Missile launcher HWT and WIP

Finished my first missilelauncher HWT a week ago but i wanted to wait with showing it before i had build my second one. These two HWT goes with my infantry squads and i have still to do 3 more for my HWT missile launcher squad.

Now i wanted to continue the idea that HWTs don't just sit on their asses and wait til something comes within range to fire on. These guys spend most of their time dragging these heavy ass weapons through the jungle so their squad have some firepower with a more heavy punch to it.

Like the Auto cannon HWTs i made 1 that is actually set up, ready to do some havoc. His helper is ready with another missile. The first one i think came out pretty nice, the only thing i have been on doubt with is the white dirty missile head. I wanted it to be the classic white missile with red top on it so it stands out a bit from the more camouflaged look. I plan on doing the sentinel missile launcher the same way, however after putting it with the rest of the squad when i put it with the rest of my army, it looks a bit outta place. Maybe because its the only one so far with the white head on top..?

I also build the missile launchers with the thought in my mind that these where actually a bit lighter in weight, so they didn't needed to get set up the same way as the rest of the HWTs(more bazooka, than actual artillery).  This i tried to show on my next WIP HWT, one guy carrying and the other guy defends his mate and help spots potential targets.


Now to the WIP, as before mentioned i wanted to show the easier job of transporting this Heavy weapon. Its so easy for some catachans to carry that they can at the same time even use the other arm chopping down branches that's in the way! I put the branch there to show a newly cut branch just seconds ago.

Maybe it was Harker in his youth that started out as a missile launcher crew before he got veteran status and promoted to Sargent;). Jokes aside we all know that the catachans are more hardier and stronger than normal imperial guards, do you think does biceps are just for show? Another note is if you closely you will see i left a mold line on his left forearm. This is something i do sometimes to show the artery, which gives the muscle a more natural look. Its not always possible tho, depends on certain arms where the mold line fits perfectly.

Ras signing out.

Catachan 1500 point armylist and future 1750.

The last week or two i been seeing some real nice debate on the blog concerning improvements on my 1000 point list. Basically what worked, what didn't work and what units could be interesting to put in to cover some of the weaknesses in my list.

I had a plan on what units i would use in when i expanded from 1000 point and i had bought most of them in some of the first months of starting my army. Does of you who haven followed me for a while or read just a few on my post properly already know that my army is based more on fluf than winning tournaments. The fluf is what drives me to keep painting, converting and playing an Imperial guard: Catachan jungle fighter army. That being said i would still love to win games at the local club. In short i would like to be competitive at a club perspective, but still follow the fluf.

Now without further mumbling here is my 1500 points list(notice i am building from the 1000 points).

Edit. This list is actually wrong. I seem to have miss calculated the Command squad. As Marcus said its actually 310 not 260 which is a whooping 50 points wrong!

HQ:
CCS: Straken, medic, 2 laspistols with close combat weapons, Nork Deddog, vox and carapace armor upgrade.
260points

Lord Commisar: powerfist (Joins the ogryns)
85points

TROOPS:
PCS:  Vox and heavy bolter HWT.
45points
Infantry squad 1: grenadelauncher, HWT with missile launcher and vox.
70points
Infantry squad 2: grenadelauncher, HWT with missile launcher and vox.
70ponts
HWT 1: 3 Missile launchers. 
90points
HWT 2: 3 autocannons. 
75points
Veteran squad: Harker, 2 melta, flamer and 1 demolition charge.
180points
penal legion
80points

Special weapons team: demolition charge, 2 flamers.
65points

HWT squad: 3 Mortars
60points


ELITE:
Marbo:
65points

Ogryns: 3 ogryns + bone ead
175points

FAST ATTACK:
1 scout sentinel squad: 2 with auto cannons and 1 missile launcher
135p

Total 1455.

