submit my list.
over all i think its decent. in this type of game there should be alot of infantry so i tried to kit out to deal with that primarily but also have some mech killing just in case. i figure the anti tank will be limited by points, and strategy that the engines might actually stand a chance to do something, or at least draw fire for a turn or two. over all i think this is a fun and silly list that will look cool and die hard... but hey i could be wrong.

over the course of the leauge i will try to keep people updated on my status and also to fix up my sisters. i plan to rebase all of the army so i might as well start here and re base these 25 sisters and touch up the paint on them in the process.

well tell me what you guys think. anyone have some good ideas for a sisters combat patrol under these rules? questions and comments always welcomed.

well that's all for now.
until next time...
May the Emperor Protect

some more thoughts on the Sisters of Battle after another battle

2011-09-24T15:22:00.002-04:00

Well, i got another battle in with my sisters. it was a rematch against the eldar from last time with basically the same lists (we went up a few more points so some more doodads were added but nothing major). the battle was annihilation with pitched battle deployment. i ended up drawing the game just at the end and the whole thing was very fun. so now on to some points on the sisters.

-First i would like to say i have been reading the hand flamers wrong. in earlier posts i was gripping about them not working properly. somehow i missed read them so they are a s3 ap6 template pistol so they do work just fine for serraphim so you can be sure i will take some in the future.

-serraphim again are good for harassment and for being extra wounds for the saint and that's about it. either take five, two with hand flamers and superior with an eviserator and protect the saint, or take ten and just jump around pissing people off. i would not use the inferno pistols unfortunately. the unit is not really designed for tank killing in my opinion. or at least domminions are so much better at it that you really just shouldn't bother.

-domminions kick ass. right now i am using a ten girl squad in a rhino with 4 melta and a combi melta superior. i would change this to 5 girls two meltas and combi melta in a immolator simply because half the time they die right after completing their mission of tank destruction so better not to waste points. also this makes it easier to take two squads of them.

-standard sisters are good. yes i would have liked more than one troop choice but well this is a good troop choice. the only real problem is they have no close combat buffs so keep them shooting as long as possible. i have been fielding ten sisters with a combimelta superior 1 flamer and 1 meltagun in a rhino and i think its pretty good. this allows the squad to handle just about everything from orks to marines. you could give the superior a power sword or something but at S&I 3 i just feel its not worth it. just shoot the crap out of enemies and if the sisters get into close combat hope for lucky rolls or have a counter assault unit near by.

- so my biggest problem is of course this whole counter assault thing. right now the saint is the obvious and probably best assaulter in the book. all the other hqs are ok at best. i run a cannoness with combi plasma and eviserator right now with a command squad with either 3 heavy bolters or 2 heavy bolters and a heavy flamer. this makes an ok fire support/ counter assault unit. they have relentless, move through cover, stubborn, feel no pain, preferred enemy, I4 for the squad, and a god amount of attacks (assuming all your faith powers work). but this over all has been rather... meh they kill stuff but not as much as they could. a transport would of course help (preferably a rhino so you can keep shooting as you roll around the field) but i think this is just a point sick. the next best options are the cannoness again with celestians in stead, if only for a better combo of faith powers, or uriah and a goon squad of crusaders and assassins. the latter i very well might do since i am making some crusaders and assassins right now for an inquisition army so i might as well get some mileage out of them. the problem is i just don't know if i want to field Uriah. just don't like the priests for some reason. even though they have great rules and point costs just not loving them (must be because they aren't sisters).

-i still plan on trying out both repentia for the counter charge and pen engines since they are the only things left to try. i know no one likes the engine rules but im still going to try em. right now i have 2 models ready to go a third in the mail (yay ebay) and enugh bits to make the most likely esential wreck markers for them so i might as well try the damn things. i do have some high hopes for the repentia. used smartly i think they could be a very good unit for the army. giving a nice high strength close combat unit with some resilience (through having an invuln feel no pain and a faith power that lets you get at least one hit in per model)that really might help deal with serious problems like monsterous creatures and close combat dreds.

well that's all my thoughts for now. when i get some more bits in i will try and post some progress on making cheap repentia and the like. i do have one last closing thought. i have been trying to get the most out of my hobby budget as i'm sure most of you do too so i spend a lot of time looking for sales and cheap alternatives when i can. i think ebay can be a great place to shop for cheap second hand models. one thing i did notice though is some people need to do their bloody research before they bid on stuff. in several instances i saw this model being sold as a "oop sisters hq" which is a bold face lie. and not only that but people were bidding as much as $70 US for it. people please always check descriptions as well as the gw website before you bid. this model is still for sale for $15 US on gw and many other places and i would hate to see people get swindled like this.

anyways that's all i got to say. until next time...
May the Emperor Protect

Some thoughts on my Sisters' first battle

2011-09-08T20:19:00.004-04:00

Well i had my first game with the new codex this week and i would have to say it went pretty well. unfortunatly there was some cruel jokes of the dice gods against my opponent so we will have to play again to get a better idea of the sisters.

so for this game it was about 1680 points of sisters vs eldar. i know this is a weird value but my friend wanted to try out some new models and i said just filed whatever you have and i'll match it. my opponent was testing out a small group of shadow spectres and a warp hunter tank (both from forge world). besides them he also had some storm gaurdians a squad of dire avengers with exarch, some pathfinders, a wave serpent full of harlequins, some fire dragons with an exarch, a wraith lord, and a farseer with some warlocks. sorry i dont have a point break down or what powers the warlocks had but we made lists up on the spot so... sorry.

to fight this i had the Saint (of course), a cannoness with an eviserator, rosarius, and combi-flame, a command squad with 2 heavy bloters, 3 squads of sisters all 10 strong with a flamer, melta-gun, combi-melta in a rhino with extra armor, a domminion squad 10 strong with 4 melta-guns and a combi melta in a rhino, 5 serraphim with the sister supperior equipped with a eviserator, and 2 exorcists with extra armor. that's a decent amount of stuff.

well the mission was seize ground with three objectives and i deployed and went first. the objectives were lined up pretty much down the middle of the table forcing us to have a pretty straight forward fight. i reserved the dominion to out flank later and hoped for the best. over the game went very much my way. my dominions came on turn two and killed his warp hunter and i killed some other stuff through out. sure the doms died the next turn to blade storm + assault but they did their job. i avoided my opponents path finders just about all game as well as his wraith lord which was good. his specters didn't show up until like turn 4 and the game ended on five so they didn't get to do much. his harlequins basically killed everything they touched which sucked for me but eventually i got them out of close combat and burned them to death. the saint did decent pulling fire and getting back up to kill things. the cannoness and command were a decent range support unit. i wanted to get the into some combat but that never quite happened...next time. basic sisters did fine which made me happy. i usually rolled 2-4 faith a turn and it worked out ok. the first turn or two i only really could spend it for the command squad to get all relentless, which was great and to twin link the doms which was equally great.

My opponent had terrible luck. like i said his specters came in way too late, and the dice hated him. for example he went to wreck my sisters with his harlequins and the troop leader leads of with a bunch of power weapon attacks. he gets three hits and then rolls three ones to wound. but worse at one point i had him down to two fire dragons and they decided to blow up a rhino full of sisters so his storm guardians can charge and kill them and grab an objective. well first he whiffed the shooting phase then in anger he assaulted it. the rhino hadn't moved so two auto hits with melta bombs which of course pen. and then i roll 2 6++ invuln saves tottally crushing his dreams. next turn the saint got up from the dead and burned the dragons and the sister squad in the rhino let their flamer fly and sizzled them to death.

in the end i held 2 objectives to none and i had very little resistance left. so good first time out filled with lots of luck for me and non for my worthy opponent.
so what are my thoughts so far after experianceing the sisters first hand now?

well its a nice breath of fresh air. the faith works though is very limited. the saint is a house and she will basically always be in my list now. i plan to keep fielding the cannoness and her command crew. i like the idea of a range support/counter assault unit and they work pretty well, i think the only change is i will switch to combi-plasma and maybe add a simulacrum imperialis and transport if points allow. a simulacrum would be a good upgrade for any unit really and if i have points i'll tak them i think. the doms worked well. might try a smaller squad with less melta in a immo next time becuase i think 5 melta shots might be a bit over kill. the serraphim did ok as basically a meat shield for the saint. they really are now just a flanking unit to harass opponents with now i think or a meat shield for the saint, they really should not get into close combat if they can help it. exorcists have changed little so they are still pretty awesome. oh and 6++ always helps. its not a lot of help but its a chance to slow down your opponent and piss 'em off.

overall it was fun. i do think the sisters need a more dedicated assault unit. so that means i will be trying out the repentia. i have already ordered the bits i plan to use to make them so hopefully my plan will work, because i refuse to use the games workshop ones (they look dumb). i think they could work well, especially if they borrow someone else's rhino. like say the hq's or the dom's.

anyways i hope to do an actually proper battle report and some proper lists in the near future. oh and maybe i will remeber to take pictures during the game so you can see the enemies stuff. and of course sorry the pics were taken with my phone. my digital camera doesn't like me right now and my computer doesn't like SD cards right now either so double loss on that. so sorry if the pictures suck.

until next time...
May the Emperor Protect.

Sisters of Battle: some comments and future plans

2011-09-03T13:48:00.004-04:00

so the new codex is out and done with. i have a few gripes but over all i think its actually pretty decent. there looks to be a good amount of synergy and it all looks cool. they do need to faq the serraphim though. rules as written the hand flamers don't work very well and are thus a stupid point sick. as it is written serraphim can shoot two PISTOLS at the same time. the hand flamer though is a assault 1 weapon. it does not have the pistol rule. therefore not only do serraphim carrying them not get an extra attack for two weapons (which i am going to assume the other all do but that should be clarified as well) but they are basically paying 20pts for a s2 ap6 template. that's a bit of a rip off to say the least. other than that most of my complaints are little things or things i have already mentioned that i won't get into until i actually play some games.

i should be getting my first game with the sisters in this coming Wednesday, so that should be good. i will just throw together something for what i have. knowing my opponent is going to want to try out some new eldar stuff (the forge world spectre guys) i know that the game will probably be around 1300pts. so this will really just be for fun and testing.

after that i am going to try and make some lists from the codex at the 1500, 1750, 1850 and 2000pt levels since those are the usually tournament standards. the codex should work well up to 1850 definitely and most likely up to 2000 before the faith points start to suck with the whole not scaling up thing, so we will see how it goes.

so here is a quick list i threw together that i can field pretty easily for 1500pts. it looks ok and has some obvious flaws but it could be fun and is a start.

HQ:
The living Saint- 115

Cannoness- rosarius, eviserator, combi-whaterver -125

command squad- 3 heavy bolters- 130

Troop:
Battle Sister Squad- 2 melta gun, combi-whatever, rhino w/ extra armor -205

Battle Sister Squad- 2 melta gun, combi-whatever, rhino w/ extra armor -205

Battle Sister Squad- 2 melta gun, combi-whatever, rhino w/ extra armor -205

Fast Attack:
Domminion squad- 10sisters, 4 meltaguns, melta-bomb, rhino- 215

Heavy Support:
Exorcist- extra armor- 150

Exorcist- extra armor- 150

total 1500points

again not a great lists but i can field it right now no problem and lest me play around with some stuff. at higher point levels i want some serraphim and more domminions. i do want to try out the repentia and Pen Engines but that wont be for a while i don't think unless i proxy with my IG and some sentinels.

well tell me what you think. any ideas for sisters lists?
until next time
May the Emperor Protect

Codex Sisters of Battle completion imminent

2011-08-25T02:16:00.004-04:00

In just a few short days we will finally have the whole story on the new sisters of battle rules. the anticipation of getting the second half of this silly white dwarf codex is driving me mad. and it doesn't help that i wont be in the state when it comes out so i wont be able to pick up a copy until the Wednesday after at best. so i will just have to rely on the internet to give me the low down.

i am surprised that there really haven't been any rumors for part two on the internet. its like no one cares about this thing anymore after seeing the initial rules last month. i am just hoping at this point everything is decently costed and we get some cool war gear.

anyways my next post will be my thoughts on part two of codex sisters of battle and the beginning of the reorganization of my army.
as another note if repentia are costed well and in a good FOC spot i would like to try them out, but i hate there models. they look stupid and are crazy expensive at this point. i am thinking of using wargame factory's amazons some liberal green stuffing and finding some chainsaws or something and making some better looking repentia. anyone out there have a better idea? i am looking for cheap and plastic. a box of i think 24 amazons is like $20 U.S. which is well worth it.

anyways until next time...
May the Emperor Protect

EDIT:
just saw that the point costs are popping up on the internet, and people are not happy. i am not going to talk about it now as i want to really look at it before either joining the hate wagon or jumping for joy. i will say this may be bad for immo spam lists, which is ok because i didn't like them anyways... we shall see

White Dwarf Sisters Part 1 review: Part 2 the not so good part

2011-08-16T19:20:00.007-04:00

So for my first part I tried to be as upbeat as possible since most of the internet seems hell bent on doubts and complaints. this is a list of things I do not like the looks of based on this first part and the revamped sister’s page on games-workshop’s site.

