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Been awhile since I've posted... Here is why (I've been doing a little thinking about my list etc...

I've got photos but my work computer doesn't like SD cards, my digital camera is screwed up on connecting to any computer via cable (I think something landed in it and messed it up) and my desktop doesn't have an sd card slot... SO this means I have to use my laptop. Something I'm very rarely on (cause it mainly accompanies me to classes)

SO I managed to get in a game last Thursday with my Stormravens and dreads last night (we're up to 1750 in our league) So I took a Death Company army proxying my Chain Swords as power weapons, and just ran those into Plague Marines... I proceeded to get stomped by the sheer amount of shooting he has on the table, and my extremely low model count (the entire way to the store my buddy who was playing the plague marines kept complaining that he had over costed models etc etc... I told him the average price for my Death Company was 50 points a model... He shut up then and there).

I lost by a single kill point.
So I will most likely be holding off on my Stormravens in my painting them for a few months and here is why.
1) One of the birds took a long hard fall from the table to the floor when my buddy ran into the table trying to set up a chair. Bits of the wing broke off, a leg or two, and it needs repairs...
2) They're only armor 12, and it would be the only 2 pieces of armor on the table (any idiot could say... well I wonder what I'm going to shoot first)

SO! On to the reason why you're all here!

July Hobby Progress Complete!
This month I said I do the following:

Alfndrate wrote:Build Storm Ravens
Prime Dreadnoughts, Stormravens, and Sanguinor (I bought him at Origins this weekend)
Paint 1 Assault Squad
Test basing for army

SO! Lets review:
1) Build Storm Ravens:


2)Prime Dreads, SRs and Sanguinor






3) Paint 1 Assault Squad
Here is the first half of the unit





And the second half of the unit


And the whole "family"


4) Test Basing for Army


August Hobby Progress Commitment
Paint Sanguinary Guard
Base all currently painted models

I know this commitment sounds a little lame, but we're going back to the gold models, which give me trouble (even though its not yellow :lol: ) and I need to focus a little more on my Trollbloods

If your going to go for a snowy base, I'd throw in some grey slate and whatnot for difference.

from a distance on that base, you get a nice sort of frosted look, but I'm probably going to be adding to it, as it was just a test for the army... I'm looking for bigger stones.

Okay, so I've been thinking about my list, and some of the things I'm noticing about it, its failings, its strengths, etc..


I'm beginning to rethink this whole dropping in. The past few weeks my local league has placed me up against my buddy, the a Nurgle player. His army has an inordinate amount of large blast markers, which wreck my face, as the plasma is AP 2, so it negates both my armor and my FnP save. In another game I tried the storm Ravens, and it became a major issue with only having two pieces of armor in my list. I still like the idea of an entire Jump Pack army, I can move across the board quickly, and I have a lot of firepower in my lists, but there is an insane lack of cover saves, invulnerable saves, or armor, so I'm still learning how to deal with the whole standing around for a turn D:

Here is my current idea of my list, but by doing so I will have to buy an additional 2 boxes of Assault Marines, and a thing of Meltaguns and I'll probably scratch build another Sang Priest.

1750 Version:
HQ:
Dante
Librarian w/Jump Pack, Combi-Melta, Sanguine Sword, and Unleash Rage
Honor Guard w/Jump Packs, Meltasgunsx4 and Flamersx4

Elites:
Sang Priest x3 w/Jump Packs
Chaplain w/Jump Pack

Troops:
2x Assault Squad w/Meltagunsx2, Infernus Pistol, Power Fist
Sang Guard w/Chapter Banner, Infernus Pistolx2, Power Fist

For 1850: Drop the Chaplain and add in the following:
Assault Squad w/Meltagunsx2, Power Fist, Meltabombs


Time to play test... I'm just not looking forward to having to buy more models :-/ Oh well, such is the road to slightly competetive...

How about pods? That way you "drop in" on top of him in rapid fire range/melta range. Especially if you can get a homing beacon on the ground first & can then pic your spot (no scatter).

I didn't give that a thought (besides the fact I don't want to have to buy/build 3 more drop pods or so lol)

I was trying out the drop pod with 1 (horrid situation when the rest of your army starts off the board anyways), though your idea did force me to check my codex, and I get any transport at a 35 point discount (OOOOH NOW RAZORBACK SPAM MAKES SENSE) .

