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Utsanomiko wrote:You've made some really interesting combinations of the BT and Bretonnian accessories, for sure. And man, I thought I had a lot of Guardsmen in mind for my planned army, but yours seems to be twice that in number.

Thanks, and you've got a pretty sweet building there.

As for the Guardsmen, I'm actually well short of goal. The full army (minus the LR Exterminator and the pile of unused models, lower-left corner) is two force charts and I'm woefully short on Troop choices. I can mix them around quite a bit and get 3-4 Troops per company, but that leaves the platoons at the minimum 2 squads and hurts some of my support units like Armored Fists. Guard is about lots of tanks and lots of infantry, and is very difficult to play unless you have plenty of both (short of using alternate lists like Armored Companies).

Oh great, so you heavy-handedly snap-judge in person, too. That's kinda tragic. Razz

Uts, you and me should play a game after we both get our armies done. You only live like 90 minutes away, and an SD.net Grudgematch would be pretty damn funny.

Right, a few photos... the completed figures first, then a series showing my steps of painting so y'all can critique my technique if necessary...

Chaos Terminator first-- most of the pics of this guy turned out kinda fuzzy, so there aren't that many. Also, he's my first figure-- the paintjob here is my second try. Be gentle....



(linked for size)
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v131/ ... 010189.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v131/ ... pleted.jpg

Then I equipped one guy with a heavy bolter...

(natural light, no flash)
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v131/ ... 020007.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v131/ ... 020006.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v131/ ... 020008.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v131/ ... 020002.jpg

Steps I painted in:

Prime-- Rustoleum auto primer, funnily enough, but it works nicely--
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v131/ ... primed.jpg

Metal trim--
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v131/ ... rimmed.jpg

Uniform colors--
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v131/ ... nished.jpg
As you can tell, that guy wasn't quite finished when I took the photo... he's my Aspiring Champion. Still not quite sure what to equip him with though-- tentatively I went with plasma pistol and power sword.

But anyway! Lineup of the different stages--
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v131/ ... ineup2.jpg

You might notice I'm painting the shoulder pads, weapons, and such separately before gluing up... admittedly, it makes everything take forever, but I think the better paint job is worth it. My brush ain't too good at reaching into the nooks and crannies, after all...

But anyway! I've got a question about equipping my squad--

Came with 4 chainswords, 4 boltpistols, six bolters, plasma pistol, plasma gun, heavy bolter, power sword, powerfist, eight grenades, and 4 knives.

What's the ideal loadout for my squad? I'm thinking powerfist or power sword and plasma pistol or boltpistol for the AC, one with the heavy bolter, and the rest with bolters; everybody has a frag grenade (or possibly krak, not sure which yet).

Advice would be appreciated...

Elheru, if you are building marine squads, you use either lascannon, lascannon&plasma gun, 2xplasma, 2xflamer, HB&flamer (loyalists only), or 2x melta. There might be one more useful combo, but almost all other combos of weapons blow.
And since you are playing Chaos, give everyone who can have it CCW&BP. The extra attacks do make a huge difference.

Dark Hellion wrote:Elheru, if you are building marine squads, you use either lascannon, lascannon&plasma gun, 2xplasma, 2xflamer, HB&flamer (loyalists only), or 2x melta. There might be one more useful combo, but almost all other combos of weapons blow.
And since you are playing Chaos, give everyone who can have it CCW&BP. The extra attacks do make a huge difference.

So go with the chainswords and boltpistol? That's four figures then...

Yah, bolters can put out OK fire, but most of the time, at 13-24 inches, the lascannon/plasma is good enough, and when you are going to get charged anyways, the ability to counter charge with the +2 attacks (2 weapons and charge bonus) can actually let you take down a weakened squad.
Of course, you are Chaos, so you can get Obliterators for shooting, Daemonettes, bloodletters and furies for assault, and other goodness, so the normal marine squad can be las/plas a lot more readily just letting them deal with armour and anti-marine duty.

Elheru Aran wrote:Hmm, regarding the paints, I'm guessing the official GW paints are some sort of oil-base due to needing some pretty strong cleaning fluid to strip 'em?

Also; will other paints work fine? I'm not real keen on shelling out $35 for the GW paint set when I could pick up two-three boxes of Testors from Walmart for the same price...

Hey, sorry for being so late to reply, was out on vacation. For paints, go to your local Michael’s Craft or even Wal-mart. The paint to look for is Delta-Ceramcoat. It's a water based acrylic paint, real easy to clean up. A bottle is roughly twice the content of a GW paint pot, for half the cost. A bottle will run for about 99 cents to $1.50, depending on the store and the paint, metallic usually run a bit more. When using, you need to thin them down a touch, they are too thick straight from the bottle. I usually go with a 2 parts paint to 1 part water for my general mixing - nice advantage over GW again, more paint, and needs to be thinned = more bang for the buck

For those that say the paint is crap, I can point to a few Golden Daemon winners that have used only Delta paints for the figs.


