Minotaur Flyers and Army lists for the weekend

I've been working on my Storm Wing for my Minotaur Space Marines.  I have two Storm Talons assembled as you can see below:

I am going with lascannons because even though they have strafing run, I want these to hunt other flyers.  I want them to shoot them down no matter what their armour is.

I didn't include the little sensor spines on their backs or their front landing treads on purpose.  I like the way they look right now.  If you look inside their cockpits, you will notice no pilots.  I will be painting the canopies so you can't see inside and I will save the bits for future projects.

Below is my current progress on my Storm Raven:

I am going to have the landing gear up just like my Storm Talons.  This one will be kitted out with twin-linked lascannons and twin-linked multimeltas.

The giant air intake on the top of the Storm Raven will not be included on my model.  The turret with windows will not be on this either.  I have never liked the look of those two features.

My plan is to use an automated turret on the top.  I really like the look of the Forgeworld Razor Back turrets and I may go that route.

I will keep the blog updated as I work on these more.

With that being said, this weekend I will be playing at least one game at my friend's house.  I want to use my Knight and he wants to try to take it out.

Here is a list I was thinking of bringing:

Space Marines (Minotaurs Chapter Tactics) 2500 points.

HQ -

Asterion Moloc Chapter Master of the Minotaurs
235 pts.

ELITES -

9 Vanguard Vets
1 Sarg with power axe and meltabombs
210 pts.

Ironclad Dreadnought
135

Ironclad Dreadnought
135

TROOPS -

9 marines - flamer
1 sarg - power sword melta bombs
in rhino
200

9 marines - flamer
1 sarg - power sword melta bombs
in rhino
200

9 marines - meltagun
1 sarg - power fist
in rhino
210

9 marines - meltagun
1 sarg - power fist
in rhino
210

FAST -

Land Speeder - Typhoon missile launcher and heavy bolter
75

Land Speeder - Typhoon missile launcher and heavy bolter
75

Heavy Support -

Predator - Autocannon and 2 heavy bolters
95

Predator - Autocannon and 2 heavy bolters
95

Land Raider Redeemer with Multimelta
250

ALLIES -

Imperial Knight Paladin
375


I am still trying to figure out how best to use the Minotaurs with their new chapter tactics.  I don't know how well this list will work but it will probably work better if he is playing with Space Marines, which he may do.

I will take pictures and post something next week about this weekend.

Until then.....

Imperial Knight - Done!

So I have finally finished it, probably.

Here are some pics:

The Exo-Skeleton.  

 I think this is going to be great as a Chaos Iron Warrior Knight.

Here is the back. 

 Here, I've started painting the armour.

It is an Imperial Knight, so I have painted it to mesh with my Minotaurs Space Marines.   I think the color scheme I chose for it will work with the Minotaurs.  

Here it is all done:

As you can see, I put a Greek letter on its shield, hoping to help tie it in to the Minotaurs.

As you can see in the pics below, I have left it poseable.  In fact right now the top is not attached the the bottom, I will eventually magnetize it.

I think I may work on its base a bit yet, but otherwise its done!

I hope you all like it.  Let me know what you think.

Until next time......

The War On The Floor Imperial Knight Vs Eldar Battle Report Part 2

Check out part 1 here


And now for the exciting conclusion....


The Dire Avengers from the stricken Wave Serpent advance and begin firing on the 5 man marine squad in the ruins.

The other Dire Avengers squad disembark from the other Wave Serpent along with their leader and Warlord, the Farseer Sarek.

A 5 man marine squad scurries to get into the ruins and grab a penny objective.

The Warp Spiders make their move and jump into the forest ready to blast the 2 remaining marines into bits.

I charged Sarek with a Dreadnought, hoping to keep him occupied and / or kill him.  He ends up putting his Singing Spear straight through the Dreadnought and blows it up.

My marines open fire on his Dire Avengers killing a few of them.

After the Dire Avengers shoot and kill a few marines, I open fire and return the favor, dropping her squad to only 3 strong.

At this point I am still feeling confident although she is starting a comeback.

At the end of turn 5, night falls and the game continues.

The Dire Avengers charge and kill the 2 remaining marines, and also taking the objective.

The Warp Spiders, after despatching two marines in one squad, jump and fire then assault another marine squad who is on an objective.

At the end of turn 6, the Eldar have almost destroyed all of the Marines, but the Marines still have a chance to pull off a win.

Sarek rejoins the Dire Avengers and take a penny objective.

The final 10 man marine squad takes a quarter objective.

The Dire Avenger's Exarch dies to shooting but the two last squad members don't run.  They take a quarter objective.

This quarter objective was abandoned by both the marines and the Eldar.

The other Penny objective in the building ends up being contested by a single Warp Spider and 3 Space Marines.

At the end of the game, the Eldar pull out the win.

The Eldar take the Primary objective scoring 4 points.

The Eldar also get Line Breaker for 1 point.

The Minotaurs got First Blood for 1 point.

