Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Looks like such an agressive list for such a small point game. I can never fly my ST on with a dread, it always gets shot down!

I'm not sold on the plasma cannons personally. A single blast shot means that realistically, you're only hitting 1 or 2 models. And gets hot is always a worry when you have dice like mine >.<

Excellent work on the dread. That looks like a fun list

I did warn him I was going to play a much more aggressive list this time. When we were setting up the game, he reminded me that he’d have to bail at 8, so I told him:

OK, I’ll bring a very aggressive list. None of this shuffling around looking for a clear shot. We’ll see how many bodies we can pile up in two hours!

His response: Hell yeah! Blood for the blood god!

I know in his small list last week he had at least one meltagun and likes to give everyone as much wargear as they can carry (including meltabombs), so he would have some AV. Plus he was adding the terminators and some other stuff. I forgot that chaos termis don’t come with powerfists. The other nice thing about drop dreads is it made my turns very fast, with not a lot of guys to move or fire. Which was good, as he had a larger army this week.

I was actually worried that he might table me after the initial drop. 2 pods, 2 dreads, and a LSS of scouts is not a lot of presence on the battlefield. Running the fully loaded SR was me just larking about. I know he’s a new player, so I could pull the crazy without much fear. But having that much of my army in reserves was not something I normally do; I traditionally advocate running SRs empty as pure gunboats. But we couldn’t have that 4th dread walk, now could we?

The Gets Hot! doesn’t bother me as much as my scatter die. While it worked for me today with the plasma, I did shoot a frag missile at the packed terminators and watched it zoom off into nowhere. I even prefaced the shot with “I always regret every frag I shoot, but I’m going to use one now.” One of these days I’ll stop trying. Of course, I’ve been saying that for years. There are often plenty of opportunities to get guys under the template; I’ve only seen one guy even attempt to maintain max coherency, and that was in a tournament setting. It’s just my scatter die hates being on target.

It’s been a while since I fielded a PC on foot. I’m not opposed to them. Just the style of lists I’ve been building lately. I think the last time they hit the table was vs. nids, and I recall scattering and blowing up one of my bikes. The plasma biker. Dangerous stuff.

I tend to have insanely good luck with scatter dice; last week I played an all-Drop BA list and every unit landed dead on target! I still lost, though, thanks to a Thunderwolf Lord murderising half my army!

Plasma, on the other hand, I have dice that hate me. I'm convinced that under the Gets Hot entry in the rulebook, it has in invisible ink 'probability be damned, this will happen at least 50% of the time'.

So I promised yesterday to do a brief review of the new KR stuff I got. First, the accessory case:

I added it to push me over to free shipping. Not sure I’d pay the $22 for it otherwise, but considering what I saved in shipping, it was well worth it. My main concern was that it would be big enough to hold the templates, as they are a little oddly shaped. No problem. I’m debating just storing my dice loose in it, but I like the brick. If the brick is full at the end of the night, I know I have all my dice. I might have preferred it with a hinge, rather then separating, but this way it works well if you need a dice tray to roll in.

This is a table of foam trays:

This is a shelf full of miniatures:

This is what they look like together:


I was a little surprised it all fit. Well, the marines. I didn’t have room for any of the Eldar foot troops. But frankly, I’m never going to take everything off the shelf for any practical reason. There is a little space left. I’ve got 7 spare rhino slots, two dreads, and 19 more infantry. Now I’ve got 12 troops and a razor primed, so some of that space is spoken for. My old lead LS should also be in a different slot, probably one of the dread or rhino ones. He’s a lot smaller then the new kits, and glued to his base.

On a technical KR note: They recently introduced some new trays to fit the 32mm bases. If you don’t know where to look, you might miss them. Right now they are in the BA, not the vanilla marine section. The walls are thinner, but you can fit the same number of minis in a SM57/58 as you can in a N3/4H. It’s custom foam, so more expensive then getting the normal trays, but if you are already paying for a case full of custom, you might as well get the roomier trays.


