Battle Report: The Disciples of Entropy vs Tyranids

Bonus post! I got to play a couple games recently with the radiation army that I am building. I have taken to calling my army the "Disciples of Entropy" as an analog to the "Children of Atom" from the Fallout series of video games, which is also the inspiration for my army's backstory. I am a little fuzzy on the details of the battles since I did not take good notes, but the overall story is essentially there.

The Armies:

The first battle was against Tyranids and Genestealer Cult allies. The Genestealer Cult allies consisted of two of the "The First Curse" formations, so lots of Genestealers and two Partiarchs. The main Tyranid detachment featured some Zoanthropes, two minimal squads of Genestealers, a Mawloc, a Trygon, an Exocrine, a Tyrannofex, a Lictor, and a Hive Crone. The Warlord was the Death Leaper.

The Disciples of Entropy main detachment is a Skitarii Maniple containing two squads of Vanguard, one with three plasma calivers, one with three arc rifles, one squad of Rangers with three transuranic arquebuses, two Onager Dunecrawlers both with neutron lasers, and one squad of Infiltraitors with the Pater Radium relic. I also took an allied Cult Mechanicus formation: the Cohort Cybernetica, which consists of two units of Kastelan Robots and one Tech-Priest Dominus. I also included an allied formation of Deathwatch: a Dominatus Kill-Team, with Corvus Blackstar dedicated transport. Finally, I took an allied Inquisitorial detachment of just one Ordo Xenos Inquisitor to ride with the Deathwatch in their transport. My warlord for this game was the Tech-Priest Dominus, who rolled the objective-identification trait from the Cult Mechanicus list. I had to substitute my Anvil Industries models that I use as Militarum Tempestus for the Vanguard.

Deployment:

Tyranids set up and went first, with both of our battle lines fairly spread out. The cult ambush deployment didn't result in any first-turn charge potential (thankfully for me), but did allow the 'Stealers to get very close. The mission was The Scouring: six objectives with random VP values.

    

Initial setup before Cult Ambush deployment, then two after Cult Ambush deployment.

The Battle:

Turn one, the Tyranids moved in. doing little shooting and thus little damage to my lines. On my turn, my Skitarii and Kastelan group moved up and laid waste to the center mass of Genestealers. After realizing that the Patriarch has no invulnerable save, it was taken out, too. The Vanguard to my battlefield right took shots at the Tyrannofex, but did little, and the Onager Dunecrawlers did a wound to the Exocrine.

  

The center Genestealers (and upon later realizing it had no invulnerable save, the Patriach) get wiped.

Unfortunately for me, it was at this point that the Tyranids started to lock in a lead. The Death Leaper showed up right behind the Vanguard and Rangers in one of the buildings on my side and managed to kill the Vanguard Alpha with its flesh hooks. The Trygon also arrived on the right flank near my Infiltrators, and a Lictor popped up near the center of the board as well. The First Curse formation on my left flank made a disordered charge on my two Dunecrawlers. One of them did explode and take a bunch of 'Stealers with it, though.

  

The Death Leaper arrives, killing the Vanguard Alpha with its flesh hooks.

The Genestealers and Patriarch assault the Dunecrawlers. One of them explodes, killing a fair number of the buggers.

On my turn, my robots moved up to deal with the Endocrine (which failed a charge the previous turn), Lictor, and the Zoanthropes. My Vanguard tried shooting at the Death Leaper to no avail since they were only allowed snap shots. They then tried charging, which was a complete disaster. The Rangers and other unit of Vanguard ended up taking down the Tyrannofex and the Robots dealt with the Exocrine and Lictor, while the second Dunecrawler succumbed to the Genestealers.

The Death Leaper disaster.

This is where both my documentation and recollection of events becomes a bit hazy, but somewhere in the course of the battle, there was a disastrous charge by the Infiltrators to the Trygon, and the Rangers were taken down by the Death Leaper. My Deathwatch reserves did eventually arrive, intending to deal with the Death Leaper or the Zoanthropes. The Mawloc, however, took care of them instead. The Kastelans killed the Mawloc, but by that point they were all I had left, so I ceded victory.

