Thoughts on my list for the upcoming Chaos Day

Ayup fellas. My blog posts have been rather sporadic recently and a...varying...content. I posted my final list for chaos day (found here), with final tweaking. I'm sat now at 8am GMT on the morning of going down to Nottingham, unable to sleep because of my hayfever kicking in and listening to various tunes on youtube avoiding all reference to that certain royal wedding. Since I've no other excuse, I thought I'd go through the ideas and reasons behind the list.

Before I begin, I'd like to say that I've never played Dark Eldar at this scale before. I fully expect their to be a learning curve. Hopefully, one I can manage, but one none the less. This list is not meant to be nasty - some bits of it are, and I'll get to that in a minute, but most of it is trying stuff out - especially some of the more esoteric haemonculi options.

I'm taking the full option of 3x haemonculi. The haemonculi ancient I have gifted the much vaunted soul trap huskblade option. Why? Well...because I made a model for it! I've already put sliscus in my list, so no extra room for archons. His WS5 means he'll have a fair chance at hitting something and even his ST3 (st4 with a pain token with furious charge, however...) base means he'll need 6's to wound T6 and 5's for marines. With the weight of d6 he's rolling, it's enough to make people sweat.

This fella I'm going to run with the bloodbrides and go either monster hunting or dread hunting. If I get chance, I'm going to attempt to use the ridiculous speed of the raider and wyches to get him into base contact with a sagnuinary priest to instagib him too. The shardnets will drop the number of attacks down to 1 in most cases, and the wyches are survivable with their 4+ save. Also, with Sliscus I improve the chances of rolling something meaningful on the drug chart, so there's a reasonable chance they'll get an extra pain token.

However, I'm aware the haemonculi is an independent character, and can be singled out in close combat. His t4 and 6+ save just wont cut it. I'm hoping some savvy positioning when charging will help negate this, but just incase I've given him a vexator mask - you never know, the opponent might FAIL their leadership test and be unable to attack him. LOL! Yeah, I know...not going to happen. My main protection is hitting things hard and killing them before they get chance to hit me back.

So, the other two cheeky haemoncu-chappies that are taking up valuable oxygen in the drop ship. The first will sit with my blob squad of 20 warriors, with a hex rifle. Leaving the squad every so often to snipe with her hex rifle and annoy dreadknight and thunder wolves everywhere, and accidentally leaving her pain token with them. I gave her a casket of flensing (sd6 shots d6 str and d6 ap), just as insurance incase anything particularly nasty pops up infront of the blob squad. St6 ap1 12 shots!? YES PLEASE! Probable 2 shots at st 1 ap 6? Unfortunately yes. Why do I seek out these risky options?! She has a venom blade too, incase I end up in combat.

The other, Wyrmstrym, has a liquifier an will accompany the wracks. Their main job will be to drive by with their liquifiers. However, with the sheer number of psykers that will be present this weekend (grey knights, space wolves, deathwing, blood

angels, thousand sons...) I thought I'd try my luck with the crucible of malediction. His raiders equipped with torment grenade launchers to help drop potential victims leadership, but even so, it probably won't do anything useful. It would be great to take out a few grey knights with it though!

So onto the 20 man blob squad. Their purpose is many fold. Firstly, I don't need to buy and make two more damn raiders before the weekend for two squads of kabalites! Very practical! Secondly, I make maximum use of the 3+ poison granted by Sliscus. I throw in a blaster, for insurance again. I would throw in two, but you only are allowed to upgrade one man with a blaster, regardless of squad size. Weird huh!? I'm not too concerned with pieplate death, as I can't see many people taking them. Their coversave should see them right. I'm hoping to stick them in cover and with a few pain tokens they'll be feeling no pain from any bolter fire. I've never had an unwieldly squad like this before so using them correctly may be difficult.

The reavers I had to throw in there, I really want to try these guys out. I wanted the range of a blaster and the potency of a heat lance, so to maximise their versatility I took both. I know you shouldn't mix and match like this in units, but I didn't want to hamstring the unit as a  kamikaze tank destroyer. I did however want a weapon that I could use if something needed to die that very instant. The blaster would be useful at the beginning of the game, and the heat lance I would use as a last ditch tank destroyer. Again, using sliscus would help improve their drug rolls and avoid dreaded 1 roll (the 3d6 running one), which is utterly useless on bikers as they can't run!

