Control, control, control

Welcome back to the webway, and today I want to talk about an idea I want to play with; that of total mind -fu (my term for super tricks).

Just now when I was watching some Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann videos in Japanese (perhaps the most epic animation ever created), i flipped into a video where they show some of the main characters screaming out "Who'd the Hell you think I am?!?!?!" (yeah I understand Japanese, but I'll translate the word here) Suddenly my mind went a little brainstormy and I figured out......why not try to make the opponent really screwed up no matter what they do before the game even starts.

For the purpose, I decided to see what I can do to make this shit happen. Unfortunately for me, that means I have to play around with special characters, and also making some unfluffy combinations. But hey if it works, it works right? So with that I went to work, and immediately I can see the one that will screw up people's pre-game.

I decided to combine Asdruvael Vect and Lady Malys together. Now here are the abilities that can affect the pre-game.

Lady Malys:
Precognisant: essentially bthis is similar to Eldrad's power that after both players deployed at the start of the game, the Dark Eldar play may redeploy D3 units in their army including plaicng them in reserves.

Vect:
Master Tactician: This is a souped up "seize the initiative" where you would seize the initiative at 4+ rather than a 6+.

Now imagine this two elements combined. You would let your opponent deploy first, and the later on you would  redeploy a number of units to a weaker flank and then try to seize the initiative. It is a massive deception tactic, which when it works it is rather nice.

Now you can also play with Baron Sathonyx with either one, as Sathonyx adds 1+ to the dice roll when determining which side chooses table deployment. Baron works well with either one. My personal money is with Malys though if you want to use the Baron instead. But of course Vect and the Baron is quite fun indeed.

Now imagine a Apoc game where you field these three monsters together. You get to choose who gets to deploy first, you get to choose what units to be redeployed to counter the opponent, and then you get the initiative to break through the whole thing. COmbined it with some apoc strategems and you get a real funky play.

I would seriously want to try the Malys/Vect combo more as it is more flexible than the Vect/Sathonyx combo or the Malys Sathonyx/combo. Besides vect is a monster in CC, and Malays allows for whoever that she is attacted to to become immune to psychic powers. Let these two attach with each other, and yeah, you get a really funky scary unit, and that is excluding their bodyguards yet.


Well, this is a first draft of the though , and so I would love to test it out one day. Until then....

Eccentrics in warhammer - how they make my games a whole lot awesome

Throughout my gaming experience in 40k, I have fought against a lot of powergamers, good competitive gamers, good thematic players. But for some reason, among all the gamers I have fought against, I for some odd reason love fighting against a certain type of gamer; the Janky good gamer.

Janky is a term used in card games meaning strange, wrong, screwed up and/or no one really knows what it means. In 40k, I tend to use this in its more light-hearted tone; that of strange way of playing or making a list. It so happens that in everyone's time as a player they will eventually meet up with such a player. The fact that this is not comparable to a newb or a noob should be noted, for the former means that they got no idea on what unit to use and for the latter they don't know the rules properly and act like they know everything. When i talk janky good players, I mean that their lists are so weird, but when they play it it is just plain scary good.

You know how it happens and for those who don't lemme run you through it. You being the player decided to go to the local game store, and wanting a 40k match. There you find another player who is an all-round nice guy who woould all be too glad to play with you. But when you see his army, you say to yourself "What the hell?".

There before your eyes, you see a list unlike any other. It is not a cheesy list, not a balanced list, but instead a list that if more akin to some Circus Circus performance, where you see the units that no one ever uses in tandem with each other with other units, creating what looked like a really sub-par list, if not really unplayable. You think he was a noob, or a newb and say to yourself that it will be easy. As he deploys his units, you see that even his deployment is really off, and you wonder what is he pulling at, or not pulling at all. You deploy, with alll the precision and focus of a player who have seen many battles.

However, when the games start, you realized that for some reason, his list is strangely working very well and somehow he is holding out, in fact at some point his army is breaking yours apart. Before long you already ended up with a battle that challenges you to your limit.