The Deathwatch arrive, and just as swiftly depart thanks to the Mawloc and Death Leaper.

Conclusions: 

• I should have known better than to spread out so much, especially against the Genestealer Cult and their Cult Ambush deployment. I probably should have placed the Dunecrawlers in the center with the Kastelan Robots. 
• The Kastelan Robots are a far tougher model than I am used to, and they were absolute tanks. The only trouble is that they still only move 6", so to avoid having them just wander around the board the whole game, they need to be in the center as well, especially with so many reserves coming in from my opponent. I would like to use them as a flank guard, but at 515 points for the unit, that would mean a large part of my army could be avoided. I think they will simply need to be moved up straight into enemy lines to provide an irresistible and frightening primary target while the rest of the army moves around them. 
• I think I misused my Deathwatch here, and they should have stayed inside their transport to get a more optimal charge. They came in a little late to make much difference, but still.
• Not exactly sure how to deal with units like the Death Leaper that can arrive in the midst of my battle lines and almost necessitate close combat to deal with since getting shooting hits on them is very difficult. We did a final fight between it and the Kastelan unit, and the robots were able to take care of  the super-lictor just fine. However, I can't keep the Kastelans in my back lines to guard against such things since they don't have great shooting and I would thus not be using a quarter of my army's points very effectively.

I played another game that same day, and that will go up as another battle report very soon!

What is the best way to deal with infiltrating/deep-striking/pop-up backline units? What do you think I could have done differently? Leave a comment!

EDIT: I have since come to realize that due to me thinking the Kastelan Robot maniples were 190 points each, when in reality they are 290 points each, my army was overpowered for this game! Sorry Tyranids!

Heldrakes and Dunecrawlers

This past month, I managed to paint up a couple more Kastelan robots. However, since I've already shown photos of the first two and the new ones are essentially the same, I won't post pictures of them. Aside from that, I finally finished up the Heldrake painted as a gift. Since I need to transport it across the country and since it has many fragile pieces and not a lot of attachment points, I have not assembled it yet. But I took a couple photos of a couple interesting pieces. Highlighting the patterns on the body and wings was a long process, but I think the final product looks good!

Heldrake head... might look good on a Chapter Master's wall, too.

Heldrake body, highlights and all.

Another point of progress has been assembly. I have begun assembling the Skitarii Vanguard, and finished the assembly of two Onager Dunecrawlers. They are both outfitted with Neutron Lasers, both because a S10, AP1 blast sounds pretty good, and because it's a radiation-based weapon! 

One unpainted Onager Dunecrawler.

Closeup of the neutron laser.

Closeup of the cool triple-lens thing.

Finally, I have enabled comments on this blog! I welcome all discussions about painting, army lists, and the 40k universe, as well as questions for me. I also know that the internet can be a horrible place. I have seen comment section arguments on YouTube, Facebook, etc. Don't make me regret it.

A bigger, better lightbox

Another busy month, so unfortunately there has been nothing new in terms of painting. However, I have some new photos of things already painted that I have not shown so far. With how behind I am with the pace I set for myself, my goal is now to get the entire army at least to the wash stage before OFCC in July. I will also need to come up with a new display stand for them and get some custom decals made. Stay tuned!

First are the two Deathwatch Vanguard Veterans. These are the Antor Delassio and Edyric Setorax models from the Cassius Kill-Team box. They will be used as Vanguard Veterans instead of their named versions and made into a Dominatus Kill-Team with the Veterans shown earlier. Along with a Corvus Blackstar that will be part of the army, this kill-team along with the inquisitor are meant to be a hard-hitting counter-assault unit. The inquisitor will bring along rad grenades, which suits both the army theme and makes the Deathwatch hit that much harder. With the Assault Vehicle special rule on the Blackstar and the Vanguard Veterans letting the unit re-roll change distances, I expect them to hit pretty hard. The models themselves aren't completed yet, and don't even have their wash on yet.

