Whats new?

Hey folks!

Ok, I have been slackin on my postin.  I'm talking like an Ork! Don't worry, I'm not going to play orks.

I just wanted to give a quick update on whats going on in Jawa land.  First, I have a couple more banners to show you.

Here is the finished Space Wolves chapter banner I sent out last week. I love painting this one and it came out way better than the first one I did.

And here is a fun one I am doing. It is a custom one for a client with his own chapter, The Lions of Harlech.

It is based on a Crimson Fist banner appearing in the SM Codex. There will be a lions head in the center and some other images placed about.  

New Armies?  The Grey Knights are coming along.  But as I knew coming into them, they are going to be a long work in progress culminating in the fall tournament season. My goal for them is to perfect a competitive foot list that does not rely on extreme cheeze to win games, while competiting for Best Painted.

But in the meantime, I need a tournament army! My Nova army just isn't cutting the mustard.  And while I was at that last tournament, I spent some time looking around and soaking what seemed to be trending in army composition, and what was doing well against it, paying special attention to Blood Angels success.

Simon Lean has some pretty good success, with a list very similar to mine, sans Mephiston and scouts of course.  However, even his army is not consistent enough to do more than place him in the upper tiers. What was working? Well, I noticed players who use BA Storm Ravens with Furioso Dreads having some fun.  But the SR usually serves as nothing more than a delivery system for it's occupants. Essentially a winged drop pod. A very expensive one.  But it did the trick!  Those ravens move up and die, hopefully taking a lot of fire power in the process. Then the dread gets out and tears into the squishy infantry, killing entire squads of purifiers at a time!

As it turns out, it seems that I believe I stumbled upon a brief window of tournament meta that has a pretty big weakness.  And with a quick deal made with Spikey Bits, I am on my way to making it happen.  Death From Above is back!

I made a pretty loud splash a few years ago using the BA PDF to win or place second in some fairly big tournaments. My list was unconventional. 3 Venerable Death Co. Dreads, Dante and Corbulo giving the ven diagram of death, 3x Baal Predators and two Tactical Squads.  Thats right, only two troops choices. I won second at The Conflict earning a golden ticket with a list that worked not because it looked good on paper, but because the current meta was ill equipped to deal with it.

Well the dead pods are back.

My list: Roughly... 2k

Librarian with Shield and Lance
10 man Tactical with Melta, Multi, and combi melta in pod
7 man assault with melta, melta pistol, pw and pod
5 man assault with melta and pod
10 man Death Co with melta pistol, hammer and PW and pod
x2 DC Dreads with HF, BT and Pods
x2 Furioso with BT, HF, 1 EA and pods
x2 Heavy Support dreads in pods, one MM, one Asscan
x2 priests, one with PW

and if I drop upgrades, I add a third heavy support dread in pod with MM.

Game on fellas!

I already had two dreads and most of the infantry painted from previous armies. I had to paint the 10 DC which I am doing now. I also had 6 pods remaining from when I originally intended to do this army but held off because of the great Melta Explosion of 2010.  So all I really have to paint new for this army is 10 pods and 4 dreads!  But then I remembered the second reason why I didn't do the pod army... I hate assembling pods.  But a quick fix was available. A phone call to Brother Captain James and a C note later and the BCJ Forge World is activated.  He will have the first wave of pods done while I wait for the rest to arrive from Spikey Bits, whom I made a deal with, the stuff I need in return for a full sized banner for his store!  Win Win.

Now the plotting.

I need to get Fritz over to the Jawa Cave to do some battle testing, but I already have a pretty good idea how to use the pods after playing my own dreads a few years ago, and talking a lot to Sean Nayden who plays Salamander dread pods.  But the strategies are fairly simple. Drop and destroy.  Try to take second so that my opponent has stuff on the table for me to destroy on turn one. If he reserves every thing, then the fun begins. I deploy some units on the table, and drop empty pods on his objectives and line his table edge, forcing him to come on in a choke point, where I have nasty dreads waiting for him.  You get the picture.

Kill point games are going to be tough, but pods are not as easy to kill as you may think. Objective games are going to be fun, as I know from experience vs Sean that 3 pods on an objective can be quite the challenge to take off, and most guys will not start killing them until it is too late.

You can guess what the troops do. The 7 man unit has 3 openings in it's pod for my ICs.  I keep them close, using one of the priests to split off and go join my tacticals, while the rest of the guys support the assaulting dreads. The 5 man drops into safety if it can, and uses it's melta if I need it, or just hides some place on an objective. On occasion, if needed, I can throw them a priest to help keep them alive.  The death company wreak havoc.

I painted up some tanks using my airbrush as testers for my pods and came up with a fairly good method. So they should not take too long.  End result, I will quickly have a fun and hopefully competitive army to carry me into 6th edition.  Then I can go in either direction, GKs or stay with the pods if 6ED proves a boon to dreads.  In that case though, I would need to repaint most of the army, as all the infantry are old and outdated, not quite competitive for painting honors in the big events.

What else?  Warmachine!

