Getting ready for Alamo con

Been neglecting this blog for awhile now, but with good reason, I've had 114 models to paint for Alamo con! That plus playing 40K at the local club on Thursdays has made me very, very busy. So let's break it down.

Hobby

I have been on a major painting spree and had thrown down ink on all but my Biker Warlord. Things seemed to be going well for awhile as I was making progress, even if it was only painting a single color on a large swathe of Cultists. I got to the point though, where it became painfully obvious I was not going to have enough time to get the models table ready by the tournament on May 18th. And so a decision was made, I hired a very talented, and fast, local painter to finish the job. The bad news was there were 114 models to paint. The good news was that they were most of the way there. I got to take a look at what my friend had accomplished in just a single night of painting and he had added an awesome looking rust effect to the Maulerfiend, as well as having cleaned up and detail washing on both Heldrakes. His goal is to have those three models completely painted and based by the end of this week. My fingers are crossed!

Gaming

So I finally had the opportunity to play against a couple Tau armies, and wow, those guys are brutal with the new Codex. The first game I played was also the first time my opponent had run his new Tau list. Despite some major achievements on my end, including wiping out his Warlord and all the suits grouped with him with a single Baleflamer pass, in the end, they get too many cheap units that can fire way farther than my Cultists. While the body count was pretty epic on both sides, my opponent controlled more Objectives and had Linebreaker on me. It was a fun game, but I knew that Tau armies were going to be a problem for me. And that was reinforced in my second game against another Tau opponent. This fellow had brought an Aegis Defence Line with a Quad-gun and tons of abilities specifically to down Heldrakes. While he couldn't do that as quickly as he was hoping to, he did eventually bring both demon chickens down and the marker-light ability of denying Cover meant my Cultists had no chance. The Maulerfiend was destroyed in Turn 1 and Night Fighting didn't matter to that army. In hindsight, I should have done what I've been trying to break myself from doing, aggressively charging. I should have sent both Heldrakes (was using 2 Baleflamer Heldrakes for this game) at the Defence Line and at least had a single turn of roasting a bunch of fishmen. Mmm, fried fish. Ah well, lesson learned. Cover means little against a Tau opponent who knows how to use marker-lights, so the ravening Chaos horde has to push with no care of the losses.

That's it for now. I'll be posting pics of the finished army as soon as I get the models back. Until next time, see you on the battlefield!