After looking at my last post and noticing some areas of the Broadsides that needed clean-up, I spent tonight doing small touch-ups. Mostly, this involved breaking out the foundation paints and recoating all the areas that didn’t quite match. I even found a few spots on the SMS arms that, despite priming and painting, still had small spots of bare metal showing through. The bases got some cleanup as well, with a liberal application of Gryphonne Sepia wash followed by some drybrushing with Vallejo Cobra Leather. With them finally looking a bit sharper, I decided to break out the portable studio and snap a good picture of them.

I also managed to finish up the shield drones that go with the team leader:

Somehow, I managed to have a minor catastrophe with one of the suits while I was working. As I was doing my touch-up work, one of the railguns started getting a bit… wiggly. I worked the gun back and forth to see what the damage was, and the entire gun came loose from the body. My biggest fear was that the tab at the bottom of the gun had broken loose, but fortunately that wasn’t the case. The glue just gave up. Thankfully, getting the gun reglued was just a matter of cleaning up the area with my hobby knife and regluing it.

Now that these are complete (minus any decals I might apply), it’s onto my third Hammerhead next, as it’s already primed and basecoated, along with its Ion Cannon turret. After that, there’s a couple of Devilfish that need some basecoating. I’ve also been giving my Kroot a closer look. I might not use them much, but that doesn’t mean they don’t deserve to be painted!

This weekend, I finished up my latest Tau project, a unit of three Broadsides. Technically, the unit’s not finished – I have a couple of shield drones that have the flat colors done and are getting ready to move into the inking and detail phase – but the battlesuits themselves are. These three are painted a bit differently from my standard suits. For one thing, I didn’t use much Goblin Green on them. Instead, they’re mostly done in Knarloc Green foundation paint, with just a few areas (heads, middle armor panel, thigh armor panels) done in Goblin Green for contrast. I did this to distinguish the Heavy Support suits from the Elite suits. Just as my Hammerheads have more Knarloc Green showing than my Devilfishes, the Broadsides are generally in a darker shade of green than their Crisis Suit counterparts.

One downside to this is that Knarloc Green, while being great for basecoating, is not a good color for minor cleanup work due to the thickness of the paint. It’s easy to thin it too much, though, and make it runny and hard to control. As a compromise, I tried to find a standard paint for doing the little touch-ups, and settled on Vallejo Model Color Reflective Green. Preliminary tests on the palette looked good. However, when actually applied to the model over Knarloc Green, the Vallejo color was noticeably darker. Because of this, there are small areas here and there where the color doesn’t match. I tried mixing in some Goblin Green, and that helped somewhat, but it’s far from perfect.

To be honest, it’s not my best paintjob. The lenses don’t “pop” as much as I’d like, some of the highlighting work is messier than normal, and even the back, where I have blue shining through the heat sink vents on each suit, don’t look as clean as I’d hoped. I imagine I could spend more time cleaning them up – and I might – but not right now. They’re definitely done enough to play with. Modeling-wise, they’re a bit below my preferred standard as well. There are a few sprue marks still visible on some pieces, and the railguns are slightly bent/bowed on at least one of the suits. Even the priming was a bit rougher than I’d prefer, as there were still a number of silver areas showing when I was done. Those were all covered with the appropriate base color paints, though.

They’ll still look good from the tabletop, of course, and I may yet add some decals to them. I’m also happy with how the blue lining on the railguns turned out. It’s a minor effect, but one that keeps them consistent with the Railheads I’ve put together. They may not be perfect, but they’ll still look good alongside the rest of my army.

So, now that I have my basic Slaanesh Marine army listed out, built, and through some preliminary testing, where should I take it? Where do I want to go with it? How do I want to grow it to expand my options and/or run larger lists? Well, there are some things I could already start building right now.

