Officially starting guard finally.

[micahwc]

http://i.imgur.com/NV87lpH.jpg

 

Got my sentinels assembled. Got everything together now except my tanks. I plan on putting the together tomorrow night and then basecoating everything with rustoleum fusion camo green.

Edited October 18, 2017 by micahwc

[micahwc]

Yarrick and the steel legion distracted the forces of chaos enough for Tallarn reinforcements to flank them. The Tallarn Russ crews quickly opened up the heretic's transports from behind with their punisher cannons,a rhino exploded and the high value target inside fled directly away from the Russ tanks; directly into the sights of a full battalion of Tempestus Scions who arrived from high orbit. Melta and plasma fire quickly took the target down, winning the battle.

[micahwc]

Last night I fought against Death Guard, 2000 points.

 

My opponent brought a hellforged Leviathan dreadnaught and 2 hellbrutes, Typhus, some terminators, a rhino, bloat drone, daemon prince, and a couple of the special Deathguard characters. We used the open war cards. Our deployment zones were 50/50 of the board. Mission was VIP, where we each had to nominate a VIP and the only win condition was to kill the enemies VIP.  Special conditions were +1 to all attack characteristics.

 

I used the Ambush stratagem with 2 Leman Russ tank commander punishers and the unit of 3 armored Lascannon sentinels. I put my entire battalion of scions in High Orbit. He put Typhus and the Terminators in a teleportarium. His VIP was one of the Deathguard characters, who was placed in a rhino, with the rest of his army basically surrounding the rhino with the daemon prince towards my army.

 

I placed my Cadian heavy weapons teams in cover, in a firing line with LOS to his force. Yarrick and 1 squad of infantry rode in a Valkyrie. My Tallarn Veteran squad with 3 meltaguns and a heavy flamer rode in the other Valkyrie. Both Valkyries positioned on the left flank of the table pretty close to the enemy in the center. My idea was to hopefully be able to drop the Veterans near something to do some damage. The rest of my steel legion troops were placed in front of my heavy weapon teams.

 

Turn 1, I go second. His leviathan dreadnaught shoots down Yarrick's Valkyrie in one turn of shooting using its Forgeworld balanced weapon it has. (-5 AP, 5 damage per attack) 3 shots hit the Valkyrie and it goes down and explodes. The rest of his shooting sees some damage on my other Valkyrie, one Heavy Weapon Squad completely destroyed, 2 others damaged, and the Daemon Prince charges the infantry in front of the heavy weapon squads.

 

In response I withdraw all my infantry from the daemon prince, order them to get back in the fight, and FRFSRF another nearby squad into the daemon prince. He survives due to disgustingly resilient saves with only 1 wound remaining. Valkyrie drops off the Veteran squad which fires into a squad of plague marines and kills a few. Everything left shoots at the Daemon prince and nothing gets past its disgustingly resilient save. (Seriously, he rolled a lot of 5+ saves). Deciding that the infantry with the daemon prince were probably dead anyway, I charge the prince with Infantry and my Company Commander. Company Commander gets a wound through his armor, he rolls a 5+ for disgustingly resilient and lives through the turn. Yarrick (my VIP) takes cover behind a rock and his infantry squad surrounds him to keep him out of assault.

 

Turn 2: Opponent drops Typhus as close to Yarrick as he can get, and drops Terminators close to his rhino to help support it. His shooting isn't particularly effective against anything. His Daemon prince kills everything in combat with it. Typhus doesn't make his charge and takes a wound from overwatch. I place my 2 tank commanders and Armored sentinels on the right flank of the board. I put the Russes behind the rhino and the plague marine squad guarding it's rear, and I put the Sentinels in front of the models guarding the front of the rhino. Russes explode the rhino and wipe 4/5 of the plague marine squad. The fifth guy ends up running away. Armored sentinels put 1 lascannon into the rhino and did 6 wounds to it before the Russes opened fire. Daemon prince gets blown off the table by 3 krak missiles.

 

Turn 3: My opponent moves a dreadnought within assault range of Yarricks infantry squad and moves Typhus closer. Everything else moves to the right and rear of his VIP so that nothing on the board could target it as it wasn't the closest model to anything but my sentinels. He kills one Leman Russ in shooting and damages the other. He kills 2 and most of a third Sentinel. Dreadnought charges Yarricks infantry and kills half. Typhus charges the other half and kills them, and consolidates into Yarrick. My opponent ends his turn, looks at my half of the table, and sees the entire battalion of scions I hadn't dropped yet. Profanity ensues. He forgot about them and left them an opening to drop in where they could shoot his VIP.

