Representing the Legions - Part Two.

Part One can be found here.

Lets get stuck in then.

No. 8 - Night Lords.

Due to some early stereotypes and poorly written codex entries Night Lords were classified as either a bike or Raptor filled army. The story 'Lord of the Night' though having a more well rounded bit of Night Lords background than the codex had, did little to dispel the 'They're a bunch of Daemonic Jump Marines' vibe. Fortunately in recent times they've been given over to Aaron Dembski-Bowden who's books 'Soul Hunter' and the more recent 'Blood Reaver' have done a lot to help with ideas for building a 'fluffy' army.
Personally I wouldn't use the Chaos Codex as it is poorly equipped to represent them in any kind of usable form due to the Raptors in it being more expensive than Assault Marines while at the same time being worse and the fact that their basic Chaos Marines suffer from a lack of the 'And They Shall Know No Fear' rule.
The Blood Angels Codex however, gives us a number of viable options. The ability to have your whole army set-up as a precision strike force with Jump Packs allows you to represent the 'Raptor' side of their character while the fast vehicles give you the ability to make a quite scary mechanised 'Lightning Assault' force. The 'Red Thirst' rule is easily justifiable in a Legion recruited from a world full of criminals.
Of course another less used, but entirely viable option is to use the Space Wolves Codex. Obviously this option moves away from the 'Raptor Cult' aspect of the Night Lords and moves more towards the 'Warband' style of army. The wide variety of equipment options (on Wolf Guard especially) enables you to recreate the more random equipment that a bunch of renegades would have access to and the HQ's make representing a Warband leader a piece of piss cake.

No.9 - Blood Angels.

They have their own Codex which does the job just fine.

No. 10 - Iron Hands.

A Legion of Marines who like chopping bits off themselves, think being encased in a Dreadnought is a promotion and like Techmarines (a lot) leads us nicely to the standard Marine Codex. Master of the Forge and Tech Marines are freely available as 'Iron Fathers' and mass Dreadnoughts can be used if required. I personally think Games Workshop screwed us over by not giving us a named 'unique' Master of the Forge character to use to lead Iron Hand armies, but they didn't so we'll have to make do without one.
Alternatively as their companies are basically individual clans led by a revered representative, any Marine codex that has access to TechMarines or equivalents (so all of them except Chaos then) could be used. The Blood Angels Codex could represent them as the apparently brutal force they are alleged to be with Sanguinary Priests 'Feel no Pain' rule representing keeping their Bionics in order rather than their biological systems.
Space Wolves are an equally legitimate choice as they have (if anything) a more suitable Techmarine representative in the form of Iron Priests and can actually be led by a Venerable Dreadnought (Bjorn) if you so desire.

No. 11 - ???
If Primarchs themselves are forbidden to mention the 2nd and 11th Legions then I'm probably best off keeping away from the subject as well.....

No. 12 - World Eaters.

One of the few Traitor Legions that can actually be represented using the Chaos Codex, Admittedly it would be a fairly one dimensional army but I've used (almost) mono-Khorne armies with some success on multiple occasions.
Blood Angels are a better choice if you want to win games though. My own custom chapter 'The Night Reapers', 3rd Company is made almost exclusively of Khorne Berzerker models with weapon options to suit their use with either of the aforementioned rule-sets. Sanguinary Priests become 'Berzerker Surgeons', Chaplains become 'War Priests', A Blood Chalice doesn't even need to change it's name at all, lol. Librarians are a bit trickier to justify from a 'fluff' point of view but if you think of their powers as 'Gifts of Khorne' it's not much of a stretch.
I'm sure you've all seen Khorne Berzerkers on Juggernauts of Khorne 'counting-as' Thunderwolf Cavalry by now so that's an obvious option. Lone Wolves also work well as Berzerker Champions if you think that rather than them not wanting to join other Marines it's the other Marines that don't want to join them.....

No. 13 - Ultramarines.

As the Space Marine Codex might as well be subtitled 'Codex - Ultramarines' then this one should be obvious to everyone.

I think that's enough for today, I'll continue with Part 3 in a couple of days starting with Death Guard as I have my Tuesday 'House of Paincakes' post to sort out first.

As usual feel free to comment away if you wish ;-)

Representing the Legions - Part One

After a few discussions both on-line and in the real world there seems to be a 'Fluff Nazi' conspiracy to limit what codices are used to represent which Legions/Chapters.

There is much talk along the lines of  "Codex 'A' has character 'B' in it and therefore MUST be used to represent chapter 'C' or the world will end". This is blatantly bollocks and so I'm going to list which books (imo) can be used to represent the different armies and give some reasons why and perhaps list a few alternatives that may not have occurred to people.

