Weekend's gaming - Part 2, with 100% more High Elves

So, day two rolled around, and I played two more enjoyeable game's against Mr Matt "Nightwolf" Knight. He is a good chum of my girlfriend, and she'd ordered me via the "portable boyfriend command delivery system" (aka mobile phone) to give him a good spanking. Unsure of the context of that request, I figured I'd just concentrate on the warhammer...

I'd mentioned to Matt the night before of the dirtyness of bringing a level 4 to a 1.5 k game, at which he sheepishly replied that I wouldn't like his list. It turned out I would, as Matt brought with him:

20 swordmaster

25 spearmen

2x 5 shadow warriors

10 archers

2x RBT

Lv 1 mage with high magic and...

Lv4 archmage with Lore of Light!

Oh dear. Game was again pitched battle. Banner of sundering is an interesting banner, as it makes all spells from the lore of light miscast on a double 1, 2 or 3 as well as 6. I know light isn't that common but the damage it does to daemon armies makes the banner just worth taking, just in case. So I took the -2 modifier to high magic, knowing light would be nerfed sufficiently.



My fiends mincing behind a big hard thing



So, with this in mind, Matt began his magic phase with a tentative 3 dice cast and rolled two 3s. Then two 2s on the miscast chart - interdimensional cascade! One large blast template of st 10 later he was down one wizard and 7 spearmen. I was a bit disspaointed, as I hope the wizard would have blown holes in is army every turn rather than heroically blow himself up for the greater good in his turn 1! His first turn wasn't all bad, his bolt throwers shredding my seekers to death on my right flank.

I marched my huge block of demonettes forward, hoping to capitalise on this horrid luck! He decided to charge me three ways with his spearmen, swordmasters to my front and his shadow hunters on my flank - can't fault him for that. My daemonettes held, just, losing combat by about 5 due to my 3+ ranks and, being steadfast with a reroll, I wasn't going anywhere. My fiends minced up the right flank tentatively, respectfully keeping their arses behind a big hill after seeing the car crash that had been the seekers that lay nearby. I lost one to the bolt thrower, the other saved by terrain.

Melee!

The advantage of my daemonettes being surrounded was that they count dish out attacks on all sides - With hoard rank bonus I could chuck out enough attacks at the units infront of my that I could spare the side daemonettes to attack the small unit of shadow warriors to my flank. I ground out a win and with no BSB and no general, the elves had had enough and fled. My fiends had also got into combat with one bolt thrower, eating it in one but about to take a bolt to the face. The Flamers and archers had a fire fight, the flamers taking no casualties and the archers fleeing. At this point we called it.

Matt was a great sport even though his dice rolling was abysmal. His dice rolling didn't improve in his game with Max - his archmage once again miscasting turn one and leaving a large blast template shaped crater, the spearmen then failing their panic check as a spirit host wiped a nearby unit of shadow warriors, and Max cruelly ressurected 5 zombies and van hanselling them into combat, wiping the unit. He then failed every fear check he was required to make, meaning most of his combats were at weapon skill 1!

My mincing fiends, yet again hiding

So after dishing out a beating, Max was too tired for another game, so Matt and myself had a rematch. We decided on the random setup for the dawn raid. We both tweaked our lists, Matt swapping out his light mage for a dragon with fire mage, and myself swapping out 4 daemonettes and my seekers for a squad of three bloodcrushers.

My daemonettes and BSB ended up on the right flank, with eerything else on the left. Matt was more central, with only his bolt throwers on his left. This suited me fine, as I scooted my left flank forward and shuffled my daemonettes centrally. I brought my bloodcrushers too far forward, within charge range of his swordmasters, who promptly charged them, and over ran into my fiends. His spearmen marched up a hill and was met by my flamers, wo gave them two withering salvos before being charged. The stand and shoot reaction was one casualty short of making him panic - something I fancied trying to make him do with his current dice luck!

His swordmasters, even hexed with withering and enfeebling foe, still popped my fiends, and they then reformed and charged my wizard, who I'd positioned too close to the front line.

A reminder of what we all fight for. Booze.

My daemonettes on my right also had troubles of their own. Matt positioned his dragon on their flank, just behind the very nice house, who I chose to ignore and march towards the proper fight. Unfortunately, I couldn't pass a march test for toffee due to the dragon being within 8inches, so I just pottered on 6in a go. The archers were taking pot shots, so I cast siren song on them, hoping he'd accept due to their proximity to his board edge, and I'd hopefully wipe and chase them down, gaining a few sneaky inches towards his lines. He instead chose to flee, then rolled a double 6 - off the board they went! 25pts well spent!

Matt had enough of this, and charged his dragon into the nette's flank. I immediately issued a challenge with my herald, and cut down the rider. His dragon overkilled the herald, and we drew combat. I had an instrument and therefore won by 1! His dragon fled, I reformed, then charged the dragon as it fled, wiping it out. I probably would have been better throwing my unit champion into the challenge rather than my herald, but I wanted to kill the rider dead and her superior WS and Strength insured that.