I have the privilege to play with a player like this at a somewhat regular basis. His name is Yee How, and he plays Imperial Guard. But the thing about him is that despite the fact that he got lists enough for all types of Guard (from footslogging to Mech), but his personal favourite is his conscripts and Penal legion lists. He loves to spam these particular units, and play them with the addition of a Commisar with some rather weird upgrades and Straken together accompanied by other platoons. He also plays with vanquishers and some executioners, which makes for a rather weird list. What makes it even weirder is that contrary to most guard army, he would personally love to charge you than to shoot you. And due to the unit's rules and the like, he can potentially make my games very interesting.

He would nuke his conscripts with chenkov if it would mean that he can charge you the next turn. He would allocate that shot to the commisar with the large blob of men if it means that he could do some weird shooting and/or charging at you. He would use his tanks as meatshields for his men if it means that his tiny men would be able to do something to you. Almost everything he does with his army borders on madness, but it does work.

Among all the players I have played against, he is the only one I can never truly read as he is just too random for my own mind. I mean I am rather unconventional, but I do have a sense of building a lean and mean army list. But compare that with Yee How, I am as rigid as Barbara Streisand.

Due to this, I rate him rather highly on enjoyability of playing against, as he always make my 2 hours of gaming a worthwhile experience. In addition with his sportsmanship and being of a similar mould of being joker players, we get along very well. In fact, if I were to face im in a tournament, I would either win very big or lose very big against him.

Players like him challenge me, for I learn on how I can use subpar units to my true advantage and win me games. I also learn about how I can use some weird technicality to make my games so much more devastating, and how a small notion of arrangement could affect the entire course of the game.

If I could face more players like this, I would be so much more happier. but alas I am stuck with more conventional players. This not to say that conventional players are bad, but seeing the same o' things can be rather tiring, and seeing a whole new unit on the table is always a treat. I rather see Thunderfire cannons raining down shots on me than seeing a Razorback spam list. I would rather see a Chaos Slaanesh lord with daemonic weapon and a bike than the Lash prince. Sure these units are subpar at times, but when the are used with devastating effect, I am very happy that I am on the receiving end of it as this showed that these people do have some originality in their though processes.

So with that, I bid thee adieu and enjoy your holidays.

New Beginnings

Well the end of the year is coming, and with it new beginnings. Never is this true than in my current situation.

I will be going over to the US of A to further my studies, and studying overseas will indeed impact the growth of my army, as right now it is sadly one of the things that I must put aside for the Tau'va a.k.a Greater Good until times permit. As selfish as I want to be to bring my entire Dark Eldar army along with me to the states, but the fact still remains that survival comes as one of my top priorities and thus even Vect would understand why I did the sacrifices I have made.

Coming out from the comforts of the webway is indeed a harrowing experience, but nonetheless like any realspace raid, it will also prove to be interesting to see how things go. Exploring the entire place where I will be studying for a considerable amount of time for gaming centers will be one of the primary things I will do if time allows. However, the idea of making army lists, exploring the potential of Dark Eldar units, and the stories will continue on whenever I could post them up.

With that, I will have to say, happy new year to all and may the year ahead be a good one.

The Wings of the Cruel - Voidravens and Razorwings

Whenever someone thinks about Dark Eldar heavy support, they tend to think about the Ravagers, and perhaps even the Talos. But with the new edition of the codex there are two new choices for Dark Eldar; both of which are unique even among Dark Eldar. The vehicles that I am talking about? The Razorwing jetfighter and its larger cousin, the Voidraven bomber.

Hammer units of Dark Eldar: Scary or ridiculous?

Hello, and welcome back. Today's topic is about something that some players would do at all cost to play them, while others would do at all cost to destroy them. That's right we are talking Death Star units!

For those who got no idea what Death Star units are, the video above should tell all that you need to know about them. They are big, scary, and downright destructive and most of the time, they are a pain to destroy. You have heard of Nob Bikers, you have heard of Thunderwolf calvary spam, you have heard of Juggernaut spam. Yeah, those are called Death Star units. There are others such as Tyranid Warrior spam and the likes, but the three mentioned above are the most common ones.

The Attention Part 3 - Short Story

Verdant's World.

A beautiful world, where nature and technology blends together in perhaps one of the more beautiful worlds of the Imperium. The world's oddly toxic ground atmosphere is such that humans are forced to live upon great trees that extends itself towards the strastosphere, each housing a major human settlement, with the largest trees housing several human settlements. Other than that, it is as imperially law-abiding as any Imperial world can ask for.

