When all you have is a hammer-Dark eldar Hellions

I think i'm going to try a new thing  here, i'm going to call it "when all you have is a hammer" the gist of the article is a coping mechanism easing the retirement of certain models within codex transitions. IE, when a unit that was suited for several combat roles is now relegated to one niché, or when something that you have a soft spot for and bought a couple of, but now, due to an errata or a new edition for your codex. But you've still bought it, so maybe there's a different way to use it, or at least get a different perspective on it's usefullness.

First up!

Hellions

looking at my blog it sure seems i love these dirty gangers.

Ok, let's be honest, i trawled a lot of DE blog's when i started getting a Dark Eldar army, and i cannot remember anyone ever saying that Hellions were a real game changer. At best they are harassers, flankers or possibly mobile assassin's.

So let's see how the differ from their previous iteration.

changes from 5'th Edition to 7'th

• +a unit of five are now 15 pts cheaper
• +better HoW
• -no chance of getting FnP for combat drugs
• +Phantasm grenade launcher cheaper.
• -Pgl is no longer of&def grenades, IE no charging into cover easily, nor reducing impact of chargers on themselves.
• +Stunclaw for hellarch (sergeant equivalent) is now +1S and ID in challenges, as opposed to +1S and the ability to pull a character from a group after a hit&run
• -No sathonyx (meaning, no way of making them troops, no way of giving them an automatic cover save when in the open or enhancing while in cover)

Now, to me, these units have a suffered a multitude of sorrows. And it all amounts to their main weakness getting all the more glaring. They have about as much durability as a cardboard umbrella. And being in the Dark eldar codex that is something of a competitive place to be, and that is all they are competitive about, true story.

But seriously,let them hug cover like a forlorn lover,stalk it, move in it, ignore the cover when moving in it, but reap it's benefit. That 5+save or 6+ FnP isn't going to save you. And the 5+ FnP isn't exactly bringing home the glory, especially as anything has 6S AP5 is going to straight out murder you either way. 

So why the hell even mention them? 

Well, i bought 'em, i was happy with the paint job, and i don't have a lot of models to replace them with. So let's see what they can do.

Their splinter pod is the straight ordinary bs4 4+ poisoned shots with 18" range, a slight advantage is that they have assault 2, and not rapid fire, this is to allow them to shoot twice and THEN charge, hopefully to mitigate that overwatch. Which will kill you if you aren't careful, everbody except AM is going to laugh at your armour save. 

The Hellglaive is +1S,so yay, S4, possibly S5 if you get decent Drug result, the +1T might be preferable for some, but let's face it, in 7'th a +1 difficulty to wound doesn't make a lot of difference. The Hellglaive is two handed, which doesn't really matter as no one can get a pistol and glaive combo. Your hellarch can have a Power sword (AP 3) stunclaw, covered above, or an agoniser (ap3 poison 4+).

I cannot fathom why you would buy an agoniser for five more points, unless you want to charge T5 or better, Ie you want to tarpit a MC. otherwise, the sword is better, particularly with a good drug result.

Now,the board allows you the +5 Armour save, and the HoW and status as jump infantry. But it also allows you to deep strike. 

Now, lets jazz y'all. 

This is how i use them.

A) Deepstrike assassination squad. 

Turn two you position them to allow them to fire 10 or more poisoned shots into a bunch of guys being evicted out of a transport. Also creating a threat that allows you charge into a flank or tie up some heavy weapons if they aren't eradicated.

B)HEY-LOOK-OVER-HERE

Start them in cover turn one, have the formation that gives you the 6+ cover save and have night fighting. If they don't flee, run them up the side and tie up a unit, combine with a stun claw and some PgL shenanigans to make sure there is a real threat.

C)operation human shield. 

Deploy in front of a loved raider with night shields, pretty much guarantees another turn of survivability for your paper boats. 

Why you probably will skip out on them.

• 65 pts minimum is still more expensive than a group of kabalites with a dark lance.
• Their leadership is pretty bad. 
• overwatch will ruin your day,erry day. 