Being in Rapid Fire range doesn't do me much good as my Assault Marines don't have Bolters lol

Drop pod would only serve to get my marines on the board on Turn 1 (at least half of them) instead of the entire army dropping down on Turn 2 (Descent of Angels allows rerolls on the reserve roll for DSing via Jump Packs)

Ah, I see. Sorry Alf, not up to speed on the intricacies of the BA dex.

Still, you're left with assault troops on the board that can't assault... not good... unless your drops come in on target so you can nail the oppositions vehicles early with all of those meltas. A single pod with a homing beacon would do the trick IF you can keep it alive until turn 2. Perhaps a pod with a furioso dread that drops down in the middle of his stuff (or a flank, which I prefer) on turn 1. You pop smoke and hope he has to waste enough fire on the furioso that there isn't enough left for the pod, the following turn, your assault squads come down right on target and melta the hell out of everything.

Gitsplitta wrote:Ah, I see. Sorry Alf, not up to speed on the intricacies of the BA dex.

Still, you're left with assault troops on the board that can't assault... not good... unless your drops come in on target so you can nail the oppositions vehicles early with all of those meltas. A single pod with a homing beacon would do the trick IF you can keep it alive until turn 2. Perhaps a pod with a furioso dread that drops down in the middle of his stuff (or a flank, which I prefer) on turn 1. You pop smoke and hope he has to waste enough fire on the furioso that there isn't enough left for the pod, the following turn, your assault squads come down right on target and melta the hell out of everything.

Its okay Gits, I'm still learning as well...

I did this at 1500 points, it didn't turn out well lol I'm not worried about things coming in on target, I'm worried about the sitting in the open w/o accomplishing anything, because DoA allows me to only scatter on 1d6 rather than 2d6, but if I drop into terrain (to get a cover save) I've got to deal with the mishap table, which is never good. My best plan so far has been to reroll my way into dropping into turn 3 so my opponent has usually wasted his smoke (that way the 3 melta shots per unit don't have to deal with stupid cover saves, and Dante always come in on target ).

Vanguard Vets would be a way to solve my not being able to assault on DS woes

Surprisingly I do well against Grey Knight shooting because very few things will get past my 3+ armor save, and if it does, it doesn't get past FnP... But I tend to face the following: Necrons (yay monolith pie plates), Mech IG, Mech Grey Knights, and Plague Marines w/Plasma...

Second "Ah"... OK, skip the pods or the homing beacon. So you can get your troops where you need them fairly easily, you can do "x" damage with the resulting fire... but you're still vulnerable to assault or shooting afterwards. Obviously you're not able to kill enough of the big shooty stuff with your initial assault to make the retaliatory shooting palatable. Would combat squadding the assault squads help so you can shoot at more targets? Or taking more, smaller squads so on balance (between the squad and the sergeant) you get more melta on the table? (sorry for pointing out the obvious, I'm sure you've tried this already)

Vanguard would work but they're insanely expensive, at least in the vanilla dex they are.

Perhaps putting all your bets on a massed assault that can't really hit home isn't the best tactic.

Can you re-roll your reserve rolls if you make them? (i.e. purposefully delay your arrival)? That might help with the Necrons (waiting until his warriors arrive on the board before committing your troops).

Problem is with mech, you have to pop the transports before you can get at what's inside, so if you're relying on your assault troops to do all the work, they can't help but be vulnerable. My current army has kind of a two pronged approach. I have an assault contingent made up of pods and scouts (bikes and LS-Storms) that can hit on turn 1 (hit by shooting, not actually close combat... though the bikes and scouts in LS-Storms can assault on T1), and a second, long ranged fire support contingent. The assault contingent has both anti-tank and anti personnel capabilities. So the idea is that the long-ranged support or *some* of the assault division cracks open the vehicles while the rest of the assault division shoots the now exposed juicy bits inside.

It's not a perfect force by any means, but generally it works pretty well against other mech armies.

I'll have to look at smaller squads (something I generally wanted to avoid because of the fewer models needed to kill to cause a leadership check) Combat squading is something that I did not look at, and I'll have to try it my next game.

