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Hi Folks, This CtA25 challenge has been the event that brought me up to putting the last touches of bruches on my Assuryanii. All factions released are represented in a big Ynnari party. I'd still like to increase a little bit this force with a few units such as Dark Reapers or Wraithblades, but it will not be so soon. I have other project so far. It is a big army. And some units deserve maybe a little focus. First come these Corsairs - 3 units of VoidReavers, out of which 2 are kitbashed. Another kit bash is the Autach made out of some BAnshee parts and the Old Dhrazaar Yvraine leads the way. As a GW's junky, I might some day complete the Triumvirat of Ynnead with her lover, and may be with the Dramatis Personnae that helped her: Jain Zaar, Yriel, Eldrad and Lelith. What would be a Saim-Hann army without Windriders? And the venerable WraithLord, my first Eldar mini ever. As a final touch, a farseer with his retinue. Should they be all fitted with Singing spears, this unit could be the ultimate Titanic vehicle hunter... A nice trip. That requires hitting the table top more often. See you folks, and in-between, visit the Galleries!

Random games pics from my game on Sunday, May 21. Played against The Plague Brothers and got tabled. Three objectives to seize in no-man's land. I'll spare a full battle report and let you just look at the pics.

Cross posting some pictures from the Hall of Honor > Army Showcase thread. I didn't take a ton of close ups, those can be found elsewhere on the B&C. Comments and criticism welcome. Characters Shadowseer Solitaire Troops Fast Attack Heavy Support Dedicated Transports Transportation

Hi Folks, After a while disconnecting from the hobby due to material contingencies including a home relocation (New Year / New Job challenge), I resumed this quarter hobbying with a small KT for the challenge hosted there: https://bolterandchainsword.com/topic/384972-knives-in-the-shadows-sign-up-thread/?do=getNewComment I selected the team on the basis of simple criterias: - being usable in 40k as a standardized unit - completing holes in my Aeldarii forces - bringing tactical options I do not have. The Harlies were the way to go, as they can climb onto the converted Venom I built 25 years ago or so and bring interresting dirty tricks with the Jester and the Shadowseer. And it is a set of mini that is relatively low on budget. So here I went. The assembly was not that great. Troupe member benefit of a poorly designed assembly leaflet. Arm selection and positionning is especially ill indicated and getting a proper pose is a little bit more demanding than for other kits. But the Jester is probably the model that is the less user friendly of the mob. His calf is the part which positionning is among the worse designed I have seen for a while. Anyway, it ended being assemblied more or less properly. Painting was a little bit more challenging and I rapidely gave up painting checkers and diamonds. Yet the decision to go to a more simple scheme resulted being eye catching enough. The results are here bellow: The Lead Player requires some small corrections on the transition between clear and dark colours. Yet the biggest deception of mine is that I still have not found in which crate I put my snow flock. Basing will require being completed latter on. Next step is to set a small narrative and my contribution for this challenge will be completed. See you soon.

