Still Alive

Work has been killing me, as well as personal issues at home. Nothing serious, just busy. This past weekend I didn't get any painting done but I spent a lot of time reorganizing the basement and taking out the huge space-wasting work bench that was there. Now I need a new desk and some shelves.

Specialist Smackdowns

Last night I had the chance to play 3000 pts of Epic versus Jeff and then a 1000 pt game of BFG against Adam.

Epic

This was a fantastic game, even though I lost. Really you only need to see the following two pictures from the beginning of turn 2: this massive assault by three IG formations led to these four broken Chaos formations. That's 1200 pts broken before even activating in exchange for one rough rider formation and two other activated IG formations. He won the combined assault by 1 point  in the roll off. The one blast marker involved in all of those seven formations was on one of mine, and had it not been there then this game was completely different. Damn.

I tried to fight back and but it was hard and a failed assault by my platoon on the Stormtroopers (Jeff made great amrour saves and I made none) sealed the deal. I took him to four turns and we had to go to VPs, but he had the upper hand.

Great game Jeff. So close, yet so far.

Here are the pictures from the Epic game.

BFG

Battlefleet Gothic for the first time in a long time, and man is that game fun. One thousand points is a decent sized game and we fought hard. In the end, Adam won and I believe the victory can be attributted to the beginning. My two Slaughters pull up right beside a squardon of three Iconoclasts and three Infidels and open up with firepower 28, four lances, and 2 teleportation attacks. I mean point blank range. I killed NONE of them. Even my teleport attacks failed and they needed 2+ to kill. On his turn he used his cruisers to punish my Devestation cruiser down to a single point and it quickly disengaged giving Adam complete ordnance domination. I tried to fight back but was always one step behind as I had to deal with the two escort formations still as well as the cruisers.

Great game, and I'll get you next time Adam!

Here are the BFG game pictures I have. 

Sorry For the Lack of Updates

Painting was limited since Wednesday, although I did manage to start the canopy of the new Wave Serpent. My free weekend time was taken up by my new obsession EvE and I didn't sit down in front of any slow movies or TV to paint upstairs. This week I'll have more opprotunity I'm sure.

I have a game Thursday against Jeff for Epic, and if it is in the afternoon I'll play some BFG afterwards with Adam. Woot!

Ranger Prototype

Not the best pictures, but you get the idea. Work in progress needless to say.

Dark Reapers Done!

Finished the Dark Reapers! Here is the final result including the exarch and two original reapers:

While working on the reapers, I also decided to spruce up the old wave serpent to make it look more snazzy.
 
Here's what it used to look like:

And recently stripped models, some warlocks and guardian support weapon crew:
   

Next up, Rangers!

Autarchs

Until the codex is released, this is all just pie in the sky, but I've been thinking a lot about the new Eldar Autarch and what it means to my Eldar army. Go here to see the current rumour compilation that seems to be very accurate to the released info. There's a post in there about the Autarch and what he can take.

In the current edition, your HQ choices have been limited. Avatar or Farseer. In some cases, a Seer Council of farseers or an Avatar and Exarchs. But most went with the Farseer and perhaps a couple warlocks as a bodyguard so that you couls add warlocks to your guardian squads. Farseers are cool, but modeling options are limited. Unless he is mounted on a jetbike, your only choice is to equip him with a sword or a spear as everything else is too small or a psychic power.

The autarch on the other hand opens up a world of combinations. Jetbikes, warp generators, wings, multiple different weapons of various abilities... its a converter's dream. And tactically, it leaves a lot of room for experimentation.

My chaos army has a virtual host of different leaders: Daemon Prince, Terminator Lord, Sorcerer Lord, Jump Pack Lord, regular Chaos Lord, and even a Chaos Lieutenent, each one filling a different role depending on my mood that day. I think my eldar will have similar variety in that I think I will end up with a few autarch models fulfilling different roles.

Basic Autarch - For most games, this guy will have power weapon with pistol but not break the bank points-wise. Plan to attach him to an Aspect squad and ride in a wave serpent or Falcon.

Fast Autarch - Warp Spider generator, bansee mask or mandiblaster, power weapon & pistol (or maybe fusion gun)

Shooty Autarch - Reaper Launcher, fast shot power. Act like a leader and a sniper.

Supreme Commander - Jetbike, Laser Lance, mandiblaster, close combat exarch powers. I expect him to be most expensive, but the deadliest on the charge.