 

Valkyrie flys over to where the remaining sentinel is, 17 scions drop where the remaining sentinel is. Meltaguns shoot first. Enemy VIP takes 10 wounds. Disgustingly Resilient saves 3 of them. Game over with an Astra Militarum win. Typhus and the hellbrute would have eviscerated Yarrick had it gone another turn.

[micahwc]

Lessons learned.

 

• My missile launchers have a 48" range, I don't need to put them nearly as close to the enemy as I did. Cadian missile squads with a Company Commander to order Take Aim are very nasty. Placing them too forward was a mistake I made.

 

• Russes are awesome. Ambushing Russes are awesomer. Sentinels are okay. It was nice to have lascannons to shoot at a rhino, and the last surviving sentinel hit a dreadnought in overwatch which was nice. I still see them as a FA tax for a brigade but they did alright.

 

• Stormbolter upgrades are worth 2 points if they kill 1 model. My 2 point storm bolters on the Russ tanks killed Plague Marines which are much more expensive.

 

• My opponent thought the daemon prince was a good trade for two squads of infantry and a company commander. I don't really disagree, but the infantry squads and company commander cost less points than the daemon prince.

 

• I think upgrading the commanders melee weapons may be helpful if you are using them to screen heavy weapons, as once the daemon prince was attacking my company commander I wanted something better than a chainsword to attack back. I really think the powerfist may be a good option here.

 

• I have mixed feelings on the Valkyries. To be fair, one got shot out of the sky before it could do anything. The other didn't really do any damage to anything, but the ability to drop off troops anywhere it flies is really nice in the right situations. I think if you have a plan for them they are a good investment, but if you don't they should stay at home.

 

• Astra Militarum can be a surprisingly mobile army. I ended up almost completely surrounding my opponent between initial fire base placement, Valkyrie drops, Tallarn ambushes, and scion drops. My opponent mentioned how there were too many targets as all of them could be a threat if left alone.

 

• Command Points for days. I started with 11. I spent 14.

[Major_Gilbear]

I think upgrading the commanders melee weapons may be helpful if you are using them to screen heavy weapons, as once the daemon prince was attacking my company commander I wanted something better than a chainsword to attack back. I really think the powerfist may be a good option here.

 

Interesting, as I have been pretty convinced recently that I want to have most commanders with power swords, and a couple with powerfists.

 

A "waste" of points sometimes, I'm sure, but rule of cool and your comments here have me pretty much convinced otherwise! :)

[micahwc]

It's a tradeoff. Powersword instead of chainsword I would have had less hits, but he would have failed more armor saves. Powerfist would have had less hits and worse weapon skill, but more hits would have gone through armor, each of which would have done more damage that he would have had to roll disgustingly resilient against.

[Tallarn Commander]

Looks like a solid and fun starting list.

 

Down the road you might want to try running 2 or 3 more foot infantry squads to bulk out your numbers and to screen your heavy weapons squads but the 79 or so troopers you do have are more than sufficient.

[micahwc]

Yeah, it was a lot of fun and a good learning experience.

[micahwc]

With the FAQ and errata out I need to make a few changes.

 

First, and most excitedly, my Earthshaker Batteries are now AP -3. 3 of them is 240 points, and they are really nice to have. I'd like to eventually get a basilisk or 6, but for now the earthshaker batteries will work.

 

Leman Russ' are still amazing but I wont be able to ambush 3 tank commanders anymore. I'll still buy my third and run them as a supreme command detachment, they will just start on the table. To make the punishers more of a threat I will probably either run them as Tallarn still so they can move and shoot with no penalty, or more likely, take them as the regiment that adds 6" of range.

 

My Valkyries are probably not going to get used unless I have a specific plan for them, as they are both a pain to get to the store, and not especially points efficient. Airdropped scions are probably a better choice if I want mobile special weapons than a Valkyrie full of command squads or special weapon squads. I will likely buy some more scions to max out my squad sizes and have the command squads included in my battalion. So three squads of 10, 2 command squads with special weapons, and two tempestor primes for a nice Scion detachment.

 

Finally, I've been really happy with the basic infantry squads and I may try to add some more. Right now I only have 4 and I'd like to at least have 6 to be able to run a brigade.

[Khornestar]

Awesome to hear about Leman Russes putting in some work. The entire time I've been playing up until now they've been garbage. About time that turned around!

[micahwc]

Nov 1 I get paid and plan on buying some more stuff to bulk out my forces. I want to pick up 3 or 4 more scion squads to complete a battalion of them. I really like having deep striking BS 3+ special weapons that are guaranteed to survive turn 1 shooting. Dropping a battalion of scions midgame has been very effective for me, and I feel it's pretty fluffy as well.

 

I'm also want to pick up at least two squads of regular infantry so I can field a brigade of just regular infantry. I'm debating whether or not to get them packaged with chimeras or not.