Now, if nothing else, they do have one other purpose. If you want the kabalite realspace raider detachment you have to have at least one group of hellions. 

The detachment allows your troops a 5+ cover save turn one, and everybody else a 6+ cover save turn one. And the same on night fighting. It also make your power from pain one turn better (IE 6+ FnP turn 1) and if you can get a good hit with the Animus vitae (20 pts for a 8" S4 AP2 shot) then you get two turns better,and with a haemonculus you get a three turn better for whatever unit you put him in. 

These effects are stated to be cumulative. So this isn't RAI, but i'm uncertain if it's worth it. But i am going to try it. 

There you have it, i probably won't be able to make my hellions make their points back, but i will keep running them, and if i find a way to  make them work, i'll be sure to tell HOW. 

What i've been up to lately.

I really need to get my shit together here.

And that, just now? that was the placeholder i wrote, just to upload some relevant pictures, like four weeks ago.

So what have i been up to? Well, so far i've gotten in one low-points game of Dark Eldar 7'th. I was not impressed. I'll be getting back to my impressions with a few more games under my belts, in short though, i don't think the codex is dooming casual players to any greater extent. But i can't really see it as being competitive without some Craftworld lovin'.

Then again, the hell do i know about competitive?


On the Painting front things have faring better. I keep getting in about one session of painting each week, not as much as i'd want, but i usually walk away with a squad or a vehicle painted each time. Which is quite satisfactory to my meager skills. So without further ado. Let's post what i've gotten done.

 

My first venom. 

Now, as with everything else to do with Dark eldar the Venom is a real treat. The model is sleek, predatory and the very design gives the impression of speed and movement.

The kit itself is also incredibly easy to assemble. If you've ever built a games workshop "bike" model, then you're going to be familiar with the whole "two-sides-glued-together-done" assembly. The which is am incredibly gratefull for, as the raiders are pretty finnicky to assemble.

You have two design choices to do regarding your Venom.
A) Do you want an open cockpit with visible pilot/open canopy with clear plastic.
B) underslung splinter cannon or TL Splinter rifle? And some spikes underneath. Because it is a Dark eldar modell.

I went for C. And painted the canopy black, and even chose not to have a gunner in the back. I'm assuming that my evil-space-dark-elves have figured out a way to fire two weapons from the inside.

The painting itself is as complicated or easy as you want to make it.

I went with a detailed "sybarite green" higlight, like this.

Now with shaky cam!

Now with oversaturation in flashes!

To be completely hones i think this makes it pretty damn hot straight up. This is 70% of the work (but as the blog says, i Can't paint) and it really makes the venom look like the predatory hunter that it is.

But i chose to try out some new things.

The horrible leg not included in purchase.

Now, the first thing i wanted to try was getting a good highlighting on the "gems" on the wings, it isn't immediately noticeable, but up close it's pretty clear that i botched it. So i just did the old "half bright red, half dark red, shade and yellow dots" to fix it up. And as a table top paintjob it worked out.

Per my wifes suggestion i did the cut sides in metal, as well as the wing spikes, with a simple silver highlight to make them "pop"

it wound up looking like this.

Which works as table top painting in my opinion.


I've also had the time to paint a couple of kabalites. I've continued with the previous way of painting (highlights and copper weapons) But i have started adding more details, it's a pretty organic process for me. IE trying something out on ,say a sybarite, thinking it looks Neat-o and going back to complete my older ones.

For some reason i kind of dig the ol' "pope" hat size of the 5E kabalites.

These guys have also gotten a matching raider by now, and i need to start up the second one this week. All in all it looks like this.

I'm pretty happy with the red sail offsetting the blue torquoise of the mast.



What is missing right now is the following

* Getting on basing. i've got some SM and Tau bits to add as trophies too.
*doing an Archon. So far i've made do with Sybarite conversions as HQ's
*Getting a final list for what i want to play with for 7'th.

that's what i'm doing right now, and of course, ragging on the codex.

