Rave Review: Dark Eldar Bloodbrides & Wyches

Colour by MajesticChicken

Hello again folks, bit late with the DE review this week as I have been on a bit of a cooldown as I did a bunch of articles in a short space of time this past seven days, including compiling the photo's for my upcoming Spacewolves Showcase on Mindofthedeamon, and  I also did a feature article for Hop on Monday about paint scheme / palette selection and implementation.

Going to be talking about Wyches today and including the Bloodbrides as they are essentially the same thing. May as well kill to birds with one stone.....

Stats wise Wyches are fairly unremarkable , well in all stats bar one they have I6 which Im sure you will agree is fairly hectic for a troops choice , if you loose a combat to these girls, bad times ahead.

Some people complain about the str3 , I tend to agree with the frustration that a predominantly T4 gaming environment brings , if the balance of armies being played were more even I think str3 would be, well average.... Fortunately there are a couple of things that help the girls strike with a bit more sting than half trained, very depressed human cannonfodder.

Actually it could be worth mentioning the fragility 'issue' here too, as it is largely caused by their stats, T3 and a 6+ save out of combat ? Im not going to lie to you, they die horribly if caught in the open or their transport explodes which is alot as DE seem to think manufacturing their vehicles out of an advanced version of nitro glycerine is a jolly good plan .....

One option which you can use to mitigate this somewhat is to start them off with a haemo in the unit, his pain token will confer FnP (assuming you dont get one from drugs) which makes them three times less likely to be vaporized by their own ride and/or most small arms, in this instance it is a trade off though, as in order to have a haemo along you will have to drop a unit member to fit in a raider, which means less special weps and also if you want him moving with them, you loose fleet. So a downside if coming in on foot from a portal, although I guess you can move him away on the turn they arrive leaving the token with them, this has an advantage in that outside a raider you can run a much larger squad, more models benefiting from a pain point is a good use of resources.  Otherwise in a raider squad the should probably just leave him behind if you are not sure they can reach with a standard move + assault, you DO NOT  want to get stranded as your opponent will end them extremely easily outside of combat, plus the haemo can still fly around in his shiny new raider liquifying things and giggling.

Basic stuff that comes in their package includes:

Close combat weapon, pistol and plasma grenades - run of the mill basic kit for a cc unit .

Combat drugs:

  hypex look, shoes !!- errr not a huge fan of this one but it does make your run moves more reliable ? I recommend throwing models around and kicking tables when you roll this, perhaps accuse your opponent of rigging the dice .....

Serpentin Sexist comment ! - not terrible, it helps slightly with the 'hitting like a girl' problem as you will get more hits on your predominantly ws 4 opponents and therefore more chances to wound it will also offer a little protection from ws5 opponents, so not bad there will be no need to try and knock your opponents models over with dice rolls to make yourself feel better.

Grave lotus YOU forgot my birthday!- Now they are angry @ str 4 they can also glance down vehicles as well as actually wound t4 FC wyches have str5 with this ;o) maybe not time to break out the special dice and elastic tape measure... some chocolate perhaps ?

Painbringer Crimson tide !- This is hands down my favorite, statistically slightly better chance of wounding T4, and much better on anything they will need 6's on, also makes for far more stable amounts of wounds generated. Also the agoniser you may or may not have bought the unit just got real ugly. - you are perfectly justified to get those people you hired to come and heckle your opponent to join in on this one , you will no doubt impress everyone and earn the respect and love of everyone.

Adrenalight The toilet seat was up !! Another good one , helps with getting more hits /wounds/kills than you would without. I think you are ok to just note it down and continue here, though snide remarks about Spaze marehnz are always acceptable if unsure how to proceed.

Splintermind Omnomnom chocolate - free pain token , fnp will do nicely , if you already packed your haemo then they will have FC too , but if not, no worries its a short trip to FC and you will loose less girlies on the way. - the dice have obviously decreed your opponent is unworthy cattle, refuse to make eye contact for the rest of the game and only communicate through your 'mouthpiece'-one of the guys you hired to do cheer routines in the background will do .....

So yeah the drugs can help , sadly they are random , which means I'm tempted to shy away from them in competitive lists , however, wyches do not really perform their function by killing stuff , I mean its nice but not the point to including them in a list , the last and possibly most important thing they get as standard is a 4++ in CC , yup ,a troop with 4++ in cc that costs 10 points per model, nice 

At this point you can probably see they wont be killing much of anything in cc, however with a 4++ and the potential for FNP also they are a brilliant tarpit unit, chuck em at some Termies or Twolves etc to bog them in combat, with the addition of some other upgradess they can tie up almost anything for a while . Some people rely on powerful cc units to win games, wyches can seriously hamper that anything with massed power weapons are wasted points on wyches. If nothing else the main purpose of wyches is to blunt the cc effectiveness of your opponents derp stars and main combat units, this allows the rest of your army to go to work, and hopefully if the wyches hold them up for long enough, assuming they eventually die you should often be in a position to destroy the remains of the enemy squad on your own terms.

Upgrades:

Razorflails - costs ten points - get re rolls to hit and wound - not  really sold as it clashes with some of the drug results not really worth a whole wych Imo.

Hydra gauntlets - these are the gamble weapon , a potential d6 plus 3 attacks on the charge and gains benefits from all the drugs, I tried them in a couple of games but my rolling was terrible so they did nothing of note, More str 3 attacks does not seem to do very much, again not convinced they are worth 10 points 

Shard net + impaler - For me this is the best upgrade as it makes wyches better at what they are good at in the first place, tarpit central by making them even  harder to kill in cc, it also makes them a good home for Characters, careful and clever positioning of the nets can really help you out and reducing attacks at a character with shadow or clone fields is golden.... shenanigans to be had for all ;o) , take as many as you can. Thne learn to use them.

