Necron Cryptek Edition Codex unboxing video

  Hey folks, just posted a you tube vid of the codex unboxing.  Hope you like!!

  See ya soon!

Lessons learned BatRep - 1750 Necron vs Space Wolves

  Wow!  What a game.  What a great freakin game.  It was infuriating, excellent,  really long and gobs of fun.  I don't care what anyone says about 6th edition, I'm having a lot more fun with 6th than any previous version.

  Devin came over last night for a rousing, pre-tournament shakedown cruise for the lists.   Devin brought a bunch of Space Wolves, decked out to destroy!  (Hopefully he'll post his list...)  We rolled up vanguard deployment and Purge the Alien for the mission.  That was HUGE for me, since I only had two troop choices, an objective mission would have been devastating for me!  Kills worked just fine!  We both had some pretty good HQs, with Njal and a wolf lord on his side, plus those damnable rune priests ;)

The table layout

more table layout

And more...

Here was my list;

1750 Pts - Codex: Necrons Roster - Phalanx OU-812-1750 V5
Total Roster Cost: 1743

HQ: Imotekh the Stormlord (2#, 305 pts)
   1 Imotekh the Stormlord, 225 pts
      1 Catacomb Command Barge, 80 pts

: Royal Court (2#, 180 pts)
   1 Royal Court, 0 pts
      1 Lord, 90 pts = (base cost 35 + Warscythe 10 + Mindshackle Scarabs 15 + Resurrection Orb 30)
      1 Lord, 90 pts = (base cost 35 + Warscythe 10 + Mindshackle Scarabs 15 + Resurrection Orb 30)

Troops: Immortals (10#, 170 pts)
   10 Immortals, 170 pts = 10 * 17

Troops: Warriors (11#, 143 pts)
   11 Warriors, 143 pts = 11 * 13

Fast Attack: Destroyers (3#, 140 pts)
   3 Destroyers, 140 pts = 3 * 40 (base cost 40) + Heavy Gauss Cannon x1 20

Fast Attack: Canoptek Wraiths (3#, 130 pts)
   3 Canoptek Wraiths, 130 pts = 3 * 35 (base cost 35) + Particle Caster x1 5 + Whip Coil x2 20

Fast Attack: Tomb Blades (3#, 75 pts)
   3 Tomb Blades, 75 pts = 3 * 25 (base cost 20 + Nebuloscope 5)

Heavy Support: Night Shroud Bomber (1#, 225 pts)
   1 Night Shroud Bomber, 225 pts

Heavy Support: Monolith (1#, 200 pts)
   1 Monolith, 200 pts

Heavy Support: Doomsday Ark (1#, 175 pts)
   1 Doomsday Ark, 175 pts

Laser Cut Card - Cyborg Sentinal (twin pack)

  Hiya folks,  Just a quick review of another FANTASTIC kit from Laser Cut Card. This one is the Cyborg Sentinel Twin-pack.  As you may recall, I built the previous incarnation kit, the Monolith and I was thoroughly jazzed with it.  Well, this kit is even, and I mean A LOT better!!

  As you can see in the pic right here, the Sentinals have a nice angle to them, unlike the monolith, which is a square.  Also, gone is the cardstock crystal, replaced by the green power crystals that mount into the holders perfectly.  The package comes with 2 complete Sentinals, as you see here.  Ingenious cut outs in the 'sprue' allow the crystals to ship relatively flat in the package.

  Assembly is dead easy, even more than the square monolith.  I like the fact that all the stuff in the symbols on the sides is 'backed up' by a small piece of card that you glue in.  You can see it in the pic below.  That means the highlight painting is even easier on this kit!

Laser Cut Card Objective Markers - Necron

  Well, Neal from Laser Cut Card did it again!  Another home run in the Necron coolness department.  These are some dead simple objective markers for themed for a Necron force and they are just great. 
  What makes them so great?  Notice the dice in the midst of the marker.  This is a great way to show what mysterious terrain you are in.  You can just roll the die, set it into the marker and voila, instant remembering.  I have the GW munitorium objective marker sets, and I like the stands and the dice, mind you, but the color and contrast makes them damned hard to read.
  These markers are pretty big, but not overly so, you can see the size in relation to a die.  One side has the normal spread of number 1,2,2,3,3,4 while the other side has a generic Necron emblem.  They are three layers thick of the heavy duty card Neal uses, so there is very little chance of the die getting bumped or jostled out of the marker during a game.  If you're tough enough to knock the die out of it, you're probably a rage-quitter... seek professional help :)

Necrons with Lollipops, or masking with Silly Putty

  Well, not exactly lollipops, but the first time I looked at at this setup, it struck me as a good title.