Lest start with the HQs and work through again. So we have standard hero sister (canoness), Super sister (the Saint), a human version of a chaplain, and two super versions of said chaplain. So we have 5 hqs. Now my problem with this is why the hell in a sisters of battle book are only 40% of our HQ options sisters? That really bugs me. I get that the ecclesiarchy is important but seriously drop one of the stupid preachers and just replace it with a freaking special canoness or something. Is that so hard? Hell you don’t even need a model for her just like that special xeno inquisitor in the grey knight book. Just throw in her rules and let us figure it out. I get they want to sell of their remaining stock of dumb rather meh models. It would have been cooler if they just made one an upgrade or something though (heck maybe they still will… yeah right).

Ok next thing. They gave sisters frag and bolt pistols. I mentioned this before but again this annoys me a little. Yes I know they are modeled with them on the models and that is probably why they have them now. But I really can’t see a situation where you would want to use either of these things with sisters. Unless there is like 2 or 3 marines left on turn 5 and you need to clear them from an objective and take it for yourself. And in that case I think just charging them would have to do anyways. Sisters don’t charge. They don’t need frag grenades. They are a close range shooty army that relies on their armor to help them get in there and then protect them if the enemy charges them. It would have been better to give them some kind of defensive grenade. That would’ve been awesome. Oh well I guess I’m just annoyed because I fear this will cause them to cost a few extra points a model then they should.

Moving on from that little gripe let’s look at the web site. Now that they have officially switched it over to the “sisters of battle” section and no longer “witch hunters” maybe we can see where things might fall force organization-wise. Well it is possible that they just left everything set up as It was on the witch hunter side and this look will be pointless but I’m guess how it is set up is how it will be when part two comes out… I hope I’m wrong.

Why? Well I really want pen engines in elite and either repentia or celestians as our second troop. Because all armies should have two troop choices, even if no one uses the second one normal. There must be a choice. But it looks like repentia are still elites and well everything is as it was before leaving us with just battle sisters as troops which is the lame. And, as an aside, if one of the special characters make something a troop that doesn’t count as a second troop choice. Though if something makes seraphim troops I could be happy (but that’s just crazy talk).
Oh and before I forget screw you GW for the immolator. If it isn’t dirt cheap or covered in really really badass affordable upgrades, like say one that makes it a emperor damned fast vehicle like it is suppose to be, I’m am going to be very upset.

Well I think that’s all the complaining in me until the second part comes out. Now before I go I will make one thing clear.

No matter what I will play this codex. I will not give up on the sisters. I do not recommend anyone starting an army of them unless they inherit the army or a million dollars, until plastics come out. But for those of us who play sisters we should not give up on them. I will do everything I can to make this codex work until I am given another.

This whole white dwarf codex will most likely be a setback for sister somewhat. Really the set back is more the lack of affordable models then possible bad rules. But something good has come of it for me. It has given me a definite purpose to continue this blog. I will still talk about my other armies occasionally and actually plan to talk about one of them in the next post. But from here on out Ordo Hereticus will be dedicated to primarily making a good working possibly competitive (don’t hold your breath) list out of the new sisters of battle.

That is all for now
Until next time…
May the Emperor Protect.

White Dwarf Sisters Part 1 review: Part 1 the story so far

2011-08-07T14:51:00.005-04:00

I did not want to talk about the new sisters of battle rules until i had a physical copy of them and could give it a full and careful read through. So i picked up the issue on Thursday and have been looking it over. so where to start? well i guess lets start with this. the new stuff so far does not suck. that's right i will be the first person i think that plays sisters that is not going to be all angry about this stuff. am i happy with the new stuff... not really but it really is not terrible from the looks of it. i won't be positive until part 2 comes out and we get our force organization chart and point costs, but for now i think it is OK.

Lets take a step back first. for those who read this very sparse blog you should probably know i have been playing war hammer 40k since about a year before the end of 4th ed so compared to a lot of vets I'm pretty much a noob. second thing you should know unlike most people talking about this stuff on all the blogs out there i play sisters of battle. not only do i play them but they are my primary army and my first army. so i am going to say that although i may not be as awesome or as experienced at the game in general as many other bloggers i will say i know the witch hunters and subsequently the sisters of battle.

so lets get this rolling.

FAITH: the new faith system is OK. i am not going to explain it since its all over the internet and i do not feel lie re type what so many have already have. what i will say is that the bog flaw is that the bigger the army the less effective your faith it which is a problem. but if we look at it my current 1850 builds out of the witch-hunter book net me about 8-9 faith point and another 6-8 from martyrdom. though of course i will only be able to art best use 5-6 of those martyr points since after that no one will be alive to use them. so with this we will say on my better list o have a max of 15 faith a game. with the new rules you will average about 21 faith a game (3.5 faith a turn for a game length of 6 turns). so at this level to about 2000pts you shouldn't see much difference in total faith, in fact you should get more. but the big problems with the new system are one you can't blow all your faith for massive cool turn anymore since you only get so much faith a turn. and second you can obly use them on your turn which is really not that useful. and third the powers are not as strong as the use to. this last problem isn't that big a deal to mean since it changes sisters from holy warriors protected by big awesome miracles to holy warriors with just a constant out flow of faith that is almost imperceptible. kinda like going from the bad ass obviousness of turning water to wine to the more subtle during the game but awesome in retrospect of the hey we have 3 fish and some bread how the hell did we just feed 500 people and have left overs? so its different but it still works.

as for the powers i think they are all pretty decent and work well with the units that have them and i will go into particulars as i get to the units. another god point here is that with the new faith you should actually pull off your powers more often. you have to roll a 5+ on a d6 for all of them but you get a +1 for having a sister superior, a attached ic (from the sisters army list), or have taking a casualty. all of this is cumulative. so a base squad should pretty much start rolling on 4+ and if they take a loss that isn't their squad leader and have an IC attached they are now making it on 2+ so that's pretty cool.
so past all this faith stuff lets look at what has changed unit wise. well the most annoying change is the lowering of the I of both the Serraphim and Celestian squads which at first i was like wtf but after thinking about it i think i it is OK. basically people were mad because now serraphim besides no longer having a possible 3+ invuln save now have human I scores so close combat isn't really their thing anymore. but looking at the fluff they arnt really suppose to be close combat fighters they are suppose to be jump pack gunners that can get in and out quick. and the new rules and stats i think represent this better and force you to play them as such. i am very happy they have 2 shots each now because i always wanted that and if you run the numbers you will see they hit a lot more now and with their faith power should kill some dudes. if you want to use them for counter cc you can and they should be ok especially with the support of a cannoness giving them +1 I and preferred enemy and then just be careful with hit and run and use it to jump out on your opponent's turn if possible and then shoot more dudes. celestians are also suppose to be shooters and i think their faith power just makes then an ok tar pit or again counter assault unit in a pinch.

over all with the new rules they are reenforcing what the sister are suppose to be about, brutal short range shooting.

ok lets go down the rest of the units
Cannoness: the new on is ok with a better weapon skill then before and stubborn standard. her faith power is again handy for a quick counter assault or a mop up attack and should go well with serraphim, celestians, and the command squad, as well as the battle conclave. i just hope she can still take a jump pack and somehting to enchance her armor and invuln saves.

Sororitas command squad: nice flesh out of the old just take celestians but bit from the old book. there act of faith gives them relentless and move through cover, which will make them good at covering ground to support other units and give them more shooting before mop up assaults. lets hope they can take a few heavy weapons though so they can have some broken fun.. come on just one relentless multi-melta is all i ask.

Priest: decent i am a little annoyed though that we get 2 priest options but not two cannoness options (whats up with that? i miss my palatine). anyways he will hopefully be a cheap hq which chaplain abilities that will probably unlock battle conclaves. so it should give a little flavor and be decent ... i hope.

Ecclesiarchy battle conclave: so this is were your henchmen went if they didn't already defect to the grey knights (mine will probably be playing double duty between the two). they should be alright giving you some other assault options with crusaders and death cults. too bad the new arcos look like they will suck.

Sister Repentia: much better then they used to be if only because they have faith now and feel no pain. yes they lost their armor but seriously they never had any to begin with. they should be decent with costed well. i am hoping for some possible upgrades, the ability to get into a transport and ummm not terrible models. i probably wont get the last one anytime soon. i am looking forward to seeing where they end up in the force org if they end up in elite that's OK troop would be great and fast attack would be acceptable if serraphim become elites. right now i think I'm OK with them but we will see what i think next month. (also i really wish they had better models. i hate the current ones a lot. if they had new ones i would probably pick them up).

penitent engine: basically the same as before but with an invuln save. i am hoping for some options and that it will only cost 40-50 points before upgrades. if so i will get a couple more of these guys.. especially in fine cast (probably the only thing i will take from the sisters line in fine cast with out a remodel). i would like them also to be moved out of heavy support but i won't hold my breath for that.

battke sisters: better then before. not because of the pistol and frag grenades, which honestly are useless on sisters. when push comes to shove sisters should always rapid fire and never assault. the real bonus is the krak grenades and the ability to regroup using faith. they should be pretty good. lets hope they are about 9-11 points for model that would be sick. i am also guessing that they will be 5-20 models a unit but we shall see.

Celestians: as above lower I sucks but they should be alright. s4 and fearless when they need it should be helpful lets hope they get some good upgrades. i will assume they are in the elites section but the way this bestiary is laid out i think there is a possibility they won't be which could be... interesting.

Dominion: i already loved these girls. 4 flamers or meltaguns was fantastic. now that they can twin link with faith and have scouts they will be a must take for most. they will most likely have to take a dedicated transport like the old days and for that if things go the way they are looking i think we will move away from immolators and put more rhinos on the field (more on that latter).

Serraphim: as mentioned above now a fast moving close range shooting squad (as the should be). these models are what got me into the sisters in the first place. there will always be a place for them in my army. also they re roll acts of faith if needed which is pretty handy.

Retributors: basically haven't changed. they get rending with their act of faith which is basically the same as divine guidance. i used to use some back in the day and it was OK but i opted out for dominions instead. they can now more effectively take on higher armor with a rending multi melta which is kinda cool but they should be wielding either heavy bolters and providing cover fire or using heavy flamers and clear hordes all day long. their points will be a huge factor in whether people take them or not.

Exorcists: no oput ward changes can be seen. yay 6+ invuln on tanks? i hope they haven't changed the missle launcher because it is what makes the exorcist the many stay heavy support of most sisters armies. lets hope the only thing they changed is the point cost (to cheaper).