• Chaos Terminators: They’re a nasty unit in my Khorne list, so I have no doubt that they’d also be effective in a Slaanesh list. Is the extra initiative worth the trade-off for the extra attack? Volume of blows is great, but being able to wound your enemy first, and thus blunt their ability to attack in return, is great for survivability. Sure, this unit can’t sweep its foes in assault, but it can still tie them up for a while, and it’s less likely to get swept itself. I have 7 terminators and a terminator lord yet to build, so I have plenty of parts to work with. I might want to look for a Land Raider to cart them around in, but in the meantime I can deep strike them, especially with all the icons I carry around.
• Chaos Bikers: Some bikers running around the board with 5 initiative sounds fun – almost like Eldar in power armor – and I just happen to have six of them waiting to be assembled. The question is, do I bother giving any of them special weapons, and do I upgrade any of them to an aspiring champion? An icon bearer is a must, of course, but everything else is up in the air.
• Defiler: Right now, my heavy support choices are a bit limited; I have Obliterators and… Obliterators. However, I have an unassembled Defiler that would make a nice addition, and unlike my Khorne Defiler, this one would keep all of its ranged weapons. I’m thinking of running the Reaper Autocannon and a Havoc Launcher on it, so that I could fire either one big shot or a number of smaller shots each turn. I’ll need to figure out some appropriate customizations to make the the model itself, though.
• Vindicator: Again, more heavy support choices. A possessed Vindicator, or even a plain one, would be useful on the field. I could have one together in a single evening, but much like the Defiler, I’d have to figure out how I want to customize its look.
• More Noise Marines: I have a couple of spare Noise Marine arms just sitting around, and I have a number of unassembled Chaos Marines, so I could easily throw these together and pad out the squad a bit. It’s a useful add-in if I find my self having 50-100 points spare to use up.
• Chosen Marines: Again, I have spare marine bodies to work with, so it wouldn’t be hard at all to throw a squad of them togther. Having some outflankers would be quite useful, and they’re very customizable. I’d have to get a Rhino for them, though. Of what I can assemble now, they’re at the bottom of the list, but that’s because it’s a list with no real bad options.

As far as things I’d need to buy if I wanted to add them, there’s not much. The main thing that comes to mind is more Lesser Daemons (again, using the old Daemonette model), just so I could run more/larger squads of them to deep strike in and claim/contest objectives. Other than that, it’s a matter of getting more Rhinos for the units that need them, and deciding if I want a Land Raider or not. Still, with everything above, I could easily add another 1000 points or so to the army and have plenty of options to pick and choose from.

Finally, there’s the small matter of my other Chaos Marine army. The Khornite army isn’t bad; it’s just that I enjoy playing the Slaaneshi army more. Storage space is at a bit of a premium, and if I’m not going to use the army much, I might as well sell it to someone else who will. I haven’t done a final tally, but I know I have between 1750 and 2000 points, all assembled, and most of which is primed (apart from one squad of Berzerkers and Kharn himself). I’d prefer to sell it to someone local, as I’d hate to try to pack it for shipping and risk all the various spiky bits getting broken, but if there’s no interest here, there’s always eBay. Keep your eyes on this spot.

And in the meantime, I have to get to priming and painting these guys!

Artwork by jubjubjedi. Used without permission.

So, after months of not wanting to run a Daemon Prince list because they seem so prevalent amongst Chaos Marine lists, once I had one I figured that I might as well put together a list that included it. Most of the list – such as the Obliterators, the Noise Marines, and the other Chaos Marine squads – I was happy with, so I really only needed to change up the daemonic portions of the list. Here’s what I managed to put together:

HQ: Chaos Sorcerer (1#, 130 pts)
1 Chaos Sorcerer (Mark of Slaanesh; Lash of Submission; Personal Icon)

HQ: Daemon Prince (1#, 135 pts)
1 Daemon Prince (Mark of Slaanesh; Sorcerer; Lash of Submission)

Troops: Noise Marines (7#, 285 pts)
5 Noise Marines (Sonic Blaster x4; Blastmaster; Personal Icon)
1 Noise Champion (Doom Siren; Power Weapon)
1 Rhino (Daemonic Possession)

Troops: Chaos Space Marines (11#, 285 pts)
9 Chaos Space Marines (Icon of Slaanesh; Plasmagun x2)
1 Aspiring Champion (Power Weapon, Plasma Pistol)
1 Rhino

Troops: Chaos Space Marines (11#, 285 pts)
9 Chaos Space Marines (Icon of Slaanesh; Meltagun x2)
1 Aspiring Champion (Power Fist)
1 Rhino (Daemonic Possession)

Heavy Support: Obliterators (2#, 150 pts)
2 Obliterators

Heavy Support: Obliterators (2#, 150 pts)
2 Obliterators

Summoned Lesser Daemons (6#, 78 pts)
6 Summoned Lesser Daemons

Total: 1498 points

There’s a lot of icons in the list, and that’s to make sure that the Lesser Daemons (and if I choose to deep strike them, the Obliterators) always have a spot to come down safely. And yes, it is a dual Lash list, albeit one with only one Daemon Prince. The two Lash users, though, have different purposes. The Sorcerer rides along with the Noise Marines and uses his Lash to pull enemy infantry into the range of the Champion’s doom siren. The Daemon Prince, on the other hand, mostly uses it to pull units into assault range (to make up for the lack of wings) or out of it (when facing off against horde armies). Otherwise, the list performs identically to my other Slaanesh CSM list.

