40K Project Update: Tau and Space Marines

Made a little bit of progress on the hobby front... No painting in this post, its mostly assembly.

An old skewl Pathfinder team. Even though I just bought the new plastic kit back in October, I decided to assemble the older ones first. I considered swapping the metal Rail Rifles for plastic ones and using Ion Rifles on the plastic team... Still contemplating that one. 

The 3 Rail Rifles and Shas'ui were unique poses, but the remaining 6 figures in the team were 3 pairs of Pulse Carbine duplicates. The first thing I did was swap guns between a Rail Rifle and duplicate body.

The Rail Rile fit nicely. But I was unable to fit the Pulse Carbine 2-handed. I attached the Pule Carbine leaving the left arm handles and nothing to hold on to. I dug into the Pathfinder plastic kit and found a binocular bit to complete the model. I really like how this pose turned out.

The other conversion was a simple head swap on the Shas'ui. I positioned the head looking in a different direction. All my Fire Warrior teams have a bear headed leader, so I wanted the same for this team.

No conversions here--Just assembled a bunch of drones... 11 in total: A Marker Drone, 2 Gun Drones, 4 Shield Drones, 2 Grav-inhibitor Drones, a Pulse Accelerator Drone and a Recon Drone.

After taking inventory in my Tau bitz box, I discovered I had 41 Gun Drones unassembled--24 of them will be built as-is, but the rest will be converted into Shield and Marker Drones.

To fill in all the drones that I spec'd out in my army, I still need about 20 more Gun Drones.

Made some progress on my son's Dreadnoughts. I found an unopened pint bottle of paint stripper that I bought from a model train store about 20 years ago. It did the trick on these bad boys. Although I got a little rough scrubbing and knocked off an arm, both smoke launchers, and a banner pole.

A number of years back I scored a plastic dread arm with an assault cannon from an ebay bitz lot. I think I will replace one of the multi-meltas with it. I will also add a few detail bits and something to cover up the banner pole hole.

That about wraps up today's update.

Star Wars Monopoly

Back in October, I acquired a copy of Star Wars Monopoly at Goodwill. It was missing Han Solo, so I turned to eBay to find the missing piece.

While looking for Han, I discovered there were three versions of a classic Star Wars Monopoly with some variation in the selection of pawns. I was able to pick up a Han in a set from a different version as well as a few other characters. The game comes with 8 pawns, and I have assembled 15 uniqe characters.

We played a game the other day and they were easily knocked over. So I based them on 20 mm MDF bases from GF9.

I would like to paint them up similar to how I painted my Clue pawns. The base edge with be color coded to Empire or Rebel as there is a mechanic in the game that plays off which faction you are playing.

Tau 1500 Point List Building

The other day I was playing around with a new list... and it only requires the assembly of one model!

I LOVE my battlesuits! I also love my 3-gun combo of Fusion Blaster, Plasma Rifle, and Missile Pod on my suits. They are have range out to 36" and get more punch the closer they get (up to 12").

My thought was to switch it up a bit and try running 3 Plasma Rifles on each suit, along with adding the maximum Shield Drones (6 per team). That would be 9 dice out to 24" and 18 dice at 12". The teams would have 12 (or 14) wounds, depending on if it was the Elite or HQ team.

On the other end of the spectrum, so far I have been very disappointed with the Sniper Drone Team. But I am going to give them another try--Hopefully in 6e rules. I only have one "team" but considered running a few extra "counts as" drones to boost the effectiveness of the unit. With this configuration, I thought I could drop 4 Fire Warriors to afford 2 more Sniper Drones.

What I am really anxious about is to assemble some new Tau! For this list it would be a Riptide. But I have a hankering to assemble my Pathfinders and Piranhas too...

So, without further delay, here is the list I was kicking around. This is a casual list... IF I can call it that spamming plasma! :)

HQ: Commander (3# 186 pts)
Plasma Rifle x3; Target Lock; Neuroweb System Jammer; XV8-02 Crisis 'Iridium' Battlesuit; Shield Drone x2

: XV8 Crisis Bodyguard Team (6# 202 pts)
Plasma Rifle x6; Shield Drone x4

Elite: XV8 Crisis Team (9# 283 pts)
Shas'vre; Plasma Rifle x9; Shield Drone x6

Elite: XV104 Riptide (3# 238 pts)
Heavy Burst Cannon; Twin Linked Smart Missile System; Advanced Targeting System; Counterfire Defense System; Shielded Missile Drone x2

