Man oh man, I love Tzeentch Terminators. They rock. Make sure to give your aspiring champion both Bolt of Change and Gift of Chaos. There's nothing like a terminator squad that can make more chaos spawn.
Anyway, as promised here are the terminators. Now, as I mentioned before, the best part about Tzeentch is the ability to get two different kinds of terminators (though both count as elite choices). The problem with this is that you will inevitably want to buy miniatures for your army that GW does not sell. There are no Tzeentch Terminators. Moreover, as the Thousand Sons are supposed to be resistant to mutation, you really shouldn't be using the regular terminator model (since they all have horns, tusks, mandibles, etc.). The old Rogue Traitor terminators are your best bet because they look like regular terminators with a different sort of iconography. Instead of imperial symbols they have chaos. The other problem with the terminator miniature is that Tzeentch termies (non-chosen) are all supposed to be using power weapons, and the terminator power weapon is rare.
So, to sum up, your non-chosen terminators are going to require you to use a terminator model that is pretty much without mutation and which is carrying a power weapons. Already, you are going to have to convert. Moreover, if you're already converting you might as well make the head dress.
So, first things first: for this conversion, you will need a clay that hardens in the oven (something like filo), you will need a dremel with a cut off wheel, and finally, you will need to hit Michael's and pick up a pack of random shapes made from thin wood sheets.
About those wooden sheets, first off, they're going to be near the balsa wood. They come in bags of rectangles that are between a 1/2"x1" up to 2"x1", so they're small. They are necessary for this project and absolutely useful in almost every scenery project you are going to undertake as they can quickly create the texture of masonry or plating. They're flat and easilly manageable. Too thick to be cut with a craft knife, they have the resiliency that you need, and combined with the dremel cut off wheel, you can cut or sand them into almost any shape. Use the "cutting" part of the wheel. to cut, and use the top or bottom of the wheel to quickly sand out. In this way, you are not technically "cutting" out the headset shape, but rather sanding it out of the wood.
I'm getting ahead of myself. Before you sand anything out, first draw the basic shape of the head-dress on one of those 1"x1/2" pieces. You may want to look at a regular thousand son head to get the basic proportionso for this.
Good, NOW sand out the shape.
Make an incision along the top of the miniatures head running from side to side with the dremel. You're making a slot in which to fit the wooden piece. Keep grinding at the metal until you can get the flat wood headdress in there snugly. With the piece in place, trace the outline of where the top of the head meets the headress.
Now cover the wood with a thin layer of the filo. smoothing it agains the edges to give it more "stick". Now slice out a little channel halfway across the headdress running up and down. Next, with a toothpick or something equally wide and NOT SHARP make the horizontal stripes of the Thousand Sons head dress. Keep in mind, the point here is not to cut out channels (as it was for the middle of the head dress) as that is likely to tear the filo, but rather to simply make indentations.
By now, you probably have a good idea of where the sillouette line you drew earlier was. Cut away the clay so that it doesn't get in the way of putting the headdress back into the slot.
Finally, put the whole thing in the oven so that the clay bakes, put it together with some glue, and wallah, Thousand Sons Terminators.
As for the body, I already mentioned that the old terminator models are really what you want to use, but barring that you must improvise. As you can see, I've used three different models to make my terminators. The old chaos terminator, the old chaos terminator sergeant, and the old chaos squats in exo armor. The main stay of my force is actually made up of the exo-armor squats. What the hell else am I going to use them for? These other two miniatures are really more for chosen terminators--note for instance the conversion of one terminator so that a skeleton is at the helm. Regardless, your main trick is to get those power fists out of the majority. They are fine for your aspiring champion and for your chosen, but the regular automaton terminators all have power weapons. That's why I find the chaos squats such a great solution to this problem; they're already armed with a hand to hand weapon that could pass for a power weapon and which is very much NOT a power fist.
I have other solutions to this conundrum, including another option for the terminator body, but not on these miniatures. I think I'll save that for next time.
Friday, January 27, 2006
Tuesday, January 17, 2006
Chaos redux-rethinking Slaanesh and Tzeentch
Oh, man oh man, do I have some tips for you all coming up. I'm making my Thousand Sons Termies which has been a royal pain in the rear, but the pay off is a sight to behold. Yes indeed. I need to get a few more of them painted and then I will post the whole...post.
Until then, I feel I may have steered you all wrong in my "expert" opinion of Slaanesh and Tzeentch. I say this because last Tuesday, we playtested some of my ideas. As it turns out, the distance between my house and the place where I do battle every Tuesday is about twenty minutes. Slash and I carpool. Now, if you read the introduction to this site you know that Slash will play whatever you put in front of him, or don't. I swear the guy would play Quarters as Raveners, nickels as genestealers, and pennies as gaunts with a special Chuckie Cheese Token Hive Tyrant if we let him. Anyways, I told Slash about my blog and about my assessment of Slaanesh, and rather than whole heartedly agreeing with me, he decided to give them a shot that night against Chris's Daemonhunters and Russ's Imperial Guard (man, IG every frickin' time!).
We played 750 a side, which doesn't seem like a lot, but basically means that your army doesn't get tanks and/or dreadnoughts. Regardless, in our discussion, Slash and I came to the conclusion that Slaanesh have a great deal of advantage at tank shocking their opponents. However, no tanks this battle, so I can't tell you how that turned out.
First of all, despite the fact that Slash's chaos lord teleported right into the back of a Chimera on his deep strike (and we therefore lost about 300 points of our force), we still won. Chaos is a hard force to stop, and Chris really just couldn't get his forces on the board fast enough, so that's not a real big surprise. What is a surprise is how handy Slaanesh turned out to be.
First of all, those sonic blasters are a damn sight better than bolters. True they are five extra points, but still really really nice. Three shots at 24" range turned out to make a lot of difference. Plus, if you consider that the mark of Tzeentch costs 10 points a model, and that the mark of Slaanesh only costs 5, you sort of have the 5 to spare. Meanwhile, you can still get heavy weapons.
While the chaos lord never made his appearance, he was a sight to behold on paper. Here's why, the inclusion of combat drugs gives him powers above and beyond those of any other patron god's chaos lords. He can ignore wounds, raise strength, etc.. Sure there's a chance of overdose, but if you only use two of those powers a round, the chance is pretty slim. In addition, the minor powers of Slaanesh are incredible. They are, I think, better than the major powers of Slaanesh. His lord could have waltzed into hand to hand, without being able to be shot at, with a strength of seven before the power fist. I don't know, it looked powerful. Then it teleported into an APC and that was the end of that. Deep strike taketh and deep strike taketh away.
Meanwhile, Tzeentch. I have not lost faith in my new army, but I have had to rethink them a bit. First and foremost, Thrall wizards are not the great thing I had believed. I have not totally abandoned their usefulness, it's just that it's a usefulness that's hard to control. Keep in mind, that in ranged combat, every model gets the toughness of the majority. So, when the termies are in the majority, the thrall's get a toughness of 4, but when the thrall's are in the majority, the termies are at toughness 3, but since the unit has different armor saves as well as toughness saves, the wounds are allocated to the majority first. This is so incredibly frickin mathematically complex that to drag it out would be ridiculous. Let's put it this way. The Terminators block, as per usual, until such time as enough of them die and the thrall's are in the majority. At that time, if the thralls are in a major condition of majority, you're probably all right, in fact, you're probably well off, but...if they only outnumber the terminators by one, and they take enough hits to die and leave more hits remaining then the terminators will have to take the save at toughness 3 and without an armor save. Yes, that does suck. On the upshot, if the shot that kills the thrall wizard is a lascannon, then they're worth the points, moreover, you still get to decide which model takes which hits.
What happened was this, the thrall wizards saved the terminators from getting killed by lasguns. Yeah. I'm not sure they were worth it, and I'm pretty sure, that might have gone far worse. I think, buy A thrall wizard and sacrifice him to get your extra bolt of change shot the second you touch down from deep striking.
As for the Thousand sons termies, combi-bolters. That's all I have to say. Damned combi-bolters. You see you can move and fire heavy weapons in terminator armor, but there is no mention of rapid fire weapons in the rulebook or in the codex. That means they can hand to hand or fire, but they can't do both. THEY CAN'T DO BOTH!
I feel as though this might be an oversight since they can fire lascannons and attack hand to hand, but they can't fire a bolter and hand to hand to hand. Something about that seems wrong, like I can lift a tank over my head but not a penny. Oh well, them's the rules.
So, your Tzeentch non-chosen termies aren't really great at hand to hand because they have power swords rather than power fists, and they aren't really great at ranged because they can't get anything better than combi-bolters, and they can't do both at the same time. I don't know. I'm sure I'll have more to say on them later, but for now, their main purpose seems to be to guard the aspiring champion, which they do fine and all. The question though isn't whether or not they do fine job at protecting the aspiring champion while he throws around the olts of change, but whether or not they do a better job than would 8 normal Thousand Sons marines in power armor, and that I just don't know.
I will say this though, the Thousand Sons have STAYING POWER. I walked a squad of six across the board, and made it, all the while slowly picking of Inquisitor retinue. Also, the horrors of Tzeentch, or more precisely the Flamers of Tzeentch, are awesome. They just get a whole bunch of dice to roll at their enemies.
Having said all that, next time, I will return with conversion ideas for making Thousand Sons terminators and pictures dammit! Where the hell are the pictures? Is this not a site for miniature war gaming, and didn't it promise to include some pictures from time to time? Yes it did, yes I will; cross my heart.
Until then, I feel I may have steered you all wrong in my "expert" opinion of Slaanesh and Tzeentch. I say this because last Tuesday, we playtested some of my ideas. As it turns out, the distance between my house and the place where I do battle every Tuesday is about twenty minutes. Slash and I carpool. Now, if you read the introduction to this site you know that Slash will play whatever you put in front of him, or don't. I swear the guy would play Quarters as Raveners, nickels as genestealers, and pennies as gaunts with a special Chuckie Cheese Token Hive Tyrant if we let him. Anyways, I told Slash about my blog and about my assessment of Slaanesh, and rather than whole heartedly agreeing with me, he decided to give them a shot that night against Chris's Daemonhunters and Russ's Imperial Guard (man, IG every frickin' time!).
We played 750 a side, which doesn't seem like a lot, but basically means that your army doesn't get tanks and/or dreadnoughts. Regardless, in our discussion, Slash and I came to the conclusion that Slaanesh have a great deal of advantage at tank shocking their opponents. However, no tanks this battle, so I can't tell you how that turned out.
First of all, despite the fact that Slash's chaos lord teleported right into the back of a Chimera on his deep strike (and we therefore lost about 300 points of our force), we still won. Chaos is a hard force to stop, and Chris really just couldn't get his forces on the board fast enough, so that's not a real big surprise. What is a surprise is how handy Slaanesh turned out to be.