As for MSU, I'm looking at it, and besides the more bodies (though there isn't a number difference, just a 25% difference), having a minimum assault squad size shortens my double penetration range on the melta (from 6 inches on 2 melta shots, 3 inches for 3 melta shots to 3 inches for 2 shots). NOW having them within 3 inches, gives me a better chance at assaulting if I pop the vehicle.

I actually do well against the necrons, I have enough movement and power weapons to phase them out, its every other army I face lol.

I can re-roll reserve rolls to purposely fail (my general tactic, because coming in after they've wasted smoke is good).

Predators might be the way to go, but I'm trying to avoid buying more models until I paint this army >_< lol

Thanks for the input gits... I basically just need someone to bounce ideas off of.

Well, I'm not a tactical genius... but I do like kicking ideas back and forth... fun way to spend some bandwidth.

I'm far from Sun Tzu, and I manage to win about half my games with my Vanilla Space Marines. I'm just thinking about what I can do to beef of the army that I have with the models I have (very similar to what you're doing with your mantis warriors, you just have tons more models )

Uugh.... don't remind me!

Gitsplitta wrote:Uugh.... don't remind me!

Haha! I would consider that a bonus, my list changes are extremely necessitated by the pre-planning stages of my army building. I could take my ultramarines, soak them down, make assault marines in razorbacks, or stormravens, without jump packs, and use my assault Marines as Vanguard vets... but my Ultras were not painted by me, and they look amazing...

Sounds like the sirens of GW are beguiling you to spend more $$ on new models! Though I custom build my own, I must admit that the official sternguard and vanguard models are really sweet.

I've custom built my libby and my sang priests, but I'm running out of bits, which is why I haven't been able to accept doing a GMS for alabamaheretic (he wants a BA Assault Marine)

Ah... bitz poor. A sorry state for a wargamer. Don't know what I'd do without my bitz. Weep uncontrollably I guess.

Alright, so got to proxy some things, and I like some of the changes I've done, and it helps with the biggest issues of DoA... Not being able to assault (though I think I've come onto EVERYTHING that DoA players have already realized...)

Two Lists:

1750 List:
HQ:
Dante
Libby w/Epistolary, Jump Pack, Shield of Sang, and Blood Lance
Honor Guard: Jump Packs, 4 meltas, 4 flamers

Elites:
2x Sang Priest w/Jump Pack and Melta bombs

Troops:
3x Assault Squads w/ 2x Melta, Power Fist, Infernus Pistol

Fast Attack:
Vanguard Vet Squad w/Jump Packs, Power Fist, 2x Infernus Pistols, 4x Power Weapons

(I tabled a Tau player by turn 3 with this list tonight)

1850 list makes the following changes
Drop Dante: Pick up another Librarian w/same gear just different powers

Pick up another Sang Priest w/Jump Packs

I'm at 1815 points... gotta find some upgrades lol.


For those that are expecting painting updates, be patient... I'm trying to focus my painting on what I'm going to be playing...

Slight update: I was going to post this in the Nostalgia thread in the Showcase, BUT I cannot (as it is not based... I used a coke cap)... This is my first miniature painted and idk which is better... sometimes I think I haven't improved, and then I see some of the small details that I missed on this model.

I really like the work you were doing on the dreadnought. Nice work!

Lol, you like primer? The vehicles are probably going to be the last things I paint because I'm slowly phasing them out of my lists.

I'm sorry, that seems harsh from me. Thanks! Hoping to get my Sanguinary Guard finished here in the next few weeks.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
This will probably Auto Append but w/e

I just got some new basing material that I want to use to base my models (the test base scheme was lacking something). How might I remove my models from their bases without ruining everything?

Alfndrate wrote:I just got some new basing material that I want to use to base my models (the test base scheme was lacking something). How might I remove my models from their bases without ruining everything?

Depends on what it is - metal or plastic - and then how it's based - superglue or poly cement?

If superglue a clean break is possible - using a knife or something for some leverage to pry the model free if on a flat base.

Or if you have bases spare and it's a slottabase - snip and break off around the tab!

its a plastic model to a non-slotta base... I tried getting a knife under the foot, and ended up breaking his arms off... whoops! lol.

I would use a razor saw/jewelers saw if you have one available, I find it is the best way to remove the models from their bases. I you don't have a saw I would highly recommend one, the best tool for any converter!