MAD II Tournament Pre 1st Battle Pic

NB: 1st game is against Necrons

Starsmash Tournament Game 1 Battle Report [DE]

I was taking to Starsmash the following list:


Baron
Haemonculus with Shattershard

2 x 3 Trueborn with 3 Blasters & Haywire Grenades in a Venom with 2 Splinter Cannons

9 Wracks in a Raider with Disintegrator Cannon
8 Wyches with Haywire Grenades in a Raider with Disintegrator Cannon
5 Wyches with Haywire Grenades in a Venom with 2 Splinter Cannons
3 Wracks in a Venom with 2 Splinter Cannons

3 Beastmasters, 4 Krymerae & 4 Razorwing flocks

2 x Ravager with 3 Dark Lances each
Razorwing Jetfighter with 2 Dark Lances & 4 Monoscythe Missiles



For Game 1 I was facing the following Daemons list:

Fateweaver,
Bloodthirster,
3 units of 3 Flamers,
3 units of 5 plaguebearers.
10 pink horrors
1 big unit of 9 screamers,
10 flesh hounds,
5 slannesh daemonic cavalry.

A very fast list, with 3 big units in the screamers, hounds and cavalry.

I had first turn and moved into the middle of the board.  I circled the beastmasters with the vehicles so they could be flamed much if he decided to go for them.

[Note: My opponent was using tyranid gargoyles as screamers,
and the hounds are hiding in the ruins, the slannesh cav are
behind the ruin on the far right hand flank]

When he dropped in my beasts were unlikely to move away far enough to avoid being charged, so they charged the hounds which were outside fateweaver's aura (to reroll saves), helped out by shooting by the rest of my army, they wiped out the hounds.  I gained first blood by wiping out the hounds after poor flaming from the daemons when they dropped.

However both our armies had glass cannon assault units, so after i wiped out the hounds I got charged by the slannesh cavalry and got wiped out myself, giving way the warlord secondary vp.

The screamers with their speed managed to charge a vehicle and wreaked it, but now outside of fateweavers aura and not having a 4+ save fron boosting my army turned on them and reduced them to a couple of models that wyches killed in combat.

A trend over the tournament was that once my units got out of their transport and killed something to get a pain token they died the next turn, and this was no exception with some flamers making a mess of them the wyches.

An interesting tactic came up when the Bloodthirster mishaped and I got to place him anywhere on the board.  I decided to place him 11" diagonally away from corner of the board facing the corner.  This meant that he couldn't run off the board without rolling a double six, giving him the hard choice in his next turn; either fly off the board and waste a turn or glide to stay on the board and face the majority of my army's firepower as I was retreating towards that corner. In the end he tried to run off the board, but didn't make it, so in his next turn he decided to fly off the board, which meant that the bloodthirster did not have any effect on the game until very late (he came back on turn 4 swooping so couldn't charge anything until turn 5).

With the beastmasters, large wyches & large wracks gone or gutted, it was now a rearguard action, with my remaining forces retreating while my remaining vehicles poured firepower into the daemons.

Although the game was a bloodthirsty one, I wouldn't make up the disadvantage of having the large kill point total my army has, and the game ended in a loss for the Dark Eldar.

The daemons had some small 5 man units of plaguebearers as additional troops, however you have to focus so much effort to kill the fast threats of flying monstrous creatures, screamers, flamers & cavalry that by the time they arrived there is little to kill the small but very resilient plaguebearers.

Being a kill point mission also helped the daemons as the plaguebearers could hide in ruins and go to ground if necessary, plus they didn't have to spread out to threaten multiple objectives.  However this takes nothing away from my opponents good play.

This was second game against Fateweaver, and it cemented in my mind that Tzeentch daemons are definitely a top tier list (note: my opponent only had a unit each of screamers and flamers). Just like you should always ask yourself "How will my army deal with MEQ ?" you should now also ask yourself how will I deal with Fateweaver Tzeentch Daemons - Answers on a postcard...

Given the time since the tournament, the rest of the Starsmash games will be a more summarised version, with another post detailing where I think the meta has moved.