A world that Vespera had chosen for her next realspace raid, and the world she chose primarily for its extensive communications array that could support whatever it is that is within Faolchu, the messenger-thing that had her Kabal even planning this invasion. How the name Faolchu came about, she never really knew but before long every Kabalite in her Kabal is calling the messenger-thing Faolchu. Clad in her elaborately-crafted ghostplate armor and her custom-made phantasm grenade launchers, she looked upon the world as a place that is just too bright for her, however due to its rather peculiar triad of suns the planet is always lit up. This also poses a challenge for her Kabal, for daylight often means that the defenders would be able to mount a more comprehensive defense and obliterate her forces.

This forced her to take a more insidious route to the planet. Using a small craft, she would infiltrate a small group of her finest Kabalites into the heart of the largest tree settlement and from there on, she would deploy several of her portable webway portals, allowing her forces to bypass the planetary defenses and wreak havoc immediately in the interior of the largest settlement, the cluster of settlements named Verdant's Heart.

If there is a webway portal linked upon this world, she would not have to make such preparations but alas this world is apparently not linked to the webway. For some reason, Vespera seeks to see the message by herself, and thus she will be joining her infiltration squad with Faolchu in tow.

What I love to fight against, and what I hate to fight against

Hello all, and welcome back to the webway. Let's start this off with a feeling I have in regards to Dark Eldar: Dark Eldar feels an inverse proportion of strength to the size of the models. What the hell do I mean when I say this?

The Dark Eldar book is in my opinion, the ultimate killer of large and/or elitist units but when it comes to the small, generalistic things, they fare much worse. This is true in the sense that when you see how the weaponry of the book works, they are meant to destroy things that are significantly larger than themselves. Dark Lances, Blasters, Splinter Rifles....they are truly amazing against the larger things that we would encounter in the 40k gaming scene, such as Trygons and Land Raiders, but when faced with the prospect of a simple humble guardsmen or a Rhino, and you would see that for some odd reason the weapons actually struggles with them.

My friend's army list review

Hello all, welcome back to the webway. As the title of this particular post would already tell all of you, today's special of the day is a review of a list of a friend of mine.

Just a few days ago, my good friend and I who both started Dark Eldar around the same time decided to just sit in a McDonalds and brainstormed our way through the book in order to see what works and what does not. Initially we talked about Baron Sathonyx, which my friend wants to play but somehow the talk expanded and in the end, he decided that he would play with 10 Grotesque, led by Sathonyx coming out of a webway portal.

In more ways than one, he is bought on the idea that Grotesque are essentially a very tough unit to break, and also a rather big squad that can rampage through a lot of things, barring Land Raiders and monoliths. It is true that they do not break easily, but they would be a challenge to field with his build.

His list looks something like this (pending some tweaking and some idea on how to spend the remaining points);

The Attention Part 2 - Short Story

Vespera is somewhat annoyed that she is now forced to stay at all times in her kabal stronghold, the aptly named Tower of Venom ever since the attempted assassination on her life. Despite the fact that she managed to blunt their attempts and taking one of the kroots as her plaything, her she is rather curious as to who is this Lord Ranisold that is after her life. Thus she asked her Kabal to investigate the mysterious Archon. Today, she is being briefed by one of her handmaiden as to the identity of Lord Ranisold, surrounded by her favoured lieutenants.

The Attention Part 1 - Short Story

Nothing new here.....

Lady Vespera looks around the pleasure club that she is in, and sees that there is nothing that made her heart race. The usual electro-torture poledancing of slaves and bloodbaths raves are nothing new to her, as is the idea of modifying a mon-keigh to become a music machine in which a Dark Eldar artisan does his musical muse as the lesser Dark Eldar fornicating under the booming music, high on the latest drugs available in Commorragh.

Combat Drugs - How drugged do I want to be?

Welcome to the webway, and today I feel like talking about combat drugs, the juice that is not healthy in any way, but bloody awesome at that. When I first opened the Dark Eldar book, I wanted to know what happened to the drugs and suffice to say, I am a little sad that the 12" charge is gone, but in return we get quite a number of other stuff that is quite beneficial.

My verdict on the new drugs?

Yeah, this motivational says it all.