I even had a opportunity to run a short test of this list against WDR, one of my friends at the Undergopher podcast, and his vanilla Marine army. We only had time for a partial game, maybe three turns, so we rolled up a mission from the main rulebook. Luckily, we got Pitched Battle/Annihilation, the most basic mission type available. WDR won the roll-off to see who would deploy first and decided to take the first turn. He brought the following:

1 Razorback w/ Twin-linked Lascannons, with 5 Sternguard Veterans and a Captain inside
2 Rhinos w/10-man Tactical Squads inside
2 Scout Squads
1 Dreadnought w/Multi-melta and Storm Bolter
1 Whirlwind
1 Vindicator
1 Predator w/ Twin-linked Lascannons and 2 Lascannon sponsons

That was a lot of tanks to face off against, and those tanks were packing serious firepower. In response, I deployed everything I could, knowing I would need my Obliterators on turn 1 to counter his armor. Then, tempting fate, I attempted to seize the initiative… and succeeded! This turned the tables a bit, and gave me the first turn to get the jump on his army.

Chaos Turn 1: I run my Rhinos up and pop smoke, keeping my Daemon prince shielded from WDR’s scout snipers. The Obliterators take some shots with Lascannons, but don’t manage any noticeable damage.

Marine Turn 1: He keeps his army stationary, choosing to take shots and make me come to him. He’s able to land a couple of wounds on the Daemon Prince with the Razorback and the Dreadnought, but otherwise either he misses, fails to do damage, or my smoke cover keeps me safe.

Chaos Turn 2: The Lesser Daemons come in, and I bring them in 6 inches from the melta squad’s Rhino, which puts them within 6 inches of his one deployed scout squad. Everything else moves up closer towards his tank line, and a pair of meltagunners fire from their Rhino and destroy the Razorback, killing two veterans and slightly wounding the captain in the process. The Daemon Prince then lashes the survivors closer, so that it can assault them. The Obliterators also have a decent turn, wrecking one Rhino and taking the turret off the Predator, as does the plasma squad, which wrecks a second Rhino. When time for assault comes, it’s a mixed bag. The Daemon Prince slaughters the remaining veterans, leaving only the Captain. On the other hand, the Lesser Daemons only roll a 4 on their Difficult Terrain check, leaving them unable to cross the lip of the crater holding the scouts.

Marine Turn 2: Again, WDR keeps his army mostly stationary. He manages a solid shot with one of the Predator’s sponsons on the Noise Marines’ Rhino, destroying it and killing one of them in the resulting explosion. Elsewhere, he cuts down half of the Lesser Daemons with sniper gunfire. Near the center of the table, the Captain and Daemon Prince remain locked in combat, with the marine taking a second wound.

Chaos Turn 3: My army continues pressing on. The melta and plasma squad Rhinos pull up and drop off their passengers, who proceed to whittle down one of the two exposed Tactical Squads down to 3 men remaining. Meanwhile, the Sorcerer splits off from the Noise Marines so that he can “fire” separately, lashing the other TacSquad into a  teardrop-shaped formation. The Noise Marines then open fire, leaving one marine remaining. The Obliterators have another productive turn, destroying the cannon on WDR’s Vindicator. In assault, the Noise Marines finish off their lone opponent, the Lesser Daemons lose two more members after finally getting into assault, and the Captain and Prince remain locked in combat, each unable to kill the other.

Marine Turn 3: At this point, WDR is ready to concede the game – we’re running out of time, and I’m definitely in a superior position. However, in true marine fashion, he doesn’t want to go out without a fight. His Whirlwind wants to land a shot on the Obliterators, but he doesn’t have line of sight to them, meaning he’ll scatter without any Ballistics Skill reduction. Instead, he tries to drop the shot on a Rhino he can see… and the scatter takes the shot right on top of the Obliterators anyway! That’s some Kentucky windage for you. (Unfortunately, the shot does no damage.) The remaining TacSquad unloads some shots on the melta squad before charging into assault and manages to take a few Chaos marines with them, and the scouts sweep the remaining Lesser Daemon. Finally, the HQ assault is finally resolved – the Daemon Prince is unable to injure the Captain, but he manages a wound on it. The Prince loses the assault, and then loses its life as it fails to save its Fearless-inflicted wound at the end of assault. The Captain is victorious! Unfortunately, he’s also surrounded by two angry squads of Chaos Marines and has only one wound remaning. With that, we call the game in Chaos’s favor.