Haywire grenades - these are actually starting to grow on me, a unit with these and nets will beat down a dreadnought quite reliably if my tests are anything to go by, it is an expensive upgrade, but pending more testing I feel they are largely worth it as its more or less the only anti tank CC you gonna get, one trick you can use is multi charges charge the tank and aim to 'clip' an enemy squad, dump as many grenade attacks onto the tank as you can and then avoid retaliation in cc with a unit. with dark lances it seems there will be quite a few immobilized and stunned vehicles going around, massed haywires can really speed up the process of finishing them off, there is one small thing that makes me hesitate, there is some debate online weather the 4++ will protect them from explodes results, pending Faq this could effect your decision to equip them, though in my experience you are far more likely to glance it to death by immob and wep destroyed than actually exploding it... first outing for my wyches they killed a demolisher and a chimera, can't complain. 

Obviously if you are tight on points and just specifically want them to tarpit then the grenades can be dropped, 20 points for a squad IS expensive.

Hekatrix- one more attack and LD nine, I would get her for the LD9 alone, due to your poor damage output, you may find the wyches loosing by small margins over protracted combats quite alot, to be effective as a tarpit they need to stay put, ld 9 is well worth the extra points, you can consider dropping her if their is an IC with the unit of course.

Colour by MajesticChicken

Blast pistol - Not keen on these usually as the range of 6 is crap and you will be running often, the circumstantial opportunity to fire these let alone the fact that inferno pistols piss all over them makes it hard to justify the 15 points down the toilet, However, I feel there are some reasons to consider them in wych squads if you can afford it. For starts they offer them a chance to either pre stun/immobilise a dreadnought, making it a simple job to haywire the jesus out of it, they also gives a last chance to open a transport and assault if your lances fail (they will often) obviously you are better if you have a character along with one too, a succubus is still cheap with one, also a couple of blast shots will help thin out tougher opponents  on the way in making your job easier as wyches are best when they outnumber. In this mech environment its nice to have a cc unit that can still effect tanks as it is conceivable that they wont have a non mech unit to assault.

Phantasm launcher - essentially 10 points for defensive grenades as the squad had offensives anyway, dunno, not sure I see the point, it does indeed make them even better tarpitters when charged, but GW recently faq'd that defensive grenades wont work vs counter charge, wtf ? and they (spaze mareenhz) can stack FC with it ?!?!  so as essentially due to the inherent mobility of DE I think this of situational use at best, shame as it would have been nice in mach ups with spaze wolves.

Venom Blade - Cheap , always a good choice as it threatens mc's and kills with wound saturation.

Power wep - half the price of an agoniser and will benefit from FC and all the drugs results , defo worth consideration.

Agoniser - The 'safe' default, reliable choice, but god DAMN its costly, for what is effectively a str 4 power wep (or worse vs t3) most of the time, its like british car insurance, they know you need it so get away with charging twice what its worth, some of the pricing in this book I find highly questionable. Pending much testing I may consider only running pow weps or Vblades instead as 20 points is ridiculous , its nothing anywhere near as good as a power fist. 

Blood Brides - I look on this as upgrading wych squad to 2 attacks a piece and increased access to special weapons, really quite good bodyguard unit as you can get three shardnets and a character in a transport where with plain wyches you will only get one, also it's actually not as bad shelling out the 20 points for the agoniser here as the Syren has 3 attacks basic so better points to kills ratio, I bet it hardly edges out the venom blade. So consider these hitty Wyches, with a suitably tooled character they can tie up and likely kill any cc unit in the game. Having Lelith with a unit almost certainly means anyone trying to target her is at -3 attacks, lol 

In all honesty a plain 2 net build wyche unit is essentially just as tarpitty as Bloodbrides if not more so with points a factor. I find it hard to include Bloodbrides in my lists as Incubi outright kill shit better which I like, not to mention those pornographic models,  I also cant not take at least 2 Trueborn squads, hell I find it hard not to take 3 every single game. Incubi do often justify their inclusion by largely brutalizing everything they touch. I would honestly just reserve Bloodbrides for a cult theme list, though I suppose they are worth a try as escorts for a clone field Archon as I have yet to make more than one or two saves with a shadow field and am starting to give up on it.

Lelith, There's a new kid in town... "Show's over, Motherfethers" 

An interesting unit, nothing else quite like them in 40k, their killing power is quite low but killing power is not often a strong point of most troop units anyway, the ability to give even dedicated CC units a hard time can be golden if you know how to work the advantage, shardnets used well will have people tearing their hair out.

I get the feeling most people will either love or hate them depending on what they are trying to do, attempts to force a square peg into a round hole may result in some hating.

Coming next !! Next DE unit review is likely wracks, as for Eldar Its dire avengers, 

El Diablo is frenziedly cobbling together our spacewolves army showcase, you may even see part one before christmas.

night 

Retro Review: Eldar Rangers & Pathfinders

Well thats another first for rant, I spent ages trawling the net to find some nice artwork for this article , to no avail, sad panda. I had hoped to never have to post Mini's, preferring to use art but its that or nowt, so I guess I'll Showcase this incredibly beautiful Inquisitor Ranger by Muhani as illustration for this article.

Disclaimer: This unit does not work in a mech army no transport = no good, amongst other things they are too expensive to just 'throw in', so I advise to leave them alone if you are interested in pimping your competitive mech.

Right back when I re-started my Eldar I had to grab what I could get together, borrow,scrounge and run with it so I essentially had to go with foot-dar and had inherited a bunch of rangers.

Not long into my early low point experiments I started getting a fixation for harlequins, but found it was impossible to field nothing but harlies, fortunately I found that rangers and harlies can often be seen around each other and have some kind of interaction that makes it perfectly fluffy for them to b in a force together.

They actually made an ideal troops choice for a harly army, Ill expand on that a bit later , needless to say it was a very long time till those battered old models got filtered out of the army to try other things, they had held the fort for me for a very long time while I tested and learned about other sections and aspects of the army, Actually now we are talking about them I'm gutted I sold off the models to fund the MKII kits for my Skimmer spam...