Now this leaves me with 45 points left which can be used for upgrades when its needed. I was considering upgrading all the sentinels with lascannons for 35 points but i am very worried that it wont do with bs 3.
The second reason to the list is to ignore the Landraider and let it come to me.. with Straken, Nork, a bunch of angry ogryns and to top that of a special weapons team with demolition a charge, i wouldn't give it long to live, when it do get near(hopefully).

I do know that i am to low on Mortars but when i go 1750points ill add a lot of mortar HWT in, maybe even sooner after testing the list.

Plan is that i make a fire base and leave one flank to the PCS and 1 inf squad. Ill then outflank with the vets, penal legion and the sentinels to steal objectives and get does long ranged artillery. The penal legion squad doesn't need to kill anything, but if it can hold up some artillery, engage some devastators etc to give the rest of the army some breathing space while Strakens boys along with the ogryns beat beat on everything with the rest of the army shooting with everything it got.

I was toying with the vendetta gunship armed with the missing las cannons, but i am afraid it would give my opponent 1 juicy target to shot at.

With the added Lord Commissar i also have the option of combining squads for when playing killpoint missions with that big nasty blob of infantry leaded by a the lord Commissar with ld 10.

I know that my CCS is clocking out on 260 points which is a hell of a lot, but i think it will be worth it.


The above picture was drawn by Phil Moss 
and belongs to him.

Battlereport - Catachans vs generic marines

Yesterday i went to my local club to play a 1000 point game against a guy there. I changed my list a bit to try out some demolition action with Harkers squad.

CATACHANS:

HQ:
CCS: Straken, medic, 2 laspistols with close combat weapons,2 bodyguards, carapace armor and vox.
 
TROOPS:
PCS:  Vox and heavy bolter HWT.
Infantry squad 1: grenadelauncher, HWT with missile launcher and vox.
Infantry squad 2: grenadelauncher, HWT with missile launcher and vox.
HWT 1: 3 Missile launchers. 
HWT 2: 3 autocannons. 
Veteran squad: Harker, 2 melta, flamer and 1 demolition charge.

ELITE:
Marbo:
Ogryns: 2 ogryns + bone ead

FASTATTACK:
1 scout sentinal squad: 1 with autocannons and 1 missile launcher


GENERIC SPACE MARINES:

1 chapter captain with 5 terminators with stormshield and thunderhammers in a Landraider.
1 razorback twinlinked assualtcannons with 5 spacemarines(one vet sergeant)

1 razorback twinlinked assualtcannons with 5 spacemarines(one vet sergeant)
5 scouts with sniper riffles(one vet sergeant)
With a few upgrades i cant remember in my head. Extra armor and captain was armed with some kind of a power weapon and more i cant remember, but basically that's it

Mission: Capture and control.
Deployment: Dawn of War.
My opponent won first turn..

1st turn: Night fight.

We both place our objectives in our corner furthest away from each others armies and he deploy his Landraider and 1 razorback closest to my forces as possible. 1 razorback in defense and his unit of scouts in the ruin with the objective.

My eyes almost starts tearing up when i see him pulling his landraider up from his bag.. armor 14... my strongest cannons have str 8.. How am i gonna stop this monster?!


I decide to turtle up in the ruins in the button of my left side. Everything but 1 infantry squad and my pcs is dedicated at stopping his advance. I placed my objective near the ruins hoping if i couldn't stop them i could maybe contest it while Harker sneak in and grabs his objective. I deploy Straken and his boys + the ogryns ready to move in and act as meat shield for my squishy squads. Straken have not yet let me down in my 4 games and he is about to begin the ultimate test...
 


He got first turn AND it is night fight.. this means he gets two turns of driving towards me without me doing much shooting. 1st turn nothing really happens... he drives forward, rolls to see if he can see anything and he cant. His snipers notice something in the ruins and fires, so does his razorback. My inf squad and pcs makes the saves. I fire with about half my weapons and i didn't penetrate anything. I move Strakens squad + the ogryns forward!

