What I got up to before 8th Edition hit - Part Two [40k - Dark Eldar]

So as 7th drew to a close I had one last tournament to go to.  It was a small local 1250 point Highlander tournament, and I used it to paint up some more units.

With my trueborn with blasters always being envious of Eldar Fire Dragons I decided to paint some up.  To tie them into my army better I used Dark Eldar heads and used a darker than usual colour scheme (well apart from the guns).  Here's a work in progress pic:

[a pic of the painted Fire Dragons and Starweaver will follow in a later post]

The main reason I finally included Fire Dragons was because at the time they were allowed to go in Ynnari Harlequin Skyweavers.  This was important because I do not like the aesthetics of the Eldar transports, while the Harlequin vehicles are similar to my converted Venoms.  You can see my Skyweaver in the pic above, again I couldn't leave the model standard and mounted the 2 shuriken cannons each side of the cockpit, and adding spikes to the front of the hull to tie it into my army, as my converted Venoms have the same, finally I used a reaver jetbike helmet for the pilot.

Both units did well in the tournament, and when Soulburst works on the Fire Dragon it's deadly.  Unfortunately with the move to 8th edition, and the very sensible ruling that each faction of Eldar can not go in each other's transports both the Fire Dragons and the Skyweaver have not made my initial 8th edition list.  However the Skyweaver may make a come back, although it can't transport any models (I have no other Harlequin models) its a very good gunboat compared to the Venom for nearly the exact same points.  The Skyweaver has a better invulnerable save, and 6 shots at Str6, in my opinion, is better than the Rapid 6 from 2 (4+ to wound) Splinter Cannons on the Venom.

After the tournament I converted up my next unit, which was originally going to be some Warp Spiders.  I saw a great conversion online, from Mantle on Dakka Dakka (link here):

The conversion used Dark Eldar Scourge legs with all the spikes and blades cut off, Eldar Guardian torsos, arms & heads, Wraothblade Hip Plates on the shoulders, Wraithblade Loin Cloths and Guardian Aerials for the Warp Jump Generator, and finally the front of a Shuriken Catapult replaced with the end of a Wraith Cannon.

The only change I made was to use Scourge heads rather than Eldar Guardian heads.  Here's the first two models assembled:

Painting went on hold with the rumours of 8th edition approaching.  As soon as the Index's were released, in an effort to return my army list to mainly (if not totally) Dark Eldar, the leader of the unit got his weapon converted to a Shard Carbine, and the unit will now be Scourges with Blasters.


The tournament I won but didn't

The tournament organiser had made the scoring system to hopefully make it more enjoyable for all players.  He didn't like the idea of a player knowing their going to lose and having nothing to fight for with 1-2 hours left of the game to go.  In this tournament each player's tournament points was the amount of victory points they scored during the game (using points killed as a tie break).

While fine, this can lead to two unintended consequences:

• Fast armies tend to do well regardless of whether they win or lose.  Your score can be more impacted on the cards you draw.  This has impacted me both ways.  In a previous tournament at the local GW store I had a close game where both my opponent and myself (playing Necrons) kept drawing maelstrom cards we couldn't do.  I lost the game, but because we both scored very low victory points it basically put us both out of the running.  
• The results are polarising, in that the tournament the top players all scored high victory points even when they lost, eg. one of my losses was 16-19, and my 16 points would have been one of the highest in the room.  This makes later round's matchmaking a nightmare for the TO.  In the last round people at the top had to be moved, sometimes by 2-3 tables because we had all played each other.

In the final results I came 4th (knowing my victory points I guessed something was probably wrong), and out of the four games I had played the person in 1st, 2nd & 3rd.  What turned out was that my game against the person in 1st place had been entered the wrong way round.  Normally this wouldn't have affected the results much but in this case the game had been a 25-10 win to me.  The TO let me know later when he checked it would have swapped my position with the winners.  With my 25-10 win it meant that even losing my last game to the person who came 2nd it wouldn't have been enough for them to catch-up.

I am concerned that the winner in tournaments which similar scoring systems (tournament points = game victory points) is the one who gets lucky and wins by a landslide in one of their games wins.  Yes I played well in that 25-10 game, but not to justify 25 tournament points, compared to what people on nearby tables would have got.

So I won, but not officially, my last tournament of 7th.  Most importantly I had 4 great games, painted up some new units that I can draw on for years to come.  Plus it got me back to the converting and painting table, in time for 8th edition.


What comes next

It's been busy since 8th edition came out, and over the next few posts I will cover:

• The tournament list I used for this tournament, and how I think 8th edition affects it, and the Dark Eldar list I will be using going forwards
• How my Tau will transition to the new edition, and the new models I have built and painted
• How much I love Bloodbowl (well you already knew that), and the new teams I am converting to use in my mate's annual winter league

It'll be much less time between posts going forwards, but in the meantime let me know how you have been finding 8th edition.

Rathstar

What I got up to before 8th Edition hit - Part One [40k - Dark Eldar]

With a new edition coming up I wanted to move back to my Dark Eldar.  There were a few units I still didn't have, and I missed the army's aggressive playstyle.

Disclaimer: This post has been sitting in my draft box for way too long, so I've added some 8th Edition comments into the mix

Initially I considered Mandrakes.  I remember using a unit of three wracks back in 6th edition to hold objectives for a measily 30 points.  In 7th the minimum unit of wracks went up to 5, they lost the ability to become troops, poison got worse in that you only rerolled to wound if you had higher (rather than the same) strength compared to the opponents toughness, and lastly they competed with the much improved Grotesques, plus Trueborn and Incubi in the Elites slot.