Troops: Fire Warrior Team (191 pts)
Pulse Rifle x12; Devilfish; Gun Drones x2

Troops: Fire Warrior Team (191 pts)
Pulse Rifle x12; Devilfish; Gun Drones x2

Heavy Support: Hammerhead Gunship (1#, 150 pts)
TL Smart Missile System; Railgun with solid shot; Submunition Rounds; Seeker Missile x2; Blacksun Filter; Decoy Launchers

Heavy Support: Sniper Drone Team (4#, 58 pts)
Firesight Marksman; Sniper Drones x3

Total: 1499 Pts

Am I out of my mind? As always feel free to leave Q&C's.

Dreadnought Remodel

A very short post today...

As mentioned in an earlier post, I have recently gifted my son Deathbot additional toy solders for his Salamander Army. These are two of them.

I am currently looking for a gallon of Simple Green to delouse these figs so they can be reassigned to the Salamanders.

Giants Among Us

Another post in my Retro series. This one includes minis painted by me and a number from my Dungeons and Dragons Miniatures collection. There is a GW knight in each picture for scale.

This giant skeleton is a Grenadier miniature that I have had for years. I painted it up during my D&D campaign about 8 years ago. I added a downed hero on the base (origin unknown). The base is a little weird--I added a "green slime"  in the middle of the base for some reason.

Here is a trio of Hill Giants and a Rock Giant. The four of them are from different companies and bought many years ago. They were painted around 10 years ago. The bases are my "deluxe" treatment from that era.

Behir and a pair of Fiendish Tyrannosauruses

A pair of Treants

I included a GW Treant in this shot. You can see the other "Treemen" figures in my collection in this post.

A Warforged Titan and a huge Fire Elemental

The mini versions of the titanic creatures are based on 50mm GW monstrous creature bases. Yoiu can find the rest of my Warforged/Iron Golem and my Fire Elemental collection here and here.

A Pit Fiend, a Bluespawn Godslayer, and a Glabrezu

A pair of Nightwalkers and a pair of Bulettes

A pair of Cloud Giants and a Storm Giant

A pair of Fomorians

Fire and Ice

We end the collection with a quartet consisting of: A Frost Giant, King Snurre (a Fire Giant), a Fire Giant Forgepriest, and a plain old Fire Giant. 

I don't know if these kind of posts are of any interest. But I ride the fence between role-player and war-gamer and between hobbyist and collector. In all cases, I like eye candy on the table. These models, figures or toys help to create such a scene.

Imperial Guard Squad

As a Birthday gift last May, Adeptus-B gave my son a 5-man squad of IG. They are 2-piece models GW released around 3e (I think). My son absolutely loved them! 

Note: The following pics were taken with my phone.

For Christmas, Adeptus-B gave Deathbot another 5-man squad. But this time it had all the trappings to complete a full squad.

A close up to show off the detail he put in for a 10 year old! What an awesome friend!!

The squad in all its glory with a bonus pile of sandbags!

These have already debuted in a 40K game (with a borrowed HQ) as an allied detachment. Looks like we have the start to Deathbot's third army!!

Salamander Progress Chart

I decided to "donate" some of the "newer" figures in my collection to my son's Salamander army. Most of my army dates to 1-2e and some of these models looked out of place. Plus, it made my son VERY happy!

• 3 Land Speeders from 3e boxed set
• Tac squad from Battle of Macragge (4e) boxed set
• Captain and Tac squad from Assault on Black Reach (5e) boxed set
• MkII Rhino with bitz to make Predator
• MkII Land Raider
• Bitz to make Chaplain on bike
• 2 MkII metal Dreadnoughts

My first post ever on this blog and 3 of the first 4 posts were all about the figures I painted for my son's first 40K army. I don't think I ever listed what the origins of those figures were:

• 24 marines from 2e boxed set
• 2 Scout Sergeants (first plastic scouts produced--cir 2e?)
• Terminator Librarian and 10 Terminators from 1e Space Hulk (and expansions)
• 14 marines from Space Crusade.

I did a fair amount of conversions to assemble the Assault and Devastator squads and on the Tactical squad's flamers and heavy bolters. Except for the chaplain, none of the new figures will need conversions.

The Dreadnoughts were a bonus in a tank lot I purchased on eBay about 2 years ago. They are crudely painted and need stripping.