Mustering of the Kabal : Kabalite Warriors

Welcome back to the second installment of 'The Creation of a Kabal" and today I will be talking about the beating heart of a Dark Eldar Kabal, the Kabalite Warriors.

I for some reason love Kabalite Warriors, even the old ones that some people find horrible. I know that when I start Dark Eldar I would play these guys. When the rules came out for them, I am very pleased that a normal Kabalite can even take down a Trygon, and then I was really sold.

Conversion-wise, I did not do much about them, other than to swap some of their body parts with the Wyches but overall they blended very well together.

Now these are the first painted models in my army and this alone made me wonder; what the hell should I color them with? I for sure know that I never liked following the codex colors, and thus I went around finding some ideas. How the color scheme came around is kinda cute in my opinion.

I was thinking.....what kind of color that when people see moving around, they would be really alarmed? The colors must be very striking, and also very bright, but I do not really want to use too much of the color. Somehow the mind can envisage a totally awesome image, and amazingly the first thing that came up in my mind is actually this;

The Mustering of the Kabal: Lady Vespera

Hello all, and today I would like to start on what is essentially the development of the Kabal of my own creation; The Rapturous Venom Kabal.

Now like any other army, I would buy the minis first and then make the whole shenanigans. So where else to start but not my Archon?

The idea for my Archon came from a GW catalogue 2006 back where in the catalogue, there is a female archon leading her army in a cool manner with her rather luscious hair flowing with the wind. This is a time where I was just starting my army and I was learning the ropes of my first army (Tau) and I said, if I ever start a Dark Eldar army I would like for it to be led by a chick just like the one in the pic. Of course at the time, I am just a new guy who can't paint for nuts and can't convert too much for nuts and thus the dream came to a standstill in the deepest recesses of my mind, and it hides in the shadows.

The said pic of the female Archon is shown below.

Holistic Mumbo part 3 - Fun Times

Heya all, and welcome back to another installment of Holistic Mumbo. Today I will be talking about having fun in games.

Throughout my years being involved in this hobby, I always would try to make each game a riot of fun whenever possible, even in tournaments where the tension is supposed to be much higher than that of a normal game. Some would think of my attitude to try and make things fun as a very enjoyable experience, while others would actually think that I am making mockery of the game.

Personally, I take my fun very seriously and I will try to make the best out of the time allocated to me whenever I am having fun. In more ways than one, I tend to party very hard and also very smart, as it is only economical to yield the optimum amount of fun in the shortest time possible. But that does not mean that I would forsake someone else's fun just because I want it to be fun for me. So i tend to be rather sporting when it comes to some rules, and just make the game a little more enjoyable.

Trueborns - The awesomely spoiled brats of Dark Eldar

Welcome back......

Today, I will be talking about the unit that is all the rage in the 40k world when it comes to the Dark Eldar. I will be talking about the trueborns and what I think about them.

Alright what are trueborns? Fluffwise, they are Dark Eldar that actually have their mommy keeping them in their wombs for god knows how long and was born the normal way, as compared to the evil in-vitro way that usual Dark Eldar are created. In this way, those Dark Eldar that are born the natural way are 'true-born' from their mommy's womb. And just to add up to it, since they are rare, they are spoiled to a fault.

Their fluff alone is a cute thing, but nonetheless with this new sub-unit coming up in the new codex they are now some hot item that a lot of prospective Archons, Haemonculi and Succubi find hard to ignore.

The reason why? They are literally spoiled with the choices of wargear that you could attach to them and you can gear them up for almost everything, even close combat if you will but that would mean that you are almost forgoing their major strength, which is shooting.

Holistic Mumbo Part 2 - Temperaments and Elements

Heya, welcome back to another chapter of Holistic Mumbo.

Today I was checking up on what's in my hard drive and I bumped upon an old treasure of mine; a kind of deep thought topic about how I judge players and what armies suits them. I remembered me posting this up in Tau Online Forums before, but I assume that the thread is kinda lost in the webway. So without further ado, I will just post this out for all to read. Even today I still believe in this theory.

Lady Vespera's Solution - a short story

Urgh......