Since then I've moved away from using Incubi and only use at most one unit of Trueborn, so spending 36 points on a small harassment unit in the form of 3 Mandrakes could at least be useable.  In fact I had seen Skari (link to his youtube channel) use them very well on multiple occasions.  Skari's channel also has some great 8th edition battle reports already.

I got as far as ordering the models, but the Gathering Storm Book II game out, which gives a huge boost, even if you don't include any Eldar or Harlequin models to a Dark Eldar force, Mandrakes were not allowed in the Reborn Warhost detachment :(  I also found I was being distracted, so to focus myself I signed myself up for a tournament.

The tournament was an escalation tournament, with games at 400, 800, 1200 & 1600 points, so I decided to use the event to paint up units I didn't have.  First up was a converted Shadowseer I assembled about a year ago and undercoated grey, but then hadn't got any further:

I had initially converted it to use as a Spiritseer (one of many times I have flirted with using Eldar).  I added extra pipes to his back with extra phastasm grenade launchers from the kabalite warrior box, and the weapon was converted from a wrack blade at the bottom, a hellglaive for the middle section and a venom blade for the top.

Although I could spend more time on it, the model turned out good enough for the tournament, and I could return to it later:

Next up were Medusa.  Although I already had some Lhameans and Sslyths I thought Medusa deepstriking on a venom could be very nasty in a Ynnari force, potentially able to take out 2 small units close together with their Str4 Ap3 flamers.  Shame their weapons don't ignore cover in 8th Edition

Now the issue with Medusa is that it is a single pose Finecast model, however I noticed that the kit had 2 heads, and I had a few Warhammer Shadow Warrior legs (old project that never happened), so I converted 2 using kabalite warrior torsos and medusa heads, and put a reaver jetbike head on the finecast medusa body to get 3 different medusa models:

I have to say I really avoid finecast models, particularly as a lot of them are direct only which means you are playing Russian roulette as to whether you get a nice one or one with horrific amounts of flash on them (let alone mis moulded parts).  The medusa I received had lots of flash, but at least I only had the single model:

I think the required clean up was worth it as I now have a nice unit to use:

Last up was a conversion I originally was going to use as Corsair Jetbikes, so I wanted to incorporate elements of all the other eldar factions.  For the moment I would use them as Scatbikes, but with magnetised weapons they could be refitted to be used as reavers jetbikes.  I am sure the Ynnari as it is now will only be playable for a few months until 8th edition comes out.

Well I was wrong, but the latest FAQ meaning I have to use one of the Ynarri special characters to play Ynarri, and the better Dark Eldar power from pain table, will mean that I will just use an army with the Aeldari faction keyword until the Dark Eldar codex comes out which may make a pure Dark Eldar force have more benefits, and it allows me to play with my Jetbikes.

[Magnetised Scatter Lasers - I only see them being used for the next few months until 8th Edition hits]

The jetbike started out as a reaver jetbike then I removed the back vertical blade, and used 2 blades from the reaver weapons to make two more diagonal blades simular to a eldar windrider.  I then added a Skyrunner canopy over the front of the jetbike to which I added spikes from the raider set (to tie the jetbikes into to my army which had similar spikes on my converted venoms).  Lastly I used scourge heads on reaver pilots.

Here's the jetbikes ready for the tournament, again not finished but most of the way there:

and a group shot of all the new models:

Unfortunately due to family issues I wasn't able to make the tournament, but its nice to get new models for my army.

I've managed to catch three games down my local GW.  Two were small games at 800 points, the last one was at 1200 points.  However the 1200 point game started very late so we didn't get to finish, which was a real shame as it was the only game that included the Medusa, and they stayed in reserve all game.  However I could see they had potential looking at where they could have come in and the damage the small unit could have done.

The Shadowseer has been very lacklustre so far.  Not surprising when he's a lvl 1 psyker with no other psychic support, its a bit hard to get spells off.  Another issue he has, is that he is very fragile, and I move him into my Court's raider on turn 1, so he normally in the thick of combat soon, and being the only character in the unit he is normally challenged out, and he has struggled, dying most times, against squad leaders.

Oddly enough with Furious Charge and +2 Str on his weapon he's surprising effective against non-walker vehicles, and managed to kill an unharmed Rhino on the charge by himself.  This is really useful in a Ynarri force because the Shadowseer has a high Initiative, which meant that the Court he was accompanying was allowed to charge the occupants immediately.  However while the Court killed the occupants of the rhino over 2 or 3 combat rounds the Shadowseer died to the squad champion.

Obviously this has changed in 8th edition, with vehicles and monsters needs more dedicated weapons to take them out, rather than just glancing them to death with mid strength weaponry.

In 8th edition Beastpacks can not benefit from Strength from Death.  Ynnari works better with shooty Infantry units and Jetbikes, rather than my typical Dark Eldar list which focuses on Vehicles and beastpacks, even my Court of the Archon has been changed significantly, both becoming more expensive and individual models.  An Eldar army made of up of Reapers and Windriders would do well with Ynarri.

That's all for now, next up I'll show some more models I've painted up for a tournament I did make, before getting onto my 8th edition adventures.

Rathstar