Figuring out what size trays will fit can be a little tricky. You will note the trays get thicker as they go back. 1/4 up front, then 1/3, 1/2, 2/3, 3/4 and finally full depth. With the exception of the SR tray, they are all half width. For the most part I use a lot of the 1/2 depth trays, but some things like the LR require the 2/3s deep trays. I would have preferred to keep everything in quarters, rather then thirds, but the infantry like the extra elbow room, even if it means I need to double-check the depth of the tray before packing. If I was willing to spend a little extra, it might have been worth color coding the fractions, with the 1/4s in blue and the 1/3rds in red (or something)

Looks good, I'm thinking of investing in some so its interesting to see.

That's a lot of foam! The way I see it, you need 6 more Rhino chassis vehicles, 2 more dreads and 7 more infantry to get the most out of your foam.
With that, you could run a mean 6 dread list. And have a fleet of Preds and/or vindicators.

It must be nice to have somewhere to actually pack up your minis. When I move out in a month or so, I'm going to struggle to pack everything up nicely. Only have a restricted amount of foam, and at the minute 70% of it occupies my Scars. Not sure what I'm going to do about my >1000 points of IFs, or 6k of WoC. However, I can assure you that they wont be thrown into a backpack

 RandyMcStab wrote:
Looks good, I'm thinking of investing in some so its interesting to see.

Last week would have been the week for it. They were running a buy one, get one free sale on the new sized cases. here is the post where I first got my new case and did a review. The quick sum up is I love the boxes, foam, and modularity of the who thing. My one major issue is the inefficient layout of the pockets on the Kaiser 3 case I bought. I feel I got a good value for my hobby dollar. All told I spend a bit over $375 for what you see on the table there. That’s what I shelled out, but one of those big boxes full of foam was part of the BOGO sale, and prices have gone up slightly since I made my initial purchase. Picking up all that new, no discount/sale would probably be closer to $500. I still think it was a good investment.

The other issue I have, and noticed Wednesday, was the weight. Fully loaded, that bag is on the hefty side. Just dragging it from the car to the store wasn’t too bad, but if I was going to travel more, a combination of smaller bags, or one of the larger wheeled models might have been a better choice.

Enjoy your weekends all!


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Zambro wrote:
That's a lot of foam! The way I see it, you need 6 more Rhino chassis vehicles, 2 more dreads and 7 more infantry to get the most out of your foam.
With that, you could run a mean 6 dread list. And have a fleet of Preds and/or vindicators.

It must be nice to have somewhere to actually pack up your minis. When I move out in a month or so, I'm going to struggle to pack everything up nicely. Only have a restricted amount of foam, and at the minute 70% of it occupies my Scars. Not sure what I'm going to do about my >1000 points of IFs, or 6k of WoC. However, I can assure you that they wont be thrown into a backpack

Why is it people always reply when I’m in the middle of typing?

If you are looking for a temporary moving solution, simple boxes lined with towels can work in a pinch. Other thoughts are to move in waves if possible. If there is an empty shelf at your destination, you could move half now, and the rest later. Or just use it as an excuse to get foam for everyone!

While I have enough foam for my Ultramarines, they are just a small fraction of the minis in my collection. When I (eventually, hopefully) move into the Next House, it’s going to be a herculean ordeal to get them all to the new place.

I probably have enough unbuilt marines on sprue to fill up the space. Scratch that, defiantly more. I could always use more rhino chassis though. I’ve had my eye on a vindi or one of the AA tanks. Probably my next marine purchase. Assuming I buy something before the next codex (rumored late summer), which is unlikely. And if they come out with a new dread kit for vanilla marines, I’m a sucker and will snatch it up.

what set comes with those leg plates?
that is one handsome dread

 LordRahl wrote:
what set comes with those leg plates?
that is one handsome dread

Thanks! The legs on the venerable dread are one of the stock options in the kit. While there is a chance some odd grubbins got glued on, he’s mostly 100% out of the box. Of course, there are a lot of options in the box, including other leg plates. Here is all the stuff I didn’t use:

Woah that's a lot of models. Seeing them on those shelves is one thing but all laid up on the table in the foam trays makes it look like an unending horde of minis. An exceptional unending horde of minis though.