I have to say that I like this variant of the list just as much as the other one, although there are still things I might change. I’d like to pump up the number of Lesser Daemons I’m running (which means finding more previous-edition Daemonettes), and to make the points for it, I might consider dropping the Chaos Sorcerer. It’s not that he’s not useful, but the points have to come from somewhere, and he’s semi-redundant with the DP there. Alternately, I could bump the list to 1750 points and have the best of both worlds, although none of my friends have 1750-point lists together yet.

So, where does my Slaanesh list go from here? Come back tomorrow, where I’ll take a look at the future of my Chaos Marine army.

Artwork by SelenaH. Used without permission.

I finally had a chance to use my Slaanesh CSM list on Saturday in two separate games. Actually, I used two different versions of the list; now that I have a daemon prince together, I went ahead and created a variant that included one. First, though, I wanted to play the original list I’d built. I’d promised my friend Jon that he would get first crack at the list, so he brought his Space Wolves to the table. Here’s what I brought to the table:

HQ: Chaos Sorcerer (1#, 125 pts)
1 Chaos Sorcerer (Mark of Slaanesh; Lash of Submission)

Elite: Possessed (7#, 241 pts)
5 Possessed (Icon of Slaanesh)
1 Possessed Champion
1 Rhino (Daemonic Possession)

Troops: Noise Marines (7#, 280 pts)
5 Noise Marines (Sonic Blaster x4; Blastmaster)
1 Noise Champion (Doom Siren; Power Weapon)
1 Rhino (Daemonic Possession)

Troops: Chaos Space Marines (11#, 285 pts)
9 Chaos Space Marines (Icon of Slaanesh; Plasmagun x2)
1 Aspiring Champion (Power Weapon, Plasma Pistol)
1 Rhino

Troops: Chaos Space Marines (11#, 265 pts)
9 Chaos Space Marines (Icon of Slaanesh; Meltagun x2)
1 Aspiring Champion (Power Fist)
1 Rhino

Heavy Support: Obliterators (2#, 150 pts)
2 Obliterators

Heavy Support: Obliterators (2#, 150 pts)
2 Obliterators

Total: 1496 points

We rolled up a mission from the Battle Missions book and ended up playing Pillage, a Chaos Marine mission. It’s basically a Spearhead deployment objective mission, but with two differences. First, your board edge is not the long board edge touching your table quarter; instead, you only get the edges of your quarter itself. It’s a bit restrictive, but as you can only start with an HQ and 2 troops, and everything else goes into reserves, it’s not as crowded as a standard Spearhead deployment. Secondly, you don’t score objectives held at the end of the game. Instead, you accumulate points by having an uncontested, un-assaulted unit touching the objective at the end of your opponent’s turns. It’s an interesting concept, but in practice it felt very wonky. I was able to claim two of the three objectives on the first turn, and I just out-accumulated Jon to the point where the winner was clear on turn 3. I’d rather use the deployment with a standard Seize Ground mission instead.

With the scoring being a bit odd, I won’t go into the play-by-play, but I will cover some of the highlights of how my army performed.

Initiative wins battles. I’ve played enough games against Eldar, with both my Tau and Khorne CSM armies, to know how important going first in assault is. Having the Mark of Slaanesh on everything in the army (save the vehicles and Obliterators) made a huge difference. Rather than trading blows with the Space Wolves in assault, I could get the drop on my opponent and throw a flurry of blows at them. With enough hits, I could cut down the competition (even something as hardy as a Storm Shield Terminator) and reduce their ability to counterattack. Unlike Khorne Berzerkers’ Furious Charge, the effect wasn’t limited to the first round of combat; every time, I was swinging and hitting first.