Antor Delassio, Vanguard Veteran

Antor Delassio, Vanguard Veteran

Edyric Setorax, Vanguard Veteran

Edyric Setorax, Vanguard Veteran

The other model that I have to show is Cybernetica Datasmith Lambda-Meitner. Each of the units in the army will have a name consisting of a Greek letter and the surname of a famous nuclear physicist. Lise Meitner was instrumental in the discovery of nuclear fission, and has an element named after her: Meitnerium, atomic number 109. The datasmith has been fully painted and washed, though looking at the pictures, I made need to do some touching up!

Cybernatica Datasmith Lambda-Meitner

Cybernatica Datasmith Lambda-Meitner

Cybernatica Datasmith Lambda-Meitner

Cybernatica Datasmith Lambda-Meitner

If there's one thing I did get done this month, it's the construction of a new and improved lightbox. It's all foamcore boards, tissue paper, white duct tape, and white poster paper. Plus three lamps. Video on how to make one here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OyxzC5kqbyw. I've been using my phone camera for now, but in the future that will also change.

Lightbox 2.0

Next month, I will have more things assembled, at least, and try to finish up the two robots. I also have a Heldrake to finish up for a friend.

Kastelan Robot and Light Box

It's been a busy month, and the trend may continue for the next couple months, though I am going to try my hardest to stay on schedule. I almost made it this month by getting some more Deathwatch near-complete and getting one of the Kastelan Robot maniples near-complete. Unfortunately, they are not entirely complete. The most complete model of the group mentioned is one of the robots, which has the basic scheme and washes done, almost has its highlighting done. The other robot and the datasmith have both passed the wash stage, but do not have highlights.

Kastelan Robot Alpha from maniple Lambda-Meitner

Kastelan Robot Alpha from maniple Lambda-Meitner

Kastelan Robot Alpha from maniple Lambda-Meitner

These pictures were taken inside the light box I made. However, you can see in the photos above that the printer paper I used has a couple problems with it. The first is that it's not a continuous sheet so shadows from paper overlap are still visible. The other problem is that it's too opaque to use for the light diffusion panels on the sides of the box, so not quite enough light is getting through. I will be attempting a second version by the next post. I also only had two lamps, which will be remedied in the next version, too.

Light Box V.1

Test picture of Vael Donatus; the camera detail is good, but the light looks off.

Again, goals for next month are to have another unit finished, or at least have my current units completely finished, and build Light Box V.2. No promises.

Kill Team and Kastelan Magnets

Although the primary theme behind the new army I'm building for next year is "radiation", I couldn't resist adding a Dominatus Kill Team from the new Adeptus Astartes: Deathwatch book, as well as a Corvus Blackstar flyer for them to get around in. The Deathwatch rules themselves are fantastic, centered around small units with lots of firepower and an abundance of re-rolls. The justification for including them in this army comes from the Ordo Xenos Inquisitor with the rad grenades; the Deathwatch marines serve as his bodyguard.

Since the models are from the Kill Team Cassius box, I outfitted the unit with the weapons present in that kill team, which is more or less outfitted for close-in shootouts before a close-combat assault. This works out well for running with the Inquisitor since the rad grenades decrease the toughness of the unit they assault. For the kill team, I included the five models in the Donatus Kill Team, which act as a Veteran Squad, and Edryc Sedorax and Antor Delassio, who act as Vanguard Veterans

In terms of painting, I tried to paint them as close to the schemes from the box as possible, with the exception of the Dark Angel. The Zameon Gydrael model has his most obvious Dark Angel iconography chopped, filed, and smoothed away to make him into a Black Shield. I'm only showing the Veteran Squad for now since that's all I got to. Apologies for the bad quality pictures; making a good light box is on my list of things to do for next month.

Vael Donatus

Rodricus Grytt

Zameon Gydrael model, now the Black Shield Iton Atasas

Ennox Sorrlock

Drenn Redblade

Squad Donatus

I also figured out a way to make the weapons of the Kastelan Battle Robots modular using magnets. I drilled a magnet hole into the upper arms and should piece and super-glued a 1/8" x 1/16" neodymium magnet there. The insides of the phosphor blasters are hollow, and unfortunately don't easily lend to mounting a magnet. Instead, I snipped part of the sprue frame to the right length, super-glued a magnet to it and glued it to the inside of the phosphor blaster. Below is a shot of the mounting before the other half of the weapon was glued on, showing the two magnets connecting.