Lady Vespera wakes up with her heart pounding like blows of powerfists upon a shadowfield, and she hates it when she wakes up with a cranky mood. But then, if it does she must be that time again, a time where she would not even want any contact with anyone. She pulls her bedsheet away, revealing her amorous form and walked towards the dark reflective surface at the end of her room and looked at her form. Despite her impossibly beautiful form, and long, velvety dark turquoise hair running down her back, she knows that she is not in her top form today. What she would kill to go back into her bedsheets and rest away her fatigue....

Unfortunately for her, a loud thumping can be heard on the door.

"Who dares disturb my slumber?" Vespera lied, but that is a rather natural thing for her to say, and indeed if she does not even know how to lie, she might as well end up as one of the slave-things found in Lower Commorragh.

"My lady, today is the day. The Kabalites are getting restless, and personally my Wracks are already eviscerating themselves to put themselves in a rather favourable mood for today...." A muffled but dark and sinister voice, even for a Dark Eldar can be heard over the doors to Vespera's chambers.

It's today?! Urgh....I don't feel like it....

The Rapturous Venom Kabal 1750 pts list

Welcome back, and today I will be posting my army list which I am planning to use based upon my experiences. Without further ado here's the list.

HQ
1. Archon
Agoniser
Haywire Grenade
Ghostplate Armour
Combat Drugs
Phantasm Grenade Launcher
Shadowfield generator

Total pts: 160 pts

Haemonculi
Haemonculus x 2
Liquifier x2

Total pts - 120 pts

Elites
1. Kabalite Trueborns
Kabalite truebornx 5
Blaster x 4

Venom with second splintercannon

Total pts - 185 pts

2. Kabalite Trueborns
Kabalite truebornx 5
Blaster x 4

Venom with second splintercannon

Total pts - 185 pts

3. Hekatrix Bloodbrindes
Hekatrixs x 9
Shardnet and Impaler x 3
Haywire grenades x 9
Syren with Phantasm Grenade Launcher and Agoniser

Raider with Flickerfield and improved aethersail

total pts: 280 pts

Troops
1. Wracks
Wracks x 8
liquifier x 1
Acothyst with flesh gauntlet

Raider with flickerfield

total pts: 180 pts

2. Kabalite Warriors
Kabalites x 10
blaster x 1
splintercannon x 1
Sybarite with venom blade

Raider with flickerfield and improved aethersail

total pts - 205 pts

3 .Kabalite Warriors
Kabalites x 10
blaster x 1
splintercannon x 1
Sybarite with venom blade

Raider with flickerfield and improved aethersail

total pts - 205 pts

Heavy Support
1. Ravager
Ravager with flickerfield

total pts: 115 pts.

2. Ravager
Ravager with flickerfield

total pts: 115 pts.

I will be explaining the logic of this list one by one and then after that, how they work with each other.

Me and Wracks part 2 - Concepts, concepts, concepts

Hello all, and I am now back in the second installment of "Me and Wracks". The second installment is all about the concepts that I am exploring to make my wracks look the part as the horror of flesh and pain.

In the previous installment, I have stated that they look like those buggers from Hellraiser and seeing that I would not go wrong with the idea, so I went about researching some ideas from the Hellraiser movies and stuff for the Hellraiser world.

Me and Wracks part 1 - Why I love them

With every new codex, there will always be new units. This holds true for the Dark Eldar and they indeed introduced a whole plethora of units that just need to be discovered and in the spirit of Dark Eldar, exploited.

One of the new units that come into the fray is actually an infantry unit called Wracks. The Wracks are essentially Dark Eldars modified by their Haemonculi masters into a hellish minion that served to become their bodyguards and also helpers in the torture chambers and are in more ways than one, the successor to the older Grotesque as the new Grotesque are literally Hulk-like creatures. There are a lot of fuss about them over the internet about them, and some of them are also the reason why I like them.

Gamewise, there are several reasons why I like them. One of the reason why I like them is because they are actually one of the few Dark Eldar units that are not Toughness 3, but instead having a toughness of 4. Quite the big leap for the Dark Eldar and for once the Dark Eldar do not have to worry about getting killed by a starcannon or something.

