Saturday, November 10, 2007

Cut and Paste

For some reason I glitched out and didn't realize there was a Saturday tourney at BFG this weekend; I hear there was a 3-monolith army there and no big bugs at all. Interesting shift in the meta, wish I'd been there.

Instead I was impatiently mucking about with jetbikes today, concentrating mainly on converting shuriken cannons to mount up to 6 jetbikes and 2 vypers. With the bikes, I first made a couple of cuts to the original weapon, sawed off the cone portions of the shuriken catapult mounts, and put the catapult barrel on one side and the ammo canister on the other. There were actually 2 different versions of the cannon but they both looked pretty cool underslung in this manner. For the Vypers, I put the cannon barrel in the place of the center stabilizer that normally barely pokes out from underneath the front canopy.


I also toyed around with an old cut up Eldrad model I had in the bitz box, sawing it up even further and attaching it to guardian rider legs to mount him on a bike. His sword arm was cut off and replaced with a guardian arm, and his staff top was replaced by the blade and handle-guard from the metal jetbike autarch model to make a singing spear. On the lower half of the staff I put the little power generator from the base of the bike autarch's laser lance. I cut in deep lines in his bike's wings to set his ride apart a little bit from the rest of the troops. I think he's going to look pretty cool, although I still have to dig out the dreaded greenstuff to clean up his robes.


So, yeah, I was thinking I'd put off the Wild Riders until I was done painting Tyranids, but it looks like that's going to be pretty difficult.

Here's the latest 1500 list I'm working with, updated after several helpful comments from visitors. It's got 11 scoring units, some good anti-vehicle and anti-horde, great on movement, and the big guns are generally resilient. At the very least it should be a lot of fun!

HQ

Farseer - jetbike, singing spear, guide, doom, runes of warding, spirit stones

TROOPS

3 Guardian Jetbikes - 1 shuriken cannon
Warlock - jetbike, destructor, singing spear

3 Guardian Jetbikes - 1 shuriken cannon

3 Guardian Jetbikes - 1 shuriken cannon

3 Guardian Jetbikes - 1 shuriken cannon

3 Guardian Jetbikes - 1 shuriken cannon

3 Guardian Jetbikes - 1 shuriken cannon

FAST ATTACK

2 Vypers - 2 starcannons, 2 spirit stones

2 Vypers - 2 bright lances, 2 spirit stones

HEAVY SUPPORT

Fire Prism - holofields, spirit stones

Fire Prism - holofields, spirit stones

Fire Prism - holofields, spirit stones

14 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wow, you fit all of that into 1500pts? Nice.

~kings

bullymike said...

1497 actually. it's hard getting over not filling er up to the brim like in the old days. still, it's got lots of fun toys right? i decided to go with starcannons instead of scatter lasers on the 'dakka' vyper squadron because SLs do significantly less MEQ damage than SCs and not that much more to GEQs to warrant taking something cheaper. still, i know those vypers won't stand up to much so i'll have to pick their moments pretty well.

gah its going to be sooo long before i get the models up to playable standards! patience... running... thin!

bullymike said...

I forgot to ask, what do you think about the seer so far?

Ad Astra said...

Love Eldrad on the bike as your farseer- why didn't I think of that? Jsut a thought on your Vypers if you aren't going to take holo-fields. Consider dropping the shuriken cannons. With the star cannons you have 36" range and with the fast movement of the vyper you should be able to keep them out of range of most of your opponent's weapons yet still be able to shoot. If you keep the shuriken cannon upgrades you will have to close to 24" to shoot them- and at 24" you can get shot up with return enemy fire from bolters, gauss weapons, etc. The shuriken catapults are even worse since you would have to close to rapid fire distance to use them at 12" and return rapid fire will take down vypers quick holo-fields or not.

Like the idea of three prisms, should put quite a scare in your opponent.

4 Jetbikes in a group is interesting. I run larger groups so they can take some return fire and not break and so that they are easy to hide behind terrain- but you do have a lot more scoring units which is what my list lacks.

Anonymous said...

