Necromunda One man and his high tech toys - building the hive

[Bilbostomper]

Basing has been done and if it were not for the weather being terrible for undercoating, these would soon be nice and black.

In the meantime, here is 1000 pts of GSC.

Patriarch w/ 10 Purestrains
Abominant w/ 5 Aberrants
Abominant w/ 5 Aberrants
10 Neophytes
5 Acolyte Mining Crew
Sanctus
Ridgerunner

As you can see, one Abominant is missing. I have one coming in the mail and the idea is to use that and my bitz box to create two Abominants from one kit. They are meant to look wrong anyway. I also need to assemble my Sanctus, ideally making his weapon options (sniper rifle or pointy dagger) swappable. Other than that, I haven't 100% settled on the weapon options for the units yet either. We'll see about those.

First on the painting list are the Aberrant, who I want to make a mix of the Genestealer scheme (yellow and orange, mostly) and a more human looking scheme. I hope to achieve a blotchy look to these deformed brutes without them just looking badly painted. For the Ridgerunner I haven't settled on a scheme yet.

 

[Bilbostomper]

Some progress on the Aberrants, who are now looking a lot more cohesive - apart from one guy who's been AWOL for a long time and didn't get his painting underway with the rest of the guys. I'm much more happy with how they are looking and should be able to finish them next week.

In other news I managed to magnetise the Sanctus, which was very fiddly since the magnet is 3mm and the arm is only 4mm or so.

He can now swap between snipey rifle and stabby dagger. I also sliced up the Ridgerunner a bit to allow for magnetisation of the main gun and the vehicle upgrade, which I for some reason had glued in. Then, I dug up a familiar for my Patriarch and based that. Finally, everything that wasn't undercoated already got a round of light grey and I added magnets under their bases if they didn't already have them.

My ork buddy and I have a game tomorrow at the club, which meant I had to settle for which options I wanted.

• The Patriarch gets the enhancement that buffs his melee to AP-3, Dam 3.
• One Abominant takes the Infiltrate + Heroic Intervention enhancement.
• The Neophytes take one webber, one grenade launcher, one heavy stubber and one mining laser (I think in total they have 8 or 9 different weapons - just ridiculous!). Reading through their long, long list of options I now realise I need to go build a guy with an icon, something I never bothered with back in older editions when I had to pay for them.
• The Acolytes take max mining tools and an icon (duh!). Unlike the Neophytes, these guys really have a set of best gear.
• The Ridgerunner takes a mortar and a spotter. I went for the mortar since I only have one vehicle and I thought it would be best to stick it out of sight in the back. The spotter, amusingly, improves your hit roll, even when firing indirectly when you'd think there's nothing to spot...
• The Sanctus takes the dagger since it denies overwatch, letting him be a cheap utility running around with impunity and charge fools.

 

[Bilbostomper]

First game with GSC (allied with Orks) in this edition has been played and won. Our oppoent had one of those standard Ultramarine Vanguard lists we all know and despise. Here is a picture from turn 1. My Purestrains and Patriarch are moving up in the center (I didn't realise they can infiltrate) and one unit of Aberrants are taking cover in the ruins in the center. The Acolytes are inside the buidling in the top right with the Ridgerunner safely behind, the Neophytes are below and to the right of the picture and the other Aberrants are in reserve. The Sanctus is sneaking around.

The Eradicator brick with Calgar are also moving up and are going to shoot and charge the Aberrants, who will die and get put into cult ambush (costing 5 of my 6 resurrection points). The Abominant fails his 2+ resurrection roll. Bah! The counter-punch wipes out the Marine brick and the Orks and GSC plow into the Marine backline. Meanwhile, the recycled Aberrants charge Guilliman. The Ultramarine Primarch fights before the hulking brutes thanks to using the interrupt strat but does a measly 2 wounds, not even killing one model! The Aberrants strike back and do 6 wounds, and I think that was even forgetting that they each get a bonus attack on the charge. The mighty marine leader then runs away and hides in the building!

