Paint Progress Shot. Tervigon is done, started the Warriors.

X-25 Tamiya Clear Green is probably my favourite thing at the moment. I mixed it in with a few different GW paints to get the kind of slime look that I wanted on the Tervigon and it's base and I'm really happy with the result. 

So as far as progress goes I finished the Tervigon on Monday, and based both that and the Mucolid. The Warriors I started yesterday and are not far away from the finishing touches now. The Termagants need basing. 

I'm pretty happy with how it's all coming along:

Mucolid Spore and Tervigon WIP shot.

So I made a bit of progress today which feels really good! I have been fighting for time lately around girlfriend, work and sport time commitments mean at best I can paint for a bit on a Monday or Tuesday. I'm pretty happy with how the big spore bomb has come out, I still have to finish the base and add a few minor details but the bulk is done.

The Tervigon has quite a way to go, I've been working my way back from the front end with the head and spawned 'gants finished. I had a real win too with the Tamiya Clear Red X-27 I normally use for blood effects also being available in green (X-25) which I have sponged and stippled on to the front end where they are bursting out. It looks gross, cool!

500pt Combat Patrol - Tyranids vs Necrons & Alpha Legion - Hive Fleet Behemoth Swarms.

Tyranids, 500pts.. I had only seen this going poorly. With the Adepticon: Combat Patrol rules we were using restricting models other than troops to 2 wounds max, and a restriction in usable slots, I went with the best list I could figure for the value while still getting a hefty MC on the ground to punch it out. I listed it out in the previous post but here it is again for context:

1x Venomthrope

30x Termagants - Fleshborers

1x Tervigon - Adrenal Glands, Toxin Sacs, Electroshock Grubs, Stinger Salvo, Scything Talons

3x Warriors - Deathspitters, Scything Talons

The first match was against MB with 30k Legion Marines, he had:

10x Legion Tac Marines

1x Contemptor Dread - 2x Kheres Assault Cannons

1x Sicarian Battle Tank - JerkCannons and Heavy Bolter Sponsons

It was a match up that kinda petrified me as I could just see him tearing apart the Tervigon and the whole mess coming undone as I was left with 30 useless 'gants and a bunch of Warriors that couldn't do much. We got the Relic mission and I pushed hard to get on it with the 30 'gants before his Tac Marines could capture it. I pushed out 2 decent sized batches of new 'gants before the Tervigon ran dry and used I the spawned gants to push back the Contemptor (MB was trying to avoid CC, definitely the way to go with this guy) and finally engage it in close combat to stifle it's heavy influence on the game. 

The Venomthrope shadowed the Tervigon around as I moved everything up the guts and the big blob of 'gants captured the Relic before moving away from the Contemptor and Sicarian to shoot up the Tac Marines with the Warriors providing Synapse and fire support. I stuffed up my synapse coverage in this match though and the 'gants locking the Contemptor up were not fearless and were consequently over-run with the loss of an initiative roll off. The Tervigon got the Sicarian down to a single hull point before it bit the dust but by this time it was too little too late for the marines as the fearless blob squad and the 3 Warriors locked up the Contemptor for the remainder of the game after destroying the last of the Tac squad, netting me the win.

It was a really close game, the termagant swarm got pretty close to 60 which was pretty hard for his 12 models to deal with alongside the Shrouding from the Venomthrope and the Catalyst being cast from the Tervigon where needed. Great match though!

Result: 

Behemoth - Relic, Warlord, Linebreaker (but we called it as turn 5 came around)

MB - First Blood, Warlord

The second match was against DC with his Necrons, he had:

1x Lord (Veil of Darkness)

5x Deathmarks

6x Immortals

5x Immortals

4x Tomb Blades

1x Heavy Destroyer

DC and I are always very closely matched as the shooting range is pretty similar between the Tyranids and Necrons. This game was no exception! DC having watched me play MB in the match before went straight for the throat on turn 1, using the blast weapons that ignore cover from the Tomb Blades to hit the Tervigon he could see, and kill the Venomthrope that was hiding behind it that he couldn't see, dropping the cover save shenanigans immediately and meaning I was on +5's from that point out. 

The swarm grew, the Tervigon batched 4 times actually with the smallest lot of 6 coming on turn 4 with was perfect for the points weighted objectives game we were playing. We pushed aggressively up the middle from the start with pretty much the entire Necron force including the deep striking Deathmarks concentrating on trying to take down the lumbering Tervigon from the get go to limit the amount of spawns and synapse I would have at my disposal. 