In the interests of keeping some semblance of order I'll do them in order of founding,

No. 1 - Dark Angels.

Obviously the Dark Angels have their own codex so it would seem to be the obvious choice. If your doing a 'Deathwing' or 'Ravenwing' army then it probably is (especially after the recent FAQ).....However.....
Dark Angel players not doing either of the above mentioned themes are somewhat stuck with an outdated rule-set. It's obvious to most people that the Dark Angels Codex was a 'test-bed' for rules that would inevitably make their way into the Space Marine Codex, therefore I see no reason why the standard Marine codex can't be used to represent them. Given their background as a knightly order using the Black Templars book is also not unreasonable ;-)

No.2 - ???.
Moving on......

No.3 - Emperors Children.

The Chaos Codex has Noise Marines in it and therefore has to be used to represent them.....Of course that's only true if you believe all Emperors Children became Noise Marines which they blatantly didn't and that having an extra point of Initiative represents worshipping excess in all its forms which it obviously doesn't.
Pre-Heresy Emperors Children (being just like normal Marines) can be represented using any book you like. Post Heresy is a bit more tricky.....Though it seems like I dismissed it as a choice the Chaos Codex can be used to create a fairly 'fluffy' pure Slaanesh force which is still usable (though not optimal) as Noise Marines only really become Noise Marines once you give them a Sonic Blaster.....
Also though Lucius the Eternal is available as a character in C:CSM he can be represented in real terms by anybody who's good with a sword and there's no shortage of those in the other Marine codices. As the EC were a chapter obsessed with perfection but with an extremely well defined command structure, the Blood Angels codex could represent them just fine as 'Feel no Pain' is entirely reasonable for Marines who actually quite enjoy pain and 'Furious Charge' and 'Red Thirst' just represent the uncontrollable craving for more of the sensations of battle.....Well it's just an idea, lol.

No.4 - Iron Warriors.

Lets cut straight to the 'Obliterator' argument and get it over with. Yes, the Chaos Codex has Obliterators in it and yes the Iron Warriors are associated with them but they're meant to be exceedingly rare so therefore 9 of them turning up to a 1500 point border skirmish isn't Fluffy.....

No, it isn't......

For a bunch of siege warfare specialists the 'Vanilla' Space Marine codex is a better fit. Masters of the Forge, Ironclad Dreadnoughts, Thunderhammer/Storm Shield Terminators, Vindicators with Siege Shields and Thunderfire Cannons could all be included in an Iron Warriors army without any stretch of the imagination being required.

No. 5 - White Scars.

Well this is one of the few ones where the intended codex fits them perfectly. Bikes as Troops and a special character that gives you 'Outflank' is ideal. Though remember that just because you can outflank with everything doesn't mean you should outflank with everything.

No.6 - Space Wolves.

They have their own codex and it does the job just fine.

Next.....

No.7 - Imperial Fists

I could just copy/paste the Iron Warriors entry above into this section, lol. The reason the Iron warriors fit so neatly into the Space Marine codex is exactly because there's plenty of Imperial Fist suitable units. Lysander doesn't have to be in an Imperial Fist army by the way.....It's not compulsory or anything.....

I think that'll do for now and I'll start the next article with the 8th Legion - The Night Lords

Thoughts and comments are (as usual) most welcome.

Some 'Long Fang' progress

So I've got a bit of painting done,

They'd already been dry-brushed my Chapters metallic blue colour but they also now have the first coat on their weapons and the basic colours done on the shoulder pads and rims as well as small other small details which you probably can't see very well on this picture.
I'm also changing my usual bright blue colour on the cloaks for a more pleasing grey colour. All the cloaked Sergeants/Champions/Wolf Guard etc. will gradually get changed into the new colour scheme.

Also as a relief from the boredom of painting the same thing on 18 models I cleaned up and partially based this recent e-bay acquisition

Not much to comment on, but go ahead if you feel the need......

Grey Knights - Don't Panic.....

So I'd normally start by showing you pictures of all the new sprues from the 'Black Box' but as these are already on the Games Workshop website it seemed a tad redundant.....

He's a picture of the unit stat page though as a few of you might not be yet aware of the changes from the play test copy that was doing the rounds.

First things first,

It's not broken at all.....except if your a Daemon in which case your not going to have fun.....