And in brief summary, that was about it. Stuff learned:
- This army plays very quickly. Unlike both the Marines and Orks, who took forever to resolve their shooting and melee
- The Patriarch at his base level is a bit disappointing. I'd much rather they buffed him up by about 50% since he's supposed to be the biggest, nastiest model in the army. At 75 pts he's not even the second-most expensive character. Super quick, though.
- Aberrants were pleasingly tough and punch very hard. They get two buffs from having a character in the unit, making them much nastier, so that's obviously something I always want to do.
- Acolytes, Neophytes and Ridgerunner didn't do a whole lot this game, so I can't really comment.
- Sanctus was quite useful, though he had a moment of charging some Inceptors to tie them up, doing a decent amount of damage and then dying to a handful of weak return attacks. Toughness 3 with a 5+ save and 3 wounds doesn't last long!

Things I need to do before next week's test game:
- create PDF of the datasheets to make checking stats quicker (spoiler alert, I have now already done this for the models in this list)
- create Sanctus + Ridgerunner ability tokens
- assemble a Neophyte model with a cult icon (I never bothered with this back when it cost points)
- paint moar stuffs!

 

[Bilbostomper]

Calling the Aberrants done. I might go back and add some squad markings to the models or the bases at some point, but otherwise they're finished.

Next up is the Ridgerunner. It's still in sub-assemblies so it's going to be nice to get some progress on it. As with the rest of my army, I'm going for quite desaturated and dusty colors on the humans and their gear (with a few splashes of colour here and there), while the alien parts are much brighter and more colourful.

We have another team game scheduled on Monday (this time half as many Ultramarines allied to some Blood Angels), so expect an update on Tuesday.

 

[Bilbostomper]

Another team game fought and won. This time one of our opponents was a noob and with both my partners' and the Ultramarine forces being quite comlicated to run, we really did not get far in three hours. My guys mainly just move and fight and there isn't that much variation in the equipment (outside of Neophytes) and the thing we do that takes the longest is the Feel No Pain saves on the Aberrants. Anyways, both Aberrant units died this game (one came back) while one Abominant died twice and the other completely survived. The Purestrains eventually got wiped out but the Patriarch killed Chapter Master Dante and survived the game, so that was good. The Neophytes again did next to no damage, but held one objective through the use of their cult icon and being OC2, so that was useful. The Sanctus was useful on objectives and lived, though that might just have been because my opponents forgot to shoot him. The Acolytes did well and the Ridgerunner again did very little as again my AP buff ended up not mattering.

Here is a picture of my guys celebrating the demise of Dante and the Sanguinary Guard. There are some Marines closing in, but it would have been our turn next and they would have regretted standing so close to two of my melee characters. In the back some Nobs are in melee with the Centurions.

In other news I converted up a second Abominant. It uses the arms of a normal Aberrant with his normal hammer head swapped over and a Malstrain head alongside an Aberrant one. He is also accompanied by a Gnoblar from the Ogre Kingdoms range with a head swap, because I liked the pose. He needs a little bit more green stuffing around the necks and chest area, but otherwise he's good to go. Shown here beside the original, which is very much paint in progress.

I also slapped some paint on the Ridgerunner. This is Army Painter Desert Yellow with some Aggaros Dunes contrast paint from GW used as a wash. Very happy with how it's looking so far. I have not decided if all three of my Ridgerunners should share the same scheme (maybe with different markings) or if they should be more varied. Let me know if you have thoughts!

The little, local team tournament is in a little under two weeks. I may decide to slap some paint on the guys who don't have any (the crew here plus a handful of others) so that everyone is at least WIP. I think that instantly looks a lot better with not much effort.

Looking forward to the 40k balance update this week!