Dark eldar 7'th edition-Hellions: Ride fast die turn one.

As i mentioned in the Dark Eldar opening post, i managed to get my dirty mitts on some Hellions when i bought "the big batch of used modells". only four though, with the minimum size of a unit beeing five. I had the choice of either selling them off, or buying a box of another five. I chose the second option.

Now, again, the modells are incredibly well sculpted, some of the best GW have ever sent my way.And i have to say that whenever somebody said hellions i usually dismissed them as the Lazy greengoblin rip-off's. I was a pretty hard sell, but hot diggity damn the modells are good, i mean the Hell-blades are pretty cool, the skyboards are pretty awesome and the rules....ooooh let me tell you about the rules...he..heee..hee.*cough* they're pretty awfull.

But before i get into the rules, there is one thing i despise about the modells.

The heads, i mean look at this.

'cause gangers need dread-locks to look bad ass. 

Hell-'fro. Seriously, why?

These probably look pretty bitchin' to some. But i mostly find myself reminded of the cracka' wiggas that tried to roll over grade school students when you were a teen.

I just made use of the Wyches spares you get from the raider.


Now, if you've ever looked at Wyches or Hellions you'll notice that they can't afford proper clothing. And they're pretty bare. So you will

A) have a lot of practice perfecting skin tones for DE, yay!
B) Throw a hissy fit and wither in front of the daunting challenge of doing all these skin tones.

Luckily some DE sleuthing gave a me a damn fine answer.

Props to From the warp blog.

http://fromthewarp.blogspot.se/2011/01/painting-dark-eldar-skin-tones.html

Now, that post is pretty old. But the equivalent i've used is GW's own

Celesta grey
druchii violet wash.

Which i consider to yield pretty good results. My results are below. I was pretty damn happy with the end result-

Of course, i now realise they mostly look like the Joker. Which is a plus in my book. 

I went with a different colour scheme from my regular kabalites. As the helions canonically are rabble.

Now, as i said they are pretty schizo. The have the standard DE statline, but get a buff to their S with their weapon, and a better armour save with their boards. You'd hope for a +1T on account of the board, but this ain't no bike dawg.It's a fancy skateboard. And you get Drugs, so hope for that magic 6. 'cause that'll afford you a FnP.

If you want them to survive, cling to cover. Hug it like a clingy lover, stick to it like molasses, and other 20's noir quotes. Because that 4+ cover save is what'll save you with FAR more certainty than their buffed wychsuit. And NEVER forget that you can move through cover, since you're a jumper.

Now i've run these in two matches. In the first one i ran Baron Sathonyx, and the cover save out in the open really helped. And oboy, will you need it. Bolters, shuriken rifles, lasrifles,pulserifles. All will kill you easily.

But, i hear you say, what are they good at? assaulting?

Meh? They're good at hounding wounded units, with eight you get 16   4+poisoned shots that will allow you to charge realiably, do not, i repeat, do not charge unwounded troops, as overwatch will shred you.

We'll se what the new codex brings. But without the Baron, i can't see me running them, even with a price drop.

How i stopped Worrying and learnt how to love AV10-a New army project

To be completely honest, my motivation to play Grey knights has been waning ever since i started reading some of the more substantiated rumours earlier this year. I mean, certain things where inevitable, losing none sculpted characters? Sure, getting a nerf to the Psy cannon? we all saw those coming. But my griping mainly concerns the weird surgery they did on the codex as a whole. The wholecloth removals and piecemeal additions.

But this isn't my griping post. I'll get back to that. Just a heads up to anyone that reads that i'll probably be posting more and more of my new army rather than the old.

But before we get to that part.

I've been eyeing a third army for a while now. Initially my wandering eyes started straying towards the CSM, But i was wavering as to wether or not i was going to go Full Nurgle or not. And that's when i realised that i wasn't all that enthused about playing a similar army style, so i started looking at polar opposites of the Grey Knights. So what i wanted was.

