Wyches Raider Plus my WoC Lord on Disk

Wow what a week its been! Or has it been two? I dunno but I know the last while has not been kind to my hobbyist time. That being said I did manage to squeeze some time in to my otherwise full Schedule and the results are not bad at all if I do say so myself!







First up is my the "mostly finished" raider. The paint work is done on it at this point. I'm just looking to get some printable transfer sheets in to add some decals to the sail and possibly the hull (still undecided on that one). The biggest thing I can say I learned on this one? Get a <censored> air brush. Seriously this thing was the least fun thing I have ever taken my brush to. I think if I could speed up the base coating process a bit and get to focus more on the detailing work (and fun effects an airbrush makes possible) would have been a lot more enjoyable for me. But overall not a bad result if I do say so myself.

After the raider I felt I needed a small break from my dark eldar before I started work on the crew for my new raider. That meant a quick trip to my warriors of chaos for fantasy. I have been working on a new color scheme that may yet get made the main style of my army. Unlike my dark eldar I have yet to come up with a scheme I am 100% happy with. Once I get the test model done maybe I'll post some shots of my choices here and find out what the internet at large thinks.

But of far more interest is my latest conversion project. This here is my lord on a disk of tzeentch. Games workshop does make a very good looking model for this unit already however I always had one problem with it. The disk is far to static to be related to the god of change. When I picture demons from Tzeentchs realm I picture beings who never adopt the same form twice and never stay in the same form for more then moments at a time. Beings that in the material realm flicker from form to form with very little care for the laws of this world. The flamers are excellent examples of this theory. Also I found the model that mounted the disk far to... bulky to be a sorcerer. Maybe a lord? but a sorcerer should be casting a spell! And that's where the inspiration for this piece came from. What better source of energy for a spell then a being given life by the god of magic himself. And it is established in the army book that sorcerers often make pacts with demons to attain their magical power. So the true question remains, in this pairing is the demon, or the sorcerer the true master? Or maybe its something else entirely? Who knows what plans if any the changer of ways has for this mortal soul?

See you in the webway!

New dark eldar advanced orders!

I woke up this morning and was quite happy to see that the advance orders for the next wave of dark eldar had been posted on the games workshop site. The one I'm most excited about being the venom as I've been holding off doing a conversion to be able to field one (and good thing to as my conversion would have cost over $100 CAD while the actual venom only cost $36 CAD and looks better then mine would have). I'm also quite pleased with the fact that they have done a screaming bell/plague furnace idea with the chronos and the talos. They also gave us our scourges which is good because we needed something to field in our fast attack slot after the beast master beasts fiasco. They were always a unit I liked the sound of but could never think of a conversion I was happy with. Sorry coven players, better luck in wave 3 for your wracks and grotesques.

Interestingly enough they also released our battle force. Not a bad showing in it either. I've already got all the raiders and wyches I need (and far to many reavers) but its probably a good place for fledgling archon or succubus to start out as adding a good HQ to that box will probably bring you in close to 500 points or so.

So head on over to The advanced order page and check em out!

See you in the webway

Gold Wyches Raider WIP

Alright so right off the off I have had next to no time to work on much of anything lately. So while I was hoping to have a totally finished model to show off tonight, alas I am stuck with a WIP shot.





So this raider is going to be the ride for the squad I recently showed off. This is the first model of this size I have ever painted and I think it shows. There was a lot more that was different between painting this thing and my wyches then I thought there would be to be honest. So for a first attempt at not only the scale of painting but also some free hand work I did on the flag I don't think its to bad. But its one of those that has a serious chance of getting redone at some point in the future when my skills have improved.

So this is my first attempt at actually doing some free hand painting. I plan to have these flags on all my raiders and use them to denote what squad is in what raider. I think for any more I do I'll be removing the flag (this one was already glued in) and painting it separate as trying to paint it around the hull of the raider proved to be a giant PITA and effected then end quality I think. Also think maybe I should do the symbols smaller and inside the circle. Not sure on that yet though.




A good shot of the edging around the different plates of the raider. Keeping with my previously discussed white and gold scheme (black seems to have been unconsciously added to the scheme at some point as well). While the edging in a few places on the model could be a bit better overall I think its turned out well. I was working on trying to keep the lines as uniform in width as possible.




Here's a shot of the decking. A bit of a pain to paint without messing up the white underneath but I think the black grating will look quite good when the sail is finally attached.









So that's the extent of what I've been working on the last little while. Questions, comments, suggestions are always welcome of course.

See you in the webway

PS: Clive I do intend to try out your suggestion and get some picks up soon, but as I said earlier. Life

Combat drug roll of "Durrr!"

Alright I've putting off writing this post since last Thursday. I mean who likes to admit publicly to stupidity right? And the game I'm about to tell you about was lost for no other reason the sheer, unbridled stupidity. But before I do check out the picture on the left. That was a model fielded against me in this game, and while not a dark eldar, its still sweet!

