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Hi all,

So as teased above with the deployment photo, I participated in a 4 player game. Two teams of 4000pts, being a total points game of 8000pts, biggest game I have played thus far.

Teams were:

LDP (Ultramarines) & Knightley (Grey Knights) VS Mad (Hive Fleet Ngaro) & Knightleys bro (Chaos Daemons)

We each had an objective in our deployment zone which if we held it at end of game was worth three points, and the oppositions was worth three points.

Each of us started with 1000pts (or so) on the table with the other 1000pts in reserve. Means we could stagger getting everything on the table or else it would have been very cluttered.

There was heaps of summoning from the daemons throughout the game, however the psychic phase wasn't a big success overall with some key powers getting blocked.

As it was a bigger game, I can't remember everything so I have done a bit of a highlights package based on some of the cooler photos I got. Enjoy!

Calgar jumping out of a perfectly good transport and sucking in the big termagant screen... sneaky gants managed to knock a few wounds of the big blue dude. However he would survive the rest of the game until turn six when the hive tyrant came and butchered him as revenge for Maccrage! Calgar tanked soooo much stuff from the Chaos/Nid army and somehow lost most amount of wounds against the gants in CC hehe.



I had a squad of six warriors in a pod. They dropped in behind the ultramarines on turn two, wreck the vehicle in front of them with deathspitter fire... then the Imperials decided to do some ACE rolling on reserves and six units came on and destroyed them, to be fair they did take the shooting of a lot of those units and I did have the cyte survive for another turn.



Meanwhile on the other side of the battle the Trygon Prime came on and took out a small squad that was harrassing the backline, then a ultramarine tact squad with grav came charging on from an outflank



And the last thing the tactical marines ever saw was this



The Tervigon was holding up the right hand side of the board and did pretty well, from memory she spawned for three turns and they were big spawns as well of 13+ each time. However due to some psychic shenanigans from the Grey Knights that we weren't able to stop there was a bunch of explosions and mind melts and all sorts of stuff and the right side started to collapse, however there would be one last stand... the latest spawn got ready to charge:



And charge they did! Pinning the Warlord to the tank for a final stand! (until the tank moved, the warlord fought back, caused more wounds and the out of synapse gants turned and ran and got cut down by said warlord... doh!)



In the end the joint forces of the marines were victorious, and they vanquished the daemons and tyranid invaders.

Was an awesome game! I would have done a few things differently if we were to do it again.

It was a pleasure to play on a table with such awesome painted armies. The marine forces are really really really well painted, and the daemons didn't let the team down either.

Oh, I also built a vehicle for the Cult of the Red Saviour...



Is magnetised so it can be a rockgrinder with the drilldozer blade etc or just a normal truck. when I get to painting it you will see all options

See you all next update!

Cool pics from the battle and a nice round up. Sounds like you had a blast! Love the pic with the Trygon about to squash some marines!

EDC

The game was a lot of fun EDC, was very brutal as well. So many units just being deleted.

Have an update on the first acolyte squad - Washes have been applied, now to bring the colours back to life and finishing them off.



Should be another couple of updates this week, a battle report from a game I had earlier in the year that I realise I haven't put up here yet, and I'm working on something for Hive Fleet Ngaro as well

Thanks for checking in.

Hi Dakka,

I have been neglecting my Hive Fleet a little in recent months, mainly because there is a Cult uprising in the works. Now that I have finished building all the models for the Cult of the Red Saviour that I have I found I had a little bit of time here and there for modelling more when I'm not painting the Cult models up, so I decided to keep going on the Hive Fleet Ngaro models... and I built this and magnetised a few options, including the wings




It was relatively straight forward and the only issue I had was on venom cannon arm when the drill bit caught and ripped out a bit more than intended... easily sorted with a bit of green stuff though.

So I have a nice hive tyrant to add to the "to be painted pile", be a while before its gets painted up though.

Thanks for checking in.

Oooh close combat beastie! gunna be awesome.

No 'obligatory' TL Devourers? Suppose since you've magnetised you can get some in the future eh? I do love some magnetising.

Looking good!

EDC

Hey EDC and Knightley....

Yeah I'm not a huge fan of the whole spam winged TL devourer tyrants, and I've done a couple of games with the lash whip and bone sword combo and found it worked rather well. Although it is hard to deny that TL devourers do some good work due to weight of fire etc.

