StarDestroyer.Net BBS

Brother-Captain Gaius wrote:Ooo, old-style backpacks. That's hot.

I don't see any difference between those backpacks and the current ones. What's the deal?

The old Chaos backpacks though, they look different.

I recall there being a slightly different backpack design, mostly just having this layered panel look like the DOW Commander's pack. I have no idea how he can tell from the photo, though.

Typhonis 1 wrote:You forgot the new heavy weapons unit and the new rangers as well.

Those were revealed quite some time ago (Heavy Weapons have been on the GW preview page for weeks, months for the rangers). I assumed they were relatively common knowledge by now. I'm also quite certain all the upcoming Medusa V miniatures have been revealed for this season as well.

Ok, a few questions; I've been basically out of 40K for about 8 1/2 years now:

1. I have a WH40K rulebook, and codices for SMs, dark angels, blood angels, eldar, dark eldar, and chaos space marines, all copyrighted in the 1998-1999 timefram. Do I need to replace all these books?

2. I've got a small amount of dark eldar mostly painted, a regular eldar battle force (20 guardians, 3 jetbikes, vyper, falcon) which I've not put together, and 5 unassembled plastic tactical marines (1 with rocket launcher). I'm planning only playing primarily eldar, with small forces of dark eldar and dark angels for occasional use. Should I wait for new models to come out before buying more?

3. How's this army list for the dark Eldar I have painted? (1000 points)

HQ: Dracon w. splinter pistol, power weapon, shadow field (80)
Retinue of 5 incubi; 1 w. blaster, 2 warriors with splinter cannons (167)
Haemonculus w. destructor, scissorhand (45)

Elites:
4 wyches, 1 succubus. 1 has hydraknives, 1 shardnet+impaler, 1 razorsnare+falchion (58)

Troops: sqaud of 10 warriors, 2 with blasters, 2 with dark lances (112)
squad of 10 warriors, 2 with blasters, 2 with splinter cannons (102)
squad of 6 warriors in Raider, 1 w. splinter cannon, 1 w. blaster (110)

Fast Attack: 5 reaver jetbikes (150)

Heavy support: 5 scourges, 2 with dark lances, 2 with splinter cannons, 1 sybarite with splinter pistol and c.c.w. (176)

Bob the Gunslinger wrote:I don't see any difference between those backpacks and the current ones. What's the deal?

The old Chaos backpacks though, they look different.

The captain's pack in particular is smaller, thinner, and sits lower on his back.

SVPD wrote:1. I have a WH40K rulebook, and codices for SMs, dark angels, blood angels, eldar, dark eldar, and chaos space marines, all copyrighted in the 1998-1999 timefram. Do I need to replace all these books?

The Dark Eldar and Eldar codices are potentially still valid. Check the errata on GW's 40k site; if the errata makes sense, they work.

The other codices aren't good for much more than posterity, especially if they're early-3rd Edition (which it sounds like they are).

SVPD wrote: 1. I have a WH40K rulebook, and codices for SMs, dark angels, blood angels, eldar, dark eldar, and chaos space marines, all copyrighted in the 1998-1999 timefram. Do I need to replace all these books?

Everything except both Eldar, Dark Angels, and Blood Angels are obsolete; those four are merely awkwardly outdated. Although Eldar and Dark Angels will be getting new full Codexes within the year.

Dark Eldar won't be getting any updates within the year, but it's been suggested they'll recieve a major overhaul sometime beyond that timeframe. Eldar's common Troops and vehicles are about the same, with new walkers and Aspect Warrior minis for the end of the year. Dark Angels at most will get a Black Templars-style treatment: couple metal heroes and squads and a plastic sprue of accessories and flavored parts. What you've got right now should work out fine.

Can't comment on the army list. I have little interest in Eldar as a playable force and only started considering getitng a squad or two for small skirmishes when they displayed the new Dire Avengers plastics this week.

SVPD: You will need to buy a new codex for Dark Eldar, as they underwent a revamp in 2004. The new codex is the Dark Eldar V2 codex, luckily it looks damn near the same except with a V2 in the corner. All it really does is update wyches and add the wych cult list.

And here is a list I am considering building over the summer.

2000 Blood Angels

HQ
Reclusiarch w/Jump pack, Bolt Pistol, Frag Grenades 217
Epistolary Librarian w/Jump Pack, Bolt Pistol, Frag Grenades, Fear of the Darkness, Fury of the Ancients, Familiar 161

Troops
6x Tactical Squad 702
2 Marines w/Bolters
1 Marine w/Lascannon
1 Marine w/Plasma Gun
1 Veteran Sergeant w/Bolt Pistol, Close Combat Weapon, Auspex

Fast Attack
Landspeeder Squadron 160
2 Landspeeder Tornadoes w/Assault Cannon, Heavy Bolter
2x Assault Marines 318
3 Assault Marines w/Jump Packs, Bolt Pistols, Close Combat Weapons
2 Assault Marines w/Jump Packs, Flamers
1 Veteran Sergeant w/Jump Pack, Close Combat Weapon, Bolt Pistol