Rhinos: brought to marine standard, so cool.

immolators: used to be the only rhino chassis with a twin linked heavy flamer that could mover 12" and shoot and carry people. then the 5th ed c:sm came out and it became the only rhino chassis that could move 12" and shoot a twin link heavy flamer and carry models. then c:ba came out and it was a weaker more expensive version of their razorback (sine there's could move 12" and shoot anything really and ours it was just a special thing for the flamer). now it looks like it can't even move 12" and shoot and it lost ifs fire point. unless this thing is like 40pts a model and can upgrade to fast it will suck. I'm sure it will still be usable but it is no where near as cool as it used to be.

Kyrinov: better version of priest with a power weapon that stuns guys (interesting). don't know how i feel about him since we dont know what all of his stuff does yet or his cost.

Uriah Jacobus: again interesting priest guy. givers +1 attack and feel no pain to attached unit and lets you re roll faith for turn. may be considered a must get for a lot of people. we shall see.

Saint Celestine: not as fast as she used to be. used to be able to move 12" run and then move d6" in the shooting phase for a possible mobe of 24". now she is just jump infanty. better stats, frag grenades, and upgraded sword make her pretty bad ass. and the new miraculous intervention is pretty slick. i will miss hit and run but honestly i think this is an improvement make a fun and good special character into a great one. lets hope that she doesn't cost too many points. leaving her at 201points would be fair i think. maybe even 210 but anymore might be too expensive. i really hope she costs around 195-200.

well that's the quick run down. next month we will get the end of the rules and see how it all turns out. i think this may not be a great hold over (especially fluff wise which i didn't get into) but will be useable and possibly even fun until we get a new codex. i am just praying for some plastic models soon damn it.

well until next time.
May the Emperor Protect

Old vs New: Assassins

2011-04-08T21:50:00.008-04:00

OK, so I stole the title from the Nostalgia Critic, but past that today we are going to compare the old daemon hunter/witch hunter assassins against the new Grey knight assassins and see which ones i think are personally better.
So lets start at the top. in both versions assassins come in four types (we are not going to talk about death cult assassins in this post) representing the four major assassin temples; the Callidus, the Eversor, the Culexus, and the Vindicare.

In the old version all the assassins had a BS, WS, and I of 5 a S and T of 4, 2 wounds 3 attacks ld 10 and a 4+. they also had fearless a 4++ and infiltrate. thats some pretty awesome stuff right there. of course there are a few down sides. assassins could never join a unit, enter a vehicle, or count as scoring. also, you had to include an inquisitor to filed one and you could only have a max of one.
The new ones had their BS and WS raised to 8, their I to 7, an extra attack and gained a 6+ feel no pain. they also have Move through cover, Fearless, Fleet, and frag grenades. also they no longer require an inqusitor to use and each type counts as a unique infantry so technically you can have three assassins in your standard FOC, they all just have to be different types. the down side to them is they are about 20pts more then their fore runners.
ok so over all though the new ones are more expensive they have fantastic stats and really good special rules standards, and frag grenades standard as any assault unit should have. the only thing i miss is the infiltrate standard because that helps a lot of the assassins out but we will talk about that in the specific examples.

CALLIDUS:

The old Callidus had a C'tan phase sword which was a power weapon that ignored all saves (sick!), a neural shredder which was a s8 ap1 temple weapon taken against the opponents ld instead of t, polymorphine which basically let her apear anywhere on the field when she came in and move normal (so assault after deep strike with out scattering basically), and posion blades which gave her an extra attack at the end of combat that always wounds on a 4. for special rules she had jump back which gave her hit and run as long as she rolled better than a 1 on 1d6, and a word in your ear which allowed you to move one enemy unit up to 6" after deployment but before the first turn. All that makes for one mean disruptive hq killing monster.
the new one stil has the sword but now it is a power sword that auto causes instant death (like AL'Rahem), the same neural shredder except it is now a pistol instead of assault 1, and polymorphine changed a bit. now when she becomes available from reserves she does d6 s4 ap2 hits to a target unti and then deapstrikes within 3" of said unit with out scattering. she also has hit and run and stealth.
so the new one can't assault when she arrives but still has the same basic equipment. frankly i think i prefer the new sword over the old just because it means she will kill hqs faster (only needs one unsaved wound to succeed). i wish she still had a word in your ear but it doesn't detract too much from the new one to not have it. really the new one is about as good alittle better at killing if she can get into assault which she will need help to do. so support her.
my verdict NEW Callidus is a little better.

CULEXUS:

OK always a fun guy. designed to kill psykers lets see what he can do. so the old one has psykout grenades, etherium, and the animus speculum. as well as the special rules psychic abomination, souless, psyker assassin, and life drain (another guy with a lot of stuff). ok so what this all means is that you have to succeed a ld test to see him in the shooting phase (if you fail you may target a different unit), his grenades are a 6" shooting attack which causes a targeted psyker to make a ld test and for each point he fails by to loss 1 wound. the speculum his main weapon is a 12" s5 ap1 assault2 that gets an addintional attack for each psyker in 12". also any psyker within 6" must make a ld check on their turn or fall back. any model with in 12" of him is ld7 (unless they wound be lower), he can specifically target psykers in the shooting phase regardless of wheather they are in a unit and can avoid other models to get into close combat with a psyker. and finally if in close combat with a psyker before atacks are made both roll a 2d6 and add ld if the culexus wins the psyker losses with no save allowed. so this guy is really geared for psyker kill and also does not play well with others so keep him away from your guys.
the new guy has the speculum also and it is exactly the same. the etherium but now its a ld check on 3d6, a psyocculum which gives him bs10 if shooting a unit with a psyker and psyk-out grenades which now reduce daemons and psykers to I1when the culexus assaults them. so alot cool stuff but a lot better in my opinion. with the enhanced etherium hes harder to shoot which is great and with out the soulless rules he can now combo with the rest of your army most of which are psykers, so if he is near your forces he gets a huge shooting boost which makes for a great anti infantry unit. this guy kills psyker battle squads, i mean you get them out of their hard shell with anything else and then bam, a minimum of 12 bs10 s5 shots into a t3 unit they are soooo dead.
Verdict. again the new one just synergies better with an army. the old one is really cool and has some great abilities but the new one is just a little more stream lined.

EVERSOR:

ok so this Marbo on crack has a power weapon, melta bombs, an executioner pistol (combi bolt pistol, needle pistol (sx ap6 always wounds on 4+)), a Neuro-gauntlet which was a power weapon that always wounded on 4+ and always glanced vehicles on a 6+ regadless of armor value, and combat drugs which gave him a 12" charge and d6 extra attacks on a charge instead of +1. he also had fast shot, which stopped working once 5th started so we won't go into it, and bio meltdown!. bio-meltdown! meant that when he lost his last wound you centered a small blast over him and all units under it took a S5 hit. Over all i loved this guy. I still use with my witch hunters. hes the cheapest assassin and is really the master of killing troops and causing mayhem. he was simple and effective to use killing just about any basic troopers you put in his way.
And the new one? hes got the executioner pistol which is now 12" s4 ap2 poison (2+), melta bombs, neuro gauntlet (counts as lightning claw), frenzon (gives him his d6 extra attacks on the charge) and furious charge. not a bad set up. hes good at the assault but he has no reliable way to get in. he doesn't have stealth for enchanced cover he no longer has a calvary charge, and he can't infiltrate/outflank. so how do you get him into the assault with out borrowing some one elses transport? good question.
Verdict. the old is much better. the new one may hit harder on the assault but he has no built in reliable way to get there in my opinion. the old one could almost always get in and hit pretty hard always wounded on 4+ or better frankly and then takeing people out with him. to be honest i was greatly disappointed with the new version of this guy. at best hes a lone khorne berserk er now instead of the shadow of death looming over all your tiny week troopers. big fail on this one.

VINDICARE:

the unfeeling master of shooting lets see what this guy can do. originally he had a spy mask which reduced you cover save by one and made his night fighting vision roll a 2d6x5 instead of 2d6x3. he also had a stealth suit which made it always night fighting when trying to shoot at him basically. the exitus pistol which was a s5 ap2 12" pistol, and the exitus rifle. which was a 36" hits on 2+ ap 2 sniper rifle which could use 3 special rounds, though it could only use each round once per game. the shield breaker ignored invulnerable saves, the turbo-penetration did 2 wounds to target or 3d6 armor pen, and the helfire which wounded on 2+. he also had marksman which let him declare what model he was shooting at and shoot at any model in range and line of sight regardless of restrictions (letting him shoot into close combat and killing all your hidden power fists =)).
now he has blind grenades, stealth, infiltrate, and deadshot (wounds caused by vindicare are allocated by vindicare's controller). and his guns have changed slightly. they both are now Sx AP1 sniper weapons, with the pistol being 12" and a pistol and the rifle being 36" heavy 1. also both guns can use the special ammo which they must declare which type at the beginning of users turn, and oh yeah all special ammo is unlimited now. the hellfire is the same. the shield breaker now permanently removes an invulnerable save given by items or war gear immediately upon allocating the wound (so before the target gets to save). and the turbo-penetrator still inflicts 2 wounds instead of one to target (so you roll to hit once then roll to wound once and if you succeed the model takes 2 wounds...saves if any allowed), or rolls 4d6 for armor pen.
Verdict. its a close call the old had some nice defense with the night fight rule and nice offense with the shooting into close combat and reduction of cover saves. but the new can still shoot whom ever he wants can use special rounds in both guns and can always use special rounds which is a huge bonus. i have to say though i love the old the new is a fine remodeling of this hard core sniper.

Over all i guess i am more or less happy. the Vindicare is still good (probably better), the Culexus synergies better and is easier to use, the Callidus is ok, and the Eversor is meh. really the only disappointment for me is the Eversor. he just doesn't have that same crazy charm he used to. maybe he is better in play, which i will find out eventually. but i have a feeling that he will only play in my witch hunter now and when they get updated he will go to the shelf and only come out when i need renegade or chaos counts as marbo for my guard.

well I hope you enjoyed this wall of text. i got a silly grey knight Inquisition list in my head that i might talk about next post., but who knows something cooler might pop up then. Questions, Comments and Criticism always welcomed.

Until next time,
May the Emperor Protect.

the evolution of my current army list

2011-04-02T21:51:00.009-04:00

Hey all. Since my followership has nearly doubled in the past month (up to 5 people now! ) i figured i should you know actually put something on my blog.
well to start i have been getting a lot more gaming in. i joined a 40k league at my FLGS and it has been great. I have learned a lot... like the fact that i suck at 4ok. I mean sure i had an idea I sucked but not to this level, but I am getting better. SO far in 9 games of league play i have been shut out (no points at all) in 8 of them, most of them were really close as in last turn possbile massive victories for 4 of them and they just went the wrong way. the last one i played i was able to win the primary objective but lost the secondary and third which resulted in a tie. So since i am learning stuff lets look at one of the things that was holding me back. my army list.