Kastelan robot phosphor blaster hand with sprue piece and magnet inside.

Kastelan robot phosphor blaster hand and arm held together by magnets.

Thought for the day: Only in death after highlighting does duty painting end.

OFCC 2016 and Building an Atomic Army

It's been a while, again.

Now that's out of the way, first thing is to plug for the Ordo Fanaticus Club Challenge. The Ordo itself is actually a club that meets in Portland, OR, but their members and forum (www.ordofanaticus.com) and Facebook page gather gamers from all over the Pacific Northwest. Every year, they put on the Ordo Fanaticus Club Challenge (OFCC). Most years I've been, it's in Vancouver, WA, just across the Columbia from Portland. The event actually has several different tournaments within it, including individual Warhammer Fantasy and 40k tournaments, and now an X-Wing tournament, I think. The main event for me is the Warhammer 40k team tournament. It is a tournament where painting and sportsmanship truly are valued just as much (if not more) than actually winning games. It's an event where one could bring a Chaos Space Marine army based on all daemon-possessed models and still have fun, not-one-sided games. It's an event where having no flyers and no way to deal with them won't be a critical failing of your list. It's all about bringing a fun army (super-tough, competitive armies are actually not admitted) and having a beer with your opponent while you find out what crazy situations your armies get into. Competitive tournaments and armies of course have their time and place, but it is not at OFCC. My record this past year was 2 wins, 3 losses, and a couple of those losses were some of the most fun games I had, despite being wiped off the board! If you get the chance to go, even if it's a long ways because you're not in the PNW, I highly recommend it.

This past OFCC, I ran a hodgepodge of Unbound units collectively called "Inquisitor and Friends", including an inquisitor, some Skitarii, some Militarum Tempestus, some Blood Angels, and a couple Astra Militarum Vendettas. The Skitarii I used included a squad of rangers with three transuranic arquebuses. Our team captain asked me why I didn't use Skitarii Vanguard, both because our team name is "Glows in the Dark" referencing the radiological cleanup site near Richland, WA from whence the team hails and because I have multiple degrees in radiological-related studies. I did not have a good answer, and it has inspired me to build a radiation-themed army for OFCC 2017. Units that will be included specifically for the radiation theme are:

Skitarii Vanguard - rad carbines and Rad-Saturation rule

Skitarii Rangers - transuranic arquebuses

Onager Dunecrawlers - neutron laser

Kastelan Robots - Cybernetica Datasmiths armed with gamma pistols

Ordo Xenos Inquisitor - rad grenades

My plan for this blog is to post once a month at least until OFCC next year showing my progress as the army comes together, as well as making other preparatory materials like objective markers, display board, etc. I'll finish up the year by making sure to record my army's battles at the next OFCC.

inquisitors and veterans

Another spurt of updates, but since I finally got my hands on a camera, I figured I should put some more up here. This time, it's about the Inquisitors (counts-as sergeants), the squads of 22nd Thracian Veterans they lead, and Inquisitorial operative Winter, one of Rosenadel's agents.

First up is Inquisitor Yjan Malkom Lobo, "Venom". I haven't quite worked out the backstory for the other inquisitors that Rosenadel is teaming up with, but they are all radical, to greater or lesser degrees. Accordingly, I have named, code-named, and modeled them all referencing radical or chaotic characters from other fiction. Yjan Malkom is a reference to Ian Malcolm from Jurassic Park, a subscriber to Chaos Theory. Originally, his code name was "Lobo", a reference to a Marvel Comics alien mercenary villain/anti-hero who killed off his own race for a "high school science project". Tell me that's not the embodiment of Chaos in a nutshell. However, upon modeling Yjan, it came out looking more like Bane from Batman, so Lobo became the surname, and "Venom" the codename, after the drug Bane uses.

Venom is based on the Khorne Exalted Hero body, inspired by a sweet conversion elsewhere. I gave him a Chaos Space Marine head, a CSM sword arm, and a loyalist bolt pistol arm. Added a grenade/pouch/knife combo from a Blood Angels kit. Inquisitors need personality, so I decided to add the flamer pack from the IG Squad kit, along with hoses made from guitar wire. And thus, the Bane look came into being.

