Painting Challenge: The Ash Guard (Dire Avengers) pt. 1



Got started yesterday at trying to complete my challenge of getting my Elthrai Warhost painted. I had already some of the Dire Avengers in varying stages of completion. I was able to completely finish one, get another to the step of only needing basing, and three more needing only final washes, detail work and basing. So almost got half of the first squad done one day into the challenge. Boo ya. I am pretty pleased with how they came out. I wanted to do something different from the standard Aspect Warrior colors, atleast for my DA, as they are my beloved models in my army. I wanted them to embody the fluff behind my army, which the short version is an Ulthwe Force upon an Ash world. So I did a Codex Gray base coat and applied several layers of Badab black wash to darken the gray and add the dirty sooty look of fighting on an Ash world. With the wraithbone aspects, I did a bleached bone base and applied one to two washes of Devlin mud to add the desired rough bone look. The crest is a base of Scab red, one wash of Baal red, one wash of Badab black and dry bush of blood red. Most gems are just base blood red to be a sharp contrast to the darker colors. Sadly I am still working on getting gems to have that layered/multicolored effect that you see in most GW gems. Hopefully today I will get the rest of these five Dire Avengers finished and started on the last four plus Exarch. Here is a close up of the one completed and one lacking basing.



The Warhost - A Painting Challenge

Despite being uniform, Naked Plastic Gray makes a poor army scheme.

I woefully admit that despite my long time playing this game I have never had a fully painted army, save my very first army. When I first went to the local game story to inquire about DnD groups I saw a game being played on a table and went to observe, that game was Warhammer 40k. Being a fan of real time strat games I almost instantly fell in love with this game. Despite neither of the armies I observed were painted I got this notion that an army must be painted to play with it. So after my 3rd ed space marines battleforce showed up at my door I frantically got to painting 1500 pts of SM. Now I can't say how I managed that feat  but I got them assemebled and painted in that time, with the only real thing I got from that week of furious painting was a permanent copy of the dialog of StarShip troopers embedded into my brain as I set the movie to loop while I painted.

Now granted that many of the models were poorly put together, flash was rampant, and the paint was caked on to the point where my 'Arch  Angels' were more akin to a marshmallow with a splash of black and red on them than Space Marines. None the less I was pleased with it, then came my first game which my opponent was quite surprised I had painted a whole army in the span of a week. However a majority of the local gamers, which sadly consisted of mostly d-bags and TFGs, completely debased my paint job saying for the most part it would be better if I had simply thrown them in the microwave with an aerosaul can and played with the mis colored mush than what I put on the field. That statement coupled with the fact that I did not know the rules had a profoundly negative impact on me when it came to the game. Looking back on those days now I just shake my head as most of those that insulted my first army had the same army scheme my Eldar have now, Uniform Naked Plastic Gray. Where I am going with this little tale is that after that army I never again tried to paint my armies, because I always felt that I would not be able to paint well enough to truly do the models justice.

However after joining in with a new gaming group for a couple of years and slowly painting little things to increase my skill and confidence my local gaming club, Unbroken, has set a painting challenge out for this month. My pledge was to get my two large DA squads and my Seer Bike squad painted before the first of May and a hopefully a majority of my whole army painted by a tournament on the 20th. This will be the first time I have ever pledge to get things painted, hopefully this will keep my motivated to paint and finish my Eldar. I'll post WiP as I get them.


p.s. Stevo from Tainted by Xenos won the Bash at the Barn this past Saturday, Congrats to him and go Unbroken!

Of Mechdar and Shenanigans

Nothing says Awesome like Rerolls!

    Got another game in with my Mechdar this last Saturday at the Battlebarn. I have to say it was by far one of the best games I have had in a long time. It was a 2500 pt game vs Space Wolves. Normally I don't like to play games above 2k as I feel that the higher you go the more abusive deathstar units you can throw out and that extra 500 pts is just a perfect niche for one. With a 2500 pt tournament next weekend alot of the local guys are wanting to get in some practice for it so I figured I would just throw together a 500 pt squad ontop of my normal 2k list. I chose to build an Eldrad plus 9 warlock buddies squad. Oh... My... God.. what that squad did to the SW. I didn't even use the 6 destructors in that squad either, just mainly assaulted.

