Kings Own 4th Regiment

It was only through attempting to paint these figures that I became aware of how difficult it is to get into the hobby that I enjoy so much. The actual process of painting is a skill in itself that you have to learn but the real barrier for me was the difficulty in finding the correct reference material and help and advice on how to put together a Napoleonic army. If I found this difficult, then I think that many a newcomer to the hobby must be deterred before they even start. And where do you start? Sure there’s plenty of great websites and forums on the internet but they often are difficult to find and contain conflicting advise. There’s also the problem that you can never find the correct piece of information just when you want it.

So I plan to do a series of web logs charting my progress as I build my first British Napoleonic Army. Yes, I did say Army and I know I haven’t finished my first Battalion yet but I have resolved to have a historical army completed by the end of this year…..To track my progress, or lack of it on this subject, check out the Make History category of my blog.

I haven’t abandoned my Necron army. Far from it, I’ve still got a number of projects on the go and I’ve completed a couple that were started in previous articles. However, I think that having two very diferent armies and modelling projects on the go will allow me to have a change and learn new techniques and face new challenges. I also think that the contrast between the two facets of the hobby, that is Science Fiction & Fantasy versus Historical will provide a refreshing change.

Finally, I need to change the way I write my blog, so watch out for shorter posts and hopefully, more frequent ones …

I can’t believe that it’s nearly a month since my last Blog entry. It has been a very busy time, both in my ebay shop and on the hobby front, so it’s not as though I haven’t got plenty to write about. I should really catch up with all the new releases that I been listing and those that are due to be released, but instead I thought that I would tell you about my latest exploits with the Necrons!

I had been invited to play in an Apocalypse size game over at a friends house. Pete had a ‘free’ weekend as his Missus was away and given the choice of tiling the Bathroom or playing toy soldiers he did what any sensible person would do and organised a battle! We had decided to play 4000 points per person, so with 4 players, there would be 16000pts of figures in the game. Our opponents, John & Ritchie were playing with a mixture of Dark Angels Space marines, Imperial Guard & Sisters of Battle. Pete & I had 8000 points of Necrons.

The evening before the Battle I laid out my entire Necron force to decide exactly what I would take. The Kitchen Table isn’t exactly the most glamorous of setting for the army but it allowed me to see exactly what I had. The Blue Monolith is awaiting a repaint job, I’ve been meaning to do this for a while but the Wife found the Fairy Power spray that I use to strip paint and used it all cleaning the kitchen…….

I digress, back to the Army selection. In the end I went with the advice that I had been given by Rob, an experienced 40K player, and kept things fairly simple. The basic force was the Necron Pylon, 2 Monoliths, 80 warriors in four big squads, two Lords & res orbs, the Wraith Wing plus a tooled up Destroyer Lord, 5 Tomb Spiders, 4 Heavy Destroyers and lots of Scarabs. Pete went for a slightly more exotic force and included plenty of Immortals, Destroyers, Heavy destroyers, a Monolith and The Night Bringer. He also had a few units from a Tempus Fugitive rules set (and I will return to these in a later blog) but for now, the units were Dark Destroyers and Tomb Guard.

I don’t have the details of John & Ritchie’s army but suffice to say that there were 2 super heavies to contend with as well as plenty of other Tanks & Special Characters…it was going to be a tough game. The board was set up in Petes lounge and was about 8 foot by 16 foot with plenty of scenery. To make life simple we agreed on a pitched battle deployment with an 18inch deployment zone on each table side. We lost the roll off for deployment and so set up first. The pictures that accompany the article are all of the initial deployment. Unfortunately, I had flat batteries in the camera…Doh! Again, to simplify the battle, we didn’t use either stratagems or strategic assets. We thought that there was enough going on with the size of the forces deployed. As it turned out, this was a good idea, as it was my first apocalypse battle and I really wasn’t up to speed with all of the special rules. In fact, before the game had started I had made a serious mistake. I had allocated 700 points for the Necron pylon….stupid boy! The Pylon is actually only 420 points, I could have had another squad of Immortals!

 So with the deployment completed the Battle started at around 10. 30 ish. Once again, we managed to loose the roll off for first turn, so the Imperial Army started to move & fire….and fire…..and fire! I won’t go through every turn in detail, it would take far too long, but here are some of the highlights & low lights from a necron point of view.

Actually, the first turn was fairly low key with much long range shooting, even more movement but little in the way of casualties. Most of the big Guns were either shooting at the Pylon, which eventually took a hit and lost a structure point, or targeting the Monoliths, which seemed equally resilient. The biggest threat to my side of the battle came from two drop pods containing dreadnoughts, one of which was an Iron clad. That said, my first experience of an Apocalypse battle turn was scary. For about half an hour I was just taking fire from those big pie plate templates and making saving throws. At last it was our turn to shoot back and with a Hellhammer threatening the Centre of our Line, a Stormblade to the right and the Dreadnoughts to the left,there was plenty to aim at. The Pylon hit the Hellhammer and joy of joys, blew it to pieces with its first salvo! I also managed to kill one of the dreadnoughts and attacked the Iron clad with my Destroyer Lord & the Wraith wing. A big mistake, as although  they didn’t get killed, they stayed locked in combat with the Dreadnought for the next 5 rounds! The Lord managed to chop off the dreadnoughts’ combat arms but he just could not kill it, even when a Tomb spyder joined the fight! Over on the right wing, Pete’s Necrons were delivering a huge volume of fire but were either missing, or seeing their hits saved. It was a case of fire & fall back.