Lash of Submission is effective. I know that quite a bit has been written about Lash princes and Lash sorcerers, but there’s a reason; it’s that good. Even with mechanized armies being so prevalent, it’s not hard to force troops out of their transports, and once they’re out you can pull them right to where you want them. One particularly effective strategy was to Lash a unit of marines towards my Noise Marines into a vaguely teardrop-shaped formation, and then have the Noise Champion hit them with his doom siren. Whatever survived the AP3 template weapon (which generally wasn’t much) would be mopped up by the rest of the unit’s sonic blasters, and any particularly lucky enemies that survived would get assaulted.

Obliterators are more fragile than I thought. Obliterators are basically Terminators on steroids: same armor save, same invulnerable save, and twice as many wounds. However, melta guns ruin their day. Not only do they ignore the Oblits’ armor, but they’re strong enough to double them out and kill them instantly. With every unit of Jon’s Grey Hunters packing a marine with a melta gun, there were multiple threats on the table, and Jon used them effectively to whittle down my heavy support.

Possessed Marines aren’t bad. There’s not much chance of me running them as a hammer unit; they’re not predictable enough or nasty enough to serve that job. However, they’re still a decent assault, and the randomness is a fun aspect (which I think can be just as important as being powerful). I’d compare them to summoned daemons, but with a number of advantages even though they cost more. First, they’re not solely dependent on having a 5+ invulnerable save; they still have marine armor under all the claws and teeth. Second, they can take icons, which mean they can take chaos marks; see “Initiative wins battles” above. Third, they really only have one bad random power: Scout. Everything else they can get is a solid option. Finally, they can take a Rhino, which gives you another piece of moving cover to use.

All told, I had a lot of fun playing this army. Unlike my Tau, which can really only shoot, and my Khorne CSM, which can really only assault, this felt like a much more versatile list. Like most marine variants, it’s solid both in shooting and in assault, and it has a few edges particular to it that really allow it to shine. In fact, I enjoyed playing this army so much that I’m strongly considering selling off my Khorne army to focus more resources on growing this one. Anyone interested in 1750-2000 points of assault-y Chaos Marines?

Tomorrow, I’ll talk about the other variant of my Slaanesh list, which got to face off against W.D.R. from the Undergopher podcast and his vanilla Marine army!

Artwork by Remton. Used without permission.

Yesterday, I finally got a chance to run my Slaanesh CSM list, “Pink is the New Black“, in two different variations. I’ll write more about that tomorrow, but first, there’s something else I started working on yesterday. When I first started putting together my Slaanesh list, I was pretty adamant about not wanting to use a Daemon Prince. However, while I was on vacation a few months ago, I happened upon a gaming store that had the Urban Legends variant of Reaper’s Sophie succubus mini on the shelf. Once I had it, I wasn’t sure exactly what to do with it, other than to just paint it up as is. After some reflection, though, I decided to make it into a Daemon Prince. I don’t feel like GW’s Daemon Prince kit was a good fit for Slaanesh, so this seemed to fit my army’s theme better.

Rather than just run her as-is, I wanted to “monster” her up a bit. I had a Chaos Spawn sprue that I wasn’t planning to use otherwise, so I took some of the bits from that. The large crab claw arm – very Slaaneshi in style – was attached, along with a couple of insectoid legs springing up from where her wings would be. Why didn’t I just use the wings that came with the mini? Frankly, because I didn’t want to use them. Yes, wings are great on a Daemon Prince, but I feel like they’re a bit overdone. True, you see a lot of Slaanesh DPs with Lash of Submission, but honestly I don’t mind footslogging her around. I can keep her in cover – that’s what the Rhinos are for. The claws were also a bit of an homage to Andariel, one of the demonic bosses in Diablo 2.

Here’s a few pics of how she’s coming along:

The horns are made from daemonette tails. Unfortunately, all of the tails in the daemonette box are unique, so I couldn’t have two of the same horn. I’m not too bothered by it; being a bit asymmetrical fits the theme as well. The base is a 60mm resin base from Micro Arts, and represents my first time working with anything resin. I had to drill into it a bit to make space for the peg on one of her feet. I trimmed that peg down a bit to fit, and trimmed the other peg off entirely; while she wasn’t 100% stable before the glue set, it’s held her in place quite well.

There’s still some work to do before she’s ready for priming, mostly involving the use of green stuff. There are still open holes in her back where the wings would have been that the insect legs don’t fill completely. I want to fill those in, and I also want to smooth in the joint between the back and the crab claw arm. In addition, I want to add a shoulder pad to one of her arms, although I don’t know if I want to use a standard marine pad or one for a Terminator. Her shoulder is actually slender enough to fit a standard one, but I’ll try both and decide which one I prefer. Once that’s done, she should be ready for priming and painting. I haven’t decided if I want to prime white or black yet, but I’ll need to decide soon.

