Inquisitoral Conclave 2022

Well, following the maxim that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, this would appear to be a factionless warlock or seer of some kind with a retinue of equally disparate assorted Eldar.

The leader.  Impassive in his (her ?) wraith helm.  Looking stern with a witchblade.

There are two swordsmen/women with convential weapons and two swordsmen/women with chainblades.

This individual is possibly the pilot of their grav-tank.

Two more individuals with hafted weapons.

So these are people who at the climax of the final battle for Xyphonica, when it looked like the Imperial Guard were over extended, appeared at XVII Korps HQ and negotiated. 

 

The Eagle has Landed

 You may remember that the mission for the German Commandos in the book was to eliminate Churchill and that in the end, the man they were aiming at turned out to be a decoy. 

So as the Eldar can foresee what might happen, it doesn't seem too far fetched that they might employ decoys for their leaders.  

Of course, it might simply be the thirty year old Eldrad meeting his younger, plastic, self.  This episode of Dr Who has been brought to you by Keela Mensha Kaine.  

I think this shows that the new figure is an homage to the old Jes Goodwin Eldrad.  And that the original Eldrad Sculpt was outstanding and, IMHO, still doesn't look too bad today. 

Old Eldrad was the first ever figure I had pro-painted.  but that was a llooonnngggg time ago. 

 

The new Eldrad was painted by Raven's Nest Painting.

A new wave of dance and mime

 "I have come to dance the dance of death."  The tag line for the harlequin from DOW.  

 Fast skimmers.  Well, like light cavalry throughout history, they're good at the beginning of the battle, finding openings in the opposition formation and perhaps prising it open a little more for exploitation by actual battle winners.  

And at the end, when the enemy are scattered and disorganised, light cavalry are the ideal troop choice for preventing them rallying and re-consolidating.

And of course your army needs someone willing to carry the fight to the enemy, someone to go toe to ballet-shoed toe with the opposition.  

Landraider might well be the most stylish way to deliver this lot into the fight.  Perhaps not the most elegant, but certainly the most stylish.  

These jovial minstrels were all painted by Raven's Nest Painting.   So there's a modest build up of Eldar forces going on as well. 
 

Crowded skies

This is the T-65 Strike Fighter, as flown in number by the PDF.  Their two single crewed airframes were the locally reproduced lightening, flown in the air defence (interceptor) role and the T-65 Strike Fighter flown in the 'strike' or ground attack role.

Certainly with an internal bay holding a pair of air to ground (hunter killer) Anti armour missiles and its quad las cannons, it was an unwelcome reminder to 72AG that the PDF was still operative during their advance across the prairies of central Benq. 

However, the Imperial Navy did maintain air superiority and the individual raiders were invariably hunted down.

I keep hearing "Open wings to attack formation" in my head.  Of course the Thunderbolts did not everything their own way; as they closed in on Xyphoinca, they sometimes found themselves the hunted. 

A Xana II (sing it, everyone ! who doesn't like ELO ?) lineage HellBlade in Black Legion colours.

The HellBlade must be extremely confident to take on two Thunderbolts; like I noted in the previous post, if it gets in front of Thunderbolt, it's toast.

However, the appearance of the forces of chaos proper, emerging from the warp will invariably trigger a response from those watching from the webway:

Void Dragon's might technically be pirates, by they're still Eldar.  If they've appeared above Devos IV, then it wouldn't be coincidence.  Here configured for an air superiority role.

Hurrah !  (and thanks to Andy BG) I really must dig out the transfers for these.

The HellBlade (based to match the Brick of Scrutiny) attempts to peel away.  Possibly for the best.

(more) Eldar air power.

OK, so we all know that air power is the new black.  The Void Dragons already have a Pheonix fighter bomber, but a brief encounter with the Spaze Wulves convinced me that something a less points expensive, with outrageous air to air capability, was in order.  So we had a long hard look at the F-18 and the swing wing Mig23.  The swing wing was nice but very expensive, so we went for the F-18 Block 3.  Wha- ?!?!  Sorry, got a bit carried away there; I could get two Crimson Hunters and have change left over from the purchase price of the FW Nightwing.  

A pulse laser and two bright lances, because most of the SM flyers appear to be AV14 on all sides.

And of course, redundancy is king.  Besides which, it gives me licence for badly voiced ace/wingman conversations during a game.  Pew - pew - pew !

Sleek, huh ?

And lovely painted, the same as the existing Void Dragon assets, by Andy BG from Iron Legion.  Cheers, Andy.   And because Andy did it the weapons are on magnets to swap out for D-Scythes and that nasty soul burner pod.  'E likes magnets does Andy.  Good job too.