Heavy Support
2x Devastator Squad 304
1 Marine w/Bolter
3 Marines w/Missile Launchers
1 Veteran Sergeant w/Bolt Pistol, Close Combat Weapon, Auspex
Devastator Squad 137
1 Marine w/Bolter
3 Marines w/Heavy Bolters
1 Veteran Sergeant w/Bolt Pistol, Close Combat Weapon, Auspex

Total: 1999
HQ:18%
Troops:35%
Fast Attack:23%
Heavy Support: 22%
Equipment: 3%
2 HQ, 6 Troops, 3 Fast Attack, 3 Heavy Support
63 Marines + 2 AV 10 Vehicles
Average Death Company Generation: 11 Normal Death Company + 5 Veteran Sergeants w/Powerfists
Reasonable Maximum Death Company: 20 Normal Death Company + 11 Veteran Sergeants w/Powerfists

Weapon Summary
6 Lascannon
6 Plasma Guns
6 Missile Launchers
5 Heavy Bolters
4 Flamers
2 Assault Cannons
1 Fury of the Ancients
19 Bolt Pistols
15 Bolters

Tactical Overview:
The list plays very different than the average Blood Angels list, as it is more typical of the average shooting element/countercharge element Space Marine list. However, it utilizes the Death Company as a combination countercharge/assault unit. It attempts to put a large amount of pressure on the opponent utilizing the massive shooting (20+ Heavy/Special weapons) thus clearing assault lanes for the Assault Marines and Death Company. The relatively obscene close combat abilites of the Death Company can be utilized to rip up multiple squads at a time, and they have survivability that is similar to Terminators, and a large number of "hidden" powerfists, allowing them to wipe out multiple squads of all but the most hardy defenders in a single turn of close combat. This combines with the general hardiness of Marine shooting elements to attempt to quickly wipe out the opponent w/o risking large numbers of marines in the process. The librarian is a metagame choice, as the Psychic Hood allows for it to function very well against Siren Prince, as well as generally disrupting the opponent, while Fury of the Ancients is exceedingly good against horde armies and at harassing units, while Fear of the Darkness can at times run half of an opponents army off the board. The Chaplain is simply the standard Blood Angels Chaplain. Otherwise, the list is quite straight forward, and under usual scenarios is exceedingly deadly.

Dark Hellion wrote:SVPD: You will need to buy a new codex for Dark Eldar, as they underwent a revamp in 2004. The new codex is the Dark Eldar V2 codex, luckily it looks damn near the same except with a V2 in the corner. All it really does is update wyches and add the wych cult list.

And here is a list I am considering building over the summer.

2000 Blood Angels

<SNIPPAGE>

The relatively obscene close combat abilites of the Death Company can be utilized to rip up multiple squads at a time, and they have survivability that is similar to Terminators, and a large number of "hidden" powerfists, allowing them to wipe out multiple squads of all but the most hardy defenders in a single turn of close combat.

You hid those powerfists so well, I can't find them! Though I'm not familiar with how Death Company stuff is handled..

Personally, I'm working on some Iron Hands. Hope to have some updates soon.

Basically, if a squad with a Veteran Sergeant has a member join the Death Company, the Veteran Sergeant can also join, and he comes with a power weapon or power fist, free of charge.

Or, at least, that's how it worked in the Codex released in very early 3e. That may or may not still be valid.

Still works that way, which is why Blood Angels is currently one of the most powerful armies currently. It is one of the few loyalist marine armies that can get a really potent assault squad on par with that of other armies. Most Marine assault elements get completely chewed up when they run into real assault armies squads.

Well, Mr Muscle Oven Cleaner seems to be doing the trick for paint stripping...I'll post the results of some of my stripping soon.

If you are stripping metal, or you are willing to watch the plastics very carefully, Brake Fluid strips them extremely fast, and is very cheap.
I can't wait for Finals to be over, my work with the NBCE to be done so I can go start painting my fucking marines. Gah, summer come sooner!

Dark Hellion wrote:If you are stripping metal, or you are willing to watch the plastics very carefully, Brake Fluid strips them extremely fast, and is very cheap.
I can't wait for Finals to be over, my work with the NBCE to be done so I can go start painting my fucking marines. Gah, summer come sooner!

The oven cleaner is working quite nicely on the plastics, it doesnt seem to touch the undercoat sprays on stuff, but it's cutting through a couple of repaints worth of stuff, which will let me do the old models up quite nicely again. I'm pondering using turps on the metal models though, I really want to get them down completely to the bare metal.

One thing to remember is that most models can only be stripped a few times before they get so gunked up they start looking shitty. If you aren't trying to win any paint scores, you can get really cheap models like this, but at the same time, when you pick an overall paint scheme, you have to make sure it doesn't blow.

I'm pretty sure those backpacks on the models on the last page aren't old ones: the old ones have exterior pipes, and the bit directly behind the head is different.