Farseer looks good so far, I think it will look a lot better once the robes are done. BTW, what is that thing under the sword?... looks a little off balance if he is about to throw it.

I agree that you should take the cannons off the Vipers. That bolter return fire (NTM plasma) will chew them up. With the extra points you should take Runes of Warding... enemy takes tests on 3D6! I dont imagion this army will be afraid of LASH but FURRY OF THE ANCHIENTS might be annoying every turn...

Just more to think about before you begin play-testing.

~kings

Ad Astra said...

Upgrade to a singing spear if you can? Give your Farseer two tank busting options- throwing it and then the assault if needed.

bullymike said...

Thanks all.

The bobble on the bottom of the seer's spear is, to paraphrase one of my favorite parts of the unreleased ork book, just a bit of Elfy know-wotz. Whadda ya want, a schematic? ;) I see it as some kind of generator that powers the blade once its in, or maybe extra propulsion to really stick it to his target. Without it the thing just looks like a sword with a really long handle, though that is actually the effect I was going after after first seeing the bit. I tried to extend the staff part with piping of the same size but the glue wouldn't take without leaving a big gob, and i don't have a pin vise small enough to pin that thin a staff. Also the bike turbine on that side juts out just far enough to block anything longer anyway given the angle of eldrad's original pose. It doesn't look so unbalanced in person IMO, but whatever. I'm not about to fuck with it any more; fragile eldar stuff is pretty hard to convert well and i like what I've got. I'll get to those robes this week.

Shuriken cannons, ok. Good advice. Warding also. I had Warding in a previous list but dropped it for points. Now my problem is what to do with 8 extra points left over? GD new codexes with their no-filler wargear :P

@ Fritz, oops I deleted my last comment in order to revise. Love that notify function though, right? Unfortunately both the farseer and warlocks have singing spears already...

Anonymous said...

Is there really nothing for the Farseer or the Vehicals that is less than 10pts? I suppose you will just have to wait to make it 2000pts... ;)

~kings

Anonymous said...

One more thing... not that it matters right now but you should break that Bright Lance Viper Unit up... more flanking shots!!!

~kings

Anonymous said...

It looks like the way you have it configured you can get 2 Vypers for 1 Prism. While the Vypers are 16% more likely to get hurt by regular shots, I would try a list with 3 Vyper Squads and 2 Prisms.

Or lose one Fire Prism and add a Unit of 3 Warlocks on Jetbikes, 1 with Destructor and 1 with Enhance. Combined with the Farseer, they would be excellent for taking out high T enemies. 3+ armor save with 4+ invulnerable save makes them pretty survivable... almost like 1 wound Autarchs.

-Jim

Anonymous said...

Then give the third Warlock Embolden and one a Singing Spear and you are right at 1500 by my count.

Anonymous said...

You should consider the Shining Spear control panel for the Farseer. The panel comes with an arm, and it is more bad-ass looking than the guardian arm.

http://store.us.games-workshop.com/storefront/store.us?do=Individual&code=9947010406906&orignav=9

Anonymous said...

I agree with anonymous on that one. The pannel arm thing looks pretty sweet. If I see you next week when I am in town for Thanksgiving I'll show you my Farseer conversion from a Shinning Spear Exarch... I think yours is much better but atleast you can see the pannel arm thing. :)

p.s. off topic but are you playing in the HH campaign this week? Cuz I want to know what you are rolling with since there are baddies about.

~kings

bullymike said...

about the shining spears panel... i would love one, are any of yous giving em away? i'll put something on the austin bartertown forum about it but otherwise its going to be a while before i'll be in a position to direct order anymore GW stuff. as it is i'm going to have to try and win the other 2 grav tanks at tourneys. and i have to agree with aventine way back when, i think 3 prisms is necessary to make the overall army most effective (and more fun/unique), rather than another vyper unit.

and for the HH game, just my usual guard and tanks, maybe an inquisitor and a bunch of assassins. i don't see a point in worrying about army comp too much for it since there'll be at least two other folks playing alongside me. also i'm getting sicker and sicker with a cold today so i may not be able to make it anyway (monty should be able to stand in with all his guard)