Turn 2 started again with a huge volume of fire from the Marines, the Storm Blade was keeping it’s distance though. Having seen what happened to it’s fellow super heavy, the Stormblade lurked far out on the right of the battlefield, out of LOS. That apart, the onslaught continued with the Marines in rhinos & landraiders advancing to fill the gap in the centre and another wave of drop pods to my left.  Just to add to our woes, 5 large squads of  bikes were turbo boosting at us, threatening to over run our lines. The Necron Pylon was disabled for a turn and this time , even with the ‘we’ll be back rolls’ the casualties started to mount. Our Monoliths were absorbing a huge amount of fire and despite using the Particle whip, were ineffective at inflicting hits on the opposition. The necrons were also suffering from the short range of the Gauss weapons and so were unable to deal with the long range Las Cannons & Devastator squads. Shooting again was ineffective on the right and apart from suppressing the Drop pod attack on the left, the Necrons made little progress.

If Turn 2 was all about shooting, the Turn 3 saw the start of the assault phase of the battle. However, before the close combat started the Necron Pylon was blown to pieces by a well placed lascannon strike. Just to add insult to injury, about 20 Necrons were blown up in the ensuing explosion…..that hurt!  The  right wing was also beginning to cave in from the pressure from the Stormbalde and the huge bike squad. In the centre, the Landraider had reached our lines and had discharged a huge Squad of tooled up assault Terminators who were ready to inflict grevious damage on the defending Necron Warriors. However, they had failed to spot that concealed behind the nearest Monolith was none other than the NightBringer. Just as they declared their charge, he used his Etheric Tempest to push them back 2D6. They were now sitting targets for the majority of the Necron army! Meanwhile elsewhere on the board combat was raging between Flayed ones & Sisters of Battle, Wraiths & Marines and Scarabs and Marine Bike squads. The Imperial side won most of the fighting, but at a cost. The exception was the scarabs, who managed to hold up two squads of Marine bikes for a turn!

Turn 4 saw the Necrons making some progress on the left wing with the first wave of marines and their drop pods now battlefield debris. The Necrons had also realised that the most effective use of the Monoliths was to use the portal to transport any threatened squads out of harms way. This also had the added bonus of giving casualties a second we’ll be back roll and re -deploying the squad to enable them to rapid fire the nearest threat. Add to this the fire from the Gauss Flux arc and the Monoliths were earning their keep. They had also absorbed a fearsome amount of incoming fire without even a scratch. Even better, in the Centre the Nightbringer had polished off the Terminators and was munching his way through the following squads. However, there was still the small matter of the Stormblade on the right wing that was beginning to rumble forward and smash everything in it’s path.

The game finished at Turn 5, simply because we had run out of time. The threat on the right wing had continued to grow and by now our Necrons in this this sector had collapsed into the centre and were being ground down by the Storm Blade & the accompanying bike squad. The good news was that the Centre was holding and led by the Nightbringer, our formations were beginning to advance having destroyed all of the major units that had attacked here. The left wing was in the balance. The Necrons had caused as many casualties as they had taken but the next wave of bikes were about to hit. If the Necrons could hold in combat, then they would carry this sector, as Ritchie was running out of troops. The question was never answered….

So who won the battle? On balance it felt like an Imperial victory was likely, although it would be a close run thing. John & Ritchie still had a super heavy on the table and seemed to hold the initiative on both wings of the battlefield. They also held more territory. That said, the Necrons had held out under a ferrocious onslaught and still had a potent fighting force on the table. If they could reorganise their centre and stop the advance on the right wing, the day would be theirs!

My first Apocalpse Battle had been great fun. Apocalypse feels more like the 40K universe as decribed in the background  books. This is no place for individual soldiers, this is a battle of heroic characters, battle formations & huge tanks and engines of war. The whole feel of the game is different to a standard 40k game. I think the size and duration of the game lets you forget about winning or losing and allows you to focus on just playing and enjoying the game and of course the Company of your fellow gamers!

Necrons appear to be well suited to the game. Their durability means that they are capable of standing up to most of the weapons that they will encounter (so long as there is a res orb close by). The only shortcoming is the lack of range of the weapons available. The one exception to this is the Necron Pylon, so a note to myself, next time I wont deploy it right in the middle of the battlefield but somewhere else where the 120 inch range will be useful……

So thank you to Pete for his hospitality and letting us use his house for the Battle and for supplying the superb battlefield and scenery. Thank you to John and Ritchie for being such great opponents and making the game such a pleasure to play. I can’t wait for the rematch…..WE’LL BE BACK!

Wow! What a Christmas! I can’t believe how quickly time has flown since my last blog post. I had intended to write at least one more blog entry before the new year but I was caught out by just how busy Christmas turned out to be. This of course, is good news, so a big thank you to the record number of customers that visited my ebay shop. I can now pay the rent for another month! It wasn’t just business that was occupying me. Thanks to some really hard work on my part, I now have the body of a god…unfortunately it’s Buddha…so no more mince pies for me for a while. 

It’s strange how in such a short period you can experience such highs & lows. One minute I was enjoying the perfect family Christmas at my Daughters (thank you again Victoria & Ed!), being waited on hand & foot, the next I am on the phone worrying because my Father had been taken into Hospital 240 miles away and was trying to establish that he was OK…He was, thank goodness and is now back home safely ( Thank you to the nurses at Torbay Hospital).

In between times, I have managed to get to see James Cameroons ‘Avatar’, which was absolutely brilliant in 3D, been to the pantomime with my young nieces Lucy & Hannah, celebrated New Year at a great party, read Antony Bevoirs book on the downfall of Berlin, watched too much TV ( The Gruffalo was the TV highlight for me), played numerous weird board games, usually under the influence of alcohol, got totally hooked on Generation Kill ( a DVD boxed set….’stay frosty people’ ….’Hitman Alpha to Godfather actual’…you’ve got to watch it if you remotely enjoyed Three Kings or Band of Brothers) and as I have already alluded to, eaten and imbided  far too many calories. 

