Doctor Who and Amy

  Just a quick post today. I've been painting these minis up for my girlfriend's birthday as she is a massive fan of Matt Smith's Doctor. I bought them from Crooked Dice Miniatures. They don't name them as Doctor Who minis because of trademarks I guess but we know what they are really ;)

  Anyway pretty pleased with the result. I'm getting better at eyes and they were straightforward to paint. As a homage I based them based on the quarry landscape that substitutes for every alien planet in the programme. 

Old Rivals

  So I got to play my second game of 40K last night. Yay!

  I did not have time to rethink my list but I can give you my opponents as he sent it to me after the game. He uses a site called army builder to build his lists ( http://www.wolflair.com/index.php?context=army_builder ) and I sure will be checking it out. He played Tzeentch Chaos Space Marines and so this was a battle of old rivalries ;) Aspiration and Change Versus Disease and Stagnation (*cue drum roll*).

CB's army list:


Sorcerer (HQ) - Psyker (Mastery Level 2) -  Sigil of Corruption, Gift of Mutation, Power Armour, Mark of Tzeentch, Bolt Pistol, Force Weapon, Frag Grenades, Krak Grenades, Warlord

7 Chaos Space Marines (Troops) 
Power Armour, Bolt Pistol (x7), Bolter (x6), Meltagun, Frag Grenades, Krak Grenades,
Aspiring Champion - Power Armour, Bolt Pistol, CCW, Bolter, Frag Grenades, Krak Grenades, Gift of Mutation

7 Thousand Sons (Troops)
Power Armour, Mark of Tzeentch, Bolter w/ Inferno Bolts (x7); Aura of Dark Glory
Aspiring Sorcerer - Psyker (Mastery Level 1); Power Armour, Bolt Pistol, Force Weapon, Gift of Mutation

The mission was 'Crusade' and we concluded the battle as a draw as at the end I held two objectives (number two held by my reliable cultists) and he held one and had been the first to slay a unit outright (my bikers being substandard again!). Reading it now that scoring confuses me as a primary objective is three points and a secondary is one? Anyways it doesn't matter as it was just a fun game to learn the rules...

What I learnt from this battle was that rushing at your enemy is fine if your enemy is Tau and you are on a tiny table but is not when you are on a standard size table and your opponent has a unit of Thousands Sons. They are double 'ard b*****s. My poor bikers rushed them and got wiped out in two turns - rapid fire and inferno bolts with AP3 made Tzeentch happy! Sure they were not a fast unit but they really didn't need to be as they happily sat back and riddled my guys with armour bypassing bolter fire. Apparently a terminator squad or obliterator or two is a good unit to take to counter these guys (I guess a plus point being they actually still get an armour save against them).

  I also learnt that on a bigger table being deployed so that your Havocs are close enough to hit the enemy is important - they spent most of the game huffing and puffing lugging their equipment around and in the end only took out one chaos space marine in one of the final turns.

  My sorcerer warlord again did not use his power. He rolled and got Weapon Virus but instead I took Nurgle's Rot again (which was silly of me, Nurgle must be rotting my brain). He was attached to the chaos space marine squad. The guys spent their time trudging across the battlefield, one of their number being felled until a spectator suggested I detour into the courtyard to sit on the objective there. They were pretty safe at that point but it did mean Nurgle's Rot could not be used as he did not get into close combat while Weapon Virus could have been used in this scenario.

All in all, great fun. Next stop -  hopefully a session with the Games Workshop Sydney store manager to reinforce my rules knowledge. 

  Til next time!

 

Losing my 40K Virginity

Ok, so I have been aware of the Games Workshop universe from my mid teens and scary as it is I am old enough to remember Heroquest and the Lost and the Damned books when they were first released. Round about the age of eighteen I got rid of my little lead people and got terribly serious and starting reading pretentious literature and listening to the Smiths and the Cure. It was only about two and a half years ago that Games Workshop started to become noticed by me again. I was living in Sydney at the time (still am) and the biggest similarity between the times then and the times when I was a precocious teen was that I had a lot of spare time in the evenings and was living in an area with nothing to do to spend my time in the evenings (this time swap Kingsgrove in Sydney for the rural outskirts of Saltash, Cornwall).
  One thing led to another and I acquired a Night Goblin starter set with paints and brush. Some months later I had three of them painted and after a long story which I probably will recount another time, I now have a 500 point Nurgle chaos space marine army. Today was the first day they went into battle and the first time I have played 40K. My opponent brought Tau (who I will call JH as I have no permission to use his real name) and this scared me as I heard they are very shooty. Yet somehow I won!