 

[Bilbostomper]

The lads are all packed up and ready for tomorrow's tournament. As you can see by comparing this to the first one, the actual Genestealers are unchanged, the Neophytes as well except that two guys have been swapped out, the Acolytes have had some progress, the Aberrants more progress and the two Abominants (one of whom was not even there), the Sanctus (who was in pieces) and the Ridgerunner have had the most.

I'm fielding the same army as I have during testing, except that I've replaced the heavy stubber in the Neophytes with a seismic cannon. I doubt it's going to make a noticeable difference, even if it is a better weapon in most cases. The Neophytes have a whole lot of different weapons (seismic cannon, mining laser, grenade launcher, webber, 5 lasguns and one bolt pistol) - pretty daft game design. The Acolytes have three different melee weapons, but everything else has two different ranged/melee weapons max.

 

[Bilbostomper]

Our little team tournament is completed and this time I did remember to take photos!

My list is somewhere above here. My Ork teammate was running the Taktical Brigade and had approximately:

Warboss w/ 5 Nobs
Shokk attack gun Big Mek w/ 6 Tankbustas
Shokk attack gun Big Mek w/ 10 Flash Gits
10 Boyz
5 Stormboyz
20 Gretchin
10 Gretchin
Trukk


Game 1
We played against Votann and Tzeentch Daemons using corner deployment and the "extra objective marker" scenario. I deployed quite wide, with one infiltrating unit next to each of the far objectives in no man's land.

Our opponents had:
Lord of Change
2x 10 Horrors
2x 3 Flamers, one with an Exalted flamer
3 Screamers
Changeling

Uthar
10 basic kin guys
2x 5 Berserkers
6 Bikes with so very much shooting
2 Land fortresses

This one was quite difficult for us as we were quite lacking in anti-tank and our opponents had some shooty shenanigans that were really difficult to counter. Not only that, but they rolled very well for a bunch of daemon saves so that instead of grabbing three objectives in turn 2, my guys ended up grabbing none! Top left to bottom right we have Patriarch and Purestrains vs Flamers, Abominant and Aberrants vs Flamers and lone Abominant vs Screamers.

Also noteworthy was the Sanctus who next turn hit and wounded with all hit attacks vs one surviving Flamer, only for the daemon to pass five out of six 4+ saves and stay alive. Grrr! He then got flamed to death next turn.

Unsurprisingly, we lost that game. We only got to play turn 3, so the scores were quite low on either side. Originally, the plan for the day was three games of 3 hours each, but after game 1 I successfully lobbied that we should instead just play one more game and have four hours available, since the first had been cut short due to a lack of time. This was at least partly due to us spending too much time getting the game started, though. If we had prepared better in advance, we would have had more time, though we were losing quite badly so it would probably not have changed things.

Next game was vs the Ultramarine / Blood Angel combo from last week. Their list was:

Uriel Ventris w/ Company Champions
10 Sternguard w combi-weapons
6 Inceptors w bolters
5 Devastators w four grav cannons
5 Infiltrators
Ballistus

Dante w/ 6 Sanguinary guard
2x 3 Sanguinary Guard
Jump Captain (once per game strike first for whole unit) w/ 10 Jump Intercessors
5 Scouts

The scenario was the one with disappearing objective markers played short edge to short edge. I packed my units in the center while my teammate took the right. This was a bit stupid, as turn 1 we drew the objective card that involved doing actions near the long table edges and we couldn't get anything on the left edge for some easy VPs. Anyways, we moved up cautiously and in return the Blood Angels moved up aggressively to put pressure on us by shoving the big unit of Jump Intercessors right up close. If we charged, they would be striking first and if we didn't charge, they could charge pretty much whatever they wanted next turn with a lot of charge bonuses.