So here I am on a quiet, snowy Saturday Morning, hangover now cured and ready to face the New Year. So it’s New Years resolution time. I actually enjoy setting New Years resolutions because I tend to think of them as an opportunity to dream about what I would like to do over the coming year rather than the things that I am going to stop doing. The whole New years resolution thing seems to have been hijacked by the anti fun brigade and the health police. Well I’m not going to worry about the odd half a stone that I’ve put on. It will tend to disappear over the next month now that I’m not surrounded by sausage rolls,mince pies, Pork pie (mmmm…proper Melton Mowbray pork pie & Cranberry jelly…stop it!), tins of Quality Street, Cold turkey, Cold Ham, Home made Chips, Bubble & Squeak, Christmas Cake and other such temptations. And the chances are that I will get slightly more exercise than popping the ring pull off the next can of Carling now that I am back at work so lets think about the important things in life, making model soldiers and model kits.

A good place to start with these things is to look at where you are now. In case you haven’t noticed,I really like making models of Necrons and this will continue. So my first New Years resolution is to complete my Necron Apocalypse army. I currently have around 6500 points of Necrons but there are a couple of areas where I am short. I have managed to get hold of a cheap Monolith as well as buying another new Monolith kit. My plan is that I will refurbish the second hand Monolith in the same style as my existing one and the other kit will also have the same paint scheme but will have LED lighting in it. I will then have 3 monoliths to field and just for fun, I will ambush one of my regular 40k opponents with a 3 monolith army list….hurrah!

I am also working on a Doomsday Monolith, here’s a sneak preview of the work in progress. Once finished, I intend to ensure that I organise a proper Apocalypse Battle so watch out for the battle report later in the year.

Also on the WIP list is a piece of scenery that I have put to one side. It’s meant to be an abandoned Imperial outpost that is part of a campaign that I completed last year. As it was, we fought the battle by improvising with the scenery that we had, so this piece was not used. I’m in the process of re writing the campaign and I will organise a re fight of the campaign so the Outpost will be finished.

The next piece that I’m working on is a mini diorama using the limited edition Necron Scarab on a dissecting table. I had sort of finished it….here it is.

However, I’m not happy with it and I am going to add an Imperial scribe/scientist & a couple of Skull servos from the Inquisitor boxed set that I have had in the loft for some years. I think that this will then make a nice display piece along with my Necron Santa diorama!

As far as other Necron models go, I still have plenty of ideas yet so these will not be the only Necron projects. Now that I have strength in depth on the basic units I will ease up on these and only build conversions or scratch built projects, unless of course GW release a new codex, although my inside sources seem to indicate that this is unlikely, at least in the first half of the year. In the meantime, there is plenty of source material on the C’tan Forum and elsewhere on the web to keep me busy.

Finally, as far as the Necrons go, I have obtained some Battle field Gothic Necron Ships. I will definitely paint these and I hope to learn to use them in the game itself. I have grand ideas about combining all the 40k formats into one huge campaign and to this end I have also bought the Planetary Empire set. I’ll paint this to match my imagined world of Akhenaten III and modify some of the tiles to look like Necron outposts & cities. I also think that these tiles will make interesting bases fo the Battlefield Gothic Ships so I’ll give that a go as well.

I still enjoy playing 40K more than any of the other GW systems so although I am tempted to start a Fantasy army I think that my other GW  project for the year is more likely to be another 40K army. I already have space marines and Imperial Guard so another Xenos army beckons……Tyranids! I don’t intend to build a massive army but it would be nice to alternate between tyranids and Necrons at the club so I’m going to paint a 2000pt Tyranid army once I catch sight of the new codex.

One of the other highlights of Christmas was that just before we broke up for the holidays,  I was invited to Warlord Games Christmas get together and was lucky enough to get involved in a huge war game played with Napoleonic Armies using the new Black Powder Rules. It was great! The Black Powder rules are very playable and give just the sort of relaxed, enjoyable game that make you want to play again and again. I really enjoy rules sets that allow you to play without getting hung up on the rules themselves and Black Powder does just this. With this in mind, I am going to start my own Napoleonic Army. I have a set of Victrix Waterloo British Infantry that I have started to make & paint:

This really will be a long term project as at the rate that I paint it will take a month just to get this box finished but I will persevere and keep you updated with my progress.

My final New Years Resolution for my modelling projects is to start my own miniature version of Bovington Tank Museum. I visited Bovington in October last year and I thought that it was brilliant! I have many pictures and I will do a more thorough review at a later date. However, it was for me an inspiring visit and I would really like to start my own Tank Museum in miniature. I’ve always been fascinated by armoured warfare and I have in the past, built many a model tank. I became slightly disillusioned with this side of the hobby following an encounter with one of the pedantic ‘know it alls’ that you occasionally come across in the hobby. Unfortunately, I was young enough and impressionable enough to be upset by him criticising my work. It wouldn’t happen these days, l have thicker skin and if I ever do meet this sort ( fortunately, it’s very rare) I can just walk away smiling at their ignorance. However, the scale model scene can be daunting and although modellers such as Steve Zaloga can be inspirational, trying to produce something that looks half as good as their models seems to be beyond my ability. That said, I’m going to start again and start with a simple build from the box kit and see how I get on. So you can expect to see my Tank Model collection start this year. I plan to start at the beginning with one of the Emhar WW1 Tanks……

So all of the above should mean that I am kept busy with plenty of modelling projects, lots to learn, books to read, internet to research, games to play, it looks like 2010 is going to be great!

So what are my predictions for 2010.

Well for me, the recession will mean that we will spend more time at home, so I can build more models. I will look for ways to do this as cost effectively as possible and pass these ideas on through my Blog, so keep reading.

The improvements in technology will mean that more model soldiers become available in Plastic rather than metal, so it will become cheaper to build bigger armies. I think that Napoleonics will come back into fashion and the rise of historical & Factual wargames will lead the suits at GW to start thinking a bit more about their customers rather than their share price.

