14th Grand Company

Perhaps the title is a bit misleading, are any of our little plastic armies ever really finished? Perhaps not, but I completed the 2,000 point army I brought to the Seattle GT  including a display board for it.

Two models that were last to be finished also completed (though very late) ToEMP #10: officer of the fleet and the company command’s chimera.

The officer of the fleet is a real help against reserved based armies such as drop pod marines. During the tournament he wasn’t a game changer as none of my opponents relied on reserves, but then again maybe they just changed their tactics in response to him?

The Chimera was used to protect my command squad with the invaluable Commander Creed. This tank was destroyed in nearly every game in the tournament but Creed was lost in only 2 of them, so I think all in all it was well worth its cost.

As for my results? I achieved my goal for my first ever GT: win 2 games. In fact I even tied a third while grabbing the secondary objective. The two I lost were both hard losses. The first was against Nidzilla and only a sole sentinel remained at turn 6. The second was the last game against a fully mechanized guard army which would have been a great deal closer if luck had been better with me.  In the end I placed 47th out of 80 some great 40k players (and cheating one who won but was later disqualified!). After spending the last few weeks getting over the hard losses and the less than I hoped painting score, I’ve started to reorganize my army composition and think hard about how I want to play this army. I may move to a more mechanized army with squads of veterans rather than the platoons, but I still want to stick to the theme I’ve started so may look at replacing the tanks altogether and build a completely foot based army. We shall see what the future holds…

After reading through December’s White Dwarf article about GW’s year in review I was inspired to look back on what I had accomplished this year.

I have just finished another tank to my growing horde of traitor guard. This one is the dreaded Leman Russ Demolisher with sponsoon plasma cannons. Indeed it is a pricy tank, but when it lets loose, it is sure worth it. Thanks to the Lumbering Behemoth rule it can move 6″ and still fire off the demolisher and a plasma cannon, ensuring the destruction of any squad unlucky enough to get in its way.

The demolisher cannon is a kit bash using the Banehammer cannon that I didn’t use for my Baneblade. I had 4 Leman Russ kits, a built Leman Russ and an old built Leman Russ demolisher so I decided to build my own demolisher cannons to create two full squads of tanks, one of the traditional LR and another of demolishers (the other 4 tanks are built and painting has started so watch for them!)

Every weapon on the tank is AP2, ensuring that anything that the tank hits will not get a armor save.

I tried something different with the back by adding two extra barrels and placing a smoke stack on either side.

I also wanted to pull in a theme I’ve used on my troops by adding gas cans and ready-to-light torches to the storage bin.

This also complete the 8th challenge of The Tale of Even More Painters:

• Vehicle: 10 points
• Symbol: 1 point
• Meeting deadline: 2 points
• Total for Challenge 8: 13 points

And here is a sneak peak of whats coming next:

Just got back from the Tanksgiving event at the local GW store, and wow there were a lot of tanks there. One gent alone brought 200+ IG, Eldar and Tau tanks, walkers and a few Avatars. Although our store didn’t have the most in the region (two others had 1,000+!) we tallied up 800 tanks, walkers, large targets, monsters and supper heavies.

Now for some picts!

First up the growing tank arsenal of the 14th Grand Company:

Tanks of the 14th Grand Company

And Group Shot #1

And shot #2

And more tanks!

Sorry a few are a bit blurry, the camera was having some issues, but I think it gets the point across: a table full of tanks is crazy, but 4 tables full of tanks is crazier!

Also if you take a look at my tanks you get a peak of what is on my painting bench and been keeping me busy: 5 more Russes and a Chimera to bulk up my traitors!

So I’ve been thinking about attending the NW GT in January hosted by Conquest. It is 2k, 5 game tourny which will be an intense weekend both because the games are larger than I normally play as well as way more games than I normally play in a weekend.

I have until mid December to decide if I want to go or not so in the mean time I am going to prepare for it by making a 2k list and playing as many games as I can with it. So here it goes:

HQ: Company Command Squad @ 290 pts (Medi-pack; Regimental Standard; Vox Caster; Plasmagun x1)

• Lord Castellan Creed
• Officer of the Fleet
• Chimera (Heavy Bolter;  Multi-Laser)

Troops:  Infantry Platoon @ 207 pts

• Platoon Command Squad ( Krak Grenades; Vox Caster; Grenade Launcher x2)
  • Platoon Commander (Melta Bombs; Bolt Pistol; Power Weapon)
• Infantry Squad ( Power Weapon; Vox Caster; Flamer)
• Infantry Squad (Power Weapon; Vox Caster; Flamer)

Troops: Infantry Platoon @ 567 pts

• Platoon Command Squad ( Krak Grenades; Vox Caster; Grenade Launcher x2)
  • Platoon Commander (Melta Bombs; Bolt Pistol; Power Weapon)
• Infantry Squad (Power Weapon;  Vox Caster; Flamer)
• Infantry Squad (Power Weapon; Vox Caster; Flamer)
• Heavy Weapons Squad (Lascannon x3)
• Heavy Weapons Squad (Lascannon x3)
• Heavy Weapons Squad (Missile Launcher x3)
• Heavy Weapons Squad (Mortar x3)

Fast Attack: 2 Armoured Sentinel @ 150 pts (Plasma Cannon)

Fast Attack: 2 Bane Wolves @ 290 pts (Chem Cannon; Multi-Melta)

Fast Attack: 2 Scout Sentinels @ 90 pts (Missile Launcher)

Heavy Support: Leman Russ Battle Tank @ 185 pts ( Lascannon; Heavy Bolter Sponsons x2)

Heavy Support: Leman Russ Demolisher @ 220 pts (Lascannon; Plasma Cannon Sponsons x2)

This may not be the most competitive list, in fact I’m sure it is not, but it should be fun and uses everything I’ve built so far. The only things I need to add are: the Demolisher, Chimera and officer of the fleet. I also have to paint the mortar squad.

