Upcoming

So on Saturday I have another battle scheduled using the 7^th edition rules in which my revised night lord list is going to be taking on the dark elder. I saw them in another battle about a week ago and we discovered some massive issues with the new rules set for the dark elder – mainly the no escape rule which means template weapons not only hammer the vehicle but also inflict d6 hits at their normal profile on the passengers, the two Tyranid crones managed to butcher half the dark elder infantry before they disembarked their transports.

My army will not be anywhere near as much of an issue for the dark elder simply because I have limited range before night shields are factored in and I only have two templates in the entire force.

What I will be fielding in the battle is as follows…

Praetor – jetbike, boarding shield, melta bombs, paragon blade, trophies of judgement, digital lasers

Command squad (3) – all on jetbikes and all with combat shields

Contemptor-mortis dreadnought – two kheres pattern assault cannons

Contemptor-mortis dreadnought – two kheres pattern assault cannons

Assault marine squad (10) – 1 x power sword, 1 x power axe – sergeant – combat shield, artificer armour, thunderhammer

Assault marine squad (10) – 1 x power sword, 1 x power axe – sergeant – combat shield, artificer armour, pair of lightning claws, melta bombs

Legion tactical squad (10) – additional chainswords - sergeant – artificer armour, melta bombs, chainglaive

Rhino as transport for the tactical squad

Outrider squad (4) – I x power axe, 2 x twin linked flamer

Fire raptor – reaper autocannon battery

This is my revised force for 7^th edition, as stated previously the massive nerf to the impact of night fighting removed one of the main justifications for playing the night lord rite of war and with terror squads being massively up priced to cover the fact that they cause fear which is massive in 30k and irrelevant in 40k I simply was not getting enough out of the force. Plus with tactical objectives I felt I needed to move to something more tactically flexible and mobile than the terror squads, especially since they cannot easily redeploy once they are on the battlefield.

This is a bound list meaning I get to reroll for warlord trait which combo’s very nicely with the master of the legion rule allowing me to roll twice and pick which one I want so I should almost be able to guarantee getting a trait which is useful for the mission that we play.

On top of that the assault squads and the tactical squad being my troops are able to grab and hold objectives without having to worry about opposing jet bikes and the like jumping on to them which should help me score some victory points.

The fire raptor is in since I am going to be using it a lot, I have the actual model on my desk at the moment in all of its many pieces having been delivered earlier in the week. I will be continuing to clean it over the coming days and do some adjustments to some of the resin pieces to try and ensure a really good dry fit before I start to work on painting and assembly. While doing that I still need to complete the second contemptor and doing some practicing on my lightning painting, I have a ton of ideas on how to make that work a lot better I just need to get my arse in gear and actually try them out and see what works and what does not.

If anyone is considering getting the fire raptor I can really recommend it, the model is amazing and I was really surprised by how much of it is resin. I knew it is based on the storm raven kit but it only uses about 26 components from that kit and only one of them is from the fuselage, the vast majority of the body of the fire raptor is resin. The connection between the resin and plastic is logical and makes great use of the storm raven kit as well as leaving tons of material for use in conversions later on and as always the sculpting on the resin is top notch. It does need a hell of a lot of cleaning due to the volume of resin but hey you kind of know that when you order it anyway.

The assembly for the side batteries is very clever and I think will work really well, I have dry fitted everything together and there are a couple of pieces needing adjustment and a couple needing a small amount of green stuff but for the main part it looks like it is going to come together really easily. I have of course ordered and received the KR multicase tray for the storm eagle (they do not do a fire raptor yet) since there is no way I am going to spend a lot of time and money on this model and then ruin it but transporting it in a box lid with a bit of bubble wrap.

Pictures of the components and the evolution of the fire raptor towards its completed state will be uploaded probably on Sunday for the initial post and ongoing until it is completed.