1750 Nerd Bunker and Paint

I've got a couple of nerd related things to update.  First I've been playing around a lot with my airbrush and the new GW paints.  I purchased the reds GW recommends for Blood Angels.  Ever since Army Painter changed their spray red I haven't found a satisfactory red scheme.  Recently I played around with some Vallejo air paints and was pretty happy with them.  I left them at a stage where I want to wash them and then hit them with another coat of lighter red/orange.

More Vallejo paints just arrived so I can complete my project.  Before then I decided to try out the new GW scheme on one model.  I just quickly hand brushed him as fast as I could in order to get an idea of what the final shade of red will be.  Overall I'm pleased with the shade.  It's darker then the reddish orange used for GW Blood Angels (I started with a black primed model), but not Khorne dark.  I like my Blood Angels to really ride that line between goody-goody bright loyalist red and the darker red of Chaos.

I also took one of the models I had air brushed and washed/highlighted him.  Much to my surprise both my fully GW test model and my Vallejo/GW hybrid turned out a very similar shade of red (not exact but close enough).  Going forward my plan is to continue the Vallejo mix, wash them with the new more crimsony red GW wash (which I like), airbrush once more with a brighter color, and then highlight with an even brighter red, a hardline highlight with the new dry GW color (which I also like), and maybe the red GW glaze to help blend (I used it on the test models, not sure I like it yet).

End goal for my red

Before I move on, I'll quickly mention the other "new" GW paints, bases and layers.  While I like the new shade of red base paint more then the old one, it clearly doesn't cover as easily.  The same can be said of the layers, they just seem thinner or less pigmenty than the last set.  I liked the dry, and shade that I used (and maybe the glaze), but I'm still indifferent towards the base and layer paints.

In other nerdly news I battled at Atom's nerd bunker the other night.  It was a 1750 point battle, spearhead deployment with 3 objectives.  I didn't take any pictures, but I know Atom did so he will probably post something concerning the game on his site.  I am just going to go over a quick rundown of the units I used and how I feel they performed.  Just to get the drama out of the way, the game ended in a tie. On an overall strategy front I held everything in reserve, which I feel mixed about.  It worked ok, but I have this nagging suspicion that if I had started with most everything on the table I could have performed better.  I also think reserving hurt Atom.  Besides mishaping all over the place on his deepstriking I don't think it helped him that much.  There was not much I had that could seriously threaten the Daemon Prince, he may have been better off starting everything on the board and just plowing through my dudes (in a manly war-type way).  Long story short I think I am ready to officially break up with reserving/outflanking/deep striking (at least take a break).  It works great occasionally, but usually just leaves my ding-a-ling hanging out in the open. 

Here's the rundown of my units.

5 man sniper scout squad: They did what they always do, kill nothing but hold onto an objective.  5 of these guys have pretty much become an automatic pick for my army.

Commander Dante, Sanguinary Priest, and 5 man Sanguinary Guard unit: A major failing in this list is its "elite-ness".  I took too many expensive units and not enough base troopers.  While this unit did kill a vindicator and eventually a chaos dreadnought it couldn't dent Atom's Daemon Prince.  I stupidly forgot about Dante's hit and run ability which would have really helped against the dreadnought (and maybe have helped me get that second objective).  However I think I'm about ready to make yet another major decision regarding my Blood Angels and declare that Dante sucks.  His abilities are great, but for 225 points he can't kill shit.  I'd rather take the Sanguinor (who is a bit more survivable), Mephiston (who would have given the Daemon a run for his money) or just a plain old Librarian (much cheaper and more versatile).

8 man death company with chaplain: This unit is usually my go to assault choice.  However, I wasn't able to get a charge off with them so they just tied up a unit of Khorne Beserkers and Uncle Tickles (who is a beast) before dying.  I know that if they would have gotten the charge off things would have been very different, I just needed to wait a bit longer before deploying them.

Stormraven: The storm chicken did good.  By the time it arrived I had taken out most of Atom's long range shooting (or tied it up) so it survived the whole battle.  I was able to pour some fire and greatly weaken a unit for Khorne Beserkers with it, but even two full turns of shooting into a unit of Plague Marines produced only a handful of kills.  The chick did not come on until turn 4, I could have used its fire a bit earlier.

Cheater Claw Dreadnought: Yeah, this thing is gross.  It killed a 10 man chaos marine squad in 1 turn (ok, only 9 and the last guy ran away, but whatever), a Rhino and probably would have killed Uncle Tickles if it had gotten a chance.  For 150 points this was the best and brightest spot in the list.  Next time I'm going to take 3 of these things.

Vindicator: I usually have great success with the vindicator, this game it came on late, missed most of its shots except the last one (which was a big one).  On turn 6 I dropped a pie plate onto Chaos Lord Tickles who then failed his invul save and died like the traitor he is.

Baal Predator: My outflanking shenanigans turded out for this guy also.  I came on and laid into Atom's obliterater squad and through a combination of shitty to-wound rolls and good armor saves by Atom I didn't do squat. 

6-man assault squad with Las-Plas Razorback: These guys didn't really do much (I think they killed a Vindicator), however they held their own.  I tied up some Oblits for a few turns, and took an obscene amount of bolter fire without getting wiped.  I can see why most tournament Blood Angel players just load up with 4-6 units of these guys.  That play style is a bit dull for me, but at this point level I can see dropping the Sanguinary Guard/Dante unit and picking up 1-2 more units of these guys and snabbing a cheap HQ (or upgrading my Chaplain to a Reclusiarch) in order to up the model count of the army and reduce its "elite-ness".

It was a good game and I have to say Chaos isn't as bad as everyone says it is.  I'm sure against some new codex with a cheesey-tournament style list it wouldn't do that great but for friendly games it doesn't seem too far behind the curve.  Next time I have to face that Daemon Prince I'm going to have to bring some serious fire power.