The heavy support is 3 ravagers, one with disintigrators to help cull any pesky marines, feel no pain lovers and terminators (looking at you grey knights, blood angels, deathwing, space wolves...).  I've cut down on their flickerfields as I'll hopefully be getting saves from natural terrain, but nightshields are an essential, just to reduce any melta shots or hopeful bolter fire.

Sliscus will allow me to deep strike any vehicles, so the disintgrator ravager will be held in reserve whilst tanks are about then unleashed at my leisure.

  

There you have it! How will I do? Predictions? I think I'll scrape 2 draws and 4 losses. I'll let you all know how it goes, and will be back with hopefully some battle reports, pictures, and many a tale about my dark eldar's skulduggery!

Om nom nom...tasty poison

Here's my final list for chaos day - I've tweaked it abit, so I could get some extra juicy kibbles and bits for my haemonculi. Hopefully taking upgrades from my heavy support shouldn't impact too much on their performance, but we'll see!

HQ

Fleet Captain Irocqoui Plyskyn

-          Count as Duke Sliscus –150pt

Lord Surgeon Groshong

-          Haemonculus Ancient, Soul Trap, Huskblade, vaxator mask – 145pt

Wyrmstrym

-          Haemonculus, liquifier, crucible of malediction – 80pt

Madame Aneurysma

-          Haemonculus, hex rifle, casket of flensing, venom blade – 80pt

ELITES

The Viragos of Vice

-          9 Bloodbrides, 3 Shardnets and impalers, Haywire grenades – 165pt

-          Dedicated Transport Starbitch: Raider, Dark Lance, Flickerfield – 70pt

TROOPS

Plyskyn’s Dishonour Guard

-          20 Kabalite Warriors, 2 Splinter Cannons, 1 Blaster – 215pt

Deathdrakes

-          10 Kabalite Warriors, 1 Splinter Cannon, 1 Blaster – 115pt

-          Dedicated transport Despicable Ecstasy: Raider, Dark Lance – 60pt

The Family

-          7 Wracks, 1 liquifier - 80

-          Dedicated Transport Black Ark: Raider, Dark Lance, Torment Grenade Launchers, Flickerfield – 75pt

FAST ATTACK

The Velocireapers

-          6 Revears, 1 blaster, 1 heat lance – 159pt

HEAVY SUPPORT

Czernoborg

-          1 Ravager, 3x Dark Lances, Nightshields – 115pt

Miserati

-          1 Ravager, 3x Dark Lances, Nightshields – 115pt

Desicrati

-          1 Ravager, 3x Disintigrators, Flickerfield, Nightshields – 125pt

Total – 1749 pts



Dare you enter...the cuuuuuuube?

Here's a quicky I took today. On the dark eldar facebook page I got asked for more piccies of my models. So here's a snap of one of my favourite grunts, a converted warrior with a blaster and a no-face helmet. Looks like the model from the tv game show The Cube. I'm sure I'd win the top prize with a bit of darklight weaponry!

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The first taste of poison - preparing for chaos day

Hi guys, firstly let me apologise for the lack of updates recently. I've had a nice, relaxing weekend away and I've not made much progress on my army.

As you may or may not be aware, my army will have it's first showing in any sort of competative environment at a mini tournament this weekend. It's this years annual Chaos Day, and a good chance to catch up with my erstwhile chums. A time to settle old rivalries and ignite new ones, all fuelled with many a shandy.

This weekend will have about 10-14 players. Of which, there is one guard and one tau. And the rest are various flavours of marines. Yawn! So...I'm hoping everyone's made their lists already, because here's mine. Firstly you may notice no special upgrades on the haemonculi...I don't want my opponants knowing what they're taking or what squads they'll be going with! Secondly...it's a bit of a mishmash of units. I'm just throwing together what I've made and modelled and hoping to try things out. I don't expect to win much, but I'm going to have a good time trying all these unit out!

