Tuesday, July 26, 2011

Hong Kong Visit

Just came back from visiting Hong Kong and it was a good trip. Met up with Jay and we went for a few drinks and it was good times!

Back to gaming news, Jay actually passed me some stuff for Warhammer Fantasy. Great sheets. Now I will be trying them out for movement trays shortly and let you guys know.

 Jay moving his units around - bullying a kid.
 Another game in progress.
 Terrain just keeps getting better and better around here....

 Some painted figs in the cupboard!
 NMM-this chap actually won a Golden Demon trophy!
 The latest FW Eldar Titan.

Tournament Space Wolves Units Pt 1

In the recent Warhammer 40K campaign in Hong Kong this past Sunday, I got a really good chance to battle some races that I have never played before. It’s in events like this that really have your wheels turning as to what sort of lists to bring that can handle the most amount of unknowns, very similar to the hypothetical scenarios you present yourself with when writing ‘ard boyz & tournament based lists.
Since writing 3 battle reports would be rather boring I want to instead talk about which squads in my army are very stable performers and their pros and cons.

Below you will find a brief squad analysis as to why I bring which units to the table. Now I know there will be units left uncovered but the ones I did write about are the ones that have been play tested and these squads are the list of contenders I would choose to take depending on who or what I am up against.
Some may think by writing unit analyses I am revealing my under-belly to my foes but this blog is about sharing my experience and if eventually my combos do get cracked, it will push me to field more different combos to test their mettle. Here goes…



Squad 1:
-Logan Grimnar
-x4 Terminator Wolf guard w/ twin wolf claws
-x1 Terminator Wolf guard w/ TT/SS
-Drop pod delivery

For my drop pod assaults, I have found this unit is definitely the hardest hitting unit. Since Logan’s Axe of Morkai attacks can either be counted as a powerfist or a frost blade, its very important to have a significant number of attacks that can strike first or at the same time as your enemy. The terminators with twin wolf claws are to fill this role. Wolf claws can allow you to re-roll hits or misses, Logan can further stack preferred enemy and on top of this, he can give everyone within 18” +1 attacks once per game. The thunder hammer/Storm Shield terminator is there to take wounds and die first. No need to really worry about assaulting mech units either as Logan can opt to make his attacks as a powerfist. When using this squad you want to protect logan and the terminator wolfguard with claws so that they can continue on their rampage.

Pros: This combo will most likely chew through anything thrown at them, their durability should not be an issue either as these guys are in terminator armor. With a drop pod delivery system, they shouldn’t have to spend too much time idle being shot at. I have found this squad most effective by dropping them into the hottest sector of battle.

Cons: This squad is a huge point sinker! Model counts will usually be low and unless the game size is also big, it is very hard to field a wolf wing army. When model count is low, it is also usually very hard to come up with a contingency plan. I rarely take named characters in my games as I think they really spoil your ability to think fast by being too overly powerful.



Squad 2:
-Rune Priest w/ chooser of the slain
-Wolfguard w/ power fist
-x5 Grey hunters, melta gun & mark of wulfen
-Rhino

This squad is the core for any space wolf list I write with the only variation being the squad size. Any space wolves player will tell you how versatile grey hunters are. While other space marine tactical squads can bring heavy weapons, we have other goodies like an extra close combat weapon, counter attack which means you still get the +1 attacks if you get charged and mark of wulfen which can potentially give you D6+1 rending attacks if you roll 6’s. Essentially, you can really rush these guys into the enemy and expect them to hold their lines and if they don’t, its usually at a very high cost at the enemy’s expense. The Wolfguard is there to beef up the close combat attacks with his power fist while the grey hunters provide ablative wounds if need be. The power fist attacks coupled with the mark of wulfen attacks are usually ample to overwhelm most multi wound units (tyranids inclusive).

As for the Rune Priest, I embed him into greyhunters for 3 reasons: psychic protection, sniping, and area control. I would argue he is one of the best psychic attack/defensive assets in the Warhammer 40k universe. Firstly for psychic protection he cancels out any psychic ability cast against his team by rolling a 4+ if the psyker is within 24” range. For sniping purposes, living lightning stacked with chooser of the slain means you hit on 2’s and wound on 2’s. This attack has unlimited range and requires no line of sight which makes this perfect for rolling along with rhinos so that you can soften up targets before you charge out and rip them a new one. As for area control, I swear by the Jaws of the World Wolf. In a nutshell, the ground opens up and swallows most of everything barring tanks if within a strait 24” line from the Rune Priest. When this line is drawn, each model the line passes must make an initiative test, all fails result in the model being removed from play. This is the best way to quickly deal with multi wound characters. Yes, characters can be targeted.

