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 Zambro wrote:
Looks awesome, Nev! I'm not sure on Eldar at the moment, what will you likely run it as? NSpinner or Prism?

Prism is probably going to be it’s primary build. With 40k these days, I find you can never have too much AV firepower. Plenty of things can just mulch troops. I like that the prism has the single lance shot to pop tanks, but if needed can also pie plate squishier things.

I like the nightspinner. It’s really good at it’s job. But it’s a job that is not as needed these days.

How i've not subbed to this thread yet, IDK.
That's a beautiful FP right there Nevelon, if that's my Dec. Challenge competition, i'm in for some trouble!

Looks great Nev. I love the grav tank models and you're doing it justice so far.

They don’t call them “Fast Skimmers” for nothing. It’s amazing how fast tanks go together when you don’t need to chant hymns before tightening each bolt and light incense to purify each armor plate. Silly Mon-key AdMech. Or it might just be that the old sculpt is light on detail, and not encrusted in bling like the imperial tanks. Must be why the techmarines can’t repair them; "If it’s not baroque, don’t fix it”

The nightspinner bits are all silvered up and waiting for a detail pass. I tried the soulstone blue on them, but it came across as thick and blotchy, so I rinsed it off. Might just do a more traditional glaze.

And then get to work on the techmarine.

Looks great Nev and wow what a record turnaround time!

Marine Devastators worked out very well! Then from blue we get hit with that red! Like Halo:Red vs Blue

@JustaerinAtTheWall: sorry I forgot to comment, but welcome aboard. And don’t worry about what other people are doing for the comp. If I let that phase me, I’d never enter. I think the best I’ve ever placed was somewhere in the middle of the pack.

I think I’ve done a much better job this year mixing up the Ultramarines and Eldar. But the red ones tend to strike out of the blue. Although looking back at last year’s year end pic, I did a reasonable job mixing things up there. 2014 was just a pile of blue though. And 2016 needs to end. Not just because it’s been a horrid dumpster fire of a year, but I’m almost out of space on my YTD shelf.


The prism also bring my Eldar to a fun little point. I can field everything on that top shelf in two formations, the one from the SC box and an aspect host.

Fine looking armies.

What are the bonuses from the SC box formation?

 ColonelFazackerley wrote:
Fine looking armies.

What are the bonuses from the SC box formation?

Eldar Runeweaver Host:

1 Farseer (needs to be on bike)
1 unit of Windriders
1 Fire Prism

The Prism’s weapons have the twin linked rule when targeting things that the formation’s farseer has LOS to.

As far as formations go, I like it. It gives you a nice upgrade as a perk for taking units that are considered a little sub-par (the FP). It’s not over the top free stuff, or game breaking special snowflake rules. Most of the “costs” are opportunity ones. I.e. the bikes here are not ObSec, as they are not part of a CAD.

Lovely army shot dude!

It’s Monday, and I was planning on heading down to the FLGS for a game tonight. But we have 3ish inches of snow on the ground, and it’s still falling. So I might have to scrub my evening plans. I’ll have to check the forecast. I thought I had snapped a pic while they were all ranked up for a pack shot, but didn’t. But here is an army shot of my 1,850 Eldar army.



This is all the Eldar specific foam I have, filling up nicely. If I build every bike I own, I think I’ll be one over at this point. 16 slots in the trays. I picked up three boxes of the old bikes, two of the new ones, and a pair of seers. I’ll have to keep that in mind if I place another order with KR. Some other foam related thoughts while I’ve got a pic up. Those cool little vectored thruster extenders I put on the Prism? Made it not fit into the stock KR slot. So I had to take a knife and mod the foam. Which is not hard to do with a sharp knife. Just put some tension on the foam, and gently run the knife across it. Also, if you are getting some KR, and have space left in your case, I highly recommend the 4xRhino tray my avatar is snug in. It’s my go-to for when I have a mini that does not slot nicely into the bespoke trays. Or, you know, rhinos.

Man, that sucks. It started snowing up here as well, surprisingly. Those cases look mighty useful, How much are they?

