We're faster than evil! We're faster than crime! We're faster than love! We're faster than tiiiiiime! Oops. That was Ring Raiders. I always get flashbacks when I play with Epic aircraft. Especially with those transparent stalks.



So, these Thunderbolts are the 3rd and 4th aircraft from C Squadron from the 1337th Imperial Navy Fighter Wing, in the colours of the 1st Ager Hominis campaign where they famously supported the Grand Master Obtusius of the Dark Angels Chapter (DEFFWING COMPANY).

These guys are glued to the stalks, but the stalks aren't glued to the base so I can swap them between standard flying bases, retro hex flying bases and Aeronautica Imperialis bases. Heck, I should go scour eBay and mount them on actual Ring Raider rings. Though sadly I doubt they'd fit my adult fingers.

I also decided not to base them to match the army (like my Ork Fighta Bomberz) so I could recycle them for other Imperial armies.

Labels: Dark Angels, Epic, oldskool

Posted by Curis at 10:45 PM

The Dark Angels have a dark secret. They're absolute chumps for product placement.

I always feel Bugman's Bar misses a trick not theming its food to the game universes. Well, they used to have a "Space Marine Sandwich" and I think a "Waywatcher Salad". But no! That was just taking names and putting them in front of foodstuffs. What do Space Marines have to do with sandwiches? We could have a Lemon Russ, and Epic Parmageddon.

Labels: 40k, Dark Angels

Posted by Curis at 8:12 AM

Objective markers are one of those things that often get forgotten about modelling-wise. They're deathly important in game terms, but as they neither very shooty or killy, people neglect them. They're just extra things you can't be bothered painting and so are proxied with coins or unusual dice.

But for my Epic Bad Moonz, I thought I'd model a complete set. Left to right: Orks command bunker (the "Blitz"), exploderised Stompa head, cliched crashed Fighta-Bomba, and the 40K-scale Warlord (used to remember the Supreme Commander re-roll and also to give the Gargant an extra Macro-weapon attack).

Oh so pretty. And painting the classic Warboss figure was a joy. But honestly, these are rubbish counters. Why? Because they're painted and based exactly like the army. So many times my Warbands have found themselves halfway across the board lugging with them the crashed plane or their own command bunker. See if you can spot the objective below.

So, for my Dark Angels I went for the far simpler objective markers from the 40K transulcent green range. They stand out lovely and never get mistaken for a stand of Marines.

What have I learnt? Erm, form follows function I suppose.

Labels: Bad Moonz, Dark Angels, Epic, orks

Posted by Curis at 11:20 PM

So, Dark Angels have black Land Speeders - the Ravenwing. But do they also have green Land Speeders that don't secretly hunt the Fallen (NOT OF TRANSFORMERS 2 FAME), jink out the path of enemy bullets and cover themselves in unaerodynamic feather motifs?

1996's Codex: Angels of Death has this to say:

The 3rd, 4th and 5th [companies] are Battle Companies, each consisting of six squads of Tactical Space Marines, two of Assault and two of Devastators. These three Battle companies form the main battle lines and generally bear the brunt of the fighting. The Assault squads of the Battle company may be deployed as bike squadrons or land speeder crews.

Companies 6 and 7 are Tactical companies, each consisting of ten Tactical squads. They are intended to act as a reserve which may be used to bolster the main line, launch diversionary attacks to stem enemy flanking moves. Company 6 is also trained to use the Space Marine bike and the entire company may be deployed as bike squadrons. Similarly, Company 7 are trained to fight with land speeders and the company acts as a light vehicle reserve formation.

The 8th Company is an Assault company consisting of ten Assault squads. This is the most mobile company and is often equipped with jump packs, bikes and land speeders. The 8th Company is used in an assault role and wherever a strong hand-to-hand fighting force is needed.

But despite this apparent abundance of green Land Speeders, the Support section of the Dark Angel army list didn't include an entry for them. (Only the Tarantula, Dreadnought, Rapier, Whirlwind, Land Raider, Predator, Rhino and Razorback.) Though technically you could still get them by fielding them from an allied contingent selected through Codex Ultramarines. If you bothered to play by the rules that is, back in those days everyone just made it up as they went along.

Rock around to 1999 and Dark Angels get their own Codex, albeit a scant 24-page one that supplements Codex Space Marines. Still no green Land Speeders. No mention of anyone in the Battle or Reserve companies being able to pilot them as Games Workshop was in its fluff-lite phase.