Pros: This combo of Rune Priest, Wolf guard & Grey hunter can be tooled to any amount of points you can afford. They have excellent attack characteristics in both ranged and assault. Normal tactical squads can have heavy weapons but that means they can’t move and shoot, you can combat squad them but that greatly diminishes their endurance. The Rune Priest shooting attacks can effectively cover anywhere on the table while still being able to shoot and move. Wolf guard to power fist the enemy’s face should they be too arrogant, Grey hunters with melta gun to tank bust and mark of wulfen to rend really tough enemies. With the space wolves force organization chart, each slot basically allows the space wolves to take 2 units per slot so you can have up to 4 HQ’s as rune priest and spam this as your army. Basically its like having 4 mini armies within 1 army.

Cons: As grey hunters are there to be ablative wounds for your steam rolling attacks, squad endurance is the issue of concern. To preserve the survivability of the Rune Priest and Wolf Guard I never take less than 5 grey hunters. Any less, it will begin eating into your squad’s endurance as more and more enemies decide to pick apart that squad.



Squad 3: Long Fangs
-x5 long fangs
-x2 missile launchers
-x2 lascannons

Long fangs are the best devastator squads. They can split fire, to engage up to 2 different targets with devastating results. Many space wolves players roll with all missile launchers, against nids with relatively weaker armor, I would do the same but for most cases, I bring in 2 lascannons for the extra punch. For the best results, I always fire my 2 missiles first. If the missiles score wounds then great, but if not, I still got 2 lascannons to shoot depending on how big of a threat the target is. Against horde armies, I usually throw out 2 salvos of frag missiles to force saves on my opponent.

Pros: Can engage 2 different targets. Some players lead their Long Fangs with Wolfguard in terminator armor/cyclone missiles for that extra punch in shooting and assault defence. They also have counter charge so you can expect they will do a bit better than conventional devastator squads when being assaulted.

Cons: Most fragile of all space wolves infantry units.


Squad 4: Thunderwolf Cavalry
-x4 Thunderwolf Cavalry, Thunder hammer/Storm Shield

This squad almost guarantees to be in assault in their first turn if played correctly. This unit does everything a cavalry unit is supposed to do in every sense. They basically smash in on the flanks of your opponent and work their way through. To do this, I always keep these units in reserve while baiting the enemy into mid field range. This shouldn’t be too hard as 5th edition is mostly fought over the middle ground. Once in combat, depending on what you are charging you may want either the thunder hammer storm shield rider or a basic rider to die first depending on how squishy the unit you are assaulting is. For very squishy units, they will usually be in a horde and since the thunder hammer attacks last anyways, his shield can come in handy at weathering attacks. If the enemy is really hard, you will want the basic riders to take one for the team surviving the thunder hammer attacks to do most of the damage. Always take a thunderhammer/storm shield for all around offensive and defensive capabilities!!! Every time I run this squad it has not failed me. Since GW still hasn’t released any official models for this unit, it can be said that not many opponents will expect to face them.

Pros: Extremely effective against arrogant players whom you’ve successfully baited. They are very fast and hit with a very high velocity. Toughness 5 with 2 wounds makes them extremely survivable when unleashed at the right time. Aesthetically, they are most space wolves themed units period…

Cons: at 50 points/thunderwolf these are very expensive. They are relatively hard to use as everything comes down to timing and target priority for this unit.

Thats it for now folks... I hope this was helpful and provided some insight to the inner workings of a space wolves army. I'll be putting up more unit tacticas in the near future so be sure to look out for them. Do you play space wolves? Do you have any tricks you would like to share? As always, questions and comments are welcome!

Sunday, July 24, 2011

Hong Kong Warhammer 40k Campaign Day

Hey guys, this week has been a blast. One of my really good buddies Ray AKA enrgie was in town and we had a blast at the wine bar. Ray and I had plenty fun psycho-analyzing a group of very pleasant ladies while also catching up with our gaming hobbies.

Not to digress too far from warhammer, I've been putting up WIPs frantically with my space wolves army this past month. The reason for this was a few of the guys who play at Fun Atelier in HK were nice enough to organize a campaign day today. In a nutshell, I present to you "Best Painted Army" award...



I feel this is our blog's award as I have learned so much and picked up bits and pieces from reading all the different contributor's painting styles. I hope this award will serve as an encouragement to you all to stick with this hobby through thick and thin. I will be posting up pics from today's games as well as my army lists later.

Friday, July 15, 2011

Ulrik the Slayer WIP PT1

Took around 2 days for me to strip this model I got from a friend for free. He told me this model was a gift from his 6th grade birthday part. He is now 26 lol...

For this model, I strait up dry brushed everything on. Heres the order.

armor:
1. matte black basecoat
2. dry brush on 2-3 layers of shadow grey
3. extreme highlights with spacewolves grey.

bone bits:
1. tausept ocre
2. devlan mud
3. dry brush bleached bone

yellow bits:
1. tausept ocre
2. devlan mud
3. dry brush tausept ocre

furs:
1. scorched brown
2. dry brush 3-4 layers of dhaneb stone

Gold bits:
1. dwarf bronze

Of course this is a WIP. theres bit more details to pick out depending on how many hours I wanna spend on this guy. So far its been only 3 hours... I just wanna encourage everyone if there is a will, there is a way. I'll do my best to share with you all how to raise a space wolf strike force in the fastest possible way. Comments are welcome!