On a side note, I also received 6 of the metal Juan Diaz daemonettes for my birthday (thanks, Dennis!) and got them together as well. Right now, I’m planning on using them as lesser summoned daemons in at least one of my Slaanesh lists. I’d like to get at least 6 more; they seem like they fit best in larger units that can absorb some fire before they get into assault with something.

Last Monday, I managed to get in a couple of games to celebrate the holiday weekend, and to start off I decided to use my Khorne Chaos Space Marine list to mix things up a bit. On the other side of the table was Dennis and his Eldar army. Lately, he’s been working on switching things up a bit and trying out a few variant lists. He also picked up one of the new Fire Prism kits, which looks as good up close as it does online. He also assembled a second Wave Serpent and third Vyper and went fully mechanized. His list looks something like this:

• 6 Howling Banshees w/Exarch and Jain Zar in a Wave Serpent
• 9 Dire Avengers w/Exarch in a Wave Serpent
• 8 Jetbikes, w/2 Shuriken Cannons and a Warlock w/Witchblade
• 2 Fire Prisms
• 1 Vyper w/ Missile Launcher
• 1 Vyper w/ Brightlance
• 1 Vyper w/ Starcannon

We determined mission and deployment randomly (including the Battle Missions book) and still managed to come up with Seize Ground/Dawn of War. I went first, and started my Berzerkers as close to mid-table as I could, and held the rest back for Turn 1. In response, Dennis deployed nothing. Two objectives were placed just left of center of the table on my table half, just over a foot apart. His objective was on the right of the table closer to his table edge.

Chaos Turn 1: With no sense of where he was going to be other than his objective, I ran my Berzerkers up towards where his army would be coming in. The rest of my army started following behind, with the Defiler on my left, the Land Raider coming up near the middle, and the Raptors moving up the right. Most of the army would be out of range due to night fighting rules, but the Rhinos popped smoke just to be safe.

Eldar Turn 1: Dennis had his army come in mostly on my left flank, refusing the right save for his three Vypers. This kept his Jetbikes out of immediate reach of my berzerkers. One of his Fire Prisms ended up on the far right edge of the table, and the other sat on a hilltop near the center of his table edge, with Wave Serpents flanking the hill. He took a number of shots at the Rhinos, but between the smoke and the night fighting round, he was unable to land a single damaging hit.

Chaos Turn 2: The Rhinos did not move this turn so that the Berzerkers inside could disembark and move. One squad moved up and assaulted the Starcannon Vyper, destroying it. The other squad assaulted the Wave Serpent to the left of the hill, with the Skull Champion wrecking it with his power fist. However, I discovered that I had chosen my target poorly, as a angry squad of Howling Banshees, complete with Exarch and Phoenix Lord, poured out the back. My Defiler lobbed a shot at the Jetbikes but only managed to drop one. The Land Raider advanced a bit more slowly so that it could fire a shot with one Lascannon, which destroyed the other Wave Serpent, forcing out the Dire Avengers. Finally, the Raptors harassed the far Fire Prism, managing to stun the crew.

Eldar Turn 2: The Jetbikes started moving along the right edge of the table, trying to avoid the mess that was gathering around the hill. The Brightlance Vyper made for some ruins to put distance between it and the Berzerkers harassing its peers. The Dire Avengers stood their ground near their objective. On the other hand, the Howling Banshees came around from the back of their destroyed transport and proceeded to utterly wipe out the responsible squad of Berzerkers. The Fire Prism on the hill took a shot at the Land Raider, but could not penetrate its armor. Finally, the Jetbikes took some potshots at the Raptors, but only managed to kill two.

Chaos Turn 3: If left unattended, Jain Zar and her Banshees would do terrible things to my army, so I had to put a stop to her. I moved in the Land Raider and both Rhinos, boxing the squad in. The Land Raider released its cargo of Terminators, ready for the kill. The Rhinos fired their combi-flamers, and the Heavy Flamer terminator joined in. By the time the shooting was over, only Jain Zar remained. The Terminators finished the job, only losing two in the process. The Terminator Lord, however was of no help, as he was busy smacking himself in the face with his Bloodfeeder. Elsewhere on the table, plans were shifting a bit. My remaining unit of Berzerkers pulled back towards the closest objective, and the Raptors charged the Fire Prism on the hill. Again, thought, they could only stun it. The Defiler hung back near the objectives, keeping them contested as it continued lobbing ineffective shots at the Eldar troops.