Now the most important part of 40K besides having fun is playing well. But, no matter how well you play if your list isn't good your going to have problems. so let us look at the list I ran for the first half of the league. Before anyone asks the league was set up with each player having a standard list for all there games (like a standard tournament) but they were allowed to modify it half way through the league (after the 5th game).
SO my list was:

Witch Hunters: Order of the Penitent Light

HQ
Saint Celestine: 201

TROOP
Battle Sister Squad: 166
10 sisters, Vet Superior, eviscerator, Book of Saint Lucius, 2x flamer
Rhino: 58pts
smoke launchers, extra armor

Battle Sister Squad: 166
10 sisters, Vet Superior, eviscerator, Book of Saint Lucius, 2x flamer
Rhino: 58pts
smoke launchers, extra armor

FAST ATTACK
Dominion Squad: 169
6 sisters, Vet Superior, Book of Saint lucius, 4x Meltagun, Melta-bombs (whole squad)
immolator: 73
extra armor, smoke

Dominion Squad: 169
6 sisters, Vet Superior, Book of Saint lucius, 4x Meltagun, Melta-bombs (whole squad)
immolator: 73
extra armor, smoke

Seraphim Squad: 210
8 sisters, Vet superior, power weapon, 2x hand flamers

HEAVY SUPPORT

Exorcist:140pts
extra armor

TOTALS: 1847pts, 9 faith points, 14 kill points

so whats thew biggest problem you might ask? is it my HQ? no she was pretty useful actually? was it my exorcists? umm no excorcists are the bomb.
i know what your thinking it was the fact i am playing sisters. to this i say go to hell, sisters are a solid army and them sucking has more to do with people not knowing how to play them than the army being bad.

the real problem were those dominion squads. look at them i put way too much stuff into those squads. the biggest thing are the melta bombs. when i was writing the list i was like, " well if they don't blow up a tank in the shooting they can assault and kill it". this thought was frankly idiotic on my part. 4 melta guns at BS4 is almost guaranteed to kill any tank. honestly this much redundancy in one unit is a bad thing. i basicaly wasted about 24pt per squad. that basically left me at a 48pt disadvantage for all my games. i never used the bombs in any game and they reall just ended up wasting valuable army points

Second mistake i made was over specializing squads. since my Doms were so anti tank i made my normal sisters just anti-infantry which meant if i got out maneuvered i could be in a real pickle. for example i over extended with my Doms and HQ/serraphim and my troops were left alone with out any serious anti-tank/monstrous creature against some nids and a trygon popped up and just slammed one squad.

so to fix my list i had to fix a couple of problems. first spread the melta around. 4 squads shooting 1 melta each is better than one squad shooting 4 meltas. the second problem i had to fix was a lack of long range weaponry. sisters over all only have one long range weapon (the exorcists). if i lose my two in say the first turn (which happened several times) i have no covering fire to help my sisters out as they move into position. the third problem and this wasn't major was finding a good distraction or counter charge unit to take some heat off the rest of the army.
so after much thought I came up with the following list.

Witch Hunters: Order of the Penitent Light

HQ:
Canoness:140
Jump pack, Cloak of St Aspira, Rosarius, Eviserator, Book of Saint Lucius

Elite:
Inquisitor: 76
Rosarius, Psychic Hood, Plasma Pistol, Power Weapon, melta bombs, frag grenades

Officio Assassinorum Operative: 95
Eversor

TROOP
Battle Sister Squad: 170
10 sisters, Vet Superior, eviscerator, Book of Saint Lucius, flamer, Meltagun
Rhino: 58pts
smoke launchers, extra armor

Battle Sister Squad: 170
10 sisters, Vet Superior, eviscerator, Book of Saint Lucius, flamer, Meltagun
Rhino: 58pts
smoke launchers, extra armor

Imperial Guard Infantry Platoon: 350
Command Squad: power fist, medic, vox castor, 2x flamer
Infantry Squad: autocannon, vox castor
Infantry Squad: Autocannon, vox castor
Infantry Squad: Autocannon, vox castor
Infantry Squad: Meltagun, vox castor

FAST ATTACK
Seraphim Squad: 225
8 sisters, Vet superior, Eviserator, 2x hand flamers

HEAVY SUPPORT

Exorcist:140pts
extra armor

TOTALS: 1850pts, 6 faith points, 17 kill points

so yeah i dropped the Doms and pulled the saint out for some points and made this. the guardsmen give us alot of covering fire and more scoring bodies to hold back field objectives. also the platoon command is an ok counter assault unit espcially when the Inquisitor is added. the Cannoness chills with the Serraphim for a bit for ablative wounds but usually goes off on her own to take on things like HQs, Monsterous creatures, Dreads, and that sort of bit. and she is quite good at it, even one shoting a furiosos dread one game (most awesome thing ever!). this makes her a very good distraction pulling some heat off the rest of the army for a couple of turns. the Inqusiitor besides bring an assassin with him brings a little more psychic protection, huray for unlimited range hood.. even at LD8 its still something. and he as mentioned before helps the platoon command be a decent counter charge unit. and the assassin is just there to bring as much havoc as possible to my opponents back field, again making for a good distraction. just throw him at some troops and watch something die and then lots of stuff try to kill him the next turn.

I am still learning to play this list but i will be probably my go to tourney list until the next Witch hunter codex comes out. which may be as soon as early next year if you believe the rumors.
Well that's all for now. questions comments and criticisms always welcomed. i will try to write more often in the future. i plan on giving my two cents on the supposed leaked pages of the new sister of battle test codex some time soon.
Well, until next time.
May the Emperor protect.

Sentinels have arrived

2010-06-19T19:50:00.009-04:00

Not going to be able to game for awhile so i figured I would just do a quick post to show off my recently finished Armoured Sentinels. These are some fun models to paint i have to say and while working with them 2 were the old plastic metal hybrid and 1 is the new all plastic model. Both were fun to assemble, though of course the all plastic was easier. Unfortunately, the old ones did not have covers for the tops of them and i did not really want to try to make them (since my convert-fu is still rather lacking) so I just left them as is. The new all plastic model has some great stuff namely the very pose-able legs which basically give them a full range of motion allowing you to really dynamically pose these guys, which if i was a better modeler i really could have taken advantage of that. Oh, and the heads of the two pilots that can be seen are from the forge-world Elysian Drop Troop models if any one wanted to know. and well with out further words i give you lots of pictures.
First up group shot:

Sentinel 1:

Sentinel 2:

Sentinel 3:

Random shots:

Hope you enjoyed. Questions Comments and Criticism welcomed.
And as always
May the Emperor Protect

Witch Hunters Versus Necrons (1000pt Bat Rep)

2010-05-31T20:57:00.000-04:00

It’s time to try another battle report!

Today we have a 1000pt match with Witch Hunters Vs Necrons. The battle was a simple kill point mission with dawn of war deployment.

THE LISTS:

Witch Hunters:

HQ; inquisitor lord with power armor, rosaries, inferno pistol, plasma pistol, and divine pronouncement with a retinue of 2 acolytes, a crusader, to vets (one with a melta gun and one with a grenade launcher) and a familiar. As a note you see that the Inquisitor lord has two pistols now technically I don’t think there is anything in the codex that says I can’t do this and I have him modeled this way because it looks cool. My opponent graciously agreed that I could use him as such and we just ruled that he can only shoot one or the other a phase and that they are just two close combat weapons. (Wow big HQ post)

Elites: another Inquisitor with power armor and rosaries with a storm bolter and two gun servitors with heavy bolters. And I also fielded an Evessor assassin

Troops: two of my standard ten girl sister squads with 2 melta guns an evisorator veteran sister superior and frag and krak.

Fast attack: one dominion squad with 4 flamers, an imagifier and a sister superior with a combi-flamer in a rhino

Here I was just hoping to shoot a lot and save the meltas for killing scarabs, or destroyers which I was sure he would filed… well he didn’t field either so let’s see what he fielded instead.

NECRONS:

HQ: Necron lord with war scythe and other un fun things.

Troops: two squads of ‘crons I think 10-12 deep each.

Fast Attack (... or elite I forget): 6 flayed ones

Heavy support: Monolith

Now from a tactics view for witch hunters our only effective weapon against a monolith is the exorcist which I don’t have here. The reason for this is that for a strength 8 weapon you need a 6 to glance a monolith and then you need to roll a 6 to destroy it (remember that 1. 2d6 weapons don’t get there bonus against monoliths and that with a glance you roll at -2 but ap1 gives you a +1 to the chart so you roll at -1 on the chart making a 6 a 5). So though a melta can technically do this I only have 4 and well I don’t want to not fire my bolters to get two shots both of which I need to get 3+ to hit and then a 6+ to glance and then a 6+ to kill making each about a 2% chance per weapon to succeed.. Not worth it. Now at least an exorcist has a shot of hitting 6 times and has a better chance just based on rate of fire of succeeding and is also able to shoot from a safe distance so if it does not succeed its first attempt at least it won’t get slaughtered in the next phase like the girls will. Anyways since I don’t have an exorcist and this is a kill point mission my strategy was to ignore the monolith and just shoot dudes for the rest of the game.

THE GAME:

So we roll of an I get first turn I then place one troop in a building about center of the table ready to get a good view of the opponent are. My HQ say just below my troops in the ruins of the building and my second troop choice was in a ruin to the left my first troop safely hidden from a frontal attack waiting to see what my opponent would do. My assassin was of course going to outflank and my other Inq and dominions would come on first turn. My opponent placed all his troops and his lord in one building on the very edge of the table and just hid there keeping everything else ready to deep strike. The opponent (which was Helios raven again so I’m just going to say Helios from now on) tried to steal initiative but failed.

So first turn I see his plan is to just hide his main force back and eventually hit me with the monolith and flayed ones so I took some quick shots with one troop choice while moving my other one my INq lord and the dominions up field as fast as I could the normal Inq went up the right side of the board covered by the rhino until he could find a good place to set up and provide cover fiver with his heavy bolters. I shot some stuff but nothing died. On Helios’s turn he shot some ‘crons since they didn’t move and that was it. No kills for either side.

Turn 2: I race my troops, inq lord and dominions forward again hoping to get across the field before the monolith shows. The inq moves finally into position and I fail my reserve roll. Again nothing dies. Helios also fails his reserves and shots some more again killing nothing which was surprising since he was really lighting my guys up I even made an armor save on my familiar which is a 6+ which is just crazy.

Turn3: my guys are just not moving fast enough! We trudge forward but my run rolls all game have been meh. The inq sets up his heavy bolters and the shoot but do nothing. My assassin comes in but has no real good areas to hide so I move one troop choice slightly in front of him to make then a more appetizing target. The troops and assassin shoot but again do nothing (curse you dice gods!). MY ploy worked and Helios shoots the sisters and kills one (drat) and the monolith drops mid filed but does little damage surprisingly and the flayed ones show up right in front of my heavy bolter inq.

Turn 4: Finally I start doing stuff I get in close enough with the Inq Lord to set off divine pronouncement and with and stern growl of “leave” to one of the necron units it quickly runs off the board (for those who don’t know DP is a psychic shooting attack that causes one unit within 18” to take a moral test as if they suffered 25% losses. The ‘crons rolled box cars and ran right off the field). And at the same time my dominion squad jumped out of their rhino and dropped massive templates on the other squad dropping them down to 5 models. My Inq shocked by the deep striking flayed ones brought his servitors down upon them along with his storm bolter but only manage to wound one. The assassin and other troop choice having lost their target (the ‘crons that ran off board” started to move into towards the other squad. Helios countered by first teleporting his remaining unit through his monolith (thus giving him some extra we will be back rolls) and then split hi lord from them to attack my Inq Lord. The Necron lord swooped in fast and hard and easily would have seriously hurt my Inq Lord if not for his acolytes dutifully jumping in the way. The necron troops then shoot at my dominion doing little damage and the flayed ones charged into my inq slaughtering him with ease.

Unfortunately I got late after this and the store was closing so we called them game there. The final score left me with 1 kp and Helios with 2 (inq and retinue count as 1 kp each). If the game would have gone one I am confident that I would have killed the rest of his troopers next turn and caused phase out to occur. But oh well.

From this match I learned a few things that first that elite inq probably shouldn’t have had a retinue but rather been pimped out and thrown in a squad for support. Second, that Divine pronouncement is pretty sweet when used well and with luck. With it just get close and try to hit units near the board edge or ones that you can stay within 6 inches of (so they can’t regroup) and walk them off the table. Also just so you know as part of DP you modify the morale check by the difference in the two units LD. So if your LD10 inq lord shoots it at a LD8 guard squad they have to roll at a -2 so they have to make it on a 6 or less making this a good power against low LD units and decent against anything not fearless. But it still cost 30pts so choose wisely how you use it. I liked how Helios threw me a curve by not fielding destroyers or scarabs. Though I think he has learned that scarabs are a shady bet against my flamer toting dominion death squad. I also learned to ALWAYS expect the monolith and either plan to ignore it or maybe shoot an exorcist at it if I have one. Again dominions are by far become my favorite unit though I am thinking of no longer using immolators as their transports and just using cheap rhino. This point is something I have been meaning to talk about for some time and will hopefully make a post about soon.