How big is the table under all of that foam just out of interest?

Yah, sometimes I forget how many I have. I should doublecheck my model count one of these days. While they were still all laid out would have been a good time, but they are already back on the shelves.

That’s a 4x8 table. A little bit bigger then the standard table these days, but the norm from back when I played WHFB. I got it for free when one of my FLGS closed. Well, I had to rent a truck to get it home, but that was still cheeper then all the lumber and work to build one.

I spent the day reading and mulling over the new Eldar codex. I’m not sure how I feel about it. The new detatchment is very nice, but I’m not sure if I want to buy into it. Key word being “buy” Now, I technically could get by with just another box of windriders. Not a big deal. But they changed the way warlocks work. They are bought as unit upgrades for squads, and/or as a seer council. The problem with the council is that the ML is dependent on how many are in the squad. You can technically run it with just one, but that seems very risky. They are not characters. So if I wanted to run a seer council on bikes (required for the detachment) I’d probably want to run it as a 4 man squad, for ML 2 and some extra bodies. But that’s 200 points and $130. If I wanted to greenstuff on some rune armor and witchblades I could get the dollar value down, but odds of me making it look good are low. So I think for the near future (and probably far) I’m going to stick with the CAD.

Some of the sub-formations look nice, and offer some hefty bonuses, but with a rather high and spammy buy in cost. The Crimson Death is a good example. Field 3 crimson hunters, and you basically get a 4+ cover save without jinking. If you actually jink, you get to re-roll it. That’s pretty much going to guarantee you air superiority. But you need 3 of the buggers and 420 points of your list dedicated to flying stuff. As I only own one, this is a non-starter for me.

I guess one of my major problems with the new dex is that is promotes spamming. Field 3 CHs? Awesome bonuses! 3 Falcons? zero risk precision deep strike! Wraithhost formation? Battlefocus and extended spritseer accuracy! 3 aspect squads? +1 WS/BS for them, and re-rolls on Ld tests! I think a lot of the individual units are fine as-is, why to we need these heinous formation bonuses? I would feel dirty using them. I can understand giving bonuses to sub-par units taken for fluffy reasons, but this is not that. The individual units are balanced really well. Some, like the new bikes and the WK are a little overpowered. But I don’t need to take heavy weapons on ever bike, and have no plans to pick up a WK. So I can play this codex in a reasonable fashion.

So how will this affect my collecting, playing, and painting? Not a whole lot. I suspect I may pick up another squad of bikes just for the option of the new detachment. I’d need a new bike farseer as well. I’m not opposed to this, as I like the models. Might happen. With the new falcon formation I’m tempted to get a third. This would open up a world of shenanigans that would taint my filthy soul. As I love the damn things, this is also tempting. I have my eye on another grav tank anyway, but was thinking of a fire prism. Might be worth seeing if I could grab a spare turret from e-bay or a bitz seller. Getting my army fit for one of the ground based formations is not going to happen, No artillery, and I hate the way the war-walkers look. If I built all the guys on the sprues I could manage the 3 squads of defenders though. I keep getting tempted by the aspect warriors, but the finecast stays my hand. I do covet a squad of scorpions though. I was considering getting a squad of wraithguard, but would feel bad fielding them now. The fact that the seer no longer makes them a troop pick also hampers them. And my poor staff wielding guy. A unit of wraths were his best change of hitting the table. I suspect he might get used as a counts-as Eldrad. Or just the ever popular looking good on the shelf option.

In summery, not a whole lot is going to change on the Eldar front. The stuff that I should be doing makes me feel skeevy inside, so I’ll probably just stick with the old stuff. There are units I’d like to grab, but outside a new bike squad or HQ, that’s not going to happen unless we get some new plastics. Also, I’d like to apologize for this rambling wall of text, as the martini I fixed has hit me a little harder then expected, and I am currently quite drunk. In a cheerful way, and not my normal sleepy drunk self. But I did feel that I needed to put down my thoughts on the new codex for all my faithful readers.