Since charging is what we do, I piled in with my Genestealers and one Aberrant unit, but crucially not the one the BA had chosen as their Oath target, since they would be striking first and re-rolling to hit against that. That worked as even when striking first, the Marines didn't do all that much damage and got wiped out on the return strike. Meanwhile, I sent the other Aberrants up into the Company Heroes, where they got counter-charged by Dante and the boys. They did a bit of damage before getting wiped out and recycled into cult ambush. The Abominant also resurrected, and then our opponents weirdly decided he was not much of a threat, so they pretty much ignored him and moved up towards the center. He would later finish off the damaged dreadnought that had attempted to blast him off the field at point-blank range.

This was quite a fun game after the turn 1 bloodbath. By turn 3 I was worried we were running out of units, only to realise that our opponents didn't have a lot left either. We were a bit fortunate that it was the right-most objective that stayed until the end of the battle, as that objective got clogged by greenskins early and thoroughly. In the end we won 77 to 35ish. The Sanctus even survived the game with 1 wound remaining and killed most of the devastators by himself.

In general I think the list worked okay, but the lack of any sort of non-melee anti-tank is becoming obvious. The two cheap infantry units are a bit rubbish, but I guess that's why they are 65 pts while the bigger ones are 200+. The Neophytes, for all their various weapons, are pretty much completely useless in doing damage in this list. I'm tempted to run them entirely without heavy weapons, just so I won't spend so much time pointlessly rolling dice. In all my games so far I've recycled one unit of Aberrants as they have been the first to die, but I think I have not done a great job of getting them back in the action. The first game I forgot to bring them on turn 2 after they died turn 1, and in most games I have forgotten that with Deep Strike they don't need to walk on from a table edge.

After playing Raven Guard a bunch, it really is a change to play a more advanced and less forgiving army. Often I have found myself at the mercy of the dice and thinking "Why can't I just re-roll everything like I can with my Marines?". This is especially the case with the Aberrants and Abominants, who hit on 3+ normally and are very vulnerable to anything that worsens that. Suddenly it's a coin flip on not that many attacks, and you can't easily fix that.

Anyways, when the final scores were tallied, we came in third out of four teams and since the local game store was donating prized, I actually came away with the Secret Hitler board game. Nice!

The plan going forward is to get this lot of GSC painted up, then get a Warcry warband or two done. We'll see how that goes. I might go back and forth between painting the two. I also need to figure out a way to store my Raven Guard now that they are not on active duty.

Thanks for reading all the way to the end!

 

[Bilbostomper]

Not a whole lot of anything has happened this week, though I have finished the first two Abominants.

I have decided to name my GSC characters after some of the more dubious characters from the Alien films, and these two will be named Ash and David. I got a third model in the mail a few days ago and that one might be named The Bishop. I had planned to just buy two models and convert a third from bitz, but I got a pretty good discount on this one so I went with that. It will still be converted so that all three look different. Anyways, this makes three units with their leaders done. Next up for the GSC are the Sanctus and the Ridgerunner, both of which are almost completely done.

But before that, I'll probably do more on the Warcry front. I got the 22x30 mat along with the Abominant and I'll aim to block in the main colours on both ghouls, goblins and terrain before the next club night Monday a week from now. I have done a bit more work on the ghouls already.

 

[Bilbostomper]

I didn't get as much done on the miniature front as I had hoped last week. Work was quite exhausting and this weekend I was busy with a larger-scale terrain project (aka. doing some gardening). Still, I got some progress on the Warcry warbands and terrain.

I brought the game to club night and got one of my club mates to try it out. Of course I gave him the easy team (the ghouls) while I played the gobbos. We used the random scenario cards and as it turned out my opponent needed to kill three goblins in order to win - surely the easiest victory condition in any game in history!

At least it was three specific gobbos and he did not get to choose. Anyways, he sent his three squires (the bigger rank and file ghouls) up to tie up my grots, and though my guys killed a lot of his first wave, that meant they were badly positioned when his second wave arrived.