First of all, those sonic blasters are a damn sight better than bolters. True they are five extra points, but still really really nice. Three shots at 24" range turned out to make a lot of difference. Plus, if you consider that the mark of Tzeentch costs 10 points a model, and that the mark of Slaanesh only costs 5, you sort of have the 5 to spare. Meanwhile, you can still get heavy weapons.
While the chaos lord never made his appearance, he was a sight to behold on paper. Here's why, the inclusion of combat drugs gives him powers above and beyond those of any other patron god's chaos lords. He can ignore wounds, raise strength, etc.. Sure there's a chance of overdose, but if you only use two of those powers a round, the chance is pretty slim. In addition, the minor powers of Slaanesh are incredible. They are, I think, better than the major powers of Slaanesh. His lord could have waltzed into hand to hand, without being able to be shot at, with a strength of seven before the power fist. I don't know, it looked powerful. Then it teleported into an APC and that was the end of that. Deep strike taketh and deep strike taketh away.
Meanwhile, Tzeentch. I have not lost faith in my new army, but I have had to rethink them a bit. First and foremost, Thrall wizards are not the great thing I had believed. I have not totally abandoned their usefulness, it's just that it's a usefulness that's hard to control. Keep in mind, that in ranged combat, every model gets the toughness of the majority. So, when the termies are in the majority, the thrall's get a toughness of 4, but when the thrall's are in the majority, the termies are at toughness 3, but since the unit has different armor saves as well as toughness saves, the wounds are allocated to the majority first. This is so incredibly frickin mathematically complex that to drag it out would be ridiculous. Let's put it this way. The Terminators block, as per usual, until such time as enough of them die and the thrall's are in the majority. At that time, if the thralls are in a major condition of majority, you're probably all right, in fact, you're probably well off, but...if they only outnumber the terminators by one, and they take enough hits to die and leave more hits remaining then the terminators will have to take the save at toughness 3 and without an armor save. Yes, that does suck. On the upshot, if the shot that kills the thrall wizard is a lascannon, then they're worth the points, moreover, you still get to decide which model takes which hits.
What happened was this, the thrall wizards saved the terminators from getting killed by lasguns. Yeah. I'm not sure they were worth it, and I'm pretty sure, that might have gone far worse. I think, buy A thrall wizard and sacrifice him to get your extra bolt of change shot the second you touch down from deep striking.
As for the Thousand sons termies, combi-bolters. That's all I have to say. Damned combi-bolters. You see you can move and fire heavy weapons in terminator armor, but there is no mention of rapid fire weapons in the rulebook or in the codex. That means they can hand to hand or fire, but they can't do both. THEY CAN'T DO BOTH!
I feel as though this might be an oversight since they can fire lascannons and attack hand to hand, but they can't fire a bolter and hand to hand to hand. Something about that seems wrong, like I can lift a tank over my head but not a penny. Oh well, them's the rules.
So, your Tzeentch non-chosen termies aren't really great at hand to hand because they have power swords rather than power fists, and they aren't really great at ranged because they can't get anything better than combi-bolters, and they can't do both at the same time. I don't know. I'm sure I'll have more to say on them later, but for now, their main purpose seems to be to guard the aspiring champion, which they do fine and all. The question though isn't whether or not they do fine job at protecting the aspiring champion while he throws around the olts of change, but whether or not they do a better job than would 8 normal Thousand Sons marines in power armor, and that I just don't know.
I will say this though, the Thousand Sons have STAYING POWER. I walked a squad of six across the board, and made it, all the while slowly picking of Inquisitor retinue. Also, the horrors of Tzeentch, or more precisely the Flamers of Tzeentch, are awesome. They just get a whole bunch of dice to roll at their enemies.
Having said all that, next time, I will return with conversion ideas for making Thousand Sons terminators and pictures dammit! Where the hell are the pictures? Is this not a site for miniature war gaming, and didn't it promise to include some pictures from time to time? Yes it did, yes I will; cross my heart.
Sunday, January 08, 2006
Choosing the right Chaos lord for you- part 1
In an earlier post, I went through choosing Tzeentch, but I went through it kind of quickly, so I thought I'd back track here.
The first question you have to ask yourself when you decide you want to play chaos is whether or not you want to play an army devoted to a specific chaos lord or whether you want to devote the army to Chaos Undivided. Now, this is going to sort of depend on what you have. Obviously, if someone gives you a squad of Chaos bikes, you're going to need to play a chaos army that allows bikes (Slaanesh or undivided), or if someone gives you a pack of horrors (Tzeentch), you're unlikely to feel drawn to Khorne. Regardless, no matter what you have as a miniature or miniatures, the possibility always exists to play Chaos Undivided.
So, before going any further, you may want to ask why not just play Chaos Undivided? Here's what you get with Chaos Undivided. First of all, you get access to the entire Chaos list. There is no nook or cranny of the Codex which you cannot exploit if you so wish. For instance, everything that is good about, say, Noise Marines of Slaanesh, are available to you because you can include Slaanesh Noise Marines (as an elite choice, if your general isn't Slaanesh). In other words, the army is undivided, but the individual squads can be dedicated. In short, you can have Khornate berzerkers, Tzeentch sorcerors, Plague Marines, and Noise Marines. If you want your Predator to have the corruscating flame, just dedicate it to Tzeentch. Want to give your leader the Pandemic Staff? Dedicate him to Nurgle.
If you choose a specific chaos god for your army, you lose this power to mix and match. Moreover, you lose Chaos Raptors, Obliterators, and normally Bikes (Khorne and Slaanesh can still use bikes). Furthermore, no one gets heavy weapons except for Slaanesh and the chosen of Tzeentch. So, that's another big strike against dedicating your army. Also, in an un Undivided army, you can have squads that haven't been dedicated. Every miniature in the Tzeentch army has to pay 10 points for the priviliage!
So, the real question is why would you ever choose to play a dedicated army? Well, there's a number of reasons, and only a few of them are qualified by point costs. The "game mechanics" reason for dedicating your army is that you get the demons onto the table quicker and you get your aspiring champions for free if the squad is favored (the number of guys in the unit is equal to the patron god's "number"). The second of these two options is especially important for Slaanesh. A squad of five gets a sixth member free and that member is an aspiring champion. Of course, Slaanesh's aspiring champions are kind of lame, but hey, he's free. Tzeentch, with its sacred number of 9, rarely makes this dedication worth while. By the time you've give 8 guys the rubric sign, you've spent 80 points. Saving 27 isn't that big of a deal.
The real reason to dedicate the army is more psychological and aesthetic. First of all, the hodge podge army looks...well...hodge podge. You have a bunch of orange guys and one squad of blue. If you want a bunch of miniatures painted different colors, play Eldar. There's something initmidating about a Thousand
Sons army that just cannot be accomplished with an undivided army, even when everything in the undivided army is dedicated to Tzeentch. Plus, the armies are sort of divided between general tactics. While, you cannot adopt these tactics in your undivided army, the hodge podge-iness of it, leads to tactical skitzophrenia--not that I'm against tactical skitzophrenia.
Also, Chaos Undivided seems pretty close to Chaos undecided. I don't want to generalize here, but there is a certain stigma attached to an army that simply doesn't want to dedicate that isn't the same as say, an Imperial Guard army that isn't wholly dedicated to one of their arrangements.
My final thought on this subject--whether you should choose a particular chaos god for your army or simply play undivided is this: don't choose. Make an undivided army with the understanding that it will incorporate pieces from a particular chaos power until such time as you have enough pieces incorporated that they can split off from time to time and play in an army of their own. My Thousand Sons army, for instance, represents a limited set of my chaos miniatures overall. Unlike most other armies, a big enough chaos army is really five armies ready to be played. The same is not true for many other forces except perhaps daemonhunters (a large daemonhunter army is always also either an imperial guard army, space marine army, grey knight army, or sisters of battle army).
My suggestion if you are planning to implement your chaos force the way I have suggested is to concentrate on the demons. Everything else you can cannibalize, but the demons you will not be able to fake. So, if you're planning to branch out into Khorne, for instance, make sure that when you buy demons for your chaos undivided army (as in with money), you buy Khorne stuff. Once you have that and a few guys with chain axes, you will have a World Eaters force.
The first question you have to ask yourself when you decide you want to play chaos is whether or not you want to play an army devoted to a specific chaos lord or whether you want to devote the army to Chaos Undivided. Now, this is going to sort of depend on what you have. Obviously, if someone gives you a squad of Chaos bikes, you're going to need to play a chaos army that allows bikes (Slaanesh or undivided), or if someone gives you a pack of horrors (Tzeentch), you're unlikely to feel drawn to Khorne. Regardless, no matter what you have as a miniature or miniatures, the possibility always exists to play Chaos Undivided.
So, before going any further, you may want to ask why not just play Chaos Undivided? Here's what you get with Chaos Undivided. First of all, you get access to the entire Chaos list. There is no nook or cranny of the Codex which you cannot exploit if you so wish. For instance, everything that is good about, say, Noise Marines of Slaanesh, are available to you because you can include Slaanesh Noise Marines (as an elite choice, if your general isn't Slaanesh). In other words, the army is undivided, but the individual squads can be dedicated. In short, you can have Khornate berzerkers, Tzeentch sorcerors, Plague Marines, and Noise Marines. If you want your Predator to have the corruscating flame, just dedicate it to Tzeentch. Want to give your leader the Pandemic Staff? Dedicate him to Nurgle.
If you choose a specific chaos god for your army, you lose this power to mix and match. Moreover, you lose Chaos Raptors, Obliterators, and normally Bikes (Khorne and Slaanesh can still use bikes). Furthermore, no one gets heavy weapons except for Slaanesh and the chosen of Tzeentch. So, that's another big strike against dedicating your army. Also, in an un Undivided army, you can have squads that haven't been dedicated. Every miniature in the Tzeentch army has to pay 10 points for the priviliage!
So, the real question is why would you ever choose to play a dedicated army? Well, there's a number of reasons, and only a few of them are qualified by point costs. The "game mechanics" reason for dedicating your army is that you get the demons onto the table quicker and you get your aspiring champions for free if the squad is favored (the number of guys in the unit is equal to the patron god's "number"). The second of these two options is especially important for Slaanesh. A squad of five gets a sixth member free and that member is an aspiring champion. Of course, Slaanesh's aspiring champions are kind of lame, but hey, he's free. Tzeentch, with its sacred number of 9, rarely makes this dedication worth while. By the time you've give 8 guys the rubric sign, you've spent 80 points. Saving 27 isn't that big of a deal.
The real reason to dedicate the army is more psychological and aesthetic. First of all, the hodge podge army looks...well...hodge podge. You have a bunch of orange guys and one squad of blue. If you want a bunch of miniatures painted different colors, play Eldar. There's something initmidating about a Thousand
Sons army that just cannot be accomplished with an undivided army, even when everything in the undivided army is dedicated to Tzeentch. Plus, the armies are sort of divided between general tactics. While, you cannot adopt these tactics in your undivided army, the hodge podge-iness of it, leads to tactical skitzophrenia--not that I'm against tactical skitzophrenia.