  A while back I saw a video from Les Bursley on his youtube channel about using silly putty to mask figs and how easy it was.  Well, I had just painted up Nemessor Zhandrek and Vargard Obyron and done a feeble attempt with ghost tints and power weapons, so I wanted to mask that area off before I hit the figs with dullcote (Or in this case, Army Painter Matte finish spray)

  I rolled out the silly putty into a thin sheet with my clay rolling pin and then cut out some sheets;

My crazy life... IMP Armour 12, Night Shroud, Nova Open Raffles

  Ok, writing this post on my iPad as I lie in the hospital bed I'm chained to for another night.  Long story short, sat night/Sunday morning I went into anaphylaxis shock and was not able to breathe.  Not a cool thing, but the Rio Rancho FD was on the scene ASAP (heroes!!)  Lots of doctoring going on and I find out that I also have type 2 diabetes.  To add insult to injury, I ordered a collector's edition of Apocalypse on Friday, only to find out today that they had sold out before my order went in.  Shitty weekend, all in all.

  But, I did get some cool stuff in the last few weeks.  quick reviews follow...

Forge World - Necron Night Shroud Bomber

 Yeah, this thing rocks.  For one, the model is way better than  the Storm Eagle I bought previously.  The parts are much better fit and it looks like this one might go together pretty easily.

  And... it has Death Spheres.  Think photon torpedoes for the battlefield.  S10 AP1 Large Blast, bomb with blind and pinning.  That's a world of hurt and it carries 5 of them.

  I cannot wait to build this thing and give it a shot.

Forge World - Imperial Armour 12 - The Fall of Orpheus

 Wowza!  Expensive but is this ever great.  I have never picked up an imperial armor book before, but after listening to the Independent Characters podcast review, I had to order it.

 Am I ever glad I did.  Just the fluff section is great, but it really shines with the 3 army lists and campaign systems.  The army lists are for a new Necron dynasty called the Maynarkh.  Very cool options with these guys and you can take a lot of it to regular 40k.  The new units are fun.

  The other lists are for a Space Marine Minotaurs chapter, again, cool stuff here.  The last entry is for the update ImpGuard Death Corps of Krieg.  Again, very cool to look at, and I am not a Guard person at all.  If I was to do any Imp Guard stuff, it would be these guys, no question.

  The campaign system is outstanding.  Very fair and balanced while allowing you to play anything you like.  There are some example missions but they are suggestions and you can do anything you like, Zone Mortalis, regular 40k, even BFG if you like. 

  The book is way worth what you pay for it 48 Brit Pounds or $71 dollars at today's rate.  Expensive but you do get what you pay for.  

Forge World - Abbadon and Loken

 Ok, who doesn't love Loken and hate Abbadon, when reading the book(s).  This is a gorgeous set of figs and base.  The great part is both characters are on bases that slide in and out of the diorama, so you can have this as a great display piece, but also use the characters in a game.

Awesome!!!



Well, that's about it for now, getting tired and it's almost time for a vital signs check.  Signing off...

DOH... one more thing...

The guys at Nova Open are doing charity army raffles at this years open.  Here is the text from their website raffle section.

Our biggest fundraising events will be charitable army raffles, which focus on engaging the tabletop miniature gaming communities. Raffle tickets are sold online HERE continuously until the drawings which will occur at the NOVA Open Convention on Sunday, September 1, 2013. This year, there are three painted armies being created for the following causes:

• 40K Dark Angels: Redemption of the Fallen Army for Doctors Without Borders
• 40K Necrons: House of the Silent King Army for Fisher House Foundation
• Warmachine/Hordes: The Lightish Red Army (aka Pink) for Breast Cancer Research Foundation

 Sounds awesome to me, and they are giving .95cents of every $1 spent on raffle tickets and you do not need to be there to win.  Very cool!  I just had to plug that.

Now I'm outta here...

Review - Laser Cut Card 'Cyborg Monolith' - Awesome!

  I have had this card stock kit from Laser Cut Card for a while now, just have not had time to build it.  Boy am I sorry, this is great stuff.