Work continues on my Voidraven which is being painted bit by bit this week.  Pics will follow later this week, with the first raiding parties to have the Voidraven deployed are due to make contact with enemy this weekend (the MAD II tournament).

Rathstar

MAD II Tournament - Painting Progress

Hi,

My army list has been sent off and is locked in.  In the end, although the majority of the advice received was to lose the trueborn (or at least one unit) and replace them with Reaver Jetbikes I chickened out because I haven't had the best luck with reaver jetbikes while the trueborn have sometimes shown they can be good (original list can be seen here). There'll be no time for playtesting, so the first outing for the Defense Wall, Quad gun & Voidraven will be the tournament.

However when the advice is so consistent there's got to be something to it, therefore after the tournament this weekend I will try out losing one squad of trueborn for reavers and the other squad for a 2nd unit of wyches (or hellions when I get them assembled).

Painting wise I've now finished by Aegis Defense Line.  It was a very basic and quick paint job given the rest of the models I have to get finished by Thursday night in time to travel to my mate's Friday evening for the tournament:

Aegis Defense Wall - Pre Varnish

The wall sections just need clipping off the frames (leaving the bottom on the frames made it so much easier to paint).

With a short deadline, and wanting to spend more time on my Voidraven I painted the defense wall only using the following 5 colours:

After a black undercoat (I would use grey if I had to do this again to miss a painting step), I base painted the whole wall dark grey.  Following that I gave the front and sides of the wall a quick light grey drybrush, and painted the Aquila symbol red (I choose a dark red as it would go over the grey in one coat).  The shade was dabbed on the larger bolts, and the bits on the back were given a very quick drybrush silver with the dark grey used to touch-up where my drybrush had gone on the back of the wall.

Other painting is progressing slowly with the Voidraven purple sections all base painted, with the blue sections to be base painted tonight.  Unfortunately I will have to cut a few minor corners with the Voidraven to get it ready for the tournament.  I could do with some modelling putty touch-up, but due to time I'm going to leave it, as it's in a area that stays black, so I can touch it up later and paint it black without ruining any other paintwork.  From a distance the model will look fine, but it's now how I would have wished it to be.

Pictures of the finished army (probably minus some final basing) should be up posted up Thursday evening.  And for those of you guessing the pieces used on my Voidraven in my earlier sneak peek I have updated the pictures with the source and how I'm using them (link).

Rathstar

Dark Eldar WIP Voidraven - Part Seven - Touch-up Issues and Sneak Peeks [Updated with Sneak Peek answers]

Hi,

Before I undercoated my Voidraven I went back over the model to smooth some of the joins with a GW file, and GW emery boards.  The emery board could probably be easily sourced from out retailers, at probably a fraction of the cost, but they were only £4, and should produce a smoother finish, rather than the sometimes course and scratched look normal files make.  However this is where I realised I made a mistake.

When I did some second set of tidying up I used mulliput again, however when it came to smoothing my work with filing I came accross one disadvantage of mulliput.  It does dry very very hard, and it was very difficult to do much filing, particularly in the small areas.  The emery boards did nothing, and only heavy filing made an impact.  What I should have done, and I recommend to anyone else, is to start with mulliput, but then to do the final touch-up and finishing off to create a smooth transition between the parts with either green stuff or a mixture of green stuff and grey stuff.  This would make it much easier to touch-up the final work.

I still have some touch-up to do, but I'm going to try and do this after I have undercoated the model, with liquid green stuff.  I was hoping that some of the touch-up work would not be needed once the model was undercoated, and from a distance the small issues are unnoticeable  but when the model is examined close up they are.  The main issues I can see are a s slightly uneven finish in the mulliput in the delicate areas between the engines towards the front of the model (down to my poor modelling skills), and a slight difference in the height of the mulliput on the two engine extensions.

This last stage is also the fun part, because you can just raid your bits box and add any interesting pieces.  I used some reaver fins, some talos bits, reaver jetbike canopy.