Turn 2: Here comes the pain...!
He drives his landraider in front of Straken and his terminators + captain rushes out! His las cannon hits the auto cannon sentinel and it explodes. His scouts shots some more on the inf squad and 1 dies. His razorback shots at my pcs and they do their saves.

His terminator squad charges in and engages both Strakens squad and my ogryns, which ends in me killing 1 terminator and me loosing 1 bodyguard 2 vets, gets one wound on Straken and 1 ogryn gets 1 wound! Strakens squad holds the line but the ogryns run..!

My turn, my ogryns rally and consolidate 3 inces towards the terminators! Marbo and Harkers boys comes in from just the right side! Overly joyed i realize that Marbo coming in was a very bad thing.. All my opponents units are inside razorbacks cept for the sniper squad(which Harker can take care of) and the engaged terminators.... I decide to try and blow up the razorback with his demo charge.

I try to pop the razorback so Marbo can throw his demolition charge in the marines faces. I failed... As a last resort Marbo throws it on the razorback and misses!! After the failure i realize i still had one sentinel left with a missile launcher and i penetrate and its wrecked! His marines are climbing out and gets pinned.

Back to Harkers boys. I throw the demolition charge in the snipers faces and misses again. My flamer, meltas and rapid firing lasguns nails 2 and the rest runs over the board(Might not have been pretty much they got the job done).

Back to the terminators.. The ogryns charges the terminators again and to everyone's surprise.. Straken and the ogryns wipes the terminators...! Only the captain survives.. who immediately flees(I am getting the fuck away from that)!

Hes runs 2 incs and i consolidate behind him to use him as a meat shield to gain a cover save. Not a bad turn for me!

Turn 3: Who is gonna win?!
The intact razorback drives towards Harkers squad and fires its weapons. Harkers squad takes 3 wounds but passes their moral test. The captain auto rallies and choose to move back while firing at Straken but misses.

My Turn Harkers boys moves towards the razorback and my opponent remembers that the boys are carrying meltas... My Ogryns moves towards the pinned marines and Straken and marbo(with melta bombs) charges the Landraider. Harkers boys nails the razorback and it explodes! 2 marine dies in the explosion and the rest  passing their pinning test.

On the Landraider Straken and Marbo fails to damage the Landaraider with absolutely horrible rolls!

Turn 4: Get to the choppah!
The space marines jumps into the Landraider and drives towards the objective..! In the other corner his marines fires on Harkers boys and they take 2 more wounds. The land raider puts 1 wound one one autocannon HWT and kills another. The captain shots marbo.


My turn, Straken charges the landraider. the captain dies to massed fire from my infantry and heavy weapons team and Harkers boys manages to kill only one space marine! Straken glances the Landraider but only rolls 1!

Turn 5: The end that would never finish!
The marines charges Harkers boys and kills 1, who in return do nothing, the pass the leadership test. The landraider drives to the objective and unloads the marines who rapid fires into the the auto cannons and kills one more, landraider puts another wound on the last HWT.

My turn i move my sentinel into position to shot at the marines near the Landraider. Straken runs with the ogryns towards my own objective along with the infantry squad and the last heavy weapon team. Its a race! I pour all my fire into the 5 marines and only manages to kill 2 with 4 missile launchers and rapid fire from 6 lasguns! Realizing my mistake and that i can actually loose the game i run my pcs and inf squad towards his objective! My inf squad charges the marines, loosing and runs of the board!

Turn 6: Dogfight!
His marines jump back in the Landraider and it fires at the sentinel which destroys it. Marines vs Harkers boys end in a draw with no wounds. 


My turn Straken charges the laindraider thanks to his bionic arm, blows it up! The marines looses one marine. 2 left..... Harkers boys kills 1 marine and the last marines fails to kill any! He passes his leadership test tho my last hope of pulling a turn 7 win is gone.

