The Chaos List

In the last few day I was reading the new Chaos Space Marines Codex to see if I could put together a fun army list to play with the Khornate army I started to build last month

The following list is what I came up with. I don't play tournaments, just for fun with my friends so keep this in mind when you judge it :)
Also, you will notice that I included a unit of Obliterators with the Mark of Nurgle: I really think that Mark will help the unit more than the one of Khorne.

THE CURRENT LIST

 Chaos Lord, Mark of Khorne, Terminator armour, Axe of Blind Fury, Veteran of the Long War, combi-plasma @162

- 3x Chaos Terminators, Mark of Khorne, Icon of Wrath, Veterans of the Long War  1x combi-plasma + Power Fist, 1x dual Lightning Claws, Champion with Lightning Claw + Power Fist @184

- 8x Berzerkers of Khorne, Icon of Wrath, Veterans of the Long War, Champion with Power Sword @200
- Chaos Land Raider, Dirge Caster, Dozer Blade @240

- 6x Chaos Space Marines, Mark of Khorne, 5 CCW, Flamer @113
- Rhino, Dirge caster @40

- 5x Chaos Space Marines, Mark of Khorne, 5 CCW, Flamer @98
- Rhino, Dirge caster @40

- 20 Cultists @90

- 3x Obliterators, Mark of Nurgle, Veterans of the Long War @237

- 1x Forgefiend, 2x Hades auto-cannons @175

- 1x HelDrake, Baleflamer @170

== 1749

I will Deep Strike the Lord and his Terminators bodyguards near and  interesting target and the Berzerkers will drive the Land Rider toward the enemy lines while the 2 CSM units will hunt objective campers. The Obliterators will march up field while providing cover fire

After arriving from reserves, the cultist will go sit on an objective in my deployment zone with the protection of the Forgefiend and the Drake will hopefully Vector Strike and burn units all over the field

One possible future modification I see is to replace the Forgefiend with another HelDrake, but only if needed and when I get the second drake (I really like the model!)

What do you guys think? This is the first time I write a CSM list so all the comments and critique is very welcome!

Khorne army progess: Chaos Terminators and Terminator Lord

This weekend I was able to make some real progress on my Khorne army! I worked on a Chaos Terminator unit and did more work on my Terminator Lord. The "design" of the models is pretty much complete: this basically means that I like them now and I'm fine with the components I've used, the weapons load out, the pose and so on :D

As an added bonus I put together the Aspiring Champion for a unit of Raptors I plan to build in the future.

I'm also working on an army list to maybe play some games with the army when it's complete.

Now let's dive in and check each models out!

CHAOS LORD OF KHORNE IN TERMINATOR ARMOUR

I'm going for a Chaos Lord with Terminator Armour, Mark of Khorne, Axe of Blind Fury and Veteran of the Long War

I need to clean up it's arms and finish up the axe put a bit of green stuff here and there to buff him up a bit more

CHAOS TERMINATORS OF KHORNE

The current plan if to have the Terminators escort my Lord and ride with him in a Land Raider so I could field only 4 of them in the unit.

This two are the "standard" guys, armed with combi-bolter and Power Fist:

Next we have a Terminator with a pair of Lightning Claws and the Icon of Wrath

I've not decided what to do with the icon: mount it on the top of his backpack or on top of o pole planted on the base?

The last model is the Terminator Champion and I armed him with a Lightning Claw and a Power Fist

RAPTORS ASPIRING CHAMPION

To close up, here is the Aspiring Champion with a pair of Lightning Claws for a Raptor unit

What you guys think so far? Please let me known in the comments :)

Hobby vows - February 2013

As you may have read, I did not complete all my vows for January. I probably put too many things on my to-do list and too many of them where basically the same thing done over and over (four almost identical vehicles)

For this reason I decided to go easy on myself for this month. So, here we go with the new vows

PRIMARY VOWS

A bit of change could do me well at the moment so I want to switch focus from my Dark Eldar to my Khorne army. For this reason I want to complete the Chaos Lord I started last month and start working on his Terminator buddies

SECONDARY VOWS

As a secondary goal I'd like to complete at least one of the two Ravagers I was working on in January

BONUS VOWS

No bonus vows this time around :)



Not too much planned, so lets hope I could get them done this time :)

Hobby vows - January 2013 - UPDATE!