Here is a progress chart for the entire army. Since Deathbot and I have been playing 40K somewhat regularly, I will likely be moving into production on some of this new lot.

I am terrible at wrapping posts up, so I will leave it at TTFN!

Arbites (counts-as) Rhino Showcase

I started this project a little over 4 years ago and it is finally finished!! I am very pleased with the results!

All three vehicles are identically equipped with a hull mounted storm bolter, a pintle-mounted storm bolter, a spot light, smoke launchers, and a tow hitch.

These models are intended to be used as Rhinos in 40K, Dark Heresy, and Necromunda. But I suppose if pressed, they might make suitable Chimeras for IG Veteran squads. 

I am still uncertain about line-edge paint style. I am happy with the results, but just unsure if it is the style for this project.

Size comparison with 2 Arbites

Size comparison with a Mk1 Rhino

Size comparison with a Devilfish

I thought about trying out some weathering pigments, but could not get myself to use this project as a guinea pig on my first attempt.

Let me know what you think. To catch up on the entire project check out these posts:

Arbites (counts-as) Rhino WiP (part 2)
Arbites (counts-as) Rhino WiP
Adeptus Arbites

Deathbot vs Zorcon II (Space Marines vs Tau) BatRep

Belated Happy New year everyone!! To honor the occasion, I made a few tweaks to the look of the site.

My aspirations of 2013's post count equaling the number of posts in previous 4 years combined fell short by 18 posts. Oh well, I still had a solid 7 month run of averaging over 10 posts a month! Hopefully RL will settle down to a manageable size in the next month or two. With that in mind, my son and I played another game of 40k...

Deathbot and I played a 40K rematch, but this time we doubled our forces to 1,500 points--The largest battle I have played in about 20 years!!

Our first match was played back in May and I posted a bare bones BatRep in August. If you are curious to see the setup and pics at the end of each turn (as I did not write much of anything), check out this post.

This battle (and the last) unintentionally turned out to be a hybrid of 5e and 6e rules. To put it simply, I used the 5e rules and codecies, but built the forces with Army Builder using the 6e rules set. In hind sight, I would have written the forces out by hand. However, I don't think it impacted the game too much as both forces were created in the same fashion.

Our force selection was limited to assembled models. The Space Marines actually have more options (by digging into my Aquamarines) but I am fielding all of my assembled Tau forces.

• Terminator Captain (140): Storm Bolter; Power Axe (Figure is actually a Librarian)
• Terminator Squad (205): Sergeant; Storm Bolter x4; Power Fist x4; Power Sword; Hvy Flamer
• Terminator Squad (205): Sergeant; Storm Bolter x4; Power Fist x4; Power Sword; Hvy Flamer
• Tactical Squad (205): Sergeant; Bolt Pistol x10; Bolter x7; Chain Sword; Flamer; Hvy Bolter; Rhino
• Tactical Squad (205): Sergeant; Bolt Pistol x10; Bolter x7; Chain Sword; Flamer; Hvy Bolter; Rhino
• Assault Squad (215): Sergeant; Bolt Pistol x10; Chain Sword x8; Flamer x2
• Devastator Squad (230): Sergeant; Bolt Pistol x10; Bolter x5; Hvy Bolter x4; Chain Sword
• Predator (105): TL Lascannon. (Razorback is a count as Predator because all of my Predator tanks have non removable sponsons)

Total Points: 1510

• XV8 Commander + Bodyguards (313): Fusion Blaster x3; Missile Pod x3; Plasma Rifle x3; Shield Drone x2
• XV8 Crisis Team  (230): Shas'vre; Fusion Blaster x3; Missile Pod x3; Plasma Rifle x3; Shield Drone x1
• Fire Warrior Team (237): Shas'ui; Pulse Rifle x12; Gun Drones x2; Devilfish w/ Disruption Pod
• Fire Warrior Team (237): Shas'ui; Pulse Rifle x12; Gun Drones x2; Devilfish w/ Disruption Pod
• Remote Sensor Tower Team (120): TL Markerlight x3
• Heavy Drone Team (150): TL Burst Cannon x3; Burst Cannon and Markerlight x3
• Sniper Drone Team (58): Rail Rifle x3; Networked Markerlight
• Hammerhead (161): TL Smart Missile System; Railgun w/ Solid & Submunitions; Disruption Pod; Seeker Missiles x2

Total Points: 1496

I let Deathbot choose all the terrain. I told him only one piece per tile. The only terrain I "placed" was the river, but under Deathbot's supervision. The battle area was 4' x 4'. We had determined table edge before setting up terrain, so the next step was to determine the mission and deploy forces--Seize Ground and Spear Head.

