The Red Grail

'ard boyz army list

2009-07-10T01:08:00.004-04:00

Ive decided to take eldar once again for the first round of the 'ard boyz (3 years in a row now). Unfortunately the Eldar are much weaker compared to the newer armies but I firmly believe that I can still do very well with them because Im preparing for my areas meta games

The con of the eldar, in my opinion, are as follows

Poor infantry models
Poor CC except for jetlocks
Poor troops in general (Not very resilient)

Pros
Able to capture objectives rapidly
good concentration of fire
amazing anti-squadron units
eldrad

Knowing that I decided on the following list

HQ
Eldrad
Farseer on jetbike
8x warlocks on jetbikes

Elite
8 fire dragons (exarch with tank hunter and crack shot) + wave serpent TL BL
8 fire dragons (exarch with tank hunter and crack shot) + wave serpent TL BL

Troops
10 dire avengers (exarch with bladestorm) + wave serpent with dual cannons
10 dire avengers (exarch with bladestorm) + wave serpent with dual cannons
5 jetbikes + 1 warlock (embolden)

Heavy
Fire prism (holofields, star engines)
Fire prism (holofields, star engines)
Fire prism

Strategy
The basic strategy here is concentration of firepower on units I need to die first.. You dont NEED to zoom up and suicide yourself with Eldar .. All you gotta do is outlast them. I gave the fire prisms star engines and holofields so they can contest late game and annoy the hell out of people

I took the warlocks to surround transports and kill everyone inside with fire dragons

Mission 1 strategy

First or second turn? Second due to night fight and objectives

Deployment will be refused flank and I plan to hit them hard on a single flank and possibly then retreat to hold more objectives while using the serpents and prisms to contest

Due to only having to have more objectives it lets my jetbike squadron stay in reserve until hopefully turn 3.. Then with the warlock they most likely will not fall back

I think to win at this mission you need to be conservative with Eldar because you have to win the KP game as well as the objective game to score a massacre

Mission 2

First or second turn? First .. Eldrad is annoying in dawn of war if you go first since you then dictate where their 3 units set up (or 0 if they stay in reserve)..

Basic strategy is to deploy a unit of dire avengers 6" from the board edge and their wave serpent empty and Eldrad. This lets you on the first turn fortune the wave serpent and then have your fire dragons walk on so that they can embark into it (Instead of in a non-fortuned one)

Its important to get your jetbikes on before their shooting so they arent set up to shoot you before you can fortune.

Eldar are fast enough that you can pretty much go anywhere they move on.. First turn night fight means going first is also better because they wont have much on the board anyway

Since this is a KP mission the strategy is fairly dependent on what they bring

Mission 3

First or second turn? First turn.. Eldrad is amazing in spearhead deployments and there is no night fight.. Getting your fortunes up before they shoot is much more useful than going second in a 2 objective mission

Basic strategy
By using eldrads ability you can either force them to commit to a side and then move away OR towards them to engage.. Also it may force them to not commit at all giving you free choice over what side you wanna hit in full force.

You will lose this game if you try to commit to both objectives imo considering you dont need to control both, only one and contest the other.. That is where the jetbikes come in and the fire prisms with star engines

as stated I plan to hopefully catch the player unprepared on a flank and hit one objective with everything

We will see how the games go!

Recent tournament results

2009-07-07T21:26:00.004-04:00

As I have other sites where I post my models Im going to be using this blog more to talk about blood angels and eldar (Since those are the armies I play)

Much has been said about the state of Blood Angels as an army. A lot seem to think it's a bad list or a boring list or most likely a misunderstood list. I agree on two of those points, which are its fairly boring and its misunderstood

As my tournament results keep confirming they are NOT a bad list and infact can be quite powerful if used correctly. What this means is that you generally use the combination of Dante + Corbulo, rhinos and some hard hitting units such as death company.

Last week I played in a local 1850 tournament and took my Blood Angels once again. I didnt quite know how I'd fair against new imperial guard but luckily no one brought them for some odd reason

As usual we had a bunch of marine players and a mix of other races like eldar and orks. Some were experienced, some werent and some *thought* they were experienced. Having played 2 armies for all of my 13 years of 40k experience I like to think I know how to play my lists regardless of rule changes

For this tournament I took my standard template list.

