The Daemon's Claw

To complement my Kastellan robot maniples I made over Christmas I have been collecting some Kastellan destroyers. I have magnetised the weapons so I can change between plasma and grav cannons. I now have enough units for a 1750 point army of pure adeptus mechanicus forces without using the knights. With the right combination of forgeworld and stragems this unit can put out 6D6 shots hitting on 3s rerolling 1s S8 with +1 to wound and doing 3 damage with -3 saving throws. That's a reasonable chance of taking out a superheavy tank or a knight in one go. Not bad for only 360 points. Normally you have to use twice as many points to kill something, so any time you can get close to killing your own points in one go its a real bargain. I also have a second Dunestrider tank. I am not sure whether it is better to have the Neutron laser or the Eradication Beamer. They both do the same maximum damage but the change of the neutron laser doing nothing is higher. With two tanks I will p...

We are running a DBA collaborative War of the Roses period at the club this year. this is an opportunity for people to get some historical gaming experience and maybe we can make a new community of the club members. The idea is that we can play a mix of individual games, smaller scenarios and larger collaborative games. I have been making the Stanleys. They successfully navigated the changing politics of Lancstrian and Yorkist kings by being too important to kill and just loyal enough. They came out of the wars having done very well. The only person who did better was Henry Tudor. I have my models mostly painted and now I need to make the bases. Hopefully everyone will be able to bring their forces down to the club for the AGM so we can see who is into the period and how the armies are going. Maybe we can have some individual games and then a collaborative game in March.

My Knights got their first outing of the new year up against Al's Genestealer Cult. I am enjoying the CA 2017, many of the Admech units got cheaper so I am now getting more bang for the buck. We played one of the new missions from chapter approved 2017, which turned out to be very like one of the variants of the old cleanse mission. We had quarter deployments. Al chose the quarters. We played the woods as blocking LOS if you were shooting through them but providing cover if you were in them and troops inside could be shot at and shoot troops outside. The Genestealer Cult deployed a couple of tanks a squad of autcannon teams and a sentinel hiding behind the forest. All the scary monsters were hiding in ambush. I deployed with the knights clustered together and bubble wrapped the Knights with the Admech infantry. This was in case I lost the roll of for the first turn. In the end this didnt matter, I won the first turn. The Knights set off on their patrol. T...

As predicted, I got some new models for Christmas. I have been working on the Kastellan Robots. I have been enjoying using the Vallejo model air colours. These produce a great range of colours that work really well through both the airbrush and a normal brush. Vince Venturella recommended them. I recommend people check out his channel on YouTube for painting inspiration. I went with a Cylon inspired colour scheme. I decided not to convert the heads into Cylon Helmets but did make the eye scanner glow effect on the screens. The weapons are magnetised so I can change between fists and guns. I might buy another set and paint them gold to be leaders of the units. I think one unit of 4 with fists and two with guns might be the right number. I have also been working on the Kataphron Destroyers. These are big bad battle cyborgs mounting heavy weapons. Either heavy grav or plasma. I also got inspired to paint this model today. I got this model back in 2005. I was stopped bec...