Anyway lets do the usual and start with an examination of the 'package' a basic ranger is a fairly hefty 19 points, that is fairly high for a troops choice , stats are unremarkable just a point higher BS separates them from a guardian.

So where is the value then ? well I think they are probably over priced anyway, that seemingly being the theme in this book, what you essentially get on top of that is a more dangerous sniper rifle, infiltrate , move through cover and stealth.

I cant honestly say I really ever find cause to infiltrate them, at least if I do its only to maybe put them in an objective with plenty of distance between them and the enemy, rangers hate CC, and  they hate flamers even more best to keep that in mind at all times.

I don't often even ever have to move them from where they are set up, so move through cover is far from fundamental to this unit , doubt I would notice if they did not have it.

Stealth is where its at for these boys, any kind of 3+ save is a novelty for elda , Going to ground gives you a 2+ ,as shooting rarely does anything effectual its not such a big deal.

The rifle works exactly like a sniper rifle, just rolls to hit of 5 or more become ap 1, which is nice....when it works ,nothing you can bank on but it does make them a little shinier than a bog standard rifle, anything that makes marines even a teeny bit jealous is a plus, Desperate ? yeah, I'll take what I can get.

Right things with rangers are fairly simple, ideally you plonk them in cover on an objective or failing that, within a quick runs distance, then you spend the game annoying your opponent with them.

Often as they are largely ineffectual your opponent will leave them alone in favor of higher threat targets, which is fine as you only really bought them to hold objectives , any kills or pins are just a nice bonus.

Its worth remembering that the rifles get two opportunities to become meq killing,on 5's to hit and also as they are 'sniper', rolls to wound of 6 are rending ponies. which means in a pinch you can try and do something to light armour.Its good be aware cover might make it so even if you do a fair few rends etc your rangers will still struggle to kill much, oh well so long as they are still sat on that objective when the fat lady sings.

On the subject of rifles, in my foot dar days my seer would often end up left behind with the rangers , which was fine as they gain excellent benefits from psychic support. Fortune is fairly obvous, 3+ re roll cover essentially means these excellent objective campers will have to be flushed out with fire and the sword, which should mean they have to get through your army. You have to admit that there is value in a unit you use specifically for holding objectives being nigh impossible to shoot off said objectives. If your opponent really goes for it and foolishly tries to torrent them out GTG for a 2+ re roll save, its belly laugh time.

One Spaze Elf, one rifle. one...... Is that a Hellhound !?

The biggie is doom, "why ?" you ask, well doom does not just let you re roll failed to wound rolls, oh no no no, its much better than that, It allows you to re roll to wound, essentially this means, if you want, you can pick up and re-roll even successful rolls to wound, "but why ?" you ask. The reason you would do this is to effectively almost double your chances to get rends, nice huh ?  this works on other stuff in an army that would contain Rangers/rending too.

 I will talk about that in a couple of articles time. Something that frustrates with the rule that gives you AP1 on 5's to hit is that you need a 4+ after that to get the benefit and often 'loose' any ap1 hits you managed to get, doom helps with that, doom makes them much killier their range allows them to engage enemy units you have doomed for other reasons and put some gimp on them, you my even get lucky with the pinning which helps if you are short on an assault once every 100000 games or so, lol

In the same breath they benefit from guide also as the re rolls to hit will not only give more hits overall and more 5+ ap1 bonuses but more hits = more chance at rending , it kinda snowballs , so if you are feeling extravagant, pop two units 6" apart with Eldrad in one unit on the wing nearest the other , cast guide on both units and doom on a target and away you go , that can put alot of ap 1-2 down the pipe ,  MC's and Meq out of cover do not enjoy that experience, even in cover they may be forced to opt to GTG.

The final option available to them is to upgrade to Pathfinders for 5 pts which upgrades them to ignore cover for movement (not really interested tbh) and increases their stealth by a point so that they have a 2+  save stood up in cover, its fairly nice to get a 2+ cover save, but normal rangers can do that with GTG, pathfinders have no extra dakka, so to be honest I have never seen a reason to take them, especially as in practice there is no real difference. They are really expensive @ 24 points for what is just an objective camper troop with weak killing power, its just not points wisely spent, as you only need smallish squads to hold objectives and as that is all they are there for, just keep them cheap so you have more points to flesh out the real work horses in your list.

Just for general information, running two units of six seems just right in my harlequin list, its enough shots to do something, whilst not having too few bodies as  long as you are happy to GTG, they have a nice small footprint and most importantly not too expensive.

So... a unit thats not optimal in a mech build, thats a bit overpriced with limited killing power took a further hit with 5th cover, but on the plus, they make excellent objective campers that can be like roaches to get rid of. They have some great synergy with hybrid and foot lists, especially Harlequin builds. They can be very irritating for some opponents and its always fun when they shoot an MC off the table in one phase or pigs fly blow up a transport.

"Aww , he wont hurt ya, shoot those clowny looking Fethers instead,.... I Fething Hate clowns."

Dark Eldar Venom Conversion Winner BDub Speaks

Colour by MajesticChicken

Hey everyone this is a first for Rant. Im branching out into hobby interviews and Guest articles that I feel will be helpful/of interest to any DE and Eldar players out there.

I actually contacted BDub not long after he put his submission up on BoLS, I was so taken with it I signed up there and then to contacted the man himself in order to discuss the possibility of having him come over and have a talk about himself as a hobbyist and of course to spill the beans on that rather epic conversion.  

Im sure all of you, like myself are chomping at the bit to have some for your kabal.

Needless to say, some Emails flew back and forth we chatted online a bit, then BDub won the competition, the fruits of which you can now read about here

For ease of reading my questions start in a purple word, BDubs responses with red. 

Ok, So you go by the name BDub online, does that have any significance or is it just something you made up because all the names you wanted were used ?