Also, Chaos Undivided seems pretty close to Chaos undecided. I don't want to generalize here, but there is a certain stigma attached to an army that simply doesn't want to dedicate that isn't the same as say, an Imperial Guard army that isn't wholly dedicated to one of their arrangements.
My final thought on this subject--whether you should choose a particular chaos god for your army or simply play undivided is this: don't choose. Make an undivided army with the understanding that it will incorporate pieces from a particular chaos power until such time as you have enough pieces incorporated that they can split off from time to time and play in an army of their own. My Thousand Sons army, for instance, represents a limited set of my chaos miniatures overall. Unlike most other armies, a big enough chaos army is really five armies ready to be played. The same is not true for many other forces except perhaps daemonhunters (a large daemonhunter army is always also either an imperial guard army, space marine army, grey knight army, or sisters of battle army).
My suggestion if you are planning to implement your chaos force the way I have suggested is to concentrate on the demons. Everything else you can cannibalize, but the demons you will not be able to fake. So, if you're planning to branch out into Khorne, for instance, make sure that when you buy demons for your chaos undivided army (as in with money), you buy Khorne stuff. Once you have that and a few guys with chain axes, you will have a World Eaters force.
Choosing the right Chaos lord for you- part 2 (Slaanesh)
Many, many years ago, when there were only two chaos lords, and a hint of a third and fourth coming in many moons, came what I believe was Games Workshops first unofficial codex. It was called The Realm Of Chaos: Slaves To Darkness, and it was a book the size of the regular rulebook. In it were the rules for playing a chaos force for Warhammer and Warhammer 40k. It was the most unbelievably complex, overbearing, cheating system that ever existed. In fact, it was so unfair that the only army that could fight against Chaos were Eldar. This was back when Swooping Hawks dropped Melta Bombs on you three at a time, Farseers were invulnerable to damage of any kind for 1-6 turns, and the GW staff must have been smoking crack.
Demon weapons were 900 points apiece! But you never paid for that because you could get them on this table called "Gifts of Chaos" where one roll cost 25 points, and you could keep rolling until you either became a demon prince, a chaos spawn, or you got your demon weapon. It was a beautiful thing.
Need I also mention that, back then, there weren't just Chaos Marines, but Chaos everything. Chaos Tyranids, Chaos Squats, Chaos Ogryn, Chaos Orks. And you could mix and match. A Chaos Champion with 5 chaos Eldar, a Chaos Zoat, and 8 Chaos Orks. Yes, it was a strange time for us all.
This was pretty much Rogue Trader era, and if you've talked to anyone who played back then, you probably already know that hand to hand was the most god awful, useless, pointless way to kill your enemy. When you charged, they could run, leaving you to be fired upon, often by people just behind them throwing grenades. It didn't get much better in second edition either.
So, with that in mind--there being only two chaos powers Slaanesh and Khorne and hand to hand was pointless--there was a time when it made sense to play Slaanesh. That time has passed.
I mean there frickin' pink...and you thought I was kidding about the whole smoking crack thing.
I honestly have no idea why anyone would play an "all Slaanesh" force. None. Their demons are cheap I suppose. Daemonettes aren't bad, per se. They're not exactly great, but they aren't horrible, and you save some points so that you can buy more stuff for your aspiring champions like say...the needle of desire.
I'm sorry, I just can't do this with a straight face. Let's break this down. By dedicating to Slaanesh, your enemies get a -1 to their initiative. Other chaos lords give their followers a +1 to Wounds or +1 to Toughness. Slaanesh: -1 to Initiative. That's lame.
Oh but wait, there's more. You get to trade in your weapons for electric guitars! Sadly, Slaanesh has the coolest looking chaos miniature around: the Noise Marine with the guitar. It's been around for awhile, and I have a feeling it was the product of someone at GW screwing around with the casting molds. Whoever its inventer, they showed it to a fellow GW worker and the phrase, "that's cool, what army should it be for," was utterred, and then everyone agreed that since Slaanesh sucked, they might as well have the coolest looking miniature. The Doom Siren, on the other hand, just looks goofy. By the way, the sonic blaster is a pretty good weapon. Were it a straight trade for the bolter, it might have been worth the points, but in that you have to put out points on top of the mark of Slaanesh, it's just not worth it. Compare it to a plasma gun and you'll see what I mean. The melta gun/doom siren swap, on the other hand, is simply pointless all around. The melta gun is the better weapon. Thge same goes for the reaper autocannon/blastmaster switch. I am no fan of the autocannon, by the way, but can't we do a little better than AP 4 on the huge weapon of the army?
Upgrading aspiring champions (of which you will have many if you are playing Slaanesh) is best done through the regular options. The additional Slaanesh "gifts" are pretty useless. The needle of desire never stops an armor save. The lash of torment has been rendered useless by the new rules. Aura of Aquiessence is pretty much dangerous. Of the two gifts that are worthwhile (rapturous standard and combat drugs), one is a once per battle gift that you could have had the entire battle long if you'd played Khorne and the other is a Dark Eldar thing. Yeah, it's nice, but why aren't you playing Dark Eldar?
I'm pretty sure that since the time of Rogue Trader, GW has come to regret Slaanesh. I mean, how does the lord of pleasure go to war? Look at the miniature line. There is no Lucius the Eternal and the Fiends have disapeared from the range. Yes, that's right; Slaanesh used to have their own hunting demons, but alas no more. They have demons for Chaos undivided, but none for Slaanesh. Pity.
What they do have, though, is a wide range of miniatures that hold over from the old "Slaves to Darkness" days, and these are my lone temptation to make an Emperors Children army. Chaos guys who look like Daemonettes, or fiends, or mounts, or keepers. These were common enough back in the day, which is why there are also so many mini's with the heads of bloodletters.
But if I am tempted, let me tell you what I am willing to do to sate my meager thirst for a Slaanesh army. Take the only cool minis that the army has (the noise marines) and play them as a squad in my chaos undivided army and keep a pack of daemonettes at ready to get through my troop requirements if need be. Other than that... Emperor's Children army? Just say no to combat drugs.
Demon weapons were 900 points apiece! But you never paid for that because you could get them on this table called "Gifts of Chaos" where one roll cost 25 points, and you could keep rolling until you either became a demon prince, a chaos spawn, or you got your demon weapon. It was a beautiful thing.
Need I also mention that, back then, there weren't just Chaos Marines, but Chaos everything. Chaos Tyranids, Chaos Squats, Chaos Ogryn, Chaos Orks. And you could mix and match. A Chaos Champion with 5 chaos Eldar, a Chaos Zoat, and 8 Chaos Orks. Yes, it was a strange time for us all.
This was pretty much Rogue Trader era, and if you've talked to anyone who played back then, you probably already know that hand to hand was the most god awful, useless, pointless way to kill your enemy. When you charged, they could run, leaving you to be fired upon, often by people just behind them throwing grenades. It didn't get much better in second edition either.
So, with that in mind--there being only two chaos powers Slaanesh and Khorne and hand to hand was pointless--there was a time when it made sense to play Slaanesh. That time has passed.
I mean there frickin' pink...and you thought I was kidding about the whole smoking crack thing.
I honestly have no idea why anyone would play an "all Slaanesh" force. None. Their demons are cheap I suppose. Daemonettes aren't bad, per se. They're not exactly great, but they aren't horrible, and you save some points so that you can buy more stuff for your aspiring champions like say...the needle of desire.
I'm sorry, I just can't do this with a straight face. Let's break this down. By dedicating to Slaanesh, your enemies get a -1 to their initiative. Other chaos lords give their followers a +1 to Wounds or +1 to Toughness. Slaanesh: -1 to Initiative. That's lame.
Oh but wait, there's more. You get to trade in your weapons for electric guitars! Sadly, Slaanesh has the coolest looking chaos miniature around: the Noise Marine with the guitar. It's been around for awhile, and I have a feeling it was the product of someone at GW screwing around with the casting molds. Whoever its inventer, they showed it to a fellow GW worker and the phrase, "that's cool, what army should it be for," was utterred, and then everyone agreed that since Slaanesh sucked, they might as well have the coolest looking miniature. The Doom Siren, on the other hand, just looks goofy. By the way, the sonic blaster is a pretty good weapon. Were it a straight trade for the bolter, it might have been worth the points, but in that you have to put out points on top of the mark of Slaanesh, it's just not worth it. Compare it to a plasma gun and you'll see what I mean. The melta gun/doom siren swap, on the other hand, is simply pointless all around. The melta gun is the better weapon. Thge same goes for the reaper autocannon/blastmaster switch. I am no fan of the autocannon, by the way, but can't we do a little better than AP 4 on the huge weapon of the army?
Upgrading aspiring champions (of which you will have many if you are playing Slaanesh) is best done through the regular options. The additional Slaanesh "gifts" are pretty useless. The needle of desire never stops an armor save. The lash of torment has been rendered useless by the new rules. Aura of Aquiessence is pretty much dangerous. Of the two gifts that are worthwhile (rapturous standard and combat drugs), one is a once per battle gift that you could have had the entire battle long if you'd played Khorne and the other is a Dark Eldar thing. Yeah, it's nice, but why aren't you playing Dark Eldar?
I'm pretty sure that since the time of Rogue Trader, GW has come to regret Slaanesh. I mean, how does the lord of pleasure go to war? Look at the miniature line. There is no Lucius the Eternal and the Fiends have disapeared from the range. Yes, that's right; Slaanesh used to have their own hunting demons, but alas no more. They have demons for Chaos undivided, but none for Slaanesh. Pity.
What they do have, though, is a wide range of miniatures that hold over from the old "Slaves to Darkness" days, and these are my lone temptation to make an Emperors Children army. Chaos guys who look like Daemonettes, or fiends, or mounts, or keepers. These were common enough back in the day, which is why there are also so many mini's with the heads of bloodletters.
But if I am tempted, let me tell you what I am willing to do to sate my meager thirst for a Slaanesh army. Take the only cool minis that the army has (the noise marines) and play them as a squad in my chaos undivided army and keep a pack of daemonettes at ready to get through my troop requirements if need be. Other than that... Emperor's Children army? Just say no to combat drugs.
Choosing the right Chaos lord for you- part 3 (Khorne)
I always look at the choice of a chaos power as a choice of either Khorne or Slaanesh, OR Nurgle or Tzeentch. In other words, I rarely see the need to choose between Khorne or Tzeentch precisely because they are so strikingly different. It's like saying, that you can't decide whether you want to play the Tau or Tyranids. Apples and Oranges really. But Khorne and Slaanesh are both supposed to be hand to hand armies (yes, believe it or not...look at all the Slaanesh abilities, they're all hand to hand). However, if you are planning on building a hand to hand chaos army, and if that means that you must choose between Khorne and Slaanesh, then there isn't really a choice to be made, is there? Khorne kicks ass.
In fact, Khorne is probably the best of the chaos armies for sheer killing power, especially if your enemy is playing space marines. You will trample, you will cut, you will crush. That's what Khorne does. I don't think it's necessary to do a blow by blow of why Khorne kicks ass, but I think I should hit the highlights.