To leave you in suspense below are some teaser pics of parts of the Voidraven before I undercoated it; bonus rep if you can say what all the bits are and where on the model they are :)  I'll fill in the answers at the weekend (Update: answers now added below, did you guess them all correctly ?).

Rathstar

This is the double wing section of the Voidraven,
created by adding the spare end of the wing over the
original one at an angle

This the tail fin section, that has been cut down
to give a much thinner vertical profile to the Voidraven

This is a Reaver jetbike tail fin,
which is replacing the main tail fin of the Razorwing

This is a Reaver jetbike Grav Talon,
which I placed on the side of the Voidraven cockpit

It's a bit blurred, but this is the undercarriage of the Voidraven at the front,
on the left is the bottom of the crystal canopy made from the full and half canopy sections
glued together to make a larger canopy.
On the right is a Reaver jetbike canopy and in between is some mulliput.

This is my Void Mine.
It is made from a Talos head, a small ravager engine at the back,
reaver tail fins for wings, and a reaver cluster caltrops.

Dark Eldar WIP Voidraven - Part Six - Putty Applied

Things have been a bit slow recently, however I've managed to start filling the gaps and smoothing the joins in my Voidraven.

After I did some test putty sections:

I checked them out after they had dried overnight.  They were all very strong, but I think if I had kept pushing with my nail I would have been able to leave a mark in the green stuff.

The mulliput was particularly hard, when I went to test filing it, so I’ve decided that I would start with mulliput and then go over any detail areas with a mix of green stuff and/or grey stuff.  For a smaller project I would probably use either green stuff or grey stuff, but for the large Voidraven I would use mulliput for the all put minor detail work.


For the first stage I started by kneading the mulliput into small balls, but later found it easier to either roll it into a long tine for engine gap filling and then spread it out and smooth it with the modelling tools.  For smoothing out the join between the front cockpit and the original hull I either used smaller lines of mulliput or stretched it out to be a thin film, cutting off some of the excess when it was put in place and smoothing the remainder.

I used a pot of water to keep the putty wet, both when kneading the two parts together and applying it to the Voidraven, this stopped the putty drying out, but also meant that watery putty got on the model. I was careful to clean this out of the recesses in the Voidraven so it wouldn't dry out ruining the lovely detailing.  The canopy also had a smear of light brown/yellow watery putty over it, so I cleaned this with clean water so the small details wouldn’t be obscured when if the putty was allowed to dry.

Here’s some pics of my progress so far:

I still need to do the underside of the front cockpit, and some light filing and touch up with a mixture of mulliput and greenstuff on the areas I’ve done so far.  I particularly want to improve the join of the two engines towards the front of the Voidraven to make it curved rather than a straight line between the two sections.

One thing to bear in mind when working with mulliput or any putty is that because water is being used to keep the putty moist things are going to get messy.  Bear this in mind when you consider the location you are going to work and what clothes you are going to wear.  Here's a pic of my work space when I had finished  not how dirty the knee of my trousers are:

Also I would advise clearing up thoroughly as soon as you are finished, as the mulliput, even the watery bits will dry very hard and would be nightmare to remove later.  The same goes for modelling tools, which you should ensure are clean of all modelling putty.


With a week to army list submission for the MAD II tournaments, and the event itself in two weeks, I’ve got to get to the painting stage soon, as I have to paint:
Quad Gun (currently undercoated)
Defense Line (currently undercoated)
One extra razorwing flock (part painted)
and repair a beastmaster and two razorwing flocks (darn fragile wings )

Hopefully next post will show be a nicely undercoated Voidraven (I’m still dithering on the tail fins though).

Rathstar

3 Weeks to MAD II Tournament - DE List, DE Quad Gun & Blasterborn concerns

Hi,

The Eldar support platform base I ordered arrived, and although I partially agree with some of the comments that it looks a bit to eldar-ish rather than dark eldar-ish I'm going to use it for the MAD tournament in 3 weeks, as I probably haven't got the time to order and paint up anything else.

