Blood Angels BatRep

So time for something besides the painting competition I think. As fun as it is, that's not the only reason I love this hobby.

I went to my FLGS for league night to get a game in, and after playing my Tau the last few times, and getting hyped about my BA from being on Jawa's blog non-stop the past weeks, I felt it was time for a change.

I drew up a list that certainly isn't a "Best of" but it was one that I wanted to try, and has units in it that I really enjoy. So here is the list

Mephiston
Corbulo
Assault Terminators-3x LC, 2x TH/SS
Death Company x3 w/ rhino
2x Death Company Dread w/ heavy flamers
2x 5 man assault squads w/ Rhinos
2x Land Raider Crusaders
Dakka Predator (autocannon + heavy bolter sponsons)
Attack bike with multi-melta

It's a little over 1500 points

My Opponents list was:

2x Demon princes with lash
3x vindicators
4x rhinos with full 10 man squads inside of regular chaos marines

I got first turn, and the game was annihilation. I set up centrally with my assault element, and the rhinos, predator and attack bike to the left, but not all the way on the flank. The other guy set up his vindicators on my right flank and his rhinos centrally with the DP's in between them behind a building.

Turn 1
I rolled slightly to my right towards the vindis with my LRCs in the front with the Dread and DC rhino behind for cover. The LRCs popped smoke. The pred stayed put and the attack bike moved forward 24 up the side to get some flanking shots next turn. Shooting phase I did get a popped rhino with my predator and the explosion killed one of his marines inside, and they then passed the pinning test. Round over for me.
His turn he moved his marines out of the crater and towards some ruins for cover. His other rhinos angled towards my pred and attack bike. He left his DP's where they were because his lash was mostly worthless. His vindi's angled around to get shots on my LRCs. He popped smoke on the rhinos in the shooting phase and unloaded his vindis on me. Only one if the shots landed, and penned my LRC with the termies and Mephiston inside. I failed the cover save, but Corbulo negated that for me. The other shots scattered wildly off. End of turn 1

Turn 2
My turn I moved my LRC up 6 to get a multi-melta on his vindis. The DC rhino and dreads followed behind again. Predator moved forward 6 inches to fire, and the attack bike went 12 to get melta range on his rhinos. The assault squad rhinos held back with nothing better to do. Shooting phase was bad rolling for me. Attack bike popped the nearest rhino, pred killed one of the marines that fell out. The loaded LRC fired on the vindi's and did nothing, and the other LRC shot at the rhinos closing in and only stunned one of them, and nothing else was in range.
His turn, he ran his rhinos right at me for melta range on the LRC and dreads, which I had forgotten to pop smoke on. He moved 2 of the vindis for better angles. He fired and scattered off with all of his vindicators this turn, which was lucky for me. His rhinos managed to immobilize my empty LRC, and stun one of my dreads. He also managed to pop my DC rhino, spilling the DC and Corbulo. His marines that fell out of the popped rhino melta'd my attack bike. And his DP's were still hiding out back with nothing to do. End of turn 2.

Turn 3
This was the money turn here. I rolled my loaded death machine right into the faces of his vindis this round, and unloaded the termies and Mephiston. The dreads moved up to face the rhinos and occupants that were sure to be coming out. my assault rhinos ran away from the melta toting guys, just to be safe. In shooting, my loaded LRC destroyed one of his vindis. The other LRC Popped one of the rhinos, and one of the dreads popped the other rhino. The other dread was able to heavy flame and melta the closest marine squad and be ready to assault. He lost a few marines to my dakka pred on the left side as well. The assault phase finished him off mostly. Termies took the one vindi that had moved out in a great explosion, which killed one of my own termies. Mephiston destroyed the other one. Only one dread was able to assault, and he finished the remains of the marine squad with ease, while my DC assaulted the other squad that had been dumped form their rhino. They both slaughetred each other to a man. 3 DC vs 6 marines, good trade imo.
His turn he finally brought the DPs over to play with my termies. They both assaulted the termies, and only managed to put out 3 wounds. The SS guys both saved, and the other failed his save, which corbulo promptly ignored :) Their swings back managed to kill one of the princes. End of turn.

Turn 4
It was already over for all intents and purposes, but I still assaulted Mephiston into his other prince and killed him pretty easily, didn't even need the termies. At this point my opponent wisely called the game. He didn't have a chance at all with only 1 and a half squads of marines left.

It was a fun game for me. Granted, I think he played bad with his DP's. he should have come right at my LRs to blow them up, if not the Dreads. Also, mech armies defeat lash easy. He played defensively because his go-to tactics weren't available. Also the dice were against him and his vindi's. But I had a bad turn 2 of shooting also.

It was a really fun list to run. I'm sure there are lots of ways to make it better, but when you win easy with a list, you don't know what to change to make it better. All of the units performed just how I wanted them to. I'm not a list building genius by any stretch of the imagination, so I'll have to keep playing with this and see what I can do with it.

Suggestions and comments are more than welcome, I'd like to improve the list where I can of course!

Painting Competition, final post

FOURTH PLACE!!!

There it is. The suspense is ended.