Yjan Malkom Lobo, "Venom"

Yjan Malkom Lobo, "Venom"

Next is Inquisitor Jonathan Olivus, "Archer". While not exactly a chaotic or radical character, Oliver Queen, Green Arrow, does become an activist for lower classes, something unheard of in the Imperium. I chose him because he helped Batman fight Superman in The Dark Knight Rises graphic novel, which is radical enough for me. I'm not sure anymore why I chose Jonathan as his first name, though his code name is obvious enough.

Accordingly, the model has a green cloak, and a lasgun mounted on his back in place of a bow. The model itself is the Empire Witch Hunter. The lasgun is from Chapterhouse studios, the SCAR lasgun bit (http://chapterhousestudios.com/index.php?route=product/product&path=77&product_id=192). I added only that and a grenade/pouch from the IG Squad kit to give the model a more 40k appearance. I couldn't really add more bitz since I thought it would take away from the super-sweet model.

Jonathan Olivus, "Archer"

Jonathan Olivus, "Archer"

Next are some finished 22nd Thracian veterans. As mentioned previously, these lads are inspired by the 22nd SAS regiment. Accordingly, I wanted to make them look as close to the classic 1980's image of the SAS as reasonably could. The conversion actually ended up being pretty simple. I knew I wanted gas-mask heads, but it turns out that most such heads look more like WWI German gas masks. But, I found the "Gas Masks - Rolled Helmet" on Secret Weapon Miniatures (http://www.secretweaponminiatures.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=47_48&products_id=458), and they're almost perfect as-is. However, I decided to cut off the filter in the front and add it to the side of the mask, since 1) the front still looks to German/Krieg-ish, and 2) the classic SAS mask also has the filter on the side. This is what I'm talking about:

SAS, baby!

So, that took some very, very careful doing, but all of them are side-mounted now. The only other conversion was the lasgun. Since the guns are very long, and such special forces often work in close quarters, they often have guns with shorter barrels to better navigate doorways, narrow hallways, and other tight spaces. They also usually have sweet scopes. So, I snipped off the barrels of the lasguns and reattached them on top to make scopes. I also added some cylindrical bits for extra laser-sights on some. Can't have too many laser-sights.

Examples of the 22nd Thracian veterans.

Veteran, front.

Veteran, side.

Finally, Winter. She is inspired by two characters from Star Wars: Mara Jade, former Emperor's Hand, later Jedi, and Winter, Leia Organa's longtime friend and Alliance spy. Both are highly-skilled covert operatives, and totally bad-ass. Especially Mara Jade. So, this Inquisitorial operative is known only as "Winter", and has Jade's orange hair. This model has quite a few non-standard bitz. The legs and body are Combat Armor Legs (http://www.maxmini.eu/store/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=22_26&products_id=129) and Combat Armor Torso (http://www.maxmini.eu/store/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=22_26&products_id=129) from Maxmini. They're a little bigger in size than the normal IG legs and torso, but they look cool, and the difference isn't too noticeable. The arms are both standard IG trooper arms. The one holding the knife has the hand cut off and replaced with a heavy gunner stabilizer hand to better look like she's gripping the knife. The gun is a  "M-gun" (http://www.maxmini.eu/store/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=22_25&products_id=77), again from Maxmini. These are a little bigger than lasguns and are obviously based on the M-16. But again, they look really cool. Finally, the head is a Dark Eldar wych head, with the spot to glue on a topknot cut off. All this special stuff for this model is because Winter counts as Guardsman Marbo, perfect for Winter's role in Rosenadel's group of henchmen. Though Winter is painted much the same as the 22nd Thracian, she bears a golden triangle on her left shoulder guard signifying her status as an operative, and a red "=][=" on the other, signifying that she works directly for the Inquisition.

Winter, inquisitorial operative.

Winter, inquisitorial operative.

Winter, inquisitorial operative.

That's all the updates for now. Four more inquisitors are on the way, including Rosenadel himself, as well as pictures of the snipers once they are painted.