Shredders WIP #1, Blood Angels list

It begins.

Despite not having a whole lot of time to work with yesterday I still got a decent bit done.  The most obvious part is that I got started on some Shredders to try out my Legion scheme ideas.  My plan is for a very light blue, so light it's almost white, skin with brown/orange spikes/chitin/armor and an accent color yet to be determined.  On this pair of Shredders I took two different approaches.  The one on the left, with the raised foot, got a coat of VMC Shadow Grey as a base, a color which is far more purple than I anticipated.  A 50/50 mix of Shadow Grey and VMC Wolf Grey was next, then straight Wolf Grey, then VMC Dead White as a rather broad highlight.  The one of the right, firmly planted on the ground, started with a coat of Wolf Grey which didn't look all that different from the white primer I was painting over.  Next was a heavily watered, perhaps 4:1 water to paint ratio, wash/glaze of Shadow Grey.  After that the steps were the same, though I may well have skipped the 50/50 step.  I got similar results from both approaches, but the one on the right painted up much easier.  Perhaps it's because of the pose, or because I did the first bit of actual painting (after the base coat and the wash/glaze) after I'd already done the first coat of actual painting on the other Shredder, thus giving me a little bit of experience with how Shredders are constructed.  I think the wash/glaze just did the job better, and quicker, than layering up from the bottom.  The results are more purple than blue so I'm considering doing an Asurmen Blue wash over them, or at least in the recesses, but I'm going to wait until I have the chitin done to see how they look as a whole.  The current plan for the orange is to start with brown and proceed through a lighter brown into orange, with the orange as the last two layers.  I have no idea how this will turn out, but I hope for the best considering I picked browns that look a little orange to use as the base.



In other news, the weather here in the DMV broke for a few hours yesterday.  The humidity dipped below 90% for the first time in forever, which allowed me to get some varnish on the Greylords.  I had hoped to snow the bases and get the full varnishing finished, all the way to the Dullcote, but humidity is back up to 80% now and if the cloudy skies are any sort of predictor there won't be any break for the rest of the day at the very least.

A roundabout introduction to 40k news.  My internet has been slow the past couple days, so slow that I've had to go back to pre-broadband surfing practices (loading one site while reading another, making a sandwich while a video buffers, you all remember the drill).  It looks like the problems are beyond my control, though I wonder why nothing is on fire if everyone's internet is this slow.  Regardless of any civil disobedience, or the lack thereof, instead of blogging last night I went in for some offline entertainment.  Part of that entertainment was finally getting around to making up some army lists.  With EV closing in on having his Dark Eldar on the table, it's well past time I get my own ducks in a row.  I started, or restarted to be more precise, my Orks with the intention of doing a slow grow, paint-as-you-go thing with EV about a year ago.  The wheels fell off that enterprise somehow and we ended up moving in opposite directions, culminating in our current positions where EV has a large chunk of DE painted (1000-1250 points is my guess), while I have a little less than 500 points of Orks painted.  EV may well have his army done in the next month or two, provided he keeps close to the pace he's been going for the last couple weeks.  I will be nowhere near completing the Orks any time soon, especially with the new seasonal Warmahordes campaign starting next week which appears to have a painting component to it.  (I also want to stick with the Khador until I can field a fully painted, and fully functional, list.  I'm real close to that goal and don't want to get distracted when I'm a handful of models away.)  My only other option is the boys in red, my beloved Blood Angels.

List building began with the core of the army: Librarian with Jump Pack, 3 Assault Squads with Jump Packs, 2 Devestators with Missle Launchers. 3 Sanguinary Priests of varying armament.  This group comes in at just under 1500 points which meant I had about 350 to play with since EV is building to 1850.  My first attempt produced a couple variations on Deep Striking Terminators.  The idea was appealing enough, but there was a small problem: I'd have to get two boxes of Terminators.  While not necessarily opposed to the idea, it did get me to wondering what else I could get for ~$100.  The options were soon narrowed to: a Battleforce, three boxes of Assault Marines/Death Company/Sanguinary Guard, three Razorbacks.  There are other options of course, and more spring to mind even now, but those were what I was looking at.  My attempts at making a fully mech list didn't get very far.  Since I have no Razorbacks I'd have to add any that go into a list, and since I'd be looking at 5-6 (plus more tanks besides) it wasn't feasible in the $100 bracket.  Next I went to a Descent of Angels list and was able to make it work within my parameters, but the results struck me as a very poor match-up with Dark Eldar, especially since they took out the most effective part of the army (missile launchers).  Finally I went back to the basic idea of the list, jumpers with missile support, and came up with something I think I like:

125 - Librarian w/ Jump Pack
155 - Reclusiarch w/ Jump Pack
225 - Honor Guard w/ 2 Plasmaguns, 2 Power Weapons
235 - 10 Assault Marines w/ Power Fist, 2 Meltaguns
230 - 10 Assault Marines w/ Power Fist, Meltagun, Flamer
230 - 10 Assault Marines w/ Power Fist, Meltagun, Flamer
210 - 10 Devastators w/ 4 Missile Launchers
210 - 10 Devastators w/ 4 Missile Launchers
230 - 2 Sanguinary Priests w/ Jump Pack & Power Weapon, 1 Sanguinary Priest
1850

I like this list for a couple reasons, foremost of which is that it requires only a single box of Death Company with which to make the Honor Guard.  Unlike the Terminators and mech options, an Honor Guard has been on my to-do list for a long while, so the addition would be a versatile one instead of an impulsive one.  This iteration also keeps with the basic theme of jumpers and missiles, adding a little extra close-in firepower with the Honor Guard as well as some extra melee punch with the Chaplain.  The Librarian goes with the Honor Guard, Chaplain with an Assault Squad, jumping Priests go with the remaining two Assault Squads, and the bare-bones Priest goes with the Devastators.  Astute readers will note the swap of a pair of Meltaguns for Flamers.  This is strictly a method of cutting points and any potential extra effectiveness of one over the other against Dark Eldar is a bonus.

Some tweaks are still in order like giving the Honor Guard Storm Shields, and the Chaplain might get the axe in favor of more shooting punch, but in general I think I'm on a good track.  Running a Descent of Angels list is intriguing, even if I'm not sure that it would do well at all against Dark Eldar, and a large part of a DoA list is (by my thinking) a shooty Honor Guard, so the current list will even build towards a future one.  Plus I have magnets now, even if I have yet to use them, so I can have a flexible Honor Guard with 5 bodies and interchangeable arms instead of 20 bodies with fixed arms.  One day I'll get around to the post about why I prefer the limited options in Warmahordes list building to the dazzling array of options in 40k.