DC played well, it wasn't to be though as the growth of the swarm and the resilience of the Tervigon with the +3 armour, cover saves and Catalyst being too much for the shooting and manoeuvrability of the Necrons to overcome. The game ended on turn 5 with a roll but the Necrons were starting to be in trouble as the Tyranids began assaulting units, becoming unavailable to shoot at while still holding the objectives in most cases. Great match though also!

Result:

Behemoth - 11 Points (10 Objective, Linebreaker)

DC - 6 Points (4 Objective, First Blood)

It was a really good night of gaming, we got another buddy into it too and he helped steer the nids at the start of the second match with me for his first time playing 40k. I was really happy with the list too, the damage output is horribly low, but the birthed 'gants ad a huge amount of utility to the force which kinda makes up for it if you can use them right (and maintain the damn synapse web!).

Here are a couple of crappy iphone pics to show how the final game ended up:

500pt Tyranids in Combat Patrol and the Infinity Moto.Tronica cheap-o-table project.

Hi!

We're about to start playing a 500pt tournament amongst my gaming group using the Adepticon: Combat Patrol rules and I figured I'd need a table to host some matches on.

When Operation Ice Storm was launched, I was really impressed by the visuals of the card scenery included in the set. I didn't jump on board with the whole set as I have quite a lot of Aleph already so I just bought 4 of the scenery packs with the idea of making a 4'x4' table from them in the future. They sat unwrapped for quite a while but with the tournament kicking off tomorrow night I figured I would get to assembling them so we could use it as a second table.

Theres probably a bit much for 40k but with no area terrain as such you'd only be getting LoS cover saves so maybe it works out? It's a bit thin for infinity compared to the other tables I have played on though but it's still pretty decent for $40 worth of card!

I bought 2x 1200x600x6mm sheets of MDF with a laminate on one side that I sprayed adhesive on to and rolled out the included maps on an angle, as it dried I trimmed the edges flush with the boards and used the off-cut pieces to fill in the corners. The stacked buildings were glued in place with lower tabs of the second and third stories left unfolded for support so they can anchor on the top lip of the lower levels.

I think the angle of the 'streets' looks much cooler than using them square to the board edges and I'm really impressed with the quality of the card and detail of the maps! It's all pretty solid stuff, you'd have to be pretty clumsy or heavy handed with your models to damage anything!

So yeah, this 500pt tournament! The rules kinda nerf my favourite 'nid-zilla style lists with minimal little bugs and as many T6 big bugs as I can fit in around that. With a modification of wounds to W2 for anything other than a troop it's not really worth my while taking anything other than a Troop-Tervigon as far as a big bug goes, that does also unfortunately leave me tied to the 30 'gants as well which don't tend to do much more than suck fire and camp on an objective.

So with an alarmingly low damage output I have decided to field for exactly 500pts:

1x Venomthrope
30x Termagants - Fleshborers
1x Tervigon - Adrenal Glands, Toxin Sacs, Electroshock Grubs, Stinger Salvo, Scything Talons
3x Warriors - Deathspitters, Scything Talons

I thought about taking Regen on the Tervigon instead of the other upgrades but if it spawns itself out on turn 1, there will be very little utility coming from it, at least with AG/TS and some extra ranged weaponry it can hoon around the board and hopefully cause a bit of mischief while spawning objective grabbers.

I guess the idea will be to just try and stay in the Venomthrope bubble for as long as it lives and move up as much as possible.

We'll see! I have to play against 30k Alpha Legion Marines and 40k Necrons tomorrow, I can see the Scicarian, Contemptor with Kheres Assault Cannons and Tomb Blades all making life very difficult for me!

Eversor Assassin finished from the new set.

Hey guys,

I finished the Eversor from the new Assassinorium: Execution Force game tonight with a wee bit of basing and some Tamiya 'Clear Red' blood effect on the gauntlet and body. I didn't go with a solid bone facemask, I wanted it to look like he had painted on the bone effect as part of a pre-battle ritual.

Eversor Assassin

Eversor Assassin

Eversor Assassin

Eversor Assassin

As is naturally the way though, he just got rinsed by a Cultist in the game I played tonight.. The only painted guy on the table and he goes out like a sucka while tapping away on a keyboard activating the teleporter with his little needle fingers..