The only change I made to the base is to raise it up with an old flying base, so it is more in line with the height of the imperial quad gun base.  The flying stem glued straight into the base, and drilling a hole into the bottom of the platform with the drill I use for my small magnets was a nice snug fit for the top of the flying stem.  Below is the platform just before I undercoated it:

I will either pin and glue one of the new flying stems to the top of the platform so that the Quad Gun I previously made can be attached:

As I didn't have time to start filling the gaps on my Voidraven with putty I also undercoated the Imperial Defense Line.  I would like to use something that wasn't imperial looking, but I don't think I can source (and more importantly paint up) anything in time.  Anyway the imperial defense line will be fine for my space wolves, and I'll have plenty of time over the winter to come up with something nice.  I've seen a few good things on the web, so I'm sure I'll be able to come up with something good given time.

One of the reasons that my painting/converting has slowed, apart from manic work and family life, is that I've come to the conclusion that I will not be able to paint up a hellion squad for the MAD tournament as well.  This has made a significant cut it what I have to get done for the tournament.

This leaves my proposed list for the next tournament (assuming everything is painted) as:


Baron Sathonyx - 105

Haemonculus Nalix Soulseer – 55
  with Venom Blade

4 Trueborn – 116
  with 4 Blasters & Haywire grenades
  in Venom with 2 Splinter Cannons - 65

4 Trueborn – 106
  with 2 Blasters, 2 Splinter Cannons
  & Haywire grenades
  in Venom with 2 Splinter Cannons - 65

9 Wracks - 90
  in Raider with Disintegrator Cannon - 60

9 Wyches with Haywire grenades - 108
  in Raider with Disintegrator Cannon - 60

5 Wyches with Haywire grenades - 60
  in Venom with 2 Splinter Cannons - 65

5 Wracks - 50 [mans Quad gun]
  in Venom with 2 Splinter Cannons - 65

3 Wracks - 30 [goes in reserve]

4 Beastmasters - 183 [joined by Baron]
  with 5 Krymerae and 5 Razorwing Flocks

Ravager with 3 Dark Lances - 105

Voidraven Bomber - 165
  with 2 Void Lances, Void Mine
  and 2 Shatterfield Missiles

Razorwing Jetfighter - 145
  with 2 Dark Lances, twin-linked Splinter Rifle
  and 4 Monoscythe Missiles

Aegis Defence Line with Quad Gun - 100

Totals: 1798 Pts, 64 Models, 19 Units, 5 Troops

The main changes since my previous lists are the addition of a defence line & quad gun, an extra troop unit (5 wracks), and changing a ravager for a voidraven.  This has been afforded by losing a 3rd unit of trueborn.

I will go into my army performance at Starsmash and my thoughts on why my previous lists (and my tactics using them) needed to change in a further blog post, but the unit I am most concerned with is the trueborn.  They are very expensive, 29 pts a model for the a blasterborn with haywire grenades, for example I could lose the second unit of trueborn for either*:

• a second unit of 9 wyches with haywire grenades in a raider
• 5 wyches with haywire grenades in a venom, plus expand the beastmasters with an extra beastmaster and 3 krymera

[Who needs guns, I'll just charge them all, overwatch be damned !!]

These changes sound fine and give more resilience to my assault push, but it reduces my anti tank shooting to woeful levels, especially when you consider that over half my long ranged lances will be off the board on turn 1 (flyers), leaving just the single ravager and the quad gun for early long range anti tank.  Haywires are great but they are on very fragile troops that die in droves when their transport blows up and/or they are left in the open.

Are blasterborn the necessary evil that is still required to give enough anti tank ?  A lot of people are reducing their mech, not completely getting rid of it.  If haywire grenades are used to get units out of their transport the following turn's rapid fire response is normally enough to remove (or render useless) the dark eldar unit.

What's your opinion on anti tank requirements in 6th ?  Are blastborn still needed, and in what volumes ?  With Wracks, Wyches and Beastmasters going forwards into assault is my problem that I have an assault based force in the shooty environment of 6th edition ?

