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.

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.

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!!

For the Blood of Sanguinius!

As I said in my previous post I'm changing tack until a new Tau Codex hits the scene. Blood Angels have always been my favourite Space Marine chapter and since the new Codex was announced I've been mulling with the idea of starting a Blood Angels army and I've now taken the plunge. After reading through most of the codex and looking at what others in the blog-o-sphere have been thinking in regards to army lists I've settled on the Descent of Angels 3 list that Neil Kerr posted on his blog, Pink Tyranids. This list appeals to me in that it's in keeping with the Blood Angels fluff and that it gives me a 1500 point army for a relatively small outlay. The list is as follows:

DESCENT OF ANGELS (PT.III)

Librarian: Jump Pack, The Blood Lance, The Sanguine Sword - 125

5 Honour Guard: Jump Packs, 3 Melta Guns - 195

3 Sanguinary Priests: Jump Packs, Power Weapons - 270

x3 units of 10 Assault Marines: 2 Melta Guns, Power Fist - 235

6 Vanguard Veterans: Jump Packs, Power Fist - 205

Army Total = 1500

Now my current financial situation isn't fantastic as I'm between jobs right now so I've funded this new army by selling a load of old stuff on eBay. All of you out there should note, there is no accounting for the ammount someone else will pay for something which you consider to be tat!!! The end result is I made more than enough pennies to buy everything I needed for this list so a quick trip down to Maelstrom Games later and I now have a lot of gluing and painting ahead of me.....again.

On the advice of my friend Bradimus Prime (of the Space Wolves Grey blog) I've bought a few of the Death Company boxe sets to mix and match with the regular Assault Marines and othersto give a suitably Blood Angels feel to the whole army. I'll put some pictures up of how these are starting to take shape in the next day or so but I have fnished the Librarian and he turned out a little something like this:

Well crap!

So last weekend was the Mayhem tournament down in Warhammer World and as you can tell from the post title I finished in a less than great position....2nd from last in fact. When you consider that there were 55 players taking part at this tournament it strikes home just how poorly I did.

I've walked away from the weekend still feeling that I had a good time - I did really enjoy myself and all of the guys who took part were really great to play against and there wasn't so much of an ultra competitive feel to the proceedings as just everyone being there to have a good time but finishing a hairs breadth from the very bottom of the rankings has brought it home to me that the Tau just aren't a competitive army in any real sense.

The first day went pretty well and after losing my first game I managed to pull a draw and a win out of the second and third games respectively. This left me sitting at mid table, I was pretty optimistic heading into the last day that I'd be able to maintain that position....events of the day proved me somewhat wrong on that score however.

The first game was for kill points but rather than the usual 1 point per unit you gained a variable amount based upon the points cost of the unit which you killed - I managed to pull a draw out of the game mostly by the fact that I killed my opponents HQ which netted me 5 VP's. The other two games were objective based and the second one I got annihilated with my opponent capturing every objective but it was the third game which really brought the point home that the Tau aren't going to be viable until they get a new codex....I got out shot by an Ork army! He managed to seize the initiative for our battle and I lost my pathfinders and all my Deathtrain Crisis Suits in his turn due to a phenomenal weight of fire coming my way and the game pretty much carried on in the same vein, it says something that by the end my opponent was getting quite embarrassed by the situation!

The main conclusion that I have gotten from this is that if Tau go last they lose - it's that simple. If you go first you stand a fair chance, but only a fair chance, of being able to win. Acting first means you can usually bring a large amount of fire to bear on your opponent and use your manoeuvrability to keep at range, going second means typically that your opponent has already closed most of the distance to you before you've even had chance to fire a single shot and you have much less room to get out of the way.

I still enjoy the Tau and I will still be looking to build my Cadre up for friendly games but I think I'm definitely going to be going towards a different army for future tournament play. I've always had a soft spot for Blood Angels out of all the varied Marine chapters and I've got the new codex coming in the next week or so, seems like I'm destined for that scarlet bandwagon!

1500 Point Tau Cadre - FINISHED!!!!!!

Well I've finally finished my 1500 point cadre, as I'm travelling down to Warhammer World for the Mayhem Tournament this weekend it's just in the nick of time to!!!!

Alot of the models are far from being "finished" but I've gotten them upto a standard that I'm happy to run with at a tounament so I'm pretty happy all in all. After this weekend is over I need to have an assesment about how happy I am with this list and then look to take it up to 1750 points for the next tournament I'll be taking part in, my current thinking is to add 2 Piranhas and to take add another Broadside but we'll see.

The Cadre consists of the following:

1500 Point Tau Cadre

HQ – 127 pts
Crisis Suit Commander (Shas’el) with Targeting Array, Missile Pod, Plasma Rifle, HW MultiTracker, HW Drone Controller.
2 x Shield Drones.

Elite – 141 pts
3 x Crisis Battlesuit with Twin Linked Missile Pods, Flamers.

Elite – 201 pts
3 x Crisis Battlesuit with Targeting Array, Missile Pod, Plasma Rifle

Troop – 155 pts
6 x Fire Warriors with Pulse Rifles
1 x Devilfish with Gun Drones, Multi Tracker, Disruption Pod

Troop – 155 pts
6 x Fire Warriors with Pulse Rifles
1 x Devilfish with Gun Drones, Multi Tracker, Disruption Pod

Troop – 155 pts
6 x Fire Warriors with Pulse Rifles
1 x Devilfish with Gun Drones, Multi Tracker, Disruption Pod

Troops – 60 pts
6 x Fire Warriors with Pulse Rifles

Heavy – 165 pts
Hammerhead Gunship with Rail Gun, Burst Cannons, Disruption Pod, Multi Tracker

Heavy – 198 pts
Broadside Battlesuit Team Leader with Smart Missile System, HW Blacksun Filter, HW Drone Controller, Advanced Stabilisation System
Broadside Battlesuit with Smart Missile System, Advanced Stabilisation System
2 x Shield Drones

Fast – 143 pts
4 x Pathfinders with Pulse Carbines
Devilfish with Marker Beacon, Disruption Pod, Multi Tracker

Mayhem Progress Update 01

Ok then, yesterday I managed to get 1 of the 2 Devilfish I need to get painted for Mayhem done and I made a start on the 6 gun Drones as well as prepping the Crisis Suits, Broadside Suits and Fire Warriors (finished assembly where needed, got basing material on and undercoated the lot). Picture below is the current lot that I need to get done....well, 12 of the Fire Warriors are optional but I'd like them done for the Tournament if possible.



I'll be sticking another post on later today/tomorrow morning giving a progress update. Right, time to get cracking!