First of all, the axe of khorne is one of the best hth weapons in the game. Get a general with it, a Juggernaught, and spiky bits, you'll see what I mean. But I digress as the real strength of Khorne is not in their leaders but in their dreadnoughts and their regular soldiers. The Khorne troopers can all get Chainaxes! Good lord! Plus, they get an extra d6" of movement 1/3 of the time. The dreadnoughts are more likely to go into blood frenzy, and if you don't give them any ranged weapons at all, they'll go blood frenzy half the time! Finally, unlike most other chaos troop squads which have severe limitations on the weapon options of the average soldier, Khorne troops can still get plasma guns.
In other words, a Khorne army will get into hand to hand combat and they will do very well at it. This is both the plus and the minus of Khorne. If you like watching your troops run at the enemy and actually get there, you will like playing Khorne. In fact, you will like playing Khorne alot. If, on the other hand, you like moving around, maneuvering, holding positions, sniping, sneaking, etc., you will not like playing Khorne. They do one thing well, but that's just it: they only do that one thing. For one battle this can be very fun. A couple of battles, still good. But if this is your only army, and you play them every time, you might start getting bored with your options. It's not that you won't win, but it will be the same thing, week after week after week.
It is for this reason, that I have never been able to fully commit to a World Eaters army. There are a number of hand to hand armies in 40k: Tyranids, Orks, Harlequins, Grey Knights, Dark Eldar--but each of these armies has other things going for them. Tyranids may almost always be in hand to hand combat, but there are different flavors of hth. You can move your gagantuans down the battle field or swarm with gaunts. Meanwhile, you have firing options getting into combat.
But with Khorne, you've got your one trick. It's a good trick, but if you're really into hand to hand combat, I'd suggest another army. On the other hand, if your goal is to add a hand to hand contingent to your undivided force, Khorne cannot be beat. The troopers will rival, and perhaps beat out, the raptors as your choice of assault troops.
In fact, Khorne is probably the best of the chaos armies for sheer killing power, especially if your enemy is playing space marines. You will trample, you will cut, you will crush. That's what Khorne does. I don't think it's necessary to do a blow by blow of why Khorne kicks ass, but I think I should hit the highlights.
First of all, the axe of khorne is one of the best hth weapons in the game. Get a general with it, a Juggernaught, and spiky bits, you'll see what I mean. But I digress as the real strength of Khorne is not in their leaders but in their dreadnoughts and their regular soldiers. The Khorne troopers can all get Chainaxes! Good lord! Plus, they get an extra d6" of movement 1/3 of the time. The dreadnoughts are more likely to go into blood frenzy, and if you don't give them any ranged weapons at all, they'll go blood frenzy half the time! Finally, unlike most other chaos troop squads which have severe limitations on the weapon options of the average soldier, Khorne troops can still get plasma guns.
In other words, a Khorne army will get into hand to hand combat and they will do very well at it. This is both the plus and the minus of Khorne. If you like watching your troops run at the enemy and actually get there, you will like playing Khorne. In fact, you will like playing Khorne alot. If, on the other hand, you like moving around, maneuvering, holding positions, sniping, sneaking, etc., you will not like playing Khorne. They do one thing well, but that's just it: they only do that one thing. For one battle this can be very fun. A couple of battles, still good. But if this is your only army, and you play them every time, you might start getting bored with your options. It's not that you won't win, but it will be the same thing, week after week after week.
It is for this reason, that I have never been able to fully commit to a World Eaters army. There are a number of hand to hand armies in 40k: Tyranids, Orks, Harlequins, Grey Knights, Dark Eldar--but each of these armies has other things going for them. Tyranids may almost always be in hand to hand combat, but there are different flavors of hth. You can move your gagantuans down the battle field or swarm with gaunts. Meanwhile, you have firing options getting into combat.
But with Khorne, you've got your one trick. It's a good trick, but if you're really into hand to hand combat, I'd suggest another army. On the other hand, if your goal is to add a hand to hand contingent to your undivided force, Khorne cannot be beat. The troopers will rival, and perhaps beat out, the raptors as your choice of assault troops.
Choosing the right Chaos lord for you- part 4 (Tzeentch and Nurgle)
Here's what you must know: Tzeentch and Nurgle are not "technically" hand to hand armies. If you divide armies up, you will find that there are three ranges of effectiveness. Long (Eldar and Tau), medium/12-24" (marine and Necron), and hand to hand (Tyranid and Grey knights). Tzeentch and Nurgle are both medium range armies. If you can get the army within this range, you will be very effective at killing things. Moreover, the two armies gifts of either +1 Toughness or +1 Wounds is designed to get them into this range.
Both armies have tactics to keep enemies from closing into hand to hand. For Nurgle this is accomplished through fear: Nurgle is pretty good at hand to hand, and you will most likely regret your decision to charge them. For Tzeentch this is accomplished through devastation: Tzeentch rarely allows anyone to survive being within 12 to 24" which leaves few forces capable of closing the gap.
Tzeentch has devastating sorcery, Nurgle has disease and the best minor psyhic powers. Tzeentch has their kick ass banner, Nurgle has their kick ass banner. Neither Tzeentch nor Nurgle can regularly get heavy weapons, though Nurgle can get assault weapons and Tzeentch chosen can arm themselves as per usual.
In short, it is really really hard to decide between Tzeentch and Nurgle. What's worse is that both miniature lines and color schemes are really strong, and as such, it is not a choice between the better looking miniature. Moreover, both are going to require Conversion. With Nurgle, you will have to batter their armor up a bit. For Tzeentch, you have to give them those weird pope/pharoah head things.
I will say this: there's really no good reason to have both armies, since they are both pretty good at the same thing. Also, if you're just thinking of adding squads to your regular army, both Tzeentch and Nurgle will most likely fill the same options. So, you should choose.
...which means you need some basis for the choice. Here's what I used. I decided that the real choice was based off of the fact that Tzeentch has two kinds of Terminators--they have chosen and regular troops in Terminator armor. This means that Tzeentch can produce a kind of Death Wing army, which I don't have otherwise, and so I figured I might as well choose Tzeentch over Nurgle based off this feature alone.
That having been said, I want to stress the playability of both Tzeentch and Nurgle. You have many many options of how and what to play with these chaos forces. They are not as varied as Chaos Undivided, but they are varied enough that you could easilly make a Thousand Sons army your primary fighting force. Moreover, the modelling options for these forces are extremely attractive. There is no Death Guard Predator, but you can imagine what one would look like, and your army will look that much better for that conversion, whereas making a World Eater Predator is just a matter of painting.
That having finally been said, on to the modelling of those Thousand Sons Termies!
Both armies have tactics to keep enemies from closing into hand to hand. For Nurgle this is accomplished through fear: Nurgle is pretty good at hand to hand, and you will most likely regret your decision to charge them. For Tzeentch this is accomplished through devastation: Tzeentch rarely allows anyone to survive being within 12 to 24" which leaves few forces capable of closing the gap.
Tzeentch has devastating sorcery, Nurgle has disease and the best minor psyhic powers. Tzeentch has their kick ass banner, Nurgle has their kick ass banner. Neither Tzeentch nor Nurgle can regularly get heavy weapons, though Nurgle can get assault weapons and Tzeentch chosen can arm themselves as per usual.
In short, it is really really hard to decide between Tzeentch and Nurgle. What's worse is that both miniature lines and color schemes are really strong, and as such, it is not a choice between the better looking miniature. Moreover, both are going to require Conversion. With Nurgle, you will have to batter their armor up a bit. For Tzeentch, you have to give them those weird pope/pharoah head things.
I will say this: there's really no good reason to have both armies, since they are both pretty good at the same thing. Also, if you're just thinking of adding squads to your regular army, both Tzeentch and Nurgle will most likely fill the same options. So, you should choose.
...which means you need some basis for the choice. Here's what I used. I decided that the real choice was based off of the fact that Tzeentch has two kinds of Terminators--they have chosen and regular troops in Terminator armor. This means that Tzeentch can produce a kind of Death Wing army, which I don't have otherwise, and so I figured I might as well choose Tzeentch over Nurgle based off this feature alone.
That having been said, I want to stress the playability of both Tzeentch and Nurgle. You have many many options of how and what to play with these chaos forces. They are not as varied as Chaos Undivided, but they are varied enough that you could easilly make a Thousand Sons army your primary fighting force. Moreover, the modelling options for these forces are extremely attractive. There is no Death Guard Predator, but you can imagine what one would look like, and your army will look that much better for that conversion, whereas making a World Eater Predator is just a matter of painting.
That having finally been said, on to the modelling of those Thousand Sons Termies!
Tuesday, January 03, 2006
Introduction
Maybe, I should put something like this somewhere more visible, more permanent or something like that. I don't know.
The problem is that I have two blogs. One that's relatively "me" centered, and this one here. Which one would you trick out? Well, same here. So, the description of me which would probably serve to hold all this information permanently is set up to be a cool into kind of thing for my other blog (though, admittedly, it isn't really all that cool).
So, me. Or more importantly, me as a player of 40k.
Let's see. I've been playing Warhammer 40k since I was 15, or 1988. At the time I started, I played Orks. My opponents were many, but eventually people dropped out of the game at which time, they often sold me their stuff. Eventually my only enemy was an Eldar player, and given how unfair the rules for Eldar were (and how incompetent the Orks were), I changed teams. I played Chaos--specifically Slaanesh using the old rules from the Slaves to Darkness book. Believe it or not, this made for "fair" battles. Both armies cheated to the same degree.
Eventually, the Eldar player dropped out and he too sold me his stuff. Then there was a lull, and for about 8 or 9 years, I did not play the game (though I did manage to lose the lion's share of my Ork army). Then an amazing thing happenned. I decided I needed money, and so...armed only with a big box of lead, I attempted to sell my collection on Ebay.
Now, I am not against buying or selling miniatures on Ebay. Given Games Workshops crazy ass price increases, I say, "get around them any way you can." These miniatures were expensive when the game first came out. Since then, the entire industry has gone mad--and Games Workshop has shown themselves to be the king of the crazies. $25 for an Obliterator! You've got to be kidding me.
I'm sure to talk more about this later, as well as mourn the death of the only sane company out there: Armorcast, but we're talking old history now, and so I best stay on the subject.
I did not fair well with Ebay. I could not sell my miniatures painted for more than they were worth unpainted. I make no bones about this, I am not the creme de la creme of the painting world. But I'm good, and I've got tricks, and you can paint your miniatures using my tricks and they will look good enough to be played, and to catch people's eye.
My point is that, learning of the rock bottome prices that people would sell their miniatures for on Ebay, I began to rebuild my armies, and I found someone to play with--a guy named Avram Hooknoobie.
