The Woes of Power Armor

Source:http://1-media-cdn.foolz.us/ffuuka/board/tg/image/1339/01/1339015399665.jpg

Been somewhat back into 40king loosely time to time. However something been observing on my own games and other people games.

I don’t mean that power armor is bad it’s just the expectation for it doesn’t match its capabilities. In a probability wise the Power Armor is really good. We are looking at a 66% chance of success each save which is good.

However in reality is a different story. For those who in the hobby for quite a while know how mess up dice rolls can do. So while overall odds are good. Power Armor have low tolerance for “bad rolls” or unexpected losses.

An example would be Wong idea of using Cultist as benchmark. So let say a 5 men space marine squad is around 90 points. (no upgrades, nothing) . So each cultist is like 4 points each. So for price of 5 Space Marine you can have roughly 20 cultist.

So now both squad takes fire from 3 wound from bolter round.  On paper the Space Marine would only lose 1 man at average and obviously the cultist would lose 3 guys right off. However in game there a chance that space marine squad would fail all their save and lose 3 guys. As for the cultist, losing 3 guys is already expected and if by some chance the squad had cover. Any saves that it make is already a bonus

People can argue saying that those Adeptus Astartes can withstand flamer and autocannon round.  Which yes that true but experience player won’t leave their horde army clump up or out in open to allow their squad to be easily slaughter. Also these are things that player can anticipate and control as mention above. While the Astartes can take less heed than their horde counterpart but still binded a chance that something can go horribly wrong.

Edit: Here a video of relevant content.

Angry People Squad One of... Many

The first of many to come, I did not paint up the flamer guy as I do not plan to field them.
Am looking for a way to balance up details / look / time taken ratio for these bunch of angry people... least I find myself forever in painting as I have at least 51 more to go.

Also note to self in trying to get better photos in future for "human" size mini as I discovered their smaller size did some what make it harder to get a better picture.

Angry people... and human limits

Of the dozen of games I had played with the my horde of cultists so far one thing became abundantly clear: these fellas has few times the staying power compared to power armored fellas except when faced with extreme weaponry that are designed to clear dug in infantries ( e.g heavy incinerator ).

I tried my best trying to flood the opponents with them (infiltrating them and attaching Chaos Lord to make them fearless, etc) but being mere humans armed with autoguns they can only go so far in the relentless meat grinder. None the less these desperados has earned my respect for their staying power VS cost ratio.

Next up a daunting task: painting them up and having a system to have them seamlessly merging into squads.

CSM Chosen Squad One done

These guys... despite how bad @ss they look they never did survive well into the later stage of any games I have had with them. Their mean looks plus the big guns they carry have yet to fail on attracting fire power to them. Power armour being power armour they usually go down like rag dolls after delivering their salvo on to their sorry target.

Chaos Rising -- as cheesy as it sounds

I have since had 3 games with my WIP chaos army with one theme in mind -- hordes of angry people under the command of even angrier people. One of the game was chronicled by the meticulous Cheng in his blog.

Other than the part of needing to further thinking on figuring out how to have the opponent staying put while a sea of cultists flooded them.. I am quite happy at the army's performance. A little bit more play test and tweaking with the list and it should stand firm to all but the cheesiest list out there.

But to win is not the primary reason I started the chaos army, I started it because of the only logical reason to do so... an excuse to field tonnes of angry people, under the command of even angrier people wearing awesome ornated power armor.

There the angry lead by the angrier will charge down the field, shouting, cursing, shooting and basically  messing the whole place up... let the table burn!

Anyway lets have at look at the WIPs. With the Dark Vengeance set one have access to some of the most awesome looking power armoured guys to date, naturally I resorted to attempt using the models from there to make up my army.Following my old habit of cloning unique codex characters with kit bash model here I have a clone of Hurion, guess I will name him "Helion Dark Hearts" for simplicity sake, below is the said fella at about 80% into painting progress.

He carries this HUGE chaos symbol on his back
so no one is confused who is in charge down there. 

One difficult decision I had to face is choosing between using the standard CSM box marines for my chosen or use the converted Dark Vengeance chosen. Problem being while the DV chosen totally out leagued the standard plastic box counter parts in terms of the sheer overall power armor feel, their biggest hurdle being the dreaded single pose problem -- and I have to field 8 of these guys!

After some back and forth deciding on this, for my personal reference I would rather suffer the single pose issue than the other, so seven more clones would be on their way... 

See the blue guy? He is like totalling out of place amongst the other dudes... 
and he is the best dressed dude from his box!.

40k Cookies 1.5

As shown in the earlier post I salvaged the damaged cookies, refit, re-primed and painted them together with a batch of 3 that were made half way last time for cookies batch 1.5. 

This time taking some excellent advice on how to paint a proper crater from this excellent tutorial.  I am quite happy with the end result, let us see how long will this batch can survive in the grim dark future.

Primed and left under the brutal sun, batch 1.5 is coming along fine

No cutting corners this time,. primed and painted for consistency 

An Imperial Fist guarding a rhino wreckage, little did he know he costs more than 
1/3 of the ill fated vehicle

Cookies for the Grim Dark future

The explosion ripped the rhino  apart and exposed the Oreo cream beneath the earth

If you have ever been to Comics Mart Midvalley for a game of 40k, it is common to hear players asking for a "cookie" when yet another random vehicle exploded to the hostile war zone of the dark grim future.

The term cookie is the nickname for the DIY craters I made a long time ago when I was still fresh to the hobby and was addressing the need for craters when vehicles succumbed to hostile fire. It fact someone once said the cookies were one of the few perks of playing in Comics Mart as most other hobby outlets are ill equipped with such commodities.

The common substitute for the crater for other outlets are the infamous GW moon scape crater but these have some drawbacks in as 1) their size being uneven 2) being genuine GW item; i.e. expensive, most place does not provide them in sufficient numbers 3) Mind boggling as it is, models do not stand well on them.

As the Keeper of Cookies in Comics Mart I have noted the abusive nature of stuff being handled on the table top has literally obliterated some of the cookies over the years. While the number of cookies in the shop remained at a healthy level at the time this is posted the hobbyist in me has already been itching for the making of cookies batch 2.0 with the hobby knowledge I acquired these few years.

Megatron, the cookies were for 40k! 

Of all the hobby centers / outlets I have been to the terrain of one place stood out above the rest: Legio Malaysia. The pieces of terrains there by quality and material are made of ... "sterner stuff", as Optimus Prime would approve. I will try to emulate my batch of cookies 2.0 with that kind of standard in mind.

Emperor willing, hopefully I will have the first batch of cookies 2.0 done during the coming long CNY holidays.