So, here's my list - 1750pts. You'll get all the details from the weekend with pictures next week (and I'll no doubt update my blog from my phone as well!):

HQ

Fleet Captain Plyskyn

-          Count as Duke Sliscus –150pt

Surgeon Groshong

-          Master Haemonculus, Soul Trap, Huskblade – 135pt

Wyrmstrom

-          Haemonculus, liquefier

Madame Aneurysma

-          Haemonculus, hex rifle

ELITES

The Viragos of Vice

-          9 Bloodbrides, 3 Shardnets and impalers, Haywire grenades

-          Dedicated Transport Starbitch: Raider, Dark Lance, Flickerfield

TROOPS

Plyskyn’s Dishonour Guard

-          20 Kabalite Warriors, 2 Splinter Cannons, 1 Blaster

Deathdrakes

-          10 Kabalite Warriors, 1 Splinter Cannon, 1 Blaster

-          Dedicated transport Despicable Ecstasy: Raider, Dark Lance

The Gloaming

-          9 Wracks, 1 liquefier

-          Dedicated Transport Black Ark: Raider, Dark Lance, Torment Grenades, Flickerfield

FAST ATTACK

The Velocireapers

-          6 Revears, 1 blaster, 1 heat lance

HEAVY SUPPORT

Czernoborg

-          1 Ravager, 3x Dark Lances, Flickerfield and Nightshield

Miserati

-          1 Ravager, 3x Dark Lances, Flickerfield and Nightshield

Desicrati

-          1 Ravager, 3x Disintigrators, Flickerfield and Nightshield

The black ark

So, raider spam. It seems most list lists for dark eldar revolve around using raiders and venoms en masse to get good results.

Now, I've never enjoyed spam lists. They're dull, look bland and are a bit sterile to look at. Maybe its just the ones I'm used to are dty brushed chimeras with wonky hydra turrets, or a sea of 30 grey hunters with combimelta grey guard in a grey rhino. No need to hunt, I've found the grey you're looking for.

So, my dilemma - a spam list for a spam hater. Well, here's my attempt to unspam my list - a unique, pimped ride for my coven units. Here's a quick wip of my haemonculi ride. Enjoy.

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A good slave learns to love the whip...

Here's a pic of me and my missus having a nice night in painting little men! I've a mini tournament/gathering in two weeks that I'm wanting to have my army at least mostly painted for. I've not had much chance in the last few weeks, so she agreed to spend a couple of hours highlighting my models for me while I got through a few bases. She's much better at painting than I am!

I'll update the blog with some more pics tommorow. Unfortunately real lifes getting up in my grill this weekend.

Stay tuned, as the long painting war continues...

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A lady called malys (ooooh yeah!)

[/poor The Jam pun]

So, lets see if this works! Here's a WIP of my lady malys conversion taken with my camera phone. Currently, I'm blogging on a bus. Double decker, if you're interested!

Anyway, this conversion was using a vampire count vamparella model (I can't remember the exact name of the sculpt). The sculpt itself was powerful enough to get across an esteemed and powerful female, with enough skin to be sultry, enough segmented armour to be imposing and similar to my other kabalite warriors and lithe enough to be elvish and large enough to stand out on the field as a special character. It also resembled a bedraggled brides dress. With her history with Vect, and being jilted and sent mad, the bridesgown was a potent symbol of her character. Deal was sealed.

I had to chop the face off, I'm afraid I couldn't her from that fate. The fangs were too dominant and would ruin here features too much to remove. I didn't want to lose her neck frill, so instead I cut a platic helmet down and added a wyches topknot. Then with the gap I greenstuffed some curly hair in. I also added a knife holster to her waist.

Her arms were simple enough - one was a cupped left hand to hold the fan, the other was from the raider kit that was holding a knife. The right hand simply required a weapon swap. I used a standard power sword for the ladies blade. In the fluff its described as an unusual daemon weapon. I thought long and hard (giggedy) about what blade to use. The model however was already undarkeldary, so using a weird sword was pushing it. I decided, for aesthetic, to use a standard blade.

If the sword gave me headaches, the fan gave me an aneurysm. I tried loads of blades, greenstuff and alternate weapons. None stuck. Yet this piece of kit had been staring in my face all the time! It's from the corsair kit, and with a greenstuffed tail gave me a fan AND a symbol of her own personal kabal.

Painting wise, I had the choice between the white gown, striking as it would be - or a more dark scheme that would match my army. I decided to go for a black look instead, to match my army scheme. Because I really hate painting white.

So, let me know what you think!

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Token blog post

Soooo, I tried to take some photos of my models (really, honestly, I did!) but couldn't get the lighting right, and I was watching House and I was at work...

You get the picture. Well...obviously you don't, because I didn't take any...