With January gone, it's time to draw conclusions on my vows... and it's not looking good. At all

I may have set the bar too high or I could be a little burn out at the moment

PRIMARY VOWS

My primary objective was to build two Dark Eldar Raiders and two Ravagers

One Ravagers is almost complete, I only need to put on the external hull decorations and hanging crew men

All the weapons and weapons turrets are magnetised for gaming and painting purpose. I also put magnets on the sails and the trophies for ease of transportation.

To add a bit of variety I raised the connection points of the trophies here and there in different places on each hulls. I did the same for the other Ravagers and the two Raiders

The other Ravager and the Raiders are a little behind, with work to be done on the crew and the trophies. I also need to do some greenstuff work to conceal the magnets here and there

SECONDARY VOWS

My secondary goal was to came up with a painting scheme for my vehicles: I played around with various ideas but I still have to decide witch way to go

BONUS VOWS

I actually did some good work for my bonus objective, building a Chaos Terminator Lord. Here he is:

I've not yet decided about his weapons: I like the look of the twin lighting claws and the chain fist so I'll probably magnetise his arms

CONCLUSIONS

I think that working on four vehicles at the same time was a bit too much. A little boring too I think :)

The Archon's dilemma: Huskblade, Agonizer or Venom Blade ?

What is the most efficient way for my Archon to kill his foes?

What is the cheapest way to do it?

Those are the questions that are bothering me lately and so I finally decided to find out. Let's play a round of MathHammer!

THE BAD GUY

Uhm that must be the Archon I guess...

You may known the guy, very good Weapon Skill, low Strength and Resistance, awesome Initiative

I'm going to check out how statistically good he is against the, uhm, other guys, using the following weapons with or without Furious Charge:

• a plain Power Sword
• the Venom Blade
• an Agonizer
• the Huskblade
• the Huskblade with an active Soul Trap

THE OTHER GUYS

I will testing out the various Archon configurations against the following stereotypes:

MEQ: your standard Space Marine TEQ: a Terminator (no Storm Shield) ORK: Greenskins! GEQ: an Imperial Guardsmen ELD: the good ones

WS T As Inv Sv MEQ 4 4 3+ TEQ 4 4 2+ 5+ ORK 4 4 6+ GEQ 3 3 5+ ELD 4 3 4+

THE CHARGE OF THE ARCHON!

In this first scenario our Archon is charging his enemies without Furious Charge

With a whopping 6 attacks he SHOULD inflict the following unsaved wounds. I'm listing the weapons from the cheapest to the most expensive one

	MEQ	TEQ	ORK	GEQ	ELD
Venom Blade	1.11	0.56	2.78	2.59	1.94
Power Sword	1.33	0.22	1.33	2.00	2.00
Agonizer	2.00	0.33	2.00	2.00	2.00
Huskblade	1.33	0.89	1.33	2.00	2.00
Huskblade + Soul Trap	3.33	2.22	3.33	3.33	3.33

I highlighted the best result against each enemy type, keeping the Huskblade / Soul Trap combo aside as this will probably be always the best performing one but we could not take the activation of the Soul Trap for granted

Against MEQ all the special weapons perform adequately: the 50/50 chance of wounding of the Agonizer out-perform the low strength of the Huskblade and the cheap Venom Blade is not too far behind the Power Sword or Huskblade

TEQ are a a hard nut to crack as expected and the awesome AP of the Huskblade give the best results here but the cheaper Venom Blade is a close second

A low armour save foe is the ideal playmate of the Venom  Blade and the higher his Toughness, the better the results. The Agonizer is doing well to against T4

Against your standard Eldar the Power Sword look like the best compromise between wounds and points

WHAT ABOUT FURIOUS CHARGE?

With two Pain Tokens under his belt, the Archon get a nice boost:

	MEQ	TEQ	ORK	GEQ	ELD
Venom Blade	1.30	0.65	3.24	2.59	1.94
Power Sword	2.00	0.33	2.00	2.67	2.67
Agonizer	2.00	0.33	2.00	2.00	2.00
Huskblade	2.00	1.33	2.00	2.67	2.67
Huskblade + Soul Trap	3.33	2.22	3.33	3.33	3.33

The nice surprise here is the Power Sword that perform mostly as good as the more expensive Huskblade, TEQ being the only exception. But charging TEQ is not a good strategy in my opinion anyway...

If you plan to field your Archon with an Haemonculi and some big, ugly Grotesques and points are tight, you could take a Power Sword and the much needed Phantasm Grenade Launcher for around the same points of the Huskblade

Against high Toughness / low Save enemies the Venom Blade is still the best choice

THE DRUG LORD

Combat Drugs are one of the upgrades available to the Archon. They are not that expensive but I wonder if they are needed at all!