Nice foam setup Nev. 3" of snow though? How about you come visit me for a week in between September to February and by the time you get back you'll be wearing shorts, sandals and a polo shirt in your 3" of snow.

JustaerinAtTheWall wrote:Man, that sucks. It started snowing up here as well, surprisingly. Those cases look mighty useful, How much are they?

Inevitable_Faith wrote:Nice foam setup Nev. 3" of snow though? How about you come visit me for a week in between September to February and by the time you get back you'll be wearing shorts, sandals and a polo shirt in your 3" of snow.

I get that snow is relative. What we have on the ground here would cripple southern states. Until I was 10, I lived in New Hampshire, so was used to massive snows. Then we moved to Louisville Kentucky. Watching friends/neighbors freak out over a few inches was always a laugh. But even in New York there is a massive difference. Those guys who get the lake effect snow in the western part of the state don’t even blink if the snow isn’t being measured in feet. You guys in the Great White North I suspect are cut from the same cloth. Anyway, it’s off the driveway now, and I think the storm is passed, so I might still be able to escape for the evening.

I’m a big fan of the KR Multicase system. I’ve probably spent about $400 for my Kaiser 3 and 7 KRU worth of foam Now the prices have gone up slightly, and part of that was during a BOGO sale, so it would probably be closer to $500 these days. Which frankly sounds like a lot of money. But considering how much the minis cost, the time you spend painting them, and the quality of life boost of bespoke foam, I think it’s worth it. And you don’t need to get it all at once. One of the major perks of the KR system is that you can add more cardboard boxes full of foam as your collection grows, and just swap them into the case as needed. A Kaiser 3 w/ custom trays runs $250 these days (a Kaiser 2 would be $180 if you didn’t need the room). Each normal sized box of custom foam is $62 for when you want to expand. If you just want infantry trays a/o pluck foam the cost is lower. You can also get the cases empty, but there is a discount on the foam if you get them full.

The Eldar pictured pack into 2 KRU worth of space. Most of the trays are 1/2 with, 1/2 hight, so can fit 4 to a box. The Crimson Hunter is actually 3/4 high. I’ve got a 1/4 tray under it empty as a spacer. Basic infantry that aren’t waving guns/swords around in odd poses fit well into the 1/4 high trays (like these), but I try to use 1/3 deep ones when I can.

Yup snow is very relative. So is weather, I did a paintball tournament up here a few summers back and we had a pro-team from Hawaii come play. We're all in t-shirts and having fun and the team from Hawaii, whenever they weren't in a match, were huddled together wearing sweaters. It was quite a sight.

Yeah good carrying cases and foam are totally worth it. One of my friends recently bought a Battlefoam setup, ran him just over 800$, but he's got this massive rolling stackable beast of a case now. He lugs around 8000 points of necron everywhere he goes now.

 Inevitable_Faith wrote:
Yup snow is very relative. So is weather, I did a paintball tournament up here a few summers back and we had a pro-team from Hawaii come play. We're all in t-shirts and having fun and the team from Hawaii, whenever they weren't in a match, were huddled together wearing sweaters. It was quite a sight.

Yeah good carrying cases and foam are totally worth it. One of my friends recently bought a Battlefoam setup, ran him just over 800$, but he's got this massive rolling stackable beast of a case now. He lugs around 8000 points of necron everywhere he goes now.

While a rolling setup might mitigate it bit, I do feel you have have too much of a case. Almost all of my lists can fit into 2 KRU worth of space. But I still have to drag out my Kaiser 3. And it’s big, and when loaded, kinda heavy. Not unreasonably so, but enough that I’m glad when I get to the table and put it down. I keep thinking next time I get more foam to get a smaller case to go with them. But that’s not going to happen until I get more stuff that won’t fit in the trays I have.

So got down to the shop after all. Game vs. GSC + Nids. Very interesting game.