Turn 7: Game Over.
The game ends and we are overly joyed over the most intense game any of us have had so far. Its my game 5 and his game 4 so we are both very new to the game and our armies. It ended in a draw and we hand shook and agreed that we need a another game soon.

I think what could happen, happened in this game and i learned a very valuable lesson. Never be lazy and think you won when you haven't. I should have moved my PCS towards the razorback when it went down. I might not have made it but i might have. The Landraider was a nightmare and i really need some hard punch in my 1500 list. Maybe a vendetta gunship and a HWT las cannons?

The demolition charges failed me this game, but it just shows that i was unlucky,one game doesn't prove anything i will keep testing it in the next few games as well.

Thanks for watching, i hope you enjoyed the battle report. Critic is always welcome so i can improve on making battle reports and use more tactics.

Ras

The Demolition charge, Say hello to my little friend!

Certain Imperial guard units have the option to take 1-2 demolition charge, that being veterans squads(1) and the special weapons teams(2). Its a one use weapon. The demolition charge clicks out on pricey 30 points and comes along with Melta bombs for the squad with the vets and 20 points for it in the special weapons team. 

Lets look at the stats for the demo charge:

Range 6 str 8 ap 2 type Assualt 1, large blast and 1 use only.

  When i first saw it in the codex i put the idea away fast cause of the range but after seeing marbo in action with his demolition charge, i am rethinking the option. The demolition charge can do horrible damage! So far in 4 games i killed 8 space marines in one charge, 7 Striking scorpions, and i had two misses. So the potential of this weapon is HUGE!

 My plan will be to put a demo charge in with Harkers gang and see what happens. In half the games so far, Harkers guys got cut down with flamer, rapid or close combat. But in each case they had one turn where a demolition charge would have made a big difference.

I painted up one of my demo charge users and we will see how it works out. I any case i will let you guys know how it works out.

Ras.

Catachan battlereports in the future

I started playing games the last 3 weeks at my local club and i am having such a blast! I am learning about all the mechanics and each game is a valuable lesson learn. At the moment i am playing at least one game a week but i am expecting at least 2 games pr week in the future.

So far i been practicing on making battle reports. I am trying to get better at taking good pictures that gives a good overview of the action, but at the same time really soaking up all the tips and tricks to me as much as possible and i am at this stage where i get carried away and forget to take pictures...!

Well to make a long story short, there will soon be battle reports coming on my blog with the brave Catachan forces fighting all the enemies of the emperor. As soon as i get satisfied with my work i will start making them.

So far the score is 3 games lost 1 game won. Stay tuned, the Catachans are coming!

heavy weapons team with autocannons done

Yesterday i managed to finish my last auto cannon for my HWT auto cannon team and here is how it came out. For some reason the barrel didn't go perfectly in the front guys hand as i had measure it to do, some somewhere along the line that had gone wrong. Al tho i am happy to finally have the first team done.

The goal for this month is this one and 2 missile launcher heavy weapons for my two infantry squads. I will go with the same style as with the auto cannons to add some diversity into my army.

I have a whooping 5 missile launcher teams in my current 1000 point list, which works very well and gives me a lot of flexibility when it comes to both hordes and light vehicles.

Where the missile launcher is limited to either low toughness squads or single strong toughness targets, the auto cannon puts out twice the amount of shots and are much better at taking out 4+ - 7+ toughness squads cause of this.


Ras signing out..

How to varnish your miniatures.

When i started out in the hobby many years ago, all i did was read the army codex, read white dwarf, play a few games and paint lots of miniatures! I played fantasy back then and like everyone else i played with both plastic and metal miniatures. Back in does days none told me anything about varnishing your models and chipping was just a normal thing, i did have a army case for them but still chipping did happen anyway. Granted i didn't spend as much time painting my models and i do now, to be honest my miniatures where barely tabletop quality.