I'm looking at playing with a winged one next game and a walking one with slightly different load outs and see how it goes.

Speaking of which, March is getting close... better see who wants a game

Hi team,

Acolyte Hybrids are coming along nicely, pretty much just need to finish off the skin, claws and a bit more work on the pistols and then they'll be ready for basing.



With a bit of luck they will be all finished and ready to show off next update!

Thanks for having a look

They are very nice, some very snazzy fellows.

Looking good.

EDC

I giggled when in my head I heard Jazz hands after I saw the left two.

They look really good btw

I really like these red genestealer hybrids. Looking great.

amazingturtles - They are pretty cool models to paint, especially for someone who is used to nids... makes a change painting a few guns and other human type equipment.

EDC - Thanks, they are getting there!

Knightley - Hah, I haven't heard jazz hands looking at these guys, I do however hear "Hi there! We were wondering if you'd heard about our Saviour" a friendly cult recruiter gets more followers I'd say

Warboss_Waaazag - Thank you, I reckon the red skin is pretty effective, although I'm planning on making it a bit pinker/fleshier on the Neophytes once I get to them.

Been very busy with another hobby of mine over the last little while.

On the weekend of 4th and 5th March there was New Zealands biggest paintball event that happened, and I attended, had an awesome time and had a go pro attached to my mask so have been making a few highlight videos instead of painting and modelling 40k stuff. Have a watch if you like, I've got two more videos I'm going to do up, then back into 40k mode!

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLX9uqlUG4dn3z48wxhcQdTP7RsfqWjyg2

Hi all,

Got a game in against Knightley yesterday and it was close and intense with it coming down to a couple of key moments towards the end, so here is a little summary:

Eternal war, Purge the alien. 11 kill points in each army.



CC tooled close combat tyrant with a gargoyle screen charged along the left flank, flying tyrant got paroxysm off a couple of times which meant the gargoyles got into combat, did some damage and the cron squad failed morale. Gargoyles weren't able to catch them, the cron squad would then weather fire from a tyrannocyte with warriors popping out. The cron squad late game had one model left, so did the warrior squad... went to charge, missed by an inch and got blown to bits in last turn. The hive tyrant, got tar pitted by scarabs as I seriously underestimated how fast they would come around the bunker. Tyrant died against scarabs and spiders that joined later game :( So left side wasn't very successful for the nids.



Carnifex could see a Ghost ark, couldn't do much against it though so ran up the left/middle, got in range of some cron warriors and started to dakka them down, the warriors then disappeared in an eternity gate, so carnifex charge ghost ark, and blew it up! Survived explosion and killed several warriors inside. However, it got lit up and tanked a fusillade of firepower from all over the cron lines and was finally dragged down late game.



Exocrine could see the monolith, but couldn't hurt it so it melted some cron biker things (great description huh?) to get first blood and a kill point. Exocrine was also involved in a pretty big gamble play from both cron and nid armies which is highlighted below. Exocrine survived the game with a couple of wounds left, perhaps my target priority was slightly off, but not much more I could have shot at to be fair. There was also a termagant screen through here which took a pounding but survived the game with a couple of survivors along with the walking warlord hive tyrant who, to be honest was rather disappointing in this game, bascially just tanking some damage and picking off a few warriors and hull points from monolith with venom cannon. Didn't help that I stuffed up last turn and didn't declare charge with him.... doh!



Over on the right flank, tervigon held it's own. Corked on first turn and spawned 8 gants which is bad for my girl, she normally does really well in spawning, but never mind it didn't hurt too bad. She came out of cover mid game and shot and charged the last three man bike squad and took it down last turn with no damage taken herself... so I guess she did her job



And this happened... Warrior blob started taking damage from dakkafex, so an eternity gate was used and the blob and lord appeared in a clump right in front of my exocrine.... PLASMA LARGE BLAST TIME! Was a big call from Knightley. He also popped a rez orb thing which meant he could re-roll re-animates. So I fired.... DIRECT HIT! 18 wounds basically.... and end result was three warriors dead :( Curse Knightley and his awesome rolls, douse the entire squad with ap2 plasma and only three go down. I've now got the terminator theme song in my head with that play.

From here venomthrope got popped along with a tyrant guard which gave a couple more kill points.