  I had a Sunday night off (no mothers day here, we're monster-less :) so I looked for something to knock together.  There on my desk was my envelope from South Africa (where Laser Cut Card resides) and I decided to do it.

  It looked slightly intimidating at first, but reading through the steps on the instructions at the website made it look easier.  I have to say that Neal must have put a great deal of thought into his design, because it goes together without a hitch.  Super simple, easy to build and very forgiving of a guy with little manual dexterity and lacking modeling talent.

  The instructions on the website are clear and concise, but they lacked any information on painting.  That kinda sucked 'cuz I spent quite a while looking.  In the end I decided just to airbrush regular acrylic paint onto them.  It seems to have worked well, but we'll see if there is any warping as the paint sets overnight.  I am betting it won't, or I'm sure Neal would have warned users not to do it.

  Hint - If he says to do or not do something, he means it.  Tolerances are very tight and everything fits well if you 'do it his way'.  I won't bore you with tutorial steps on assembly, I'll just put in some pics showing where I deviated because of the paint job I wanted on mine.

  All in all, I give this kit a big A or 9.5 (I hate giving perfect scores, it tends to cheapen the scale, I think).  It went together, paint and all, in just a couple of hours.  A sharp knife and some super glue is all you really need for a great looking terrain piece / objective for your Necron game table.  Easy to build, fun to build and paint, what more can you ask for?

  I am now totally looking forward to building the 'cyborg defense line' for my next game, since I really haven't painted my Aegis defense line yet...

Pics Follow....

Something DONE! - Manufactorum and Night Scythe

  It's a Christmas miracle...  well, an April miracle?  I actually have things done for a change.  While I would love to take all the credit, my wife stepped in and did some.

  My wife offered to help paint stuff, and since she is quite good anyhow, I figured how could I go wrong, right?  So I gave her the manufactorum I built from the Imperial Sector set.  Wow, did she knock it out of the park.  It looks so good, pictures don't seem to catch the subtle shading.  My lousy photo skills make it seem clunky and blocky,  but it looks smashing! 

I can't wait to base this with some rubble and make it look great.  It will be a grand addition to the tabletop!

BatRep 1000 aka Necron Beatdown

  So, the beatdown of the metal-men continued.  After many misconceptions and hand-wringing, I developed a list for 1000 points of Necrons that I wanted to address 2 issues i saw.

1. No psykers means psyker beatdowns every turn.
2. Close combat is not our bag, but the space wolves kinda dig that sort of thing.

  Sooooo, I chose a completely ineffective warlord (Anrakyr), loaded him on a CCB and added 3 wraiths with whip coils.  That should do it.  Well, all of you who know Necron lists, know that this was pure folly on my part.  In an army that survives on synergy and using all your units to the fullest, I butchered my chances from the start with bad list making and even worse play.  We rolled up the mission and it looked like fun, The scouring with Hammer and Anvil deployment.

  I know what your thinking, a necron dream mission.  I could use  the long table to maneuver and stay away from CC with the nasty armored meat-sacks.  So, what do you think I did not do?  Exactly, I did not maneuver and I jumped into CC.  What a thundering dunder-head. Deployment was second for me, so I even had the chance to observe, and I wasted that!  What really makes me mad, is that I let my poor tactical decisions get under my skin and I proceeded to channelize, and even forgot to move my CCB with Anrakyr on it one turn!!!  A complete and total poster child for how not to play a game of 40k.  And all through this, Devin was happily butchering my units, psyking them out and generally pummeling me with the space wolf beat stick!

BatRep 750 (Nec-SW) Doomsday Falls!

The Bloody End of it all

  How quickly doom falls!  In the 2nd Escalation game, the Necrons fell hard.  Bad setup, some lower than average rolling and power fist madness spelled doooom, and I'm not talking Doomsday Ark either.

  We rolled up the same deployment, diagonal and the mission was The Relic.  Easy peasy, lemon Squeezy, I thought.  I'll roll in, grab the relic and pound some space wolf butt...  Yeah, not hardly.

  My list follows;  Not terribly imaginative, but I thought I would the next squad of warriors just to contest more objectives and use a night Scythe to deliver them, and have a mobile gun platform.