Anyways it was a great game and I think well played. Sorry if I spelt any unit or power name’s wrong but I have neither codex with me at the moment. I hope you all enjoyed this and if anyone has questions or criticism please feel free to post them. I am trying to get better at this whole blogging thing any advise would be good.

Well until next time…

May the Emperor Protect

2010-05-05T21:01:00.005-04:00

i have been having problems with my tau color scheme and so i am putting some pictures up and seeing if any one has any suggestions. i was going for a kind of night world look. i guess think of the surface world they show in the matrix movies but not as post apocalyptic. any ways here are some quick pics i took.
Sorry for the quality I'm still learning how to take pictures of minis. anyways i have 12 fire warriors 3 stealth suits and 2 xv8s like this. my only problem i think is the xv8s worry me and in time I'm sure it I will be worried by the scheme on xv88s and kroot too.

may the emperor protect..
or for the Tau'va
whatever.

My First Battle report... kinda

2010-04-23T00:48:00.013-04:00

SO for the past couple of weeks i have been playing 40k again (after the whole awesomeness of BFG) and it has been good. i have been trying to write up my first bat rep ever and well, have failed miserably so here's the brief overview and then a bunch of pics for kicks.

So the battle was a three way king of the hill style 1000pt match between me HeliosRaven and our friend matt. basically we all deployed on a small (4 x 4 ish) table with decent cover with our only objective being the personr controling the objective at the end of the game (simple stuff really). and what was our objective for the free for all? why the top floor of a ruin of course. this was chosen for the simple facts that A. it makes it almost impossible for more than one person to hold it and B. it makes the game look cool.

we have me playing my beloved Order of the Penitant Light (sisters of battle) coming in with a cannoness with jump pack 2+/4+ save and other goodies with a squad of serraphim backing her up. two battle sister squads in rhinos each with an eviserator and two melta guns. a domminon squad with 4flamers an imagifier and a combi flamer in a immolator and an exorcist for back up.

sitting just a few inches from me was HeliosRaven playing his deadly Thousand Sons cult army. so Sorceror HQ, Two squads of sons a Defiler and a very sick group of chosen (who have light up eyes but i don't have any pics of them on. sorry, check his blog i think he has a post on them).

and lastly across the table taking up a whole short edge with troops was out friend matt. now matt normally plays black templar but he didnt have them this week so we hodge podged together helios's 705th Mechanicus Tank Division and my 57th Hera Mobile Infantry (so IG). on a side note helios has made any tanks yet for his IG and i don't plan on using any ('cause im crazy) so he fileded an all infantry force. consisting of a HQ Command with a master of ordnance squad a Vet squad with Harker 3 plasma and demolitions and two platoons each one have a pretty standard platoon comand (just officer and vox i think) and 3 squads each which became two 30 man blobs each with 2 autocannons and one meltagun. thats a lot of fire power.

so long story short it was a great game with the defiler and exorcist doing basically nothing the master of ordnance blowing up the chosen (which was good becasue they started the game on the objective) my dominion squad lossing their immolator like turn 2 surviving the explosion and some small arms fire unscathed and then killing 29 guards men... that's right 29 IGies with one blast of their holy flamers.
at the end of turn 4 i got up to the objective and fortunately made it so no one could touch me that turn and the game ended on turn five with a solid victory for me. though if it went to 6 there was a good chance it would have been a chaos/sisters draw and 7 probably would have seen either a chaos win or a chaos/IG tie some how.

anyways we all had fun like i said and i played better than i usually do. i made sure to protect my important scoring units as well as keep my eye on the objective. for the most part i did very little shooting and tryed to avoid combat where i could and focused just on grabbing the objective that mixed with the gaming ending on 5 is the only reason i won.

so now i give you pics of the match. sorry if the quality is meh just kinda rushed them. the pic up at the beginning of the post is actually the last pic of the game with my one troop choice holding the objective and my other acting as a meat shield against the on coming chaos troops. if there was a next turn i would have had my serraphim in place to counter charge... hopefully.

before the dominon squad.

After. =)

opening move for sisters

chaos deployment

and the guard's deployment

sister's deployment

so many guardsmen

and the infiltrated chaos dudes

well that's all of that sorry for giant pic post i will try to make better quality posts in the future i just failed at writing this so i just wanted to get it out there all ready. and as a final aside during this game Matt was using my green dice which over the past like 7+ games i have used them for they have rolled horribly and for this game they rolled perfect for him every time. so at the end i just gave him the dice they obviously like him better.

well until next time...
May the Emperor Protect

Quick update

2010-03-26T01:54:00.002-04:00

Just finished a battle report with Helios Raven for Battle Fleet Gothic. It was a really fun game that i will try to write a brief summary on later. In short it was his Eldar pirate fleet against my Tau exploration fleet and well i made some bad moves and he just played spot on and wrecked me. i have to say BFG is a great game and if your interested in it check out the GW site for the rules (hooray free stuff!!!!) and Helios Raven's YouTube account for painting tips and our battle report, which he will be releasing in episodes over the coming weeks.
well its 2am where i am so
Until Next Time,
May the Emperor Protect

making markers for BFG

2010-03-09T01:24:00.012-05:00

OK so i haven't been on in awhile.. again... its a good thing no one really reads this or i would feel bad. OK so i actually finished the sentinel from the last post and the arms for 4 death guard dudes, as well as start on the last sentinel for the squad. and when i'm done with it i'll post the whole group.

anyways, i have been playing a lot of BFG recently. HeliosRaven has been doing a nice painting class on BFG (Battle Fleet Gothic for those unfamiliar) on his youtube site which is quite good. anyways he asked me to play a match or two with him so we can show off the game and some of the basic rules to those viewers of his blog that have expressed interest. He will be posting some rules stuff and what not soon i think. Anyways, for BFG i have a small Tau fleet, and with out going too much into it Tau rely on torpedoes and bombers to win the day for them. So this post is a quick tutorial type thing for making some really quick and easy markers for torpedoes and other ordnance.

OK so first what you will need:
a print out of the ordnance marker PDF,

some PVA glue,

a piece of plasti-card or card stock,

Scissors,

(by the way i have a Degree in Biology and as such have lots of dissection kits which are great for model work which is where these babies came from. i love this type of scissor for modeling. they are small and very controllable. if you need a scissor for modeling these are my top pick)

and some bomber/fighter models (if you have 'em).

so this first you cut out some of the torpedo marker strips and glue them to the card stock. I actually was out of plasti-card so i just used a whiteboard from my comic book stack ( in the future plasti-card does hold glue better so go with it over other card-stock type things).
After they dry just cut out each strip and then divide them up if you choose. the strips are normal 6 torpedoes wide so i keep two of those and cut other in various ways to give me a couple of 4, 3, 2, and 1 width torpedo markers which will cover most of my torpedo wave sizes (easy stuff right =))

(all of our markers Glued and ready to be cut)

(here are the finished torpedoes.. easy peasy lemon squeazie)

For the fighter/Bombers/Assault Boats it is ever so slightly more complicated and i stress the slightly. just cut out one or two of the fighter/bomber template.

(our template and all of its now cut up brothers)

Glue it on to the card stock and let dry. once it is dry just cut it out and then use this as a template to draw and cut out a bunch more of these. if you have a good straight edge you can save your self some gluing and just cut out a bunch of 2cm x 2cm squares. once you have your squares just glue on whatever you are using as models, i used some forge world BFG mantas for the bombers but you can use whatever you want that fits appropriately on the base (as in fits on it with out hanging over the edges). just make sure they all face an edge so that you can tell which way they are going in game. next just paint them which takes all of 2 seconds and that's it,

(some of our finished guys with one unfinished marker all next to their mother ship)

Quick easy legal sized good looking markers for BFG and the whole thing takes 30 to 45 minutes for 12 bombers and 36 torpedo markers (including paint drying time).

And there you have it.
Most posts to come though i am very busy right now. with work and my other project.....

Well that's it for now.
Until Next Time.
May the Emperor Protect.

progress update.... or rather lack of progress

2010-01-27T23:01:00.018-05:00

ok well over the past two weeks i have been super busy. with uping my self to almost 50hrs a week at work plus trying to study for the GRE and trying to catch up with old college friends and working on my other hobbies (fencing primarily) i have had basically no time for painting this makes me a sad inquisitor.

anyways here is what i am working on at the moment... that is of course when i have a moment.

so lets start this off with the overall pic.

this is everything i am actually in the middle of painting ( i have a little case of painting ADD)
ok so there are 5 projects here one of which is kinda two projects.

so first off a tau XV8.

pretty standard guy all i have left for him is really attaching him to his base and well doing the base. oh and his sept marks.. i need to get my actually camera working and stop useing my phone becasue this thing just doesnt take good pics of metalics and i need to work on my lighting for that matter.

Second i have my test model for my dark elf scheme.

this guys is a very simple paint job. i am trying to just figure out my scheme for these guys and a way to do it simply so i can use it for a full army. so this is really his first coat of paint. i still need to add high lights and some washes and finish the details. after much thought i have decided to go with purple and basic metal as the primary colors for this army. One, because i havn't done a purple army yet and Two, because it looks surprisingly badass on these guys. also still trying to figure out a base, been thinking maybe snow.

Next, my current work for the Hera 51st Mobile Infantry (imperial Guard army) Sentinels.
this is the first Sentinel i have done and is in the same urban-esque camo as the rest of the army i rather like how the model cam out though i dont really like what i did for the base. not really use to haveing all that empty space to fill.

and this is the base and cockpit for my second sentinel. hopefully this base will look better than the first one. though still not super happy with it.

And now for long term big project. Death Guard.
I like these i guys i really do. i have had a group of plague marines for a while now and have been slowly working on them forever and then my friends got my some forge world death guard upgrades (terminators and marine upgrades) i had to start work again. though i have not made it very far and i am not sure how to base these guys at all. i want to do a corrupted ground thing but not sure how to do it.

And Finally my super long term project.
The one and only Inquisitor Lord Karamazov.

i love this model and really dont want to screw it up so i have been slowly working on it for like almost a year now. just every so often working on just one section until it is right not rushing anything about it. i should finish the legs next time i work on it and the feet will be a quick thing and then i am just left with my usually question. how to base it.

Ok well thats all i got for now. maybe i will actually finish something soon.
thanks for tuning in and as always
May the Emperor Protect

Space Marine Scouts

2010-01-06T23:34:00.011-05:00

and now for my first post in awhile, and for that matter my first post on the Adeptus Asartes.

Scouts:

Ok so for me i would have to say that my favorite unit for the standard SM codex would be the scouts. i love scouts i think they look cool and all and all add some nice flavor to a space amrine army. now these are the first 5 scouts i have offically done ( i did make some inquisitorial storm troopers with shot gun once but i never really finished all five and i dont think i am going to) and i do like how they came out. now if you look back there is a pic of them from months ago but if you notice there are only four of them because i hadn't finished Tellion yet but i finally based him yesturday so now they are now finished, because i model is never truly done until you base it. so now that the into is done lets talk about these dudes

So what are Scouts?

Well Scouts are basically your new recruit marines fresh from train cutting their teeth on combat for the first time. so of course they are not as experiance as a full battle brother which is shown by their lower BS and WS but other wise their stats are the same as a standard marine. they also don't wear power armor, and this is for several fluffy reasons. first power armor is reserved for full fledge members of the chapter (which scouts do not count as) whom are fully trained and capable of being entrusted with these holy relics. and second scouts are supose to learn the arts of tactics, tracking the enemy, recon, and stealth (and well power armor is not very stealthy i hate to say). as well as learn to not rely on their equpiment to get them through conflicts but rather their strength of will, ferocity, intellect, or strength or blah blah blah whatever.

the point is these guys are suppose to be your first line troopers finding the enemy and reporting back to hq as well as support troopers helping the primary troops in any way they can... so they are basically the interns of the far flung future.