Here is my normal 2k List:

The Elthrai Warhost

HQ:

1x Farseer - Runes of Witnessing, Runes of Warding, Spirit Stones, Eldar Jetbike; Doom, Mindwar, Forturne

1x Warlock Unit

    3 x Warlock - Eldar Jetbike, Destructor

    1 x Warlock - Eldar Jetbike, Singing Spear, Embolden

    1 x Warlock - Eldar Jetbike, Enhance

Elite:

1 x Fire Dragon Squad (5)

     1x WaveSerpent - Spirit Stones, TL S-Cannons

Troops:

1x Dire Avenger Squad (9)

    1 x Exarch - Shimmer Shield & Power Weapon, Bladestorm, Defend

    1 x WaveSerpent - Spirit Stones, TL Brightlance

1x Dire Avenger Squad (9)

    1 x Exarch - Shimmer Shield & Power Weapon, Bladestorm, Defend

    1 x WaveSerpent - Spirit Stones, TL Brightlance

1x Dire Avenger Squad (7)

    1 x Exarch - 2 Avenger S-Catapult, Bladestorm

    1 x WaveSerpent - Spirit Stones, TL S-Cannons

Heavy Support:

1 x Fireprism - Holofields, Spirit Stones

1 x Fireprism - Holofields, Spirit Stones

1x NightSpinner - Spirit Stones

    This has been the basic template that I have been playing with, it has changed slightly a few times to test different units or upgrades but thus far this load out has been the most successful. In the game I recently played against the Space Wolves I just switched gave the WaveSeperent that used to belong to the small Dire Avenger squad to the Eldrad Squad of Doooooommm. I kept the now foot DA squad in reserve and hoped they would stay there for most of the game. I have to say having this been the first time I have played Eldrad in a long time his Divination ability is just nice. The set up was two obj, one in each deployment zone, and I put my obj directly across from his and deployed my bikes, the two full DA squads beside them and a Fireprism pretty much surrounding my obj and a staggered line of the rest of my forces stretching out to the other side of my deployment and table edge. As expected the SW player depolyed his LR with Deathstar, and 2 Wolf lords on Thunder Wolves with wolf packs around his obj and directly infront of my forces on my obj. He depolyed his LF squads in a similar staggered line across his deployment to mirror where my tanks where and a razorback in the middle to go where needed close to the second Wolflord squad. Knowing ahead of time of Eldrads Diviniation I had hoped he would build up his forces close to my build up and when it came time to roll I lucked out and rolled a five so I was able to completely redeploy the forces around my Obj and place them near my other table corner across from his weak flank.

I left some the one of the DA squads to hold and harass things coming towards my obj. The game started out real well with my Nightspinner hitting directly one of his Wolf lords and killing a good handful of his wolf shields but the real kicker was pinning him! The first fireprism knocked out the razorback and the second killed a few of the wolf's in the second wolf lord squad. The rest of my shooting wasn't as effective with the Bright lances failing to do anything agains the LR and the rest of my forces going full speed towards his weak flank and the long fangs. The SW turn saw him rushing towards my Obj and shooting at my tanks but unable to do any real damage as most were glancing and were unable to shoot results. The second turn was the true defining moment in the entire game. Apart from my foot Da coming in when I didn't want them to the shooting in my phase was about avg but it was the fact that I wiped out the rest of the pinned wolf lords woves with my Nightspinner not only causing the wolf lord to be pinned again but causing them to take a break test which he failed and ran off the board. To which I jested before he rolled the second pinning test and break test, Beware the Silly String! To which after I pantomimed "Its in my beard, its in my beard!!" So for everyone who is struggling against SW I have found their bane, Silly String.

Good for parties, pranks, and keeping away the Wolves of Fenris.

The rest of the game went well for me baring a turn or two of really good shooting by the SW. I completely swept everything he had in  his depolyment zone, which included his two wolf scout squads he decided to have come in on his deployment to try and reinforce. Which brought me such joy to have made them deploy like normal people. Also it was fun to watch his LR and Termie squad inside start to come back to his Obj to only run into a solid wall of Eldrad, his squad, my Seer Bike squad and promptly reembark and turn around and head back to my obj which by this point had two gunless tanks flying around it to contest. Even though it went to turn 7, a usual bad thing for Eldar, and the last two turns having each of the two contesting tank taking about 20 glancing hits each, the holofield roll 2 dice take the lowest made my opponent clench his jaw and fist in frustration, and cursewords abound. To which I must admit again tickled me greatly. In that final turn it saw my Eldrad squad and Bike squad assault the remaining forces on my Obj and my two contesting tanks flying around and a DA squad sitting on his obj for a Solid Win for the Eldar. After all was said and done I still had a good 75% of my army left with the SW only having 3 things left on the board. Good times was had though probably only mainly by me especially when I failed all but two of my saves on my Seer Jet squad and then picked up all the failed dice and rerolled cause of fortune and made everyone.