* A fast army that can still shoot
* An army that wasn't representated among my playgroup
* An army whose design and estetics were polar opposites of what my current "lego vehicles" "pauldroned bro's" were.

That's when i was gripped by a sudden fancy. There IS an army that has all this, and more. An army that has all the durability of a cardboard umbrella, and the striking power of a razor. I am talking of, of course. The pleasant Gentry of comorragh.

Now, i was fortunate enough to pick up a large collection of Dark Eldar from a pleasant chap that was looking to get into the Waaaauuughing side of life. And an entire BOX of 5E kabalites warriors.

 So i got a hold of the following in quick order.

*god knows how many kabalites (40<)
*four hellions
*one ravager
*two raiders
* approximately five trueborns ( the previous owner had done a bang-up-job of converting them with CC weapons and pistols)


And i picked up a couple of other sundries to round out the army.

The bottom box is filled with ONLY kabalites.

All in all though, i was pretty excited to get started. The sculpts are amazing, the codex was exciting and for the first time in a very long time , i was looking forward to assembling and painting.

Until i was struck by the "oh-my-good-how-the-hell-am-i-gonna-paint-this".

Once again the internet proved to be right about everything all the time, a quick googling for "how to paint dark eldar" yielded this particular gem.

I found a lot of good tutorials. My favorite has to be this one

Particularly the step by step description regarding how to highlight, in the end i chose to do my own a bit more discreet. But i was very happy with the end result.

The first batch ended up looking like this.

An sybarite with a Blast pistol and a Power sword. 

Same one, i should probably borrow a camera to do these. Particularly happy with the chest piece.

I've done a complete squad so far, and now i just have too get my shit in gear and start a proper vehicular Scheme. 

Feeling good so far. 

Now the point i was going to make is the following. 

I think that it is inevitable that we all get some form "painters block", and giving in to that impulse of getting a new army might actually be helpfull with that. I think the important part is to keep your dab hand at it. And just keep painting/modelling something. Obviously it isn't viable at ever juncture in your life, but most of the time? Probably. 

The worst part is probably when you've modelled a large part of the army, you have it in front of you, and you get intimidated. It's probably happened to everyone atleast once, in some form or the other. When it happens to me i find it conductive to just sit down with some mates and try to get a painting circle together, it makes all my painting go slower(interestingly enough) but it is conductive for improving my technique, and makes me eager to practice it and evolve it.

just my two cents. 

Amateur conversion time!

What time is it?
Amateur time!

So as i mentioned in the first posts, when i started out i was pretty keen on saving money. And as such i tended to do everything i could to dodge GK going prices, hunting on Amazon and ebay didn't really give me what i needed. So i tried my dab hand at building some additional troopers. And here are the results, now, these are pretty.....no, VERY amateurishly built, but maybe someone'll take a gander (fowl play,eh,eh nudge nudge) and get a better idea and do those.

Here we go.

What you see here is a "clip on" marine with a bolter, with some purity seals added on to him, the hands and "pegs" for the clip-on bolter cut away, and a falchion hand glued on, a storm bolter glued on, and a terminator shield on the left pauldron. The pose was intended to invoke the feeling of a knight in prayer, or greeting a dueling foe. All in all? you can see it is a silver painted space marine with a sword and a Storm bolter....he usually dies first though.

Yeah i'm not sure where to start, the paint scheme aside? damn, i'd forgotten all about these. This guy has a Venerable dreads secondary head, and a green stuffed incinerator. If nothing else i can mention how easy it is to alter "clip ons" with a bit of knife work and glue, i mean i was wondering if i should even add this, but hey, he's killed a Company command squad on his lonesome. So there is that, even with a crappy modell, if you can see what he is supposed to be, he can play, if he can play, you can try out different tactics while getting in the game. And that nets you experience if nothing else. And that will allow you to learn how you want to play your guys, without spending money. Which is a plus to me. 

Same thing here, a "complete" modell, allowed me to try out some different paint schemes, it got me to learn how to paint the eyes more completely, and wether or not i wanted to do the Storm bolters in grey or not.