Secondly, they come with a pain token free, and this means that they are already build in with Feel No Pain which means that they will be like a chewing gum in someone's hair; a bitch to take out. Thirdly, they all come with two poisoned weapons (4+), which means that with their toughness they are perfect to hunt down infantry squads like Imperial guardsmen, and with a second pain token works against marines as well and their squad upgrades only proved to serve this purpose. The Wracks also work against Monstrous Creatures as their poisoned weapons can potentially take down even a C'tan

Last but not least, if you take at least one Haemonculus Ancient or Haemonculus in the army, you can make them troops. This last point means that for once, the Dark Eldar have an unit that can essentially hold ao objective if needed to, and anything that comes close enough will suffer its wrath.

However, the reason why I love them for real is not because I want to take advantage of the rules, but it is because the Wracks are just so beautiful in concept and art.

Just look at it....it is just awesome. They really remind me of these guys;

Yeap, actually to be honest Haemonculi, Wracks and Grotesque in the new Dark Eldar makes me think Hellraiser (in honest truth, the fluff also supported this view of mine). This alone is a concept that I can not ignore, as the conversion possibilities is just endless. That of the unit being a very good unit for Dark Eldar is a real bonus which makes me want to field this unit. But now the problem is that the model is as of this moment non-existent. For some, this is a very annoying thing that newer codices are doing, but for me it is a boon as I am allowed to do what I want and try to make this. Of course that saying, a new wave of models might change all of this, but even then I will make one squad for myself just to mark it out as a 'veteran' wrack squad that stands out.

So I guess I will be returning to the webway and ponder upon my next big scheme for my Dark Eldar.

The Archon's first true venture into realspace: Opinions about the evil elves from space

I just came back from my realspace raids and is now quite spirited to talk about my experiences with my evil space elves. First, I will be talking about the two games that I have played with my Dark Eldar (proxied mostly to understand how units worked) and the results. This will then followed by what I think is the fundamental ideas of a Dark Eldar army and finally I will touch upon units that deserve some more detailed mentioning.

The first game I got ever with my Dark Eldar is against their goody two-shoes cousin, the Eldar in a good o' game of Seize Ground. This game is a real setback for me as my opponent managed to seize the initiative and rip apart my army with lots of big nasty weapons. This game serves to prove the point that if your aggression is stopped in its track before it even began, you are gonna die hard. In addition, I can also see that some units got the makings to become extremely destructive if given the chance, as I managed to see how a small squad of Trueborns with 4 blasters with a Venom with two splinter cannons can wreak so much havoc despite its small size, causing much havoc behind enemy lines. It is also here that I noticed that Dark Eldar is better off destroying or denying scoring units than holding objectives.

Holistic Mumbo Part 1 - The Looks of an Army

Welcome back and today I will be talking about the rather holistic way in which I decided to build my army. This is but a first of many parts, and the reasoning behind my actions to make my army the way it is.

Now some of you must be wondering, what the hell is a holistic approach and how does this even apply to what I am doing? Well first we must look at the root word of holistic, holism. The general principle of holism was concisely summarized by Aristotle in the Metaphysics: "The whole is more than the sum of its parts", and this is how I tend to go about my armies. How I go about this, you asked. Well, I'll tell you.

The first thing that I tend to do with an army is to imagine how I want it to look on the table, no matter what the hell I am doing or no matter where the hell I am going in order to make it real and tangible. The reason for this is because this army is going to be mine, and mine alone. I hate to be similar to the person next to me, and I find that I have a streak of individualism that I can't ignore inside. Sure I can go and become a normal vanilla Ultramarines or Marines, but without the look no one would even notice that there is something special about these guys. But when I put an army that is dressed and made for the kill, it will turn heads and make them wonder; Woah...who the hell is that guy? You can call this ego, but I call it being the pioneer of playing in style.

The next thing I tend to do is then make them a story that make me want to go about playing these little plastic men more. I am a guy who loves a good story, and I never find it wrong to make some narrative as to what your boys and girls are all about. It makes for a more enjoyable moment when you decided to play around and just pretend that you are indeed in some kind of epic war movie about these men and women in 40k.

A good example of this approach would be my Orks. My ork's background story is that of them being a rather odd bunch of Deffskull grease monkeys whose boss decided to try and loot everything he can get his greasy fingers on, and while he is at it he will play loud percussive sounds for his own enjoyment. So this also gives me a reason to go about modelling all the things that the Orks salvaged or stole from their enemies as with every adventure, they found more people to break their heads and take their vehicles away to Orkify it. At the bottom, you could see what I go about doing to make it fit to the image I want my Orks to be.



