Mustering of the Kabal - Razorwing Fighters and Reaver Jetbike prototype scheme

Heya, it's been a while since I posted anything about my painting. As a reward for my annoying term in university this spring, I decided to get another two more Razorwings to add to my growing Dark Eldar Air Force. And here is some pics that I managed to get the other day with the lead Razorwing which I affectionately call 'The Duck'.

 The whites on these things are annoying to paint, but with the new Ceramite White, my job have become so much more easier.  The White accent is just what I need to make the jets have the 'rule of cool'. Not to mention the flying and pew pew pew sounds that I would make with them.....

After painting my Razorwings, I figured that the colour scheme may be the key in painting my Reavers as the Dark Eldar fluff did say that Razorwing fighter pilots used to be Reaver bikers. So with that I decided to try out the scheme on my long-ignored Reavers and voila! Here is the end result. 

Need some touch-up, but suffice to say that I actually felt that I finally nailed the colour scheme that I wanted with the Reavers. The way I painted the leather is taken from how I painted the leather on my wyches.


And now to paint the whole 11 other reavers, and any other nonsense that I can find in my bitz box that are already assembled (somehow....) and ready to be paint. 

Nasty Lash of Submission Combo

Heya and welcome back!

PabelBilly

Just two days ago while I was reading my rulebook in the friendly neighbourhood LGS, I stumbled upon another way in which units could get down from ruins without needing to roll for difficult terrain, albeit a much more dangerous route. The text that are bolded will come into play later

As stated in page 99 of the BRB;

A unit that is not falling back and descending through a building can always elect to Leap Down to a lower level, rather than making a Difficult Terrain Test. However, all descending models in the unit must take an Impact test (see page 95).


And what is an Impact test? For this we refer to page 95 of the BRB;

To resolve this, choose one model from the battlements and place it anywhere wholly within 3" of the base of the building that is at least 1" away from enemy models, and not in Impassable or lethal terrain. That model must then take an impact test. This is exactly like a Dangerous Terrain test, with a -1 modifier for every full 3" the model has dropped. Unlike ordinary Dangerous Terrain test, armour saves cannot be taken against Impact test. Jump INfantry and Jetpack models must still take impact test but they ignore any modifiers from falling 3 or more inches


If the model is slain, choose another model and try again. If the model survives, resolve the same sequence for all the other models in the unit, taking care to remain in unit coherency. Any models that cannot be placed for whatever reason, are removed as casualties with no saves of any kind allowed.

It was then that I realized something kinda evil too, as I remembered the wording of Lash of Submission  from the FAQ but just in case I went ahead and talked about the terrain test in itself first, and allow one of the LGS staff who is knowledgeable about 40k to somehow spark the idea. And soon enough he told me about the thought that I have out loud; you can definitely lash people from ruins down to their deaths.

This in itself makes the Lash of Submission quite a deadly counter to all those happy campers up on the ruins as they will be forced by the player who move the unit on whether they will walk down or jump, and obviously with such a deadly effect, the moving player would elect for the unit to jump down. Any type of test that could kill people off is not pretty, and with such modifiers to the test you could kill quite a few people off too. And this is before the pain of the enemy shooting comes into being and other nonsense.

Nasty, nasty, nasty........

My Dark Eldar/Eldar list 1999 pts list and thoughts behind it

Heya and welcome back to the webway!

Just had my first 6th edition game and suffice to say I really enjoyed myself with the game. But nonetheless while I was playing the game I could see that the psychic powers, new objective grabbing rules, shooting and assaulting rules will have an effect upon my force in more ways than one.


For one, I can no longer let my troops sit in the transport and just zoom towards an objective. Now I have to get out and take it for myself. In addition the way assault works now, it is quite a high-risk, high-payoff kind of thing as your distance is increased but in return it is random and the enemy units can fire on you like in Fantasy as a response to your assaulting. The Nerf to power weapons in general also made me wonder if the good o' days of tarpitting is the wisest thing to do. And then there are the psykers, and although the psychic powers from the rulebook is random, but they could be very powerful. And flyers.....enough said.


But in return for this weird nerf, the shooting phase is a very nasty and powerful phase as I am allowed to snipe models and kill them off with careful positioning and also Focus Fire. In addition the idea of ignoring Night Fighting is freaking amazing for Dark Eldar, as now the new rules for Night Fighting and Night Vision means that Dark Eldar can play a more aggressive game while having great defenses. having the Strategic Warlord trait to take advantage of stuff also helps in the long run. Challenges in close combat will also be a way in which Dark Eldar players could bully people and/or save our own ass against stuff that we do not want the rest of the squad to face. Last but not least, wound allocation with the Archons will always be fun as their 2+ invul laughs at the allocation quite well.