What can they do?
well for starters they have the same basic equipment as normal SM except they have carapace armor so only a 4+ save and all the same special rules plus move through cover, infiltrate and scout. these rules make them very versitile basically allowing you to start them anywhere on the board or just outflank the enemy with them. with scout or infiltrate you can basically set your scouts up for a possible turn one assault if you do it just right (though this is risky).
Scouts also get some fun add on. first they can get camo cloaks which gives them all stealth which greatly increases their survvability. and they can also take sniper rifles which as you can see my scouts have both of. i feel that scouts make wonderful support snipers and are very well suited for this roll.

i mean setting up anywhere on the board with a +1 cover save and a sniper rifle is just a good idea in my opinion. they can aslo all take shot guns (for some fun quick shooting) or comabt blades for a more melee orientated squad. they can also take eithe a standard missle launcher or a Hvy Bolter. the nice thing about the M launcher is the versitily it allows by being a good anti tank and anti infantry weapon. the Hvy Bolter also is killer because of its option to also shoot hellfire shells (HVY 1 blast, 4+ posion) which is another fun horde killer. though they dont have the best bs or ws (both being 3) they still excel at either roll as long as you remeber they are a support unit so use them as such. don't spear head an attack with them unless you want them to die. have them float on the flanks wiping up weaken squads or sniping enemy troops from a safe distance.

Tellion

Probably my favorite part of the new scout entry is their special character upgrade. the guy can make your scouts better at any of their rolls but you know with his load out that he is meant to be in a sniper squad. the guy is almost a vindicar assassin but with a squad of dudes to back him up. first off the tellion model is awesome.
i love it, the grizzled old sarge look is great and once you get rid of all those ultramarine U's he'll fit in any SM army. the really nice thing about him though is his BS6 and the fact that he can give that to any squad member for a turn if he choses not to shoot (like say that missle launcher dude who you might be depending on to pop that enemy rhino so your assaulters can get at the juicy infantry center). If you do choose to shoot with him though he may declare who he is shooting at (much like the vindicar) so he can kill sargents or Hvy Wpn guys while the rest of your squad just massacre things.

All in all i think Scouts are great. they start off 3 points cheaper than standard marines and only have really two draw backs from that. 1) +4 instead of +3 save, 2) can't take a dedicated transport. i really dont see their ws3 bs3 as that mush of a disadvantage honestly i mean if they are equiped with sniper rifles A. they technically still have the same chance to hit as they did in 4th ed (+4 to hit) and B. if they have rifles they shouldn't get into assault unless things go sour and even then ws isnt as important as S, T, I which are all 4 or armor which is their real week spot in CC.

Well Until next time...
May the Emperor Protect

(up next.... Sentinels...... i think)

returning soon

2010-01-05T00:26:00.002-05:00

after a small departure from the world of model painting i shall be returning soon. on my desk right now are the 50% completed Inq Karamazov (who has been that way for about 6 months now but ill finish him soo i swear!), my first deathguard terminator as well as eventually 4 of his friends. sergeant Tellion, who i am finally basing so he can look awesome with his home boys, and my second sentinel. one of these things i plan to finish in the next two weeks. and from there i will try to finish everything else on the table then do my last sentinel and my first valkyrie (been putting off the IG for too long) and then after that hopefully i will find a tournament or something else to finally motivate me to make the changes to my Sisters of Battle that i have been meaning to make. anyways pics in the next post of whatever i finish and probably everything else still sitting on the table.

THE PAINTING LIST: (the stuff i either have started to make or am planning to do in the near future)

-IG sentinel (lascannon)
-IG sentinel (plas cannon)
-IG Valkyrie
-CSM Terminators (5)
-CSM plague marines (~17ish)
-TAU broadsides (2) (one forge world one normal)
-WH INQ karamavov
-WH put tracks on my second exorcist already
-WH another immolator
-WH another Dominion Squad
-DE Reapeter Bolt Thrower (heh i bet you where expecting dark eldar or something but nope it is time to start some WFB in the near future)
-IG stormtrooper (using FW elysian drop troops for em)
- redo my IG HQ will explain later

well thats alot of stuff and in no particular order and thats just what i have laying around (yeah i am really behind i should be finished with all that ig stuff right now oh well)

and eventually more PEs and some other fun things from the WH codex.
well untill next time
May the Emperor Protect

the Engine of Penance

2009-10-13T00:38:00.012-04:00

PENANCE:
Sorry for not posting in some time, real life got in the way a little and I have not been able to finish any new projects for awhile now. In fact today I am going to talk about a model I made quite some time ago The Penitent Engine!
Now the Penitent Engine is one of those models that I think any one that like to just build and paint models should have. Its big, it’s unique and just full of all those things that just scream 40k. I will say that it is by far one of my favorite models. The only two major short comings of it are that it is not very customizable out of the box, and you really really really should pin this thing or it will most likely fall apart. For customizability all you really have are two different “pilots” for it, and male and a female, I chose to use the female mostly because tried to use the male pilot for a kit bash of something else and failed horribly. And you can also mess with the arms and legs a little to affect the pose but that’s really it. So if you have more than two of these guys, unless you've added stuff on from other sprues and what not, they are going to all start looking alike. The shape of it also makes it very fragile, like I said earlier you really need to pin it or it will fall apart. For pinning I would recommend definitely pinning the torso hip joint and the arm joints if you can. Though the later can be hard since you might have to drill through three separate pieces to really secure the arms right.
Since we have looked at some ok pictures and gotten an idea of the model itself you might be wondering “well, how good is it in game?” To that I say, well what do you want it to do?
First off let’s look at this baby’s stats.

STATS
First off this thing is an open top walker with front and side armor of 11 and rear of 10, which sounds kind of fragile but you will soon see it makes up for this a little bit with its special rules. Next we see that the darn thing has a BS of 2 which sounds like total bull crap but fortunately the engine only has a template shooting weapon so the crap BS is not a big deal. Ok but hey WS4 that’s decent and hey look it gets D6 attacks and has S5 (10) so this thing can totally lay down some beats… but wait ohhh it only has I3 so it’s a little slow.
So all in all stat wise it is at best ok really just being a scout sentinel with close combat skills so now let’s see if its equipment and special rules might make it better

Weapons
Ok so here we have not one but two dreadnought close combat weapons (which is why it has a (10) in strength. Unfortunately it does not get an extra attack for two weapons... oh well. It also has two flamers which fire as one heavy flamer (score!) which is pretty cool. Now the part I really like about its weapons is that the rules tell you how it losses weapons (in other words if your opponent scores a weapon destroy on this thing the rules say what goes not the opponent). So on one destroy it losses one arm which reduces its attacks by one (to a min of one) and brings it to S5 and only a flamer instead of a heavy flamer, and On the second destroy roll it losses the flamer minuses another attack (still to min one) and no longer ignores armor (cause you just lost both your dread arms). So all in all so far for 80pts a model your getting an off the bat heavy flamer and D6 S10 power weapon attacks which isn’t half bad. But now let’s see if the special rules make the engines any better

Special Rules
ok first we got rampage. This rule helps a lot because it means the engine ignores all shaken and stunned results for vehicle damage. Which considering it’s a low armor open top thing will happen pretty often. So this helps your close range beat stick get to the fight. Always a plus.
Next we have battle frenzy. All this does is force the engine to always fire its weapons if in range (and did not run) and lets it roll a D6 for number of attacks each turn as shown in its stats. So all this really does is force you to be a little aggressive with it, but frankly you were going to be aggressive with it anyways so this doesn’t affect much.
Last we have holy rage which has been changed in meaning several time on the WH fact and at this time should go with the book version though sometimes games workshop switches it for the rage universal special rule. Anyways what holy rage does is if the model is not already in close combat they move an additional D6 towards the nearest enemy which is not affected by difficult terrain and they must always charge if able to do so. As a note according to the last time a read the FAQ this extra D6 is done during movement phase so the engine can still run if it so chooses (as in if nothing is in range to be fired at) though of course if it runs it can’t charge. But this rule does make the engine very fast allowing it to go anywhere from 7 inches to 12 just in the movement phase giving it a minimum max distance of 8 inches and a max speed of 18 make the engine one of if not the fastest walker in the game.

Discussion
all an all I say that 80 point per model for a one to three vehicle squadron as a heavy weapon slot with all of this stuff is pretty cool. Though are a bit fragile, easily killed and hard to control with them running at whatever is closest at the time, when they do get into combat they can potentially do some pretty awesome stuff. I would say that the key to this is deploying them well in the beginning to face off against basic troopers or light to medium vehicles. They also make a good distraction since they have to run at the enemy you might as well let them and hope you opponent wastes some fire at them or makes the mistake of ignoring them and gets slammed. The only real down side I see to them is that you must take a priest in your army to allow you the option to use them. And well I feel the priest is usually a point sick and there are only a few squads really worth attaching him to so it can rather constrain your list a bit (I will discuss the priest at some later date and all my feelings him).
All in all I say if you what something fluffy and unpredictable I say yeah take a penitent engine it will be loads of fun. its a pretty decent though not great assault walker that i would say would probably more effective in squadrons that way you can hopefully have a few to die off and assure that one makes it into close combat. i will say staring down 4 or more of these guys from across the table could be a pretty scaring thing. And well if your more into cold long term planning and tactics you might just want to paint this one up and put it on the side or have it count as a chaos dread for your slanessh army or something because its rage rules will force it to move in specific ways which you may not want it to. then again this could make for some interesting strategic planning on your part.

Well until next time
May the Emperor Protect.

2009-09-16T00:30:00.001-04:00

Today I shall go over the basics of faith in 40k and no I don't mean the religious values of the different races I of course mean that ever cool mechanic unique to the adeptas sororitas.

THE BASICS
so first off how do you get faith? simple put every sister's specific HQ, seraphim squad, celestian squad, and every veteran sister superior (sergeant upgrade for all sister units) gives you a certain amount of faith points, usually about 1 point per with the hq units giving you a little more, 1 for palatines, 2 for canoness, and 3 for the living saint.
So now we have our army and we have our faith how do we use it? Well first we declare we are using a power and spend a faith point then you roll 2d6 and compare the number to the size of the squad using the power. if you succeeded the role the power goes off if you don't you still use up a faith point and can't use that power again on that specific squad in that phase.
That’s the basics now we will go over each of the powers and discuss how and when to use it
FAITH POWERS
Some the SoB have 5 faith powers they can use two of which you have to roll equal or under your squad size for and the other 3 you must roll equal or higher to succeed obviously lending the first 2 to large units and the latter 3 to small units ( oh and by the way independent characters have to roll a Ld check instead of the squad thing if they are by themselves)

Mob powers
These powers are the ones meant for big squads and they are Hand of the Emperor and Divine Guidance

HAND OF THE EMPEROR
This little power pops your squad +2 strength but drops your initiative to 1. Now this power is what is my normal answer to t5 enemies such as well any kind of biker that comes my way and charges me. frankly S3 doesn't cut it against T5 (u need 6's to wound and that is not good enough) so choosing to go last, which frankly in a lot of cases you are going to anyways, and get a chance to wound on 4+ is great. Frankly whenever you get stuck in against someone with a I6 or higher or a T5 or higher this is a good choice. also if you have a eviserator in the squad it goes from being a S6 power weapon with 2d6 armor pen to a S8 power weapon with 2d6 armor pen and the I1 draw back does not apply because you are already I1 so this works well with the emergency charge of a land raider or the needing to kill of that big'ol monstrous creature. I do not recommend this power for use against anything you can easily wound (T3 or lower) or in situations where you really want to go first obviously).