BDub is short for B.W. my initials. It tends to be easy for people to remember and is usually available. Its basically a nickname based on my grandfathers name, which was T.W. (no one new what that stood for if anything, not even my grandmother). My grandmother always called him TDub for         short.

You are an artist by trade, does that cross over /help with your hobby, do they feed into each other in any way? 

To some degree, yes.  I do 3d character and texture map painting which has a lot of applicable theory when it comes to painting miniatures - Particularly when rendering specific materials and painting in lighting.  Ironically it has only recently dawned on me to apply what I do for a living to my hobby.  This is probably because I started the hobby when I was a teenager and only pursued it on and off - (mostly off) once I started my career. So when I started getting more active in my hobby a few years ago, it took the light a while to come on.  I am only scratching the surface on the synergies between the two, so far.

I suppose the most obvious question Is, how did you find your way into the hobby ?

When I was a teenager a friend of mine gave me some horribly abused D&D miniatures that came in a box - Grenadier Models I believe.  They had been roughly handled and a haphazard attempt had been made to paint them.  I striped them down and painted them with Testors enamels I had left from some model car project or other.  I did this a couple of times because they were almost as horrible looking as when I received them.  Eventually I gave up but not before I discovered a couple of Citadel blisters at a local book/game store.  I bought these and someone said they read somewhere I should be using acrylics as they were more manageable. I purchased some paint and a decent brush and took to it.  By the time I was in high school, two things happened, 1) Rogue Trader came out and I flipped!, and 2) I had gotten good enough at painting that I was asked by a group called Dabblers Inc. to paint models on commission that they could then sell at conventions.  Back then the standards for quality were much lower than now and I didn't make much money at all - the real reason I did it was that it allowed me to purchase my own models at their wholesale rate!

Are you more painter than gamer, game to paint /paint to game ? how long and what systems are you playing /working on ? favorite things, system.army.

Simply put, yes, I am more painter than gamer. I like to play, but am rarely prepared.  I tend to paint what grabs my fancy. The last time I played seriously was 3rd Ed. I had two armies - a Saim Hann Wild Riders army that used the Craftworld Codex and a Ravenwing army.  I guess I like mobility! I also liked the look of 48 jetbikes on the table at once!  I lived in San Fransisco at the time and when I moved back to Texas I sold the armies and all my scenery  rather than transport them.  These days I am interested in Orks (and trucks!) and I will likely take a stab at Grey Knights when they come out.  I am a huge fan of their fluff.

What inspires you, Music, Film, Art ? please elaborate a bit about yourself and how that ties into the hobby if it feeds into your social life at all.

As far as influences, I am an avid reader and music listener. I read sci-fi and listen to metal mostly.  I am also a big history buff, particularly ancient and medieval.  I think I got sucked into that as a child living in Malta - I was constantly surrounded by history there and I guess it seeped in.  I am also a huge fan or art, production art mostly, be it movies video games or whatever.  I like seeing other artist interpretations of things and how they solve visual problems both technically and aesthetically.

What do you listen to if anything when you work ?

Like I said before, mostly metal, but I am all over the place as the mood strikes.  I get on kicks where I will listen to nothing but one band after buying their entire catalog until I am either sick of them of have completely internalized their music.  Right now that band is High on Fire - I don't see myself getting sick of them....ever.

What are you running now and why ? care to share any plans ?

I'm dabbling in Orks but looking forwards to Grey Knights.  Someday I will rebuild my Wild Riders  if we ever see a new Eldar Codex. Seeing what they did for the DE Reavers made me excited to see Eldar Jetbikes back on the field.

As this is an Eldar blog your thoughts on how your hobby relates to Eldar and Dark Eldar if at all is obviously of interest.

I have always loved the Eldar aesthetic as well as the idea of a fast and deadly force. I am also a big fan of a strong theme in an army, which is why I loved the Craftworld Codex so much (and probably why I dislike the latest Chaos Marine Codex (too homogenized). Also being an artist I really am attracted to well designed and executed miniatures.  Which is the reason I never had a DE army.  I loved the fluff, but the miniatures offended my artistic sensibilities profoundly, so I never built an army of them.  Its all I can do to resist the impulse to build one now.  I suppose I am waiting for all of the bandwagoneers to abandon them so I can pick up some models cheap - perhaps next summer.

Im sure Everyone has lots of questions about your venom project: 

Firstly, It would be wonderful if you could give us an insight into how you built it, parts list, process, your thoughts, essentially a how-to guide, alot of people that follow this blog will be very grateful for that sort of feedback. 

Unfortunately there are no process pictures of this project.  It took so much trial and error that I wouldn't have known which ideas I would keep and which I would abandon.  I am entertaining the idea of making another one to document this procedure.  I think if I were to do another one, and having settled on a design, it would be much easier to do.

Basically I use a Raider kit, a Vyper kit, and two splinter rifle pods from the Reavers kit. I had purchased some Reavers on a lark, because I really love there design, and I had plenty of Vypers on hand from back in my Eldar days.  After looking over other peoples designs and reading the description of the Venom a couple of times, I decided I needed a Raider kit.  From the very start I had wanted my design to look at home sitting on the table next to a new Raider or Ravager. So even if I didn't end up using the Raider kit (not likely) It would be important to have one on hand to copy its lines and shapes.

I have been actively trying to push myself into participating in more contests, both to challenge myself, and to get me more involved in the community. This seemed like a great combination challenge - conversion and painting.  And while I feel like my painting is somewhat weak, I love a good kit bash and felt I would have a good chance to come out strong in this category.

Did you honestly just chop a raider in half ? would the other half be suitable for a second vyper ? was it expensive to make ? the underside in particular has me intrigued as the conversion is very seamless, would love to know how that was achieved.

Obviously the back is actually the front of a raider, where/how was that engine done ? I think its my fave part of the model, I actually thought it was just taken from an eldar falcon chassis, but on closer inspection its not, again I would love some detail on that.