Let me know your thoughts (good or bad). I have 2 months to tweak the list and build any other units I need.

This is a combinational post. First of it is to display my second entry for ToEMPs but also for FTW’s request for our “Must Have Unit.” I’ve only played a few games for my traitor guard, but in all the games my Bane Wolves have made a huge difference by either killing 15 marines in one turn or taking a lot of shots while my lowly platoons take the objectives. These tanks aren’t real tough but they are fast and they are very deadly, which causes many people to fear them to the point of ignoring anything else.

Even though there are the disadvantages of running these tanks in a squadron, it does give them more survivability – I really just need one shot from the chem cannon to make that marine player cry Also my fast attack slots are all filled with my scout and armored sentinels (which are other favorite units!).

Bane Wolf 1:

And its pack mate, Bane Wolf 2:

For the ToEMP this unit gives me an additional:

• Vehicles x2: 20 pnts
• Vehicle details x2: 10 pnts
• Challenge 7b total: 30 pnts
• Challenge 7 total: 37

Whats next? Well in part it depends on what the next challenge is for ToEMP but I have 4 Leman Russes in the mail to add to the one I have finished and the Demolisher I need to strip and repaint, this will give me a full squad of Leman Russes and a full squad of Demolishes! I would like to get these all done for Tanks-giving but we’ll see how that goes!

I finished my body guard for the Shas’O. This is my second, and probably last for a while, Tau battle suit.

Armed with a plasma rifle, missile pod and shield generator this suit can either hunt tanks or MEQs at range, while sticking around for a bit.

This model is half of my submission for ToEMP #7 which earns me:

• Large model: 2 pts
• Icons/Marks: 1 pnt
• Beating deadline: 2pnts
• Meating Deadline: 2pnts
• Total: 7 points!

I am also finishing up the second entry for Challenge #7 and here is the sneak peak:

Although I’m not sure if I will ever build up a full army, I succumbed to the desire to own a mecha army.  I like the idea and look of the Tau army so I thought I’d try out painting a few before committing.  After buying the codex and spending a few days searching Google Images I decided on the blue suits but wanted a worn and dirty look. I was inspired very much buy this guy on Advanced Tau Tactica.

Although I enjoyed painting this model, the battle suite models (I built another to escort the Shas’O) it is poorly designed and had a bunch of voids that needed filling. Even discarding the minor conversion work, I still needed to use a great deal of green stuff to smooth out the armor.

The armament was chosen more out of looks and “coolness” than perhaps competitiveness. I like the idea of the ion blaster, although (and maybe perhaps because) it is unpredictable and using the droid as the shield generator just looks cool.

Although  I was hoping to finish my bane wolves (which really are as good as they sound!) for this challenge but I haven’t got that far.  The next challenge is for fast attack and elites so I’m hoping to finish both my bane wolves and this fellow’s body guard.

Painting Points for this round:

• Large Model: 2 points
• Hard Challenge: 15 points
• Meeting Deadline: 2 points
• Total: 19 points

So I haven’t really been that active in the 40k world this last month for many reasons, one of which was a low excitement for the hobby. This was in part due to not playing a game in nearly 2 months. In the last two weeks though I have had the chance to play my traitor guard twice and took part in a ridiculously huge Apocalypse game.

My traitor guard played brilliant and pulled off a win in the last turn in both games. The first was against a small, elite space marine bike army that hit hard but was brittle. Highlight of that game was one of my platoon commanders surviving an assault of 3 bikers and in return cutting all three down with his power weapon! Game two was against a drop pod army hurt the turn it came in but lacked any mobility. Highlight of that game was my banewolves coming in from reserve and toasting an entire tactical squad. In revenge my opponent dropped his sternguard squad with 8 (yes eight!) combi-meltas next to my poor, innocent bane wolves and destroyed them both in a fiery, toxic blossom.

As for the Apoc game, I brought 3,500 points of my Iron Warriors with some of my traitor guard vehicles (I didn’t fell like pushing around 50+ guys in the 15 minute turns we would have). The game used all 5 of the store’s tables to create a 6′x20′ board! The mission was themed around the space wolves (surprise!) attempting to escape after stealing an artifact from the Thousand Sons, so the Space wolves and company setup on the three middle boards and were trying to make it off the small board edges. The enemy team (me being part of it) could set up to 12″ along any board edge. As you can see in the picture below I set up in one of the corners, determined to keep any of those loyal fools from escaping.

Next to me was a huge hoard of Dark Eldar (I was surprised any one still plays them!) and holding the other corner was some Thousand Sons.

Directly in front of my was a spear head of Space Wolves and various other Space Marines. This picture was taken about 1/2 before the game started and before most of the rest of the board was filled. Turn one say this force surge towards my line and 8 drop pods land next to me, disgorging a dreadnought from each. My defiler, Land Raider and vindicator never had a chance to wreck havoc. In fact the only thing I had left at the end of the game was two of my Basilisks and a Rhino with a troop squad hiding inside. I did my job though and only one enemy squad made it off the board.

What can’t be seen in any of my pictures is the 40+ people crowding in around the table trying to push there men along and blow things up. Needless to say I left with a splitting head ache and a desire to play more 40k!

ToEMP challenge #6 is due in about a week, and after the high of an Apoc game I am determined to not only meet the challenge but to finish my banewolves as part of the bonus challenge!

Not sure how many of you follow the lifehacker.com blog but they just posted a great link to an article on how to take great close-up shots. For all of us this is very fitting since we are continuously taking pictures of our small plastic men.

Lifehacker link

Instructables Link