Work in Progress: Nurgle Warband

For my first post, I wanted to talk about my current project. I have been slowly planning, assembling, and painting a small Nurgle-themed force. I'm not much of a converter, so the troops are basically just a mix of chaos space marine and plague marine bits, which shouldn't be confusing as all my troop choices will be plague marines. But that does mean they are mostly without boils, guts, etc. I am instead focusing on making the armor look as nurgly as possible.

For the paint scheme, I tried to go for a weathered, rusty effect that suggests a certain lack of upkeep - i.e., that these marines have not washed their armor since the fall. I start by painting the armor catechan green with a boltgun or tin bitz trim. Then, a generous wash of chestnut ink, trying to pool the pigment near the armor trim. Finally, drybrush with camo green to dull down the shine. The power fists and swords have sort of a lacquered bone theme: a coat of chestnut ink over rotting flesh. Pretty simple. Here's a sample where you can see the steps from first coat to inked and based model:

I haven't done much work yet on my Chaos Lord. He still needs a saddle in the back (about all the modeling I can manage with my limited green stuff skills) before the model is primed. Here he is on his daemonic steed:

Lastly, I am still deciding on the name for this warband. I'm currently leaning towards Children of Despair, or maybe the Sons of Pestilence. Any thoughts?

-Wintermute

***Next up: Updates of the fully painted squads, as well as my WIP daemon prince, chaos dreadnought, and chosen.***

Tactica Rhinos:

One thing that I flat out cannot wait for is when the Marine codex inevitably gets redone in the manner of Blood Angels and Dark Angels, and my Steel Talons (DIY Iron Hands Successors) get cheaper rhinos with smoke launchers already attached. I mean seriously. Rhinos are something I already love to death at 58 points (because really for 8 points you should always take Smoke Launchers and Extra Armor) because of how versatile they are. Just a few things that Rhinos can do with impunity are:

1) Actually get you to the enemy.
2) Tank Shock, Tank Shock, Tank Shock
3) Kill important single models
4) Block LOS and LOC

1) Get you to the enemy: They don't have the speed or resilience of eldar tanks (probably the best in the game), but if you set them up out of LOS (always do this) they really don't need to survive very long. Here's my basic plan of action, which for some reason I frequently see people not get.

Step 1) Drive forward and pop smoke. Now unless they have a truly obscene amount of anti-tank or you are silly enough to take only one threatening looking vehicle that is a pretty handy thing. For three points (or soon, free!) you get a turn where the chances of dying are dropped by 66%. Anything else that happens to your Rhino is okay. The biggest part of its job is done. As long as it doesn't steel coffin all over your men and entangle them, anything else is fine.

Step 2) Hop out of the unmoving transport. This will get you a surprisingly good charge distance. Most people expect you to be charging 12" from a transport. Instead you are charging nearly 15" because of the disembarking movement. I can't come close to counting how many surprise charges I've gotten because of this. If you're planning on shooting you can drive the tank up before hopping out, but an important thing to remember about this is that aside from being able to spin around to change the access point's location, you haven't gained any movement over the charging folk.

Step 3) Profit. Your squad is basically in the enemy's deployment zone and is free to run amok either blowing them away with point blank bolter fire with a rhino covering their back or just charging on in and killing everything.

The important thing to note here is that you never stay in an unsmoked rhino that can be seen. Armor 11 isn't wet paper, but if the enemy has a box cutter you're still in trouble. You can take the wounds as power armor is pretty damn tough and even a fast moving full squad will only take about 2 casualties from their tank exploding around them. What they can't take is the entanglement.

2) Tank Shock, Tank Shock, Tank Shock!

Make your enemy hate your rhinos. Most armies in 40k have pretty good morale. I can't think of one off hand that doesn't have easy access to Ld 10, re-rolls, fearlessness or what have you. Not everyone will take these things though so you will see a lot of 9s and 8s. If you ever find yourself going up against small units of orks, guard without officers or tau without ethereals or command nodes just laugh for a bit, the rhinos will more than pay for themselves.

Even if you're going up against a scary unit like Harlequins though, keep in mind. Ld 9 has a 1/6 chance of failing. That's not a lot, but you can keep doing this basically every turn until your enemy hates your empty rhinos enough to shoot them, and even then, he only needs to fail once. Don't forget you can Tank Shock 6". If your enemy has good close combat anti-tank it may be worth giving up the storm bolter, but never forget that you've got the option.

3) Kill important single models

By this I don't mean assassinate enemy HQs. That is immensely funny when it works, but usually a waste of your time. What you're trying to do is find the places where causing a single wound benefits you the most. A single storm bolter is not a very intimidating amount of firepower. But when your enemy is a casualty away from being knocked below 50%, it's excellent.

Oh, and unless you really have nothing better to shoot at, forget the rear armor of vehicles. I know that you've killed the Falcon of Invincibility before by doing it. It doesn't matter. One time in Monopoly I got a hotel on Boardwalk and cleaned out my little brother in one turn because of it. Illinois still gets landed on more. Needing a 6 to glance and then another 6 to
destroy renders the whole thing pretty unlikely. If all you need is to stop it from shooting, you've got just under a 1/3 chance (assuming both shots hit, which is a silly assumption) and that's not quite terrible. But I'll still say that shooting for those min-maxed squads is gonna be your better bet.

4) Block LOS and LOC

This is the moneymaker as far as top players are concerned. For 35-58 points getting mobile cover is amazing. You can use Rhinos to choke off firing lanes allowing you to concentrate on one section of the enemy. Blocking LOC (line of charge) is a little trickier. The main mistake I've seen is when people try to use the rhino as a speed bump. They stick it out close to the enemy that's not gonna be able to charge this turn anyways. All this does, even against an enemy that doesn't have a good shot at killing the rhino up close is give them an extra 6" of movement, especially if your opponent is clever at his order of charging models. Where the rhino is golden is that last second save. Your rhino makes a full 1" ring around itself impassible terrain for the enemy in the movement phase, and does the same thing in the assault phase as long as they don't charge it. If it's turned side towards the enemy that can mean a whole lot of runaround for those angry angry genestealers which can give you that whole turn of close range rapid firing to cut them down a bit more.

This post is starting to feel a bit long, so I'll close with this. Rhinos are not something you forget about after the squad is gone. Transport is an important job, but you can get so much more out of these tanks. One game that I brutally misplayed against a very skilled Eldar player went from Victorious Slaughter at the Top of turn 3 to less than 100 points from a draw at the end entirely due to 2 rhinos and 2 drop pods that relentlessly tank shocked his units, stayed within 6" to keep them running till the end of the game, shot them below scoring and when they finally died exploded all through his ranks.
Never forget to use them.

-Aurelius