DIVINE GUIDANCE
This is probably the most flexible power you have at your disposal in my opinion. What you have here is that after you roll to hit in either the assault or shooting phase you may choose to use this power. if you do all your rolls to wound of a 6 either count as AP1 for shooting or power weapon wounds for assault, either way you deny armor saves and that’s what’s important. the nice part is that you get to choose after rolling to hit so you really save this one until you roll lots of hits, say with your dominion squad with its 4 flamers dropping all their templates to cover the same 5 man tac squad 4 times over for 20 wounds. in this example if you do so first off your doing an average of 10 wounds just in general (which is why this kind of squad is the awesome) but for every 6 you roll you basically just killed a marine since they get no armor save from the power and no cover due to template rules this makes from some killer awesomeness. This power of course works well with hand of the emperor or with the passion either giving you decent strength or high initiative power weapon-esque hits in close combat. Though I will say I never roll enough hits with my sisters to really warrant the use of this in close combat but hey if the dice gods are nice do not pass up the opportunity.

Elite Powers
These next three powers our those that your need to roll equal or over the squad size for so obviously these work best with small squads like seraphim, dominions, and whittled down battle sister squads. These powers are Spirit of the Martyr, the Passion, and Light of the Emperor.

SPIRIT OF THE MARTYR
This power is probably the one I use the most. Basically at the begging of either yours or your opponent’s shooting or assault phase you can activate this power which gives the unit using it a invuln save equal to their armor save, so basically it gives you a 3+ invuln save for those sticky situations where your girls are either being hit with serious artillery or power weapon toting assaulters. This power is pretty self explanatory the hard part of it is figuring out which units should use it when because you must choose who is going to use it at the beginning of the phase (in other words before your opponent decides to shoot or assault anything). It serves to note that if you intend to use this power that you should ask your opponent as soon as their turn starts to state when they are going to start their shooting and assault phases so that you don’t miss the chance to use the power. In close combat it is easy to tell if you want to use this power. First is your unit being or about to be assaulted and if yes is it with power weapons (or an equivalent). If no then don’t worry. If yes then you must decide whether or not it is worth attempting to keep the unit alive a little longer. Remember you can’t make an omelet without breaking some eggs. Also you can use this as a “denial” strategy to an extent in the shooting phase. If you think a unit might get shot with some low ap weapons and you don’t want them to die then obviously use this power because if your opponent still shots you got that 3+ no matter what, and if they decide not to shot that’s great too because you just scared your opponent into not even trying to shoot what may be a key part of your strategy… though they may then decide to shot another weaker target instead so watch out for that. I can also say that this power is responsible for keeping my canoness alive for more than 4 turns of close combat and has there by slowed down and mudded up a section of my opponents army all because she went from have a 2+ regular save to having a 2+ invuln which will stop just about everything that swings at her.

THE PASSION
The Passion is yet another combat enhancer power giving you a +2I (this may not be combined with hand of the emperor just so you know). I personally use this power with reckless abandon against elder guardians and imperial guardsmen letting me get the drop on then and smash them in their faces before they can respond and also against most other elder infantry since it will allow me to go at the same time as them (I5) therefore increasing their losses in close combat. I also use this all the time with my seraphim just because they have so many attacks and this pumps them to I6 making for certain they beat most MEQ to the punch (pun intended). The hardest part about this power is figuring out whether you want to use it strength of the emperor or nothing at all in close combat and only your personal play style and experience will be able to answer that

LIGHT OF THE EMPEROR
This last power is usually over looked by many. At the start of any phase you use this power and the selected unit if successful will become fearless until your next movement phase. Now there is the obvious use of it to make sure your units do not turn tail and run while under heavy fire but the thing I use it most for is regrouping. You see the SoB do not have the marine’s wonderful “and they shall have no fear” rule allowing them to regroup even under half strength, nor do they have war gear like tau bonding knives which do the same thing. Instead they have this because as stated in the WH40K book “if a unit that is falling back suddenly gains this rule, it will automatically regroup at the beginning of its next movement phase, regardless of all normal restrictions on regrouping.” (Warhammer 40K pg 75). So basically instead of having a unit with a built in we always get to roll or an unit what can by war gear to make this possible, you have a unit that may choose to spend its built in power in this way if it has to. And frankly just based on this if your sister squad is below half strength (so we will say 4 sisters assuming a 10 sister squad) you only need a 4 on 2d6 to have them get back in there and hold that objective to win the game. And hey if your down to just the veteran sister superior then well technically she is not an independent character so she is just a squad of one meaning that she will always pass this test as well as the tests for the passion and spirit of the martyr for that matter making her one tough cookie to take out.

Well that’s pretty much all there is to using faith the rest you just have to figure out on your own, which is really just faith point management and when to use them to be the most effective. Sorry for not posting this about 2 week ago but I was kept away from the internet by real life which hopefully won’t happen again soon. Next week should either be another tau bfg post or maybe an introduction to my Imperial Guard army the Hera 57th mobile infantry.
Until next time
May the Emperor Protect.

Xeno ships spotted

2009-08-25T22:06:00.002-04:00

OK sorry for not posting last week. i am really trying to post at least once a week just to get into a good habit in case anyone ever starts to read this. anyways i just had too many things i wanted to write about and so little time that i ended up writing nothing. any ways enough of this on to the actual post! oh and sorry for taking pics on my laptop again just have no work space these days oh well.

so i started a little fleet of ships to go with my eventual tau army i will give fluff at a later date at the time all you need know is that the big ship is called Doran'Por'Kor'O'Aloh'Yanoi

Battle Fleet Gothic:
So for all of you who do not know what battle fleet gothic is it is a specialist game made by games work shop that co insides with war hammer 40k. what is is is the naval aspect of 40k and i do not mean naval as in water fairing vessels this is the future so we get space ships. now if you look into it most people have a lot of good things to say about BFG and i have to agree. it is fun and heck if your interested you can down load the rules of of GW's site and have a go at it with some pieces of paper of space marines representing your ships just to try it out.

In BFG all the major races are represented more or less and well when starting to make a fleet i decided i did not want to make a fleet one of my friends were making (eldar, and imperial navy/ space marine) so i went to the one race i love in 40k but have not really gotten to mess around with too much (though that's changing soon) the Tau. i started by collecting a few gw models and they are alright with OK rules but well they just did not look tau enough (sorry no pics of them look online if your interested) they honestly remind me of the botinay bay (from TOS star trek.. khan's ship) they are clunky and submarine-ish which is kinda tau and does fit the style they should be played but i wanted something more elegant and organic thus i turned to forge world.
The forge world models look great and are easy to assembly.. well just about everything for BFG is easy to assemble if it even needs assembly and before you say "yeah but aren't forge world models expensive?" you should know that at least at the time i ordered them they actually costed me less then the gw models so i will say that fw BFG stuff i think is usually actually well priced. also the rules for them or at least the stats are a little better (and recognized at BFG tournaments).

any ways i will talk about this again when i finish the fleet, which will be soon since i just finished 3 escorts (again sorry no pics) and will have everything i need to make my bombers and fighters by the end of this week.

May the Emperor Prote... i mean For the Greater Good!

The Living Saint

2009-08-12T23:43:00.012-04:00

hail and well met. today we shall do a little bit of talking about Saint Celestine. Why do you ask?
Well, because i finally based the model and instead of just showing off my mediocre painting skills I figured i would all talk a little bit about this model from both a painting and tactics view.

So here we have Saint Celestine the Hieromartyr of the Palatine Crusade (or Cel for short). for all intents and purposes this has probably been my favorite metal model to paint to date. Cel has a lot of nice flat areas of armor as well as plenty of texture and a good mix of armor, cloth, skin, and doo-dads. Now I didn't really take advantage of all that open canvas that that huge suspended robe of hers has but i am sure an experienced painter could do some sick stuff on there. also i really enjoy her base, so much so that i didn't even bother to add anything to it, i just plugged it into a slot base and painted it. I think she can make a great center piece for and army and though i didn't do it here i have seen her relatively easily converted by others to give a rather unique looking HQ.
All in all i highly recommend her as a model every witch hunter player should have whether they plan to field her or not. and for any one that just likes to paint cool minis Cel is a great and rather fun choice.

Now for tactics.
STATS: Cel here has some pretty solid stats with a WS&BS of 5 (though as we will go over in a second the BS is useless). 3 wounds 3 attacks a 5I and a 10LD but an unfortunate 3 for both strength and toughness.
WAR GEAR: The Ardent Blade, Armour of Saint Katherine. now these two things are good stuff first off the ardent blade is a blessed weapon (that for all those who don't know is a master crafted ((re rolls i miss a turn)) power weapon that gives her +2 strength) making her really a strength 5 melee character and by the by can be shot as a flamer in the shooting phase (Burn the Heretic!). and the Armour gives her a +2 save and a 4+ invuln
so this stuff definitely gives her some punch and lasting power.
SPECIAL RULES: Adepta Sororitas, independent character, fearless, faithful, wings of faith, and miraculous intervention.
OK she has a butt load of things on her, 1st the standard SoB special rule giving her a "free save"" against psychic powers sent her way and down grading all force weapons to only power weapons which is great for multi wound characters such as her. you all know independent character and fearless so we'll skip those. ok faithful means that she contributes to and can use faith points which are a special set of powers that the Adeptas Sororitas can use (and that we will go over in a later post) now whats nice about her is that instead of giving you the usual 1 faith point or 2 for a HQ she puts 3 into your faith pool thats big stuff. unfortunatly the first time she dies (yes i said first time we will get to that in a second) you lose D6 faith and if that brings you below 0 faith then you can't produce anymore for the game...bummer.
Now here is a cool one, wings of faith, this lets her move as jump infantry as well as let her hit & run as per the 4th ed version not the 5th ed version as stated in their faq (basically says her hit & run works as in codex which is the 4th ed wording for it). but wait that's not all! she can also move an additional 6 inches (moving as jump infantry so ignoring terrain unless starting or ending in it) in the assault if not engaged, or with a squad and can do this the turn she deep strikes in. this makes her an incredibly fast model.
Her final rule though is what people really remember, her Miraculous intervention. this basically states that when she loses her last wound (no matter how) you make a leadership check. if she fails.. yeah shes dead..bummer. but if she passes she goes into reserves and starting during your next turn you can start rolling for her to come back. and when she can com back she must deep strike and only has one wound. further more this can happen more than once in a game. so in other words as long as you roll well Cel will always come back to help you out.

PROS: she is an incredibly fast model with a movement max of 24 inches a turn meanig she can get anywhere. she is a great melee fighter and really probably the best in the book with that WS of 5 and a standard I&S of 5 also, which with proper faith point usage can go to 7 (for either but not both at once) for a turn which is pretty great. Cel definitely goes along great with a squad of seraphim giving you a fast moving hit & run assault squad of kill. and she is relatively hardy with a 2+ save 4+ invuln and fearless all of which will help her stay in the fight which is where you want her. and since she can technically always comeback you always have something to bother your opponent with.
CONS: ok now the bad news, first she is 201 points and for that much shes a little over priced compared to some of the new special characters for IG and SM. second T3 really sucks, i mean the saves aregreat but the more you have to make the more likely you will fail, and with T3 you will have to make a lot of saves, and instant death due to strength 6 weapons is always a downer. and my biggest complaint NO FRAG GRENADES. that I5-7 is not going to do anything if you assault into cover with her, that's probably where you are going to send her so what the heck! you can fix this problem by putting her in a squad with some (seraphim come standard) but really you would think she would have something for gosh sakes!

now personally i love this unit. Cel is not in my list right now but i have used her several times in the past and she is loads of fun. she has a great mini, and pretty cool rules. if you are going to play sisters of battle and don't intend on using that silly mech style army then i suggest her and a squad of seraphim as a quick hitting troop killer squad, its points heavy but it really causes a lot of damage.

so in parting i leave you with some more pictures of her, there would be more but the pics were just not coming out right for some reason (having problem with the focus).
Next post will be either about Faith Points, Seraphim, IG/legend of war, or Tau BFG. not sure yet really depends on what pictures i take this week.