Thursday, July 14, 2011

sniper wolf scouts WIP 1

For those of you who havn't been following my entries, I have been powering through a major update to my Spacewolves army. Aside from drop pods and wolfguard reinforcements, I decided to add a task force of wolf scouts to my army. I still have never play tested these units so I have nothing tactical to say about them yet. I tend to paint up models I like to collect more than to play games with. When they are all done up, I will be sure to keep you all posted about their tactical performance :)



Wednesday, July 13, 2011

Warhammer Mecca


For those of us not lucky enough to visit Warhammer Mecca and home to our hobby - Warhammer World, I present to you an awesome video clip by a few fellas lucky enough to go! With the British Pounds being so weak, this may be a good time to go! Anyone keen for a trip?

Sunday, July 10, 2011

space wolves reinforcements: converted terminator wolfguard, wolf scouts, rhino & drop pods PT5







Wolf Scouts Complete!!! This is my new table-top standard, 5 wolf scouts took me less than 6 hours to complete from build to finish. I still got 15 more wolf scouts to do so revising my speed painting technique was imperative to tackle this project.
Hope you guys like them!

Friday, July 8, 2011

space wolves reinforcements: converted terminator wolfguard, wolf scouts, rhino & drop pods PT4






Almost done... just a few more details and touching up on the bases... work's a bitch... if only we can stay young forever and just chill in the summer... lol I would have so much more time to paint...

Wednesday, July 6, 2011

Multi-wound Counters

Saw this over at http://www.heresy-online.net/forums/showthread.php?t=18195 and thought I would share this with everyone. I thought it's a very smart way to keep track of all those multi-wounds. I wish I did this for my larger creatures (nids).








Tuesday, July 5, 2011

Space Wolves Terminator Heads

I used to dread painting models without helmets as I struggled a lot with painting convincing skin tones. I even went as far as to assembling my Dark Angels army with all models in helmets just to steer away from skin tones. NOT ANYMORE!!! The majority of my Space Wolves army does not believe in helmets. When you regularly face the most broken of lists, helmet or no helmet it doesn’t really make a difference… 
Back to the hobby side, I’ve realized painting faces is easier than painting the details onto helmets as you can easily utilize washes/layering/highlights to get reasonable results in a very very short amount of time. The skin tones on the heads shown here took me 20 mins to do. It looks like a lot of steps but considering the area on a mini’s face, its really not that much… Here is the order of colors I used.
1. Black basecoat
2. Tausept ocre – try to get a good even layer sparing only the crevices
3. Dwarf flesh – layered on the raised edges
4. Elf flesh – high lighted by dry brushing
5. Gryphonne Sepia – wash the entire face
6. Elf flesh – high lights again



40k space marine terrain center piece






I saw this and I gotta do it... I've had the fortress of redemption kit for 2 years just chillin. This guys got the right idea of how a proper space marine center piece should look like. Be inspired...

for more, check out this link below:

Monday, July 4, 2011

40k Megabattle

We had a blast on the 3rd of July at PI Fusionpolis. It has been quite awhile since we gathered to have a good game and a mega-40k game was really the way to go!

3 vs 3 with the following in 2 teams:
Xenos: Defeng (Imperial Guard) + Alvin (Tau) + Ray (Tyranids)
Imperium: Ethan (Grey Knights) + Melvin (Imperial Guard) + Sam (Flesh Tearers/Blood Angels)

Brilliant game and brilliant day! Took us about 4 hours to complete the entire game in 5 turns. 2 objectives with Victory Points as Tie Breaker.


Head on over to: https://picasaweb.google.com/enrgie/4thJuly2011Megabattle40k and do leave your comments either on this post or on the pictures! There are a few pictures that require the participants to post their comments as I had no clue what was going on the other side of the field! 

Space Wolves: Paint Style Variation




space wolves reinforcements: converted terminator wolfguard, wolf scouts, rhino & drop pods PT3






Okay!!!, this weekend's update focuses on my converted wolfguard terminators. This post especially goes out to an exceptional supplier: without further adiue, Mr. Joel Pitt from Anvil Industy who supplied these awesome shoulder pads for my wolf guard terminator conversion project.

All the bodies are done so far. Outstanding bits being the gem stones which are encrusted into the golden bits. I will be aiming to finish the heads to mount onto these models as well as the bases.

As for the Space wolves reinforcements, I managed to pick up 2 more drop pods from our local store, my wolf scouts with sniper rifles kit also arrived this past saturday so you cna be sure there will be a lot on my plate. Come to think of it, what originally was meant to be a small update to my Space Wolves force has turned out to be a decent sized project.

Completed in the past 14 days:
- x2 drop pods
- x5 wolf guard terminators
- x1 rhino

To be completed within the next 14 days: (hopefully)
- x14 wolf scouts
- x2 drop pods

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