Archive for August, 2009

1500 Points of Tau (Almost)

Posted by NockerGeek in Army Lists on August 6, 2009

I’ve been working on refining my 1500 point list, building on top of what I already have and tweaking/adding to it. Here’s what I’m at so far:

HQ: Commander Shas’el (100 pts)
1 Commander Shas’el (Cyclic Ion Blaster; Hard-wired Multi-tracker; Plasma Rifle; Targeting Array)

Elite: Crisis Battlesuit (196 pts)
1 Crisis Battlesuit (Team Leader; Hard-wired Target Lock; Missile Pod; Plasma Rifle; Multi-Tracker)
2 Crisis Battlesuit (Missile Pod; Plasma Rifle; Multi-Tracker)

Elite: Crisis Battlesuit (104 pts)
1 Crisis Battlesuit (Team Leader; Flamer; Hard-wired Target Lock; Twin Linked Missile Pod)
1 Crisis Battlesuit (Flamer; Twin Linked Missile Pod)

Elite: Crisis Battlesuit (77 pts)
1 Crisis Battlesuit (Airbursting Fragmentation Projector; Team Leader; Shas’vre Upgrade; Hard-wired Drone Controller; Twin Linked Burst Cannon)
1 Gun Drone (Twin Linked Pulse Carbines)

Troops: Fire Warrior (145 pts)
6 Fire Warrior (Pulse Rifle x6)
1 Devilfish (Gun Drones; Disruption Pod)

Troops: Fire Warrior (115 pts)
9 Fire Warrior (Add Shas’ui; Pulse Rifle x9)
1 Shas’ui (Bonding Knife; Pulse Rifle)

Troops: Kroot Carnivore Squad (84 pts)
12 Kroot Carnivore Squad (Kroot Rifle x12)

Fast Attack: Pathfinder (172 pts)
5 Pathfinder (Markerlight x5; Pulse Carbine x5)
1 Shas’ui (Bonding Knife; Markerlight; Pulse Carbine)
1 Devilfish (Gun Drones; Marker Beacon; Disruption Pod)

Heavy Support: Hammerhead Gunship (180 pts)
1 Hammerhead Gunship (Railgun; Smart Missile System; Disruption Pod; Multi-Tracker; Target Lock)

Total Roster Cost: 1498

The major changes are the addition of the Kroot squad – my first time running Kroot – and putting two small Fire Warrior teams in Devilfish. I need the added mobility for capturing objectives, and being able to get the drop on my opponent, whether across the board or outflanking from the sides, is a huge benefit. The other change is adding a unit I’ve played around with before, the Burst Cannon/AFP suit. It’s mostly intended as a harassing unit, with some decent anti-horde capabilities. It’s not exactly acting as a bait/suicide suit, but hopefully it will act as enough of a distraction or threat to draw attention from the deadlier/higher-priority units in my army. Meanwhile, everything else does its normal job; the HQ suit and Fireknives (PR/MP) run together against harder infantry targets, the Deathrains (TLMP/FL) deal with light armor, and the Hammerheads focus on eliminating heavier armor and/or horde targets. With any luck, this list should be able to handle just about anything reasonably well. I can’t guarantee how it’ll work against killer lists, like my friend Richard’s Ork list with Nob Bikers, but I’m willing to give it a go.

army list, tau

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Good news, everyone!

Posted by NockerGeek in General on August 6, 2009

It’s about a week past the predicted release date, but Army Builder 3.2 has finally been released. Not a lot of major changes, other than a cleaned up interface, but there’s one thing that I was particularly glad to see – native support of BBCode output. Not having to manually reformat army lists when I post them on forums (such as the Dice Like Thunder forums) makes me very happy. Native support of PDF output is good as well, although I’d already been getting around that by using a PDF print driver, but being able to jump through fewer hoops is always a good thing.

In hobby news, approximately 90% of my Chaos minis are stripped of paint and ready for re-assembly. The last few holdouts are the old plastic Khorne Berzerkers, mostly due to the layer of white primer they had. After 48 hours in Simple Green, they still have not come clean, and may not completely. It’s a bit frustrating, but they’re getting another 48 hours as we speak, so tomorrow I should see if I’ll finally have clean Khornites to repaint. Surprisingly, the paint just peeled off the plastic Plague Marines, but I suspect that’s because they were not primed. While I wait on the last holdouts, I’ll be gluing figs back together, starting with my sorcerer and my last remaining terminator. After that, it’s on to the vanilla Chaos Marines, and then finally the Dreadnought. I still need to see if standard Dreadnought arms will fit on the metal Chaos Dreadnought – or even better, the Forgeworld Chaos Dreadnought arms. More options for weaponry is always better.

Finally, I’m still sticking with my goal of having my Pathfinders (and their ‘fish) completely painted by the end of the weekend. Here’s hoping I can get it done!

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A good weekend

Posted by NockerGeek in Warhammer 40K on August 2, 2009

It’s been a good weekend for working on miniatures. I’ve finished basecoating on all my Pathfinders, and have started doing detail work on four of them. I also started working on their Devilfish for the first time in over a year. I think I should have no problem getting them finished up by next weekend. Also, as I type this, all the old Chaos minis I recently acquired (not counting the two painted by my friend Richard) are sitting in a bath of Simple Green and waiting to be stripped tomorrow. Hopefully, I can get them re-assembled and primed this week, all ready for at least a 500-point game this coming weekend.

Also, yesterday was my friend Dan’s birthday. In our circle of friends, Dan’s become sort of a pet project. He’s been interested in playing 40K, but he just doesn’t have the spare income to really get into the hobby. Fortunately, he has friends that do. So far, he’s acquired the marine contents of two Black Reach boxes, the marines from a Second Edition starter set, 2 squads of Assault marines, and an old metal Terminator with a Cylcone launcher. Last night, we were able to pad out his army even further. He’s now got an Ironclad Dreadnought, a Thunderfire Cannon, and Vulkan He’stan. We’re not done by a long shot, either. I see a number of drop pods making an appearance around Christmas.