Of course, the quality of painting on these modells make me cringe slightly nowadays, but it does give me a measurement of how far i've, if nothing else.

So in closing, horrible modells? sure. Tacky painting scheme? that too.

But i'd like to give a shout-out to kit bashing as a good way to save money and get a bit of inspiration.

Grey knight rumours, the apocalypse is here

So the rumourmill got turbo boosted straight out of the gates of the jaws of the world, and with that i refer to, of course, the fact that the slipshod proof reading of the new space wolves 'dex resulted in some Grey knight "early" drops. Well, it got official and this is what has been released so far.

So... They're out there now, people know they're coming so I can talk about them.
It's true that the Inquisition and assassins were cut. Assassins are getting their own update (similar to 4E) which will let them end up in any Imperial Army without necessarily taking an Inquisitor and have some cool narrative missions/kill team missions.
But we're not here to talk about Assassins.
Grey Knights are definitely getting "stripped" of a lot of the bloat they had before, not necessarily the stuff they had.
What I mean by that is this codex is C:Grey Knights, and NOT Ordo Malleus.
The focus is on the marines and only the marines. If you want to recreate existing armies, its not difficult you just use the inquisitor codex alongside it.
The special characters as rumored at gone, BUT the relics section lets you effectively portray them (functionally) on the table. This lets people convert to their heart's content without conflict as to what is/is not the right way to represent one character or another.
Unlike space wolves and Orks there is no follow up supplement for Grey Knights. It's all in the book already.
Draigo makes paladins troops, but they have to be 4 or more models or else remain elites.
Things got a little bit cheaper to bring them in line with the new base marine costs.
Librarians still require terminator armor.
Land raiders are dedicated transports for strike squads as well.
Deep striking via teleport got more precise.
Grand strategies are warlord traits.
There are 2 new kits only one of which is a vehicle
Have some very unique rules for when playing against daemons primary. /Both/ armies get buffs (fluff wise because GKs only show up when the situation is super dire)
So to reiterate: book is about the grey knights and nothing else cluttering it.
If you want the old book, just grab codex: inquisition to go with it.
It's not GWs fault that TOs are limiting people to two sources. The design process was that the book was too bloated with choices that had nothing to do with grey knights, thus didn't need to be there.
Does it mean less options? Sort of, if you only have one book, but in return you get a more balanced army that isn't being weighed against the strength of inquisitorial henchmen when considering the potency of "GK troops," allowing for a much stronger book if you wanted to play just knights.
Crowe doesn't make purifiers troops in the traditional way, but he has a formation that's him with 2-6 units of purifiers in transports.
In this formation he gets a bodyguard of the new unit that are based roughly on his "story" per se and is the only way to give him a retinue as he is not normally an independent character.
More will hit the internet soon I'm sure but that's all I can say at the moment.


Now, personally, playing on the fluffy side of things, i like to have inquisitors and henchmen in my Grey knight detachment. Particularly as a vague hand-wave or paltry justification on why approximately 5% of the entire chapter (there are only 666 of them after all) is attacking anything except a vicious Daemon infestation. So i usually point to my kitbashed inquisitor or Coteaz and say "An inquisitor made 'em do it" hell, it's not worse than any other justification offered in canon (or blacklibrary's close-as, anyway). 
Now, as has been pointed out, there is absolutely nothing preventing me from fielding a Inq (=II=) allied detachment, as a matter of fact, that actually improves things in my opinion, as that means i can shoehorn in a vendetta, and some MORE anti armour, which is usually where i tend to have a gaping hole in my army. 

So a new kit? And a new vehicle? i've heard speculations that it could be something like a taurox, but in keeping with the fluff for the GK (and since it is now PURELY, grey knight, not the entirety of the ordo malleus) the grey knights are Quick reaction forces that have access to the finest that the imperium can provide. So i'd wager an anti flyer or something specifically fast, to let us hit them with our swords. 

what i'd want would be, as mentioned, a tank hunting vehicle, but the grey knights have always been intended to go against Daemons or Chaos Marines. And Daemon Engines might have AV but Daemons go with Toughness, so probably something that allows two modes of fire, a rapid fire lawnmower and a focus fire S9 at the most, and i'm not holding my breath for "lance" on that mode of fire. But i'm hoping. 