My opponent recorded the game, and was going to put up a batrep on her youtube channel within a couple of days. If I can figure out how to embed it here, I’ll edit it in. (I know there are tags for it, just not something I’ve done)

After being traumatized by a superheavy last game, I think I erred too hard on the AV firepower. With the cultists infiltrating/being summoned everywhere, I just didn’t have the dakka to kill them all. Also, being able to summon is already a little twitchy, but fully upgraded units is a little over the top. Add in that they arrive via cult infiltration (so can sometimes get an extra round of shooting or assault) makes it extra rough. The game was very close, points wise, until I got tabled at the top of turn 4. I think I’m a little too fond of sacrificing units for maelstrom objectives. I charged the hawks into CC to get a point, but that left them exposed to a counter charge the next turn. I would have been better off just not scoring, and retaining their firepower to thin out cultists. Not that they would have lasted long vs. a summoned squad loaded up with all hand flamers. Overall the mobility I had was countered by cultists popping up everywhere. The game was very fluid on my side of the table as I tried to kill the cultists as they appeared and scoring objectives, while the nids advanced up the table. But they could replace their casualties, while I was being whittled down.

Fresh Paint Report: (and boy, there is a lot of it)
Farseer on bike: Got stuck into CC via a 1st turn assault by the GSC. Was able to hold out until the Avatar showed up. Tossed some buffs around that helped a little. Overall, not bad.
Bike squad (with warlock): Their mobility was hampered a bit by an early combat, but once they shook free of that, they zipped over to grab an objective. Then got shot to death.
Dire Avengers: ObSec’d an objective, dakka’d some cultists, and then were evaporated by some 20 shot nid MC.
Fire Dragons: Was waiting for the right time to disembark (as troops in the open had a very low life expectancy). Their Falcon got shot out from under them, and they they were shot down that same turn.
Swooping Hawks: These guys pack a lot of light dakka. I probably should have conserved them better. They did well until they died.
Fire Prism: Most things were making cover saves vs. the pie plates. It did score a VP when it used to focused shot to pop the magus after the cultists around him had been shot off.

Slightly less fresh paint:
The Vypers spent the whole game jinking. Yet for that, not only did they soak a reasonable amount of fire, but put some pressure on the the flyrant. Happy with their performance.
Crimson Hunter came in, slammed a bunch of wounds onto the flyrant, and then was shot down. About what I expected. If a few dice had gone other ways, I might have had air superiority (the flyrant was grounded with 1W at one point).
The WS ate a huge amount of fire, killed a ton on cultists, and scored some objectives.
The rangers didn’t do much, but were camping an objective (which I don’t think I ever drew for the maelstrom) Killed by flamer cultists.

The really stupidly old paint (seeing how I’ve already listed most of the army, might as well finish it out)
Falcons. Still good. Was running them with brightlances paired with the pulse lasers. Ate a respectable amount of fire, didn’t have a lot of good targets. Did help score some VPs by popping a ripper swarm that was in the backfield. Wish I had kept the scatters on them, but after my last fight with necrons, decided for a more dedicated AV load.
Guardians. Chaff filler. Or so I thought. They do just fine mulching up cultists. And the way I had put my list together, I needed the anti-horde firepower of a nice block of small arms.
The Avatar. He looks big and mean, and his fluff backs it up. But against dedicated assault units, he just is not all that. Mulched 2 squads of cultists, then pulled down by a large block of genestealers.

It’s hard to say what my MVP was this game. The Hawks, which could have been it, died early. The Avatar did some nice cleanup work, but nothing monumental. The humble Guardians in their Wave Serpent probably pulled above their weight this game. They had the right firepower for the opponent I was facing.

Enough that I’m seriously considering getting another serpent to mech up a second squad of them. I know the days of serpent spam are gone, but they do still bring a good bit to the table. Plus they are troops, so not hard to work into a list. But I was stretching to reach this point value and it showed. So getting something more might be needed if I’m going to keep at the 1,850 level. Although once I build/paint everything I should have a decent buffer of points (9 bikes and a seer should be 250-300ish points) I could field the guardians on foot, but then they would get muddy. Can’t have that.

Looks good I'm really looking forward to some GSC games, I'm waiting for Alex to sort his. They feel like a perfect adversary thematically for my PDF IG. I will check out that report sometime.

