Battle Report: Chaos Demons

So, back when the Dark Sphere slow grow was still at 1,500 points, I rocked up with my Guard to see who was about. This time around, I ended up facing a Chaos Demons list, which I haven't had to deal with before, so I was curious as to how it was going to go.

On the right flank, I deployed the Leman Russ, the Conscripts lead by the Primaris and one of the infantry platoon squads, with the Lieutenant's command squad using the Demolisher as cover.

Meanwhile, on the left flank, my Command HQ was using the Chimera, the Manticore was doing its own thing, and the other infantry squad was covering the space between the flanks.

So meanwhile, a large squad of flesh hounds was scouted out into the centre, a squad of Pink Horrors hunkered down in cover with an objective, and Kairos and two demon princes huddled behind some ruins for cover until they got moving.

We were using some lovely objective markers the demon player had made, while we made the patch of terrain to the right of this some quicksand which we made difficult and dangerous terrain - I think it's actually meant to be the base for some tree area terrain, but we couldn't find those while setting up the battlefield.

A close up of the Pink Horrors, huddling over an objective.

Sneaky flying monstrous creatures! Note the magnetised square / circle base Kairos has - very clever!

First turn, and the Flesh Hounds rocket forward, with the blessing of the Grimoire of True Names increasing their invulnerable save.

The Portalglyph helpfully scatters to the far corner of the battlefield. Given it would be spewing out demons for the rest of the battle, I was quite glad of it's position.

The conscripts watch nervously as the demons advance, not realising that the threat is also within...

The Primaris clutches his head and collapses to the floor, the vomit pouring from his mouth and nose coalescing into a vile Herald of Nurgle. (We then proceeded to forget to roll on the Warp Storm chart most turns, but this was a particularly memorable introduction.)

Kairos proceeds to miscast his psychic powers, injuring himself...

This was about the only damage Kairos took all game, so it was rather ironic it was self inflicted...

Panicking conscripts desperately shoot wildly at the terrifying apparition that was once their psyker... It was eventually brought down by the Lieutenant's melta squad.

A vast array of shooting at the Flesh Hounds only removed a couple due to the Grimoire of True Names' protection.

Heedless of the casualties, they tear into the left flank, tearing apart the Chimera, causing the commander to desperately bail out of the wreck.

Meanwhile, psychic shooting powers from the flying demon Princes was decimating the infantry...

Soon enough, the Flesh Hounds have massacred the Command HQ and ripped the Manticore to pieces, without really breaking a sweat.

Team sentinel rock up on the flank to threaten the Pink Horrors.

Well, things aren't looking too bad here - there's lots of infantry left on the right flank, we're pressing onto two objectives, and there's not many demons in sight.

The danger is coming from the left flank, where a horde of Flesh Hounds and Kairos lurk in the ruins among the corpses and wrecked vehicles.

Reinforcements start arriving, with more Pink Horrors materialising onto the table, cackling madly.

You'll also notice one of the demon princes has returned from ongoing reserves...

The Flesh Hounds slip through a gap in the lines, and Kairos swoops over the perimeter squad, clawing at them as he passes.

And then the Slaanesh Demon Prince decides to get all close and personal with everyone...

And whatever flavour of mind bullets he was using wrecks the Leman Russ MBT.

Kairos demonstrates that his mind bullets are just as good, blowing the perimeter squad to pieces.

The Sentinels realise that with a 2+ cover save, those Pink Heralds aren't going anywhere without some good old fashioned violence, and charge into the terrain to try and kick them to death - and actually start doing quite well at it!

The Valkyrie roars onto the table to help out, as Daemonettes from the Portalglyph race across the table to save the objective from the Sentinels. Meanwhile, the Flesh Hounds rip the Demolisher to pieces.

The Daemonettes pour onto the objective, and the Sentinels are in trouble.

The Flesh Hounds rush up to attack the conscripts, but Fateweaver destroys them all before the minions of Khorne can claim their skulls.

And that was pretty much it... My Veterans did drop down and mangle the Pink Horrors (but nowhere near as much as they should have) and the Sentinels managed to desperately hold on, but I had so few units left there was no holding the objectives and I was thoroughly defeated.

Progress over the weekend, arbitrators and assassins and Dark Angels, oh my!

This week, an irresponsible moment on ebay resulted in this.

I also went on a bit of a spree through the "Collectors" ranges on the Games Workshop site, as they will sadly shortly no longer be with us, and I didn't want to end up in the sad state I am over not having the Frenzied Mob from Mordheim I've been having acquisitive thoughts over for so long.

So I'm also aware that when they arrive, my "painting score" is going to take another hammering.

This motivated me to get modelling and painting this week, and I'm pleased to say I've finished a bunch of projects. The weekend, in particular, has been super productive.