Also, Fast and Furious seems to have won for next month’s painting comp, so expect to see the jetbike autrach get some paint. Assuming I don’t rip him apart to make a new one out of an old banshee I have hanging out. The new masks are quite nice. I do have a spare bike kicking about, so I could just use that...

Cheers!

Interesting thoughts Nev, even if they are alcohol-fueled. I guess I'll hold my judgement on the new dex until I start facing armies built with it.

 Gitsplitta wrote:
Interesting thoughts Nev, even if they are alcohol-fueled. I guess I'll hold my judgement on the new dex until I start facing armies built with it.

40k is easy to break, it doesn’t mater what codex you are using. With marines you can bring a fluffy TAC or a grav-spam death star. Eldar are no different. They just are easier to break, and can be more broken without having to resort to allied forces or other external shenanigans. But every time you agree to play a game, you enter into a (normally unspoken, sometimes negotiated) contract with your opponent. How many points? What sized table? How much terrain? Tournament or fun lists? D? LoW? How many sources/detachments? FW? Eldar were already pushing a lot of the hot buttons for what/how people wanted to play. The new book just adds a few more things you need to hammer out with your opponent before you start.

I’m a fluffy bunny kinda guy. My goal is to have fun, and for my opponent to have fun as well. I am fully capable of playing a meaner game, and getting more wins. If all I wanted was a higher win tally, I’d get the latest hotness, paint it up, and go kick ass. I don’t. I play my generic TAC marine lists, interspersed with wacky theme lists, some of which are effective. My Eldar pose more of a problem. By their very nature they are more competitive and lethal. It would be very easy for me to slip into some murder death kill list and roflstomp the guys at the FLGS. All it would take would be a bookkeeping note and my units would get better. If I’m already fielding a unit of fire dragons, swooping hawks and dire avengers, why not BS5? My cost is separating them out of the CAD, so the DAs loose ObSec, but I’ve got bikes for that. And it’s well worth it for the accuracy boost.

If I know I’m going to be playing someone who has a higher base line of competitiveness then normal, I might re-jigger things to get the free power available. But pulling out all the stops when playing against the casual crew at the FLGS who are sporting out of date codexes and fluffy lists is just kicking puppies. Wave serpents got a good solid nerf, but are still very playable. Almost every other unit got better by themselves, and if they take advantage of the new formations can turn it up to 11.

Yeah, I'd heard that. No doubt they can be as good as the player wants them to be. Question is, can you tone them down enough to be a fun & challenging game for both you and your fluffy, mid-level dex opponent? Time will tell.

 Gitsplitta wrote:
Yeah, I'd heard that. No doubt they can be as good as the player wants them to be. Question is, can you tone them down enough to be a fun & challenging game for both you and your fluffy, mid-level dex opponent? Time will tell.

I think just sticking with the CAD will get you strong, but not broken lists. Taking advantage of the formations is where all the power is. That and the wraithknight. The rest of the wraiths should be fine. They are expensive and short ranged. And for 90% of the things out there, there is not a whole lot of difference between a unit full of S10 and SD. You are going to explode and die anyway. And of the 10% that can tell the difference, a sizable chunk of them get labeled as dairy products themselves. If Eldar players want to play friendly games, they are going to have to be careful to tailor to the level of their opponent. If you touch the throttle just a hair, this book gets crazy fast.

On to painting progress:
The meltabombers are getting almost done. They should have all their washes at this point, so need the touch up pass, a few details picked out, and then the final blue coat and wash.


I guess I also have to do their arms and packs, which I haven’t started. But having the bodies will let me get some meltabombs WYSWYG on the table.

Interesting to hear your thoughts on the New Eldar book, odd they seem so bent when most of the recent books have been very sober affairs.

Melta guys are coming on nicely..

 RandyMcStab wrote:
Interesting to hear your thoughts on the New Eldar book, odd they seem so bent when most of the recent books have been very sober affairs.

Melta guys are coming on nicely..