28mm scale will dominate wargaming and smaller scales will fall out of fashion as some gamers start to turn to 54mm. The exception to this will be Flames of War, which will continue to grow.

The continuing growth in the cottage industry side of the modelling business will mean more choice than ever for modellers and the internet will be the increasing place to buy your model supplies and do your research.

There will be a revival of Airfix thanks to the James May effect and their re tooled models will start to gain the respect of Modellers that Airfix used to have. This will help the continued growth of the grey haired brigade of modellers re entering the hobby.

Watch out for the first 3D printers to produce model soldiers to order.

More  model kits will contain brass etched parts, resin extras, aluminium & metal gun barrels and non plastic extras under the influence of the growth of Chinese & Korean kit manufacturers.

Oh, and England will win the World Cup….No, I’m serious!

Happy New Year and enjoy your modelling!

Just a note to wish all my Customers a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

If you like the model, I will be uploading a guide to making it nearer to Christmas, just so that I can show it again! In the meantime, I hope that your Christmas preparations are slightly more organised than mine!

You often learn more from your defeats than you ever do from your victories. Lets be fair, if you are anything like me, when you win you are too busy celebrating, taking the aplause from onlookers, and patronising your vanquished opponents with phrases like ‘well you did have some really unlucky dice rolls’ to remember anything other than the fact that you won. I mean, let’s be fair about it, keeping the smug look of your face whilst your opponent packs up his defeated army is tough enough.

But when you lose, that’s when you learn and that’s when you find the energy to change your Army list or think about new tactics. That’s when you vow to think a bit more about your troop deployment before the battle starts or to figure out the best tactics for each unit in your army. How do I protect the more vulnerable units and how do I commit the big hitters?

Well my results of late have taken a bit of a dip. I’ve had a draw against Chaos Space Marines that I should have won. ( My necron Lord flew into a building and killed himself….not his finest hour); a draw against Space Marines, (that was a good result, a very tough battle); a loss against Dark Eldar ( the rot had set in, curse those Talos); a victory against Imperial Guard ( flattering, it was a new army, still in development) and the most recent battle, a loss against Chaos Marines. It was the most recent battle that has prompted me to revise my list again. Here’s why.

I was playing against Studge at the Warhammer World Club and he had brought along 1500 points of Chaos Space Marines, consisiting of 3 large Squads of tooled up possessed Space Marines in three Rhinos, 2 Defilers, A Demon Prince ( with lash of course) and Fabius Bile. The set up was Dawn of War and we were fighting over 4 objectives. As Studge only had 1500 points, I had to trim my army, so out went the Pariahs, 2 Immortals & a Scarab swarm. For the rest of my army, see my previous battle reports. I had first turn and so deployed two squads of Necron warriors to defend the two objectives on my side of the table.  Studge went for a very aggressive set up with 2 squads of possessed marines & the Demon Prince as close in as he could get.

Learning point number one. Why was I so concerned to defend the objectives from turn one? I’ve got at least five turns to get to the objectives. Turn one should be about getting in position to cause the enemy the most problems, not give him a clear target! What was I doing committing both troops choices that I had so early?

Just to rub the point in, Studge rolled a six to steal the initiative and immediately sent his chaos horde rampaging forward. The Demon Prince lashed the nearest necron squad straight into combat with the biggest Possessed Marine squad. The necrons lost combat and were wiped out. I now only have one squad of Troops left and they’re next on Studges hit list. It was fair to say that I was rattled. In my turn, I had some luck with my Heavy destroyers. They rolled an eleven to give them night fighting range to see the demon prince and then rolled 3 hits and three wounds, none of which were saved. The Immortals also opened up on the Demon Prince and that was the end of that bad boy! However, my triumph was short lived. I then charged his Marines with the Necron Lord and two wraith squads. Just for good measure I piled in with the scarabs as well. This was a great way to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. I had forgotten that his Marines were drugged up to strength 6, so they gained instant kills on the scarabs, which put me three wounds down for every base killed. The result being that I lost combat with three of my Waiths down, all of my scarabs dead and my Necron Lord running away. It would seem that rather than drinking from the cup of Victory I would be enjoying a taste of that infamous American whine….’it’s game over, man’!

 Learning point(s) Number two: Don’t panic, if things have gone wrong the worst thing that you can do is commit units for the sake of it. Choose your targets, The scarabs are to be used against units to either tie them down , draw fire or divert the enemy. They may be a cheap unit but don’t throw them away. Of course, it goes without saying that charging against a unit that will instant kill you is just a waste of time.

Studge then started his turn two. With no Demon Prince to lash my necrons he had to foot slog it towards them ( I forgot to mention that in the last turn, the surviving necron squad had made a tactical withdrawal, AKA ‘run like hell, there’s a monster coming’!) Fortunately, his defilers were on the other side of the table, so they were alternating between firing & running and not hitting much. His rhino’s were also still at the back of the table and worried about the Heavy destroyers shooting them up and so were moving cautiously towards my side of the board. The real action was back with the Possessed marines. They piled into the Necron Lord again and wiped out the remaining Wraith squad. However, all this was at a cost and gradually they were being whittled down by combat and dying from O.D.’ing on combat drugs.

By the end of turn four I had wiped out the two squads of possessed marines in the centre through combat and fire from the immortals, destroyers and the remaining Necron squad. The Necron Lord was the real hero. He was at his tubthumping best doing his Chumbawamba chant ‘I get knocked down, but I get up again……’ The Flayed ones had made an appearance and were threatening the Chaos Rhinos with the last Marine squad and Fabius Bile and one of the defilers was blown to pieces. The end game was going to be tight!