Eldar Turn 3: The Dire Avengers did not like having the Raptors that close, and proceeded to Bladestorm them, but to little effect. They then swung around their wrecked transport and assaulted them. They managed to whittle away a couple of Raptors, but both sides remained locked in combat. The unstunned Fire Prism took a shot at the Land Raider, but once again could not penetrate its AV14 shell. On the other side of the field, the Brightlance Vyper took a shot at the Defiler, but failed to damage it. The Missile Launcher Vyper, on the other hand, set its sights on the withdrawing unit of Berzerkers and managed to kill a couple. The Jetbikes turbo-boosted towards my table edge in order to gain a 3+ cover save against Defiler artillery.

Chaos Turn 4: One Rhino pulled back to attempt to shield the Berzerkers from the Vypers, while the other attempted to ram the Missile Launcher Vyper. However, the fast skimmer darted out of the way. The Terminators moved up the hill, joining the Raptors in combat and evening the odds a bit. Together, though, they’re still unable to wipe out the Dire Avengers, and both sides remain locked. Again, the Terminator Lord was too busy keeping his Bloodfeeder under control to be of any assistance. The Land Raider wheeled around to fire its lascannons at one of the Fire Prisms. Once again, though, only a stun could be managed.

Eldar Turn 4: The melee on the hill finally concluded, as the Terminator Lord finally got his weapon to behave and butchered the Dire Avengers to a man. Elsewhere, though, the Eldar were more successful. The Brightlance Vyper landed a solid shot on the Defiler’s back armor and wrecked it, and the Missile Launcher Vyper finished off the other Berzerkers. Finally, the Fire Prism on the hill, unstunned again, destroyed the Rhino nearest to the objectives on my side of the board. Oh, and the Jetbikes? They just waited, out of range from any threats.

Chaos Turn 5: At this point, it became clear that I’d been outplayed. I moved one of my Rhinos back towards my objectives, but I can only manage to get in contesting range of one. The Land Raider will fare no better, so I take the opportunity to unload with both sets of lascannons on the far Fire Prism, finally immobilizing it. The  Terminators hang tight, as they have nothing they can contribute from their location, and the remaining two Raptors ineffectively assault the Fire Prism on the hill.

Eldar Turn 5: Coming in for the victory lap, the Jetbikes turbo-boosted to my objectives, claiming one of them.

Final Results: Eldar win, 1 objective to none.

I’m still getting used to an assault-y army, and in this case I got straight-up outplayed. I wasn’t as aggressive with my Defiler as I probably could have been; had I been going after Vypers with it, I might have kept my second unit of Berzerkers alive. That might have been enough to keep the Jetbikes from coming in relatively unmolested at the end. I also need to stop trying to assault Banshees with my Berzerkers; it never ends well for my side. I didn’t completely lose track of the mission, but in true Khornite fashion I got more interested in kills, and it cost me.

On the other hand, the Raptors did a fair job of keeping Dennis’s Fire Prisms tied up early on, which kept my units a bit safer, so I felt that they were well-utilized. I am contemplating swapping them for a third unit of Berzerkers in a Rhino, though. The price is roughly the same, and I could mount a Combi-Melta on the Rhino so as not to lose all the anti-armor capabilities. With more troops and some better play, I could have tied the game, if not won it outright.

Last night I managed to get about three hours of painting in, which gave me the time to do the detail work and basing on my second team of Fireknife suits. There may be one or two spots of touch-up to do, but they’re pretty much done and ready for the tabletop. Next up on the list is my Broadside team, which has the basecoating done and is ready for cleanup and detail painting. After that, I have a pair of Devilfish that are primed and ready for basecoating. It’ll be time to break out the spray gun again!

Adding up everything I have painted, not counting upgrades that aren’t modeled on the minis (like Team Leader upgrades and vehicle upgrades for which there are no bits), I’m finally up to 1,689 points worth of painted Tau. When I finish my Broadsides, that’ll push me to just over 1,950, and the Devilfishes will take me over the 2000-point mark. It’s been a long, slow slog – I started painting my Tau in the early months of 2007 – but three years later, I can finally field an entirely painted Tau force. I’m hoping to pick up the pace so that the rest of my Tau, and my two Chaos Marine armies, won’t take another three years finish.