Hi Folks, Today's contribution will be a different one: the narrative due to come along the painted minis for the "Knives in the Shadows" challenge. An exercice I am not very familiar with. Let's see how it sorts out: ____________________________________________ The master of the Esdainchii was carefully watching at the stage. The troop was jumping and flipping around, dancing a Masque very few had seen played, even among the near immortal Asuryanii. As far as time and age might have any meaning. The plot looked so archaic and old that it depicted a storyline older than the Fall. Older than the war in Heaven. Older than his of race or its gods. A secret story. It set a cosmogonic theme, revealing the preexistence of the Black Library to anything else and giving a small and very limited insight on the true nature of its darkest guardians. Everything else around and inside the Library of Chaos came later. Even Cegorach. It might make uneasy even the most hardened Solitaire. But not the Shadowseer of the Esdainchii. He already knew that some darker places and secrets may exist beyond the darkest known ones. He knew, because he felt, saw, and lived it in his flesh and in his soul once having been touched by the guardians. A nearly meta-empirical experience. Not even the most powerful Farseers of Ulthwee could imagine the depth of his true secret without being consumed. The Dance was not really telling any story. No one could pretend understanding the meaning of the ballet, its cabalistic nature. While pretending depicting a Masque about the genesis of the Black Library and its discovery by the Old Ones, it was in fact a ritual. A forgotten, and somehow forbidden one, which purpose is to trap new Dancers for the Troupe. The potential recruits should connect with the secret, without being aware of this connection. This is the Shadowseer’s task for today: trapping recruits. For more than ten millennia now he was filling his Troupe’s ranks with souls that were not even aware that their lifes and decisions did not belong to them anymore. He embraced this quest on purpose of maintaining alive the secret and, someday, finding his successor. Millennias ago he had to overcome his own disgust at the idea of being at the manoeuvre in the process of confiscation of freewill of his blood brothers in order to reshape them as members of his Troupe. He went though the very same process. He knew it meant crossing an ocean of infinite darkness, until eventually being touched and reborn as a Shadowseer. The psychoharpist sat on the edge of the stage was reacting to the Dance. He could see it in his glaze. Soon this soul will stand up and join the Dance. The Aeldar did not control his fate anymore. Should he survive the Dance he will become one among the Harlequins of the Esdainchii. And the Troupe will then leave the Craftworld while its new member will walk his first steps on a one-way trip to his true fate. The Esdanchii are a mysterious Troupe even under Harlequins standards. They appear very punctually, less than once per millennia or even lesser. They play a Dance that always see members from the assistance joining the stage and eventually dying on it. They then disappear until a next performance but most of the time no one ever hear about them again. They seem to live a secret life deep in the Webway, beyond the mortal dimension. Since the event called by the Mon’Keig “the opening of the great rift”, the Troupe started however being seen in the real world more frequently. Though it looks it holds its own agenda and it is not that clear if they fight with, along or coincidentally at the same place as the Aeldarii hosts or the Drukharii raiding parties they might join. This agenda of them looke like being more focused on a specific aspect of the battlefield than any thing else. Physically and litterally. It looks like they are harvesting some stuff, not even being really interested in killing the enemies of the Asuryanii. Yet most of the time, their apparition is more likely to be reported by non-Elder races, telling about the Troupe coming to their place and performing its ballet even under the direst battle circumstances. Some among the observers of this Troupe’s actions reported some strange behaviors, witnessing that apparent objective of the Troupe was just to collect a single piece of gravel or a fistful of sand from the battlefield. Once this task completed, they just vanish as ghosts, their objectives, whatever it used to be, fulfilled. What for and why? The Master of the Esdainchii do not even know himself how the nature of the offering is defined: why harvesting such a specific grain of dust matters more than another one? Yet he is fully aware that this duty his Troupe completes is the only tithe that satisfy the primal guardians of the Library of Chaos and keep them contained in the deepest and darkest keeps of the Black Library. This is the mission they received from Cegorach himself: acting as intermediaries between the current reality and the reality of old, that predated anything, so that the latter does not overflow the dimensions the children of Asur settled in. The Esdainchii guard the dam and keep its vanes closed. A curse among the curses. ___________________________________________________________ And... that's it. See you folks.

The Assault on Eibhir I don't have an Eldar army but when I decided some years ago to enter my Psychopomps (my Slaaneshi heretic astartes) in Armies On Parade i decided that I wanted to not just show the army but to show them at war. What more fitting a foe than Eldar? I discussed with my local GW's staff which craftworld would look best fighting my pastel-heavy CSM and he first suggested Saim-Hann, which I turned down as I wasn't keen on doing a lot of jetbikes (plus I'd just finished making Crusade-era 1kSons and wasn't in the mood for colours close to red), so he suggested Biel-Tan. Over the years of prep I added a few Eldar bitz as... ...Basing materials Sacrifices... ...Snacks... ...more snacks... ...and lots of trophies and some not getting killed/tortured, for display on the AoP base itself. With the B&C now allowing Eldar I thought I'd show the Biel-Tan and Harlequin Eldar I did for the display (The Psychopomp assault upon the Biel-Tan maidenworld of Eibhir). First of all, the Armies on Parade diorama, which got me Silver: Hidden Content Silver: Psychopomps by Nehebkau, on FlickrSilver: Psychopomps by Nehebkau, on FlickrSilver: Psychopomps by Nehebkau, on FlickrSilver: Psychopomps by Nehebkau, on FlickrSilver: Psychopomps by Nehebkau, on FlickrSilver: Psychopomps by Nehebkau, on FlickrSilver: Psychopomps by Nehebkau, on FlickrSilver: Psychopomps by Nehebkau, on FlickrSilver: Psychopomps by Nehebkau, on FlickrSilver: Psychopomps by Nehebkau, on FlickrSilver: Psychopomps by Nehebkau, on FlickrSilver: Psychopomps by Nehebkau, on FlickrSilver: Psychopomps by Nehebkau, on FlickrSilver: Psychopomps by Nehebkau, on Flickr I'll post photos of the Eldar models next.