HQ
Dante
Corbulo

Elite
6 man veteran squad - 2 meltas, power fist, power weapon
8 death company - jump packs

Troops
Tactical squad - melta, power fist, rhino
Tactical squad - melta, power fist, rhino
Assault squad - power fist, rhino

Fast attack
attack bike - MM
attack bike - MM

Heavy
Land raider crusader

-------------------------------

At first glance it doesnt seem like a "wowzer" army but played correctly Blood Angels can be asbolutely devastating. The overall strategy is to keep your units close to one another as you advance, keeping Dante and the DC out of los if possible by using the land raider. Once you reach the enemy you branch out and attack as many units as you can while remaining within the 12" bubble of the two characters. People who dont understand how lethal this is get demolished by a multi-unit charge which ends up entire wiping them out with a ton of LD modifiers or they suffer massive amounts of no retreat

However, Blood Angels are a tier2 list to be sure so new IG is difficult however Orks arent that bad because BA can pump out tons of wounds

Game 1

I faced a mech eldar player who was using what i remember as..

HQ
Autarch - warp generator
Farseer

Troops
10 man wraithguard
guardian squad
2 10 man dire avengers - wave serpent

Elite
2 6 man fire dragons - wave serpent

Fast attack
9 man warp spiders

Basically his strategy was to hold objectives with his guardians and wraithguard and out flank you with the avengers, dragons and spiders. To be said it was a decent list. I personally don't like 10 man wraithguard units because they're a bit too slow for my taste

Deployment - 5 objectives, table quarter deployment
He won first turn so he set up with aggressively with his serpents in front with the wraithguard and guardians behind. The warp spiders and the autarch were kept in reserve.

My deployment was fairly defensive with my rhinos upfront (the empty rhino closest) with the land raider, jump troops and attack bikes hidden behind them. I also combat squadded 5 bolter marines to hold and objective in my deployment zone. I was worried about the warp spiders deep striking backing there, but my fears were unfounded

Summary of the battle

I stole the initative and was able to use it to blow up a wave serpent with fire dragons on the first turn. In return he destroyed my land raider but was unable to destroy my rhinos before they got to his line. On turn 3 all my assault units charged his wraithguard, guardians, and a squad of dire avengers and wiped them out on his following turn

By turn 5 nothing was really left alive except for the autarch, some warp spiders and an empty wave serpent. To the Autarchs credit he did kill Dante when I failed all my invulnerable saves but then was cut down by the veteran squad on the final turn

At the end of the game I had 4 objectives controlled and he had 0

Game 2 - dawn of war, capture and control

This game was against an Ork Army played by someone who I rarely get along with during games.

His list was something like this..

HQ
Ghazghkull
Big mek with shokk attack gun

Elite
Mega nobz - battle wagon

Troops
Shoota boyz - 30
Shoota boyz - 30
Slugga boyz - trukk
'ard boyz - 30

Heavy
killer kan - mega blasta
deff dread

He won first turn and deployed his big unit of 'ard boyz in the middle of the board, a unit of shoota boyz at his objective in the rear and his big mek with them

I decided to not deploy anything and force his hand.

Summary of Game

After much taunting about my strategy being stupid he moved his units on, but didnt move the 'ard boyz up at all.. I came on with all my forces and moved slowly, killing a few of the 'ard boyz here and there

The only thing I was really worried about was a lucky shot from the shokk attack gun which did manage to destroy a rhino but did nothing else

For the 2nd turn I moved up slowly again, putting my rhino within charge range of his 'ard boyz (which were in a large piece of terrain). This is a very classic tactic of delay because I was trying to bait him into commiting his units

Taking the trap he tried to charge my rhino with his huge 'ard boyz unit (why he did that I will never know).. and failed to make it to me. On my following turn I counter charged with every unit I had except for the assault squad in the land raider. The 'ard boyz were dead and I consolidated so that my tactical squads were in front

Ghazghkull and his mega nobz charged them next turn, wiping out a full squad (no surprise) and he called the waagh as well. However he made a massive mistake and charged his shoota boyz unit at my death company AND the tactical squad thus locking them into a complex assault.