The Grey Knights have preferred enemy against Daemons as well as (mostly) coming with grenades that make your Daemons Initiative 1 if they assault you. Ironically it makes my original 'Cavalry' Daemon list awesome at killing Grey Knights as it lands outside of the range of any mishap abilities and is unlikely to ever be on the receiving end of a charge as it has an effective charge range of 19-24" with most of it's units.

The Dreadknight is also much less killy in the release version as it's S6, T6 (rather than 7) and only has a 2+/5+ save rather than the 2+/4+ everyone was expecting.

Pleasingly, Assassins are still WS and BS 8 and Initiative 7 so finally non-Eldar players get to use that 'Ballistic Skill higher than 5' table from the rulebook.

Pretty much everything else is as was expected with one important difference.....All those people who were writing lists with Warrior Acolyte units with a bazillion special weapons in them are going to be disappointed as you can only give 3 of them special weapons which was (lets be honest) entirely expected.

As usual I'm going to wait until the internet has finished missing the point and writing embarrassingly bad lists before I decide what I'll be using myself.....

If anybody else who has seen the actual Grey Knight codex has any insights please feel free to comment away and I'll check back later as I'm now off to paint some Long Fangs.....

Loose Canon

Another brilliant article by Aaron Dembski-Bowden can be found here

Trouble with Chaos.....

A fairly new acquaintance of mine has discovered the rich and interesting background that fascinates us all about the forces of Chaos.

Unfortunately for him he's attempting to represent that on the tabletop actually using the Chaos Space Marine Codex.....

Yes, I know.....

He also has developed a preference for certain units from the aforementioned codex that aren't exactly what you might call optimal.

Before we get started on attempting to make something usable for him without abandoning units he actually likes here are a couple of army lists that actually work fairly well,

First a brief overview of the unit choices.

One of my own (semi) useful lists.

MSU 'Rhino Rush'

Chaos 'Monstrous Creature' List.

There are of course other lists that work, those are just there because I'd already done posts on them and therefore didn't have to do a lot of tedious additional typing.....

Okay then, where were we?

That's right we were trying to make a bunch of unoptimised units from a poorly written codex into a viable army without spending too much extra money.....

So we somehow have to include Abaddon in this list without him being useless which means he needs transport. In this case I'm afraid our only option is a Land Raider (which is fortunate as our subject actually has one), It'll need Extra Armour as it's only really going to be used as an 'Abaddon and Escort' delivery system in this particular case. Abaddon himself needs a bodyguard of some kind which realistically needs to be able to absorb the sort of anti-armour fire-power that will otherwise be going into Abby himself.
Our ideal escort will be something with lots of bodies or a decent invulnerable save. Due to Chaos only having access to the default 'Godhammer' type of Land Raider 'lots of bodies' isn't really going to happen so we'll have to settle for a smaller unit with invulnerable saves. Our 2 options are Possessed or Chaos Terminators with a mark of Tzeentch as they have a 4+ invulnerable save and as Stu already has Terminators we'll use those.


HQ: Abaddon the Despoiler (1#, 275 pts)
   1 Abaddon the Despoiler @ 275 pts

Elite: Chaos Terminators (5#, 390 pts)
   1 Chaos Terminators @ 390 pts (Icon of Tzeentch; Terminator; Land Raider)
      4 Terminator
      1 Land Raider (Searchlight; Smoke Launchers; Extra Armor; 2x Twin-linked Lascannons; Twin Linked Heavy Bolter)


Troops are also a necessity and after looking at Stu's model list we've got a choice of Thousand Sons (Too expensive and useless in many important areas) or Khorne Berzerkers (Decent at choppy death but with minimal useful fire-power). We'll utilise the lesser of the 2 evils and take Berzerkers.


We need a Champion with Power Fist so we don't get tar-pitted by Dreadnoughts and lets be honest 4x S9 Power Fist on the charge are nice to have. They'll of course need transport and we might as well be fluffy as well and take them in Khorne's sacred number ;-)

Troops: Khorne Berzerkers (9#, 243 pts)

   7 Khorne Berzerkers @ 243 pts (Rhino)

      1 Skull Champion (Power Fist)

      1 Rhino (Twin Linked Bolter)

Troops: Khorne Berzerkers (9#, 243 pts)

   7 Khorne Berzerkers @ 243 pts (Rhino)

      1 Skull Champion (Power Fist)

      1 Rhino (Twin Linked Bolter)

We'll need an objective holding unit as well and fortunately the guy's just finished a unit of Plague Marines so they'll do the job nicely. We'll equip them so they can do other stuff as well just in case.


Troops: Plague Marines (6#, 170 pts)
   5 Plague Marines @ 170 pts (Meltagun x2; Rhino)
      1 Rhino (Twin Linked Bolter)

Now we need some long range fire-power which will come in the form of Obliterators as I know he has at least two of those.