Oh...go on then, you little scamps.

Let me talk to you a little bit about gaming accessories. The Dark Eldar have a unique system called "pain tokens", where they get benefits for wiping out enemy units. There are three levels of pain tokens so keeping track of what pain tokens each units have what is quite important.

Games Workshop don't currently provide any tokens for gaming use. They do make several suggestions on their website, although none of these really appealed to me.

I found these models, however, fairly cheap. They're Cryx "soul tokens" from Warmachine. I think they're extremely cool. I was tempted to paint them different colours to represent each "level" of pain token, but decided that may look a bit tacky and slow things down. So Instead I'll just use them as individual pain tokens. These are quite rough, but they'll do for now. I've got about 20 all for £8 and painted identical, so my pain token needs are fulfilled for now!

As you know, theme is boss with me. When I ran daemons I ran a set of dice with the same colour (I honestly can't remember whether the dice came first of the daemons scheme, but I did get some bitching dark grey dice with golden spots from my local gaming shop - Something Wicked, in Huddersfield).

This army was no different. I like armies with strong themes that people have taken time, effort and put a little bit of themselves into (hurhur!). So, I like to try and add a little bit of theme to my lists. This runs to my dice as well!

Here are my chessix dice. I bought a shedload of them for about a fiver. The main ones are a cool dark blue, and for separate rolling (you always need more than one colour of D6!) I got these new, funky toxic green dice. I think you'll agree, my models with these dice may lose heavily, but I'll lose heavily looking good! The case I had to buy separately at Vaptarnak gaming fayre in York in February. Lame!

I prefer chessix die, they're small and handy. I do hate those big die with pictures in the place of 1s or 6s. They're confusing, big and heavy and in a tournament where you play quickly its too easy to get confused with them. Chessix for me thanks!

Ok, I'm talking about different colours of D6 on my blog...what a loser. Well look what I found on eBay! These templates were £50 and matched my dice soooooo well I just had to have them!

Arf, I jest. But you wouldn't believe how many of these buggers I've lost over the years. Shame my army hardly has any huge pie plates to drop on the enemy...

And finally, I've acquired some excellent objective markers. The dark eldar are cruel beyond redemption - their savagery knows no bounds. The gladiatorial arenas need constant supplies of fresh warriors for the wyches to hone their skills on. The haemonculi require fresh samples to perfect their flesh craft on, and Archons require slaves to torment and do their bidding.

Pray they don't take you alive...

...especially if you're cute and fluffy.

Tweet this to all your fellow Archons!

Two creepy men and a weird headed lady - The Coven

Another day, another bunch of my models. Now we get the creepy dudes - members of The Gloaming - the private haemonculi coven of the Poisoned Tongue.

The first of my coven, the just dang nasty Master Haemonculus, The Surgeon - Lord Groshong.

Oooooh he's just so dag nasssty! He's a conversion, albeit and embarrassingly simple one. I picked up the old Urien Rakarth (Or urien rakarse, as he's been oft called) from eBay in a huge bundle of metals for about a tenner. I decided the metal of the body, which was fantastically detailed, was good. I actually like the haemonoculi models, even thought they're almost 15 years old. Infact, I've got an especial fondness of all GW metals produced between 1990-98 (as my huge collection of necromunda cawdor will tell you!). There was a couple of things i didn't like. First - the weird scythe axe blade thing...wtf is that? It like a glorified bread knife! That was chopped! Next...the laughing face. My goodness that was a stupid comical look that looked totally out of place with the modern models - even for a helix-bending-doctor-freak!

So...a full face transplant was too tricky, and would risk ruining the details. I decided to give him a medical mask instead - extra creepy. I also gave him a huskblade (a cheap cop out with a plastic bony crest from a chaos spawn kit). I left his little jack in the box, as this would be a soul trap. Will it work on table, probably not, haemonculi are weedy and he'd be taken out before he gets chance to take out an enemy hero and double his strength - but it looks kewl!

NEXT! The second of my three haemoncularse, Wyrmstrom.

No conversion work, this guys got a liquifier and scissorhands - I'll probably just run him with the cheap venom blade option instead. I'll run him with a squad of wracks and do some drive byes.

And, finally, the third heamonculi, a laydeeee. Lady Aneurys. Or conehead bitch.

