My C'tan has transcended, what's your excuse?

...and he shall be known as Bocephus

I am slowly plugging away at this whole "Necron Thing" that I've gotten myself into.  I wish all of the models were as easy as this guy was to paint.  (1) Prime with GW white spray; (2) Heavy wash with Thrakka Green; (3) Drybrush with Astronomicon Grey; (4) Drybrush with whatever the hell that new GW white drybrush paint is called.  The base, as with all of the bases in the army, is the Armageddon Dust texture paint with a drybrush of Ushabti Bone over the top.  The bases are simple at the moment, so they can be upgraded if I get the inspiration and/or energy & time to take them further.

No clever name for Lordy McLorderson as of yet.

I believe I regret posting a close up pic.  This guy definitely looks better at a distance...with better light...and a better camera...and a completely different model painted by someone better than me.  :)

We are making progress on our Tuesday night "Friendly" league.  We will model our elite choice tomorrow evening.  Since I'm already finished with that, I'll be working on the albatross that is my necron warriors.  There's always more of them to paint.  Additionally, I'd like to show up to our competitive league night on Thursday if only to take pictures.  It seems that all I'm reading about on the internet is how GW is failing (they are), and how the game is dying (it might be), and how everyone is abandoning the 40k ship (they might be, but not around here, that's for damn sure).

In any event, here's the official Team Snake Eyes stance on the current state of Warhammer 40k:  We don't give a crap.  We've spent too damn much money and time on our models that GW could decree that all hands must play the game in latin and that d100 dice will be used for every purpose and that any model from any book can be grammar school chums and benefit from each other's wargear and rules and we will straight up ignore that trash.  We'll play the version of the game we enjoy, with the models we've painstakingly collected over the years and poured our blood, sweat, tears, & wife-points (married chaps know where I'm coming from here) into modeling/converting and painting them.  Soldier on you ninny's.  Don't let the bad men tell you how to play with your dolls.

Come the Apocalypse...

That's apparently what it'll take for me to update this thing.  In any event, I'm not dead; I've just had a great deal going on.  New job location, new house, new son, new codex(!), etc.  Life is busy, but that's why they call it life I suppose.  In any event, here's some pictures of what I've been up to.  I may not be blogging, but life couldn't keep me away from the game!

The New Hotness.  I had to get in on this right?

I also had to get rid of some of those damn brass etchings that I had laying about...

And some more brass etching...

Here they are with a bit of paint.  Prime black, base with Knarlock Green, go over with Snot Green.  No idea
what the new names for those colors are.  Something appears lacking, yes?

"The New Hotness" doesn't come on a standard sized base, the way God intended.  GW in their infinite heresy
decided they would go with wonky 50mm bases.  Dark Arts Miniatures, the lads who made my gorgeous resin
lava bases don't have an equivalent.  So, a bit of cork and some assistance from my lovely daughter and I had it
sorted.

A closer look.  I was skeptical at first about what I was going to do, but after my daughter asked if she could help
They've become my favorite bases in the whole army.  Parents will understand what happened here.

It's wasn't all infantry.  Part of The New Hotness includes fliers, so here's mine.  I'm not a fan of the original kit,
so I had to borrow liberally from the internet to get a conversion I was happy with.

Drop pod fins for wings, removed the lower rear stabilizer, magnetized the weapons on the outside of the engines,
switched out the over-sized assault cannon for a converted land speeder version.  You know, the simple things.

Again with the brass etching, again with the non-standard base size that needed cork and my daughter to render aid.

There's probably a bit of highlighting yet to do on this guy, but frankly I got tired of painting Snot Green at this point.  If the Easter Eggs in some of the above pictures haven't been clue enough, I sold off my Tzeentch Daemons after their new codex dropped (and I absolutely did not like the way that new book played) and replaced with them with something else sinister:

An ancient Necron Dynasty has awakened, and they are pissed.  But it's not what you might think.  They were pretty cool dudes, but someone left a hatch or two open in the tomb, and now they're all corroded and even their ceramic has seen better millennia.  

Giving the new paints a go (Prime with Army Painter Brown, base with Rakarth Flesh, layer with Wych Flesh.  Metallics done with Warplock Bronze, Hashut Copper, & that new Oxide Technical Paint.  Use that stuff folks, it's so easy it feels like cheating.  Giving the textured paints a try on the bases as well.

So now we're all caught up.  I can't say I'll be regular, but I can say you'll see more of my Necron project log.  I'll likely have a few posts on the new paints and new techniques I'm trying out (tried a bit of sponging on the ceramic as you can see).  I won't win any painting contests with this army, but I'm having fun again and I'm testing my hobby skills.  And for me, that's what it's all about.