Learning Point number Three: The battle isn’t over until the last man is down! Keep fighting with what you’ve – focus on knocking out his best units and ignore the rest.

So the last squad of Chaos marines had to charge the Flayed ones. They just couldn’t ignore the threat that the Flayed ones  posed, which meant my last squad of troops were in the clear. Well nearly, Fabius Bile charged into them but joy of joys, they not only held but valiantly fought back. The Flayed ones died under the attack from the chaos Marines but caused enough damage to allow the Heavy destroyers to wipe them out in the next round aided, once again, by the Necron Lord. The last Defiler had raced across the table and engaged the immortals. They were always going to lose that fight but they held for a turn.

If things were tight at turn four they were right on a knife edge at turn six. By now the necrons had killed every thing in the Chaos Army except the last defiler. The battlefield was littered with the wreckage of three rhinos’ , a defiler, the bloated drug ridden bodies of some 30 Chaos Marines and even Fabius Bile was history. I had taken one of the objectives with my necron squad and the enemy had nothing left to threaten it. The problem was that I was two necrons away from phase out and I had let my Heavy destroyers get too close to the defiler. With one last charge, it ambushed the destroyers and killed two. Fortunately, they were within range of the Lords Res orb and so on my turn I was able to roll the we’ll be back save & both got back up. Hurrah! I then charged the Necron lord into Combat. Surely with his warscythe he would save the day….He rolled one penetrating hit and one glancing hit….I just needed a 5 or a 6 to win the game. I rolled a 1….bugger! I was more fortunate with the glancing hit and immobilised the Defiler but with his last attack he killed three destroyers and this time there was no ‘we’ll be back’.

The Necrons went into phase out and the game was lost. To be fair, they took the view that their job was done and it was time to get back to the Tomb for some Necron R&R. Well, that’s the way I saw it.

Learning point number Four: Destroyers have got a range of 36 inches. Keep them out of combat, they’re for moving and shooting!

So the game was lost but in a most enjoyable way. Studge was a great opponent and we had  a lot of laughs through the game as it ebbed and flowed. I also enjoyed the narrative that the game played out. Even the ending seemed appropriate. How am I going to revise my list? Well you’ll have to wait for the next battle…

Learning point Number Five: The best games are the ones that are fun regardless of who wins.

Some time ago I started to describe my Necron Army and started with a description of my Necron troops. Well, here’s the next installment featuring my Necron Lords or HQ choices. I started my HQ with the Necron lord that was issued at the time of the GW Apocalypse launch. The Apocalypse supplement allowed you to field huge armies and was the first real expansion pack for 40K for some time. Necrons were not given a great deal of coverage in Apocalypse and I feel that they are somewhat underrepresented but the new Lord was a nice figure and had a ressurection orb so he was chosen to be the leader of my growing army.

I painted him in the colour scheme that I had developed for my army with the standard terracotta basing scheme and as well as the crystals supplied with the model, I added a few of my own ‘emeralds‘ to the base.

The next Lord was the Classic Lord, first issued when the original Necron Raiders supplement was published for the 3rd edition rules.

Once again, I continued with the red, gold, silver, green,  terracotta pallette so that he fits in nicely with the classic edition troops. For the sake of completeness, I then painted the original Necron Lord on foot, issued with the first full Necron Codex about 5 years ago. Yes, that’s the one that’s still in use now and well past needing an update…..rumour has it that it’s next year….we patiently wait, as all good necrons would!

I changed the arm on this figure as I thought that having the outstretched arm palm down made him look a bit like a magician sprinkling magic dust. The new pose makes him look a bit more sinister and he looks as though he is goading his opponent to come and get some! I also made the metal ants on the base. They were supposed to be a representation of the mini or micro creatures that are mentioned in the phylactery war gear rule in the Necron codex. I had intended to start including these on the bases of other Necrons but they are very fiddley to make. They are made from a metal bead, fuse wire and the tail is a small piece of guitar string. I lost count how many times I stuck the pieces to my fingers with super glue and the whole model nearly found a new home at the bottom of the garden at one point, so I have postponed any mass modelling of the metal ants for the time being!

I had to have one of the limited edition Lords that were issued with the army deals. I managed to get one as part of a job lot of bits on ebay for a very good price. I decided to change the colour scheme slightly. This was for two reasons. Firstly, I had just finished painting the Night Bringer and I wanted a Lord that looked as though he was one of his gang, so to speak. The second reason is that in the Apocalypse Supplement there is a very good article about the Necrons that seems to hint at a Hierarchical order within the Necron hordes. I thought that a Colour change could be used to signfy his seniority.

Having built all the lords on foot that are available it was time to build a lord with a destroyer body. However, I just couldn’t build the standard version, I had to have the one with Tomb Spyders legs. This is quite a common conversion and very straight forward to build. It really is as simple as cutting the Tomb spyders legs and superglueing them into the destroyer body. I also extended the warscythe by combining both types of staff supplied with the kit. A bit of a tricky operation but the result is a more imposing weapon, always a good thing ……

The other modification was to add the scarab swam on to the base. The swarm is based on the swarm that is supplied with the Night Bringer model and I was lucky enough to have a spare piece (again, all bought on ebay as part of the same job lot that included the limited ed. lord). To make the swarm even more impressive I added some extra scarabs and topped the swarm off with a scarab with his claws outstretched. I also used a very simple moulding technique to produce lots of extra Scarabs to add to the base itself. I’ll cover how you can make these two simple projects in a future article.

My final Necron Lord (so far….there will be more!) is a complete conversion based on a model that I had seen on a forum. It’s a necron wraith Lord that uses the parts left over from the Destroyer Lord Kit. I used Sculpy to make the body and added a few extras from my bits box and hey presto, a new Lord!