With these things in mind, I noticed that my playstyle would have to incorporate even more killing power to eliminate opposing scoring units while also have psychic defenses to prevent my forces from being screwed over. Like a shark drawn to the scent of blood, I went about looking in the rulebook to see if I could somehow do this to help myself and suffice to say my solution is actually simpler than I thought it would be; Allies.

And among all of them the most obvious choice for me is the humble Farseer with Doom. Doom as a power is quite ally-friendly as it states that any unit that was targetted by the power allows any hits on that unit to have re-rolls to wound. This is big as it increases the killing power of the army by whole lot. Re-rolling to hits psychic powers are really nice, but they tend to be too short of a range for me to be comfortable with and Doom has a very good range to boot. Besides with my list, I tend to worry about the wounding rather than the hitting. Rune of Warding is the best psychic defense in the game and will shut down anyone wanting to cast their powers while Rune of Witnessing allows me to trigger my power much more easily. And just for shit and giggles the Singing Spear is a good anti-tank weapon.


In addition, if I so feel that Doom may not be as helpful, I can always substitute it with something from either the divination psychic powers or the Telepathy to improve my play (but highly unlikely as Doom is so good already).


In order for the Farseer to keep up with the rest of my army which is monstrously fast, I need to put it on a Jetbike to allow my Farseer to keep up. But to take the Farseer, I need a troop choice from the Codex Eldar, and what better choice to take for the troop choice than that of a Guardian Jetbike squad? Not only it is fast, it can also protect my Farseer as bodyguards of sorts. And just for the fun of it, putting a Shuriken Cannon on one of the bikes will allow for the unit to have some sniping moments and help in the glancing of vehicles. Last but not least, they are also scoring units that are not in vehicles.


Of course, by taking the requisite slot this allow me to take some units from the Eldar codex that would complement my army in more ways than one. As I looked in the book, I noticed one unit that stands out above the rest; War Walkers.


Not only are they quite affordable and survivable, they are also able to dish out some hate in the form of two scatter lasers each and also piss everyone off by outflanking to the sides and target units from unexpected corners. This would also help me in some form of anti-air as well as the number of shots would allow me to at least do something to some flyers if my Razorwing is not up to the task.


So with that my allied contingent would look something like this

Farseer with Doom, Rune of Warding, Rune of Witnessing, Singing Spear and Jetbike - 138 pts
3 Jetbikes with one Shuriken Cannon - 76 pts
3 x War Walker with 2 Scatter Lasers - 180 pts


For a total of 394 pts, I actually solved a number of problems that my list face somehow. I solved psychic defense, objective grabbing and anti-air in one nice swoop.


With that I decided to take out some things from my general list and incorporate the first-hand experiences with 6th edition into this particular list (do note that I am going for the 1999 pts + 1 format, as the true 2k format is very ridiculous and I would be maxing out some slots more than others);


Dark Eldar/ Eldar list 1999 pts


Dark Eldar 
Archon with Agoniser, Venom Blade, Haywire Grenade, Combat Drugs, Shadowfield - 130 pts
Haemonculus with Venom Blade and Liquifier gun - 65 pts
4 Blasterborn in a Venom with two splinter cannons - 173 pts
3 Blasterborn in a Venom with two splinter cannons - 146 pts
8 Wyches with Haywire Grenades with Hekatrix with Agoniser and Haywire grenades in Raider with Nightshields - 196 pts
5 Kabalite warriors with Blaster in Venom with two splinter rifles - 125 pts
5 Kabalite warriors with Blaster in Venom with two splinter rifles - 125 pts
5 Kabalite warriors with Blaster in in Raider with Nightshields - 130 pts
5 Kabalite warriors with Blaster in in Raider with Nightshields - 130 pts
Ravager with 3 Dark Lances and Nightshields - 115 pts
Ravager with 3 Dark Lances and Nightshields - 115 pts
Razorwing with Twin-linked Splinter Rifle, 2 Dark Lances, 4 Monoscythe missiles and Flickerfield - 155 pts


Eldar Allied


Farseer with Doom, Rune of Warding, Rune of Witnessing, Singing Spear and Jetbike - 138 pts
3 Jetbikes with one Shuriken Cannon - 76 pts
3 x War Walker with 2 Scatter Lasers - 180 pts


Total pts for list: 1999 pts


In order to incorporate the Eldar stuff for my list, I decided to take out one Wych squad and a Haemonculus as I no longer want to tarpit if possible and decided against another blasterborn squad in Venom as the third blasterborn unit does not truly improve upon my playstyle.


In general the gameplan for the list is quite similar to my older Dark Eldar list of killing everything first and capturing objectives later but instead my list now has a more effective controlling factor into the equation. In addition, with my style of play, I tend to snipe and kill it overwhelmingly and Doom + Dark Lances/Poison shots = WINZ is definitely a good start for that kind of play. The Wych squad is there just in case I need to do some assaulting and/or tossing grenades at something and also act as a sort of bait for the rest of my forces to do their thing.