No Chapter For Old Men: Local League game 1 of 5

What's that you say?  You want the truth?  You can't handle the truth!
You may have wanted me on that wall, but due to your pathetic generalship, we're all dead!

So yesterday was our Thursday league night at the FLGS.  Not as big of a turnout as I would have liked to see, but we likely had 12-14 players show up for the first of five Thursday night games.  Some of the "newer" players could have shifted days since the store recently set aside Friday nights to help new players with practice games, painting & modeling advice, etc.  An excellent way to grow the hobby in my opinion, and I only wish I had more Fridays available to lend my assistance.

To quickly recap, I have a five week league.  I have five army lists.  You see where this is going don't you?  In any event, I had a buddy of mine "pick a number between one and five" prior to tables or opponents being named.  He chose number 3.  The third list on my sheet was "No Chapter For Old Men".  The spirit of this list was that due to my poor skills as a commander of Marines, there were only a handful of scouts and tactical marines available for use, while maximizing dreadnoughts.  When I min/max here, it's not to extremes.  I set a few goals (lots of dreads, minimum scoring units) and then attempt to make a viable list within that framework.  Here's what I settled on:

Master of the Forge with Conversion Beamer on a Bike
(10) Assault Terminators with Thunder Hammers & Storm Shields
(10) Terminators with (2) Cyclone Missile Launchers
Dreadnought with Twin Linked Lascannon & Missile Launcher
(5) Sniper Scouts w/Cammo Cloaks
(5) Tactical Marines w/Powerfist, Combi-melta, & TLLC Razorback
Rifleman Dreadnought w/(2) Twin Linked Autocannons
Rifleman Dreadnought w/(2) Twin Linked Autocannons
Dreadnought w/Multi-melta, Heavy Flamer & Drop Pod

Deployment was Pitched Battle while mission was Annihilation.  I won the roll and elected to go first.  Here was my deployment zone:

I castled up in my left corner and hoped he would advance towards me.  This would serve to minimize my exposure to his guns (due to the terrain set up you'll see in the next pic) and limit the number of his units that got to me at any given time.  Please pardon my regular terminators as they are still "in progress" on the paint desk, and my feeble MotF model is still on the drawing board as far as conversions go.  Here is his deployment zone:

With a terrain set that my opponent casually termed "the battle for the port of Los Angeles" there were those cargo containers all over the battlefield in approximately that density covering almost the entire board.  There were a few clumps of trees here and there, and a ruined building that was out of frame to the right.  Our deployment zones were relatively free of terrain.  As I know nothing of his filthy xenos codex, I'll do my best to relate what was in his list:

(4) 5 man warrior squads
Gypsy Shyster Lord with nightfighing, turn stealing, and lightning powers
Squad of (3) Wraiths
Squad of (5) "assault" necrons with shields that reflect shots
Squad of (5) Immortals with assault guns
Squad of (3) scarab swarm bases
Squad of (3) Destroyers (or were they heavy destroyers...I have no idea)
Squad of (5) Snipers with assault weapons
Skimmer with guy in it (control barge?)
Skimmer with creepy arcing electrical gun on it

The early game did not go my opponent's way.  He brought night fighting to a table with a lot of guns, so he was spared a lot of early casualties, but as he advanced, he took up positions outside of cover...which made him vulnerable to return fire and allowed my terminators to advance rapidly.

This wasn't all bad for him.  I dropped my drop pod (with dread) next to his big gun barge and rolled a one to hit it with my multi-melta.  folks are often shocked at how poorly I truly roll.  That's when I bring Vulkan to the table.  Without those re-rolls, my opponents often consider my rolling on par with a humanitarian crisis or some other horror of history.  It is truly appalling.  That dread fired three more shots throughout the game. He would roll a 1 to hit every time.  He did, however, kill that gun barge, the scarab swarms (str 10 vs. swarm bases?  Yes please) and the Monolith, but he did all that in assault.

End of turn 2.  Monolith immobilized, gun barge dead, scarabs about to be dead
skimmers about to die because they exposed themselves on top of cargo containers...

I'm horrible at writing battle reports.  I get involved in the game, and I forget to take pictures.  I'm so bad that I kept putting my phone in my way so I could remember to use it, but I just moved it around without even thinking about it.  Pathetic.  I forgot a pencil so I couldn't even take notes.  But, it was a fairly one sided game in the end.  I had 5 victory points (gun barge, monolith, 2 skimmers, & sniper guys) and my opponent had none.  He killed a few models here and there, but no full units.  My assault terminators were down to 4 guys due to my chronic inability to roll anything but a one on their armor saves, but they held.