  Here was my list:

Nurgle Chaos Space Marines (The Devotees of Effluence)

"Only in Father Nurgle do we trust. Through his generosity may his beneficent contagions bless the universe."

HQ Brother Halastis the All-Seeing Eye of Infection, Sorcerer
Power Armour, Bolt Pistol, Force Weapon, Frag Grenades, Krak Grenades
Plasma Pistol, Mark of Nurgle
Troops
The Hand of Corruption, Chaos Space Marine Squad
Brother Alcrax the Decayed, Aspiring Champion - Power Armour, Boltgun, Plasma Pistol, Frag Grenades, Krak Grenades,
Mark of Nurgle, Power Fist
Marines (3) - Power Armour, CCW, Bolt Pistol, Frag Grenades, Krak Grenades, Mark of Nurgle
Marine (1) -	Power Armour, CCW, Plasma Pistol, Frag Grenades, Krak Grenades, Mark of Nurgle
The Death Head Cult, Cultist Squad
Supplicant Helgarnan the Base, Aspiring Champion - Improvised Armour, Autopistol, CCW, Shotgun
Cultists (8)  - Improvised Armour, Autogun, CCW
Cultist (1) - Improvised Armour, Heavy Stubber, CCW
Fast Attack
Bikers (2) - Power Armour, Bolt Pistol, CCW, Frag Grenades, Krak Grenades, Chaos Bike
Biker Champion (1) - Power Armour, Bolt Pistol, CCW, Frag Grenades, Krak Grenades, Chaos Bike
Heavy Support
Havocs (2) - Power Armour, Missile Launcher (Frag and Krak Missiles), Bolt Pistol, Frag Grenades, Krak Grenades, Frag Grenades
Havocs (2) - Power Armour, Autocannon, Bolt Pistol, Frag Grenades, Krak Grenades, Frag Grenades
Aspiring Champion - Power Armour, Bolt gun, Bolt Pistol, CCW, Frag Grenades, Krak Grenades   Definitely, the men of the match were the The Hand of Corruption. Despite having a couple of their members wiped out by Tau fire they (with the Sorcerer as part of the unit) managed to destroy a battle suit and then with the assistance of the bikers demolished another unit with the Sorcerer killing my opponent's warlord with Instant death from his force staff. He then as a chaos boon received the ability to perpetrate instant death without the expenditure of warp points. This was after they were routed by having their number count down with fire just after the death of the Battlesuit.   The 'booby prize' goes to the bikers who failed their charge rolls and took an awful long time to get to the warlord's unit giving that they were on bikers and move 12". Next time as an observer suggested, I may replace them with a bolter armed unit of chaos space marines.   The havocs did an OK job of picking off a few Tau while covering the objective in my deployment zone and probably scaring off the opposing Kroot trying to get to the objective in my deployment zone.   The cultists sat on this objective on my side of the board were almost completely demolished and ran away, then rallying with only three of their number left by the end of the game. However given their stat line they performed the job I intended for them. This was to split the Tau fire (the rest of my troops were deployed up the other flank).   In the end I held one objective which sat in the pile of bodies of where his warlord and his troops were piled. While the cultists did not hold the objective in my deployment zone neither did his troops. The objective in the centre of the board remained unclaimed. On top of that I slew his warlord and was the first to destroy an entire unit making it a score of 3-0.   The other lesson I learnt was do not take Nurgle's rot as your Primaris Power when the table is less than 48" wide and only one unit have the Mark of Nurgle! That is unless you want to poison your own side too...   Only half of my force is painted at this point, but I will aim to post up pictures of the painted ones at a future point.