Here’s a cellphone photo of last night’s painting progress. I did some final touch-up on the basecoat to take care of some spots where my coverage was a bit thin, and then it was on to cleanup and inking. I also touched up the accent colors, as my paint was a little too thin last time. In the past, I’ve mixed up a darker shade of Goblin Green by adding a touch of black (usually about 6:1 green to black), but this time I decided to go with a pre-mixed color: Vallejo Model Color’s Reflective Green. The results are good, and it’s close enough to Knarloc Green that I think I can use it as a touch-up color on my Broadsides as well.

When it came to inking, though, I had a bit of a dilemma – both my micron pens were drying out. In the past, I’ve used micron pens for doing all my armor lining, and I’ve been pretty pleased with how my minis turn out. However, they’re sometimes hard to find, and the pen point is very delicate. Instead of fretting about finding replacements, I decided to try something new. One of the reasons I’d switched to micron pens was because I’d had poor luck with paint washes in the past, but that was before GW released their line of washes, so I decided to give washes another try.

With a pot of Badab Black, and a fine brush (I was using an Army Painter Hobby: Precise Detail brush, which is about a 10/0, I believe), I started washing the armor lines. The process and the results were nearly identical to using the micron pen, other than having to clean and reload my brush from time to time. Load brush, dab off excess, draw into line, wipe away overwash with thumb (or lightly with the corner of a paper towel, in tight spots), repeat. In fact, the coverage was a bit better than with the pen. With a micron pen, you only get ink precisely where the tip is, so if you want to get the walls of the groove you sometimes have to wiggle the pen a bit. The wash fills the groove and provides much smoother coverage.

There is a caveat to using the wash, though, and it has to do with your priming quality. If you’ve got a spot with rough priming, when you try to wipe off the overwash, it’ll instead sink into the pits of the primed surface. I discovered this on a couple of spots on my Crisis Suits where high humidity left me with a less-than-ideal priming job. When I wiped away the excess, I ended up shading the entire antenna that I’d been inking. Fortunately, a little Goblin Green on the same fine brush allowed me to touch up the affected areas. On smoothly primed portions of the mini, though, there was no muss, no fuss.

I still like my micron pens, and I’ll still use them for drawing on fine details, but I think wash is the way to go from now on for armor gaps. It’s cheaper, is just as easy to work with, and delivers results that are just as good, if not better.

Just a quick cellphone photo of my workspace right now. I’ve been working on getting paint on the Fireknives and Broadsides I recently assembled and primed. So far, so good. I’ve got the base color down on them all, and I’m starting to do the flats on some of the details, like rank markings and accent colors. The Fireknives are being painted in my standard Goblin Green, and I’m carrying over the markings from my other team of Fireknives to keep them consistent. Meanwhile, I’m going with a darker base on the Broadsides. I’m using Knarloc Green to give them a darker color, which will let me use Goblin Green as the accent color to bring them in line with the rest of my army.

A couple things I’m noting as I keep working:

1. I am not a fast painter. In three hours, I did the base coat on two Broadsides, and did the accent colors on the Fireknives. I’m not meticulous; there’s still several spots where I’m going to need to do cleanup. I’m just… a bit slow, I suppose.
2. I hate painting red. Even with Mechrite Red, a Citadel Foundation paint, I have to put down two to three layers to get anything remotely resembling a strong red. Note that I didn’t say “solid coat”. Even painting Mechrite Red on top of Knarloc Green (such as on the markings on my Broadside team leader), two coats still leaves me with patchy, streaky color. I wonder if this is why I haven’t gone back to my Berserkers recently.

Once I get these two teams finished up, I’m going to try to finish up the rest of the Tau I have primed, which includes:

• 12 Kroot
• 3 Stealth Suits (and 1 Marker Drone)
• 2 Devilfish (probably next on the list)
• 1 Sky Ray
• 1 Ion Cannon for a Hammerhead (not a separate mini, technically, but big enough to be one.)
• 8 Fire Warriors

If I can get this painted by year’s end, they’ll earn me (along with the Fireknives and Broadsides) another 68 painting points. Along with the 22 I already have, that’ll put me just 10 points away from my yearly goal. Hopefully, I’m not too slow to get it done!

EDIT: I just realized this is my 100th post on this blog. Hooray!