Jim the Stout Smurf, Fritz and Myself have decided to delve into something new.  Jim decided to go with Khador, Fritz may go with the blue guys, and I decided to try out Cryx. I simply looked at the website and picked the models I thought were coolest.  There is a store nearby that has Warmachine night on Mondays and Jim and I are going to give it a go.  I ordered up the battle box from Rob Baer and got my hands on some other models, and am looking forward to something different.  I will keep you posted!

Thats it for now, time to get back to painting before the kids come in this morning.  One more week til I am off for a week. Looking forward to getting some serious painting done during my spring break!

Jawaballs

Painting a Death Company Dreadnought

Introducing Old Shatter Hands! Jawaballs Productions is proud to announce the first guest writer on The Blood Angels and Warhammer 40k. He has been a frequent commenter and contributer for years, and now it is official. I have had the pleasure to meet and play with him personally and am looking forward to many more articles from him to come as he develops his own Blood Angels army.

Jawaballs

My debut on The Blood Angels and Warhammer 40k Blog will be ushered in by this magnificent robot, the Death Company Dreadnought. Great in girth and stature, this fellow is going to make a great addition to my Blood Angels force. Having played him only once in a game, I don't have much to say about him tactically, but I know he'll make a mess of any heretical Space Marines that get in his way. Painting-wise this was a surprisingly quick job because I limited my palette to black, red, bone and metallic colors. 

So much of painting is method, process and the order of things. The first thing I did was paint all the parts I wanted metal. These are back portions of the model, all the mechanical bits and the gun barrels. I coated them in Boltgun Metal, let it dry and then did a liberal wash of Badab Black. When that was dry, I then did another wash of Badab Black. Let that dry and then highlightted the edges with Boltgun Metal again. I then picked out little highlights with Mithril Silver here and there.

Next it was time to paint the markings and insignias. For the wounds on Sanguinius, I painted an X with Mecharite Red, then did a coat of Vallejo Carmine Red. I tightened it up by outlining it with Chaos Black, then I highlighted it with Blazing Orange. 

To make this dreadnought a true Blood Angels creation, I ordered Blood Angels Etched Brass from Forge World along with the kit. The Crux Terminatus on his right chest-plate signifies this Dreadnought as once part of the Blood Angels 1st Company before succumbing to the Black Rage, reaching near-death and then being encased in a mechanical body. The details on the Etched Brass are extremely fine and you need to make sure you have watered down your paints when painting them as you can easily lose the detail with thicker paint. I lightly brushed on Khemri Brown and cleaned up any mistakes with Black. Then I took thinned down Bleached Bone and painted it on, as though light was coming top-down. Then I thinned out some Skull White and painted the top portions to complete the look. Then I painted the blood drop Carmine Red, highlighted it slightly with Blazing Orange and painted in a dot of Skull White. 

Once I had painted all of the details and insignias, I started on highlighting the black. I mixed 2:1 Chaos Black with Shadow Grey and brushed on light highlights on the edges of the armor plates. I used a semi-thin brush for this. Then I took Shadow Grey mixed it with Skull White about 1:1. I made sure it was thinned down enough as I only wanted to produce thin lines on the hard edges of the model. I took my smallest brush to paint these on. You have to exercise a certain about of restraint when painting black and I made sure to leave most of the black as a flat color. Once that was done, I moved on to the claws. I wanted these to rally stand out but I wanted to keep an element of realism so I decided not to painted bright blue or red, and instead chose a metallic color with hints of red. 

I painted the claws Boltgun Metal and then washed them with Badab Black. I waited for the wash to dry and I highlighted with Boltgun Metal, followed by Mithril Silver. Then I grabbed my pot of Dark Flesh. I took some out and watered it down to the consistency of a wash. I lightly feathered on the Dark Flesh wash on the claws. I waited for that to dry, then I feathered on some more of my Dark Flesh wash and repeated this process until I had nearly flat Dark Flesh at the base of the claws. To clean it up a bit, I highlighted with Mithril Silver once more. I really liked how this looked and I had leftover Dark Flesh wash so I went around on the metallic parts of the model and brushed in the color. It added a layer of corrosion to the metal and added hints of red here and then. It really worked well. 

I painted the gold Imperial Aquillas and purity seals, nothing special here but when that was complete I was done. This towering behemoth is ready to return to service for the Emperor.

Warhammer 40k Full Size Blood Angels Death Company Furioso Banner

I thought you guys would appreciate some pictures of my newest full size banner. This one is a Blood Angels Death Company Furioso Dreadnought banner to comemorate the newest form of my army. I painted it up for this coming weekends Battle for Salvation tournament in White Plains.

I used a black heavy fabric banner that was made up by Black Matt's wife. Then I used acrylic paint to layer in the color. It takes a lot of layers I learned, so when painting with yellow over black, I use 50/50 white and yellow on my first layer. White is a very opaque color that lays down a good base. After that you only realy need a single coat of yellow on top. The skull and scroll were painted brown first, then I mixed in white for successive layers until I got to just the highlights with pure white. The blood drops were made laying down a few layers of red, then highlighting with Orange and white. Feel free to ask any questions!

Jawaballs

Warhammer 40k Blood Angels: Death Company Rhino