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The Cultists are crushing me this game!!

Putting the ass into Assassinorium Execution Force.

As probable with most people who have bought the Assassinorium Execution Force board game, I got in for the gorgeous new Assassin sculpts and wow, they have not disappointed! Actually as per my usual critique of the new GW kits the quality of the plastic sucks, but the actual design and proportions are much more pleasing on the eye and I can only imagine will be amazing to paint like Forge World's sculpts.

My girlfriend Loz came over last night and was quite excited to give the actual game a go with me, we got the clingwrapped pack of tiles and counters out from the box (I'd just gone straight for the minis) and checked them out for the first time..

The ass in Assassin:
They have printed both sides of each tile in a high resolution semi-gloss finish over the card, the quality is really nice, just as good as FFG puts out... accept... they only printed a map on one side. The back side is actually just plain black, not just 'yeah whatev's' black, but specifically printed in the same finish as the top with a really high DPI, I would have paid a bit more for an alternate temple layout if money was the issue but at $210.00 AUD I figure that much would have covered it?

Despite how miffed I was at this typically HUGE oversight by GW designers, we set everything up and went through a game.

Loz picked up the Callidus (naturally, girl) and Vindicare. I went with the two leftover vagrants of death, the Culexus and Eversor and we deployed to find the Teleportarium and rinse out the Crimson red suit of Terminator Armour from the soon to be pulped Sorcerer Lord inside..

As you would assume the Assassins blaze through the Cultists at any range, the worst chance you seem to get that we saw in our game was a +4 roll to kill, most attacks from the Assassins are launched with modifiers however, or multiple dice so a kill is easy enough to attain. 

On the Temples:

The Callidus has a nice mechanic where she can hit-and-run from a phase sword action, sort of giving her the ability to spring past dudes on the board and cover good ground while putting them in the ground. Her crux move of invisibility is also a ripper for the ritual site as you can sneak around the room and get in close enough to the target for the kill.

The Vindicare makes for a great cultist culler, he drops them on a +2 if you stand still or shoot with him for the first action before moving away. Loz had him covering the long hallway in the final third of the board and he was crushing them as they swung past on their patrol routes.

The Culexus rolls around the board predominantly unaffected by the psychic events of the EVENT deck which are usually buffing the renegades while hindering the other assassins in their mission. His damage output to anyone other than the Sorcerer Lord is a little lower than the rest but he still mops up Cultists easily enough.

The Eversor I found had the most utility though with the ability to burn tactical tokens (of which you have 3 for each Assassin) for an extra action each turn, I managed to get him around the board more than anyone else using these for extra movement which allowed us to find the rooms required for the jump much faster. 

We punched through the temple, finding the control panel for the teleportation pad in the 4th last searchable room. The mechanic is pretty good for the room searching, but the replay ability will probably net a pretty similar result for the next games as they use a numerical ranking system on the board and cards to stop you from getting over there too soon. The Cultists and CSM's on alert meant we were drawing 4 event cards per turn for most of the second half of the game which further slowed the Assassins and buffed the Renegades, though they still couldn't put a wound on an Assassin before we jumped over to the ritual site.

We got there on turn 9 and immediately I charged the Eversor in for his final bit of glory, triggering his bio-meltdown mechanic to kill himself and put wounds on the 2 CSM's closest to the teleporter and the Sorcerer Lord in the process. The Culexus would have been the next most deadly vs. the Sorcerer but he and the Vindicare were waylaid by CSM's blocking the closest doorway. Meanwhile Loz slipped the Callidus around all the comotion and in through the back door to put the Sorcerer down like the traitorous scum he was.

To the Sorcerers credit, he did hit her with a melta-gun round as she entered the room, but with no ID rules she chopped him to pieces using her tactical advantage tokens by re-rolling the phase sword hits on what would be our final game turn, 11.

The game was fun and there is enough depth (through the event cards mostly) to give it a few more goes as a couple but with a limited amount of variety built in to the set, you'd be better off buying this with the models in mind as it's definitely not got the depth of your typical FFG masterpiece. We did enjoy it though and I can see it as a nice way to get people in to tabletop with the cool looking minis and the ability to explain how this would go down in 40k differently.

Redscorps