Another option if you want to pay about the same as GW paints, but for much higher quality, try Vallejo Great paints, very easy to work with. They also come thick in the bottle and need to be thinned for use. But again, you pay about the same as GW, but with thinning, you get 2 to 3 times the paint. Unfortunatly Vallejo is not in every store, for buying, I recommend The Warestore, great prices, shipping, customer service, etc. Never had a problem there.

Elheru Aran wrote:Right, a few photos... the completed figures first, then a series showing my steps of painting so y'all can critique my technique if necessary...

Looking good.

Couple of things to add in:

For your gold, try a thin coat of dark brown on the primer, then the gold. Gold, Bronze, and Copper tend to look a bit better with a brown under coat, it tends to lessen the harshness that straight gold can give. Once you're feeling stronger with you painting skills, try dry brushing the gold onto the brown, this will give the metal a more worn and 3D look. Something you can try now if you want is a thin wash of a rusty reddish brown (more brown then red though) on the gold, it will settle into the receaces and help give shadows and a sence of depth to the trim.

From the looks of it, looks like Word Bearers, correct? If so, for your red, I recommend a thin coat of a blood red, looks like some of the undercoat is still peeking through. After that, put on a thin wash of a purplish red, the GW equivelent to Megenta ink. Again this helps to define the shadows of the model.

Over all things are looking good. Keep up the good work, and when Bolter and Chainsword gets thier log-in/new registration probelms fixed, I'll PM you. If you plan on staying with marines loyal or chaos, I highly recommend joining. Lots of good advice from both the playing and painting sides there.

Anothyer site I recommend for more painting advice and tips - Work in Progress The people there will give you real feedback, not crap.

Say HI to Commissar Shepilov!






My LeMan Russ.

Shep playing the Imperial Guard, never saw that one coming

I did.

next he will destroy adaptus Titanicus, and every last Tau, Defiler, Sentinal, Warwalker, and Dreadnaught in the name of HAB.

So over on Bolter and Chainsword, they're setting up an online Space Hulk game, players need to paint and show their figures. I've had a command squad of termies on the back burner for some time now, but never had the push to get going on them, well the fire has been lit.


So my commander is Agamemnon, for the AOD he'll be a seargent - Storm Bolter and Power Sword.


For the rest of the squad, 3 power fists and a chain fist for up close, an assault cannon, heavy flamer and 2 storm bolters for ranged.

Now this load out is different from my 40K command squad, that has 2 assault cannons, a sergant with storm bolter and power sword and a trooper with storm bolter and chain fist. So what do I do?, why magents ahoy

So here we have the base 4 termies:


Each are set up with magnets in the shoulders


This will allow me to swap out weapons as needed. But I hear you already, what about the outer shoulder-pad?? Well fear not, for I have magnetized them as well.






So here we have my Sgt


But with a quick flip, we remove the shoulder pad


Or just replace the arm




So all four of the command squad can swap out their weapons as needed, looks like I might have to pick up a close assualt sprue in the future

Devious. I do love modular stuff, and I've been very careful with my Predator, both my Land Raiders, and my Dreadnought to make sure all their hatches/arms are fully modular, allowing me to use almost any weapon or vehicle upgrade configuration possible. But your magnet work is truly diabolical.

One of my mates is going to loan me an old digital camera of his which he never uses, so I should hopefully be able to post a few of my figures in the next few days.

Azazal wrote:

Elheru Aran wrote:Right, a few photos... the completed figures first, then a series showing my steps of painting so y'all can critique my technique if necessary...

<snippy helpfulness>

Not Word Bearers-- I suppose they do have that look though... I dunno, I just like the dark red/gold combo. But I'll definitely keep the brown-under-gold in mind. Also, I rather like the way the black shows through the red slightly,

Since I finished my last figure (guy with a bolter, no pic yet), I decided to take a more mass-production approach... line up the shoulder plates, above them the weapons, then pouches, then the main leg/body/head/backpack (all glued up and undercoated). Go through the lines one by one, doing each with a single color at the time. So far it's working-- I've gotten most of my shoulder plates finished in red and gold-- just need to add a little Boltgun Metal-- and added golden accents to all the weapons. Probably gonna fine-finish the red bits on the insigna'd shoulder plates and add Boltgun Metal to the weapons today. May go ahead and gold-trim the figs, depends on how late it gets

Lost Soul, are you totally in love with KoS, or would you consider playing a different variant of orks. I tried to put up a lot of lists, and none of em would be makable without costing tons of money, or just being generally shitty.

Elheru, do you have any army list you are considering, we could probably critique it for you.

Dark Hellion wrote:Lost Soul, are you totally in love with KoS,

Hmm, pretty much yes. I have the models to play a normal army if need be, or just as a change. Seriously though, do not waste your time trying to create an army list, the one I posted is just something that appeals to me and I'm quite capable of changing that into something a little more hard hitting.

Plus, as I said, I still need to buy the new rules to see how things have changed, and if elements of the rules have completely fucked up KoS armies, I may have to send pleading letters to GW to hurry up with releasing a new codex which counteracts these problems.