Final count: Nids: 5 - First blood, line breaker, 3 kill points. Crons: 6 - Line breaker, 5 kill points

Crons win, but such a tight game it came down to a few rolls last turn.

Thanks Knightley, look forward to the next rumble!

Yeah the re-rolls from a res orb can be a pain to deal with, I always forget how durable Necrons are...

EDC

Thanks for the Game Mad! so close and you were up a KP right up till turn 4.

I was totally shocked at how well the rolls went for the blob kill you tried, re-rollable reanimate saves were on fire, absolute fire!

Looking forward to next months game

Yes EDC the Necrons are pretty durable, you have to kill everything a few times before it doesn't get back up

I too am looking forward to next months game Knightley... I'm toying with the idea of bringing along some GS Cult allies to see how they play... but we will see, perhaps that will be the winter games in June.

Evening all,

Nice update tonight, I finally finished the acolyte squad! Woohoo.

I'm pretty happy with how they turned out, I had a couple of issues with the flesh but managed to keep them close enough to the rest of the Cult so that's ok also sussed out the colour I'm going to go with on the minig suit/armour pieces. Also found some coloured rocks at a craft store which I though would be a cool addition to the bases of the Cult so this is the first squad to get the minerals added, hard to see in the photo but it looks pretty cool



One thing I am debating in my head is what main colour to make the vehicles when I get to them? Do I paint them red with blue trimming etc to mimic the patriarch? Or do I do them blue base?

Let me know what you think might work

Thanks for taking the time to read.

Hi everyone,

So after completing the acolyte hybrids above I went to go start a new squad and remembered that they were the last of my primed models.

This meant it was time to experiment with the air brush I purchased late last year to try and help speed up the painting process through priming and base coating using the air brush.

I got the air brush set up, turned on with paint in it and pressed down... air came out but no paint... hmmmmm, so after a few minutes of trying to work this out I remembered Knightley pushing down and pulling back when he gave me the tutorial, and lo and behold paint started flowing!

I'm no expert by any stretch haha, but I did get the hang of it and started priming a whole bunch of stuff:



In that picture is most of the Cult models, a bunch of termagants, a mucolid, Carnifex, and hive tyrant along with some magnetised bits. Along with priming black I also did some night blue base coats on the skin of the Tyranid models.

Happy with how it all went overall and looking forward to bashing out a bunch more stuff with the air brush, and I've got more stuff to paint again hooray!

Cheers.

Looking good, and ahhh, i remember this joys of learning to Air Brush, you'll get it

Go go gadget airbrush!

EDC

Right on! Airbrushes terrify me, but they should not.

Heh, I figure using the air brush for priming and base coating will do two things, a) speed that part of process up and b) it's just priming and base coats so if I do stuff something up during my learning phase then it's not such a big deal.

I'm sure I'll be a little more "fearful" if I ever try to do smaller stuff, but that's a while away yet.

Hi all,

I pulled the gargoyle unit out to glue them to their flying stands as I'm going to pop some magnetic sheet to the bottom and store them standing up on a piece of metal, way easier than trying to get foam that will fit them. In the box with them was an unpainted mucolid, so I thought I'd paint it up to keep practiced in my Ngaro fleet paint scheme as I've been focusing more on the cult recently.

I didn't put the side tentacles on the tyrannocyte when I built it so I could use them to build a mucolid, which I managed to pull off.

Have laid down basecoats, started highlighting skin and tentacles, coming along nicely. I aim to have this finished really quick as it isn't a difficult model to paint and I have a game coming up which I'd like to throw it on the table for to see what it can do. Str 8 ap3 large blast when it pops could be entertaining, and if it gets taken down then oh well, 15 points.



I've also done a white top down spray over the cult models I primed black the other day, so they have had their two colour prime and are ready for production, I think I am going to go with red as the primary colour for the Goliath and Leman Russ, with blue trimming and purple/gold genestealer symbols. Although knowing me I'll change my mind again over easter haha.

Hi everyone,

Hope you had a nice easter break, I know mine was pretty good. Got out to play some paintball and also got a bunch of 40k stuff done, one of those things was completing the Mucolid.



Sorry about the sideways picture, not sure what happened there.

I'm going to give this floating bomb a go in the next game I play as I haven't tried them before so figure why not? Next up I'm going to move onto another acolyte hybrid squad for the cult.