I'll clean up that green stuff on her right arm eventually...
May the Emperor Protect

bases loaded

2009-08-06T00:11:00.021-04:00

Ok, so today we are going to talk about basing.
First lets get this going from the begining. Why base? well the simple answer is that it looks good. just as a painted model look far superior to an unpainted one (no matter the skill of the painter) the same is true for the base. the base is a part of your model i mean what would your space marines look like if you didn't paint their bolters? they would look imcomplete right. the same is true for the base. a painted model on a unpainted base is just a little plastic or metal figure. once you paint the base it becomes a little unique character.
As you can see from this mediocre picture of two decent models the basing adds something to the whole model. it makes it look like its on the battle field and not just sitting on your game table.

now you dont have to get all fancy with the base, though it is fun and a great way to add character to your models, you can simple just give them the look of the environment you want your forces to be in. whether it be in a forest, a hive city, a space hulk, or a desolate waste land any thing can go and most are simple enough to do.

now some important things you might want to consider when deciding on how to do your basing are the general environment, positive and negative space, focal point and complimentary color useage. now all of these are concepts that will help you make a good base and can be used by a modeler of any level to make their stuff look good (i mean I'm an average painter and modeler at best but this little concepts deffinatly help me out a lot and can probably help you too).

ok so our first concept is basic environment. now this is an easy one for most people it really just comes down to a fluff question of "where do your forces usually fight"? now with some paint schemes you can do whatever you want like big yellow imperial fists on a snow land scape. but other times you might play say a guard or tau army which use stealth and camo to their adantage so your gonna want to choose a terrain style for your base that matched your army's color scheme. like have guys in forest camo on an urban base looks kind of weird, though if maybe part of the fluffiness of your army is that they are usually jungle fighters and have been deployed improperly equiped in a urban setting thats fine and dandy just think about this stuff before hand. ok so here we see two examdddples of trying to match our paint scheme to our base.

on the left we see some SM sniper scouts with their camo-cloaks and bases painted to match what this does is show proper use of camo for them and gives us an all around nice see tieing our whole model together. now the second picture shows some IG in an urban camo design. now since there are alot of colors going on in their camo scheme (4 to be exact) we have to try and show i would say at least 2 of the colors on the base (try not to get to caried away though with the color matching because that can lead to a base that is just far too busy). so we can see that the black grey and white of their uniforms are represented in the black/white road design and the ruble at their feet. now before we talk more about color lets move on to positive and negative space.

Now for those who don't know what i mean by positive and negative space (+/- for now on) let me explain or at least sum up. in any picture or sculpture you see this concept is usually apart of it (if its good anyways lol) its really just an idea of balanceing your positive space of your subject matter (ie your model) with the negative space around it (i.e. its base, the area around it so on and so forth). when balanced right you'll have a clean attractive model. when off you'll either have a model with too much going on around it or well a empty base.

Now here we have an example of poor use of +/- space. this guy is a very short and broad model so our paoitive space is very very tight and then is we add this big hand thing (which will make an appearce some where latter on i hope) it first covers a huge chunk of the models back side and makes the whole thing a little too busy so for this guy what we really want is a rather flat base one that doesnt take up his space. like this one here.
As you can see here the model has lots of space for him self and looks far less busy which lest your focus more on him and less on his surrondings. speaking of focus lets move on to the next point we are going to talk about Focal Point.
for the most part focal point is where you look first when look at a piece of art and then the "flow" of looking you do after, the goal is to get your audieance to look at one spot first and then to move from that point to the rest of the picture, or again in this case our mini. using the example picture above what do you look at first? ok now really look at that point and then just let your self flow through the mini, hopefully if i did my job right your eyes will move across the whole mini from point to point untill you look a basically the whole thing. now i dont know what your focal point on this is becasue it differs from person to person i usually focus on his head or ammo clip first and then make my way in a circle. the whole point of this is to basically get the audiance to see the whole picture an enjoy all the little details. now how does this have anything to d with basing? well you base can add points to look through on your trip through the mini I'm sure some of you eventually made your way down to the skull at his feet and then back up. and thats the point the base is there to help the viewer look around the whole mini and really look at it and its surrondings.

look at these three guys, they all have the same basic equpiment, and practically the same stance but with slightly different bases you get a whole different view of each and your eyes will see different things when looking at them. for the most part with all of them i go right for that orange but then with the first guy i go up to his face and then make my way to the feet with the second guy i see the gun first again and then get pulled down by the little metal spire and then the hand below him and then get led back up to his face and the final guy is like a counter-clockwise circle going gun, face, knee ground and up again.

for our final point we have complimentary color usage. this is just chooseing afew colors to either blend into your model or make it stand out. the camo pics earlier show the whole blending in concept pretty well just matching colors to make the base and mini feel like one thing. but we can also choose a few well placed colors that we dont see on the mini to give it a little "pazaas".

Ok check these guys out. again two models that are basically identical. heck they both event have similar base ideas but one (guy on left) uses a color on his base that mixes with the rest of him with that little bolt metal deally on the ground while the guy on the right has this little bronze bit which really just adds a whole other feel to the mini. it adds some brightness ehich is good with this rather dark color scheme and just adds a little bit of extra something. now im not say the guy oin the left is bad, i like how he came out, i'm just showing you what differance a little bit of non matching color use can do.

So in closing i hope this brought any one who read it a little incite. sorry if my writing is alittle hectic and stuff, but it is late, i'm sick, and i hate proof reading hehehe. anyways i'll work on makeing that better. and sorry for the IG heavy pics i just happen to be working on them and really trying to base them all because its the right thing to do.

anyways remember a unfinished base is like a baseball field with a tarp on it..

It's just no fun =).
(had to do it the one time i go to a base ball game in like 10 years and it rains so i took a pics.. stupid mets)

Emperor Protect

So Why the Witch Hunters

2009-07-26T23:06:00.000-04:00

Ok so you may be asking yourself, "Why did this guy decide to play that army?" Well to be frank it all started with fluff. you see as i was starting to get into the hobby (a friend of mine and at the time room mate) was getting into the hobby of 40k and well I said to my self that looks cool and people have been trying to get me into it on and off for years but i guess the camel's back finally broke so i said lets do this.

so i picked up some space marines ya know 'cause their cool. i painted them up (as blood ravens by the by) and while doing this thought i really like these guys but i don't know if they are the army for me. so i looked at some stuff on GW and other places and found out about the inquisition. now these guys are the awesome is what i thought and i looked into it more and said to my self i really like the witch hunter inquisitor model i'll do that army, and as you can see above that is my first inquisitor Inq. Allastar Low whom is also my forst conversion by the by with his giant rhino storm bolter in his left hand.

Any ways, i got into it and also saw the Adeptus Sororitas, or sisters of battle as they are more better known, and saw that these gals deffinatly kick some ass. i mean storm trooper stats and space marine equipment plus special powers for only one point more than a storm trooper (this was the old imperial guard stormtrooper im talking about by the by ya know that 10pt dudes with hellguns and targeters) i'm sold!

So i started the army and quickly found out a few things. First though sisters can bring the hurt they are a close range army and they are NOT sapce marines. i found that the duribilty of the SM comes not only from his 3+ armor save but also and more inportantly his T4. Second i hate painting metal, since the witchhunters are entierly metal this was a long ordeal especially at the points where i wanted to do some conversions (for special weapons and the like). and Third painting white also sucks. i love my sisters and they look great ( to me anyways) but i swear i will never paint a nother white primary army nor an army more that 30% metal again.

other than this stuff witch hunters rock. now my current list, which has only gone to torney once (and finished some where in the middle of the pack) is all sistes of battle (SoB for now on 'cause i hate typing the whole thing out). the reason for this is even though i love my inquisitors i wanted to make the strongest list i could from just the straight Witch Hunter codex and i felt pure SoB was the way to go. at 1750pts i had 3 troops 3 heavy support 2 fast attack and a awesome HQ and a total of 8 faith points. eventually i will make my inquisitors cool lists of their own ( which i have several planned) but for now my sisters are my go to list for all my 40k needs.

ok so next stuff above is my Saint Celestine for my Sob order, which i have dubbed the Order of the Penetant Light. anyways sorry for the meh pic and the unfinished base ( ill finish it eventually) any ways just wanted to show you her before we get to the next section.

So besides the WH haveing cool fluff with all their protecting the imperium of man from its self stuff they also offer other cool things. first off inquisitors are cool very fluffy and full of conversion potential. so if you like just making cool models inqusitors and their retinues are the way to go. here i have two inquisitors i've made the left one is the classic witch hunter inq but i changed his inferno pistol into a storm bolter, and the other is a silly idea i had of a kinda gunsliger inq which is a tech priest body with a plasma pistol AND a inferno pistol and his back back (which you cant see was made from a SM missle bit from a troop box). you can really kit these guys out to have whatever you want them to and make them as crazy cool looking as you want its fun stuff =).

also assassins are grat looking to and some of my favorite elite choices in the game. for game play SoB are great. first like i said earlier they have great basic set up with BS4 bolters and power armor, plus they have a built in "psychic hood" which is cool which not only lets you negate enemy psychic powers but also makes force weapons less effective. and faith point kick butt, they have totally saved my skin many atime i mean giving a whole squad invuln saves for a pahse is a life saver and so is pumping to S5 or I5 for a turn is great too. they also can have waaaaay to much melta and flamer which is very very nice =). next the amry can recruit other imperial armies so if you already have guard deamon hunters or SM your can add these guys in to them or vice versa. and the last pro i give is only a minor one and that is most people have NO IDEA what you can do, i know in casual games with your friends thats not going to help but most times and random pick up games with strangers and in some low level tourny stuff alot of people have never played against the SoB so they will have no idea what you can do.

on the con side if you want to know like i said WH is basically allllll metal. and metal models are a big turn off to most people in my experiance. second like i said before they are a very short range army (12-24 inch efective range for the most part) so they need to get close and well they can not handel the assault too well.

well i think i've blathered enough for one post. I think i'll talk about my current list and all that in the next post and put up some pics of things actually in my army right now and not just stuff i think looks cool. and i'll work my my pics my only camera right now is my phone so its not the greatest and i probably whouldnt be taking pics with my computer screen in the background throwing out evil back lighting... oh well live and learn.

Until next time, May the Emperor Protect.

2009-07-22T20:52:00.001-04:00

Hello and Greetings to you all.
this is Ordo Hereticus which is a miniature war gaming themed blog. here i will go over the basics that i'm sure any one who frequents these kinds of blogs will be use to ( army lists, painting, tactics, battle reports and the like).
i will be focusing mostly on warhammer 40k but i will eventually do some stuff for other games as i get in to them (expect some battle fleet gothic and maybe some war hammer fanatsy in the future.)
OK moving on i am relativly new member of the 40k world having been playing for almost 2 years now. my primary army as the name of this blog suggests is the Witch Hunters. Whom are awesome and if you say other wise i will bure you with holy promethium like the heretic you are. heh just kidding any critisim is always welcome here as long as it has fair backing. so no "you suck loser" i'd much rather "you suck loser beccause...".
anyways i go on so this is the first post i am working on my primary army in like 3 differnt list types (i will have pics soon enough of them) and also some tau dudes (cause the greater good is well great!) and some space marines 'cause like every one makes some of them evetually, and i'm working on a Imperial guard army ( because who doesnt like watching wave after wave of their own men die) which is actually for something called 'Legends of War" which i'm participating in with Keeper of the fortress and Helios Raven. you can read about it more on their blogs and i'll talk about it more eventually.
well this has gone on for far too long so then fare well and may the Emperor protect.