Angels of Death New Formation and Detachment, with pics and rules!

If GW didn't want us to really know what these were already they wouldn't put up HD Youtube videos. All pulled direct from them. 

EDIT: APPARENTLY THIS FORMATION IS IN KAUYON. SCROLL DOWN FOR THE NEW DETACHMENT.

Hunting Force
1 Captain
0-1 Chaplain
0-1 Librarian
2-5 Bike squads
1-3 Assault Bike Squads
1-3 Scout Bike Squads
Restriction: Everything needs to be on a bike
Khan may be taken in place of a Captain. Must have Moondraken

"Special Rules: The Hunter's Prey- After deployment is complete, pick an HQ unit in the enemy army to be this Formation's Primary Target, then two other units to be the Formation's secondary and tertiary targets. The primary target is the formation's prey at the start of the game, once that unit is completely destroyed, the secondary target becomes the formations prey, and so on. When attacking (unreadable) prey, units from this formation reroll To Hit and To Wound rolls. In addition, if a unit from this Formation charges their prey, they have the Furious Charge special rules until the end of the phase."

(Unreadable) Assault: Models from this Formation that make Hammer of Wrath attacks make two (unreadble. hits?) instead of one if there are at least five models in their unit."

Anvil Strike force next. If you like tanks, this is for you.

Anvil Strike Force:
Same restrictions IRT core, aux and command as a Gladius except only allowed 2 command instead of 3.

Command Benefits:
"Master of mechanised warfare: You may choose a vehicle form this detachment to be your warlord, even if your army inclues characters. If you do, your warlord has the following warlord trait:

Big Guns Never Tire: (skipping fluff) At the eng of your shooting phase, your warlord can nominate himself or another vehicle from this detachment that is within 24" of him. This vehicle can immediately fir its weapon again.

Armour of Contempt: Vehicles in an Anvil Strike Force Detachment ignore the effects of Crew Shaken and Crew stunned damage results, though they will still loose a Hull Point"

And make of this last part what you will. We shall see who gets access to them and who doesn't.

EDIT: So there is this to clarify...

Adepticon Coverage Part One: My Completed Display Board!

So after taking a week to calm down from Adepticon and reintegrate into real life, I am able to start sharing my Adepticon experience. First post: The display board I made.

You can see the WIP post here!

So the requirement is that I had to be able to break it down and fly with it, so I did two 2 x 2 segments that I put spacers between and bolted together then boxed up, which actually made it super resilient with virtually no damage on the plane (2 tiles popped out, but I popped them right back in).

Our Theme was the Fall of Medusa V, the old GW global campaign that every faction fought at. It was the only thing we could come up with the fit our rag tag composition (we were using armies we had this year. Next year we are building for Adepticon specifically).

Stay tuned for more coverage of ADEPTICON 2016!

Adepticon Prep: Necromunda

Hello again, Schlemazal here for one last time before heading out to Adepticon tomorrow. Today I thought I'd post up the Delaque gang I painted for one of the Necromunda events there.

For those who aren't well versed in the vagaries of Necromunda, the Delaque gang are known primarily for their trenchcoats, dark glasses/visors and bald heads. Thankfully, that sort of cyberpunk aesthetic is certainly popular, so there are a number of good options for modeling them outside of the original GW line. Most of the models I used come from the Gang line at Heresy Miniatures, which are clearly designed to serve as Delaque gangers. The one thing I didn't care for about them is that all the models in the range are shirtless or nearly shirtless, so I used green stuff to add undershirts. The bases are all from Secret Weapon Miniatures, who have generally become my go-to provider for bases.

Gang Leader with a plasma gun and a ganger with chainsword and autopistol

For my heavies, I chose a heavy stubber and a flamer for primary weapons, with a plasma gun as a long range option for the flamer heavy and an autogun for backup on the other. Since all non-pistol weapons need to be modeled, I decided to attach them as though mag-clamped to their backpacks (I couldn't really find a better place to add them).

The rest of the gangers were basically left as is, the only exception being my lasgun ganger - I used a little bit of green stuff to fill out the tip of the barrel to more closely match standard GW lasguns.

I was a little bit disappointed with the models for the juves - the two models I received were the exact same model with slightly different arm positioning. One I modeled with just an autopistol, the other has an autopistol and a hand flamer. I made the hand flamer with the base of a long pistol attached to a combi-flamer piece from Chapterhouse Studios.

Finally, we have the hired guns for the gang - an underhive scummer with plasma pistol and laspistol and a bounty hunter. For these two I wanted to keep to the theme of trenchcoats for consistency, but to use a different color palette to indicate their status as outsiders. Both models are Reaper minis, modified with 40k weaponry. The bounty hunter has way too many weapons, so I added the strap across his chest with green stuff to attach a lasgun from Chapterhouse.

I based the color scheme for the scummer (left) on Mal Reynolds from Firefly. Now if only the face looked more like Nathan Fillion.

That's it from me for today. Tomorrow I'll be leaving for Chicago, and I hope we'll get plenty of good photos and stories for Gothmog to put up here later.

Adepticon Prep: Dark Angels

Hello everyone, schlemazal here again. I finally managed to finish all the painting I had to get done in time for adepticon, so I thought I would share some photos of everything I'm taking with me. It's been a pretty wild ride desperately trying to get through everything in such a short time frame, but I'm definitely looking forward to going to Chicago with team Sepulchre of Heroes in a week's time.