Who puts a briar patch next to a ruined temple dedicated to chaos?

I finally got to his swordmasters and spearmen, but we worked out it was turn 7 when I got in! So we stopped there, tallied up - and Matt sneaked a 150 VP victory! It was a very good, tight game which went right to the wire!

So, all in all, a nice weekend gaming with good company. Aplogies for the eratic photos - but when your gaming you don't always think to keep taking photos!

Editorial - Bidding the vampire armybook an unfond farewell!

Well I'm just getting ready to go have a nice relaxing weekend- and- a- bit- gaming with my arch-friend Max. This weekend is just getting Max into fantasy again with his vampire counts - a week before the new book no less! Poor planning - although this weekend was the first (and last) I've had free for a while to go away.

Even so, it will be a bitter fought weekend with Max pulling every dirty rotten trick he can, so I'm ready for him! It's 1500 points and I'm bringing my daemons of slaanesh, just because I have them built, painted, and experience with them.

So, what do I expect? Knowing Max, a huge hoard of Ghouls, some skellies and a huge grave guard deathstar with a vamp bunkered up in it, with libral casting of necromancy to keep his armies buffed and resurrected.

So, what have I brought? Well I'm mixing it up a little. First of all is a big block of 50 daemonettes in a hoard. The Hero restriction at 375 points, I could afford one herald of tzeentch (a must in my list when facing a magic heavy list like vamps) and a herald of slaanesh. With only one herald, I can only buff one regiment, so I just combined my usual two into one large one. The herald was given a BSB and banner of sundering, which I'll choose to use the -2 debuff to all casting by Lore of necromancy. I never leave home without the banner of sundering, it's a very under rated magic flag!

Second - flamers of tzeentch - I'm running a full unit of 6 for a nice bunker for my herald of tzeentch. With their marching D6 flaming shooting attack, I should make mincemeat of any regenerating units and weaken up any smaller units for decisive charges. The herald has loremaster and a dispel scroll (or the daemon equivalents) and will probably run with shaodw in my first game, then beasts in my second.

Thirdly - two fiends of slaanesh and a unit of seekers, both for flank protection, flank charges and big critter removal.

And that's it - a very small, fragile army. I am tempted to change it about abit this weekend, by taking 3 bloodcrushers instead of the seekers, and dropping a rank of 10 daemonettes to help cover the costs. The bloodcrushers have slightly more staying power and much more punch. I'll see how the first list goes - it's abit weaker but more nippier, although against a slow foe like vamps it might be a bit redundant.

I'll let you all know how it goes - I've also got a game against my friend Matt's High Elves tommorow so I don't want to tailor my lists, as that's just not cricket!

Wish me luck!

Unit - complete!

So, I finished a unit this weekend. An epic, long haul of painting and modelling and fixing broken off arms, touching up poses and painting bases. I got a unit of 24 pretty much finished. They need a good wash with black ink and snow putting on their bases.

I'm hoping to complete two units of 30. I was tempted to paint them slightly differently by giving them different coloured tabbards, but I gave up on that idea. I decided to paint them all the same, since there's a good possibility of combining them together to make a single larger unit.

So here are my Daughters of the Slaughter. The name gets 9/10 for originality.

In there is my Battle Standard Bearer and full command. The unit champion/Alluress is the one in the helmet. I've got a bit of touching up to do, but they're definitely table top quality for me and I'm quite pleased I had the discipline to sit down and blast out a unit! It'll be nice to field a full proper unit, without unpainted or manky ebay cast offs.

Comments, as always, are welcome!

Count as - how far is too far?

Hi guys, how we all doing? Today is another slim update day, in the last week I've had no real chance to get any modelling done (although I did get a game in midweek, which was a hard fought reverse versus those pesky unkilleable warriors of chaos of Mal).

But I thought I'd share with you all an interesting topic I started on Warseer regarding "count as". Opinions were well and truly split regarding my proposed count-as unit.

Basically, with my army, the only models that get in are Slaanesh figures, or close friends with one. I like to theme my armies so they have a theme running throughout. Of course, I don't deny that alliances with daemons exist and happen regularly, but these are temporary, fickle agreements. Not something that happen every game, without fail.

But again, it states that daemons come in various forms and guises, and vary wildly in their shape and appearance, and the rules are for the most common servants of chaos.

So, as I've pretty much set out, I want a themed army that is aesthetically Slaanesh. However, with reasonable modelling, I am willing to include as many of the different units from the chaos armylist as possible. And my target for this is a full 5000point army for storm of magic - 4000 from my army book, and 1000 in monsters/pacts.

So, this blurb out of the way, I wanted to include another unit. Now, I saw these cheeky chappies on a certain auction website:

I love adding old school daemons to my armies. One of these units would really add character to a large army. But looking at them, their claws are huge and unwieldly, not like the current daemonettes. I've found a nice comparison picture to show you the differences. 