A Brief Interlude.
Here's where we need to think of the future. Undoubtedly like so many others followers of Chaos Stu will be forced to abandon units he likes in favour of ones that work or move into the realms of 'Counts-As' and use another codex. As this point will happen eventually anyway we might as well accept it and include some-things he'll be able to use in other lists. Due to the wonder of magnets a Rhino chassis can be utilised for many different purposes as long as it's been assembled with the future in mind ;-)


Heavy Support: Predator (1#, 100 pts)
   1 Predator @ 100 pts (Searchlight; Smoke Launchers; Autocannon; Heavy Bolter)

Heavy Support: Predator (1#, 100 pts)
   1 Predator @ 100 pts (Searchlight; Smoke Launchers; Autocannon; Heavy Bolter)

As long as the hatches aren't glued in and the doors are magnetised these can easily become Rhino's Razorbacks or any number of other useful things.

Let's not forget those Obliterators though,


Heavy Support: Obliterators (3#, 225 pts)
   3 Obliterators @ 225 pts




Okay, so lets look at that as a whole.


1750 Pts - Chaos Marines Roster - Stu's Chaos

HQ: Abaddon the Despoiler (1#, 275 pts)
   1 Abaddon the Despoiler @ 275 pts

Elite: Chaos Terminators (5#, 390 pts)
   1 Chaos Terminators @ 390 pts (Icon of Tzeentch; Terminator; Land Raider)
      4 Terminator
      1 Land Raider (Searchlight; Smoke Launchers; Extra Armor; 2x Twin-linked Lascannons; Twin Linked Heavy Bolter)

Troops: Plague Marines (6#, 170 pts)
   5 Plague Marines @ 170 pts (Meltagun x2; Rhino)
      1 Rhino (Twin Linked Bolter)

Troops: Khorne Berzerkers (9#, 243 pts)
   7 Khorne Berzerkers @ 243 pts (Rhino)
      1 Skull Champion (Power Fist)
      1 Rhino (Twin Linked Bolter)

Troops: Khorne Berzerkers (9#, 243 pts)
   7 Khorne Berzerkers @ 243 pts (Rhino)
      1 Skull Champion (Power Fist)
      1 Rhino (Twin Linked Bolter)

Heavy Support: Obliterators (3#, 225 pts)
   3 Obliterators @ 225 pts

Heavy Support: Predator (1#, 100 pts)
   1 Predator @ 100 pts (Searchlight; Smoke Launchers; Autocannon; Heavy Bolter)

Heavy Support: Predator (1#, 100 pts)
   1 Predator @ 100 pts (Searchlight; Smoke Launchers; Autocannon; Heavy Bolter)

Total Roster Cost: 1746

The veterans amongst you will have been picking holes in this army as I've been going along and rightly so. Unfortunately the Chaos Codex does not lend itself well to optimisation and I'm afraid this is the best I can do within the given parameters.....

Thoughts and Comments are (as usual) most welcome.

Games Workshop Newsletter - Grey Knights

The Games Workshop Newsletter 09.03.2011 In this issue: The Lords of Titan have arrived...

The new Grey Knights are available to Advance Order now

House of Paincakes Article No. 13

Article Here.

This week bought to you by Vampires*,

* and judging from how easy it is to find pictures of attractive female vampires maybe next week and the week after that as well.....


Kate Beckinsale - Underworld 1 + 2

Rhona Mitra - Rise of the Lycans

Aaliyah - Queen of the Damned

Kristanna Loken - Bloodrayne 1 + 3

Natassia Malthe - Bloodrayne 2

Salma Hayek - From Dusk Till Dawn.

And NO, there wont be any pictures related to any of the Twilight movies so don't even fucking ask.....

Old Stuff Day : 'Alpha Strikes' or how to suck all the fun out of 40K

So I've decided to support 'Old Stuff Day' by.....well.....posting something old.....

I'm not a big fan of assault, Haven't been since I shelved my Chaos Space Marines (due to their lack of competitiveness being compounded by 5th Edition, Codex Creep and the fact that apparently everybody else writes Marines better than Gav Thorpe).

I briefly became interested in winning by punching stuff again with my Cavalry Daemons list. This one to be exact. Unfortunately that list is inherently flawed because Daemons have several almost insurmountable inbuilt problems.

1) Your effectively fighting with half an army for your first turn.

2) There's a 33% chance it will be the wrong fucking half.

3) Any army who can effect your reserves makes this even worse.