Then, when Jervis penned the 2006 Dark Angels Codex, again the Assault Marines' ability to pilot Speeders is again overlooked.

Maybe Workshop ret-conned it all away?

But, in 2008 Matt Ward writes a beautifully in-depth Codex Space Marines, and rehashes the material from Angels of Death - there are lots of Marines floating around that can drive the floaty vehicles. Hurrah. We can extrapolate from this the current Dark Angels do have green Speeders.

And therefore, I can paint mine green. It also has the added benefit of making people less irate I'm not using the Epic UK Dark Angels list (whose Land Speeders are exclusively of the Ravenwing variety).

Labels: Dark Angels, Epic

Posted by Curis at 2:52 PM

This weekend my housemate and I made the long trip from the deep south to Mansfield to attend the last Epic tournament of the 2009 season - the Epic UK Grand Tournament. I had my spangly new well-behaved Dark Angels and Ole had his Biel-Tann.

I was quite nervous. I'd had only two games with Space Marines prior to this (one proxying with Si's Shadow Scorpions and one with my own figures) and had lost horribly both times. In fact, the second game was disastrous as by turn three I was left with only a single Thunderbolt, and that was only because it chose to stand down to avoid a completely humiliating defeat. And that was against Ole who was only on his second game of Epic ever. It seems that my air assault Space Marines were as fragile and underpowered as their most vocal critics would have me believe. Add to that my last Epic event (May's Club Challenge) had me finishing last and I was expecting to achieve a whole new low in gaming history. But hey ho, at least my army was nicely painted. Not that it would stay on the table long enough for anyone to spot the squad markings.

The list I eventually settled on was:

Tactical formation
   Supreme Commander
   Hunter
   Razorback - twin lascannon

Devastator formation

Devastator formation

Terminator formation
   Chaplain

Land Speeders

Thunderhawk

Thunderhawk

Strike Cruiser

Thunderbolts

Reaver Titan

So, I consulting Grand Master Jeridian (Si) for how to make my Marines work. Paraphrasing the exhaustive essay he provided from his years of experience pilotting Thunderhawks to their dooms the plan was:

• Choose corners to cluster for the benefit of my Strike Cruiser's orbital bombardment



• Keep the Tacticals on my Blitz to ensure the survivial of the Supreme Commander re-roll



• Sneakily advance the Titan until turn 2-3 when it would stride forth into the middle of the enemy



• Swoop in with the Thuuderhawks and land the Devesators for lots of mutually-supporting engagements and crossfires



• Have the Terminators on hand to open up a second front or support as needed



• Use the Land Speeders as zippy harassing units that could swoop in on objectives in the later turns

As Si says: "SR5 and the mobility does make the army great fun to use though, as YOU get to decide when, where and what happens in the game."

So, how did it go?

Game 1 - Mark Preston's Black Legion

Mark Preston! By way of cool coincidence we'd already played each other at the Club Challenge, where Mark had been using his Dark Angels pretending to be just regular Space Marines. Mark was borrowing some beautiful Black Legion that were surprisingly Daemon-free. However, that didn't stop my regular anti-Chaos strategy of exterminating the closest units to prevent Daemon-bombing. Turn three 0-2 defeat.


Game 2 - Matt Otter's Orks

Orks - the army I'm most familiar with their strengths and weaknesses. However, I made a fatal mistake of sending in a Dev Thudnerhawk to engage a large Boyz formation spread over two objectives - effectively committing suicide. I should have simply landed to contest objectives and drag out the inevitable another turn. I did however spectacularly set fire to his Gargant and destroy it - the one time I achieved Break Their Spirit. Some sort of loss for me, but it was technically a by so I got the points for a 2-0 turn three victory.


Game 3 - Matt Arnold's Space Marines

Aha! Some Blood Angels pretending to be just regular Space Marines. I just need to play some Black Templars and White Scars now...

Turn one went very well with Matt teleporting his Terminators immediately and pushing forward with his Warhound. I focussed everything on a counter assault and wiped out both, feeling very confident I'd eliminated his main threat units. However, I had over-committed and his counter-counter assault broke my Reaver, and not even the Deathwing teleporting into ruins straight on top of his Blitz could stop this being another turn three 0-2 defeat.


Game 4 - Kevin Bott's Biel Tann

Against received wisdom I avoided drop-podding anything in. Though it would protect the incoming units from the horrific Eldar AA I wanted some maneuverability to counter the Eldar's insanely fast marching jetbikes. I focussed on breaking Kev's Revenants to deny him their awesome firepower and also allow me to air assault without running the gauntlet of their AA.