Fast forward: I now have (and paint) a number of armies. Chaos (Tzeentch/Thousand Sons, The Pyre, and the beginnings of an Emperors Children army), Marines (a Scout army chapter as yet unknown, Ultramarines), Eldar (Saimhann), Orks and Tyranids (both of which I have yet to begin seriously painting, and so I don't have a color scheme quite yet), Harlequins, Daemonhunters/Grey Knights. When I use the term army, I generally mean the ability to field a 1,000 point force.
I play now with a group of guys who are less than adamentine about playing WYSIWYG. Chris plays Space Marines and Necrons, Russ plays Imperial Guard and occasionally Death Wing, Slash plays just about anything but often spends the first ten minutes of the game saying things like: "these quarters represent my Wraithguard. Between my collection, and Slash's improvisation, any kind of battlefield can be played. For the most part we play games with four different armies.
Russ and Chris send their miniatures out to be painted, I paint my own, and Slash...well, some things are painted, some aren't, and some can't. In our group, I'm the scenery guy in that I make scenery. The other people provide store bought scenery which works okay, and I'll probably review that stuff from time to time.
Anyways, beyond that, I think it's probably best just to get in on with it.
The problem is that I have two blogs. One that's relatively "me" centered, and this one here. Which one would you trick out? Well, same here. So, the description of me which would probably serve to hold all this information permanently is set up to be a cool into kind of thing for my other blog (though, admittedly, it isn't really all that cool).
So, me. Or more importantly, me as a player of 40k.
Let's see. I've been playing Warhammer 40k since I was 15, or 1988. At the time I started, I played Orks. My opponents were many, but eventually people dropped out of the game at which time, they often sold me their stuff. Eventually my only enemy was an Eldar player, and given how unfair the rules for Eldar were (and how incompetent the Orks were), I changed teams. I played Chaos--specifically Slaanesh using the old rules from the Slaves to Darkness book. Believe it or not, this made for "fair" battles. Both armies cheated to the same degree.
Eventually, the Eldar player dropped out and he too sold me his stuff. Then there was a lull, and for about 8 or 9 years, I did not play the game (though I did manage to lose the lion's share of my Ork army). Then an amazing thing happenned. I decided I needed money, and so...armed only with a big box of lead, I attempted to sell my collection on Ebay.
Now, I am not against buying or selling miniatures on Ebay. Given Games Workshops crazy ass price increases, I say, "get around them any way you can." These miniatures were expensive when the game first came out. Since then, the entire industry has gone mad--and Games Workshop has shown themselves to be the king of the crazies. $25 for an Obliterator! You've got to be kidding me.
I'm sure to talk more about this later, as well as mourn the death of the only sane company out there: Armorcast, but we're talking old history now, and so I best stay on the subject.
I did not fair well with Ebay. I could not sell my miniatures painted for more than they were worth unpainted. I make no bones about this, I am not the creme de la creme of the painting world. But I'm good, and I've got tricks, and you can paint your miniatures using my tricks and they will look good enough to be played, and to catch people's eye.
My point is that, learning of the rock bottome prices that people would sell their miniatures for on Ebay, I began to rebuild my armies, and I found someone to play with--a guy named Avram Hooknoobie.
Fast forward: I now have (and paint) a number of armies. Chaos (Tzeentch/Thousand Sons, The Pyre, and the beginnings of an Emperors Children army), Marines (a Scout army chapter as yet unknown, Ultramarines), Eldar (Saimhann), Orks and Tyranids (both of which I have yet to begin seriously painting, and so I don't have a color scheme quite yet), Harlequins, Daemonhunters/Grey Knights. When I use the term army, I generally mean the ability to field a 1,000 point force.
I play now with a group of guys who are less than adamentine about playing WYSIWYG. Chris plays Space Marines and Necrons, Russ plays Imperial Guard and occasionally Death Wing, Slash plays just about anything but often spends the first ten minutes of the game saying things like: "these quarters represent my Wraithguard. Between my collection, and Slash's improvisation, any kind of battlefield can be played. For the most part we play games with four different armies.
Russ and Chris send their miniatures out to be painted, I paint my own, and Slash...well, some things are painted, some aren't, and some can't. In our group, I'm the scenery guy in that I make scenery. The other people provide store bought scenery which works okay, and I'll probably review that stuff from time to time.
Anyways, beyond that, I think it's probably best just to get in on with it.
Tzeentch army at the beginning
I suppose it was last year around this time when I first said to myself, "self, this chaos undivided army crap just will not stand. You must have an army devoted to a chaos power." And of course, when I said A chaos power, I really meant two, but I'll get to that later. The thing is, I don't like Slaanesh that much. I like the miniatures, or well....I like the Noise Marines, but I don't like the way they play. The Sonic Blasters just really aren't worth all that hype, and the rest of it...has anyone actually seen a miniature of Lucius the Eternal or do you have to convert that yourself? You can see what I'm saying.
I also am not a big fan of Khorne. They grow on you, but my problem is that they are essentially a hand to hand army and well...I've got a frickin' Tyranid army and a Harlequin army. I don't want to count Khorne out, but still.
Nurgle. Well, yes Nurgle is nice. My problem with Nurgle is directly related to the miniatures and it seemed logical at the time. Now, it doesn't. The logic was this...in order to play Death Guard, you have to have miniatures that look like Death Guard, and therefore, I decided to play Tzeentch.
No, that doesn't particularly make much sense. As of right now, any miniature I attempt to add to my Tzeentch army, I have to graft some weird head gear to. What's worse is that there really are only three official Tzeentch miniatures: guy with bolter, guy with power sword and bolt pistol, and Ahrimann. Guy with blasted standard? No. Guy with that staff thingee? No. Terminators? No. All of those miniatures must be added. Now, one could buy the heads as Bitz from Games Workshop at $2 a pop, but that's a lot of heads. 8 termies and 2 cool leader guys and you've spent $20! You could have bought a whole 'nother squad on ebay for that kind of money. I will go over this later.
Going back, I should have chosen Death Guard. They are a better army, and the conversions are much easier to do. A little putty, a jewlers drill, and the armor looks screwed up. There is no need to make fancy headgear and etc. Plus, the death guard are essentially Thousand Sons with cooler stuff, an extra point of toughness rather than the extra wound, and oh yeah...heavy weapons.
I'll tell you what I wasn't going for with my Tzeentch army. I didn't want a repeat of any configuration possible with my undivided army "The Pyre" and so, let me discuss them for a moment.
My Pyre army has a number of incarnations which revolve around the fact that I have a full squad of obliterators, terminators, raptors (12 or so, I think), bikes, a defiler, a predator, a dreadnought, a giant commander, a lesser sized commander, and Fabius Bile. Plus, with undivided you get eggroll which means that ultimately you can play any demon you want so there, plus I can put in noise marines, berzerkers, thousand sons, or death guard, if I want. It's a serious army. What they CAN'T do isn't immediately obvious.
So, here's what I have to work with the Tzeentch army. When I first decided I wanted to make a thousand sons army I bought four things, a box of Horrors of Tzeentch, two boxes of Thousand Sons marines, and the piece de' resistance, a Thousand Sons dreadnought from ForgeWorld (curse you ForgeWorld!)
By the way, has anyone seen the Greyknight dreadnought from Forge World? God that things beautiful. If only I ever planned to play a five thousand point battle with my grey knights, but I digress.
I already had at my disposal a Lord of Change, which I got on ebay along with a Great Unclean One for something like $20--old models. See? I really should have been thinking Death Guard. Oh well, too late now. Also, I have thirteen or so Terminators who are either chaos or easilly converted. I'm using VOID exo-armor guys just because they're cheaper and the five chaos termies I've got are circa 1990. So, they look like regular terminators with different markings. One has been converted to look like there's a skeleton inside the armor.
I have put together the tzeentch bad boys and here they are. I am sure that I will later give a blow by blow on how to paint them on my next squad, but for now, let me point out that the one thing you MUST do before putting together your army is decide on a base. I don't know how many of my armies have fifteen different base types. It's ludicrous. What I want to go for is to paint the whole thing black and then drizzle extra light sand over that. It creates a sort of alien pyrite thing. The sand by the way, I got at a dollar store. Perhaps it needn't have to be said that you should always avoid Games Workshop stores whenever possible, but also, avoid paying Trainset prices for shit like sand. It's sand! If you can't get it for free, $.50 a pound is a pretty good price.
Alright, that's the start of the army.
I also am not a big fan of Khorne. They grow on you, but my problem is that they are essentially a hand to hand army and well...I've got a frickin' Tyranid army and a Harlequin army. I don't want to count Khorne out, but still.
Nurgle. Well, yes Nurgle is nice. My problem with Nurgle is directly related to the miniatures and it seemed logical at the time. Now, it doesn't. The logic was this...in order to play Death Guard, you have to have miniatures that look like Death Guard, and therefore, I decided to play Tzeentch.
No, that doesn't particularly make much sense. As of right now, any miniature I attempt to add to my Tzeentch army, I have to graft some weird head gear to. What's worse is that there really are only three official Tzeentch miniatures: guy with bolter, guy with power sword and bolt pistol, and Ahrimann. Guy with blasted standard? No. Guy with that staff thingee? No. Terminators? No. All of those miniatures must be added. Now, one could buy the heads as Bitz from Games Workshop at $2 a pop, but that's a lot of heads. 8 termies and 2 cool leader guys and you've spent $20! You could have bought a whole 'nother squad on ebay for that kind of money. I will go over this later.
Going back, I should have chosen Death Guard. They are a better army, and the conversions are much easier to do. A little putty, a jewlers drill, and the armor looks screwed up. There is no need to make fancy headgear and etc. Plus, the death guard are essentially Thousand Sons with cooler stuff, an extra point of toughness rather than the extra wound, and oh yeah...heavy weapons.
I'll tell you what I wasn't going for with my Tzeentch army. I didn't want a repeat of any configuration possible with my undivided army "The Pyre" and so, let me discuss them for a moment.
My Pyre army has a number of incarnations which revolve around the fact that I have a full squad of obliterators, terminators, raptors (12 or so, I think), bikes, a defiler, a predator, a dreadnought, a giant commander, a lesser sized commander, and Fabius Bile. Plus, with undivided you get eggroll which means that ultimately you can play any demon you want so there, plus I can put in noise marines, berzerkers, thousand sons, or death guard, if I want. It's a serious army. What they CAN'T do isn't immediately obvious.
So, here's what I have to work with the Tzeentch army. When I first decided I wanted to make a thousand sons army I bought four things, a box of Horrors of Tzeentch, two boxes of Thousand Sons marines, and the piece de' resistance, a Thousand Sons dreadnought from ForgeWorld (curse you ForgeWorld!)
By the way, has anyone seen the Greyknight dreadnought from Forge World? God that things beautiful. If only I ever planned to play a five thousand point battle with my grey knights, but I digress.
I already had at my disposal a Lord of Change, which I got on ebay along with a Great Unclean One for something like $20--old models. See? I really should have been thinking Death Guard. Oh well, too late now. Also, I have thirteen or so Terminators who are either chaos or easilly converted. I'm using VOID exo-armor guys just because they're cheaper and the five chaos termies I've got are circa 1990. So, they look like regular terminators with different markings. One has been converted to look like there's a skeleton inside the armor.