That BA list looks pretty deadly to me, but I've only really ever played 1000 points, when games get above that they get too long, and first turn has too much sway on the outcome, so anything with that much power seems pretty obscene

I've always been skeptical of people going against the point of an army, like shooty focused orks, or assault focused Guard. If you can pull it off, fien, but the big worry for me with an army like that is the blood lust, where if you roll a one (?) the unit must move. That is a MAJOR weakness for dev squads etc, so be careful.

I know the Black Rage can hurt, but it only forces you to move forward D6" afterwords you have free reign on you movement, thus I generally use it as a method of moving from cover to cover, or I simply have my models move back to their position afterwords.
As for the idea of going against the grain of the army, I don't really like it either, but GWs poor balancing ability and lack of conception of how Americans play the game has made it completely impractical in the American metagame to play some of the armies completely to fluff and have them be of any real competitiveness in tournaments. All assault BA are a very one trick pony, and with the exception of the Death Company all their squads lose very badly against the majority of other, better assault armies. The Assault Cannons from Hell version of BA is very funny looking, and looks to be entertaining to play, but a lot of it is dependent on the undercostedness of the Baal Predator, and the Landspeeder Tornado.

Lazarus wrote:I've always been skeptical of people going against the point of an army, like shooty focused orks, or assault focused Guard.

Orks LIKE shooting and shooty things. The bigger and louder the better.
There just not very good at shooting. Hence a shooty Ork army is fine, just make sure you've got lots of them.

Yah, but Orks shouldn't win games. The army pretty much loses to anything with more than a single flame template, and every unit in the army can be chewed up by standard bolters. Feral Orks are much better, with their Madboyz and Squigoth, and they still lose against a single Hellhound, or anything fielding "real" units.
Orks are however, exceedingly good at punishing people for playing with units badly, as they eat up terminators, swamp over most heavily specialized squads, and generally just look like big green goofs.

Dark Hellion wrote:Yah, but Orks shouldn't win games. The army pretty much loses to anything with more than a single flame template, and every unit in the army can be chewed up by standard bolters. Feral Orks are much better, with their Madboyz and Squigoth, and they still lose against a single Hellhound, or anything fielding "real" units.
Orks are however, exceedingly good at punishing people for playing with units badly, as they eat up terminators, swamp over most heavily specialized squads, and generally just look like big green goofs.

Bollocks, I've won with Orks against Chaos, Tau and Imperium. If flame templates are a worry, then position yourself so they can't use them on the Orks. Admittedly, it was easier for me since I used Speed Freeks for almost every Ork game after Codex Armageddon was released.

Yah, but you're also from England. Games Workshop staff have admitted many times at Gamesdays and such that the American enviroment is far more competitive, and that they simply don't know how to balance armies for American players. Orks can win some RTs but when it gets to things like Gladiator Tournaments, and even American GTs Orks are a woefully underpowered army. Their complete lack of save, combined with weak vehicles, being forced to take a Warboss (who blows) and the lack of an effective lascannon equivilent seriously hurts them. The most successful ork lists attempt to maximze rokkits and P.Claw Nobz, and field absurd numbers to overcome these weaknesses, and they still are less than 30% against well build marines, and something like 10% against Necron Phalanx. They are out assaulted and outshot by nids, outnumbered and outshot by guard, outmaneuvered and picked apart by both Eldar varients, markedly inferior to their Feral cousins, and really the only armies they beat are badly built armies that would lose to any well built army.
And 4th ed killed Speed Freaks. The new entanglement rule means that you will lose every ork in a squad if the Trukk is destroyed, and given that the standard tactical marine squad can eat a Trukk a turn no problem, there is little you can do. Combined with the fact that the Battlewagon sucks, and only having one looted vehicle leaves you lacking any real guns, and even KoS isn't that viable anymore.
Again however, Orks are very good at punishing opponents who built poor armies, as they can generally manage massive victories in such situations, where more finesse driven armies are going to still suffer from attrition.

Lazarus wrote:I'm pretty sure those backpacks on the models on the last page aren't old ones: the old ones have exterior pipes, and the bit directly behind the head is different.

That BA list looks pretty deadly to me, but I've only really ever played 1000 points, when games get above that they get too long, and first turn has too much sway on the outcome, so anything with that much power seems pretty obscene

I've always been skeptical of people going against the point of an army, like shooty focused orks, or assault focused Guard. If you can pull it off, fien, but the big worry for me with an army like that is the blood lust, where if you roll a one (?) the unit must move. That is a MAJOR weakness for dev squads etc, so be careful.

The Captain with the storm bolter has an old style character backpack.

Here's a work in progress conversion of a conversion into a company champion.

The Emperor is pleased with your work.

Dark Hellion wrote:The Emperor is pleased with your work.

And since I finally found my bloody superglue again...

Nice. I am not a big fan of the robed marines, but you managed to make him not look like a drunk after a toga party.

Dark Hellion wrote:Nice. I am not a big fan of the robed marines, but you managed to make him not look like a drunk after a toga party.

I've got a mix of blood angel, dark angel and space wolf models in my collection along with standard marine models to make up my army. The toga look doesnt really work for the emperors finest.