YOU SHOULD NEVER DO THIS when you have one GOOD unit and a unit that is total liability like shoota boyz are. I managed to do around 7 more wounds, which caused ghazgkulls unit to take no retreat damage and left about 6 shoota boyz AND made the mega nobz unengaged

On my turn I jumped my veterans right next to the nobz and unloaded the land raider.. After many melta guns and bolt pistols 4 of the 6 mega nobz were dead and I charged, killing the other 2 while suffering a good amount of deaths in the process

Ghazghkull failed his LD test and was run down. Note, he was fearless but the ork player insisted he was not (I knew he was because of his special waagh but this guy was really annoying during the game)..

KNOW YOUR OWN RULES..

Anyway after that point I was able to move my remaining units up and capture his objective as well on the last turn via consolidation

Victory - 2 objectives

Game 3 - kill points, pitched battle

I faced a sisters of battle army that was definatly not high tier

HQ

Saint celestine (lol)
Canoness

Elite
celestians

Troops
20 man sister
10 man sisters
guard platoon - chimera

Fast
Dominion squad - immolator

Heavy
2 exorcists
retributor squad

His list was at a massive disadvantage because it was not mech and basically had to wait for me to hit his lines. Now, he did benefit from those super annoying acts of faith which stopped his celestians from dying and actually killed my veterans

He deployed extremely defensively in a box at the back corner.. and I deployed aggressively with everything in a line.

Summary of the battle

I won first turn and moved everything up and popped smoke. On his next turn he only managed to stun a single rhino (which was the empty one) and another rhino made 4 cover saves in a row. On my next turn I moved up another 12" so I was right infront of his lines with 2 rhinos, the land raider and the death company charged saint celestine who was hiding behind a building, killing her.. The veterans and another tactical squad moved to engage his celestian and dominion squads

Basically, he failed to stop my assault units and when they assaulted I killed all the guard infront, then a tactical squad died to return fire and then the entire sister army vanished when the death company and assault squad charged on turn 4

However, as stated his celestian squad killed my veterans and really was the only thing left alive. To make matters worse, the rhino that passed 4 cover saves was only rendered immobile on the next turn and on turn 6 repaired itself!

Victory - tons more Kps

I went on to win best overall due to my painting scores and highest battle score.

Tycho and Terminators

2009-05-13T18:38:00.005-04:00

Yesterday I had a wonderful idea to add in Tycho to our upcoming mega battle on the 30th which included him not being "quite" dead from Armageddon. Instead he was left with nothing more than a fragmented memory and a hatred for the orks that almost killed him. With no chaplain to guide him he gathered a few remaining soldiers to leave that world to hunt out any green skins he could find

It is on Rikal IV that Tycho found his target

For this conversion I took Tycho's head and cut it off because I think his model is garbage. Kit-bashing a new body I used the chainsaw sword from the vanguard box and a combi-melta from another model I wasnt using. Painting was fairly easy as I knew he would be in death company colors. I partially hand drew the banner followed by a huge skull decal from the baneblade sheet. The end result is below!

In other painting news I finished up the last of my terminators. The opposing side is bringing 5 gargantuan squiggoths so I desperately needed something to kill them with.

...Enter Terminator squad: black

That's it for now. If you're interested in the playtest rules for the final battle for Rikal IV just follow the link at the top of the blog

Master of the Forge Detonious

2009-05-06T21:39:00.003-04:00

Took me a little while but I finished my custom master of the forge.

He's going to be a minor character in the final battle for Rikal IV that we're having on the 30th. You can find his stats by clicking on the LINK in the last blog post

Final Stand rules

2009-05-02T19:49:00.006-04:00

I have been hard at work writing up the rules for my next mega battle named "Final Stand". In this the Blood Angels are pushed back to their last stronghold and must either destroy all the assaulting orks and chaos or die trying. Here are the rules, however parts are missing such as secret objectives

To see the rules click here

Terminators and sternguard

2009-04-26T12:59:00.008-04:00

It's a lot of work trying to get all my units ready for our big final Rikal IV game. After making rules for Jolin the terminator captain I decided he needed his own command squad. Fortunately I had a base coated terminator unit with FW shoulder pads which would work perfectly.