I have put together the tzeentch bad boys and here they are. I am sure that I will later give a blow by blow on how to paint them on my next squad, but for now, let me point out that the one thing you MUST do before putting together your army is decide on a base. I don't know how many of my armies have fifteen different base types. It's ludicrous. What I want to go for is to paint the whole thing black and then drizzle extra light sand over that. It creates a sort of alien pyrite thing. The sand by the way, I got at a dollar store. Perhaps it needn't have to be said that you should always avoid Games Workshop stores whenever possible, but also, avoid paying Trainset prices for shit like sand. It's sand! If you can't get it for free, $.50 a pound is a pretty good price.
Alright, that's the start of the army.
What Tzeentch can do
I mentioned in my earlier post that I wanted my Tzeentch army to do what my other armies could not. Here's what that is.
Keep in mind the only thing that a thousand sons army can get that an undivided army with Tzeentch soldiers cannot, is the ability to put more than one sorceror in a unit of chosen. Keep that in mind.
My basic tactic with the army is two fold. First off, it's based on Chosen in terminator armor. Chosen in terminator armor can get massive firepower in the way of spells. It's possible to have, in a five man squad, two gifts of chaos, a wind of change, and two bolts of change. That's a lot of death coming out of a five man squad.
Furthermore, the champion with the eye of Tzeentch and four thrall wizards, creates a flesh buffer. Since the Terminators outnumber the thralls, the save is 2+/5+, and if its a ridiculous attack, the aspiring champion can soak the wound and re-roll. Moreover, it allows the champion to cast more than one devastating spellsper turn. Even if you don't arm the termies with cool stuff (which you might as well still do), you can still throw out 2 strength 8, AP 2 attacks a turn. Or Wind of Change, or whatever. Seriously, this is firepower. I'm still not sure whether or not this means the unit cannot deep strike (Thrall wizards are war gear after all), but if it does mean that these guys can deep strike, holy shit!!
The problem is that this unit could ultimately cost five hundred or more points all by itself. Tzeentch is not cheap. This means that the HQ section is going to have to cost very little, as are the two basic units. In order to make a terminator squad of sorcerers with the firepower I want, I'm going to have to go the supercheap route on everything else. This means that, more than likely, the Lord of Change, the Dreadnought, and the Predator are out. Still, can't have an army without 'em. So, there you go.
Note, you don't have to put that squad in terminator armor, it just makes them nigh unstoppable. That's the point. This is not an army where I plan to put twenty five or thirty serious miniatures on the table for a 1000 points. That's my other chaos army (actually that's my marines and Eldar, but you get the idea). The point here is to put down twenty useless miniatures, ten decent miniatures, and five little GODS!
You can go another route, of course, by simply making a nine man squad in terminator armor, and giving the aspiring champion the four thrall wizards, and etc.. This will mean, however, that only one guy will have spells, but then, the terminators will all have two wounds. Moreover, this squad actually costs less than a group of chosen in terminator armor, and you can use these models in a chaos undivided army if you'd like as they count initially as a troupe choice.
Keep in mind the only thing that a thousand sons army can get that an undivided army with Tzeentch soldiers cannot, is the ability to put more than one sorceror in a unit of chosen. Keep that in mind.
My basic tactic with the army is two fold. First off, it's based on Chosen in terminator armor. Chosen in terminator armor can get massive firepower in the way of spells. It's possible to have, in a five man squad, two gifts of chaos, a wind of change, and two bolts of change. That's a lot of death coming out of a five man squad.
Furthermore, the champion with the eye of Tzeentch and four thrall wizards, creates a flesh buffer. Since the Terminators outnumber the thralls, the save is 2+/5+, and if its a ridiculous attack, the aspiring champion can soak the wound and re-roll. Moreover, it allows the champion to cast more than one devastating spellsper turn. Even if you don't arm the termies with cool stuff (which you might as well still do), you can still throw out 2 strength 8, AP 2 attacks a turn. Or Wind of Change, or whatever. Seriously, this is firepower. I'm still not sure whether or not this means the unit cannot deep strike (Thrall wizards are war gear after all), but if it does mean that these guys can deep strike, holy shit!!
The problem is that this unit could ultimately cost five hundred or more points all by itself. Tzeentch is not cheap. This means that the HQ section is going to have to cost very little, as are the two basic units. In order to make a terminator squad of sorcerers with the firepower I want, I'm going to have to go the supercheap route on everything else. This means that, more than likely, the Lord of Change, the Dreadnought, and the Predator are out. Still, can't have an army without 'em. So, there you go.
Note, you don't have to put that squad in terminator armor, it just makes them nigh unstoppable. That's the point. This is not an army where I plan to put twenty five or thirty serious miniatures on the table for a 1000 points. That's my other chaos army (actually that's my marines and Eldar, but you get the idea). The point here is to put down twenty useless miniatures, ten decent miniatures, and five little GODS!
You can go another route, of course, by simply making a nine man squad in terminator armor, and giving the aspiring champion the four thrall wizards, and etc.. This will mean, however, that only one guy will have spells, but then, the terminators will all have two wounds. Moreover, this squad actually costs less than a group of chosen in terminator armor, and you can use these models in a chaos undivided army if you'd like as they count initially as a troupe choice.
The horrors, the horrors- gluing and pinning
Demons are a super cheap troup choice. This is funny if you started playing chaos back in 88, when there wasn't anything in the game more expensive than a demon. Now, I put in six daemonettes just to get the limitation out of the way.
Now, don't get me wrong. They are cheap, but they don't suck. Even the daemonettes can get lucky, and the invulnerable save is nothing to scoff at. Plus, for Tzeentch, the horrors can be upgraded to flamers without much of a problem. They are still cheeper than nine guys with a rubicon sign. If I really wanted to fully implement the super terminator idea, I wouldn't buy any human troops, but I thought I'd least make a show of playing thousand sons, even if I'm really just trying to play their terminators.
The actual model for the Horrors is a pain in the ass. Keep in mind that GW made their name with the original marine box set which is reminescent of the Gaunt box set now: a bunch of parts from which you can fashion 20 marines. At the time, this set cost around $30.
My point is that GW has a moral obligation to create sets where there is a whole bunch of gluing involved so that you can "customize" your miniatiature. With Gaunts this is really fun, though I still have a problem with WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get). After all, I'm currently talking about an army with two artifacts which do not exist on any miniature. Plus, is there really a point to this WYSIWYG. I prefer full disclosure: here is this miniature, it is a chaplain, he has a rosius and a plasma gun, yes if you ask me later I will tell you this again. It's called a friendly game. I shouldn't need eight librarians to cover the whole spectrum of my options when I can never play more than one librarian at a time.
But I digress. All of this is particularly pointless when it comes to Horrors. You have to glue on their arms. Arms!!! You're choosing between claw or fist. There's not effect either way in the game. Geez, just model the miniature with the arms already connected. Is that too much to ask?
What's worse is I think the box set I got was coated with anti-super glue stuff. Seriously. It's a ball and socket joint. That's the easiest glue there is, and yet it took me three hours to put together ten miniatures, and I eventually had to pin them to get them to set. By the time I was done, I was wearing super glue gloves. I'll be biting my fingers for the better part of the new year.
Now, don't get me wrong. They are cheap, but they don't suck. Even the daemonettes can get lucky, and the invulnerable save is nothing to scoff at. Plus, for Tzeentch, the horrors can be upgraded to flamers without much of a problem. They are still cheeper than nine guys with a rubicon sign. If I really wanted to fully implement the super terminator idea, I wouldn't buy any human troops, but I thought I'd least make a show of playing thousand sons, even if I'm really just trying to play their terminators.
The actual model for the Horrors is a pain in the ass. Keep in mind that GW made their name with the original marine box set which is reminescent of the Gaunt box set now: a bunch of parts from which you can fashion 20 marines. At the time, this set cost around $30.
My point is that GW has a moral obligation to create sets where there is a whole bunch of gluing involved so that you can "customize" your miniatiature. With Gaunts this is really fun, though I still have a problem with WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get). After all, I'm currently talking about an army with two artifacts which do not exist on any miniature. Plus, is there really a point to this WYSIWYG. I prefer full disclosure: here is this miniature, it is a chaplain, he has a rosius and a plasma gun, yes if you ask me later I will tell you this again. It's called a friendly game. I shouldn't need eight librarians to cover the whole spectrum of my options when I can never play more than one librarian at a time.
But I digress. All of this is particularly pointless when it comes to Horrors. You have to glue on their arms. Arms!!! You're choosing between claw or fist. There's not effect either way in the game. Geez, just model the miniature with the arms already connected. Is that too much to ask?
What's worse is I think the box set I got was coated with anti-super glue stuff. Seriously. It's a ball and socket joint. That's the easiest glue there is, and yet it took me three hours to put together ten miniatures, and I eventually had to pin them to get them to set. By the time I was done, I was wearing super glue gloves. I'll be biting my fingers for the better part of the new year.
How to glue and pin
I figured I'd publish this out of its context so that I could link back to it later. It seems like something that is likely to come up over and over.
There are numerous sources on the internet that will tell you how to glue and or pin a model, probably because there are numerous philosophies about pinning and or gluing. I like to think of mine as the "Lazy method."
I say this because, for the most part, I don't screw with two part epoxys. I want something glued in five minutes, not five hours. Occasionally I will use a glue gun to hold pieces in place until the other glue sets. But for the most part, my "glue" is super glue and nothing more fancy than that.
Be conservative with superglue. Too much and it will take too long to dry. Also, keep in mind that of the things that superglue will glue together, it is best at gluing together flesh. It takes absolutely no time for the glue to begin bonding your fingers together. Thus, if you're going to be pressing two pieces together to glue them, you might want to think about what you're pressing with. Fingers work in a pinch, but rubber bands are much better if you can use them. After the glue has dried, you need only cut the rubber bands away.
As for pinning. I keep seeing the words "jeweller's drill" whenever I read articles about pinning. I don't know what's wrong with these people, but I assume it's the same problem that causes them to use the words "jeweller's saw" in discussions of converting. You need neither of these pieces of equipment. I assume that the reason they are so ubiquitously mentioned is because GW makes Jeweller's saws and Jeweller's drills. However, I recommend a Dremel.
Dremel's have little drills (you can buy a 1/32nd or 3/54 drill bit for about $1.50, the dremmel itself will run you a weighty initial investment, but will still cost less than a single piece of equipment from GW and it can then be used to pin, convert miniatures, make scenery and every other frickin' thing on the planet). I cannot stress this enough, if you play 40k, you must have a Dremel. By the way, Dremel also makes a pretty nice hot knife and spot welder. Weehaw!
The goal in pinning is to put a tine hole in both sides of the thing to be glued. Depending on your pin size, you're going to need to be fairly accurate about how the two "faces" come together. For low gauge wire, the stuff will bend and so it's not so important. For high gauge wire, or actual pins, where the holes line up is where the holes line up and there's no two ways about it.