Sounds like a fun battle Nev, I've never fought GSC but looking at their rules they seem like they'd be a ton of fun to play against. The list you brought looks fun too, a good mix of many different units, and it's good to hear that the guardians did work, love the models and really want to get some of my own.

Thanks for taking the time to write up.

It's hard to evaluate (and easy to underestimate) the value of something that soaks up fire all game.

That playstyle is rather similar to mine. Luckily, Necrons can kill literally anything with their basic units!
All in all, well played! It'll take a while for people to adjust to GSC. But thoroughly entertaining!

Thanks guys. We both had a lot of fun during the game. It was a nice proof of concept. Even if you have armies that can be cheesed out (and both ours could) if you can your opponent want to have a fun game of 40k, you still can.

Fun thing I found today when cruising Dakka. I went over to the P&M article section to grab a link for the paint compatibility chart, and what to my wandering eye should appear? As the pic for the “Modeling" section:



Which you might recognize as being cropped from my old workbench tools photo:



So while I might not get my minis on the front page (although I made the gallery front page once), I have been worked into the very fabric of Dakka.

Kinda psyched about that.


I should really go down and get some painting done. Been slacking since I finished the prism.

Great news and crap news, chin up old bean. I often find solace in my toy soldiers as my recent burst of activity can attest to.

That's awesome that you've been immortilized in an article Nev! I agree you should go get some painting done, I'd love to see what you work on next. Sorry to hear about the papers dude, it sucks right now but there's still plenty of good to look forward to, new adventures await you man.

Sorry to hear that news you posted Nevelon.

CB

Sounds like an interesting game. I've not had chance to play against GSC yet, but they're certainly an interesting army.

EDC

I find it a little ironic that at the top of this page, I was like “Nightspinner? Feh, who needs more anti-horde firepower. Prism all the way” and during the game with the GSC I kept thinking “The torrent flamer fire mode on the doomweaver would totally cash out that whole squad of cultists”

Well, maybe next time:

Finished the alternate guns.

Video is up! I personally can’t stand to listen/watch myself on film, so only watched a few minutes of it.

OK, got some paint down.



No idea what the month is going to look like, but I’ll try to get him done. December tends to go fast. Got some of my shopping out of the way today, but need to bake some cookies. Going light this year, but still need to put in a token effort. And about a half dozen other things that are up in the air and will need to be juggled if they fall into place. But the techmarine on bike is the final bit for the HQ matrix, so if I can get him done I’ll be able to check off that box on my things to do list.

Hope everyone has a good weekend.

--Nev

Yay progress! I've been meaning to get a couple bike units myself, and that's lookin' like a fun little project.
PS, sorry about the news my dude, braveheart!

Bikes are great on the table, but the normal bike kit is really starting to show its age. Not sure about the newer DA ravenwing, as I’m just a humble Ultramarine. The riders are compatible with the rest of the range, so at least you can vary up the bodies for some spice. My struggle with bikes is well documented in the early parts of this thread. I’d say this is the last marine bike you’re likely to see me paint, but I’ve still got one left on the sprue. No need to build him for anything, so he’s likely to stay that way for a while unless the rules change and I need someone new on a bike. The closest “need” I have is for an apothecary on a bike, but I think I used up the last of my medic bits on the 30k apothecary.



Did get some paint down on him this weekend. Not as productive as I thought, but that’s life.

And for whatever reason, the machine spirit that runs this place decided that Zoat deserves the front page of Dakka. Kinda stoked about that. I’m sure more impressive stuff will push it off shortly, but I’m enjoying my 15 minutes.

We got a bunch of snow dumped on us, so I’m not sure if I’m going to make it down to the FLGS tonight. Also a meeting with the Wife and all our lawyers this afternoon, which might impact my mood. Although we have almost everything hammered out at this point, besides the unexpected appraisal/appreciation of the house.

Stay safe and warm everyone. It’s cold out there.

Edit: Meeting went fine. Snow clearing went fine. Roads look decent. I have no idea what kind of list I want to write though. Inertia is very powerful to just stay home and veg. But I should go out. Or at least that’s what the non-lazy side of me is saying...