On Wednesday, I was at the 40K slow grow league at Dark Sphere as usual, when a young gentleman (he said he was 12) came in and asked me lots of questions about games, particularly about which one he should start. As the store staff were busy with people paying for things, I had a chat with him about the different games available, and what they were like.

He bought a Troll Bouncer with the money he had (and a bit of the money his elder brother had, after a bit of arm twisting), and as he was too young to be loaned the shop glue, I agreed to assemble it for him. This resulted in me providing a short and impromptu tutorial on basic rules of assembly. "See how I'm cutting towards my thumb like this? Don't do that when you're doing it."

The model was actually remarkably easy to quickly put together. The mould lines were easy to spot and clean off with a scalpel blade (my preferred means of cleaning). It seems Privateer use a different type of plastic to the one I'm used to, and I will say I'm rather impressed with it.

The young gentleman was able to, on the basis of the completed figure and enthusiasm, persuade his father to allow him to purchase a Hordes two player starter box, and left happy. Fortunately, I then had someone turn up late to the slow grow so I still got a game in and didn't keep anyone waiting.

My friend's Herald of Tzeentch is now undercoated and ready for base coating. The plan is to try and paint it up in standard GW colours, using the techniques GW recommend. I also sorted the flying base - it was a bit loose where it is meant to enter the disk, so I used a small piece of green stuff to make it a tight (and straight) fit. A trick my wife taught me was to oil the flying base with light machine oil so the green stuff stuck to the model, and not to the flying base. Both will work, but this way looks much neater.

With some other blogs getting all nostalgic over Arbitrators, I decided to throw together my test kit bash Arbitrator as well. (You may remember a while ago, I wrote a few thoughts on how to represent Adeptus Arbites in 40K). This one uses Empire Greatsword legs, a Forge World Cadian Veteran body, and a Hellstrider of Slaanesh helmet (which is really the core of the conversion). This particular one only looks good from some angles not others, but I'm happy with the principle. I also need to see if I can acquire the body and arms of a Space Marine scout, as I have a suspicion they may be a viable and cheaper alternative.

I'm also putting him away again now - I'm trying to limit the number of projects I have 'on the go' at once now, and the Herald is my work in progress for non army related projects.

I've also finally finished the Vindicare assassin I've had pottering along in the background for goodness knows how long. Sadly, he won't see the battlefield outside of Apocalypse until I get myself a new Coteaz model and get him painted up - and I have several Grey Knight figures to paint and finish before I'm allowed to buy any new Grey Knight figures. I had better crack on!

And I've also finished my test Dark Angel Marine. Sim is recommending I try out an oil wash technique on him, which, if we find the time to do it, I will undoubtably do some "before" and "after" shots of. In the meantime, I'm mostly happy with the colours I've used working well enough. The green base is Caliban Green, despite an early experiment with Castellan Green, it just didn't provide the colour I wanted. He was then dry brushed with Sybarite Green.

The shoulder pads were edged in another green I now can't find the paint pot of, and the eagle coloured in Zandril Dust, followed by a Screaming Skull drybrush and a sepia wash. The boltgun was originally base coated in Jokaero Orange, but it really didn't work, so Wazdakka Red and a mix of black and red washes brought it back down to a tone I liked.

Sim doesn't particularly like the over-heavy drybrush I tried out on the green, but I do kind of like it, especially on the helmet. I'll have to make a decision when I finally crack out the Dark Vengeance set.

Battle Report: Chaos Space Marines

I have just realised how behind I am on my battle reports. I have three queued up to go, and I'm planning to go fight another battle tomorrow at Dark Sphere's 40K night (I'm writing this on a Tuesday evening).

This is from a battle I had against Chaos Space Marines with Traitor Guard allies. We had rolled up Big Guns Never Tire. I was experimenting with taking the brave and noble Captain Al'Rahem. My list was pretty standard for me, with a big platoon, some veterans, a couple of Leman Russ tanks and a Valkyrie.

The other player had a few squads of Chaos Marines, a flying demon Prince, some Chaos Terminators and a Defiler. He then had an allied psyker, veteran squad and a Valkyrie.

The early battle involved me being beaten brutally about the head by the demon prince - murdering my command HQ to death, in particular.

In the centre, my Veterans jump out of the back of a Valkyrie and murder to death a Chaos Marine squad holding one of the objectives. His Valkyrie, having dropped off his Guardsmen, starts pursuing mine with the aim of shooting it down.

Al'Rahem and his platoon rock up from outflank and between them and a Demolisher, turn the Defiler to a small smoking crater.

On the right flank, a Leman Russ encourages his Marines to stay in cover and do very little.

Meanwhile, his demon prince bears down on the Veterans to seek a bloody vengeance for the destruction of the Chaos Marine squad. This was also the hilarious moment his demon prince threw psychic lightning at the Veterans, and the telekinetic dome caused it to ricochet off the Veterans and knock a hull point off his Valkyrie.