I have no idea where GW’s head is on balance. Some days they can make reasonable books, other days: Eldar.

Almost done with the mad bomber brothers:


Need to do the bases and then see if I missed anything a/o need to do touch-ups. I also finished the tank hatch, but forgot to grab a pic of it. I probably should, just so when I go back through this thread looking for what I’ve done, there is a pic to remind me.

Zipped up to the FLGS during the day today to grab some stuff. Just the new WD and a jetseer:

$33 bucks for that guy seems a bit rough. I’d not want to put together a seer council at that price. But it would cost me more to get another seer on foot and bike to kitbash together, so I guess it’s OK. WD is for the assassin rules. And I guess to read. I’ve got an old vindicare that might see the table now.


Bike is just tacked together for a size comparison for now. I’d actually started to clean and glue it. But I wanted to make sure the new bikes would fit into my KR trays, and they do.


This makes me very happy. I’ve ordered a box of the new bikes from my FLGS. Which should finish up my store credit there. I’ll break down where it all went once it’s gone.

Paint progress:

Behold the majesty of the painted tank hatch. Sexy, isn’t it? OK, maybe not, but it’s done and needed the final pic. The mad bombers will get their’s once I finish all their parts. I did finish the bases on them, so they are fieldable if needed. I also put some paint on the MM and TLLC for the dread. I figure if I don’t at least attempt to keep up with the swap parts, I’ll get buried.

Those size comparison pics are very helpful. I'm sure there are people out there with old models wondering what the size difference is. Also the shot of the both in the KR foam would be helpful to people.

Those assassin model's are great. The one with the rifle is my favourite!

With a few minor quibbles, I like the new assassins. But I’m not shelling out the cash for the game. I might pick up one or two if they release them separately. Maybe not, depending on how they price them. $4 for the WD for the rules seemed a good deal though.

The bike is going together well. All the parts are cleaned, and partially assembled. Waiting for everything to cure and solidify well before I take a drill to it for magnets. I’m not sure how much I’m going to make swappable. Head defiantly. Farseer or Warlock. Not sure if it’s worth being able to swap between a witchblade and a singing spear. Might just make him with a sword, as the other guy has a spear. The arm sockets are fairly deep, but a little loose for just a push-fit. If I drop a little bit of poster tack in there, the arms might stay without the need for

I did a quick count of empty slots in the Eldar trays. I have space for one more falcon and 6 bikes. As I’m going to pick up 3 of the new ones, that leaves me with 3 bike spaces left. I think I’ll leave them for now, hoping for plastic shining spears. Optimistic, I know. I’m torn on the falcon hull. Probably get a prism, but time will tell. It’s not going to happen any time soon at this point.

When I did the headswap magnets for my old jetseer, I had a lot of trouble fitting a 2mm magnet into the neck on the heads. With a part that small, you don’t really need the 2 magnet strength, so this time I just sunk a length of paperclip in there.



Holds good, and much easier.

And here he is ready for action:


The spear is just push-fir in there. A little wobbly, but serviceable. One nice thing is that the rider fits flush to the bike, with little divots cut out of the inside of his robe to hold tight to the bike. I can just pop him off for painting. The chin gun is just tacked on ATM. Not sure if I need to leave it off for painting. I could probably get a brush in everywhere I need it. I also need to put together a new flight stand for him, he’s borrowing one right now, but has his magnet. They changed the clear sticks. It’s now a ball top, fitting into a socket on the bottom of the bike. If you were glueing them in, it would make it very easy to have dynamic, swooping poses. For me it meant a ball of greenstuff dropped into a concave divot, and some work to get the magnet mounted. The old bikes just got a 2mm shoved into the peg hole.

I like the new bike & rider... very nice indeed.

The niceness of the new bike and rider is makeing it hard to go back and assemble the old guys. They just seem a little shabby compared to the new guys. I meant to do them today, but decided to procrastinate and tidy up my workbench instead. Classic delaying tactics. The viper is also looking like it wants to be done before the windriders. But I should try to buckle down and do them before I get the new bike kit, or. They will be hopeless.