So that’s the HQ covered. In part three I’ll have a look at the elites that are in my collection, although I might just jump to Heavy support and show you how you can still use the Tomb Spyder body left over from the Lord conversion. I would n’t want you to think that I had just discarded it into the bits box!

They say that bad luck comes in threes and I suppose that it is one of those truths that I would prefer not to keep proving but this week it happened again. This time the culprit was spray paints. Myself and two customers had bad experiences with spray paints this week. I should have known better but despite all my experience, I still managed to ‘forget’ the basic lessons of using aerosol spray paints.  I felt bad for my customers to. One in particular, who had a coat of varnish go bad on his model, had my sympathy. I knew exactly how he felt, he had spent 20 hours painting his model only to find that the final coat of varnish had ‘bloomed’ spoiling the shading on his masterpiece. Fortunately, you can usually cure the problem but it involves more work and of course it would be much better if it didn’t happen in the first place.

My problem occurred with the final spray coat on my new forge world Necron Pylon. Now just to be clear here, the model costs £80 to start with and as it is a resin model, there was a lot of work that was done before I even went near it with a paint can. I had invested a lot of time and money in this kit. I had even washed every part down with soap and water to get rid of the release agent before I had started making the kit, so for once I had followed the instructions properly.

I sprayed the undercoat reasonably successfully and touched up the bits the spray had not coated. The base of the pylon was done in a terracotta colour with a succession of dry brush finishes so that it matched my monolith. So Far so good. The weapon Arc was to be finished in a gold. First of all I sprayed it with a deep copper. It looked great but I wanted some highlights so I gave it a light spray of pure gold……Why didn’t I leave it in copper? The gold spray just didn’t take properly nor did it dry, even after 24 hours, so the model felt sticky & every time I touched it the gold was rubbing off…Oh Bugger!

So I carefully rubbed the whole thing down with paper towels and then used a Varnish dip to try to stabilise things. Well the good news was that the model dried out and the stickyness disapeared but there were a number of runs were I had been too heavy handed with the dip. So I covered these with a careful dry brush of gold and things aren’t looking too bad.

 So here’s my list of rules for spraying. I hope that you find them useful.

1. Always shake the can well. That means a good 5 minutes when you first start and give it a good shake in between coats or if you’re spraying a big area. I have never had a problem with over shaking a can of spray…..
2. NEVER start spraying with the nozzle pointing at the model. Spray off the model first to clear any stuff in the tube first and to ensure that if the spray can spits, it doesn’t do it over your model! In fact, start each pass of the spray can off the model and move across it finishing off the model.
3. Spray from at least 12 inches away from the model and spray in light coats. Don’t do what I do every now and then and get up close to blast the spray into those awkward creases! Be patient, alter the angle of spray and try again.
4. It might seem quicker to drench the model in a nice thick coat of paint but it’s much better to apply a light coat, wait for 15 minutes or so and then apply another light coat and another if necessary.
5. If in doubt or even when not, try the spray on a piece of paper first or a piece of paper sprayed with undercoat to see how different sprays work together.
6. Varnish can be particularly difficult. Always spray light coats. Gloss varnish will seal and protect your model. Matt varnish tends just to be a matting agent and doesn’t give the same protection. It is normal to first spray gloss varnish and then when completely dry ( 24 hours at least) give your model a light dusting with the Matt varnish. AND I do mean a LIGHT dusting! If you can see the matt varnish as you spray it you are probably using too much ! You can always give another light coat but beware to many spray coats.
7. Sprays can be temperamental in changing temperatures. If you are like me and have to step outside the back door to spray your model, be careful if there is a big temperature difference as this will cause ‘blooming’ in Varnish. The best solution is to wait until the wife goes out and then spray indoors…..deny all knowledge when she comes in and explain that it’s just the model drying……
8. When you’ve finished spraying, turn the can upside down and spray the last of the paint out until just propellant is coming out to ensure the nozzle doesn’t clog.

So that’s about it, I’m sure that ther are other hints & tips but these are the main lessons that I have learnt and if you follow them you wont go too far wrong.

If the worst does happen, things can usually be sorted with a light glaze of ink or a careful recoat. The important thing to remember is not too panic or lose your temper, take a deep breath a think how you can rescue your masterpiece and try any solution on a small part of your model before re painting the whole thing.

Once again I find myself gloating over a Necron victory. That’s two in a row now and I’m beginning to believe that the Necrons aren’t such an uncompetitive army as I had first thought. The Necron Wraith Wing was pivotal in the victory and this time they were still standing at the end of the battle despite being in the thick of the fighting.

My opponent, Adrian, was fielding a Dark Angel Space Marines and this time the army size was 1750 points. So how did I spend the extra 250 points? Well I gave the Necron Lord even more wargear in the shape of a phase shifter and Warscythe making him a 210 point character. ( Just about legal, the codex says that the Lord can replace his Staff of light with a warscythe and have 100 points of war gear). I also added a squad of three heavy destroyers to deal with any heavy armour and I swapped out a squad of 10 Necron warriors for 5 Pariahs. I had a few points left so I was able to increase the scarabs to a squad of 8 to make a total of 1747 points.

Now the most debatable change to the list was the Pariahs. They’re expensive and they’re not Necrons so they dont have the ‘we’ll be back rule’. They also affect the phase out number adversely, so the general advice is dont take them. Well I ignored this because on the positive side they have the same fire power as immortals but they carry warscythes so they can be devastating in close combat and they push down the enemies leadership to seven whilst being fearless themselves. On that basis, I thought that I would give them a chance.

The enemy consisted of 1750 points of Dark angels, which as I remember consisted of the following: 2 razorbacks with two 5 man combat squads embarked, 2 dreadnoughts, 5 terminators, An assault squad led by a Chaplain, A six man bike squad with an attack bike, a devastator squad and a spare  squad of marines. The mission was a three objective spearhead set up so rather than go through turn by turn I thought I would take you through how each squad did.