Turn three held some appalling activation rolls for Kevin, and the normally hyper-maneuverable Eldar were unable to perform their regular objective-grabbing marches, letting me win turn four 2-0.


Game 5 - Andy Harris' Biel Tann

Apparently the worst Eldar list to have ever graced the planet. Buoyed up by the success of mounting the Devs in Thunderhawks rather than the Strike Cruiser I did it once more. Very dangerous as Andy had Nightwings and a Vampire. After two largely bloodless turns of maneuvering for an all-out air assault Andy masterfully broke my Reaver before I could use it as a fire base for air assault Devs. Instead I used the Devs instead to cause Andy a lot of difficult decisions in where to press me in order to get objectives.

No-one had won on objectives by turn four, so it went to victory points which Andy had easily more than the 150 difference with the annihilation of my prized Terminators.

So, five great games and not that shabby a performance - one win, one drawn, one bi and two losses. Yes! A win! And the points for painting catapulted me up to nine of fifteen. With the bonus points for attending the GT, and playing different armies that also starts to lift me away from the bottom spots on the 2009 Championship.

But best of all, my Dark Angels got the Judge's Choice painting trophy.

In the aftermath, the plan was fairly solid. It falls down if the opponent anticipates the all-out assault and dig in with overwatch.

The only let-down was the Strike Cruiser. Rather than lazily bombard the deployment zone turn I experimented with clustering my objectives and plotting a turn 3 bombardment to place Blast Markers before I began my air assault. It did work, but was quite a gamble. 200 points is a lot to pay for the one attack, and not once did I use it for drop-podding. I think I'll drop it at 3000 in favour of some Scouts or Speeders to give me an additional formation on the ground to get objectives and support the handful of ground formation that aren't flying or teleporting in.

So, all in all a great event. I particularly enjoyed attending the Epic UK Annual General Meeting which was almost drowned out by the David Bowie tribute act in a pirate hat we were sharing the venue with. The best way to judge whether an event's been enjoyable for me is whether I want to play another game that week, and start painting my next army as soon as I get home, and this was very definitely one of them. Many thanks to all the Epic UK organisation and efforts. And thanks to all five opponents for five brain-sweating games (and not defeating me in the humiliating fashion I was expecting).

Labels: Dark Angels, Epic, Titan

Posted by Curis at 7:25 PM

Carrying on the prepation for this month's Epic UK Grand Tournament, I've dug out my converted Strike Cruiser. Annoyingly this is one of my favourite models but one of the few that's not made the cut in the cut-down tournament list. (It was in for Britcon which was 4000, but this event is only 3000). In fact, most my favourite detachments in terms of painted models have been cut - Landing Craft, Scouts and Land Raiders.

This Strike Cruiser is not the standard BFG one, but a Forge World Grey Knight Strike Cruiser. I've got a retro vibe going in my Dark Angels, and the smooth angular plain surfaces of the Grey Knight version evokes this really nicely.

I filled in the High Gothic inscriptions, removed the huge =I= icon from the bridge and added a few accessories from the Dark Angels veteran sprue. Quite simple. I would like to weather this up with the Forge World weathering powders in future. One day.

And, in other news Epic UK have re-released their Space Marine army list - which clears up a lot of the schoolboy typographical mistakes. So I can no longer mock them with this.

Labels: Dark Angels

Posted by Curis at 3:04 PM

I've just bought my ticket to the Epic UK Grand Tournament. I'll be taking my 'Dark Angels' (fuller explanation on the inverted commas later) with the support of a Legio Igantum Reaver Titan.

Legio Ignatum - also known as the Fire Wasps - have a very distinct colour scheme. I based mine around the Reaver Titan shown in the Epic Armageddon rulebook in fact as I sound it so striking. But I painted it before I decided the Dark Angels army it supports will be based with a snow theme. So I have a big fiery Titan ridiculously contrasting ridiculously with its own base. Oh dear.

I'm very tempted to switch it for another Titan painted in an arctic camo scheme.

Oh, and that thing on the base is a snow-covered tree. It just looks weird in the photo.

Labels: Dark Angels, Epic, Titan

Posted by Curis at 2:37 AM

I'm starting another Epic army - probably the Dark Angels Chapter. (Deathwing Company!)



So, being frugal with my purchases, I've unearthed a load of old Land Raiders, and dunked them in brake fluid. One day later, the paint peels off though it were a greasy flan.

Labels: Dark Angels, Epic

Posted by Curis at 6:22 PM