Using my standard paint scheme I simply added gold to their shoulders and altered their headpiece colors to make them stand out more. I think they turned out pretty well

Now the sternguard were much more of a conversion process since I didnt buy GW's boxsets. 70$ for 10 models isn't what I call a bargain for marines who just have special bolters. Creating my own 7 combi-meltas was fairly easy just a bit time consuming. For the sergeant I used the limited edition one from the online store and then made my own heavy flamers. Inspiration struck me for the floating platform and while it's not totally canon I think it looks cool anyway so screw it

In game 1 these guys were a huge disappointment but I hope game 3 will be different!
and lastly I finished Corbulo's custom stormlord. If anyone follows BA lists you'll notice that Corbulo tends to ride in a vehicle to maximize his range which has become a bit of an inside joke to my friends and I. Since he's a prominent member of the chapter why isnt he riding in something a bit more stylist? Well here is his new ride

I call it the "Last Rites"

That's it for now. Only a few more units to go

New updates

2009-04-26T12:50:00.003-04:00

It's been a super busy couple of weeks due to me getting married and also involved with a mortgage for our new house.

The board did get finished so first I figure I'll post the results!

This first picture is the entire board with all my terrain. Since this picture was taken I have finished basing and painting all the terrain so it looks better. Please remember my carpet isnt flat and will look different properly set up

a picture of the blood angel base area which took me the longest

So far all the players in the game are excited and its looking to be A LOT of fun. Who says apoc cant be entertaining?

Day 3

2009-04-08T18:16:00.005-04:00

The final 3 boards in the first half of the battlefield took a while to paint due to the roads.. Here are how they turned out

This piece is the top half board #2 and it connects to the board seen in the last update. Here you see the road that will connect to the second bridge which is very near the blood angel base

Moving to the bottom half of the board we have board #1 which has the first bridge and the left half of the road that goes around the research center

Bottom board #2 is the rest of the research center road and would connect to the BA base if not for a roadblock at the end (Another piece of movable terrain)

Lastly we have the entire board set up.. Keep in mind this is only half of the final battlefield

Day 2!

2009-04-05T14:11:00.012-04:00

Much progress can be made in a day especially when you're laid off and on unemployment.. So hey Im getting paid to do this and go to school..

My goal for the terrain is for it to look really good with models and other scenery on the field but at the same time I do not want to spend weeks detailing it. Reason? I don't believe it will enhance the enjoyment of the game all that much because people tend to not pay a lot of attention to it compared to the models themselves

After having marked up the first 4 boards I got my tub of textured paint and just got a paintbrush to layer it on. Fairly straight forward. Before that however I covered all the roads with masking tape so that later (as you'll see) I could take it off and paint them by hand.

Here is an example of the very exciting "foam with white paint" picture! Now, the paint can said it took 4 hours to dry but it actually took more around 14. But that did not deter me from working on other parts of the overall project in the meantime

Deciding I needed some base defense since I've never really played with any. For whatever reason all my game stores have terrain yet nothing like that. Going to the hardware store I found some plumbing pieces that looked like they could be an imperial gun emplacement.. Some bits later I had these!

Also needing some turrets for my sandbags I made a few autocannon turrets which were just predator sponsons with the lascannons replaced by autocannons (From said predators)

Finally one of the boards was dry so I got out my spray paint and started to paint it.. First coat was matte black then a brown and finally an off white to give it the look I wanted. Once that was dry I peeled off the masking tape and did the roads by hand

That's it for day 2

Building the battle for Rikal IV Board

2009-04-04T12:56:00.003-04:00

I've decided to build at totally new board for my final battle on Rikal IV

The first thing I did was buy 2 8x4 2 inch thick insulation from home depot at around 15$ a sheet.. Then I had it cut into 8 2x4s so it was easier to carry home and modify

After that I measured all pieces of my terrain that I intended to use and made a scale model of the board in photo shop which helped me design and plan it..

Once the terrain was placed I drew the roads and the sludge river on the map

You will have to click the thumbnails to see the road outlines!

It took a few hours of fooling around to get everything just right and after that I started to mark the boards and cut the river..