But right now I'm grilling some chicken and drinking a mint julip in honour of Derby Day. Hold the mint, hold the simple syrup. Beautiful day out; I should be priming.

Hope everyone is enjoying their weekend.

OK, I’m a little more dead inside then when I started my day. I hate cleaning mold lines off of Eldar. Particularly ones sculpted in ’94. Soul crushing, repetitive, work. And my hand is sore as hell. But here we are:


Finished the darn buggers.

I also got out the Viper to do some work on it. It’s new, only made in ’96. I, being the pack rat that I am, still have my instruction (and 2nd ed rules) from the first one I put together. Probably around ’96

I decided to pause it for a little but though. I want to magnetize the chin guns, as well as the main one, and thought that the new bikes might offer a part that would work well. So I’m going to wait for the next supply drop before continuing.

Moar speed! Gooooo!


Still have the jetbikes to clean for those bikers? That was the thing that tended to get to me about doing bikers, significantly more model to work with but you still usually want quite a few.

 GrimDork wrote:
That was the thing that tended to get to me about doing bikers, significantly more model to work with but you still usually want quite a few.

Agreed.
Although my biker units were only 5 models, it felt like painting almost 10 marines (actually painting 5 marines, and then doing their bikes...)

How many vypers do you have / plan to run? They're a fun choice, so hopefully you'll avoid all the scorn for Eldar if you put a few of them down I just spend a few mins trying to workout whether they are on par with Land Speeders, or a little bit better? I'm leaning towards a bit better. I mean, they have more weapon choices, and their weapon choices actually pair nicely.

Z

GrimDork wrote:Moar speed! Gooooo!

Still have the jetbikes to clean for those bikers? That was the thing that tended to get to me about doing bikers, significantly more model to work with but you still usually want quite a few.

The bikes are already cleaned and primed. I was just putting off the riders because, well, just look at them! I do still have one whole bike/rider on the sprue, who I’m not sure what to do with. He can stay there until I get some games under my belt.

Zambro wrote:

 GrimDork wrote:
That was the thing that tended to get to me about doing bikers, significantly more model to work with but you still usually want quite a few.

Agreed.
Although my biker units were only 5 models, it felt like painting almost 10 marines (actually painting 5 marines, and then doing their bikes...)

How many vypers do you have / plan to run? They're a fun choice, so hopefully you'll avoid all the scorn for Eldar if you put a few of them down I just spend a few mins trying to workout whether they are on par with Land Speeders, or a little bit better? I'm leaning towards a bit better. I mean, they have more weapon choices, and their weapon choices actually pair nicely.

Z

Fully agree that bikes are a lot of work. That’s why I count them as two models for my 1-a-week goal. I remember at the end of my marine bike project the tedium just grinding them out. At least these guys are smaller.

I own two vipers, one my old one, with the guns glued on, and one still on the sprue from when I picked up the Eldar battleforce at the start of this blog. They are a little more fragile then speeders, being open topped. And if you want to utilize the chin gun, you need to get in close (12” for catapults, 24” for the cannons) and unlike jetbikes, can’t pull JSJ shenanigans, being just a fast skimmer. AV10 means that small arms can bring you down. While you can raise survivability by taking vehicle upgrades, that’s going to boost their point cost fast so not worth it IMHO. I suspect I’ll end up running them as a pair with duel cannons each. That’s a good chunk of dakka for 100 points. If I’m just running a singleton, I suspect I’ll leave the catapults basic and take a brightlance for the gunner. Spend the game flitting about my backfield taking pot shots. Some will depend on my overall army composition.

 Nevelon wrote:

GrimDork wrote:Fully agree that bikes are a lot of work. That’s why I count them as two models for my 1-a-week goal. I remember at the end of my marine bike project the tedium just grinding them out. At least these guys are smaller.

I forgot that you count them as 2
Doing my bikes was terrible... I'd prime and base white. Then I'd paint the engine block black, then silver. That black then silver step used to kill me! So tedious