Entanglement for example, I would expect that Trukk Boyz will have rules which give them a chance to ignore this rule.

Brother Captain Gaius, if you're looking for some of your old archons pictures, I saved a few. I am planning to er... sincerely flatter you.... by ripping off your ideas.

Shep-- I love the guard army and especially Comissar Shepilov's two-fisted style of fury. Too cool. One thing though; you might want to try drybrussing some light khaki or "Bleached Bone" onto your army to add depth. Plus, it will make them look "experienced", i.e. dusty, and unify them on the battlefield.
Either that or use some colored inks to wash them. They're such nice figures they deserve more than just flat-color paining.
Now where is the artillery?


Hopefully, I'll be able to get a digital camera soon so I can take pics of my mostly-unpainted figures for everyone to see.

Azazal, you have to give some tutorials on how to do that kind of magnetic swapping!

Bob the Gunslinger wrote:Brother Captain Gaius, if you're looking for some of your old archons pictures, I saved a few. I am planning to er... sincerely flatter you.... by ripping off your ideas.

Fine with me. I doubt I'm the first person to think of "Space Marines in Shining Armor" (figuratively) anyways.

DPDarkPrimus wrote:Azazal, you have to give some tutorials on how to do that kind of magnetic swapping!

Actully it's pretty easy. I got my magnets from K&J Magnets

The shoulder magnets are 1/8 by 1/32 disc magnets, the shoulder pads are 1/16 by 1/32 Disc Magnets

I simply drilled some holes in the plastic, super glued in the magnets. I just finished setting up the heads with magnets as well. Much easier to paint that way, keep them off the model and work on all the details, then drop them into the cavity when done. Plus I can make it look like they are looking at different things during a game

So, I played a game tonight, it was rather fun.
Me: Blood Angels 1850 (well not quite, as explained later)
Same as my posted list, with 1 assault squad nixed.
Him: Death Guard 1850 (it should be mentioned that he is an expert with his death guard)
Greater daemon, Manreaper termi Lt., 2 fast attack rhino squads, 2 normal squads, 2 laspreds, 1 DCCW naught.

Deployment: Very standard, with both of us putting up a refused flank on opposite sides. However, I completely forget to deploy my landspeeders, combined with my DC rolls, I have only 2 real mobile elements in my army.

Turn 1: I go first and shoot the ever loving shit out of him. I drop about 400 points worth of tanks and troops. He moves forward, and takes a few pot shots that do very little damage.
Turn 2: My Death Company moves forward, but in unfortunately out of charge range of a Dreadnaught by about 1". 3 lascannon and 3 plasma gun shots later, the Dreadnaught is still fucking standing with one arm (not a problem, but pumping that much firepower in a cheapy naught and not killing it is annoying). I continue to shoot him up. Shitmonster comes in. He closes and shoots and assaults my DC, killing 5 but losing his Dread in the process. I proceed to roll a 3 for my consolidate, leaving me standing around like a dumbass, whereas a 4 would have started me sweeping into his army.
Turn 3: Here, I make 3 mistakes that would cost me the game. Mistake 1, I charge my Librarian and assault marines into a squad with a fist (my librarian could have kept furying forever with no chance of being killed, dumb me), I charge his big shitmonster with my DC (mistake, I could have repositioned, and then gotten a massive combined charge instead of attacking a single slowass model). I kill it handily. I forget to shoot his 2nd rhino, instead pumping fire into Nurglings. I have at this point still destroyed over half his army, and may have been able to pull off a win, but I proceed to roll a 2 for my sweeping assault move with DC, and am again stuck out like a loser. My weakened DC proceed to have half his army rapidfire at them, and then get charged by the LT and Nurglings. While it would take him 3 turns to finish them off, his lord would manage to sweep his killzone, and effectively prevent my DC from putting up a real fight.
Turn 4-6: I still pick off units, he only has 2 scoring units at this point, but I do not have enough firepower left anymore, combined with bad rolling, and inopportune blood rage rolls, I cannot keep any scoring units alive. He wins 2 scoring units to none.
End game analysis. I fucked up bad turn 2-3, and basically threw away my DC to kill his Dreadnaught, Greater Daemon and Nurglings, none of which threated my army, and allowed his real threats to sweep my backfield. My godawful 2nd half shooting (60% wounding with lascannons for example) greatly diluted any possibility of me weakening him too much. Had I had my Landspeeders, I would have had another mobile threat that would have forced him to be unable to concentrate his forces as heavily, without fear of unassaultable Asscannons shooting his units up.

Moral: Don't send a unit that can kill half his army on a single combined charged to be slaughtered. Save my DC for counter assault, its not like could outshoot me.

Dark Hellion wrote: Elheru, do you have any army list you are considering, we could probably critique it for you.

Fraid not. I totaled up my armament for the squad and it came up to something ridiculous like 130 points...

At this point I'm just getting different units and trying to get the hang of painting. I'm thinking a squad of Fire Warriors next... or maybe Eldar Guardians... depends on which one's cheaper