Rather than my awesomeness, which has been proven to be more myth than reality, I think my opponent lost the game rather than I won it.  The terrain hurt him.  His own night fighting hurt him.  I removed his big gun early, and he had not back up for it or back up plan in the event that it was destroyed.  His warriors did nothing.  I don't know how cheap they are, but he only shot one squad once (at my drop pod) and that did nothing to it.  The other three squads never even moved.  Those were points that I didn't have to contend with, making the game an imbalanced one as everything I had was shooting, assaulting, or getting into position to do so the next turn.  He's still learning the Necron codex, finding out what units fit his playstyle and which do not.  I expect these are just temporary shortcomings and that he will shortly become a more serious Xenos threat.

Most importantly, he was a fantastic guy, and I think we both had an enjoyable game.  No Chapter For Old Men was fun to play, and I think that had a lot to do with the fact that it just happened to be perfectly suited for the mission were were given.  While I'll likely come back to it in the future, it's on the shelf for now.  I wonder how my random list selection and opponent/mission assignment will go next week.  Stay tuned.

Battle Report: Salamanders vs. Necrons @ 1850

Had another Thursday night game at Fantasy Games tonight. I played Matt, a Necron player. We rolled for a Capture and Conrol mission with Spearhead deployment. Matt, who was a fantastic player and an even better sport considering some of the horrific rolling he had this evening, won the roll to go first and picked his table quarter and I failed to win the initiative. Our objective placement wasn't all that exciting with each of us placing it in the corner about 12" in. I used my standard 1850 list discussed here, keeping both of my tactical squads in reserve.


Matt's list consisted of (2) 20 Necron Warrior squads, a Monolith, some Heavy Destroyers, Flayed Ones, Scarab Swarms, and a lord on foot with the requisite Res. Orb.

Matt's first turn wasn't very productive. He moved everthing forward as fast as it would go and he managed to stun a dreadnought. I moved my Land Raider forward and unloaded my terminators - who were able to make their 6" difficult terrain roll and assault through cover, destroying the scarabs. That was the story of the night. I made more rolls than I had a right to, and poor Matt managed to capture the low end of the bell curve all night long. Between my Assault Terminators (backed up with Vulkan & a Chaplain), my Vindicator, and the Predator twins, the necrons were phased at the bottom of turn five. I had my objective & contested his for the win.

I had another terrific opponent, played a brilliantly painted army on a table filled with superb terrain. A great game at, what is turning out to be, a great store for me. Special thanks go out to Chambers who has served as resident rules guru for both of my matches.

Battle Report: Salamanders vs. Necrons @ 1500pts

I.Q., one of the honchos of the Lords of Egypt group here in Carbondale, Il game me a quick game tonight. I've known him for a number of years, but I've never been able to beat either his necrons or his marines. He used his marines to good effect at our Ard Boys tournament last Saturday by earning the second place berth. Tonight, however, I was to face his necrons. Not sure what his actual list was, but he had a Monolith, a Destroyer Lord with annoying wargear, and several squads of warriors. We rolled for an annhilation mission with a pitched battle deployment. I.Q. won the roll to go first, and deployed like so:


My 1500 point list can be found here, and I kept both speeders and both tactical squads in reserve. I'm not sure why, it's not as if he has a ton of long range shooting, but that's what I did. I guess I get so frustrated when my speeders get geeked early on that I'm over protective of them. At some point I hope to figure this whole 40k thing out. :-) Anyway, here's how I deployed:


My thoughts were to push forward and smash the Necrons with my terminators and dreadnoughts, but that wasn't to be the case. First turn, the monolith drops ordinance on my vindicator and immobilizes it. The rest of the game was quite close up until the end. My speeders were crippled or destroyed, one of my dreads was immobilized, and that Necron lord killed my Chaplain and assault terminators...except for this guy:


That guy killed two squads and almost had another one. He withstood two turns of 17-22 attacks to his two before being brought down by a handfull of guys. His survival made up for the sickness I felt when I.Q. explained what a warscythe did. At the bottom of five we rolled for a 6th turn. I had him 6 kill points to 5, but stranger things have happened. I pushed what I could forward, and brought down quite a few necrons with bolter shots and the demolisher cannon. We rolled for a 7th turn, but there was a caveat...of the 15 or so necrons that I killed, 8 of them needed to get back up to avoid a phase out. 7 of them succeeded and I phased him out. I.Q. said that this was the fourth time he had ever been phased out (with this army list? ever?) and I know this was the first time I have ever been victorious against him. Of course I'm excited about that, but it was a great friendly game and I had a blast playing all the way through and the result wasn't decided till the very end. That's why I play this game. That and I.Q. is willing to pose for cheesy post-game photos that the rest of us wouldn't do.