Building a Tervigon: Sketchbook Edition

My Tervigon is nearing completion, and here's the sketches I worked with. I wanted this one to look like the one in the book. My next one will be a radical departure. Anyway, having a rough sketch to work with is helpful. I didn't copy it exactly, some details turned out to look fine on paper, but not work out at all in green stuff. I should have the guy completed by Monday, then hopefully painted up by Friday.

Why Are There No Shooty Characters?

I suppose I had better rephrase this. Why are there hardly any shooty characters? I was pondering this as I thought about the state of my Eldar. 13 years ago, I saw a picture of Maugan Ra in a GW catalog and knew from that moment I would play Eldar. While in his current incarnation he can put out more shots than almost any other model, it's still not a lot of shots. Furthermore, he can't pick out single models, like Telion (one of the few shooty characters).

Image copyright Games Workshop

Most characters are fit for close combat. What's more heroic, a character who sits back and shoots or one who boldly charges the enemy? Also, close combat has the advantage of being able to attack during both yours and the enemy's turn. Shooting is only done on your turn. Maugan Ra shooting (provided you rolled perfectly) could potentially kill 5 models in one game turn, while in one game turn of close combat he could potentially kill 8, 9 if you charged. Plus if he broke the unit he could potentially wipe them out entirely.

In order to make a proper shooty character they need to be able to do one of two things: either be able to ignore cover and armor saves and remove whichever casualties you want with reliable wounding rolls, or put out an insane amount of shots. The Vindicare Assassin can pick his target, but he's still rolling on a 4+ to wound.

Now that I look at the new codices and the coolness of the characters, it makes the Phoenix Lords look even more underwhelming. I'd like there to be characters who are just as deadly in the shooting phase as others are in the close combat phase. Let's hope that when the Eldar are redone, the Phoenix Lords, especially the shooty ones get their proper due.

What do you guys think?

A Better Picture of My Shining Spears

I think I'm finally figuring out how to properly photograph miniatures. Compare this photo to the ones here. On the old one, half of them are out of focus.

All it took was a trip down memory lane to my high school and college photography classes. I'll make a post later showing my setup and what I do to photograph.

Now that I look at it, I really need to redo their bases. That project is going on the back burner until Eldar get updated...

Comic: This Is How It Will Go Down

A rather hilarious comment by Funk on this thread inspired me to make this comic. This is my first time slapping together a comic, please let me know if you can't read it so I can resize the fonts. As usual, click on it for a larger view.

First Game With New Tyranids

I got in my first game last night, and I'm not really counting it as such because it was a team game (DA and IG vs. IG, Daemons and Nids, we had an odd number of players). Still, here's what I found out:

Tervigons rock. I had mine in reserve, so they didn't start pumping out gaunts until turn 3, but by turn 5, I had summoned 47 Termagants. One of them even shut down on the first turn I used it. That's over two hundred free points of Termagants, and had we continued the number would have been even higher.

Regeneration is great on your 6-wound creatures. My Trygon got in a fight with Azrael, and while they fought for 3 turns with neither the victor (the game ended before we could see the end of the duel) the Trygon probably would have died without it. The Guard player told me he didn't want to shoot my Tervigons because they would have simply regenerated.

Biovores are decent, but I think they need to be taken in full squads to be most effective. Don't forget to put that spore mine down if you miss by enough! I forgot twice and while it wasn't a game breaker I was missing half the fun of biovores.

Zoanthropes are great, but psychic defenses suck, especially the old psychic hoods. My opponents had one psychic hood but he didn't show up until late game, so I got to attack uncontested for a bit. While I rolled poorly on the vehicle damage charts, I still did enough with only two Zoanthropes to draw lots of fire. That 3++ comes in handy now, until they start bringing out psycannons. Which they did.

Mycetic spores are great. Being able to deep strike with impunity is a power trip. I put a barbed strangler on mine and managed to kill a few guardsmen. The funny thing is that they never bothered to shoot it, even though it was an easy kill point. There were so many other high priority targets that the thing just kept shooting and shooting. I may not take the gun in future games, but I had some points to spare.

Next game I hope to try out a few more new units, then I'll probably settle on a list and focus on that.

Completed Ravenwing Bikes

Here they are! Here is a tutorial on how I painted them. These were painted as a commission.




This biker as you may have noticed is a bit unusual. For some reason the original gunner was missing, so my friend replaced it with a scout biker. We couldn't figure out any way to get his arms in the right position without major cutting and filing so I simply decked him out with guns.

Ymgarl Stealers

After reading through the codex, I'm intrigued by these guys. They seem like an interesting unit to use, but with a major flaw if the enemy hides in the same terrain. Then I had another idea- what if during deployment you used Spore Mines to saturate the terrain, to keep the enemy out? This may not even work, and it may not be a game winning strategy, but I'd like to give it a try.

I was also thinking about their morphing and when you'd want to use it. What I was thinking is on the charge, use the +1 T morph so you win combat, but not by a landslide. This way the enemy won't run and you won't be stuck out in the open. In the opponent's phase, use a more offensive morph to hopefully wipe out or break them. Once again, I need to test this so it may not even be a viable strategy.

They seem pretty easy to model, the feeder tendril heads from the Genestealer kit are all you need. Anyone had a chance to try these guys out yet?