So about this game. The list I was up against was horrible, especially when going against a list with plenty of darklight weapons (which I had). It was against Gray Knights fielding Draigo and about 20ish paladins split into two squads. The mission was annihilation with the deployment being dawn of war. I lost the deployment roll and was forced to go first. We both placed out entire army in reserve so the game didn't start until turn 2. Everything I owned save 1 unit of wyches came on that turn, but with nothing to shoot at it was mostly just setting myself up so I could respond no matter where he cropped up. On his turn one unit stays in reserve and one unit deep strikes onto the table. Now this is where things went to pot. I tried to use my regular tactics against this army, which generally amounts to overwhelm a flank until it collapses then move up on the rest of their forces from the side. Of course this army didn't have a flank, this army didn't have any tanks. All this army had was 21 dudes, and I got cocky. I basically tried to throw every wych I had against the one unit he had on the table. He was able to slaughter me before I even got a chance to attack thanks to that psychic power that makes them initiative 10. He only had 4 kill points in his army. The game was called as soon as he scored 5 against me which didn't take long.

Now most of you reading this are going to be able to point out exactly where my screw up was and what I should have done. But for the sake of my own recollection and any newer players reading this let me lay it out. My first mistake was not deploying anything on turn 1. A relatively minor mistake and one that didn't really effect this game at all but one I shouldn't have made regardless. The biggest mistake I made was throwing my wyches at them such as I did. Paladins are powerful but slow as all get out and after their deep strike they had almost 0 maneuverability. I should have used my speed to keep my raiders, ravagers, and jet-fighter out of arms reach of the paladins and blasted away with my darklight weapons? why? Paladins might have 2 wounds a piece but they are toughness 4. A Paladin takes a wound from a strength 8 or higher gun (IE: Darklances) then its insta-death, game over, good night Mr. paladin. Now its true he had Draigo a toughness 5 model with a 3+ ward save as well as a nemesis staff which is another ward save. However Draigo can be killed and once he is your home free as the nemesis stave only works in close combat (don't let your opponent tell you otherwise, like mine did). After that happened the rest of the squad would have gone up like kindling in a fire storm. And all this without him able to retaliate in any meaningful way.

So hopefully my foolishness in this game will serve as a good lesson for any other commanders out there (especially other dark eldar commanders) about the proper way to deal with this list and a list like it.

See you in the webway

I live for your Gold Squad

I am proud to introduce to you... GOLD SQUAD. So I finally got my first group of wyches painted, based and ready to go. I can tell you one thing about these girls right off the off (never mind the fact that this is my scrub squad where all but the Hekatrix and special weapons are male) is that they take FOREVER to paint. I went through three audio books of the dresdin files in the process of getting this group done and honesty, I feel like I rushed it a bit near the end. But I am very happy with how they have turned out all the same.

First off is my Hecatrix. This is the model I am most proud of. I'm not sure why. She was the last model I painted and therefor everything I learned on the others was able to be incorporated into her paint job. Maybe its the sweet looking weapon I gave her. Honestly the agonizer is my favorite part here. Some changes I'm going to make in the way I do the lighting effect on future incarnations but over all very happy with her.

Next up is the hydra gauntlet bearer. I wanted to make the spikes coming out of her arms look like crystals. While I don't think I nailed that effect close enough for anyone but me (and now you since I just told you) to realize that. For future I'm gonna have to find a better way to paint them up. That being said its not a bad paint job by my standards.











And now I will leave you with the rest of the wyches. Generally I hold the same view for all of them. Not bad, for my usual quality. But definitely room for improvement.

 

As a reward to all dark eldar generals who made it this far a suggestion on music for your army. Yes music! Having a awesome set of songs that goes will with your army can inspire you to kick ass come game time and renew your desire to get some painting done so you look good next time your kicking ass.
My music suggestion is I live for your pain by Halloween. Seriously its like the lyrics of this song were made for the dark denizens of  Commorragh. Here's a youtube link


See you in the webway

Another 1850 pt game and my latest project

So its been a bit since I've been able to post anything here. Mostly due to lack of developments due to lack of time thanks to my new job. However Last Thursday I did happen to have another 1850 point game VS the space pups. I wish I had something exciting and ground breaking to bring to the blog about the game but... The game ended with him being killed to man on turn 3. Nijal went down to a troop of wyches and besides a massive furball in the center of the table between 2.5 units of 9 wyches and 1 pack of blood claws with wolf priest and 1 pack of gray hunters there wasn't to much to say about this one. That's not to say the game was bad, just uneventful.

However going back to that furball it gave me a couple lessons to walk away with. First of all when playing a wych cult army the multi-charge is one of your greatest assets. Wyches are a powerful close combat unit and if they happen to wipe what ever they are fighting out in your turn your opponent is going to shoot them to little bits. However you can't always choose when combat ends for your wyches. Sometimes you will rolls unnaturally well and slaughter a group that should have taken at least 2 rounds of combat. Sometimes your opponent will roll poorly and break from combat right away. And sometimes there's a unit you just need to kill right now, scouts are a good example of such a unit. If any of the above happens your wyches are stuck in the open with their crumby 6+ armor save and possibly feel no pain. However if you multi-charge and get one or two wyches on a new target while the rest of your wyches go to town on the main target even if they destroy the one unit chances are the second unit will hold. And since your wyches are still in combat they cant be shot at and still get their 4+ invulnerable save. Not a trick the possible all the time but one that should be used often.