Thanks for checking in.

love the almost wet feel it has, like im looking at the chest bursters from Alien

Hi all,

Master Azalle - Thanks for the feedback, it is the look I am going for on the skin of my hive fleet so I'm glad to hear it is working

Update time... I've laid down all the base colours on the second Acolyte squad and they have now had a wash and are ready for highlights and details to be done:



There has also been more expansion to both Hive Fleet Ngaro and the Cult of the Red Saviour:



So I got the Armoured claw box for the cult and a brood box for the hive fleet. My plan on the brood box is to make the big creature magnetised so it can be used as a Tyrannofex or a second Tervigon if I'm going for a swarm army, the little guys will just be fleshborer termagants because I need a few more. This brood box brings my total number of gants/gaunts to 100 models which is a bit of a milestone I guess hehe.

The sprue in the picture is a carnifex which I got for a very cheap deal along with the lictor, the random model there is an old metal tyranid model that has lost it's head that the seller threw into the box. I believe it's an old school hive tyrant, so I'm going to kit bash a new head for it and get it looking sweet again

Also played an awesome game against Knightley yesterday... I'll do up a battle summary and post it up in the next day or two.

Thanks for checking in.

1500pt Battle summary.

Hive fleet Ngaro:

Flying hive tyrant
Walking hive tyrant in tyrannocyte
Venomthrope
Living artillery node
Tervigon and 30 babies
Genestealer brood
Mucolid
Carnifex

Knightley’s Tau:

Commander with 3x Broadside squad
Pathfinder squad with markerlights
Gun drone squad x2
Kroot squads x2
Hammerhead tank
Riptide suit
Crisis battlesuit squad

“Contact lost” Maelstrom game, dawn of war deployment, one TO per objective held each turn.



Hive fleet Ngaro deployed on the lighter cover side of the table, only had four pieces of terrain on my side due to the vagaries of the dice and one was outside deployment zone. The Tau had eight or nine terrain pieces and three objectives within deployment, perfect for setting up a gunline J

Genestealers in ruins to hold objective two, Exocrine and warriors nearby, then in the middle I had the biovores right up against the imperial bastion with the flying hive tyrant standing behind, then out to the left I had the Tervigon, her babies along with a venomthrope and carnifex to hold left and objective one. Objective four was pretty much in the middle of the table in the open, so had my eyes on it.

Knightley deployed his Tau with drone squads backed by a riptide (sitting on objective) opposite the genestealers and exocrine, in the middle there were pathfinders with markerlights with a bunch of kroot (sitting on objective) out in front meat shielding. Out on his right flank there was a hammerhead (on objective) and a bunch of Broadsides with commander looking at pretty much the whole board with scary firepower.

With deployment done it was time for Knightley to see if he seized initiative… and he did… uh oh, here comes some pain!

Tau fired a lot into the broods, and I only lost a biovore outright, but took numerous wounds on some of my bigger bugs, and the flying hive tyrant was down to 2 wounds before being even able to take off into the air. He also pushed up with kroot and drone squads.

My first turn was mixed. My biovores obliterated most of the pathfinder/markerlight squad… there was only two left when they finished getting bombed, who then went running. Exocrine melted a bunch of gun drones and the one remaining model ran off when it’s self-preservation chip kicked in. The hive tyrant took off, cast catalyst on itself and exocrine, and then promptly periled crashing to the ground and stood up on one wound awaiting the turn two deletion, however tyrant did shoot down the second drone squad… all of them. The army as a whole moved forward and got into whatever cover they could and the big termagant blob moved towards objective four in the middle of the table.

The first turn pretty much set the tone for the game, it was awesome fun with a lot of stuff happening and a lot of units being decimated or completely removed. The tau reserves were a squad of kroot which snuck on to the right to try and take out the genestealers camping on objective, the kroot took out 4 out of 5 genestealers with gunfire, and promptly lost a whole bunch of their squad when biovores dropped off a welcome present, the survivors managed to crawl into cover, shoot down the last genestealer and hold on until they were dug out by and angry exocrine… the exocrine was angry because the riptide ran away from it after it took out the shield drones, although the riptide running may have had something to do with the close combat armed hive tyrant landing next to it in a tyrannocyte haha

The other Tau reserves were crisis suits, which appeared next to objective four to score some points for Tau, in front of a crawling mass of termagants with a tervigon spawning more. They scored the point, tried thinning the herd out a bit and then tried backing out… however they were caught by a brood of spawned termagants who managed to charge into them and dispatched the suits over a couple of rounds of combat… it is so weird being able to hit on 3s with Gants in CC hehe. The heroic gant brood (now five strong) then lined up and charged the broadside/commander unit that had been softened up by the biovores, only to have the riptide finish off the last two models in “supporting fire” overwatch, dam Tau and their shooting.



