The way it is....

A blog that is mostly surrounding my obsession with Games Workshop's many, many fine products but will occasionally feature posts about my many other geeky hobbies!

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Friday 14 May 2010

Honour Guard and First Game

I've now finished getting the Honour Guard painted - I've gone for a pretty basic paint job with these as I decided to follow the example given in the pictures in the BA codex (page 67) so they're predominantly gold with the odd few bits of detail picked out.


I've painted the Sanguinary Novitiate as a mix of the Honour Guard colour scheme and the way I've turned out my Sanguinary Priests and he's turned out pretty nice if I do say so myself.




I had my first couple of games with this list against Bradimus Prime (of the Space Wolves Grey blog) the other day and whilst I did lose both games there were an awful lot of lessons learnt. The first game was against his all Terminator list and the second was against his standard 1500 point tournament build (see the Space Wolves Grey blog for more details) and the key points I took away are as follows:

1) Brad's terminator list is sick and wrong - my Blood Angels broke against his wedge of terminators like waves crashing against a cliff! Admittedly I did lose pretty much all my Sanguinary Priests pretty early on due to some Space Wolf trickery (all jump movement within a certain range of them was classed as difficult terrain, guess which of my guys rolled 1's when they were incoming!!!) but the main lesson here is to either stay away from them or seriously gang up on them!

2) Trust in thy armour! - cover becomes less important when you can get an armour save against most weapons that are thrown at you, that coupled with the Feel No Pain granted by the Sanguinary Priests means that these guys are one hell of allot more durable than Fire Warriors and standing in the open is not quite the death sentence it is with the Tau.

3) 18 inch threat range - this is very important with this list that I hadn't really considered until Brad pointed it out to me. I was dropping my guys in right amongst his Space Wolves which meant they pretty much took a round of fire and were then assaulted meaning that I lost the advantage of the Furious Charge granted by the Sanguinary Priests. Opting to drop them further out on their first turn of deployment and then roll in on masse seems to be the order of the day!

4) Play like you've got a pair! - this is something that I did during the games (some very, VERY risky deep strike's which pretty much all panned out thanks to Descent of Angels) but is worth remembering that losses are less important with a BA list than they are with the Tau, in fact even at the point when I'd lost about half my army I still felt in a fairly confident position which is something that I'm afraid I can't say about the Tau.

I really don't want to seem like I'm now completely anti-Tau, I will still be playing them as I really, REALLY enjoy the army it's just given that 5th edition has such a huge emphasis on the Assault phase of the game I can't really equate the Tau to being competitive as they pretty much ignore this entire aspect of the game.

Wednesday 12 May 2010

3 Sanguinary Priests Walk Into A Bar.....

More progress with my Blood Angels!!!! Shocking I know! I've now finished the 3 Sanguinary Priests I need for my 1500 point list, they've turned out pretty good all in all.


These figures are the Sanguinary Priest figures from GW but as I have equipped them with Jump Packs and Power Weapons it means that I still have the funky backpack and right arm with the reductor from all 3 so I will be able to knock together another 3 foot slogging priests by adding those bits to a normal plastic marine if need be in the future.


I used a couple of the shoulder pad add ons from the Death Company box set to "pimp" some standard Jump Packs for these guys. One of the tricky parts of this was making the white on the Jump Packs look clean but I think they've turned out pretty nicely all in all.


Saturday 8 May 2010

1st BA Squad Done

I finally managed to get my finger out and spent the better part of the day today painting some of my Blood Angels painted. I now have my very first Assault Squad done, I've hit on a method of painting the guys that is leaving me happy that there's a fair amount of detail picked out on them whist at the same time is relatively quick for me to get done. They may be a touch heavy on the old washes for some peoples tastes but I like the way they look a touch "dirty", as if they have been in the field for some time.









All in all I'm pretty damn pleased with the way theyve turned out. Only about another 30 guys to go!!