4) Your best ranged weapon is only S8.

5) If your opponent has Land Raiders and remembers to move them, your only going to destroy one with a lot of luck, 2 with divine intervention and 3...well...never, if we're being honest.

As anybody who knows me will tell you I have a somewhat rocky relationship with the Dice Gods. They have an uncanny habit of deciding that a 1 to hit is all I'm going to have for 5 turns but that all my opponents vehicle damage rolls should be 5's or 6's, lol. Then occasionally they'll give me all my luck at once and I'll end up utterly destroying someone in the most unimportant game I play that month...but I digress...

So most of my Marine armies win by shooting stuff so I'm as guilty as anybody of what I'm about to whine about. But It's both the games I've lost hideously and won in the same 'only one of us is having fun' fashion that's decided the theme of this post.

Some examples so it looks like I thought about this a bit...

Imperial Guard.

If a well constructed IG army goes first your going to be in the shit quite quickly. They have ranged firepower a plenty that can be easily improved through orders, Valks and Vendettas that can deliver 3 Meltagun troops units into your lap first turn and the ability to both improve their own reserve rolls and fuck up yours. Going first or 2nd they have many ways to annoy.

Blood Angels.

5th ed. made vehicles a lot tougher, BA rhino variants can move extremely quickly and with the addition of smoke launchers cover save take a lot of firepower to destroy. Combine this with the ease with which you can give 'Feel no Pain' and 'Furious Charge' to anything you damn well please and you have an army that can do the old fashioned 'Rhino Rush' with remarkable efficiency. Also with 'Descent of Angels' they don't even need the Rhinos to be in your face on turn 2 with no way to counter them at all without IG style 'Bubblewrap' units.

Tau.

Tau can only do gunlines so I might be unfair including them in this list, after all if a Tau player is looking at the assault stats of a non-Kroot unit he''s probably about to lose.

Space Wolves

You can easily cram 9 Las/Plas Razorbacks and support units into a SW list which again does a lot of damage from your first turn salvo...

I could go on and on with similar examples but the basic point is this...

90% of competitive lists will pwn you if they go first and are in fact designed to do so.

So how do we counter this trend for boring games where you might as well just shake hands after the first turn 'roll-off' and go and have a beer or 3 instead of playing a game which will just make one of you frustrated and the other one feeling the need to apologise.

Lets look at the potential solutions then.

1) If you can't beat 'em join 'em - Build your own army that works on the same principles and hope you go first instead. At least you'll be the one having fun 50% of the time.

2) Bubble-wrap - Protect your own important units with expendable crap. Sadly this only works against lists that 'Alpha strike' you up close and requires you to actually have bubble-wrap units which unfortunately applies only to Tau (Kroot), Imperial Guard (Infantry Platoons) and possibly Tyranids (Gaunts and the like).

3) Reserves - If your not there he can't hit you, right. Again this plan also has it's problems, If your against guard they can effect your reserve rolls for the cost of a whole 30 points. Blood Angels armies can get to you anyway through sheer speed of movement and turning up piecemeal against an army designed to cripple entire armies is never going to end well.

4) 'Castling', 'Turtling' or whatever you call it in your area - Put your highest armour at the front, hide the rest of your army behind and wait and see what survives. Guard can deal with this by dropping big fuck-off blast templates into your lap as they can't really miss if your in a big clump and Blood Angels have the 'Blood Lance' psychic power.

And of course there's the times when you thought you where going to get to go first and your opponent seizes the initiative...

So the question I'm asking is this,

Is a 40K game between 2 competitive lists fun any-more if either or both are of the 'Alpha Strike' variety *?

* I mean fun for both of you. Obviously if your opponent is the kind of cock who microwaves his dice, brings his fan-club to games and rolls his dice without actually telling you what the roll is for till after he's seen the result then 'fun' probably wasn't going to be happening anyway, lol.

Editors note : It would be nice if anybody who comments could avoid using the phrase 'Leafblower'. BoLS did not invent the 'Alpha Strike' list or IG fucking gunlines despite what they'd like you to believe and if your going to give your army a nickname try and make it a cool one for fucks sake.

House of Paincakes Article No. 12

Link here

Pretty pictures below.

This week bought to you by Milla Jovovich, Who according to Maxim magazine once was quoted as saying "I love that I'm a dream girl for geeks. Nerdy guys are always the cool ones in the end"

The 5th Element.

Ultraviolet.

Resident Evil.

See you all next Tuesday *

*I know most of you check more regularly than that but I do get a distinct increase in traffic of a Tuesday for some reason.....must be the quality of those HoP articles.....