 PEOW PEOW! Her needle pistol wounds on a 2+, and her right hands in her pocket, all like "yeah dude I'm all like "whatever"". I've strapped a rifle to her back, lifted from the redonculously large number of splinter racks that come with the raider set. I've but a kroot rifle muzzle on the barrel to make it looks, well, slightly different from splinter rifles, and to make it more sniperish. Thus, I created a hex rifle. How easy was that?!
She'll sit in the back field, giving a pain token to any warrior squads she sits with. She may also instakill any model with her sniper rifle. Granted, there's like a 5% chance or something equally measley.

I must say, I really enjoyed painting all these models. They just ooze character, one of the best parts of the original Dark Eldar line. I honestly hope if they ever resculpt the haemonculi, they don't make them too crazy and too far from these guys. I'm sad they never made more variations.

And here are a couple of my covens creations - two wracks

RAWR! I've used the fantasy flagellants as a base, and used the old warrior heads - they give a pretty brutal, mask like appearance, almost a pennance mask. I've tried to make the cuts in their robes look freshly bleeding, to represent their heightened toughness and carelessness in the face of pain (granted by their gnarly gnarlskin). I've given them assorted blades for hands to make them extra nasty looking. I try and get a green theme on all my coven units to link them all, and I've also used neat astronomicon grey for their skin - the paler, almost white hue separates them from the pale-but-still-living warriors.

On a related note, I'm very pleased they arn't releasing metal wracks now. I'm a strong believer of GW not spoon feeding gamers. I like to see armies and units that are created from conversions. Plus, my wracks are plastic, and a squad of ten is much cheaper and look very striking than 10 models in a couple of separate poses.

So, that's all for now. Please drop by again - remember to follow and comment if you like!

Bane of Lisps - Duke Thlithcuth

Here's my version of Duke Sliscus - Fleet Captain Iroqoi Plyskyn (lieutenant, junior grade, hrnrnrm...anyone who gets the reference earns a cookie).

Let me just say, that the Dark Elf Corsair kit is AWESOME! This is a combination of Eldar and dark elf kits. The legs are standard Kabalite legs. I did a bit of greenstuff between the torso, which is a corsair commander with swords crossed. If you look close enough, I actually moulded the stomach to be bare and has a navel sculpted into it. Unfortunately I think you miss it with the busyness of the model and the exact angle required to get to see between the chest plate and groin. He has an old plastic dark eldar pistol holster to represent his blast pistol of 6inch BS 7 doom.

I had to xacto knife the neck area to make a space big enough to put a plastic DE head in from the raider kit. I toyed with putting topknots on him, but I decided the bald head was quite stern and sadistic looking enough to leave as it was.

The banner is from the Kabalite box, with the banner top from the corsair kit. I'm a bit worried actually, since the plastic pole is quite weak and is threatening to break if you look at it too much, nevermind rag it round in an army case. The banner, eventually, will get some treatment in the form of freehand iconography. For now, however, it will suffice.

Sliscus The Snake is a roving pirate who enjoys fashion. So, snakeskin cloak? Check. Moleskin gloves? Check. Dual venom blades? Check. Green everywhere and a whopping great big snake symbol incase nothing else denoted him as Sliscus? Double Check.

It's intreseting to note, however, that Eldar culture, especially the Saim Hann craftworld, reveres the snake as a symbol of age and wisdom. Something I think was overlooked when designing this slippery Eldarian character!

And here's a random yum yum with a splinter cannon.

The loinclothes are human flesh, so darker than the 50:50 grey/flesh mix I use. Sliscus's's's's's's loinclothe is a green, to differentiate himself from the yumyums.

Tune in for more tales from the crypt...

Dread Archon Ilzharod

Ok, here's some photos of my Archon, Lord Ilzharod.

He's a conversion from the Fantasy Dark Elf lord, armed with an agoniser. I've had this guy for a while, I was intending to run him as my Archon for the last codex. His right hand is from the ravager crew and has a greenstuff orb. The orb is a webway portal...or soul trap...or obsidian orb, if I ever decide to run him as Asdrubael Vect. The tiny cutsey drake on his shoulder is either a blast pistol...or a phantasm grenade launcher...or his shadowfield...basically, he's a handwavium device!

Now, I'm not a great painter - I freely admit this! I am pretty pleased with the lighting source under the gorget. My inspiration for this was the old images of Horus from collected visions. I think I get the effect there's a light from within the armour pretty well. I got this just from using icy blue on the gorget, and several washing on the cheeks and eyebrows.