Rathstar

* My hellion idea is to also lose the small unit of 3 wracks and the haemonoculus venom blade (as he would now be giving his pain token to the hellions and joining the wracks manning the quad gun) to afford 13 hellions including a hekatrix.  However that's an experiment for later when I can get the hellions assembled.

Dark Eldar WIP Voidraven - Part Five - Putty Wars & Void Lances

Hi,

After the unexpected quite modelling time I got on Saturday, Sunday turned into a complete fail, but I was back to modelling Monday night (abeit very late).

Putty Wars

Tonight was the first half of the modelling putty practice.  I'd already made my test peices:

The internet is a wealth of information, not all good mind you, but unless you're doing something very unique there's probably a video out there of someone else going it.  Therefore first I watched a couple of youtube videos of people using green stuff.  Main tips I took in were:

• Always keep your finger tips and tools wet to stop the putty drying out too quickly
• Be careful to knead the two parts of the putty together for long enough to ensure both parts of mixed together sufficiently

First up we have GW's Green Stuff.  As always with modelling tools, costing just under £7 for the following:

It's odd that there wasn't an even mix of yellow/blue.  Particularly when I spoke to some friends saying that previously (many years ago) that the green stuff didn't dry hard enough and being given the advice that the ratio was probably wrong and I wasn't using enough blue stuff.  Well time will tell if it happens again.

The green stuff was a bit harder to knead together than the other two, and came apart slightly when I was shaping it rather than spreading.  It's now drying and I will see how hard it dries and how easy it is to file tomorrow.

Next up was Gale Force Nine's Grey Stuff.  While costing £10 it came with 2 separate tubes of putty and had considerable more putty than the GW offering, but probably not as cheap as some of the green stuff offering you'd fine on ebay or from other manufacturers.

The grey stuff went on a bit easier than games workshop green stuff.  However the main claim to fame of grey stuff it that it dries harder, so I will be testing this tomorrow after it dries:

Lastly I had Mulliput.  This is definietely a more industrial version.  It was the only version to include instructions, which included a suggestion to use gloves (which I ignores) and to ensure the putty was kneaded together sufficiently.  As well as modelling uses it was advertised in the instructions as being suitable for industrial repairs (eg. boiler leakages, wall filling etc.).  What stuck me was that it would set under water, definitely not just for modelling:

Milliput was also the cheapest option.  For an amount similar to the Gale Force Nine's Grey stuff it cost only £3.99, from a town centre hobby shop.

The mulliput was very easy to knead together, and felt almost like plasticine.  It spead on easy, and if it dries hard it will probably win the quest to be my main material in the voidraven's next stage of conversion:

I made sure the mulliput went over the bits of plastic because I wanted to see how easy it would be to file down once it was dry.  The mulliput instructions also said that it dries without shrinkage, so I will compare the dried models to these pictures to see if there is any skrinkage or expansion in any of the putties used.

So I have my three samples all drying, waiting for the next stage; how well can they be filled once dry:

Void Lances

Before I finished for the night I wanted my Voidraven to take another step into looking like it's finished position.  First I glued on the rear thrusters, and I put on the section that holds the tail fin.  I'm putting it on regardless of whether I put on the normal tail fun, as it adds to the rear length of the model.

For the Void Lances I put a Bright Lance in between the mount and the barrel of the razorwing Dark Lance.  I glued the gun mount into the Voidraven, but I magnitised the barrel of the Void Lance.  Here's my completed Void Lance:

I may put some green/grey stuff around join of the bright/dark lance, but I think once undercoated and painted it will look fine.

Here's a picture of the Voidraven so far:

The stages remaining before I can undercoat the Voidraven are:

• Fill the gaps in the engines
• Smooth the join between the first and section cockpit sections
• Fill the gaps under the front cockpit, and attach the cockpit clear bottom
• Decide on and attach the fins at the back (the original straight tail fin, x-wing type fins, or both)

the void mine will be attached later.

That's it for now.  I'm only managing to grab modelling time in small bits, but this is showing it is possible to make progress, although in small steps, once I'm committed to using the time for modelling no matter if the time spare is only 30 mins or an hour..

Rathstar