I would definitely try to test the list soon to see how viable this idea would be. But based upon my experiences with Eldar weaponry and powers, I can safely say that it is a very good compliment to my army.


Well this also gives me the reason to go about converting even more stuff for my Dark Eldar army so I am really stoked to get this list up and running. See ya all soon!

6th Edition Archon - I need to dress to impress!

Heya all and welcome back to the webway!


Well now that I have gotten the 6th edition rulebook and read the rules and stuff, I can see that my Dark Eldar as a whole is actually much more better than before as I am never truly a Raider-Rush, and more like a Raider-back player. Flyers are also awesome sauce too now, and I am really enjoying this edition (other than the odd wound allocation system). 


But enough about my first impressions of 6th, as there are other bloggers posting those kind of posts even as I write. Instead I would like to touch upon how the new rules affect one of my most favourite units in the game; the Archon.

In 5th, the weapons of the Archon is quite literally powerful as power weapons ignores armour of any kind. But with the new AP system in place for power weapons, most of our funky power weapons are now AP 3 and this could cause problems in some cases as the implications of this would be that we can see a 2+ hero walking around taking hits and challenging anyone they see fit (wound allocations and challenges does that to some of the CC monsters of the game). So I ask myself, how do I solve such a problem when such a situation arise when I see a 2+ armour unit walking around (Termies of any kind will be lumped as such) and I am in close combat with it?

Oddly enough, with the way power weapons work now, I get to choose what kind of power weapon I get to put on my model, and the only one that still works against terminators is the power axe. Sadly enough for me, this power comes at a price; I strike at Initiative 1. I am still on the fence with this one, but thankfully the Shadowfield would be able to mitigate this problem. This also means that I will have to equip my guy to work in different situations where the axe would not be as kickass as it is and that means a lot more points. Is it worth spending a lot of points for a single model? On one hand I am quite the pragmatist, and I would say that for the points I could get Sliscus instead if I wanted an Archon that can work his points, but at the same time I try not to play with special characters.


But of course, if I were to just abandon the Archon, I would not even post this to begin with. So let's say you are like me and would like to play with the good o' archon we would have to think a little.


The question here is this when we are thinking about the 6th edition archon: What do I really want to do with him?

First thing first, do you want him to beat face still? From there, we will proceed down to the route of 'who's face do I want to beat?' as this would affect his CC wargear selection. The next agenda would be to consider the secondary role of your archon. Will he have some way of shooting people? How close do you want to shoot the opponent's unit? And last but not least, the third consideration of the Archon's purpose is the unit that you want to stick him with? Different units have different optimized builds.


 If you do not want to beat face with the archon, your choices will be much simpler his role will most likely be to shoot things, and the best weapon an Archon could take for the shooty role is the Blaster. In fact, in this case, the idea of a Shadowfield or any CC weapon could be ignored for the sake of keeping cost down and you can enjoy yourself with it. A personal opinion of mine would be that by doing so, it is a waste of the Archon's potential but everyone has their own way of making it work so I will politely agree that different people would use the Archon in a different way. Nonetheless a cheap CC weapon could help the Archon in sticky situations.


For example, using this route I have decided that I want an Archon that beats face no matter what the Archon faces and from there I have to consider ways to make this work. Let's work it out in numbering it out shall we?

1) I want an Archon that can hold his own in close combat: Shadowfield, Haywire Grenades, Combat Drugs will be included into the gear selection. Shadowfield are mandatory as a 2+ invul will always help. Haywires are there to glance any walker that decides on coming close to me, while the Combat Drugs will always help in improving CC prowess.


2) I want the Archon to be able to take advantage of challenges: Soul-trap would be nice here and can be comboed with the axe and/or Djinn blade for a can of whoopass. Negating FNP would be really nice. Not to mention that this wargear allows for the other weapon options to be viable in their own way.


4) I also want to be able to kill other things as well: Here I have several choices.


a) Agoniser: A good all-round weapon. Does not matter if the AP3 is the only thing that makes it not as good.


b) Venom Blade: 2+ wounds are not to be underestimated despite it not ignoring armour. Not to mention that it is a cheap weapon. Could be comboed with drugs, pain tokens and soul trap.


c) Djinn Blade: A nice wargear that does not take up precious CC weapon slots and gives an additional 2+ attacks. Torrenting AP3 CC weapon is quite an interesting proposition, not to mention that it could be comboed with drugs, pain tokens and soul trap.


d) Power weapon: Specifically the power axe, as it is our only AP 2 CC weapon. Despite the price we have to pay for such a weapon, but nonetheless could be comboed with drugs, pain tokens and soul trap. All the other power weapon options  are quite literally inferior to most of the Dark Eldar power weaponry.


e) Blaster: Blasters are always good, but taking it would reduce the attacks on the charge.


f) Blast Pistols: Like the blaster but at a reduced range, and does confer additional attacks to the Archon.