Ignore the middle daemonettes, they're the beautifully famous 6 tittied "diaz" sculpts that are a pain to find and cost literally hundreds of pounds per unit.

The older daemonettes are more masculine, squatter, and completely bald. I thought they would suit the profile of bloodletters much more than daemonette.

I was thinking of painting them a darker shade of grey, and saying they were older, embittered daemonettes whose beauty has left them. Their claws are now gargantuan, and they've lost their heightened senses, so to get any feeling from the kill they have to bludgeon them (hence strength 5).  They've also spent their entire existence fighting the elves and lizardmen, causing them to have a heightened resistance to magic (MR 1).

I think it's a cool idea, and I'd only be using them in higher pointed games. Some people disagree though, and despite their physical appearance they would still cause confusion as they ARE old school daemonettes, so will confuse my opponents.

Another person said that since I have count as bloodcrushers already in the army, they lobsternettes should be riding them rather than converted current edition daemonettes (although it is worth pointing out, the bloodletter and juggernaut bloodletters have different stats!).

I can see where they're coming from, but I've played all sorts of count as in the past and, once the paint's on and they're lined up with the army, the differences will be apparent, and they will look and play the part.

And, to be honest, I doubt I'll be going to a tournament anytime soon!

I'm interested to hear more input from you guys regarding this topic. I've not yet bought the lobsternettes, but I will be soon. If the differences are too small, I can always just field them as another daemonette unit - it is the models I want, not the bloodletter stats.

Take it easy

Showing your (garish) colours - Daemonette standard bearers WIP

Today's update is some WIP pictures of my standard bearers.

The paint jobs are a bit messy, and need alot of touching up (quite a bit more than I thought now I've seen the photos!).

What I wanted to do was to make the icons stand out. I didn't want to use the straight out of the box icons on my troops (how dull!), so I jazzed them up.

Here's the first. The flayed skin banner was the undivided/glory icon taken from the chaos space marine box, which was a spare bit since I'd cut off the spikes for some previous conversion which I cannot remember. I put some spare claws in their place to finish the eight pointed star. The main icon was just a slaanesh icon from the chaos space marine vehicle sprue - it just finished the whole icon and made it fully slaanesh rather than undivided.

Here's the second. Inspired by seeing a Skaven BSB with a long billowing banner behind it. I decided to try the same with one of my banners. I took the two standards from the seeker boxset, and added the long banner onto the other banner pole sideways. I had to greenstuff the bottom corner to the pole to make it look like it was wrapped around it. I also had to fill in a hole on the back on the banner with greenstuff. I decided to give the girl a dark eldar dagger arm, just for added uniqueness. I had to cut it above the rope tied on the bicep to make it fit with the daemonettes shoulder.

The Skaven banner had chicken scratch (or should I say rat scratch?) runes and iconography on it, which I liked. So I did the same with my daemon banner. I used the old chaos rune translation from the looooooong out of print Slaves to Darkness book. So, here's a quiz, what does my banner say?

It says: Claw, Keeper of Secrets, Mark of Slaanesh, Daemonette, Under the eye of the Chaos Gods. Utter gibberish, I know, but they look slaaneshi and I'm quite happy with the job I did.

Cool, huh?

Herald of Slaanesh

S'up fellow daemonfiddlers, how are we all today?

I've got a nice update for you all, my herald on foot. I absolutely love this model (far nice than dechala!). He was an utter blast to paint too. He's got so much wargear - rings, pouches, swords, scrolls - lots to keep me busy.

I've yet to give him a wash, so that should bring some details out.

So here's my vintage herald. He has yet to be named, though...

Lemme know if you like!

Furious fallen angels - WIP furies

O hai! I'm back, with some more wippy WIPs. This time, I've brought you my furies!

I decided to make some furies, just for variation for my list, and also for a bit of speed. Are they any good? Who knows, but I had the idea a while ago, and wanted to see if I could make it work. Hopefully, you'll let me know if they have!

I've seen harpy conversions for dark elf armies that convert daemonettes with wings on their backs, which I don't think really worked. Yeah, they're lithe little things, but you'll need a decent pair of wings to fly! So I had the idea of putting tyranid harpy wings on the shoulders of daemonettes. I was also going to put tyranid genestealer claws on their feet, but decided against it - too much faffing, and feet looked ok as they were.

The models came out much better than I thought they would!

So, here are the 6 furies (if you're going to do a themed list, you might as well do it right!).

I got chance tonight to test paint one of the furies as well. 

I've gone for a dark grey (50/50 chaos black and shadow grey - just like my bloodletters of old). I've kept the skin in the wings the grey my daemonettes will have as their skin, just to help visually tie them in, whilst showing they're not [i]actually[/i] slaaneshi on the table top.
I've gone for a darker look all together, avoiding using the bright pink that is warlock purple (lets face it, it IS pink).
The wings I've tried to paint on some veins, just for extra creepiness. It's quite shiny because I've badab black washed it all.

I've tried to get a view with a standard daemonette and some decent views of the wings. Let me know what you all think!