Now with the internet information is easy get find on everything and when i started hearing about varnishing miniatures i started a quest on how to varnish my miniatures the best. I didn't want my miniatures paint job to change when i varnished em. The more i read about varnishing, the more horrified i got about stories where varnish went wrong! I spend about 4-10 hours painting on each model and the last thing i wanted was to spoil the miniatures. After many months of looking for a perfect way to varnish, i finally found it!

For does who rather watch a video on how to do it, i also made a video here is part1 and part2.

How to varnish your miniatures walk through

What you will need.

1. Games workshop: Ard Coat. (gloss varnish)

2. Water to rinse your brush after using the "Ard Coat".

3. A pallet.

4.  Modelmaster dullcoat.

5. Mineral Terpintin(this is the one i used). Both used for thinning down the matt varnish and to clean your brush afterwards.

6. A soft cheap brush.

This is how my model looks when its finished painted and ready to get varnished. 

Step 1.
You start of with your  finished painted model and and you apply the "Ard Coat" straight from the bottle. The only thing you need to be aware of is to smooth out the pools of varnish so its even all over the model. The reason we apply the "Ard Coat" is cause the purpose of of this varnish is to apply a strong thick protective coat on the model, cause its a gloss varnish it will protect the colors when we apply the dullcoat(matt varnish).
Now to be sure that the model finished drying i but leave it for 24 hours. I dunno if you can actually start step 2 before but i don't wanna risk it. Here is what you will end up with after the varnish dries.

Step 2.
Now to apply the "modelmaster dullcoat"(matt varnish). Before you start, shake the bottle a lot for at least 2 minutes, what you want is the varnish to even out in the bottle so the button drop evens out. The varnish needs to look the same in the whole bottle. Before you apply the varnish you need to thin down the varnish. Here is how the terpintin comes into the picture. The dullcoat is a bit to thick and when its to thick it doesn't spread out even and you might make brush strokes in the coat. So to avoid this we will thin down the varnish. What i do is i use the same way i thin down my paints with water. I take some varnish from the bottle on my brush and put it in the pallet, then i take some terpintin and put it on the pallet the same way and mix em. Now to get the right consistence is pretty easy. it should look a bit thicker than average milk. After this you apply it to the model and make sure to cover all the shiny parts you want covered(in my case everything). But if you want something glossy, like a tongue or gems, just don't apply the matt varnish to does places. If you missed some places the first time, just go back and hit it with some more matt varnish until the shine is covered

Heres what you will end up with after the matt varnish dries.

And here is a better picture of the finish varnished model.

If you have any questions just comment and i will get back you you asap.

Ras signing out.

My new 1000 point Catachan list.

 Okey so here is the list i came up with for Thursday next week. I altered the old list to tweak in some more ranged tank buster firepower and i also threw out the small ratling squad. I am curious to see if this list + the experiances i gained last Thursday will put the Catachans on top of the game versus the fast and brutal space wolves. 


 With this list i will have to make some alterations with the Heavy weapon teams and also need a few extra heavy weapon teams made. I already converted the sentinel with the missile launcher. My main plan this time will be to hang out more in the back with cover and try to hurt the wolves all i can before they charge in my face. Hopefully with the added firepower i can stop more than last game which shouldn't be to hard considering i only took out one rhino. Without further waiting, here is the list.


HQ:
CCS: Straken, medic, 2 plasma, carapace armor and vox.
180p


TROOPS:
PCS:
35p vox
Inf squad 1: grenadelauncher, HWT with missile launcher and vox.
70p
Inf squad 2: grenadelauncher, HWT with missile launcher and vox.
70p
HWT 1: 3 Missile launchers. 
90p
HWT 2: 3 autocannons. 
75p
Vet squad: Harker, 2 melta, flamer.
150p

ELITE:
Marbo:
65p
Ogryn: 2ogryns + bone ead
130

FASTATTACK:
1 scout sentinal squad: 2 with autocannons and 1 missile launcher
135p

Total 1000p straight.