 

I'm planning on getting 1 more Leman Russ so I can field three of them as a Supreme Command Detachment and bring 3 tank commanders; and I'm toying with the idea of getting a baneblade to go with them in the superheavy slot of the supreme command detachment.

[duz_]

I'd suggest buying the MT start collecting box then, especially from a discount retailer

Means you get 2 squads of MT's plus a commissar (for kitbashing ;) ) and Taruox for free! :D

[micahwc]

Well, I ordered two more infantry squads. I think that brings me up to a total of 6 infantry squads and 1 Veteran squad armed with melta guns and a heavy flamer, plus 17 scions. Throw my heavy weapons teams in there for another 18 guys and I'm over 100 infantry models, which I think is a decent start for now.

[Guardsman Bob]

Be sure to assemble in a well ventilated room. With that much plastic if the vapes don’t kill the brain damage will mess you up.

 

Godspeed on the hobby work.

[micahwc]

I don't have pictures yet as it's still a work in progress, but I've been working on my Leman Russes a bit. I got a 3d printer 2 weeks ago. I printed this:

 

https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2541799

 

I modified it a bit to fit on the Leman Russ chassis, I had to cut a notch in the top so my heavy bolter could fit.

 

I've also magnified the turret and punisher cannons on both tanks. I haven't taken any of the other weapons off the sprues yet, and I'll probably leave them until I need them for something because I can't see not using the punishers for a while. I haven't started on the sponsons yet but I plan to magnetize them as well.

 

I've also printed and assembled a proxy model for the Forgeworld Earthshaker Carriage. It's a pretty similar model with some obvious differences. It is also on thinigiverse. It didn't particularly turn out great, but I have some ideas for how to improve it on my next attempt. There is also a thud gun proxy that again, looks very similar to Forgeworld's but is different enough not to get removed. I'm using 40k as an excuse to learn 3d printing software, and I've modified the thud gun files to be able to print all the parts for one quad launcher in one print. Still working out the kinks in it, but it will take approximately 3 hours per quad launcher on a medium-fine setting.

 

Edit:

 

I also ordered a new airbrush and a new compressor for my painting. I've been really happy with my patriot 105 and my Iwata Eclipse. The badger is .5 and I have been using it mostly for priming and base coating single colors. The Eclipse is .3 and I've been using it, well honestly, I've been using it as well to prime and to do base colors, but also to do all my gradients and blending's. Both are good brushes but I prefer the Iwata as it just feels like it has better construction. Also the Badger feels like painting with a fire hose compared to the Iwata, and it goes through paint a lot faster.

 

I wanted to try a .2 airbrush for finer detail work, and I had really wanted to get an Iwata Custom Micron, but I was persuaded to try out one of the Badger offerings instead and so I ordered a Badger Krome. I also ordered a California Air Tools 1 gallon compressor that is advertised to run at only 56 db, which is quieter than my keyboard as I type this. All together, it was about $210 for the setup and I think it will work out pretty well. I've found that an airbrush is an investment in upfront cost and learning curve, but it saves so much time that for me it was worth it.

 

Edit 2: I forgot to mention that I also ordered my paint for my paint scheme. I found a picture online to use as an inspiration for a paint scheme, and then chose Vallejo game air and Vallejo Model Air colors that matched as best as my color limited vision could do.

 

Colors are German Grey, USAF Dark Grey, and IDF Sinai Grey over black. I know it's been done a lot, but I love the inspiration. Would you like to know more?

Edited November 1, 2017 by micahwc

[micahwc]

My next list is as follows, 3 detachments. 1997 points. 19 command points before relics.

 

Vostroyan Brigade

 

2 tank commander punishers with heavy bolters, storm bolters.

3 company commanders.

6 infantry squads with vox and boltguns on the sergeant

2 platoon commanders

1 Veteran squad with 3x plasma

3 Scout Sentinels with lascannons

3 Earthshaker Batteries

 

Cadian Spearhead

 

2 company commanders

3 heavy weapon teams with missile launchers

 

Scions Battalion

 

2 Tempestor primes with plasma pistols and chainswords

1 squad of 5 scions with 2 plasma guns

2 squads of 5 scions with 2 melta guns.

 

 

Plan:

Cadians form a fire base and issue Take Aim every turn until they are all dead. 9 missile launchers hitting on 4s and re-rolling misses seems like a good idea. They will be near the earthshaker batteries. 2 Vostroyan infantry squads and platoon commanders act as a road block for anything that tries to assault the fire base. Scout sentinels keep things from deep striking close to the firebase.