Short answer...Yes.  And I was a nervous wreck when I did it.  I didn't relish the idea of messing up and having to shell out money for another kit, but I had come to the conclusion that the best bet for the design was to cannibalize the front of the Raider. I knew that most designs for the venom I had heard of people doing fell into one of two categories, a) they just glued Raider or Reaver bits to a Vyper, or b) they used the obvious portion of the Raider, the back, to make Venom's passenger section.  I wanted to avoid this for a few reasons. With the first I felt it was two easy and very hard to disguise the Vypers lines or make them match that of the Dark Eldar. With the second, after having a Raider kit on hand to dry fit ideas I quickly realized that using the back end would make the Venom overly wide bottomed in appearance.  I wanted mine to match the Raider but not to compete with its dimensions and silhouette.  Also, The Raider's engine arrangement is too complicated and overpowering for a smaller craft like the Venom, so I would be wanting to scale that down, perhaps even scratch building a new engine - Luckily I found a solution for all of that.  I used the front of the Raider spun round.

First, I took a guess  as to were I would need to cut the Raider.  It would be important to make the Venom shorter than the Raider since it would be narrower as well. After I had the front half cut loos and the top glued to the bottom I began looking at options for the engine.  I settled on cutting the intake and engine nozzle loose form the bottom back half of the Raider.  I cleaned this up and glued the other half of the nozzle to the loose engine and began dry-fitting this to the front bottom half of the Raider.  I found that the engine nozzle lined up beautifully with the cut-out for the shock prow.  All that needed to be done was to cut down into the bottom of the Raider a place to seat the engine.  This took some work and I was least happy with this part of the project as it is somewhat crude and not particularly clean because of the difficulty in cutting a smooth line through the ribbing on the underside of the ship. Once done I test fitted this with the Vyper font to get a sense for the lines I was getting and was very pleased with the silhouette that I had, in particular the sloping lines from the handrails angled down nicely giving a very exotic and fast looking appearance.

While fitting the Vyper pilot seat into the Raider portion I noticed that the Bottom of the Vyper had the same ribbing that all the Eldar and Dark Eldar vehicle have and this was an opportunity to use that to tie the two together almost seamlessly.I cut and squared the bottom f the Vyper to sit flush with the ribbing on the Raider half.  This necessitated carving a recessed semi circle out of the decorative floor of the raider and filing down the Vyper around the pilot seat to match that shape.  Had I started with a Vyper that wasn't glued together in this area I would have left/cut off those portions and slotted the seat directly into the Raider floor for a cleaner fit. The other issue to resolve was the weapon locations.  I used the shuriken catapult bit of the Vyper as the base since it already fit there.  Using the blast shield from the Raider's dark lance I fashioned a skid plate that echoed the shape of the nose-cowel of the Venom and used this to integrate the main weapon (splinter cannon) into the center of the nose.  I cut down the shuriken catapults til they were just little ammo bins fitted next to the new skid-plate. Since I didn't have a shuriken cannon, I had to reshape the end of the dark lance from the Raider kit. The Splinter Rifles are from the Reavers and are filled and shaped to fit on the bottom front of the Raider portion. 

The canopy is almost unrecognizable as a vyper cowling , was it hard to do ? you have given me many ideas for my own hatchet venom with this, obviously mine will deviate from this somewhat as I have my own ideas, but I would like to understand how this was achieved before I consider messing with it ;o)

This was perhaps the easiest part of the conversion.  I simply took cues from the Reaver Jetbike cowls, noting hoe they had a squared-off spine running down the top center, and ovoid cutouts with an almost blade like appearance.  To do this with the Vyper canopy the first thing that had to go was the roll bar portion that seated to the back half of the canopy glass over the drivers head.  I cut it loose following the natural curve where the roll bar intersects the rest of the cowling - this gives a sort of bat-wing edge to the cowl almost immediately and streamlines the whole look. From here I cut two ovoid shapes in the location of the small vent like structure at the bottom center edge of the Vyper cowl.  This let me get rid of that obviously Eldar feature and made the cutting easier to do.  Next I glued a strip of square styrene rod down the center of the cowl leaving a portion extended past the front lip of the cowl. Later I would shape this with a file to taper it a pit. Next I used green stuff to fill in and level out the depressions in the cowl caused by the double-bubble design of the Vyper cowl.  This I feel is absolutely necessary to kill the distinctly Eldar look of the canopy.  After letting the green stuff set up over night I filed this smooth with emory sticks flush with the edge of the styrene rod.  The result is a smooth, aggressive shape that looks faster and deadlier than the Vyper's and echoing the Reaver's own lines.

I Love the gritty paint scheme you have achieved, would you mind breaking down the process for that for us ? At a guess I would say its built up from a spray undercoat of some sort of red (mechrite) , then stippled upto blood red ?  then a careful drybrush of the metal to give the worn look with hand highlights on the sharper edges ?

This was a straight forward technique I developed when doing Ork Def Koptas and Truks. The conversion took so long that I was only going to have 2 days to paint this up, so i settled on something I knew I could do in time and it also fell in line nicely with the fluff I had in mind for the hypothetical army this Venom belonged to.  Here is the fluff I sent in with my submission.

Jagged - The 3rd Venom of 10 in the pirate fleet of Duke Sepsis.  Know for hiding in asteroid fields and spacehulk debris for unwary passers by, or raiding the bowels of Hive Cities, all ships in Sepsis' fleet are devoid of decorative paint and other cosmetic affectations.  The ships are simply allowed to rust and patina - the better to blend into their usual hunting grounds.  However, the pride of many of the crews gets the better of them, so a certain amount of tribal and squadron identification is permitted, if only to pacify the more treacherous members of the war-band.

I knew from past experience that most peoples army schemes tended to fall in line with those in the codexes.  I wanted to avoid this, save time and have a distinct appearance. I had joked with my friend that I wanted this ship and the army in general to look like it would give you tetanus just looking at it.  I think there is much more horror in a rusty knife than a clean one so in my mind this paint scheme was very Dark Eldar. 