1) HYPEX

A boost to the Run move that will not help much our Archon for the following reasons:

• our Archon will probably ride in a Venom or a Rider most of the time
• if he Run, he can no longer charge thanks to the changes to Fleet in 6th edition
• his damage output is not modified in any way

2) SERPENTIN

+1 WS: the standard Archon is already hit back on a 5+ by WS3 enemies and this bonus is not enough to gave him the same benefit while fighting WS4 units so still not much help here

His damage output is not changed

3) GRAVE LOTUS

+1 S: we start to see some improvements but Agonizers are not effected

without Furious Charge	MEQ	TEQ	ORK	GEQ	ELD
Venom Blade	1.30	0.65	3.24	2.59	1.94
Power Sword	2.00	0.33	2.00	2.67	2.67
Agonizer	2.00	0.33	2.00	2.00	2.00
Huskblade	2.00	1.33	2.00	2.67	2.67
Huskblade + Soul Trap	3.33	2.22	3.33	3.33	3.33

with Furious Charge	MEQ	TEQ	ORK	GEQ	ELD
Venom Blade	1.30	0.65	3.24	2.59	1.94
Power Sword	2.67	0.44	2.67	3.33	3.33
Agonizer	2.00	0.33	2.00	2.00	2.00
Huskblade	2.67	1.78	2.67	3.33	3.33
Huskblade + Soul Trap	3.33	2.22	3.33	3.33	3.33

4) PAINBRINGER

Re-roll failed to-wound rolls: this is always a good thing especially when our Archon must relay only on his base strength to wound his enemies. Not so much if you fight with a Venom Blade

without Furious Charge	MEQ	TEQ	ORK	GEQ	ELD
Venom Blade	1.30	0.65	3.24	2.59	1.94
Power Sword	2.22	0.37	2.22	3.00	3.00
Agonizer	3.00	0.50	3.00	3.00	3.00
Huskblade	2.22	1.48	2.22	3.00	3.00
Huskblade + Soul Trap	3.89	2.59	3.89	3.89	3.89

with Furious Charge	MEQ	TEQ	ORK	GEQ	ELD
Venom Blade	1.30	0.65	3.24	2.59	1.94
Power Sword	3.00	0.50	3.00	3.56	3.56
Agonizer	3.00	0.50	3.00	3.00	3.00
Huskblade	3.00	2.00	3.00	3.56	3.56
Huskblade + Soul Trap	3.89	2.59	3.89	3.89	3.89

5) ADRENALIGHT

+1 A: a bonus attack is always welcome!

without Furious Charge	MEQ	TEQ	ORK	GEQ	ELD
Venom Blade	1.30	0.65	3.24	3.02	2.27
Power Sword	1.56	0.26	1.56	2.33	2.33
Agonizer	2.33	0.39	2.33	2.33	2.33
Huskblade	1.56	1.04	1.56	2.33	2.33
Huskblade + Soul Trap	3.89	2.59	3.89	3.89	3.89

with Furious Charge	MEQ	TEQ	ORK	GEQ	ELD
Venom Blade	1.51	0.76	3.78	3.02	2.27
Power Sword	2.33	0.39	2.33	3.11	3.11
Agonizer	2.33	0.39	2.33	2.33	2.33
Huskblade	2.33	1.56	2.33	3.11	3.11
Huskblade + Soul Trap	3.89	2.59	3.89	3.89	3.89

6) SPLINTERMIND

A free Pain Token: an improvement of the defence capabilities for the Archon and his units (Fell No Pain) that could also help to gain Furious Charge faster if there is a Pain Token already in the unit (Haemonculi and/or Grotesques)

SO, ARE COMBAT DRUGS NEEDED?

Of the six drugs only three increase the damage output of the Archon and a forth could do that too in some particular unit configurations. The remaining two drugs are totally wasted on him however

In the end, I think I would take Combat Drugs only if I have some points to spare after I have secured all the other units in the army list or if I will ever field Grotesques with my Archon

WHAT IS THE DEADLIEST OF THEM ALL?

There is no overall winner: it all came down on the role you want your Archon to perform.

You want to go hunt Terminators? I won't do that but if you so wish than take the Huskblade and Combat Drugs

MEQ Killer? Power Sword or Agonizer. The Venom Blade is not much worse if points are tight

Hordes anyone? Venom Blade

Are you a Kin slayer? Then a Power Sword or a Venom Blade are your tools


And now it's up to you! What do you guys think on the various special weapons and how do you field your Archon?