Painting wise, he's similar to my troops. Regal blue with enchanted blue highlight and a black inking. The skintone is 50:50 astronomican grey and tallarn flesh , with a mud wash. I'm still undecided about my basing scheme so I've left it black for now. He's also got a elfist...thingmebob...on his base that he's stepping on. I've painted this as a saim hann scheme.

He's not quite finished as he could use a bit of touching up in certain areas, but he's table top standard for me!

Let me know what you think!

Rogues of the highest order...

Before I go any further with my fictional characters, I want to introduce you to a few non - fictional ones as well. These guys are people who I've not had the pleasure to play as frequently as I'd like to. But people like these are the reason I carry on with this hobby. Great friends on the table, better friends in the pub, they are truely the reason why wargaming was invented. So, in no particular order, and without photos, as much to protect you as protect them,...

Adam Turabi

I met Adam almost 8 years ago through a mutual friend at Uni. Whilst playing "I have never" (A drinking game in which you say something you've never done, and all those dark monster at the table who have experienced such desolate acts of self violation sup their ale), one of us (either myself or he) muttered "I've never rolled dice to decide the fate of tiny little men". At that point, we realised we both were warhammer nerds.
High (or low) points of our warhammer exploits include:
- buying the Tau codex on 1st april 2006, and sitting in a bar reading it whilst being chatted up by drunken girls at 3pm
- falling out over Adam not charging his tau stealth suits into combat because "it wasn't fluffy", even though it would cost him the game
- numerous games days
- arranging dates for warhammer goodness that he would get totally wrong and appear a week earlier than expected

One of the original founders of "chaos day", or annual meeting for wargaming, he's a cracking fellow who embraces his inner nerd.

Dan Dan Warhammer Man

Dan's never beaten me at 40K, fact. Fateweavers why. The one and only time I ever took fateweaver was against Dan, and I thrashed him so completely I apologised profusely. I felt extremely bad, as he'd trekked from London to Leeds for the experience.
Dan I met through Adam, and a thoroughly splendid fellow who'se slightly obsessed with 2nd editon. To the point he got his missus to drive him to bristol to pick up the old 2nd edition boxset with the autogun gretchin. He plays blood angels now, and I'm looking forward to playing him again, as when I thrash him next I won't feel as bad because he's travelled less distance.
I'm sure the entire reason he bought mephiston was to exact his vengeance upon me...

Ellen & James & Simon

Ellen was my old housemate, who was dragged kicking and screaming into the hobby. She now plays thousand sons, who I've always fancied as a bit of a tough list. James is her boyfriend, who is a metagamer in all but name. To James. warhammer is a clinical expereince. To him, tactics just come naturally. His Tau are a trimmed fighting force that is able to clinically dispatch most other armies. He uses every dirty trick in the book, and I'll never ever beat him! But, I will be sure to try! He wrote an interesting blog regarding how to win with armies that don't have power armour, which I cannot find for the life in me at this present time. EDIT: Winning without a 3+. I'll also post a link to Ellen's blog, which is a riproaring read into how to get the best out of your...weekly shop.
Simon is a new player to 40K, and we are currently tied at 1-1 in games. My Dark Eldar's first ever run out was against him, and it took no casualties. In the second game, I brought out my trimmed khorne daemons, and all my gaming experience using my army of choice. And got utterly thrashed. Swings and roundabouts!

Paul P

Paul's a delightful american who I probably wind up a little too much. We've never played, but I do enjoy putting the boot into his prized Plunderwolves. He is a space wolf player (booo!) who I'll either beat and torment him over his thunderwolves being overated, or he'll thrash me and I'll moan his plunderwolves are cheesy, overpowered, and against all that is good with the fluff. Win-win situation for me! He also plays Dark Eldar, although his heart will always be lupine. Check out his group Space Wolves here!

Luke

Luke's a pig. Well, a razzer, a copper, old fuzz etc. I'm having a necromunda affair with him right now. We both approach 40K in the same way, and we both have the same outlook on life. It's like we're twins, eerily. Unfortunately soon he'll be packed off away to Afganistan with the TA. I wish him all the best.