To start with the scarabs did what they do best, turbo boost straight at the enemy gun line finishing just about 14 inches away so that it’s clear they cant be assaulted but licking their lips at the prospect of jumping the devastator squad. Well that sort of thing tends to concentrate the mind, so my opponent had little choice other than to try and shoot the little buggers before they chewed him up. So half of his army opened up on the scarabs. They survived , of course and piled into his devatators. They weren’t going to win the combat but they were going to tie the squad up for a couple of turns and stop them knocking over my troops.

While this was going on my Heavy destroyers stayed well out on the flanks picking off his armour. During the course of the battle, they accounted for one of the dreadnoughts, a razorback and two terminators for no loss to themselves.

The two squads of necrons were holding two of the three objectives, whilst the Immortals & Pariahs advanced on the third objective. They cleared the marines from this objective with shooting alone but I was holding them back as I expected the terminators to deep strike into the rear of my army. I wasn’t disapointed and on turn three in they came. It was at this point that the battle would be won or lost. The situation was that The wraith wing had jumped the marine assault squad and were gradually chewing through them, the Dark angels bike squad were engaged in close assault with one of my necrons squads on one objective and the other objective was now threatened by the terminators and a marine squad in a razorback. Fortunately the terminators scattered towards the Pariahs so Adrian had a simple choice. Shoot at the necron squad and clear the objective but then be assaulted by the Pariahs or try to kill the pariahs first. He went for the Pariahs & killed two and the remainder failed their morale check and so retreated from the battlefield…not so good. However, this left the Terminators open to rapid fire from the necrons. So all my unengaged necrons opened fire, That’e 16 shots from the Necron squad, 20 shots from the immortals & three shots form the heavy destroyers. Under this weight of fire the terminators were wiped out. Even better, on my turn the flayed ones came on and wiped out the bike squad in combat! The crisis was over for the Necrons. They continued to hold two objectives and the Flayed ones and the wraith wing & necron lord were going through the Marines squad by squad in close combat. One of the Wraith squads was assaulted by the last Dreadnought but even under this fearsome attack, the wraiths survived, their high initiative and invulnerable saves saw them gradually dismantle the dreadnought piece by piece…nice!

So will I keep the Pariahs? For the time being, yes. Although they were easily shot to pieces, they posed such a threat that they attracted fire whilst the rest of my army could get on with the job of killing everything else. That said, I might be tempted to substitute them for another tooled up Necron Lord……….

Ok for those of you who haven’t heard of Douglas Bader, he was a World War Two spitfire ace with 22 victories to his credit. Incredibly, Bader  had lost both of his legs in a flying accident in 1931 but despite this set back, recovered, retrained and  fought in the Second World War with ‘tin legs’. A truly remarkable man who overcame incredible obstacles throughout his career. If you want to know more, have a look at Wickopedia on the subject. I like the summary of his character:

“Bader was considered to be an inspirational British hero of the era. His brutally forthright, dogmatic and often highly opinionated views (especially against authority) coupled with his boundless energy and enthusiasm inspired adoration and frustration in equal measures with both his subordinates and peers.”

Sounds like my sort of hero! So whats all that got to do with Necrons? Well avoiding bad jokes about his tin legs qualifying him as an honorary Necron, Bader was a believer in the ‘Big Wing’ theory, which basically meant that instead of sending Spitfire squadrons up piece meal to attack the incoming German raids in hit and run style, you should send up everything at once in a large formation and hit the enemy in one big battle. So with this in mind, I had decided to rewrite my necron Army list. I was going to be playing a Tau Army and I wanted something nasty to cause problems in the Tau firing line. I had heard that the ‘big wing’ formation for the Necrons is two squads of Wraiths, led by a Destroyer Lord with Res. Orb.

So the complete army of 1500 points was Destroyer Lord + Res. Orb, 2 squads of three wraiths, a unit of 7 scarabs, 3 squads of 10 Necrons, one squad of 10 flayed ones and 10 Immortals.

The theory being that the scarabs turbo boost towards the enemy attracting suppressing fire ( their turboboost & swarm size give them a 2+ cover save….nice!), the Lord & Wraith squads also charge forward in concert, the lords Resurrection Orb providing protection from heavy fire & the Wraiths 3+ invulnerable save keeping enough of them alive for the next round. Add to that, the flayed ones are going to flank attack, so if my opponent is sitting at the rear of the board there’s a good chance that they are going to pile into his gun line. Of course, while all of this nastiness is going on, the 3 Necron squads will be advancing implacably, ( all within 6 inches of each other, so we’ll be back means that even if one squad goes down, there’s still another nearby for casualties to join) whilst being supported by the Immortals. 

So how did it all work in practice? It worked beautifully. As I said, I was playing a Tau army and the set up was Dawn of war with each of us defending and objective. The Tau seized initiative & went first but this turned out to be an advantage as it let me see their disposition and took the sting out of the first round of fighting.  The Tau have little to shoot at, so they whittle away at the nearest Necron squad & knock down 6, of which  2 get up. Necrons to move. So Scarabs turbo boost towards the Fire warriors, The Big Wing of Wraiths move out towards the core of his army, everything else moves and then runs under the cover of darkness……

Second turn, the Tau open fire but there’s too much to shoot at! The scarabs are already about to assault, the Big wing of Wraiths looks very threatening and the Necron Phalanx has made it clear that it’s going to take the opponents objective. So the Tau open up with everything but I get very lucky with the saving throws on the scarabs & Wraiths and only lose a squad of necrons.

Half of which get up and join the nearest unit to form a mega squad of 13 necrons. Second move for the necrons, Scarabs into combat with a squad of  Stealth suits, Big Wing of wraiths now right into the Tau army ( with hind sight I should have turbo boosted these as they would have been into assault by now), Necron Phalanx move & fire and the nearest Kroot are either dead or running and joy of joys, the flayed ones are on assaulting the nearest broadside battle suit. To paraphrase Corporal Jones, the Tau ‘dont like it up ‘em!’