The second trick is much less impressive then the first. Essentially coming down to "if there is a unit that scares your wyches, throw more wyches at it". This rules can be seen in the afor mentioned furball. The forces were more or less evenly matched with maybe a slight advantage to the wyches. They held until I could bring my Archon + incubi squad around in behind them and finish the combat once and for all.

Away from the battlefield I've been working on painting a unit of wyches in that color scheme I showed on the blog earlier. But deal lord do wyches take a long time to paint. And as you can see from the pic at the top I have a new conversion underway, more on him after I get a coat of paint on him.


See you in the webway!

My first 1850pt Game

So a couple nights ago I played my first 1850 point game down at my FLGS. The game was against a mostly mech guard list and ended in a win for me and my denizens of Commorragh. This game taught me a lot about my dark eldar and the way they play and which I shall share here.

First and foremost the jump from doubles at 500pts to singles at 1850 is a rather jarring move to start out with. There was so much on the table I had to keep track of, it became a bit overwhelming at first. Case in point was me forgetting to have an entire unit of warriors fire their guns before I moved onto the assault phase. There were a few other small mistakes I made during the game thanks to my newness and forgetting to do something with a unit in a certain phase but this was really the most glaring as it could have save my bacon from the return strike of the unit they were meant to kill. To combat this - and this is true for any army I expect - the first thing I did was force myself to slow down, take my time on my turn. My opponent never mentioned my longer turns but if they do tell them to shove it (unless your in a tournament of course... maybe try to be a bit more polite then that too? I'm generally not towards people like that though). Next step was to create a list (in this game it was in my head but it will be on paper for my next game) of all the units you have and what each should be doing in each phase. Then its just a matter of going down the list and checking off the tasks one at a time. Move this raider, disembark the unit inside, move unit 6 inches towards target, shooting phase: are they close enough to reach their target in the assault phase yes: open up with any ranged weapon they may have, no: make a fleet move to ensure your close enough for the next phase, ect, ect. I organized this much like a flowchart in my own head.

The first actual in game mistake I made was right during deployment. I won the roll to go first so I got to chose the side we were fighting on. I chose the wrong side. The side he received gave him a building and a fairly large patch of trees to hide his guys in. In this I learned as a dark eldar player I am most likely going to be fighting in and around my opponents deployment zone due to my speed. No army can match the dark eldar for speed (though some come close admittedly). Had I forced him to the other side of the table he would have had two hills to stand on and a ruin he might have been able to run into for cover on his first turn. And without the buildings he would have lost by a lot more. In the same vain I made another mistake right after choosing the wrong side. As I deployed my raiders, ravagers, and razorwing jet-fighter I deployed them spread out accross my deployment zone. The thinking being to be able to hit him where ever he deploys. This was wrong for the main reason of - once again - the dark eldars speed. By spreading out across the table I essentially ensure 1/3rd to 1/2 of my force would not be able to quickly bring their guns and blades to bear in the first turn. Since the first turn or two are vital for a dark eldar player this can be fatal. The right way to do it would be to deploy the entire force front and center. Since dark eldar are so fast unless they deploy extremely far back and in one of the corners our raiders can probably reach them first turn. And since our vehicles can move 12 inches and still fire all their weapons (36 and 48 inches for the dark lances and missiles respectively) theres no point in casting such a wide net as I did. Also parking raiders sideways to give a cover save to any other vehicles behind them. That way if by chance the initiative is stolen from you (as it almost was me in this game, he rolled a 5) your entire army isn't blowing in the wind.

Next was being able to take advantage of certain rules when you need them. In particular in this game I had killed a unit with a group of my wyches in my turn. This isn't the best time to finish off a unit because it leaves your wyches exposed to a round of shotting. And thats exactly what happened, the guard player opened up with his shooting and proceeded to wipe out all the wyches I had escorting Vect around the field. Vect lived due to the magic of his shadow field and indeed went on to win the game for me more or less. However had I forced the wyches to go to ground during that shooting they would have had a much better chance of survival. And because Vect was with them with his leadership score of 10 there was a very very good chance they would have been able to stand back up in the following turn. game breaking? potentially. It wasn't this game but the dark eldar will not allow such mistakes very often.

Another thing I learned was to think more about the objective of the mission. This game was an annihilation game. The guard player had plenty of smaller, juicier, easier kill points but instead I spent the whole game trying to kill his blob squad because it scared me for some reason. This kinda ties into the first point of slowing down, taking a moment, and thinking things through. I believe that this was the biggest mistake I made all game. Had he not given up I believe the guard player could have turned the game in his favor. Instead he gave up when the game was at 4KP a piece.

Well this post is already getting a little over long so I will end this one here. These were the most important parts of the battle I learned from any how. If this post helps another new player (especially new dark eldar players) then I'm happy. If not then well its best to write the lessons out any how. Helps solidify them in your mind so you don't make the same mistakes next game.

See you along the webway!