It then all got a bit frantic on the left flank. Al'Rahem's squad got out of the Chimera, successfully used Like the Wind and melta gunned the Terminators to death before ducking back behind their Chimera. The infantry platoon caught the Traitor veterans in the open and gunned them down

The flying demon prince swept across the table in an attempt to deal with the mass of guardsmen bearing down on his flank.

A slightly blurry shot shows my Demolisher trying very hard to be inconspicuous away from the demon prince.

His Valkyrie went into hover mode in a desperate attempt to deal with the Demolisher a little too late (it survived the game, remarkably, although it was immobilised)...

The demon Prince managed to destroy the Chimera, and shortly after this last shot was taken, cut down Al'Rahem and his squad - I don't recall if it made it through the game in the end, but I was holding enough objectives to scrape a win!

This was my first introduction to flying psychic monstrous creatures, but it was not to be my last. They are incredibly dangerous this edition, and are now making my list of "things a list needs to be able to deal with".

Succeeding by setting low bars - work from the weekend

I'm sure maybe one person who reads the blog will be wondering how productive my weekend went given the bomb site my house was at the start of the weekend.

Sadly, the biggest achievement from a vaguely gaming related standpoint was cutting down all the boxes the wife's WarDesk came in and getting them into the outside recycling bin.

Still, the Dremel was brought home from where it has been loaned to the wife's work, and this kicked me into getting some things done.

The test Dark Angel progresses well. I'm now quite pleased with his armour, and I'm just trying to get the bolter to behave itself.

The Vindicare now has an attached arm, and just needs a bit of touching up and final detail work before he's done.

The Tzeentch Herald has now had his feet pinned for later attachment to the disk. Undercoating is next for him!

And Collodi is now undercoated for painting. That progress definitely feels like I'm defeating some kind of nemesis!

All in all, it's not a huge amount, but it is progress, so I'm quite happy to get a little done every day or two.

Projects around the house

Things have been super busy recently, and that means a lot of projects have just been being lying around the house, or waiting to be picked up again. I decided to take a few shots of the state of the house to give my loyal readers an idea of what I'm working on.

The lounge room is covered in half assembled furniture. This is not actually mine, but Sim's. This is the new KR "WarDesk" which she pre-ordered at Salute. It's the desk that folds out into a 4 x 4 gaming table. Once it's up and finished, expect a celebratory post from me!

More of Sim's projects! These are Martian walkers from Timeline 300. They unfortunately had a few casting issues with these ones, but when Troublemaker Games heard about it, they were very quick to arrange to send us some replacements. Sim is planning on turning the mis-casts into some terrain with wrecked walkers in. All credit to Troublemaker - every manufacturing company will have a glitch or issue somewhere along the line - what marks out the good companies are the ones who fix it.

The first of my projects: Sarissa Silos, with me learning how to airbrush. I'm doing these up as a kind of concrete colour, with rusted metal. At the moment, they're just base coated, but I'm hoping to add in some simple airbrush highlights on the concrete, shade the metal a little, then try out a few weathering techniques on the metal to finish.

On the CD shelf, we have a certain Herald of Tzeentch who mocks me at every turn with my slow progress on him.

... and the wider shot, showing I haven't lost his disc (which is actually undercoated) or his flight stand.

My god, it's full of projects. Also, this is a mess. I really need to sort this out. I mean, the Hydra is a finished model I dropped into a space when I was swapping tanks around in my carry cases to get out to a game. That's just sloppy.

Guardsmen! One is as far as having a head, although his neck will need some Green Stuff work. These are going to be another 20 infantrymen when I'm done, lightly armed with just a flamer for each squad to discourage assaults. My Guard army is seriously lacking in troops choices, so I hope they'll provide me with some more tactical flexibility.

This is the worst of it. My Malifaux crew is all over the place. Collodi needs an undercoat, the others need me to get back into painting. A test figure for a Dark Angels colour scheme lies forlornly on his side, discarded and forgotten.

Vindicare sniper, on the verge of completion. I use paper clips for my pinning wire, and leave arms attached while I paint before trimming it down for the actual assembly.

And here's a Lord Commissar I got out to consider for a bit of a kit bash. I managed to lose his right arm and bolt pistol through idiocy and untidiness, so I've been looking for an alternative right arm. He's pretty much prepped for painting short of undercoating. My local gaming store is talking about a little 40K painting competition, so I'm holding off on starting anything with him until then. Really, I need to find a little bag for him and put him away until then.

Relics models resting on top of my wet palette. Also, a jiffy bag from my last Bitzbox order. Again, pure untidiness that I need to fix.

My wife's painting desk is much more restrained and sensible. She just has one project out.

Here's the work in progress.

And here are the finished ones, waiting for their co-conspirators to join them.

I took all these photos before the start of the weekend, so I could have a nice visual representation of what I managed to get done by the end of it. Soon to come - how did I do with getting back on track?