750 Pts - Necrons Roster - Task Force OU-812-750

HQ: Overlord (1#, 130 pts)

   1 Overlord, 130 pts ((C:NE, pg. 30); Infantry; Warscythe; Resurrection Orb; Ever-Living; Independent Character; Reanimation Protocols; Warlord)

Troops: Immortals (5#, 85 pts)

   5 Immortals, 85 pts ((C:NE, pg. 34); Infantry; Tesla Carbine; Reanimation Protocols)

Troops: Warriors (10#, 130 pts)

   10 Warriors, 130 pts ((C:NE, pg. 33); Infantry; Gauss Flayer; Reanimation Protocols)

Troops: Warriors (11#, 230 pts)

   10 Warriors, 230 pts ((C:NE, pg. 33); Infantry; Gauss Flayer; Reanimation Protocols)

      1 Night Scythe ((C:NE, pg. 51); (DFTS, pgs. 61 & 70); Vehicle (Transport); 1 Access Point; 15 model capacity; TL Tesla Destructor; Deep Strike; Invasion Beams; Living Metal; Supersonic)

Heavy Support: Doomsday Ark (1#, 175 pts)

   1 Doomsday Ark, 175 pts ((C:NE, pg. 48); Doomsday Cannon; Gauss Flayer Array (each side); Quantum Shielding; Living Metal; Jink; Vehicle (Open-topped, Skimmer))

Roster satisfies all enforced validation rules
Total Roster Cost: 750
Created with Army Builder® - Try it for free at http://www.wolflair.com

  Also wanted to mention - Used the Battlemarker markers for this game, very handy, cannot recommend them highly enough!!!   The are an e-bay store that makes markers for all kinds of game systems, and all types of things.  The Reanimation Protocol, ever living, quantum shielding etc markers are so handy.  Well worth looking into!!!
 

BatRep 500 (Necron-Space Wolf)

  So, finished up the first of hopefully many games in an escalation series that a friend of mine, Devin, and I are doing.  Doing an escalation style series of games gives it more of a campaign feel, even though we are using no campaign rules at all.  It is also highly motivational in the painting department.  I just realized that I have to paint up another 250 points of necrons before the weekend.  Holy Merde!

  We played on the Realm of Battle game boards that I have just finished up, and they worked really well.  The heavy flocking stayed put, dice rolled reasonably well (take that MightyTim!!), and all in all, I have to give them an A+.  Of course, all they did was lay there and sweat, so to speak.

The Finished boards to play on. I like the way the flocking came out.

 
  The game... well that was odd.  We started out at 500pts and we will escalate 250 pts each time, and we're sticking with our forces (Necrons for me, Space Wolves for Devin) throughout, although who knows about a few one-offs that may come up!  We rolled the mission as Big Guns Never Tire with the wonky diagonal deployment.  I lost the roll and had to set up first.  No biggy, three units.  The mission helped me by making my already Velveeta-Smooth Doomsday Ark scoring.

Doomsday Ark - Hawtness

So, I had some time tonight after my toothache turned into an extraction because the tooth broke below the gum-line.  Wonderful USAF dentistry the culprit here, it rotted from the inside out...  Anyhow, I got to finish the assembly of my Necron Doomsday Ark that I started on Sunday.  This is the first model that I actually built in small stages and painted the sub-assemblies as I went.  Very hand y way to do it.  I'm kinda bummed that I didn't clean up the model more, there are mold lines that stick out like sore digital-metallic appendages.

Here are some shots... enjoy...


Still some edge highlighting and touch-ups to do, but mostly done...

These are also on my Flickr Page if you like that better...

BattleMarkers - Great stuff!!

So, every now and then you come across a great product that fills a great need.  Battlemarkers is just that deal.  Imagine all the markers you would ever need for your 40k game, without hassles and without breaking the bank.

Imagine, if you will, That these markers are just like buttons without the pin in the back.  They are metal, excellently printed and clear coated to that they will last a long time.  That's what these markers are, and they ROCK.  They are great looking, and durable as hell.  These are not going to wipe off or fade out on you.

I needed these for my Necron army, but they also have a ton more.  In fact, I got a great deal on a Necron Package that had just about every marker you could think of for a necron force to use.  They also have a ton of markers for other armies and for the game system as well.  For $6 for a single set of markers, you cannot go wrong.  My Necron Package was $20, and it had 4 sets, so that saves you $4 over and above.  The guys shipped them out so fast I had them before I knew it.

Definitely use the link above to check out all they have to offer.  They sell through ETSY, so you know you're not getting hosed and they have to maintain a standard there.

Seriously, Run, don't walk, to this store and grab these markers, you're game will be improved.