Of course, with more games I played with them, my army grew and now it is a rather healthy chunk of at least 2.5k with the burnas, lootas and the warbuggies to make it fit the image of the junkyard warriors I always imagined my Orks to be. In addition, I also intentionally made it a goal that whenever I defeat a foe, I will try to loot something from the range of the army. So far I have failed to win decisively over the Nids, and due to the string of ties I always had with them I am unable to loot that Carnifex for my own army. On the opposite spectrum, I have yet to buy a tau devilfish/hammerhead to loot as I am currently preoccupied with my Dark Eldar not to mention that I want to buy both a devilfish and an ork trukk to make for a devilfish with wheels. So that fluff alone is already a big factor in the choices I made in my army and also it fits in overall with my style; that of playing fast, efficient armies with lots of tricks up its sleeves.

So I guess this is the end of Part 1. More to come in the far (well actually not that far off) future.....

Sharing is Caring, Gain from the Pain

Pain. None of us like pain, but Dark Eldar does. Dark Eldar loves pain and this is reflected in their trademark rule "Power From Pain". For those who are not even aware what this funky rule does it basically boils down to this; The more a Dark Eldar destroys, the more nasty it becomes.

The specifics is that whenever a unit with the "Power From Pain" kills off an entire enemy non-vehicle unit, the unit will gain a pain token which will give them benefits depending on how many pain tokens you get;

1 Pain Token: Feel No Pain

2 Pain Token: Furious Charge

3+ Pain Token: Fearless

The fun part about this? It can stack. So if an unit kills enough, it will have FnP, Furious Charge, and Fearless all in one go. But if this is not enough, they decided that "Hey, let's make them evil version of Care Bears!" and alas, we ended up with a sub-rule called..."Sharing the Pain".

Can I Haz Painz Tokenz?

Archons, Succubi and Haemonculi - A Few of my Favourite Things

With the release of the Dark Eldar codex and the awesome models that comes with the new release, I have finally embarked upon what I call the final test of my 40k gaming life, using everything I have learned in the past 4 years to start what is often called the hardest army to play in the whole 40k world. So with that I have lost my soul, despite the fact that I already got like a number of armies I am playing.

That aside, I will now go into the things I really liked about the new Dark Eldar.

First things first, the models are SICK. They looked a lot better than the old school models (though I actually do like the old school Dark Eldar Warriors)and seeing that the majority of the range is in plastic, it will make conversion a hell a lot easier than most.


Oh Nom Nom Nom.....


Secondly, the fluff is fun and very enthralling for a connoisseur of fluff like myself. It really portray the Dark Eldar as those boogieman from under our beds and the fairy tale evil creatures, witches and monsters imagery that some of the Dark Eldar units exhibits is really something to marvel at. For example the idea of the haemonculi as an immortal Dr. Frankenstein entertains me a lot as I can relate to the idea of a mad Faustian alchemist of evil. My most favourite story of them all is the rise of Vect as the Overlord of Commorragh and the imagery of a full-scale invasion of Space Marines into Commorragh reminds me a lot of Black Hawk Down.



Thirdly, the army works naturally with my inclinations in 40k. In a game of 40k, I enjoy using fast and deadly armies that work together in an interconnected net of support and logistic to become a rather unstoppable force, and I tend to play in a hit and run manner picking where and when I want to fight. The Dark Eldar works in this sense because the army as a whole is true to its fluff; a fast,heavy-hitting force that is fragile as hell. The idea of them being fragile means that in order for them to survive, all of them must work together and fight together to survive and win. In a way this is akin to those damn Planeteers from Captain Planet having to combine all their rings to summon a perfect Captain Planet.


By Your Powers Combine, I am Evil Eldarz!

And fourthly, it is one of those armies where everything from building to playing them is a true joy. They are those armies where you can put your own brand of awesome into the mix, and make your imagination go wild with the possibilities! One of the things I am looking forward to is actually the Wracks, where the models just scream personalization......(Yes my pretties, Daddy will make you all feel good....*gollum*).

Thus, I am actually rather pleased with this prospects and I am a stickler for making fluffy but also very playable lists with tricks up its sleeves . Now time for me to go into my laboratory and concoct evil in my lair.....*evil supervillain cackling laughter*