The technique amounts to starting with Krylon Ruddy Brown Primer as my base. This is a great color to start this kind of scheme with.  Over this is a thin was black or dark brown paint to make the lines and detail pop.  I find this helps me perceive the shaped better as I'm working. After this is dry a begin to stipple and mop the model in a patchy haphazard way to break up the evenness of the primer coat and create patches of differing value to paint over.  Its much harder to get the rest of the paint job away from the smooth appearance if you skip this step.  After this I begin lightly stippling with a well used brush the following Vallejo Model colors; Cavalry Brown, Flat Red, and a touch of Light Orange and/or Scarlet.  I used these straight and unmixed and any areas that I think have gotten out of hand I tone down with Flat Brown.  I alternate this as needed all over the model until I am satisfied with the look. After this come a lot of slow and steady build up with a dry-brushed Black. The idea with the black is to give the appearance of the rusty either being worn off or not allowed to happened due to wear and tear and handling of the vehicle.  It also mutes the saturation of the rust color as it approaches the models edges.  After this is a careful and subtle dry-brush of Oily Steel and then edging this in silver in the most worn or sharpest areas. Note that on broad surfaces with shallow edge angels I will sometimes us Gunmetal Grey and edge in Oily steel - this is a subtler approach and looks lest sharpened.

How long did the project take , and how do you feel about it now that you have had it to look at for a bit, I often find I do not like my work at first (if at all) and often find a cooldown period allows me to look at it more objectively and form a more balanced opinion.

The project took a week. I had some time off just before a holiday that ended right before the contest deadline so I thought that would be the perfect time to work on it.  I spent most of my time designing and constructing the Venom and had 2 days to get it painted and based.  I was still painting at 11pm Sunday evening after having spent the better part of an hour sketching Dark Eldar runes before putting my nice rust-job at risk.   The runes were painted with in a thinned down Medium Sea Grey by Vallejo Model Color and then I used stipples of Flat Brown and Cavalry Brown to weather and blend in the runes.  While waiting fro things to dry I was constructing and painting the base which is composed of a few left over GW scenery bits, cork tile and ballast.

I tend to really like the work I do when I finish it, and then slowly start to not like it as I have time to reconsider my decisions.  Also as time goes by I get better at executing various techniques which make older projects less appealing to me over time.

Obviously this has got you some attention ,especially over on the BoLS competition vote, are you comfortable with it ? Bols is fairly big, wer'e talking hundreds of votes here, have you experienced this kind of reaction to a piece before ? 

The attention is no problem. I got much more attention that this when my portfolio was leaked on a fairly high profile Game News site a year ago, which resulted in me getting fired from my job.  This kind of attention is a nice change. Though I will say that there has been a lot more attention paid to this challenge than there was to the Warbeast/Warjack Challenge that I won earlier this year.  I guess there is just more interest in 40K.

Do you have a single piece of work you are most proud of would you like to tell us a bit about it.

Well the Venom is obviously fresh enough to rate highly with me, especially since it was a kit bash .  The next things that I am most proud of would be the Warjack I won the Warjack/Warbeast Challenge with and the there is this WFB Ogre that i completed while taking a master class workshop by Mathieu Fontaine.  Sadly there are no photos of the Ogre, unfortunately.  I can try and get one if you'd like.  I have been meaning to photograph him.  Hes nothing special but I had so much fun doing him and taking the class that I rate him as one of my favorites.

Weathering Ftw

If you make another venom, whats the chances of a pictorial tutorial ? (shotgun !) 

If I make another Venom I will most certainly document the process. I have already been contacted by BoLS to to a showcase and or tutorial on the piece, so I am likely to get around to it at some point.

Thanks for trawling through all that for us BDub, Again I would like to congratulate you on the well deserved win. and I'm sure will see some more conversions inspired by your design and words popping up in the near future ;o)

Its been a pleasure talking to you and I for one am looking forward to any of your forthcoming Dark Eldar projects as you have kindly agreed to contribute them to the content here as a guest, will be glad to have you back.

Note: Anyone wondering what to do with he other half of the Raider could get some ideas looking here... ;o)

In other news, we have Eldar retro review at some point this week and Im just about to send photo's of my old showcase army to El D...

Edit - Found this great little tutorial By Dave taylor today , thought it might help some folks out with their army painting 

Back soon with MoAr Space elf goodness *click* 

Rave Review: Grotesques

You would be angry too.
 If someone replaced your pee pee with a steriod injector for lulz
Colour By Majestic Chicken

Hmm Grotesques , I can't really put my finger on it , but I love the 'feel' of this unit , they are essentially ogryns only...not. I feel they have their roots in polp culture characters like Pyramid head and the Abomination or the berserkers from Requiem.

Dunno if these steroid guzzling flesh juggernauts are some kinda DE sick parody of spess marheens or what, but they both delight and amuse me.

This unit is essentially a living battering ram and a wonderful if not totally unsubtle blunt instrument.

lets have a poke around ....

Stats: The stats are pretty nice, more or less direct comparable to ogryns with the main differences being higher I but lower LD and save, no one cares about the save as they come with a free pain point to start with and therefore feel no pain which due to their high tougness will save them from quite alot of stuff, including missile launchers.

They are also a short trip from FC which will bump the 'vanilla' Grots to str 6 and I 5 on the charge  ..... Its fairly easy to start them off with this as due to their pitifully awful LD you are likely going to want a Haemo to lead the unit. Hell bring them up to a decent Ld give them furious charge from the get -go  and bring another liquefier to the party, whats not to like? he'll even benefit from majority toughness 5.

Another rule they come with as standard is Berserk Rampage, essentially , If they are not lead by a character of some description you if you fail a test at the start of the turn another good reason to consider a haemo 'babysitter', the grots go PMT and smash everything within 2d6 for 2d6 str 5 hits... even allies, before essentially dying and they'll hit vehicles on the side facing. I really want to to get a unit to 'go off' in a parking lot ...The only other rule they have understandably makes them count as 2 models for transportation.