Max

Max and I have a fierce rivalry as we only seem to play together in tournaments. Our skill levels are about the same, but his lists always edge mine because I'm a daemon player, and he's a dirty stinking blood angels gamer. I'm better than him, and he knows it, and it burns him up inside. Our games are always hot contested affairs with too much pride on the line, lashings of over the top taunting and goading and usually ends up with him swearing (he suffers from a case of "Gamer Tourettes") and myself drunk. We both are involved with a 40K podcast called The Power Sword podcast. I definately think you should all check it out. He's also in the process of making yellow necrons in anticipation of the new codex. Yeah, I know what you're thinking, I thought that too!

Adam "Adam Smith" Smith

Adam is the main honcho behind the Space Wolves Grey blog, probably the most successful blog for space wolves on the cybernets. Our last game was a messy affair - In the first turn there was a dispute on cover which involved about 10 people and a games workshop employee being roped in for 20 minutes of fierce arguing (in the end, I won the argument and killed 3 blood claws - a phyrric victory I feel but a victory non the less!) and the infamous extra squad of space wolf scouts that were ontop of the 1500 points agreed limit! A chronicle of the events can be found here.
He's a seasoned tournament player and a really nice guy who I've known for about 5 years. I really look forward to playing him again, his lists are solid, his tactics sound, and his miniatures crisp and well painted. His blogs are choc full of intrested caveats regarding the wolves, well worth a pop in.

The Nightowls

The nightowls are my local gaming group which unfortunately I find very little time to pop down and play. My main opponant's there are Mal and Rob, both extremely nice fellas who, like myself, find it difficult to juggle real life and toy soldiers. Rob is just beginning to play 40K but is a seasoned fantasy and necromunda player, and Mal taught me how nasty Paroxysm can be the last time we played. I hope to get a few more games in with them once my Kabal grows.

There we have it, a huge amount of text. I'm sorry if I've missed anyone out, but theres so little room left and my mind's frazzled from the typing!

The missus has taken the camera out today, so tommorow I'll be able to add some pictures of my Kabal.

Thanks for reading so far.

The Grand Scheme!

So, what do I want to achieve with this army? What are my goals?

Firstly, I want a large army. One which I can play differently every week should I wish. At first, I wanted to take a hellion army, nothing but Hellions or wyches as troops. with Baron Munchausen/the Green goblin (or Blue Goblinette, with my personal conversion of this special character).  I'd rock Duke Slsicus and Baron Sathonyx in tandem. Deep striking combat drug lovelyness, with 3 heavy vehicles also deepstriking with lances to blast tanks.

Very similar to daemons...

Then I thought about the anti-tank theme this edition of 40K had - 3 ravagers wouldn't cut it. My troops had no way to deal with tanks. So, drawing board - haemonoculi list? Wracks and grotesques as troops. Same problem again, tanks will cause me pain, wracks are slow and actually very vulnerable (T4 and armour 6 = bolter bait).

But I enjoy running a theme list, and to tactically limit myself. That's true tactics, working with what you have, not the choice of whether you want 4 Hydras or 6 or 2 melta vets and a chimera or in valkyries.

So, I'm building an all comers Kabal list, with warriors as troops. This list will form the backbone of my Dark Eldar experience, and allow me to become flexible and try certain things in the future.

But that's not all. I wanted to craft a tale to chronicle this. I wanted to weave a tale about my characters, what their motives and goals are. I would have several characters, whose stories would intertwine. Partly inspired by the way George R.R. Martin writes in a game of thrones (Each chapters just begins with the characters name) and also inspired by a cracking guy on Warseer called RedRiverTears. His daemons battle were an inspiration! Even though I've never talked to the guy, his battle reports were thematic, and always interesting. Something I'm afraid GW has lost in the last few years.

Another small project (lolz, small my ass) that I wanted to finish was based on my true love - Necromunda. I wanted to create (or redesign) an old modification called Tales of The Dark City. A fan project that's been lost in the tubes of the intrablags, it made special rules for gangs of commoragh fighting each other in the slums of the dark city. With the new Codex, and a huge trove of untapped background potential, I wanted to make a mod for Necromunda that kept the core of the game mechanics in one piece (as, to be honest, it's a very robust system that easy to follow and quick to play) whilst adding Dark Eldar gangs fighting each other with their own macabre, arcane weaponry. Changes would include adding a negative skills set and all sorts of other interesting wargear and missions.

