++++INLOADING DATAFILE 81++++ Dark Skitarii Rangers WIP 1.0

Sorry for the derth of posts, I've been otherwise engaged of late.  That said I for one am very excited for the new Adeptus Mechanicus codex which should be coming out soon, as well as the Skitarii book coming just before it.  I'm interested to see whether this will be the first book which truly works to unify a GW and Forgeworld range as has been suggested by some to be the new model for the upcoming 30k plastic range.

After I bought my first White Dwarf in a few years (I had a subscription for over 10 years ago.) I was quite impressed by the rules for the Vanguard and Ranger units.  Both are well costed, neither is brokenly good or bad, and they each have workable weapons with different mechanics between the units.  The Vanguard's rad weapons are very neat, while they differ substantially from Rad weapons in 30k I prefer this version.  The 30k rad weapon effect only matters AFTER a multiwound model has failed to save a wound it has been dealt by a rad weapon, which is situational in the extreme.  The new "double wound" effect is cool, and it works well with the weapon's low str of 3 and high rate of fire.

Skitarii Rangers actually strike me as being the more conventional of the two units, as they are essentially just equipped with Kraken Bolters.  A while ago I converted a bunch of Skitarii for my Dark Mechanicum army but at the time there were no rules for them and I used them as Adsecularis Tech Thralls.  Right after reading the new rules I started reconverting them into Skitarii rangers, all it took was swapping the lasgun barrels on their guns for more Sniper esk ones and adding some scopes.

Galvanic Rifles group 1

++++INLOADING DATAFILE 080++++ Scyllax Guardian-Automata Conversion

I'm sure that everyone has seen the new Scyllax Battle-Automata from Forgeworld, they are nifty new models and have some neat rules.  I like this unit as there have always been battle constructs in the lore that are mostly made up of lots of Mechadendrites but up till now there has never been a decent representation of such units in game.  So I decided to have a go at converting one for my Dark Mechanicum army.

Forge World's version

 My Version

++++INLOADING DATAFILE 079++++ Myrmidon Secutors WIP 1.0

First off, this week we hit 30,000 pageviews for this site.  Huzzah!  Thank you all for viewing and providing me with the recognition all of us bloggers crave desperately!!!

Onto today's post.  Here are some in progress shots of my Myrmidon Secutors.  As always these guys are a kitbash using components from a very wide array of sources.  The legs I got off of a friend a few years ago, he had planned to use them for a Grey Knights Paladin squad I believe, but that didn't work out.  I never liked them for marines as the poses are so rigid and awkward, but that makes then ideally suited for Admech cyborgs.

Myrmidon #1

Based on his pose I am thinking he is the squad leader.  He's armed with two Phased Plasma Fusils.

++++Inloading Datafile 078++++ Post X-Wing tournament

So turns out that the shop changed the start time for the tournament from 7 PM to 6 PM and there was a communication snafu. As a result I only got in two matches but I still came in third with a buy. I Lost the first match and won the second.

Both matches were against rebels, which I found is pretty much the norm with not many people around here playing Empire. The first match was versus two Hawk-290s with blaster turrets and a Lando Calrissian in the YT 1300. This game can be summarized as "it doesn't matter how well you maneuver and isolate your opponents' ships, bad dice will kill you."

While I did kill both of the Hawks there was a single turn in which I failed all of my evade rolls, I literally rolled 11 blanks that turn and was brought down to just Tcyho and Jake each with only one hull point left. From that point I wasn't able to take down Lando, though I brought him down to 5 hull. I learned quite a bit about the limitations and weakness of the Hawk-290 in this game, it was my first experience fighting them. I kept forgetting that Blaster Turrets are only range 1-2 and so I should have focused on killing the YT-1300 first. Lesson learned.

The second match was versus a vanilla YT-2400, Wedge Antilles, and Ten Numb. I took Wedge down in round three, but he killed Gemmer before he went down. Tycho with push the limit, daredevil, and expiramental interface is just amazing for this as he zipped up the board and was on Wedge's tail on round two! That really got inside my opponent's head.

After that I managed to isolate Ten Numb and kept one A-wing behind him at no matter where he went, after which he went down fast.

For the end game the YT-2400 took me down to just Tycho while it still had 1 shield left. At this point there were about 6 people watching our game and everyone expected Tycho to go down fast. But in the end Tycho managed to finally take it down, being able to focus and evade every turn really helps, and he evaded 4 hits with three Dice a few times. This game was very close but the A's took it.

The overall conclusion from the evening is that the mass A-wing tactic does work, but I always need to try to focus down whatever my opponent's biggest ship his first as once I've fired the Proton Rockets it takes too long to kill any large ships they have, especially with turrets.

I'm thinking of reworking the list again, I picked up another rebel aces so I now have 4 A-Wings to play with.

As for minis expect more stuff soon. I've been working on a unit of Myrmidon Secutors to go with the Archmados Myrmidax, a Ursarax Cohort, and the next two Grimlok pattern Battle-Automata.

++++INLOADING DATAFILE 077++++ In Defense of the A-Wing

So over the last few months I have gotten into x-wing and the local tournament scene is really starting to come into its own. This game is far more fun to play in a tournament currently than 40k is IMO, the rules are crisp and the game has a breakdown of about 50% player skill / 25% luck / 25% list building vs 40k's 65% list building / 20% luck / 25% player skill. Plus I can play an entire tournament in under 3 hours on a weeknight, which rocks.

Anyways this Thursday we have a tournament and here is the list I plan to bring. It is VERY unconventional as I am exclusively taking my favorite ship, the much maligned A-Wing.

++++INLOADING DATAFILE 076++++ Vorax Class Battle Automata Completed

It's done, and if you liked this fellow from my last post, let me introduce you to your one true love!

++++INLOADING DATAFILE 075++++ Vorax Class Battle Automata WIP 2

It's been a while since I have touched this model, but last weekend I finally played a game with my Dark Mechanicum army, using the rules for the Legio Cybernetica from the Horus Heresy series. I only had about 800 points and hilariously my one battle robot gained sentience and turned on me as the first roll of the game.

The previous iteration of this guy was too small compared with the Forgeworld kit, and it really did not stand up to my standards, so I broke it apart and kept only what I liked from the original attempt.