The Minotaurs also have Line Breaker for 1 point.

The Final score: 5 - 2, Eldar Victory.



Thoughts -

The Imperial Knight seems to be quite nicely balanced.  I don't see any issues with having one in an army.

Having more than one may be over-powering against a number of armies.  I think including an Imperial Knight in a small game, say 1750 to 2000 points is fine.  This may shift the 'meta' in the tournament scene and I think that is a good thing.  The knight could make people play more honest again, taking long range anti-tank may finally be back.

I can't wait to play with it again and I have more plans in the future as well.

I want to buy another one for my Iron Warriors and another one for  new army I am contemplating: a 30k Mechanicum army.

Until next time....

The War On The Floor Imperial Knight Vs Eldar Battle Report Part 1

So I was originally not going to play with the Knight until it was finished but I just couldn't help it.

Me and Xtine played a game on the floor this past weekend.  It was 1850 pts and I took my Minotaurs with one Imperial Knight Paladin as an ally vs. Eldar.

We played a Bay Area Open - style tournament mission because I run local tournaments and I wanted to see how Knights work in person.  I have heard a lot about them online but I haven't yet played with one so I was really dying to see if they were over-powered, under-powered or just right.

Now unfortunately some of their rules are hazy.  So we used the rules modifications listed here:
http://www.frontlinegaming.org/2014/03/27/dont-fear-the-knight/

The mission was Emperor's Will as Primary (4 pts) and Crusade (3 pts) as Secondary with Slay the Warlord, First Blood and LineBreaker as (1 pt each) tertiary.
Dawn Of War Deployment was used.

The Pennys were used for the two Emperor's Will objectives and the 3 Quarters were used as the Crusade secondary objectives.

Here is her army:

She had:
HQ -
2 Farseers

Troops -
2 Wave Serpents each with a 10 man squad of Dire Avengers inside
20 man squad of Guardians with a Bright Lance and an attached Warlock

Fast -
9 Warp Spiders
Crimson Hunter with an Exarch upgrade.

Heavy - 

3 Falcons with holofields



And here is mine:

(Ultramarines Chapter Tactics)
HQ -
Librarian with Force Axe (he rolled Puppet Master)

Elites -
2 Dreadnoughts with 2 twin-linked autocannons

Troops -
10 Marines - missile launcher + flamer
10 Marines - missile launcher + flamer
10 marines - multimelta + meltagun + combi-melta on sarge (combat-squaded)
in Rhino

10 marines - multimelta + meltagun + combi-melta on sarge (combat-squaded)

in Rhino

Fast -
2 Land Speeders with typhoon missile launchers and heavy bolters (separate squads)

Heavy -
2 Predators with autocannon and 2 heavy bolters
Thunderfire Cannon

Ally -
1 Imperial Knight Paladin



Deployment:

Knight up close.

Turn 1, the Eldar shooting focuses completely on the Knight and they only take off 1 Hull Point.  The Minotaurs' Dreadnought opens up on an Eldar Falcon and blows it up.  The knight stalks forward.

Turn two, the Eldar Flyer flies onto the table.

The Warp Spiders also deep strike, shoot at the Knight and then jump into the woods.

The Knight is down to only a few hull points (2 I think) after turn two.

The Knight on my turn is then able to charge into the 20 man Guardian blob in the building.  It Hammer of Wraths and does nothing then does its normal 4 D weapon attacks it gets on the charge and does nothing.  Then it finally Stomps only once, but it does 8 hits and 8 wounds and kills 8 Guardians. Wow!  That was much better than I thought.

They then fail their leadership and run off the board.

My Rhino has moved up this turn to try and get the Quarter objective in the building.

The Warp Spiders get shot by a whole bunch of units, Predator, Dreadnought, land speeder, etc.  and are reduced to only 3.  I should have tried to kill them all, they became a thorn in my side.

On her turn her Falcon shoots up the Rhino and destroys it. No one inside is hurt but the 5 man squad with the sargent is pinned.

Her flyer flies back around and uses its vector dancer ability to get a nice rear shot on the Knight.

Unfortunately for the Eldar, I had shot at it and it had used its Evade ability to block my shots, this turn making it only hit on a 6.  It did nothing.

The Wave Serpent moves up all the way to my board edge.  The Warp Spiders jump into the relative safety of the ruins.

One of my land Speeders moves up to get better shots.

The next turn I was able to move the Knight to the far board edge and get shots down the table at the Wave Serpent.  He was kind of out on his own with not a lot of options.  The Eldar were out-maneuvering me.

She then flew her Crimson Hunter behind the Knight, got rear-shots and blew it sky-high!  The giant template didn't scatter and nothing else died.  The problem was now she could focus on everything else in my army.

I had a 5 man squad holding a quarter objective in the woods.  They were soon reduced to 2.

I did destroy the Wave Serpent and the Dire Avengers were forced to disembark.

Next time we will finish the Battle report.....

Here is part 2