I'm also wagering on a FA. the one unique offer GK gets in FA are interceptors, and they are Quirky (what ho'! a quick jaunt through the warp, off we are, TALLY HO!) but i haven't really seen them used, nor in a competitive nor casual environment, which translates into the SS (strike squad box) goes as purifiers/ordinary troopers, so the box is probably selling well enough, but doth' GW smell a profit to be had here? Probably, and if GW has been safe to do anything as of late, then it is follow the money. 

Speaking of following the money. Poor eversor, i think you might be the least used Assasin. 

And the assasins are getting an overhaul to their MO as well, it sems we're regressing to 4'th, with a standardized Assassin temple dataslate, i've heard vague murmurs of the assasins getting their own "missions" that will allow additional victory points, but i'd be surprised if anything actually solidified about that. 

I'm guessing my Vindicare will continue to serve without distinction. But more about that later. 

So there we are, i'm looking forward to this 'dex drop. GK was the first army i picked up, and this will strike pretty close to home. So i'm eager to see what i can rag on next. 

Ever vigilant. 

Painting Squad Sequitus

That was a long time coming. So moving on from last time, i got a lot of positive feedback regarding my painting, exactly the kind of tips i was looking for too. The best one probably has to do with inking itself. Painting a monochrome (heh) army like the grey knights ( or, actually, i guess most marine chapters) inking is a pretty big deal. Particularly when you have good sculpts like the Grey Knight terminators.

So, this is what i did with my terminators that will come to form Squad sequitus, whose main task is to deep striking in and provide fire support, with the blessed stormbolter and the sanctified bolts of the psycannon. The justicar is a particularly skilled prognosticar in the making, and as such makes use of inquisitor Coteaz ready pool of ...willing, rogue psykers, who in their own hampered way, serve the inquisitors means with their leashed minds.

I started with air-brushing the entire model, a good tip i got was to keep the air brush nozzle at a 45-degree angle, so as to get a good base where the raised edges get the most paint, and thusly looks better on the table. So i'll get on that for my next squad.

 The Nest part is probably my favorite all time use of an airbrush. I painted the force weapons white. And then airbrushed with vallejos "model air" blue angel colour gently on the tip.

This is something that i figure you pick up as you go along. But i was pretty happy with the intial results. I the applied some white highligting along the edge of all halberds ( just to try it out). The force weapons have always been something of a quandry for me, i've tried freehanding it before (with a white background, black lightning bolts, and a blue wash over that) and it looks decent at a distance, but up close it just looks too cluttered, and this was a great way to get it done.

Now after filling in with colours. I wound up with these as a finished product

Again, the camera work is....crappy. At best. But this one is a pretty decent one i think, i purchased a new details brush to get all the rosettes and sigills with a red background, gold edges, and silver highlights. All inquisitorial marks were painted in gold. with hightened silver edges. All the storm bolters and special weapons are black, with mithril silver details, and leadbelcher clips and barrels.

All purity seals were made in darkred. And the liber malificariums (Books on their chests with the prayers of the faithfull, to keep the daemons that prey on mankind at bay) got red edges, with white pages and silver highlighting.

If i was in any position to offer any tips in painting Grey knight terminators, then that tip would be to dry brush all the "engravings" in gold, it really makes the shoulders and elbow joints "pop"

Overall, i was pretty happy with these guys, and they served with distinction in the match i played this week.

So there we go. Inking is pretty boss-hog when it comes to doing "Gris chevaliers". And i got very happy with details. So i figure i'm at least improving some when it comes to painting. I'll probably offer some amateurish opinions regarding Grey knights in the psychic phase later this week.

'til then. Keep painting.