And just because I know that the question was on your lips, here it is next to the T-burd.  I suspect that in common with reportage from the skies above WW2, the pilot who gets the drop on the other guy is likely to be the winner.  Beyond that, a fight between these two is the normal Eldar/Imperial fight - the pointy eared scalpel vs the baseball bat with nails in.

Damn, those colourschemes are effective as camo.

Three way in the garden. Sounds like fun eh ?

Now, where was I ?  Ah yes, doubtless you'll have seen Karitas' four way in the garden, to which I added my view here.

So we come now to a three way in the garden.  Admiral Drax's annual foray north to civilised lands where there is bacon and tea at the same time.  Karitas quite wonderfully brought down his 'event shelter', and a good job too as it happens.  I can see this ending up on every gamer's Christmas list - whilst the garage is dry and provides shelter from gusting winds that steal army lists and blow over large unstable models, the 'event shelter' has light.  Not electric light, but as long it's day time, you can see what you are doing.  Which is not always the case in the garage.

Anyway, Unteroffizer Z of the Death Korps of Kreig is leading a small patrol into the ruins of some emperor forsaken town somewhere else; to investigate the presence of Orks, which has been reliably reported by someone who probably shouldn't be trusted.

Admurul Drak and 'is boyz are holed up in the intact Administratum building, waiting for something.

Corsair Prince Karitas is looking down on the whole thing and decides that the orks and DKK offend his sensibilities so much that his going down the planet (he will have to get new shoes afterwards) and going to tidy up.

DKK Hvy Wpns cover the downtown area.

So what we have here is three armies at 525 points (exactly) each.  And no vehicles.

The shootin' starts.  Guardsmen have enormous cover saves, but orky shootin' is rubbish anyway.  But at this stage of the game the orky shootin' is still enormous in volume, so Unteroffizer Z is loosing Hvy Wpn teams at an unsustainable rate, whereas the orks are just soaking up the hits.

Hurrah for the brave Landsers.  Most of what you can see in this picture are bout to be obliterated by the Corsair Prince's Orbital Strike.  Thus begins the slow heamorage of VPs as my little army is chomped through by the baddies (hey, if they're not on my side, they're baddies).

"Orks, orks, orks, orks... Which way to da whaaagh ?"  Boyz jus' chillaxin' (see what I did there ?)

Corsair Prince and ablative blades, calling down the orbital strike on the DKK.

Gee-gees moving up into a different (but ultimately no better) position.

Deep striking corsairs.  They wipe out my remaining infantry squad.

But are then eaten by Death Korps Horses...  true.

Ooooh, jus' out of charge range, lucky for me.

Killer Klowns forgetting that they ignore terrain and thus failing to assault the orks in the building this go.

Furious melee.  Ends with all waffenritters chop suey and only the Nob left.

The ones the Harlequins should have got if we'd have read the codex properly.  Sneaky orks.

Sticky out bottom lip.  How apt, yet gauche at the same time.

Yeah !  Jet packs !

The last Nob.  Except the warboss, who was the only boss left at the end, the gallant Unteroffizer and the Corsair Prince both ending up deaded.

I ended up with just Unteroffizer Z and the standard bearer left.  At this point, in a not particularly DKK fashion, I tried to run away and was gunned down by shootaboyz.  Oh well.  

An excellent game - on an open board, I'd have gunned them all down.  On this board, the orkz reigned supreme due to Admurul Drak deploying more or less in the middle.  There'll be a next time.  Anyway, we cleared this all away and had a swipe at the plastic crack mountain.  But generally agreed that for fun and spectacle, Epic 28 is great, but that smaller battles like this are the way to go for multi-side matches.

Vexing question

I have a fight coming up.  In July.  I have reason to believe that the other three players are fielding, respectively, Tau, Eldar and Guard.  So I've narrowed down my choices to:

Templars. Nothing says 'Pleased to meet you' like a violent purge. But I don't have the new SM Codex, which could be a bit of a bind. 4th Ed army list an' all that.

Death Korps.  IA, so no worries about the codex.  And they are fab.  And they don't get out much.

CSM.  Purple armoured spearhead with twiddly bits and deamonettes.  Plus blobs of 'zerkers and termizerkers and bargin bucket of cultists.  Humm, I think this option has legs.

And Eldar.  Best results (for me) with these and I really want to throw the corsairs on the table.

Now, I suspect, if you're reading this, your heart has already decided and you would take the DKK.  But suspend disbelief for a moment, who else would you take ?  No matter how purile your reason, I'd like to know.  Cheers !