Tau turn three and the Tau finally focus everything on the Big Wraith Wing. helped by three crisis suits that have turned up in deep strike, 4 Wraiths go down and the Lord suffers two wounds, leaving him vulnerable to further rail gun hits. One small problem for the Tau through, The Necron Phalanx is untouched and so to turn three for the Necrons. At this point I made a mistake and split the wraith wing. Of the four that went down, two got up again and so I sent two wraiths to deal with the Crisis suits whilst the lord and two wraiths assaulted a fire warrior squad. As it happens, the crisis suits beat the wraiths in combat and the Lord was left with just one Fire warrior to deal with after the nearby Necron phalanx had rapid fired so by splitting my Big Wraith wing I caused it’s demise. I’ll never do that again! However, the Flayed ones had skinned their first broadside and were now advancing on the second, whilst the necron Phalanx had dealt out a fearsome amount of firepower, killing another kroot squad & a firewarrior squad.

Tau turn four and now things are looking bleak. The Necrons are tying down some of his best units in close assault, limiting the amount of fire power at the Tau’s disposal. Add to this, the fact that the Necron phalanx is close enough to choose to assault or rapid fire and there’s no where to hide and the Tau are beginning to crumble. If there is a Tau Corporal Hicks you would hear him saying ‘it’s game over man, we’re history’ in true Aliens style. So the Tau try to redeploy and fire with what they can. The last of the Wraiths go down, along with the Lord and just a couple of warriors and a couple of flayed ones.  Necron turn four, the lord gets up again! so it’s back into combat and into the Tau commander! Meanwhile, down go a squad of Pathfinders under fire from the Necron Phalanx. The Phalanx is also  now taken the enemy objective and pushed or killed all the Kroot & firewarriors defending it. The Flayed ones have caught up with the last Broadside suit and the scarabs, which have finished chewing up the stealth suits have launched a cheeky assault on the squad of crisis suits!

So to Tau turn five…….nothing left to fire other than a Hammerhead & the burst cannon on the remaining devil fish. Time to try a desperate attempt to contest the objective by flying the devil fish into the danger zone. Necron turn five and the devil fish is toasted leaving the last five fire warriors sitting outside the wreck. The Tau commander is history  although the scarabs have now been killed.  The Immortals aving safely shepherded the Necron warriors to the enemy objective manage to stun the Hammerhead. The Tau are in big trouble and hoping for no turn six…….unfortunately there is a turn six, so after a pretty ineffectual turn of shooting & the resolution of the remaining assaults, theres not a lot for the Necrons to do other than mop up that last fire warrior team and the game ends with a resounding Necron victory!

Well it’s about time that I had a win with my Necrons, having spent the last month getting beaten to a pulp. So I will bask in my victory for the rest of the week! The new army list worked a treat and although the Wraith Big Wing didn’t actually kill very much, it attracted so much fire that the rest of the army could advance and do it’s job….relentlessly killing the opposition. To be fair, it’s an army designed to beat the Tau. How it will fair against troops with a tougher assault capability remains to be seen. That said, I’ve learnt my lesson, dont split the big wing, overkill is better than no kill and if the Wraiths get pulled out of position, they have a 24 inch turbo boost move to get back to the battle.  So the Douglas Bader Big Wraith Wing flys again!

I can’t help it but I like the whole necron army concept. I’ve been playing warhammer40K since the second edition and collecting before that.  If you dont believe me, I’ll upload some ancient figures that I painted back in 1983 and I’m not sure who will be the most embarrassed, me for the standard of painting or Citadel, for the standards of production……Still, that’s another story, back to the Necrons.

When the first Necron Raiders were released I grabbed a few of the figures but there wasn’t really enough variety to prize me away from Space Marines and Imperial Guard. However, on the release of the new 5th edition rules I thought that it was time to try a new Army and Necrons came to mind.

Lets be fair, part of the attraction was the fairly simple paint job. I’m not the fastest painter in the hobby and I do like to field a painted army, so Necrons were ideal. The other attraction was the fairly limited choice of unit types. This would give me the chance to collect every type of unit and try them in different combinations in different situations.

Having decided on Necrons as the new army, the next choice was to work on the colour scheme. That took about 5 seconds….I went for a very conservative silver. Well, they’re robots that look remarkably like Terminators (I’m sure any simililarity is purely co incidental, a company like Games Workshop wouldn’t dream of taking somebody else’s IP…..’I'll be back’ indeed!) However, just to add a bit of colour I went back and added red to the shoulder pads.

The final bit was to decide on a basing scheme. After advise from the professionals from Middle Earth Studios, the clever people who paint the commissions for my shop, I decided on a simple Terracotta, highlighted up with bleached Bone and a touch of white. To seperate out the squads, I put scarabs on the bases of some and used a green crystal on the others. The Green crystals were to represent some sort of alien vegetation and became part of the background story as my army developed.

So I’ve got a basic colour scheme, a consistent basing system and the start of a background story, my army was on the way!

I mentioned the collecting thing earlier. Of course, having a true anorack gene embedded in me, I had to incorporate some of the older Necron models. So I painted the classic models that I had collected  to form another squad.

I also had some Space Crusade Chaos Androids, which look like they were the forerunners for the Necrons, so I painted these in a similar style to form another squad of troops. As you can see, one had a broken gun, so I replaced it with a spare necron gun.

Finally, I said that I liked collecting. I found these special necrons issued to celebrate Games Workshops silver anniversary. I use them as Objectives during missions…..

So, that just about covers the troops, next time I’ll look at the HQ section…I’ll be back……