Even though I let Deathbot choose table edge, we did roll for first turn. I won and chose to go second. We both put all of our deep strike capable units in reserve. I let Deathbot take his turns as he wants to, answering his questions by telling him the risk/reward of his options.

Turn 1 opens with Deathbot advancing his Predator, taking out a Remote Sensor Drone (his only visable target).

I advanced my Hammerhead and Sniper Drone Team, Stunning the Predator crew. I also shifted both Defilfish towards the middle of my table edge.

The Space Marines get 2 Terminator squads to deep strike, disaster strikes in Turn 2 (see below). Soldering on, one of the Rhinos lets out a Tac Squad. Both the squad and the Rhino press on. A Terminator squad lands on the friendly side of the hill, offering a bit of cover.

I did not get any reinforcements this turn, but did release a squad of Fire Warriors to lay claim of an objective and placed the second Devilfish to do the same next turn. The Sniper Drone Team advanced and fired with no effect and the Hammerhead missed.

When placing his first Deep Strike unit, Deathbot initially placed his target about 2" from the left corner on my table edge. When I told him he had a high chance of scattering off the table, he asked where would be safe. I measured out 12" from the left edge and my edge of the table and marked it. Deathbot placed his target in the corner of the "safe" zone. Unfortunately, he scattered right on top of my Hammerhead and rolled a Terrible Accident!, loosing the entire squad of Terminators!

On Turn 3, the Space Marines got more reinforcements in an Assault squad. The Tac squad advances again, taking out 5/6th of the Heavy Gun Drone team.

I received 2 units of reinforcements--The Heavy Gun Drone team and the XV8 Crisis team. An empty Devilfish bolted to my right flank. The other Devilfish released its occupants and the Hammerhead drifted left. The only damage caused to the Salamanders was 4 Tactical marines.

Turn 4 saw more movement on the Space Marine side. Their Commander dropped safely in their own deployment zone, the Assault Marines, Terminators and a Rhino toting a Tactical squad advanced. The other Tactical squad claimed and objective while the Predator backed up to get out of the way.

The Tau focused all their firepower on the dangerously close Terminator squad that had popped up on top of the hill, decimating them entirely. The only movement was from the Crisis team that had pulled a jump-shoot-jump maneuver.

Turn 5 got messy. Deathbot advanced his Rhino full of marines in an attempt to challenge one of my objectives. He also advanced his Predator, Captain, and Assault squads, but caused little damage to the Tau. The Predator stunned the Hammerhead.

In return, the Tau destroyed the Assault squad to a single marine (who failed morale and retreated to the rocky terrain). The Tau also got their Commander and bodyguards to join the battle. I took a risky move and landed them behind enemy lines (almost in the exact opposite spot Deathbot originally wanted to place his Terminator squad). The Commander and his team were able to take out half of the Salamander's Devastator squad, which had not moved the entire game.

The Space Marines went for the win in Turn 6. The Tactical marines guarding an objective went to ground. Then the other Tactical squad attempted to make a move on a Tau objective (see below). Deathbot also advanced his Captain to deny the Tau's second objective. If successful and if the game ends this turn a tie or a win for the marines could result.

The Tau retaliated by finishing off the last of the Devastator and Assault squads. I also positioned 3 Gun Drones in between the Space Marine Captain and the Fire Warrior guarding the blue objective as speed bumps.

After lining up for a perfect shot, Deathbot attempt to take out my Fire Warrior Team sitting on an objective. He took out all but 2--They failed their morale, but recovered and was able to reach the objective the next turn.

Turn 7 was simply a formality to see the game through. The good news was the Predator destroyed the Hammerhead. Unfortunately, the Captain and Tactical squad failed to deny the Tau's objectives. On my turn I was able to killed the Captain and all the remaining Tactical marines from both squads, leaving only the three Salamander tanks undamaged.

Game ends 2-0 Tau.

There was a real chance in the 6th turn that Deathbot could have pulled a 1-0 victory. It just didn't work out. He waited too long to make his move plus loosing a Terminator squad was crippling!

Deathbot still had a blast and can't wait to play again. I knocked off more of the rust on my game play and am anxious to get some more Tau assembled and painted.