What sort of gauge wire do you need? Not very thick actually. Paper clips are a little too thick except for the more heavy duty miniatures. I'd say for 40k stuff, you really want about half the thickness of a paper clip. This, as I've mentioned, gives you the add flexibility when you're gluing the stuff into position.
As for the actual drilling, keep in mind that the size of a pin is normally only about an 1/8". I've used longer pins for different purposes--the one I used for the leg joint of the Eldar Wraithlord went all the way through the groin and connected to both legs, 1/2". You don't need to drill deep. Also, the miniature is going to get hotter the longer you drill, and there's a greater chance that the drill will get stuck (sometimes forever) the deeper you try to go. Little shallow holes. Remember, you're just trying to give the thing extra support, not retroactively creating a skeleton for the model. A short pin and some crazy glue will hold most models together.
For larger models (and for scenery) it is sometimes necessary to give the glue some help. In these cases I recommend using a glue gun to glue the center of a piece that's got super glue at the edges. Also, if you put hot glue at the edge of a joint, it will overflow covering up seem lines. Note, this really only works on organic looking joints. Vehicles will look weird with hot glue portruding from glued on features.
Lastly, when you do the actual drilling, be careful. Fear and respect all power tools. I recommend holding things in a vice. Drilling while you're holding stuff in your fingers is a good way to get a drill in your finger. Also, though there's not much kick up from drilling lead, better safe than blind. Wear goggles.
There are numerous sources on the internet that will tell you how to glue and or pin a model, probably because there are numerous philosophies about pinning and or gluing. I like to think of mine as the "Lazy method."
I say this because, for the most part, I don't screw with two part epoxys. I want something glued in five minutes, not five hours. Occasionally I will use a glue gun to hold pieces in place until the other glue sets. But for the most part, my "glue" is super glue and nothing more fancy than that.
Be conservative with superglue. Too much and it will take too long to dry. Also, keep in mind that of the things that superglue will glue together, it is best at gluing together flesh. It takes absolutely no time for the glue to begin bonding your fingers together. Thus, if you're going to be pressing two pieces together to glue them, you might want to think about what you're pressing with. Fingers work in a pinch, but rubber bands are much better if you can use them. After the glue has dried, you need only cut the rubber bands away.
As for pinning. I keep seeing the words "jeweller's drill" whenever I read articles about pinning. I don't know what's wrong with these people, but I assume it's the same problem that causes them to use the words "jeweller's saw" in discussions of converting. You need neither of these pieces of equipment. I assume that the reason they are so ubiquitously mentioned is because GW makes Jeweller's saws and Jeweller's drills. However, I recommend a Dremel.
Dremel's have little drills (you can buy a 1/32nd or 3/54 drill bit for about $1.50, the dremmel itself will run you a weighty initial investment, but will still cost less than a single piece of equipment from GW and it can then be used to pin, convert miniatures, make scenery and every other frickin' thing on the planet). I cannot stress this enough, if you play 40k, you must have a Dremel. By the way, Dremel also makes a pretty nice hot knife and spot welder. Weehaw!
The goal in pinning is to put a tine hole in both sides of the thing to be glued. Depending on your pin size, you're going to need to be fairly accurate about how the two "faces" come together. For low gauge wire, the stuff will bend and so it's not so important. For high gauge wire, or actual pins, where the holes line up is where the holes line up and there's no two ways about it.
What sort of gauge wire do you need? Not very thick actually. Paper clips are a little too thick except for the more heavy duty miniatures. I'd say for 40k stuff, you really want about half the thickness of a paper clip. This, as I've mentioned, gives you the add flexibility when you're gluing the stuff into position.
As for the actual drilling, keep in mind that the size of a pin is normally only about an 1/8". I've used longer pins for different purposes--the one I used for the leg joint of the Eldar Wraithlord went all the way through the groin and connected to both legs, 1/2". You don't need to drill deep. Also, the miniature is going to get hotter the longer you drill, and there's a greater chance that the drill will get stuck (sometimes forever) the deeper you try to go. Little shallow holes. Remember, you're just trying to give the thing extra support, not retroactively creating a skeleton for the model. A short pin and some crazy glue will hold most models together.
For larger models (and for scenery) it is sometimes necessary to give the glue some help. In these cases I recommend using a glue gun to glue the center of a piece that's got super glue at the edges. Also, if you put hot glue at the edge of a joint, it will overflow covering up seem lines. Note, this really only works on organic looking joints. Vehicles will look weird with hot glue portruding from glued on features.
Lastly, when you do the actual drilling, be careful. Fear and respect all power tools. I recommend holding things in a vice. Drilling while you're holding stuff in your fingers is a good way to get a drill in your finger. Also, though there's not much kick up from drilling lead, better safe than blind. Wear goggles.
the horrors, the horrors- painting
The best thing about a miniature like the Horrors is that they are essentially natural. There's no strange little buttons or hoses or dials or crap all over them. That means that, minus paint drying time, you can paint a squad of them in a few hours whereas, at my fastest, I can paint one chaos marine per hour.
I want to mention here that as I am no big fan of Citadel miniatures or GW, I am loathe to recommend the use of their paints. However, I am currently at a state of my painting where I am trying something new. I'm trying to get rid of my crappy citadel paints of which I have four boxes.
I imagine it would be possible to sue Citadel for false advertising as what they sell isn't really paint. It's more like a hope of color. You pull out a tincture of "wouldn't it be nice if this would paint your miniature red" Red ($3 a bottle) apply it to your miniature and well you can't see the red. Citadel colors Red and Yellow are transparent. They must be painted over white, or else they will not show up at all. Orange being a mix of red and yellow is a joke. Their blues and greens are nice (I especially like Dark Angels Green), but let's face it, at $3 per .406 fluid ounce, you're not exactly getting a deal.
For paints, I recommend two kinds, and I'm sure there will be five thousand addendums to this later, but you want a set of really good paints (I use Golden Select professional Acrylics) and a collection of pretty cheap paints (Americana Folk Art, Apple Barrel, and Delta Creme Coat all sell a paint line that's better than Citadel for about a 1/10th the cost--nothing is more than $.99 a bottle). The good paints will, more than likely have to be mixed to get the color you want, while the cheap paints are so cheap that you can buy whatever shade you like ten a time and still not worry about it overmuch. I have about 140 cheap bottles of paint.
By the way, when I say "cheap" I am certainly NOT implying that these paints are bad. They are simply not top quality. If you want to paint with crap, paint with Citadel.
To Citadel's credit, they have a line of "inks." These are very useful. No one else seems to sell a line of inks so I can't compare citadel's to other brands. I have heard tell that inks are just magic washes, in which case I feel like an idiot for even buying the citadel brand but oh well.
Okay, all that said. To paint Horrors you will need three colors for the base coat. I'm using purple, blue, and dark blue. I put on the darkest color as a base coat and then lighten up the rest of the miniature. Some people apply the mid-range, darken recesses and lighten edges, but I find that the hardest thing in painting is to get the crevices painted. Washes do not work. Not even Magic washes, which are a little better, but not much. Therefore, I start by painting the entire miniature the color of the crevice, with one addendum...
After I get done with the main coat of paint on the miniature, I'm going to douse it in purple ink. My goal is to make the thing look purplish rather than pink, or light blue. In this case, the crevices are going to get inked as well, but that's a few steps down the road.
Okay, so step one: paint a base coat that's a few shades darker than you want the miniature to look. On to step 2.
Step 2:
While I hate Citadel and really don't much recommend buying much from them, and what I do recommend you do buy, I also recommend you buy on ebay, there is one item which I think is worth the money, and that's citadel's guide to painting, or whatever it's called. In it, I learned the difference between dry brushing and overbrushing. This is important. Overbrushing is when you still have a lot of paint on the brush and you paint over another surface, and that's what step 2 is. I painted over the blue with particularly light blue, the dark blue with magenta, and the purple with an electric pink. This is the result
Step 3:
Some may call this cheating, but I don't think so. I've got this great magnifying glass+day lamp combo. Basically, it magnifies the miniature and does so with a light specially made to simulate day light. It's frickin' awesome. In any case, you don't need the lamp if you have a steady hand. The point is to go over the miniature and paint any raised spots in a lighter shade of whatever color you overbrushed. Your goal is to get about 1/2 the miniature's surface area covered (the overbrush probably covered 90%). Don't go overboard with this, you've still got one more layer, or possibly more if you're crazy, but at least one more to go. Don't worry at this point about getting individual hairs painted, that's a project for the next step.
It's hard to give tips on a step like this, since basically what I'm saying is paint, but I will tell you how you can go wrong here. First of all, this is a very necessary and primary step. So, don't cut corners. It will save you no time dry brushing through this, nor will it save you any time attempting to overbrush this color and do multiple washes to get three "layers" of paint. Washes, except when tightly controlled, look like washes. And dry brushing, except in rare instances of supreme texture on the miniature, look scratchy at best and crap at worst. Are there ways to master these techniques? Yes. But they never look better than paint that has been responsibly and consciously applied. So, just paint.
That being said, the real trick is to get the shades so that they are not too far off. This comes with practice, but let's just say that you should be able to discern the difference between the shades from the outside of the bottle (you should be able to, for instance, tell which shade is lighter, and rather easilly), but not much more. It's bad if you can imagine numerous shades between the two colors, but you do want enough of a diffference between the colors that you can see it on a little miniature from a couple of feet away.
Some people are big fans of blending in this situation. At this level, it can sometimes come in handy. To blend, simply paint on the lighter color, and then, while the paint is still slightly wet, lick the end of the brush, and draw the paint out a little onto the darker surface.
DO NOT use glycerine to keep the paints wet or else they will not blend, but rather mix. This can be an interesting effect unto itself, but not if it isn't what you're going for.
For my miniatures, I painted Chamberlay blue over a sky blue overbrush (both Delta Creme Coat), Electric Pink (Americana) over a Magenta (Folk Art)overbrush, and Lisa Pink over Electric Pink (both Americana). As you can see, my plan to use up my Citadel paints pretty much is failing. I just can't bring myself to waste such expensive miniatures with such crappy paint.
Step 4:
Okay, at this stage it is admissable to use drybrushing but only on things that are seriously textured (hair, fur, scales, chainmail). Everything else, like these horrors are still going to require gold old painting and a steady hand. On the most raised areas get a color that's as light as you want to get. My pink horrors recieved their lightest shade with English Lace (Apple Barrel), the purple horrors with Lisa Pink, and the blue horrors with white.
This is the basic method for painting everything on these horrors, and the basics hold true for most miniatures. What remains? Well, there are the horrors mouths, their tongues, and in some cases the other horror attempting to protrude from the horror. There is also the scaly bit above each horror's eyes, some horrors have horns, fire, and let's not forget the bases.