Wow, just thinking about the last one makes me itch for the conversion opportunity.

 

Eldar, Its Good to Be Back

Man, I didn't realize quite how much I missed playing Eldar until I picked up the ghosthelm and witchblade this past summer once again.

Last night I played two quick 1000 pt games against Marty and his Blood Guard and Winston and his own Eldar. You can see the pictures here.

Long story short, Marty kicked my ass after I forgot that an enemy unit within 2 inches of a hatch when a transport goes down are all dead, losing me 9 Striking Scorpions and a Farseer. Ouch. The rest of my army did ok, but that just plain sucked. He won 4-0 in a Cleanse mission.

Against Winston and his skimmer army of minor-dread (2 Fire Prisms, 2 Wave Serpents, 4 vypers) I thought I was in trouble but my 15 Scorpions and Farseer proved too much for his Dire Avengers to handle and all of our skimmers were able to avoid much damage except my vyper and one of his Fire Prisms. Side note: Man, his Fire Prisms were hitting all over the place last night until the final turns. The thought of them at BS 4 sends excited shivers down my spine. I won the Take and Hold mission.

As I was entering in the results, I took a look at my overall record with Eldar (58-58-14) and was surprised to see a gap between October of 2004 and June of 2006. Almost two years of no Eldar games excepting a megabattle last winter. Wow, surprising. That basically allows me to break my Eldar playing into three distinct time frames or Eras. The first era was before 40K 3rd Ed came out. The second era started in July of 1999 and ran for five years to October of 2004 where I racked a respectable 55-53-14 record. Then the latest era started in June of this year and I'm currently holding at 3-5-0 record as I get back into the 40K game and remember all the gotchas and tactics.

And I can't wait until the new codex comes out in late October!!!

Asswipe

Idiot:

Oh, no doubt. I expect this configuration to be very expensive. Close to 200pts. I would think. I may buy one of the "off the shelf" autarchs for small games. That's been the problem with the eldar in the past. Our HQ's were very expensive. Even a reasonable farseer could clock in at 175pts. Don't even get me started on Seer Councels.

A farseer with witchblade, pistol, Fortune power, and runes of witnessing even comes in under 100 pts. He's a reasonable farseer you complete ass. Not high powered, not throwing a lot of psychic wieght maybe, but he can lead an army. Asswipes like the guy above who think every character has to be the god-o-combat  ruin a good game with their opinions.

Darn Bases

I went to do the bases last night. I thought it would only take an hour but forgot about the wait times for glue to try. Stupid glue. Here's the process:

1) Paint base goblin green.
2) Let dry.
3) Glue on little gravel. Let dry.
4) Paint gravel grey. Let dry.
5) Black ink on gravel. Dry.
6) Highlight gravel with grey. Dry.
7) Fix up green, then glue on long grass if any. Dry.
8) Glue on static grass. Let dry.

Each step takes only a few minutes, but the drying times for the glue takes hours. Sigh.

Dark Reapers Almost Finished

I was able to finished the painting of the Dark Reapers this weekend, and all I have left to do is the bases for Thursday's game.

Here's the army for Thursday, 1000 pts of Eldar:

Next on the docket is five rangers. I'm going to do one as a prototype to get the cloak done right, then the other four.
 

And after the rangers, a new grav tank:
    

Here's the Story...

Urb commented on my vypers yesterday and said how the "purplish-blue" riders looked out of place.

Well, yeah, you're absolutely right. That's an older paint scheme that I'm slowly replacing. So here is the full story.

About 15 or so years ago, I started collecting Eldar. I was young and foolish and painted poorly, but the paint scheme I picked was blue and white for vehciles and guardians, and various colours for the aspect warriors.

As I got better and learned the joys of stripping models, I changed my scheme from blue and white to black and red on vehciles and war machines, ivory on heavy weapons, black on personal weapons, and cobalt blue (aka purplish blue) on all guardians. Aspect warriors remained in shrine colours. This odd combination was the scheme for the majority of the years of painting.

Recently, my Eldar got trimmed down and are being rebuilt and repainted. I'm going with the new red and black scheme with ivory coloured weapons WITHOUT exception. War machines, guardians, aspect warriors, psykers, all will follow the same pattern. I love the effect so far and can't wait to have a complete army.

Some painted items like the vypers are close enough to suffice until they can be repainted. Hence the blue guardian driver and gunner.