 

Tank commanders take the front of the fire base and advance slowly, focusing on whatever they need to focus on. Remaining 4 squads of Vostroyans and their officers advance with the tanks and take objectives.

 

Scions drop to either kill priority targets or land on objectives mid game.

[micahwc]

I got my tanks and sentinels primed using Badger Stynylrez black primer. I've used Vallejo grey primer in the past and this was my first time using the Stynylrez. I like the Stynylrez more. It's thinner. The Vallejo looks like it may have to be thinned to spray out of my .2 Badger Krome, whereas the Stynylrez was pretty thin out the bottle. It covered really well and makes a really nice deep black color when it's dry.

 

Some of the paint I ordered for them arrived, so I did a gradient of German Grey on the tanks and sentinels. The rest of my paint should arrive today.

 

I started assembling 2 more infantry squads.

[duz_]

Looking forward to the final pics! :D

I've finished building my BB now so I will be basing using my airbrush and the badger primer for the first time

I'm hoping it all goes well! 

[micahwc]

I love using an airbrush, it makes priming and gradients so easy. I used to hate painting tanks because I got nothing but brushstrokes everywhere. With the airbrush and some practice they look good.

[micahwc]

Game Wednesday night against probably Death Guard again. Opponent said either Death Guard or Astartes, he's run Death Watch against me before.

 

I'm kind of glad I magnetized my russes, and I think I may have to run them as regular Tallarn plasma Russes as otherwise I am sure his forgeworld dreadnoughts will kill them first turn.

[micahwc]

I didn't get much done last night. I tried a bunch of camp combinations in my colors using a 3d printed test chimera. I'll link the album.

 

https://m.imgur.com/a/XL5Ri

 

This is three color but the two darker colors are too similar. I'm thinking of adding a different third color, like maybe a flat green or maybe white?

 

I'm not using this pattern, it was a test.

[micahwc]

http://i.imgur.com/BQDUGpU.jpg

[micahwc]

Posting all these lists is fine and all, but it's too easy to be like "I could really use 3 plasma guns here" without realizing you don't actually have 3 plasma guns to use.

 

I did an inventory last night to see what I actually have to use for my game tomorrow night. It will likely be against Death Guard, or possibly Death Watch. Strategy is the same either way  as they are both elite astartes units. I think the Death Guard will be a harder fight. 2000 points.

 

Vostroyan Brigade

 

2 Tempestor Primes, 2 Tank Commander Punishers

6 infantry squads with 1 grenade launcher each. (strength 6 krak grenades will be helpful, and I plan on using "Bring It Down!" a lot for the +1 to wound)

3 Armored Sentinels with Lascannons (turrets that fill a fast attack slot)

3 heavy weapon squads with missile launchers (turrets that fill a heavy support slot)

3 Earthshaker Batteries in a combined battery

2 scion command squads, 4 plasma, 4 melta

2 Platoon Commander

 

 

Vostroyan Supreme Command Detachment (Wont benefit from doctrine on anything, but I need them Vostroyan for the orders)

Commisar Yarrick

2 Company Commanders

Vindicare Assassin (Putting the "care" in assassinate)

 

Plan is as follows:

 

If he brings death guard he will likely be able to destroy a single large vehicle in his first turn of firing. It will likely be a punisher. He likes to bring Forgeworld dreadnoughts that have ridiculous -4 AP weapons on them. His daemon prince and bloat drones will try to get into close combat as soon as possible. I need to make it a long distance for him to cross. I will need to slow his charges with infantry squads.  

 

Yarrick will hang out with the missile launcher guys to help them re-roll all their 1s, and he will be issuing "Bring It Down" a lot for the extra help wounding death guard. He will be surrounded by 3 or 4 infantry squads who have 30" range with their lasguns and who can wound Deathguard on 4+ with "Bring It Down". Grenade Launchers will only have a 24" range, but Krak grenades will wound on 3+ or 2+ with the order. Earthshakers will shake the Earth, it's kind of their thing.

 

Scions have plasma and an annoying tendency to drop in where they are not wanted. They will do this.

 

Sentinels will stand and shoot until they die. Same with the missile teams. I will be putting them as far as way as practical to hopefully take advantage of their longer range. Deathguard and especially Death Watch seem to have trouble with ranged firepower.

 

When he's brought Deathwatch before he used a pair of drop pods to drop a squad with frag cannons and a dreadnought, and then a Corvis Blackstar to drop off some more kill teams.

[micahwc]

http://i.imgur.com/Wx0nVvz.jpg

I printed some chimera chassis for my earth shakers

[micahwc]

Painted a test leman Russ

 

http://i.imgur.com/RBuZ0vf.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/ieWsIIU.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/Gy5O9X0.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/MikogJJ.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/RjGqsdY.jpg