The Witchblade: The witchblade

Showing posts with label The witchblade. Show all posts

Monday, 21 July 2014

The Witchblade is Back!

Hail fellow Autarch's!

Wow the last post was December last year, sorry about that folks. Well it's been a busy last 8 months or so and the hobby really took a back foot in my life but i'm glad to say i'm back into it now. It's been quite a stressful time lately but now I have my new house and can finally sit down and start painting and maybe take a deep breath :)

Firstly, whats the current state of my Saim Hann army? Well I have a long list of models to paint and I got started on this last weekend. I have 35 Guardians on my painting table at the moment which I hope to mostly get done this week or early next week. This will then be followed by 20 Dire Avengers. For the medium term I have retired the Jetbike horde but they will certainly make an appearance in my new list's from time to time but rarely will I field a full Jetbike army.

I have found that foot Eldar armies are just so much fun. They pack such a wallop and with so many bodies on the table it's kind of like playing an Ork army, just with less emphasis on rage and blood-lust and more on shiny spirit gems and razor sharp Molecular flying discs! The thing with my Jetbike army is that it either suffered a heavy loss or on another day it absolutely smashed my opponent but with this foot based army I am playing it lends for much closer games and that's much more fun for me and my opponent.

I have designed my list on a very strong offence with multiple threats backed up by some long ranged heavy weapon defense that can hold back field objectives.

Offensive Wing:
Avatar - Fast Shot & Disarming Strike
Farseer

10 Dire Avengers - Exarch with Shimmershield and Power Sword
10 Dire Avengers - Exarch with Shimmershield and Power Sword
10 Wraith Blades - Ghost Axes, Shields
Wraith Lord - Ghost Glaive, Twin Heavy Flamers, Bright Lance, Scatter Laser
Wraith Knight - Suncannon, Scatter Laser

Defensive Wing:
10 Guardian Defenders - Bright Lance
10 Guardian Defenders - Bright Lance
War Walker Squadron (3) - Dual Scatter Lasers

I will keep you all up to date on my progress with painting the new army. I have a few pictures from my painting over the weekend which I will stick up after i get some progress done. Once the army is painted I will play a few games and post up some video battle reports along with some tactica. Also I hope you enjoyed some of the pictures of models in this article which of course weren't painted by me but many of the wonderful talented painters we all admire and follow. Particular favourite of mine is the picture just to the right from Thirdeyenuke from the Tale of Painters blog which you can find linked on my site.

Glad to be back!

John.

Friday, 20 December 2013

A New Eldar Craftworld is Born

Hey guys,

As you know I have collected Saim Hann Eldar for a while now. This was inspired by Fritz from www.fritz40k.com. However after a few years i'm a bit bored of the colour scheme and am thinking of a new Craftworld for my foot Eldar and my Wraith army. I want to do these armies with my air brush and I want to give them a battle hardened look as opposed to the usual bright and vibrant Eldar look. My Saim Hann were painted using Army Painter spray cans as basecoats but I want to master the airbrush and take my level of painting to a whole new level.

Also being into my fluff I need a good background for the Craftworld. Any ideas from your creative minds? If anyone can think of a cool and fluffy name for the Craftworld too I will name my high Farseer after you (with an Eldar twist of course).

Here are some of my models that were used to try out my airbrush. They are my learning curve and I must say I was happy with them.

Thanks

John

Wednesday, 18 December 2013

The Banshee Not So Scary

Happy Wednesday all!

So I have had a couple of games with my Banshee’s in my new list against Sean’s Tau and then against Erik’s Imperial Fists and here’s my thoughts on them so far.

In both games my Banshee’s lived but were severely depleted which I suspect is to be expected from a very fragile close combat unit that has to run the length of the battle field to reach their target. I fielded an Avatar in all the games and generally ran the Banshee’s quite close to him so they were fearless most of the time. My philosophy of running them in an army list that was full of higher priority dangers actually worked wonders and in the couple of games that I did use them, they weren't fired upon until the 3^rd or 4^th turns.

The problem was, when they did manage to get across the battlefield their numbers were too sufficiently depleted that their damage output was critically hamstrung. In the games that I played they were down to two or three Banshees’s and at Strength 3 (Strength 4 on charge) and rolling 5’s most of the time to wound you really need to be rolling as many dice as possible. I ran a unit of 6, Exarch with an Executioner but I think you really would need to field them in a unit of 10 to help mitigate the casualties in getting across the battlefield, which then creates its own new problem. 10 Banshee’s are hell of a lot more noticeable than the 6 I was fielding and I am sure they would attract increased fire.

Their kill tally in both games came to one Devil Fish and then two tactical marines so effectively they just mopped up a few of my enemies models near the end of the games. Certainly doesn’t warrant the investment in points into them.

I still love the models and the fluff behind them and I am sure I will get around to painting them at some stage but sadly my little play test has only backed up the general consensus of this unit that exists among Eldar players.

Pro’s:

Fast unit with +3” to run and with fleet

Great if charging a unit that isn’t in cover

Con’s:

No Grenades

Fragile

Damage output too low for Str 3

Needs large unit to be fielded to be worthwhile

No Delivery Mechanism

Recommendation: Do not field this unit

Thursday, 3 October 2013

NWG Tournament Over - Video and Pics

Hi all,

NWG was a blast last weekend! After first day I was in 9th place out of 38 however after two losses on Sunday I slipped way down to 28th. Had a great time though and the armies were incredible. Take a look at the Video and pics.

John.