INTRO: Yup, it's me, starting yet another WIP thread for a new project that I'll never finish - except, this one isn't for it's own project, it's to collate all the other ones. Now that the forum is open to Xenos content, I'm starting a new thread here to collect all my designs from 30k and 40k in one place, and although I don't yet have any xenos concepts to show, they're certainly on their way. Basically, while my blog is a place where I can have a separate archive to refer back to, all that content will also be posted here, in addition to works in progress, teasers and discussion of rules tweaks. INDEX: This is for fully finished stuff only - concepts with rules WHAT'S NEXT? For those of you who've followed my 30k designs, you'll know I've got a considerable back-log of concepts under my belt - part of this will be reviewing those (some will inevitably be consigned to the trash pile) and bringing them up to scratch, so they should appear in their final form at some point or another - you might have noticed I tend to do these in themed batches of three, so some are merely waiting for appropriate counterparts. In terms of new stuff, I foolishly started a thread for designing new Imperial Guard Regiments from planets we're familiar with, so that'll be rolled into this one. I've also got a whole host of other stuff in the pipeline, so I'll give you a glimpse: Harlequins Units - "Stilt Dancers, Furies and Shadowalkers" A whole host of new Legion vehicles, including an entirely original tank chassis Mechanicum Explorator units - Agrimensor Cadres, Hormeas Grav-Attack, Silphar Ornithopter Ordo Reductor units Imperial Army / Guard Tanks An entirely new faction - Questoris Yeomanry - the retainer infantry troops of Knight Households 30k & 40k And a whole bunch of stuff loitering on the edges of my feverish imagination I hope you'll follow me along for the ride, and as always - thanks for looking