I did not put in the huskblade as the cost of the thing is just ridiculous for what it does, and for that one weapon, I could take two weapons that increases the flexibility of the Archon.


From here I generally go for one of these builds;

i) Agoniser and Power Axe: The anti- Marine platform.


ii) Power Axe, Venom Blade: An all-comer CC wargear but with no shooting whatsoever.


iii) Agoniser and Djinn Blade: This is an all-comer when I will not see Terminators around. Also have the added bonus of negating tough units that are not Terminator-equivalent much more quickly at initiative.


iv)Blaster and Djinn Blade: Able to take down stuff from a distance, and in combat the Archon is able to hold his own in close combat enough.


v) Agoniser and Venom Blade: A Good MC/Horde Killer


Each of these configurations have their own merits and weaknesses, with my general preference being those of i), ii) and v). 


Note: These configurations were designed to work with Wych units that will act as bodyguards for my Archon. They will be trying to complement each other. The Archon will tend to be the one initiating challenges and also assassinating characters that are not the nicest people in the block. In addition, Glorious Intervention would allow the Archon to come in when the character is at its weakest and snipe him away or allowing the Hekatrix to take the helm once the Archon sees something that requires its immediate attention.


With the new edition, the way Archons are build will have to be reconsidered. In 5th it is quite easy to just say slap the Agoniser and be done with it, but in 6th there is a lot more micromanagement going around to allow the Archon to function to full capacity.


Hope this will help those who love to use the generic Archon as I do. Signing out!

6th edition leaky

Heya all and welcome back! Well I have not been playing 40k for a time now, but that is because I am waiting for this edition. This edition is perhaps one of the most hyped editions of 40k so far (but that's due to the internet) and the rumours are just crazy. But then there are those that already have the book early thanks to their pre-order things. The linkie here is from one of several people who have gotten the book early (there are a few others as well)  and from my understanding of all those who have gotten the book early, I have a few initial thoughts about how it cold affect my Dark Eldar and other 40k stuff;

1) I need to take this out of my system first: The bad juju part is the 'Ally' rule. Despite its fun nature, the rule in a competitive scene can be bad as that rule can be broken like hell and back. But that saying that does not prevent me from having a farseer with fun upgrades to boost my Dark Eldar in terms of support fire and also psychic defense and some scoring jetbikes troops (at least until thir new codex comes into play)

3) A lot of the issues that I have talked about in my previous blogpost,  'Warhammer 40k Episode VI - The New Rules~' have been answered to a degree if not help mitigate the problems of 5th. This is quite interesting for me as my transition from 4th to 5th is not like this at all.

4) Flyers would have some interesting role in the game now, especially when the Necrons could spam an entire army of flyers (as compared to the other races three flyers). I sense that the build will be quite formidable in combination with some Necron trickery.

Oh and did I mention that a dead flyer could bring down a few bastards down with it? Nice indeed.

5) In general I would also have to say that the game is also turning more mobile than before. How this would affect the threat assessments of some units (2D6 charging, etc) could take some work to figure out.

Xenos armies with skimmers are going to be hitting fast and hard. They do not have to suffer the 'snap fire' rule (shooting at BS 1 when it comes to certain situations) especially when the 'Aerial Assault' rule could become a generalized rule for most Xenos.

6) For the Dark Eldar, I think that there are some significant boosts that could propel a Dark Eldar army  even further than before, such as the Warlord trait. But of course there are some nerfs that we would have to take but it is done to prevent situations such as a Stormraven rush. My wyches will be affected most by this, but nonetheless my army in general works best in the movement and shooting phase.


With that, I am now very interested in getting my grubby hands on the book. It will be a very interesting edition.

6th edition is coming!!!!

Well, the 6th is coming and that means new rules (both good and bad) and this means I have the whole summer to learn the way to make my armies work in this new system.

And it looks like the new Space Marine posterboys are the Dark Angels.

New stuff and my to-paint list for this summer....

With only two more weeks till my spring term is officially over I am glad that now I got so much free time for this summer till the next fall comes to being! Just yesterday, I have gotten my shipment of 2 Razorwing fighters and also 2 Venoms to complete my massive armada of vehicles and boy are those things beautiful. Add these four beauties with my roving biker gangs (I think I have at least 21 Reaver jetbikes or so, maybe more), and I have myself a summer painting project!

This and 6th edition and the apparent second wave of flyers will give me loads of sexy hobby time for this summer.