Abberation Conversion ?

At 35 points a pop, jury is out wether they are a reasonable price or not , yes its three T5 wounds, but they can still be ID'd with str 10 or ID weps, ten will cost you over 300 points with no toys.

Options-

Liquefier - We like these, may as well get one as small ish units of grots will struggle to kill meq through their saves not to mention the possibility of FnP marines .....

Abberation - 10 points gets you an extra attack and a rather pointless additional point of LD, not fabulous in and of itself but he now gets access to some toys. Its worth mentioning that in larger foot squads you may be better off simply buying an extra Grotesque, he becomes more useful in smaller squads in transports.

Venom Blade - cheap and cheerful and as he has high str you will even get to re-roll those 1's

Mindphase gauntlet - pointless rubbish

Scissorhand - expensive but possibly worth it if you are going the Abberation route , with these on he will potentially get 7 attacks on the charge that wound everything on 3's and re-roll to wound anything T6 or less .....

Scissorhand, early prototype

Flesh glove- This could work , as he gets 6 attacks on the charge anyway that wound everything on 4's which gets the str based poison re rolls, I imagine he will be a fairly serious threat to any multi wound non eternal character /MC.

Its essentially a choice of improved infantry killing with the scissors or character/Mc splattering with the Gauntlet, I think overall the scissors are the better choice as they offer flexibility and are also slightly cheaper.


Transport - They can have a raider, worth thinking about, MoAr dark lances are always nice as is a potential 20 odd inch charge. I think Abberations may go well in transported squads.

There is one more upgrade to consider, In lists which contain Urien Rackarth, Grots can be upgraded to base str 6 at the princely sum of 5 pts per model, Dunno str 7 charges ? Its going to mangle anything thats not a landraider / Lith. I have a theory I would like to test which involves 1 or two large upgraded squads of grots belting out of portals and multi charging several vehicles , or maybe a couple of vehicles and an infantry unit in order to dodge return fire. I think they have the potential to smash parking lots and will playtest them asap, possibly tomorrow down ze club. Also if Urien is in the squad he can act as a sort of medipack for the unit by soaking a wound for them every turn, as he will get it back.

I think Grots will be great in Haemo/WWP focused lists, generally as it stands I can see them being overlooked in favour of other elite choices in most lists. I really like the sheer amount of str 6-7 these guys can pump out, a raider squad can assault out to 20-24 inches and dish out 19 str 6-7 attacks, if your target tank is in range and has not moved fast enough, it be dead.

Grot SMASH !! hur hur hur

There are a few set ups I would like to try with them the usual Haemo with liquifier ,v blade + 4 grots with liqui's plus an Aberration with scissors in a raider , I think these smaller squads may benefit from the Urien Str bonus more than larger squads as they dont have the volume of attacks, it will surely help them VS armour. The above squad with the Str upgrade is over 300 points ..... seems a bit much to me, I'll at least give it a run out once or twice.

The other setup is just a giant blob rushing out of a WWP, even if they dont make combat they are a threat that cannot be ignored , and to have any hope of reducing them sufficiently your opponent may end up using stuff he would rather shoot at your Raiders etc ....

As they are also missing grenades another thing to consider is an Archon with a phantasm launcher , he can also bring a bunch of power weapon attacks which Grots also lack , there is even space in the raider squad above for him, as there is a space for an extra single char, Im not sure vs most enemy objective campers that lack of grenades is a big deal, but its always going to be better to go first with that lovely I5 on the charge.

For me at least an interesting unit , I'm not sure how much they are going to be seen in competitive play I'll need to play them a bit to see how comfortable with them I will be outside of casual /pickup games at the club I think its going to be hard to justify their inclusion in a non haemo style list.

For me, potential massed str 7 hits on rear armour is just plain sexy.

Small update- The first part of my space wolf showcase will be on El D's blog at some point this week.

Next up for Eldar retro are the Rangers and Pathfinders and For DE Its Manderps.

see you soon

Dark Eldar Test Scheme 3 A winner !?

At Last !! "The Invidious Requiem" kabal is given birth !

Muh hahaha ha haaagh liive ! LIIIVE my pretties, release the flying monkeys, Hellions !!

I actually like this test scheme, I think I'm good to go.

This turned into a heck of alot of work, going to have to find a way to speed this up when I do the army. I really like how the basing turned out and will have mangled skeletons and jagged rocks all over the place , I'm kinda Impatient to see what the red uplight looks like on a raider .....And I'm really going to need a way to speed these up, Its a little less monochrome than I had originally planned but needed the extra colour to make it 'pop'

I even tried something new with the photography, better ? or stick to white ?

Steve, if you read this , drop me a line , I need to bounce some ideas off you for my Archon Conversion ;o)

Does this work as DE ? I think it does ?

lastly a small update, Next rave review is Grotesques, should go up over the course of the weekend, spacewolf showcase on El D's blog is also on the cards and fingers crossed , we have a cracking Interview lined up. As for painting Ima crack on with finishing the mechdar while I convert my Archon , he will be my reward for finishing all the tanks ....

Soon

Retro review: Eldar Guardians

Hiya, Eldar up this time , though Im admittedly having trouble as I'm all about DE at the moment, it seems like an age since I played with or thought about the poor old Craftworlders, does not help that I'm essentially writing about mostly poor units.

Most people agree they smoke the pain pipe, however I am one of the people that feels Storm guardians at least demand a second look.

As usual this is discussed from a mech perspective, I will not be touching on footdar here as It is bloody awful in 5th

Ill start by getting Defender guardians out of the way.

In terms of 40k the stats are indeed bad, however in context and in direct comparison to guard I cannot see any other way to represent Eldar citizen soldiers on the table top. people may moan about the stats but they are right on the money, they are just eldar civilians with some basic training or past experience given a gun and pressed into service, they are actually equal if not superior to a trained guardsman ? works for me .... they also have better leadership and fleet.