This meant that at the end of turn 2, two of the three guys in the 'shield' section of my band were dead. The third, Moonface Naggz, promptly legged it and actually managed to survive until the end of turn 5 by running as fast as his little legs could carry him. At that point, only one other goblin, Drizgit da squig herder, was still alive. He'd been leading two squigs as reinforcements, his charges expiring without doing much. Meanwhile, near my home base, Grinkrak had been leading the rearguard defense and also not achieving much.

Ghouls proved to be both fast and hard-hitting, with some really good damage and healing abilities. The Goblins continue to be annoyingly expensive for how weedy they are. Ex: the weediest ghoul has +1 Strength, +1 Move, +2 Health and -1 Toughness compared with a goblin for the same cost. I'll read up a bit more on the abilities, but I may end up swapping some of the specialist gobbos for more filler, just so that my opponent can't tie up all my valuable pieces right away.

Next I'll be painting GSC for a couple of weeks, then switch back to Warcry again. First priority is the Sanctus and Ridgerunner. I traded an old Tzeentch Daemon combat patrol I had lying around for a new GSC combat patrol, giving me a second lot of jackal bikers, a fourth Ridgerunner, a bike sniper chick who'll probably end up as a Sanctus with sniper rifle and ten acolyte guys I'll assemble as Metamorphs.

 

[Bilbostomper]

Progress update! I'm calling the Sanctus and Ridgerunner #1 done, though I may go back and daub some slogans onto the truck. The GSC don't actually have a lot of cult symbols, but I may have a go at the standard wyrm glyph.

Acolyte Mining Crew are well on their way. The formal name for the unit is Acolyte Hybrids with Autopistols, but since the unit of 5 only has a single pistol, that's grammatically inaccurate. Hence my alternative name, which I think tells you a lot more about what the unit does.

I like the use of blue as a spot colour on these guys to go with the yellow/orange of the 'stealer side of the faction, and the drab grey of the humies. Makes for a nice contrast, I think. At this rate, the Acolyte group should be done in the next week or so, and then it's just the Neophyte unit to paint to bring me up to a full 1000 pts. After that it's painting more of the 40k terrain set.

Battle planned for tomorrow. 1000 pts vs either Dark Eldar or Tyranids. Wish me luck!

 

[Bilbostomper]

A quick, little game against Dark Eldar and seldom have my army been such a bad match for the opposing force. My opponent's army had a lot of anti-infantry attacks (I have nearly all infantry), but was quite vulnerable to getting shot (I barely have any shooting). Fun game, though, even if I lost 20-something to 80-something. Though the Ridgerunner almost survived 'till the end of round 5.

Here are some pics. Don't ask why there are so few GSC models in them!

Lone Purestrain vs Drazhar and his Incubus buddy. I SAID DON'T ASK!

Same spot as before: David the Abominant and Aberrants ready to splat Lelith!

The Bishop after returning to life scrapping the last Venom. In the far back you can see his Aberrant unit that has returned to Cult Ambush and wiped out a small unit of Wyches.


EDIT: I also made some tokens to show which of my Abominants have used their once per game resurrection ability. Quite fitting for Easter, I think.

 

[Bilbostomper]

Usual little Sunday update: the Acolyte Mining Crew are done and the Neophytes are progressing. I would not say they are enjoyable to paint because there are so many little details, but the fact that they are meant to be ragtag means that if I end up painting them less uniform than, say, Imperial Guard would be, it's not a biggie. I keep changing my mind about the colour of fatigues and gun casings, but one idea I hit on is that each type of weapon should be painted differently, to make it easy to see if a unit has webbers or flamers or seismic cannons or whatever. I'm only painting one unit of 10 now, but I have many, many more to go, so a quick painting scheme would be ideal.

At any rate, this was two weeks of GSC, so now it's time for another couple of weeks painting Warcry. My goal is to get both warbands looking mostly done before next club night, which is at the end of those weeks. I think I got some of the guys at the club interested in bringing warbands of their own.