I played up my second game of 8th last night, taking a pure Harlequins list because their rules are sooooo much better than before and I was just so excited. Here's what I took: Battalion Troupe Master - fusion pistol, H Kiss Shadowseer Shadowseer Death Jester Death Jester Solitaire 12 Players - 12 H embrace 12 Players - 5 H caress, 7 H kiss 5 Players - 5 neurodisruptors > Starweaver 6 Skyweavers - 6 haywire cannons, 6 zephyr glaives Voidweaver Voidweaver vs Battalion Shrike Cataphractii Captain - lightning claws 10 Vanguard - pistol, claw 5 Assault Terminators - 3 claws, 2 thunder hammers 5 Scouts - bolters, combi-melta 5 Scouts - bolters, combi-melta 5 Scouts - bolters, combi-melta 5 Tacticals - combi-melta 5 Tacticals - combi-melta Rhino 3 Inceptors Land Raider Storm Talon - assault cannons, skyhammer missiles We played Tactical Escalation with Search and Destroy deployment. I deployed mostly offensively clustered around the middle, while he started further back, though he infiltrated two units of Scouts near a Voidweaver to try and get first blood. The Vanguard, Inceptors, and characters all started in reserves. Since he finished first he went first. Turn 1 his card was Supremacy, requiring three objective markers. To that end he pushed his rhino up (that held both tactical squads) to hold one of the three, and it definitely got in threat range. The scouts moved up on the Voidweaver, and the other stuff shuffled. His shooting killed a Skyweaver and took 4 wounds off the Voidweaver; a combination of bad saves on bolters and good saves on meltas kept the darn thing alive, kinda. He then charged it and took another wound off. 1 point to him. My turn 1 saw one Troupe hurtle across the table toward his rhino, a massive 23" (12" first advance, 11" second advance via Shadowseer), while I pulled back everything to basically attempt to mop up my table half. Egads I wish I could cast more than once per turn in Matched Play. Shooting knocked off a couple Scouts, but more importantly destroyed the Rhino for First Blood. I then charged the contents with the unit of 12 H embraces, half on each squad. Wiped them out quite handily. The scouts managed to hang on (my rolls were terrible throughout the game), which was a bother, but not really that bad. 1 point to me. Turn 2 his reinforcements showed up, all on the right half of the table. His entire army fired at the other Troupe of 12 players (with the more expensive weapons, naturally), and wiped them out. I like that it took the better part of 1000 points to do so; in days past, a single unit could gun them down. It still sucked terribly that I just lost half my foot sloggers, but oh well... On my turn, the Solitaire left the Scouts to start heading back into the thick of it. The H embrace troupe launched themselves another 22" toward the right. I misplaced my characters so the Troupe unfortunately wouldn't benefit; that's one of the perils of the psychic powers I'll talk about later. Still, while the scouts were wiped out on my left, the Troupe charged the terminator squad and wiped them out too. Turn 3 was kind of a rinse and repeat. His whole army attacked the Troupe and killed it, and also a Shadowseer that I poorly placed. To follow along on the rest of the game, the Solitaire Blitzed for 23" and wiped out a unit of 5 Vanguard, then died to bolters because eff my saves. There was some give and take, but by the end of the 5th turn (when the game thankfully ended) I was down to a Skyweaver, Death Jester, and Troupe Master, while he had an almost dead Storm Talon, Inceptors, characters, 4 Vanguard, 5 Scouts, and the Land Raider. Still, it was close, and only because of a wacky new TacO card (defend objective), he won by 2 points, 11-13. My take-aways from this game: - Bikes and speeders enjoy a native -1 to-Hit. This is awesome! Even better when you combine it with psychic silliness to make it even harder to hit them. - Shadowseers are key units, simply for the movement power if nothing else, but there is else indeed! Where before Heavy Bolters wounded most models on a 2+, now it's a 4+ with her around. Fewer hits and wounds means fewer saves, and there... - 4+ is exactly what they needed to be "dodgy but squishy". I love the new invulnerable save! Interestingly, cover is entirely pointless for every unit but Skyweavers and Starweavers. I didn't realize at first that these units enjoy a 4+ save too, meaning they could get a 3+ while in cover. - Skyweavers are very durable. 4 wounds each, -1 to hit, 4+ inv save. Plus, they have an assured 22" move and can then assault and cause a lot of damage. I think the haywire cannons are especially a must-take now, as they'll nail the vehicles hard, and infantry still suffer a little more than when using shuriken cannons. - Troupes with large numbers of models are aces. This maximizes any benefits, especially from psychic powers. First turn charges should be expected, and you'll crush what you fight. - While I didn't get to try the other weapons, I was very impressed with the humble embrace. It's basically 4 attacks with a MEq power sword, per model. That's nuts! The Kiss is very expensive at 14 points, and I don't think the D3 damage makes up for the weak S and AP. Despite it being the iconic weapon of the Harlequins, I don't think I'll take it on much anymore, which is quite depressing. Maybe at like 9-10 points I'd consider it. I'm more interested in the Caress and Embrace right now. - The Neurodisruptor is pretty nifty, though the huge hit on the to-wound roll really bites. Going from 2+ to 5+ on most targets is really quite sad...might upgrade to fusion pistols for added anti-tank, and vastly better effectiveness in killing infantry, and it's a point cheaper what the deuce! Having a range of 6" isn't an issue when you can move 16" in a turn.

According to the latest WD Link Harlequins are getting a new combat Patrol. It appears to contain the following: Skyweavers Shadowseer 2x troupe Starweaver

With the Sword called Word, I Kill the Silence Let us tell a story about the storytellers Let the letters dance their way from mind to eyes to mind again Harlequins where for me the too good to be real army in 40k, second to none Unfortunately I started in 3rd, so no rules, only a distant legend (and I was too into Tyranids) Then I discovered the awesome 40k BG, with the eldars... and the marvelous clowns! I was always intrigued by jesters, and being italian, with masks and Arlecchino, witch I researched as a figure both tragic and comic, existed in history centuries before the "Commedia dell'Arte" Then a Withe Dwarf minicodex came, and I managed to get an army started with some 3rd edition dark eldar converted and awfully painted...then they become a Pro Elf Bloodbowl team I got the new models when they returned as Eldar allies, but they rested unpainted on their box for a loong time Then, finally the Codex arrived! I managed to get some plastic ones, the old converted ones and the metal ones all together in an army that i will patiently paint in time, and that I have used with profit in difficult battles to my greatest pride. Pics of the better soon But for now I left the center of the stage To you Because I Know well not to be the Only One

So I've really got the bug to join in with the great performance of the harlequins and I've fallen in love with the Dreaming Shadow masque. And this afternoon I've started a test model in the Dreaming Shadow colours. i've only done one coat so far and not finished the whole model but this is where I am in the act so far. I'm going to give her another coat tomorrow and hopefully finish her. if I'm honest it was quite difficult to paint but felyt easier cos it was smaller.