Problems start to creep in when we look at the gun and their cost/fragiltiy ratio. I feel GW made a fundamental screw up with the current rules for shuriken weapons, read the fluff , these guns are stupidly advanced, the eldar are a dying people they are not going to give essentially potters and painters an smg assault weapon that only works from 3ft away, major rules fail, its ok if you shoot first but you will mostly bounce from meq and then be torn apart in response , this kinda forces the guardians into backfield where the guardians can do nothing but camp an objective and send a single heavy weapon downfield each turn.

On a slightly more positive note, the heavy weapon platform is fairly cool, it essentially gets 2 guys which makes it a bit harder to get rid of and allows the unit to move and shoot as if its an assault weapon, gotta admit thats cool, how many other armies would kill for that ? ones with better/cheaper heavy weps thats who, would be better if we could get two ...

The price of the weapons are another stumbling block and an unfortunate problem with the book from day one, especially now 5th is in full swing, theres no way round it, will give a quick analysis of each.

Shuriken cannon- Cheap, really cheap, and 3 str 6 shots, its cost effective and adds to the anti infantry fire the squad can already generate, it increases their threat range somewhat and allows them to threaten light armour, just dont expect miracles.This is the best choice if you are going as cheap as possible but still want the unit to have the chance to do something other than squat an objective.

Scatter laser - top choice really, multiple shots to mitigate bs 3, strong enough to threaten most light armour and a healthy range so your campers can get involved. its not too expensive either, though I would expect a slight drop in future- best all rounder.

Missile launcher - again perhaps a little expensive given how prolific missile launchers are in 5th and generally with higher bs. Usual stuff on the krak missile, good threat to av 12 and under, increased range  allowing camoer units to engage a fairly significant part of the board from backfield, also its technically the best ML in the game as the plasma shot offers ap 4 and pinning, omnomnomTaunom, so offers good flexibility and range, its mainly the fact that its accuracy is questionable in either mode and its more expensive that the scatter laser wins out.

Starcannon - Im not a big fan of these, the range is good, otherwise its the worst plasma gun in the game , too expensive, not enough shots and does not have enough shots with the str 6 to threaten armour, say like the scatter laser, plus the current cover situation pushes even further into poor choice territory even just a shift to str 7 would do.

Bright Aids lance - anyone who has followed this blog for any length of time will be familiar with my feelings on these, I'll avoid another outright rant and just simply state that this is a very poor choice for guardians, and given what happened with the DE book, I don't expect any changes to be made profile wise, we might see a slight points drop, currently 30 points for what is essentially a bs 3 short ranged ML most of the time prohibits its use, yup imperial las tech>Eldar las tech *facepalm

Warlock- used to go in for the conceal, but its fifth, conceal is dead, long live cover. I would run them without a warlock to be honest as he adds significant expenze while not doing much for a campy unit, if you just cant help yourself go for embolden as this should protect from panic etc making them flee the objective, dashed inconvenience !

Transport - ok, Im a big proponent of meq, im just not sure why you would want to go anywhere as guardian defenders, maybe to claim an objective, except a small unit of DA is cheaper and better for this, that also applies for just spamming serpent hulls. only reason I can think of for getting defenders a transport is to run it as an empty gunship.....

Ok onto brighter and better things , sorta.....

When I first put the current mech list together I went for avengers, the avengers still perform a solid role in the army and as the gw stormies come in 8's (wtf ? no really, WTF ?) Ill be keeping them in, arguably though stormies are a better choice for all comers competitive gaming, its after some conversations with Kirby over at 3++ that I re-thought my attitude on stormies.

So what makes them good, well, they get pistols and swords, bear in mind they are never going to own marines in a straight up fight, but they do quite well on a pre softened, doomed target, doom is fairly essential to any cc shenanigans you are planning with these guys, though if guard plebs or firewarriors etc, you'll get away with it.

Main factors that work for them up front are the two special weapons they get, either 2 flamers or two meltas, or a mix of one of each ?

And a warlock gets gets some stuff that stacks with them, nice

Common builds include:

10 storms with 2 flamers and a warlock with destructor, coupled with doom these guys put the template beatdown on things, and can generate serious amounts of wounds, they need a serpent to deliver them, but it does mean you can use the mobility to set up maximum hits for your flamers. sometimes Ill flat out accross the board , and assuming the serpent does not get cracked , ill walk them out flame then assault the target, often due to your pitiful strength you can avoid retaliation fire in cc while you grind down the survivors of the flamestorm in cc. this is possibly the more popular build of the two here and is a direct replacement for storming Avengers.

10 storms with 2 meltas with destructorlock with spear, the budget version drops the destructor and sticks to pure tank hunting, kinda poor mans dragons ....

Application here is duality, destructor some pistols and 2 meltas still sucks to be shot with (doom) the shoot / assault tactic works here too, especially on tanks/walkers you have just shot and hopefully already crippled, the warlock should be fine to finish it off knocking on the back door at str 9 , mine have killed lots off stuff (lots of walkers, oddly)  and bs 3 really is not so bad, having three AT shots in one place kinda helps with the accuracy thang. Either fly up in you serpent hop out and fire, or the old flat out followed by getting out next turn shooting then assaulting is good too. I prefer this build as eldar struggle with AT at range so having another unit/s that is a reasonable threat to tanks but can also pass muster in an anti infantry role is ideal, supported and positioned well these guys have done really well for me, they always surprise with how effective they can be. Also being able to engage 5 targets with multiple melta in a turn is good stuff.

So in summary they are a bit of an odd one. Defenders for me are really bad but Stormies have served me too reliably for me to do anything but recommend you at least consider them, they are defo a unit that is better on the table than on paper. A true case of not necessarily 'what' you have but how you use it.

Coming up next: Completed test paint tomorrow, Grotesques Dark Eldar unit review with a new Colouration from Majesticchicken, and I have the first Hobby interview in the pipe too, watch this space.