This is the bottom left corner where the first bridge is located.. Drawing the roads was easy since my model in photo shop was perfect scale at 1 inch = 1 foot

Next I went to the bottom mid left which has the majority of the sludge river and the rest of the road complex that surrounds the research center

Top left was next which let me finish up the other side of the bridge and start the roads where the invading orks will start

and finally I did Top mid left which was just a continuation of the starting ork ruins

I'll start working on the other 4 pieces soon, but Top and bottom right are basically flat as they are for the BA base and the power station so really only 2 more sections to do

The Battle for Rikal IV COMPLETE

2009-04-02T21:52:00.003-04:00

The first installment of the epic struggle for control of Rikal IV is finally finished. In this campaign book you'll find new data sheets for blood angels, tau, orks and chaos, new (and altered) strategic assets, special objectives, a new secret objective system and many more features!

This game was played in 5 hours and features armies of 15,000 points a side!

Please check out the PDF HERE

Defence laser complete

2009-03-30T14:08:00.004-04:00

After spending a bit of time on it the defence laser (Yes I know the american spelling is defense but I spell it the GW way because of how people do searches) it is finished .. mostly

It's a fairly simple paintjob, I just spray paint black and then dry brush gun metal followed by dark brown.. Then I detail it a bit

It still needs some autocannons and a big banner

Mega battle terrain

2009-03-28T18:54:00.009-04:00

In preparation for our big final battle on may 30th ive begun making a ton of terrain specific for this game.. Most of it is apocalypse but a lot can be used in average games

Here is the start of my defence laser. The base is a wood board and I went to the hardware shop and got random cheap plumbing pieces to make the base of the weapon. The upper portion where troops can sit and use the lascannons is from an old GI joe base I had.. as you can see I added cities of death bits to it as well

The turret was a large pipe and I put a cockpick from some toy on the end to focus the laser before shootingThis next one also uses a huge gatling cannon from a GI joe toy.. repainted of course . It's going to be a Super Vulcan mega bolter which goes inside the building its pictured with

Keep in mind most of these require the paint jobs to be finished! Here is our power station, i used the large portion of the GI joe bases, cut off parts and added some cool lightbulbs

A research building with built in gatling defense cannon (smaller than the previous one)

A platform for anti-air defense

First battle report almost done

2009-03-26T21:18:00.004-04:00

Ive been working for the entire week on this 35ish page campaign booklet which includes the first battle report, rules and backstory for our games. I tried to make it not just a simple battle report but something that would be interesting and fun to read.

For anyone interested you can find the *almost* done file here Battle for Rikal IV. It is around 32 pages but its a very quick read due to having more pictures than actual text

Im waiting on some more fluff before I finish it up and release it for more to see

Datasheets from our custom Apoc game

2009-03-25T01:25:00.004-04:00

So far I have 17 pages done of the PDF that will be the battle report + all the rules and backstory of the mini-campaign. It's a lot of work, but now I have a system so its getting easier

I figure I'll post the datasheets for the special characters we're using as they are what got people the most excited.

This one is Dante's Wing, basically it's Dante's personal honor guard which are some of the most skilled marines in the entire chapter. At 60 points a model they better be!

This is Moriar the Chosen who they left out of the newest codex (Or pamphlet basically). He's supposed to be the baddest Furioso around, so as you'll notice he has old school and new school rules mixed with an ironclad. Both of these are my paint jobs (You can see all of these in my flickr gallery)I'll post more tommorrow! We have Orks, Tau and Chaos still left

- Kirasu

First!

2009-03-22T21:11:00.006-04:00

I've decided to stop posting everything to multiple websites such as my pictures and put them all on this one blog. This is much easier for me to handle.

Last wednesday we did a massive 15k a side apocalypse game which is game 2 of a 3 game story arc. The previous game was also 15k a side yet very different in the mission we played. At the end of may we'll be doing the final battle of this series which will be 20k a side!

Luckily, our apoc games run very smoothly because it's only around 4 of us who don't argue or waste time. Very soon I'm going to have the battle report for game 1 up and done. It's taking forever because I want it to be high quality and I was quite busy with many other activities. After that I'm going to get game 2 up, and then of course the grand finale game 3 in the next few months after the game.

For now I'm simply going to post pictures of my models and the events that they partake in.

This is the battle board for game #1. Dimensions were 12x6. It may seem a bit small but our apoc games generally only allow 1/3rd of your force on for the first turn, to help speed things up.

The second picture as you can see is the same board but with a lot more models on it. This is what the game looked like during turn 2 (Hard to tell expect for the thunderhawk in the picture)