Dreadnought

The first in a series of posts updating what I've managed in terms of painting over the last couple of months. My time to paint has been drastically reduced, right now I get about one evening a week when I can paint solidly, outside that I can get in the odd 30mins in a morning before work but even that is a push. As such, progress has slowed, but my batch techniques have improved so its a bit better. Below are some pics of my wolves dreadnought STAMPY (in his last battle he lost both his arms in 2 turns, but then proceeded to stomp on guard for 8 rounds of combat killing 1 or 2 a turn).

Codex

Got to flick through the codex over lunch - I'm liking it. There are some really powerful units and characters in there, but they are well and truly balanced by cost. 

Logan for instance gives himself and the unit he is with a choice of USR's EACH TURN! He costs 275pts though.

There is a non-HQ independent character that is the Lone Wolf, the last remnant of his pack who roves around on the battlefield looking for a glorious death so that he can join his pack. He starts out pretty cheap, but has almost unlimited pack upgrades so can get expensive very quickly, and I think is going to be a really fun distraction unit.

Wolf scouts get a new version of OBEL. You cho0se the turn you want to bring them in, and roll a D6, 1 is the left short edge, 2 is the right and 3-6 you can choose any edge you want.

The wolf riding pack are good but expensive: 1-5, 50pts each. WS+BS=4, S+T=5, A=4 and rending in CC.

Arjac is very cool as well with his thrown thunder hammer and storm shield attack on the charge.

Long Fangs are back, you can put together a 5 man unit with heavy bolters for under 100pts and still have the split fire!

Before everyone starts to chant broken at them, I worked out with one of the IG players that was in there that they are likely to be outnumbered 3+ to 1 in most battles plus the IG tanks so they are really going to suffer against armies that put out a lot of high volume fire power.

I also got to fondle the new wolf pack sprue and not only is it packed with stuff, but the levels of details are really high, every piece has some adornment to it, lots of wolf skulls, teeth etc. You are going to be able to make some very very pretty models out of it, or alternatively it'll go a long way to giving a wolfy theme to a lot of squads of regular marines. Its a very good way of doing it in my opinion.

There was the termie box but it wasn't opened. I did see that the top right termie on the front cover has a BA Baracus head - funny.

NEW WOLVES

So there's loads of rumours around about the space wolves, but I've just seen that the new sprues are todays feature on the GW blog!

YEAH! There's a lot of details on those sprues - you could probably put together just about 10 really really individualised wolves from a couple of those sprues, or you could go and buy a tac squad or other and make up a couple of units. I think the idea is going to be that you buy up one or two of these box's and then buy the packs from the regular space marine line to make up the majority of your army if you don't want them to all be uber tricked out, and then you can make up some very very detailed and special mini's for your Wolf Guard etc.

I'm liking it, and best off it encourages you to head to your local GW and get them to show you the copy, I can't wait to get down to mine and read the whole dex!

So

Very

Excited ;)

Space Hulk played!

As the title says. Got in a game this weekend, and oversaw a game as well for a couple of other players as the staff were v. busy.

The games great. The 3 min time limit for the marine player (I was only using 5 of the 11 termies) really makes you have to think fast and gives you a good impression of the frenetic pace that they would have to act in the hulk. The mission was to flame a room, and I got hosed. My opponent was very savvy, saved up his blips, and as I was approaching the room I was all of a sudden facing 15+ stealers. Needless to say I was wiped pretty quickly after that. 

Lessons learned - overwatch is much better than guard if there is a bit of a gap between you and the stealers. KEEP YOUR COMMANDER ALIVE. The command points make a huge difference and when he dies, and you don't have them, you really feel their loss.

The game I oversaw the marine player won in part down to rolling more 6's than I think I've ever seen. Seriously, every second roll was a 5 or 6 killing a stealer. I watched one of his marines on overwatch kill all 11 stealers that were trying to get to him and the flamer termie behind him, he didn't even get a scratch.

I really can't wait for my copy to show up and start playing it.

SPACE HULK!

Just went into the local FLGS and their copy of Space Hulk was there, what can I say

OH MY GOD! AMAZING!

Seriously, this kit is something special (sorry, I won't put up pics, I don't want to do anything that might jeapordise the status of the local).

The level of detail on the models is far, far beyond anything I've seen before. The terminators are in 2-4 pieces each, the posing is very dynamic, and the details are beutiful. There is one crouching down, ripping up the floor, one checking out a sensor that is built into his power fist, so much detail on all the models, there's even a drop of blood dripping from one of the termies power fists. The assault cannon terminator has little disc shields in front of each shoulder just like medieval age suits of armour, protecting the joints. 

There's even more details in there, so many I just can't remember them all.

The stealers - wonderful and very, very spikey. I managed to catch myself on claws, teeth and bits of carapace all over the place. The broodlord is very big, and looks lovely, although not too different from a regular stealer, just a lot bigger (I thought it would be better to make him a bit more "special"). There are many lovely poses for the regular stealers as well.

Objectives: The seated temie looks lovely and will make a brilliant objective marker for any system. Theres even a little bomb disposal robot type of thing with a shrine and servo-skull atop it.

The board pieces are really good. They are made of that type of cardboard that is so many pieces of paper squished together it is almost wood. And there is even some texture to the board, with the separation between floor tiles etched into the card. Lots of iconography everywhere, bits of tyranid growths somewhat like in the movie Aliens, and door wise there's even one with Tau iconography on there.

The rules, from a brief read, seem to be about the same as the original versions, although they have incorporated a lot of the rules from the older expansions into the current rule set - imagine all the old rules combined and streamlined. Things like overwatch, facing and ammo limits, jams and psi are all there.

This Game is going to be so very good, I can't recommend it to anyone enough, I have one on order. I'm still struggling to find ways to express how good this is. Seriously, get yourself involved in this while you can.