So, my first aim - introduce all my characters! I'll be adding my models hopefully later today. Please, come again.

The Kabal of The Poisoned Tongue

So, my last post touched on why I'm making this blog, this one is going to let you all know what it's about.

I've tried, in the last few years, several times, to start a new 40K army. My previous army was the themed list Daemons of Khorne. Now, I really enjoyed playing this list. Bloodletters were a menace, Soulgrinders were the bane of many people's existance. I ran an almost monokhorne list. It could very well hold it's own. I rarely tabled anyone, rarely got tabled myself. It wasn't unbalanced, it was horrid in combat and suprisingly resilient to incoming fire. It wasn't unbeateable, nor was it a push over. I'd like to think, on a whole, people enjoyed playing me.

I enjoy lists which are themed. Recently Daemon lists have been doing quite well on the tournament scene as some people have mananged to break them. That will change now the Gay Knights (sic) have been released. Seriously - who wants to release an army to screw over one of the already most screwed over armies in 40K ?!?!

I digress. Towards the end, I started to get a bit bored of daemons. They played the same every battle (90% of which were against various flavours of marines). So I started to look for other armies. I had two or three attempts at starting dark eldar in the old codex. Tyranids I tried and failed - I couldn't make a list I enjoyed playing with. I even toyed with slaaneshi daemons, but decided against it once dark eldar were confirmed.

I've always had a fascination with the space druchii. I gobbled up every nugget of expanded fluff (I strongly suggest you all go and read "Mistress Baeda's gift", from fear the xenos - the best short story Black Library has ever produced (even though the rest of the book is pretty awful). ).

The codex sealed it. It's one of the best codices written in a long time. If anything, slightly underpowered, but enough in there to ensure it will have a decent learning curve that pays off with perseverence.

So, I chose the Kabal of the Poisoned Tongue. Why? By accident, really. I always wanted to do a wych cult (from waaaay back from the eye of terror codex) with a dark blue scheme. I chose the scheme before I looked through the codex. Dark blue armour, flayed skin loincloths, metal guns with green and light blue accents around the armour and weaponry. Once I realised the similarities between the poisoned tongue and the cult of seventh woe, I decided to run with them as a name. Well, Cult of the Maiden Violated, or Kabal of the Twisted Sister just sounded too tacky!!

So, I loved the models, I had a scheme, and an army name. Maybe I should begin thinking about tactics...

A Taste of Venom - A blog about one man and his Poisoned Tongue

Hi there! (that seems as good a start as any...)

First of all, you passed the first test - finding this little page on the mighty blogosphere. My name's Simon, I'm from Yorkshire, northern England, and I'm a 26 year old bloke who paints and plays with toy soldiers.

And, if that pleases you, this first blog post will be all I'll ever need to tell you about myself!

I've created this blog for a few reasons. The first, which is the main reason, is to get my arse into gear and paint my little men. Like many of you, real life is a real and present danger. I work at least 37.5 hours a week, I live with a woo-man, I have to eat, I have to go shopping, and I have to go out and be un-anti-social.

It happens to everyone - painting, although enjoyable, is a luxury now. And when you're painting 1750 points worth of 40K armies...you just can't be arsed. can you? Especially to a reasonable quality!

Now, I'm going to say this here and now - I'm as average a gamer as you can get. I'm an average painter. I'm an average tactician, I averagely come lower than average in an average tournament. I'm an average weight and an average height.  As you may tell, real life, on average, overshadows my 40K. Which is fine!

I'm not big on the tournament scene. I believe I had a brief conversation with the current UK number one tournament player. He didn't like system of a down, and had never heard of danzig. He has long hair. I bet that's a lot more than he remembers about me! I also played one of the brothers who also pesters the top of tournament rankings. He thrashed me with his tyranids in 4th ed 4 years ago.

What I'm trying to say is - I'm just an average yumyum, who enjoys rolling dice. I don't have alot of time to enjoy my hobby, and I'm hoping this blog will help me improve my enjoyment.

That's all I want to say about stuff non - 40K related, everything from here will be slightly less boring! I can't promise I'll update this blog very regularly. Fits and starts, if we're all lucky. But if you tune into my next post,  I'll talk more about my army, my choices and my targets and goals with this hobby. I'll include my thoughts about the current edition and my current project - The Kabal of the Poisoned Tongue.