Special mention for the Mucolid purely because this was its maiden game for me. It came deep striking on and was on track to land in a very good place (from tyranid perspective) so Knightley fired interceptor from broadsides… and killed it on the way down aww L . However, that 15 point model basically took out a turn of shooting from the broadsides that the rest of the army now didn’t have to weather. Similar the Tyrannocyte delivered the hive tyrant and then held an objective that the riptide had been camped on also absorbed a bunch of fire before getting taken down… I believe between these two floating annoyances they saved a lot of trouble for the rest of the army, so I’m pretty happy overall.

What else happened? Well, the three strong warrior brood managed to survive with one model hiding in LOS blocking terrain to hold up the synapse web for the exocrine to keep working at peak efficiency, the last warrior tanked a lot getting to where it did in the end but saved like a champ. The walking hive tyrant ended up holding an objective for a turn and then left cover to try charge the remaining tau line, but fell short in the charge and got turned into Ichor by the tau suits the following turn, Knightley really really wanted it dead for some reason. Carnifex and hammerhead were playing a bit of peak a boo on the left hand side, but eventually the carnifex and the venomthrope got taken down, objective one out on my left was resolutely held by one last termagant that had seen it’s broodmates systematically blown to bits by smart missile systems. Mumma Tervigon was close by to offer encouragement to the lone survivor.

The game ended on turn six Knightley still had a mostly unscathed riptide, the broadside/commander squad, the hammerhead and a few scattered kroot left. The hive fleet had a few termagants, a mostly healthy tervigon, two biovores, and the limping warrior and exocrine.



Tau scored:

Slay the warlord
11 maelstrom victory points

Tyranids scored:

Firstblood
10 maelstrom victory points

BUT WAIT! My warlord trait was Master of fate that allowed me to reroll D3 victory cards, my original roll was a one (reroll time!), so on a roll of a one Tau win, on a two we draw, on a three nids win... dice rolled and it was two points. So we ended in a well fought to the bitter end draw. 12-12

Hive mind thoughts and learnings

MVP units would have to be the biovores first and foremost, they more than made their points back plus some and they could have done even more if the scatter hadn’t knocked one down in opening tau salvo. Other strong contender was the tervigon (again) she held down the left flank, spawned pretty well, and the baby broods took care of the crisis suits and held objectives to the last. Mumma tervigon herself also made a last gasp dash to claim objective four and get some victory points right at the end as well. Good running big mumma.

Key learnings for me from this game was:
a) Spread objectives out a bit more… when we were allocating them I wasn’t really thinking about sides at all, and I ended up plonking three objectives in terrain because that’s cool…. Ended up being Tau deployment zone so gave them easy objectives.
b) Deploy with losing first turn in mind. Yeah I can’t control Knightley seizing first turn off me, however where I set my flying hive tyrant up was ok, except I was too far back from the terrain and could be seen by most of Tau army, in hindsight if I set tyrant up right up behind biovores she would have been safer, then would have been able to take off next turn and would have done some damage. Similar with the warriors, as they ended up exposed and lost 2/3 while they scattered to get into the cover.
c) Riptides can move fast!
d) Ties in with c) a little bit, I dropped the CC hive tyrant next to riptide, which scared it off but left the tyrant stranded as I didn’t realise how fast it moved, means the tyrant had to leave cover and try get a 10” charge to reach the kroot. In hindsight I should have perhaps dropped it on left hand side which would have had similar effect in gaining control of an objective, but would have put me in range of more units for charging etc.
e) Occasionally the random thoughts turn to gold. When rolling for warlord trait I decided to have a go at the tactical table due to the fact we were playing maelstrom, I got the re roll one which in the end was key in not losing the game and could have snuck a win!

Thanks Knightley for the awesome game, look forward to May’s dust up.

It was a really great battle, love the batrep btw!