Secude and kill?

So, my army is coming along quite well. After the victory on Tom and his dwarfs (750 points), it was time to test the daemons on another army. Arjan and I settled for a 1500 point battle on a somewhat rainy wensday, over at arjans place.

Because I can currently only field 750 points worth of daemonettes, it was time to include another fraction. Luckily for me, Arjan has some really well painted nurgle daemons which I could borrow to test on the battlefield. In my mind, the swift but vulnerable slaanesh would match quite well with the slow but o-so-realiable nurgle daemons. Since GW no longer hold srestrictions as to which factions may work together (bye bye fluff?) I can easily mix anything in my armylist up. I will be playing Arjans chaos warriors (of nurgle...), so I decide to go look for swift elements and avoid facing him head-on. Recalling from the last time I challenged Arjan, he always brings along some warriors, some marauders en a couple of annoying chaos hounds. No shooting will be involved from his side, so I should be relativly safe. Casting is probably not out of the question, but should not be on tzeensch like proportions. All in all, I decided to go with the following list:

- 1 Herald of Nurgle with staff of nurgle

- 1 Herald of Slaanesh with the musk and torment blade

- 10 Daemonettes (full command)

- 10 Daemonettes (full command)

- 20 Plaguebearers (full command)

- 7 Chaos Furies

- 5 Seekers

- 5 Seekers

- 3 Nurglings (or nurgling bases)

- 3 Fiends of Slaanesh

The original goal was to get as much of the army behind his lines, so I had at least the advantage of the rear charges. Those charges can win you a combat and since I was not to rely on my attacks, this was to be the best option.

The slaanesh part of my army turned out to be working pretty much exactly like expected. Fast movement all around, severly confusing arjan. The fiends and their stomp rule together with the magnificent 10" movement make up for a pretty tough fight. The are going to appear in all my armies from this day on. The seekers prove to be reliable and fast, but NO match for a nurgle lord, not even in the flank charge (magical attacks AUCH). The nurgle part was somewhat dissapointing. The nurgling bases are hardly a challenge for any unit. Plaguebearers might have a S and T of 4, but 4" movement and 1 on A, I and W means that they still cant hold up a decent fight. Especiallywith the low 3 weaponskill, which makes them not even a match for empire regulars. The herals however IS a promising man. It does cost yousome points, but it is hard to argue with a S, T and WS 5 hero! It does turn out I'd better put the herald in the regiment next time. Apparently they all regenerate when you do so, darn....

Unfortunately, none of us remembered to take pictures OR write a battlereport, so I can only publish my conclusions:

- It was a massacre, with both armies suffering great losses.

- Arjan won by a difference of something like 700 points

- It was really fun to do, and the match was pretty much undecided to the very last turns!

These are my lessons learned:

- Nurgle is NOT a good friend

- Never charge your surviving 3 daemonettes in an already doomed fight, hoping that rear bonus might be a turning of tides.

- Chaos warriors are tough.... really tough

- Lords are scary, even if they are called blob and ride a palaquin

This can only mean one thing though. If it is not nurgle who I must befriend, that leaves me two options:

- Khorne (hard hitting combat machines, made for destruction)

- Tzeensch (magical superiorities, made for long distance violence)

While khorne matches up with the speed of the slaanesh, it is more capable of doing great damage. Adding the magical resistence to that means that will bring more solid combat to the army. I could use that...

On the other hand, including tzeensch in my army means that my slaanesh can focus almost completely on the flank and rear combatting, leaving the magic and shooting to my fellow daemons. No real solid combat machine, but thinning the enemy units until the can be taken down by fiends and/or seekers. Flamers are a must have!

Owww .... decisions, decisions.....

Into the flames

The first unit of my Flames of War army rolls in. I've chosen the 1st Czechoslovak Army Corps as the theme for a late war Tankovy battalion. At the moment this is only visible in the Czech/Czechoslovak flag on one of the tanks. Later on I hope to add the appropiate roundels, numbers and slogans. I'm still looking for pictures of tanks in this particular army and for fitting decals in this scale. Main force will consist of T34's (what else?) in /76 and /85 versions, with support of infantry and some SU-85 tank hunters or even IS-2 (in pink?)



Painting 'historical' instead of 'fantasy' vehicles and figures was something to get used to. Many, many years ago I used to be a 'serious' model-maker and I had to rediscover some of the skills involved. And despite that the Battlefront miniatures are very nice and all five have their own distinct stowage and details, it's quite hard to create a nice paint finish for vehicles that basically were painted in one color.


Anyway, the first batch is finished, 10 more are waiting! Any comments and tips (especially on weathering effect on this scale) are welcome!

Malus Darkblade

And now for something completely different. I've been painting a lot of dwarfs recently. All the more reason to paint something different in between as a sideproject. Actually I'm still painting dwarfs but when paint dries it is nice to have a different paint object to do some painting on. I took some quick pictures just to get the idea of the finished product. I'm quite content with the cold one!

After reading all stories of Malus Darkblade and a discount at the local hobby shop on metal blisters I had to get Malus as a model. The cold one really makes this model. It comes with two heads. A rather blocky squarish plastic head and a vicious looking multipart metal head. The latter being much cooler for the model but a bit more difficult to paint and assemble. I painted the total model in separate parts for once: two sides of the cold one were glued together but that was it, the jaw, upper part of the head, torso of Malus, the sword arm and the cape were all painted before assembly. It makes for a much easier paint and gives much more detail in those hard to reach parts when painting a pre assembled model. Only the coloring on the joining parts was more difficult to get right.
I stayed with the blues for this model. The cold one being blue, the armour of Malus having a blue sheen on it and Malus' cloak is blue, even the inscriptions on the blade are a bright blue. All in all very inkeeping with the model. Malus' cloak however could have been better with a contrasting color in the end being yellow or red or something.