88% and the quest for WYSIWYG

So, I have now decided that the ironclad dreadnought is probably the way to go. This seems odd given my last game with him, in which he didn't exactly suck, but didn't exactly contribute, and may appear on the surface to be driven by a laziness in regards to painting a whole bunch of whirlwinds (and also an incredible difficulty to source the parts for said whirlwinds without a ludicrous expenditure). But there is a deeper reason, namely that mission one of the LGT will be big guns never tire. - I think having three whirlwinds just sitting in the back field (plus the two devastator squads) is just handing a savvy opponent that first game on a silver platter. - If anything my last game taught me that every point matters and I should not think lightly about dangling that many primary mission points in my opponents face. 

I am however a capricious painter / gamer, and this may of course have changed by as soon as tomorrow. For now though I'm excited about my pending dreadnought purchase. - Especially as I finished the scouts tonight as well! 

This, plus the change to the dreadnought from the whirlwinds, means I'm at 88% complete, so looking strong! Although I have a terrible feeling that I may need to work in some combi meltas which will just, yet again, nuke my attempt at stats. 

I've now begun the bizarrely entertaining process of making sure every mini in my army is WYSIWYG. - Although in another utter noob 40k moment, I realised that all space marines have bolt pistols, which I did not know. I have not, and have no intention of /modelling this. But I don't think I have ever, in the history of time, seen an army where this has been fully done. 

On to slightly more achievable WYSIWYG goals, my painting desk now contains 5 bolters. Super exciting and totally worth a pic. 

Giving them a run out...

Managed to find some time to get a practice game in with the battle company. Have been flip flopping between two list ideas on the tube in the morning. One just the full battle company with the armoured task force, so backed up by 3 whirlwinds and a tech marine possibly on a bike with a conversion beamer. The other with an extra unit of scouts in the tenth company and an ironclad dreadnought in a Lucius drop pod. 

A little bit more work needed on the tanks, but mostly there now.. Ebay has not been kind to my attempts to plug those holes

For this game I ran the dreadnought variant. Although unfortunately we got timed out so.. 

A) he had almost no impact on the game

B) i forgot about his built in melta  gun - another key mistake that would have won me the game. 

On the whole I think it went ok, I lost unfortunately because I made some mistakes at the end, basic movement mistakes, choosing to preserve the wrong models and miscounting my objective score, also I miss measured line breaker, which i thought I had but didn’t. All simple basis mistakes, but things it’s good to learn. It was my first real die hard competitive game and I think i held my own, mostly made the mistakes because i was rushing at the end and panicking about losing models / not packing them away properly. The lesson there is to come up with some sort of system for making sure that I keep better track of my models in a tournament situation. If anyone has any suggestions on that front them please let me know. I’m figuring some sort of audit check in my opponents movement phase… but i’m still working that. 

The hilarious thing that I also realised was that I just did not need to paint the full battle company as some truly catastrophic event will have occurred if I have all the marines on the table at the same time. 

Anyway on with some photos… 

His list was the blackmanes formation, a whole lot of drop pods and an whole lot of melta and living lightening. He had first turn and I tried but failed to seize. Although thinking about it I probably would have rather he had first turn anyway as it's certainly going to be more of a challenge this way. Some unlucky rolls from him saw quite a few tanks still alive after the initial unload.

Not much difference between these two pics as I mostly stayed still on my turn to maximise my grav based revenge. I don't think I killed a single drop pod all game but I killed a whole lot of space wolves, which was a lot of fun! 

Khan being lined up for a charge from Njal. I definitely do not have the combat power to take on that kind of unit, even with the remains of an assault squad with him, this was a combat that effectively went on the whole game. Njal won through tho, ultimately claiming warlord. I failed a hit and run out, which I realised in hind sight I should have rolled on Khan's higher initiative as he was down to just one buddy at that point. 

The command squad did a good job nuking one unit but then I sorta kept them holding an objective, thinking their drop pod had line breaker. Oh well. I should have brought them in closer and just had them wonder around the board killing a drop pod a turn, as it was they added little. Cool photo tho. 

So yeah, I learned I have a long way to go in my quest to be decent at 40k. But I'm glad I've found somewhere I can play. - My opponent for this game was great and totally clinically took me apart at the end, capitalising on every model movement mistake I made. All in all It was a great learning game!

Lessons learned?

Remember how I said not to underestimate the space marine scout? Well I underestimated them. Was hoping to have another squad finished by now but circumstances conspired against me...

Who am I kidding, there was no circumstance, I just paint slow.

Actually scratch that I have a better excuse... let's start again...

So I saw the painting guide on warhammer tv for a pale skin tone and wanted to try it out on one of the new bolter scouts for the 10th company. I decided to the best way to test was to paint the whole model to get some idea of the way the face would look in the overall composition, as with over 60 space marines painted at this point, my blood angels red scheme is relatively locked down. And by that I mean the steps I take each time are the same, whether the red is an exact match from marine to marine is down to, apparently, complete random chance.

Convinced by my explanation for having only painted one model...? Anyway here he is...

Overall I'm medium happy. He looks a little washed out but maybe this fits the space vampire theme. The rest of the squad are prepped and mounted and I think I'll go for one more scout in these colours and then revert to my normal more warm tones for the rest. This dude just needs to eat a good meal, and by that I mean get stuck in to the fight teeth first.

Also managed to get the full battle company out for a battle this week! Still learning the LGT missions, am not yet used to the dual scoring streams mechanic!

I thought the battle company would really struggle against the flyers but with the help of the Knights Icarus array and the fact that the rest of my opponents army just castled up, I was just swimming in board control. 

Fingers crossed I'll have a full scout squad to show next time!