The horns: We'll start here. Horn's are painted dark brown, and then a light, light, light tan is applied to the most of the horn. I normally try to leave a dark brown ring around the horn that's about a milimeter thick, and then I draw the tan down in straight, clearly striated lines back towards the base of the horn in lines running perpendicular to that base. Then, I pain the top and front of the horn using white. It's barely noticable, if you've picked the lightest shade of possible, but regardless, it will look better.
The tongues: Tongues are easy. Pick a color different than the rest of the miniature. Paint it the dark color, and then paint it over using a kind of stage three color (a highlight, but not extreme). You're goal is to leave only a triangle of the darker color at the tongues base. If you want you can futher highlight the tip or folds depending on the tongues length. As I'm painting demons, I felt no loyalty to pink tongues whatsoever.
Fire: Fire's easy. Paint it the brightest red you can find. Highlight it with a midrange yellow.
Scales: Scales and similiar features as those found on Tzeentch Horrors require a technique that's very close to "black lining"--a painting tabboo since about 95. Okay, first paint the whole area are dark shade of a color opposite to that of the skin. If the skin is light, the color should be dark. If the skin is dark, the color should be light--but not too light. Once this whole area is painted, spot paint the top of the scales. On a larger miniature, with far more of these scales than on the horrors, you could dry brush. DO NOT, however, drybush, EVER, small areas. You will end up getting some wrong color on the surrounding area, and it will look like crap. This is, by the way a very similar tactic to how I painted the demons eyes and teeth.
Eyes and teeth: Paint the entire area of the mouth, sans tongue, and the entire eyes socket, black. Now, either dry brush or spot brush the teeth white. If you drybrush, make sure that you go back and paint the tips white. Drybrushing creates a "faded" look. You do not want the Horror's fangs looking faded. Also, spot a point of white onto the horrors eye leaving the rest of the socket dark.
Having done all this, you should have a number of horrors that are done.
Those that aren't done are the one's with another horror attepting to escape. Simply paint that horror as if it were another model, choosing a new color this time to offset the fact that one horror is attempting to crawl out another horror's mouth.
I had a number of real success stories with these miniatures. They were certainly up to the high standard that you pay for with Citadel. I do however have some words of advice to anyone painting Horrors, and that is this: Figure out what's what on the miniature. This is certainly something you have to worry about no matter what miniature you paint, but it is especially true of the horrors. You can, for instance, very easilly paint the fur that portrudes from a horror's arm without giving it too much thought, but case in point, that fur is actually supposed to be fire. Given the way that the Horror's mouth mishapes, it's very easy to miss a tongue or to get confused about whether the arm belongs to the horror on the outside or the horror that's coming out of that horror.
I want to mention here that as I am no big fan of Citadel miniatures or GW, I am loathe to recommend the use of their paints. However, I am currently at a state of my painting where I am trying something new. I'm trying to get rid of my crappy citadel paints of which I have four boxes.
I imagine it would be possible to sue Citadel for false advertising as what they sell isn't really paint. It's more like a hope of color. You pull out a tincture of "wouldn't it be nice if this would paint your miniature red" Red ($3 a bottle) apply it to your miniature and well you can't see the red. Citadel colors Red and Yellow are transparent. They must be painted over white, or else they will not show up at all. Orange being a mix of red and yellow is a joke. Their blues and greens are nice (I especially like Dark Angels Green), but let's face it, at $3 per .406 fluid ounce, you're not exactly getting a deal.
For paints, I recommend two kinds, and I'm sure there will be five thousand addendums to this later, but you want a set of really good paints (I use Golden Select professional Acrylics) and a collection of pretty cheap paints (Americana Folk Art, Apple Barrel, and Delta Creme Coat all sell a paint line that's better than Citadel for about a 1/10th the cost--nothing is more than $.99 a bottle). The good paints will, more than likely have to be mixed to get the color you want, while the cheap paints are so cheap that you can buy whatever shade you like ten a time and still not worry about it overmuch. I have about 140 cheap bottles of paint.
By the way, when I say "cheap" I am certainly NOT implying that these paints are bad. They are simply not top quality. If you want to paint with crap, paint with Citadel.
To Citadel's credit, they have a line of "inks." These are very useful. No one else seems to sell a line of inks so I can't compare citadel's to other brands. I have heard tell that inks are just magic washes, in which case I feel like an idiot for even buying the citadel brand but oh well.
Okay, all that said. To paint Horrors you will need three colors for the base coat. I'm using purple, blue, and dark blue. I put on the darkest color as a base coat and then lighten up the rest of the miniature. Some people apply the mid-range, darken recesses and lighten edges, but I find that the hardest thing in painting is to get the crevices painted. Washes do not work. Not even Magic washes, which are a little better, but not much. Therefore, I start by painting the entire miniature the color of the crevice, with one addendum...
After I get done with the main coat of paint on the miniature, I'm going to douse it in purple ink. My goal is to make the thing look purplish rather than pink, or light blue. In this case, the crevices are going to get inked as well, but that's a few steps down the road.
Okay, so step one: paint a base coat that's a few shades darker than you want the miniature to look. On to step 2.
Step 2:
While I hate Citadel and really don't much recommend buying much from them, and what I do recommend you do buy, I also recommend you buy on ebay, there is one item which I think is worth the money, and that's citadel's guide to painting, or whatever it's called. In it, I learned the difference between dry brushing and overbrushing. This is important. Overbrushing is when you still have a lot of paint on the brush and you paint over another surface, and that's what step 2 is. I painted over the blue with particularly light blue, the dark blue with magenta, and the purple with an electric pink. This is the result
Step 3:
Some may call this cheating, but I don't think so. I've got this great magnifying glass+day lamp combo. Basically, it magnifies the miniature and does so with a light specially made to simulate day light. It's frickin' awesome. In any case, you don't need the lamp if you have a steady hand. The point is to go over the miniature and paint any raised spots in a lighter shade of whatever color you overbrushed. Your goal is to get about 1/2 the miniature's surface area covered (the overbrush probably covered 90%). Don't go overboard with this, you've still got one more layer, or possibly more if you're crazy, but at least one more to go. Don't worry at this point about getting individual hairs painted, that's a project for the next step.
It's hard to give tips on a step like this, since basically what I'm saying is paint, but I will tell you how you can go wrong here. First of all, this is a very necessary and primary step. So, don't cut corners. It will save you no time dry brushing through this, nor will it save you any time attempting to overbrush this color and do multiple washes to get three "layers" of paint. Washes, except when tightly controlled, look like washes. And dry brushing, except in rare instances of supreme texture on the miniature, look scratchy at best and crap at worst. Are there ways to master these techniques? Yes. But they never look better than paint that has been responsibly and consciously applied. So, just paint.
That being said, the real trick is to get the shades so that they are not too far off. This comes with practice, but let's just say that you should be able to discern the difference between the shades from the outside of the bottle (you should be able to, for instance, tell which shade is lighter, and rather easilly), but not much more. It's bad if you can imagine numerous shades between the two colors, but you do want enough of a diffference between the colors that you can see it on a little miniature from a couple of feet away.
Some people are big fans of blending in this situation. At this level, it can sometimes come in handy. To blend, simply paint on the lighter color, and then, while the paint is still slightly wet, lick the end of the brush, and draw the paint out a little onto the darker surface.
DO NOT use glycerine to keep the paints wet or else they will not blend, but rather mix. This can be an interesting effect unto itself, but not if it isn't what you're going for.
For my miniatures, I painted Chamberlay blue over a sky blue overbrush (both Delta Creme Coat), Electric Pink (Americana) over a Magenta (Folk Art)overbrush, and Lisa Pink over Electric Pink (both Americana). As you can see, my plan to use up my Citadel paints pretty much is failing. I just can't bring myself to waste such expensive miniatures with such crappy paint.
Step 4:
Okay, at this stage it is admissable to use drybrushing but only on things that are seriously textured (hair, fur, scales, chainmail). Everything else, like these horrors are still going to require gold old painting and a steady hand. On the most raised areas get a color that's as light as you want to get. My pink horrors recieved their lightest shade with English Lace (Apple Barrel), the purple horrors with Lisa Pink, and the blue horrors with white.
This is the basic method for painting everything on these horrors, and the basics hold true for most miniatures. What remains? Well, there are the horrors mouths, their tongues, and in some cases the other horror attempting to protrude from the horror. There is also the scaly bit above each horror's eyes, some horrors have horns, fire, and let's not forget the bases.
The horns: We'll start here. Horn's are painted dark brown, and then a light, light, light tan is applied to the most of the horn. I normally try to leave a dark brown ring around the horn that's about a milimeter thick, and then I draw the tan down in straight, clearly striated lines back towards the base of the horn in lines running perpendicular to that base. Then, I pain the top and front of the horn using white. It's barely noticable, if you've picked the lightest shade of possible, but regardless, it will look better.
The tongues: Tongues are easy. Pick a color different than the rest of the miniature. Paint it the dark color, and then paint it over using a kind of stage three color (a highlight, but not extreme). You're goal is to leave only a triangle of the darker color at the tongues base. If you want you can futher highlight the tip or folds depending on the tongues length. As I'm painting demons, I felt no loyalty to pink tongues whatsoever.
Fire: Fire's easy. Paint it the brightest red you can find. Highlight it with a midrange yellow.
Scales: Scales and similiar features as those found on Tzeentch Horrors require a technique that's very close to "black lining"--a painting tabboo since about 95. Okay, first paint the whole area are dark shade of a color opposite to that of the skin. If the skin is light, the color should be dark. If the skin is dark, the color should be light--but not too light. Once this whole area is painted, spot paint the top of the scales. On a larger miniature, with far more of these scales than on the horrors, you could dry brush. DO NOT, however, drybush, EVER, small areas. You will end up getting some wrong color on the surrounding area, and it will look like crap. This is, by the way a very similar tactic to how I painted the demons eyes and teeth.
Eyes and teeth: Paint the entire area of the mouth, sans tongue, and the entire eyes socket, black. Now, either dry brush or spot brush the teeth white. If you drybrush, make sure that you go back and paint the tips white. Drybrushing creates a "faded" look. You do not want the Horror's fangs looking faded. Also, spot a point of white onto the horrors eye leaving the rest of the socket dark.
Having done all this, you should have a number of horrors that are done.
Those that aren't done are the one's with another horror attepting to escape. Simply paint that horror as if it were another model, choosing a new color this time to offset the fact that one horror is attempting to crawl out another horror's mouth.
I had a number of real success stories with these miniatures. They were certainly up to the high standard that you pay for with Citadel. I do however have some words of advice to anyone painting Horrors, and that is this: Figure out what's what on the miniature. This is certainly something you have to worry about no matter what miniature you paint, but it is especially true of the horrors. You can, for instance, very easilly paint the fur that portrudes from a horror's arm without giving it too much thought, but case in point, that fur is actually supposed to be fire. Given the way that the Horror's mouth mishapes, it's very easy to miss a tongue or to get confused about whether the arm belongs to the horror on the outside or the horror that's coming out of that horror.
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