Everything going to Adepticon

Today I'm going to focus solely on the Dark Angels, but I'll be back again soon with a look at my necromunda squad. First up, the last of the vehicles between my team tournament and Friendly armies: a drop pod, a rhino and a vindicator. The rhino and vindicator had both already been painted, but I decided to update them to match the rest of the army. The drop pod is certainly an interesting model, I had never painted one before. I'm rather fond of how the hazard stripes and 4th company iconography on the fins turned out.

 

 

 

 

 

After that we have another squad of tactical marines and some scouts. The scouts were equipped with camo cloaks, but the bolter scout models don't come with them. After a failed attempt at sculpting cloaks out of green stuff (I am hopelessly useless at modeling), I found a handy tutorial for making cloaks out of tissue or similar paper products: http://www.bolterandchainsword.com/topic/286080-tutorial-capes-made-from-tissue/. I made mine using chemical wipe paper, but it's very similar to standard tissue - just slightly thicker and less likely to pill or leave lint.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

All of the bases are Urban Streets bases from Secret Weapon Miniatures. I did the ice with crackle paint followed by a wash of turquoise ink and some white drybrushing. I thought about going back with a brown wash to dirty it up again, but that would take away the luster. I may need to track down a new brown ink - if anybody has any recommendations, I would be happy to hear them. The snow is actually done with baking soda and elmer's glue following this tutorial from BoLS: http://www.belloflostsouls.net/2014/04/hobby-create-realistic-snow-in-3-minutes.html. I really like the effect it gives, particularly following a brown wash around the edges and a bit of white drybrushing to hit the surface. I'll leave you here with the bases I did for my two flying units: the Nephilim and the darkshroud. I'll be back soon with necromunda photos.

Did GW listen to us? Petition final update.

Six months-ish since the GW petition closed. I was never contacted by the notoriously secretive GW. They never released any press statements IRT this petition. Just the typical fan aloofness...

If you didn't know about it, well it got over 17,000 signatures, which is nothing to scoff at, and can be summed up as
1- Support all types of players, casual and competitive, with focused rules, faqs, event support and campaign play. Make it worth it for Veterans and new players alike.
2- Support your Independent retailers and FLGS, don't just push your online store. They will try and sell your product instead of your competitors if you make it worth it.
3- Competitively price your products. You can charge a premium because of your quality, but we have finite gaming dollars, and you are pricing us out.
4- Develop an online community instead of just having a webstore online. 
5- Conduct market research and get on social networks.

Detractors of this said "They will never listen". "GW doesn't care about the fans." "This is pointless." "This is hopeless."

I countered with "The point is to at least be heard. To at least make someone step back at GW and consider our side of the equation. 10,000 people's opinion should at least be considered."

So lets take a look at a few things that have happened since Mr. Rountree became CEO (which happened sometime after we passed 10,000 signatures IIRC) and in particular, things that have happened lately. It turns out, maybe we were heard after all.

1- GW announced it is bringing back specialist games
2- GW releases numerous low price "Start collecting" sets
3- GW develops for release low price introductory sets (http://bit.ly/1Ro7xWO)
4- GW plans a return to organized play (tournaments, campaigns and events) and has even attended several conventions, both for players and industry, already (http://bit.ly/1UFh0bk)
5- Both GW and Forge World launch official Facebook pages, finally entering the social media scene
6- Numerous board games with equal quality models to the tabletop game and even rules for table top (Execution force, Betrayal at Calth, Overkill, Lost Patrol) at varying price points and all "good deals"
7- The first FAQs in nearly 2 years (several in December)
8- GW, this week via their relaunched Facebook Page, asked US the PLAYERS to give them questions to answer for an FAQ!

Did... did... um... did GW actually, you know, maybe listen to us?

So if you compare some of these things to what the points of the petition were, it starts seeming like the petition became more of a to do list for Mr Rountree. And if not a to do list, at least a list of concerns that were considered when making decisions.

And as I told the detractors, that was the point of this.

Now I am seeing some counterpoints in places. Things like "The lead times on these things are months, if not years, this did nothing" and the usual "GW never listens"
Well to the second, that is the point of this... maybe they did. Opinions I guess. But to the first point, well you are wrong.
All of the "Start Collecting" boxes are just existing kits in new boxes. Lead time for a packaged carboard box is short. Really short. Definitely in the time span of the petition. And definitely after Kirby was gone from GW.
The creation of Specialist Games again was a decision made AFTER the petition in whole, as there was nothing and they even had to make new job postings for it online!
Some of the low price things are yet to come, like the intro boxes and lost patrol. These will have only been started design in the last 6 months or so, and they don't even use new models!

So yeah, the lead times are not something to consider as a factor as to why this petition "did nothing". The second guy saying "GW never listens" is more valid. And remember, they are asking us for FAQ questions now, and he is STILL more valid. 

I want to make it clear though, I am not a business guy, nor do I think this was the catalyst, this was the THING that did it. I just think this was another stone, and potentially a big one though who is to know, on our side of the scale of bringing GW back. Of them becoming the good guys again. Gone are the days of Kirby! Hail the reign of Rountree! Long live the Hobby!

Lastly, to all the people who signed and shared it: Thank you. If (and yes, I am admitting, that is a REALLY BIG IF) this did have a positive effect on the way GW does business, it is only because of you. So thanks.

It is an exciting time for the hobby. Get out there and enjoy it.
#bringinghobbyback