Blood Angels Combat Patrol

I wanted to start a Blood Angels army back when the codex was a free download, but it never panned out, so when the new codex hit I decided I'd go ahead and jump on it. However, I didn't want to be just another bandwagon Blood Angel player... so I decided to do things a little differently. I would make my Blood Angels out of Dark Angels models. As it turns out, with two boxes of Dark Angels veterans, you can build a five-man tactical squad and a five-man assault squad! Wooohooo! (Note: If you want jump packs, you'll need extra bits.)

So off to eBay I went, purchasing two packs of vets and two razorbacks. My goal was to purchase only units that I would someday want in a 1500 point army, since that's the point total at which we normally play. Once everything was assembled and painted well enough so as not to be embarrassed, I ended up with this:

The paint job was as follows (more for my memory than anything else... I doubt anybody would want to duplicate my shoddy paint job):

• black basecoat
• Robes - mechrite red, blood red highlight, baal red wash
• Shoulder Pads - mithril silver trim
• Weapons - boltgun metal, badab black wash
• Eyes - iyanden darksun

My combat patrol list will be:

• Librarian (shackle soul, smite) 100
• Assault Squad (5 marines, 1x meltagun, sergeant w/ power weapon & meltabombs, razorback) 150
• Tactical Squad (5 marines, sergeant w/ meltabombs, razorback) 150

(Note: I know I have the lascannons shown in the picture. I didn't glue the turret together, so it will be easy to switch back. I also know that the assault squad sergeant has a plasma pistol. Whenever I make it to 1500, he'll have one. For now, we're ignoring it.)

More (Dice) Bars in More Places

Just a funny little update... started stacking dice from one of the little GW cubes and thought I was in an AT&T commercial!

Thoughts on Eldar "Combat Patrol"

My brother and I played a 500 point game of 40K recently just for a change of pace, and it was interesting. I had a hard time deciding what to include, but finally settled on a farseer and two squads of dire avengers in wave serpents. Going into the game, I was really worried that I would get stomped. In fact, my brother even asked, "That's all you have?" before the game began. But I ended up tabling him. My farseer took one wound and I lost two dire avengers, but that was it. I managed to destroy two broadsides, two crisis suits, and a squad of fire warriors before he admitted that he couldn't kill my tanks and wanted to concede. I kind of felt bad.

So after the game, I looked online to see if I could find official rules for small games and stumbled on these combat patrol rules. I don't know how official they are, but they sounded good to me and I sat down to make a list. And my discovery amazed me... I can't play any of my favorite Eldar units in combat patrol! Currently, I own these models:

HQ
Farseer
3 Warlocks (one w/ singing spear)
Farseer on Jetbike
6 Warlocks on Jetbikes

Troops
10 Defender Guardians
10 Storm Guardians
18 Dire Avengers
2 Dire Avenger Exarchs (one w/ twin catapults, one with power weapon/shimmershield)

Elites
5 Fire Dragons
Fire Dragon Exarch (w/ firepike)

Fast Attack
4 Warp Spiders
Warp Spider Exarch (w/ powerblades)

Heavy
Wraithlord
Falcon
2 Fire Prisms

Transport
3 Wave Serpents

Now, after dropping all of the models that don't follow combat patrol rules, I'm left with just troops, elites, and fast attack choices. It royally sucked to realize that Eldar don't have a single HQ or transport that can be used, and I don't own any of the heavy support options that are legal.

I guess the best I could muster would be something like this:

• 7 Dire Avengers
• 10 Guardians (Scatter Laser)
• 5 Fire Dragons
• 5 Warp Spiders (Including Exarch)

And somehow, this just feels pathetic... maybe I'll stick to Blood Angels in small games...

General Blog Updates... A Network Drop-Out

Since it's been so long since I've been able to keep the blog updated, I figured my return should be accompanied by a little housecleaning and remodeling. I'll start with reorganizing my tags, and then go on with some visual changes. While I like the color scheme as it is now, I really want a new banner, so I'll spend some time working on a new one. If nothing else, I'll at least change the picture on the right. I'd like to make my painted 40K figures more prominent than the pre-painted D&D black dragon that currently dominates the top half of the graphic, and I want less books.

Yeah, it seems pointless to post a picture of the banner now, but when I get around to changing the one at the top, I'll  still have this one posted here for nostalgia.

In other news, it seems I've been dropped from the Bell of Lost Souls and From the Warp networks. I'm not sure why... perhaps I haven't posted often enough or I've posted about RPGs too often... or perhaps it's just technical difficulties... but regardless of the reason, I'm okay with getting dropped. I'm not going to try to get added to their lists again, but I'll continue to support both sites with links to them in my sidebar, and I'll continue to visit them on a regular basis. I like what they do... I just don't want to bug them about putting me back in the rotation. My content isn't really specific to wargames, and although I have posted quite a bit about Warhammer 40K over the last year or so, I always felt guilty when I was on their websites and noticed an Outsyder Gaming link there with an NPC Spotlight as my last post. I never had that guilty feeling with the RPGBN because they accepted the RSS feed for my RPG posts rather than the feed for the whole site. All in all, FTW and BoLS probably weren't good fits for Outsyder Gaming anyway.

Enough rambling... time to work on the blog and wait for responses to the Google Wave Rifts campaign.

Finally Gaming Again

I've been missing in action lately... not a single post since February, so completely consumed by grad school that I haven't had the time to play games much at all, much less write about them. And let's face it... when gaming time is cut, the actual gaming comes before the the blogging. But my semester has ended, and my schedule has returned to normal, so I'm back!

I've got quite a bit to write about over the next few weeks though. I'm looking forward to...

• getting back into the Google Wave based Rifts campaign (and actually blogging about it a bit)
• showing off my new Blood Angels successor chapter (with which I'll need some help with the fluff)
• writing some about 500 point games of 40K (not quite combat patrol)

I also caught wind that a new D&D campaign is in the works nearby, so if I get the opportunity to participate, I'll be sure to share some on that as well.

Ahhhhh, it's good to have the time and energy to write again...