All I can say is that was quite a ride. It was so much fun. The crunch of trying to finish the model in time while dealing with a brand new adopted baby, and two other kids, the new techniques I "learned" on the model, the waiting for the judging, it was all super cool.

Thanks Jawa for the great time. I can't wait for the next competition.

Competition Update

I made the top 4!

I am way excited. I really was just hoping for top 10, then I made that and felt like top 5 would just be icing on the cake.

So here it is, the final waiting bit. I'm dying of anticipation here. I am refreshing his blog every 30 minutes or so, knowing for a fact that the update of the next two finalists won't be until tomorrow. I just can't help myself.

Wish me luck. I just want top 2 now, but I am not counting on that. A box of terminators would go a long way in my house right now.

Just sayin' Jawa ;)

Painting Competition Update

Well well well . . . Jawa has posted concerning the painting competition. He put up the models that did not place, and some of them were pretty good. I kept expecting to find my measely terminator in the line-up as I scrolled down.

But good news, I cracked the top ten! Or due to Jawa's counting error, the top eleven. That is great news to me. It is really validating to know that my painting isn't the total suck. I felt like I went out on a limb to put my painting skill, or lack thereof, out there for the whole 40K blogosphere. Granted I have this blog, but people have to find me here, and I get nowhere near the traffic that Jawa does. So thanks for the thumbs up Jawa, and let's see the rest of the winners!

I did get my attack bike done this last weekend. Painted more table-top quality than any kind of show piece. I like how it turned out though, and it makes me want to get some more bikers into my army. I did magnetize the sidecar so I can pull it off easily in case I ever want to do normal bikers. And it makes transport easier.

I also started working more on my rhinos, trying to get them painted up. Painting tanks is just a whole other can of worms for me. It takes my painting errors and magnifies them by about 5 times it seems. The little things I don't like seem to stand out when on such a big model. But on a better note, I did start some of the freehand work on my Death Company rhino. And it is hard, much harder than I thought it would be. I got some rough outlines and some details in, but the real small details are going to be hard to put in there. I can shade scuplted things, but forcing the lighting perspective on flat tank panels will be difficult.

Anyways, just a little update, and I will get some pictures of the models to show. Since I'm pretty sure that is the only draw to this blog, besides my witty commentary of course ;) And I also have a batrep I need to write up, maybe I'll get that done this week, and maybe not with the impending move through 3 states, uggghhh.

Painting Competition Update and other thoughts

Let the judging begin!

So the entries are in and the judging has started according to Jawa

I'm all kinds of nervous for the results, although the first model he put up as a "taste of things to come" has me feeling a bit deflated about my own painting skill. Oh well, I did the best I could I think, so its all up to Jawa at this point.

On a side note, reading his latest post about his Blood Angels army got me all excited about my own BA's. The furioso dreads, Baal pred's, they all are so fun, and unique. They were my first 40k army, and I love the uniqueness about them, while still being marines. Contrary to how most people think, I enjoy the marines. I have always tended to gravitate towards the "good" armies, WoW, LotR ttg, and others.

I was into my Tau most recently, modeling and painting them up, but now I want to get back into the men in red. I have some tanks to do, LR, Baal pred, rhinos, and some free hand work that Jawa inspired me to do on my DC rhino.

I'll never have an all painted army I think, between work, school, wife, kids, other armies, other hobbies, I just don't have the time. Call me ADD, but I can't seem to stay on just one hobby at a time, much to my wife's enjoyment ;)

That's all for now, stay tuned to see how I did with my model.

I'm excited

Painting Competition is done!

So I finished up my terminator.

Mixed feelings about it. I went futher as a painter than I ever have I think. I tried some new techniquest that went pretty well for the first time, and really tried to improve myself. But, the model did not turn out as I wanted it to. I had big hopes for this model, a big vision for where I wanted it to go. Suffice it to say, I dream better than I paint ;) I just couldn't pull of a few tricks I had up my sleeve, and that was discouraging. I also procrastinated a bit too much. I was up late last night finishing up some details and taking pics. Oh, well, such is married life with 3 wonderful kids and an even better wife (she actually encourages me to paint and be the best I can).

I don't think I will win, I hope that I can at least place top ten, but neither may happen. There are of course too many great painters out there. I am not at their level, but maybe someday I will be. Moral of the story should be that I learned something new, and grew as a painter. I should be content with that.

So thanks Jawaballs, for the fun competition. I really enjoyed it, and am looking forward to future competitions!

And here are the final images. Comments welcome as always.

Painting Competition, Update

I took some pictures last night of my terminator for the painting competition. He still needs some work of course, but he is coming along pretty well I think. I have been trying some new techniques on him, like wet blending, and it has turned out better than I had expected. So here he is.







My real concern here however is the hammer that I converted. It didn't quite work out like I wanted it to, but I still kinda like it. I really need some comments/criticism on how I could make it better, whether painting tips or molding/converting tips. I went with the purple because of Jawa's joke about using pinks or purples on the model in his original post, hopefully the humor won't be lost. Granted my green-stuff work is pretty poor, but please let me know what you all think.





I wanted to do another wash in purple, then some extreme white highlights. Then maybe some type of lighting effects on the BA insignia. Be harsh if you want to, I would really like to know what you think.

Thanks!