First run with 6th ed Tyranids

7.13.12 Bugs vs SpaceWolves 1000pts

Winged Tyrant fully loaded 2x Devourers Hive commander, Old Adversary
Prime with sword whip talons and poison
3 Hive Guard
Venomthrope
16 Termagants in a Pod
Pod with Stinger Salvo
Tervigon Stinger Salvo & Claws
Aegis Defense Line

Table Layout 6x4

The Green patches are forests

Grey in the Center is a swamp

Resin mutli-floor ruins on the right

River in the center with a bridge

More Forest markers

Resin multi floor ruin at right and next to bridge

Craters leading to a crashed flyer wreck

Mission:Purge the Alien 
Deployment: Hammer & Anvil, Night Fight on round 1, Wolves go first.  Alpha Warrior is my warlord and rolls Legendary Fighter bonus VPs for challenge kills


                                                                               
Bug deployment

Flappy and the Vulva pod full of Termagants held in reserves.  Someone thought it would be a good idea to land a drop pod full of Terminators behind my defensive lines before I even get a turn.

Wolf Deployment

Obligatory Longfangs in the tall ruins
2 Rhinos with 6 man squads
2 Psykers walking along behind the Rhinos
1 Suicidal lone wolf hiding in the forest
Landspeeder w/ Flamer & MM














Turn 1

Top of 1 Wolf strike
5 Termis get out and put a total of 1 wound on the Hive Guard unit. sorta anti-climatic.
Lone wolf in the forest finds nests full of Razorwings that try to eat his face off (1 Wound suffered)

Bottom of 1
Tervigon spawns 14 termagants without blowing an O-ring out. and Casts Iron Arm for +2 S,T, etc
The Pond turned out to be full of Dangerous Iceblood, that my Termagants and Tervigon wallowed in like pigs in mud.

Termagants and Tervigon score 13 wounds in the shooting phase only to watch the termis save all but 1. Looks like this is gonna leave a mark.

Assault Phase Warlord Prime makes it into assault challenges and wins his combat (1 bonus VP), Combat ends in one turn, 3 of the spawned Termagants survive and no wounds are dealt to momma bug.








Turn 2
Top of 2
Random HK missiles and storm bolter fire from the wolves, and we see the first Daemonic attack as a wolf priest rolls snake eyes for a power.

Bottom of 2 Enter Flappy and the Vulva pod of death.

Flappy passes his roll for a power only to have 2 wolf priests deny it with a 24" range axe.
Flappy then vectorstrikes the unit of Longfangs dealing 3 wounds that were not to be saved even with ruin cover.  True to form the wolves roll snake eyes for moral. Flappy then unloads with devourers and takes the Multimelta off of the speeder.

The Vulva pod (ChapterHouse Studios pod)does not scatter and lands almost on top off a Wolf priest, Termagants unleash hell with fleshbolters and deal 1 unsaved wound.  The pod itself is within 6 inches of a Rhino and proceeds to whip the hell out of it and immobilizes the rhino.








Turn 3
Top of 3
Wolf priest and unit from immobilized rhino light up the termagants with bolters, and the Wolf Priest charges termagants. Leaving the priest and 2 gants locked in combat at the end of combat.
Lone wolf camping out in the razorwing forest decides to charge the drop pop.  Lashwhips means the pod and wolf go at the same time, wolfie does one wound and gets locked in combat.
Bottom of 3

Lone termagant keeps the wolfpriest locked in combat due to a massive  attack of ones rolling.























Turn 4
Shadows in the Warp help a Daemon find and finish off a wolfpriest when it shoots a power at a group of termagants, taking one gant with him on his way to some exotic hell.


Turn 5

Really?
End of 5th turn 2 scoring units are right on the line, 1 more inch and either unit would have scored a secondary objective of linebreaker.

The last surviving members of the Wolves are the 2 long fangs perched in the ruins.

Final Score 
Bugs 12 VPs
everything except for 2 of the Longfangs 9 points
First Blood
Slay the warlord
Legendary Fighter bonus
 vs 
Wolves 3 VPs
1 unit of 16 Termagants
1 Drop Pod
1 Venomthrope

Notable events
Momma Tervigon never rolled a double, spawned 15, 14, 8, 8, and 12. So an extra 67 Gants during a game is nice.
Daemons caused 2 or 3 wounds to wolf priests and 1 wound to the flappy tyrant.
Termagants tarpitting the Wolfpriest for at least 3 rounds of combat is crazy nice compared to the old days of no retreat wound shenanigans.

After having played Tyranids since 2nd edition it feels like the bugs may be back to being competitive.

Project Compendium Chapterhouse Wheeled Chimera

This is a compilation of the WiP posts for the resin wheeled chimera conversion kit sold by Chapterhouse Studios.

Here is a walkthrough and review of the kit.

Parts and needed tools.

It does not fit together, at all.  If you do not have a dremel tool, good razor saw and files this kit is not for you. If you have not worked with resin kits before and do not have patience skip this one.






I spoke to the CAD designer of this kit about these issues on the DakkaDakka forums he frequents.  He told me this.

"The kit was designed with the older chimera sprues in mind, so when GW made the change to the new sprues there were some issues with assembling it. The angles of some of the Chimera hulls pieces are very subtly different. This has to do with the draft angles GW uses... draft angles are the slight angle applied to a model so that its easier to remove the plastic sprue from its stainless steel injection mold. The old chimera kit of the 90s was made with an older technology and so some the angles were more extreme while the newer kit could get away with shallower draft angles. 

This reality compounded with some slight inaccuracies in the 3D printied parts conversion into a master resulted in the 1st generation models not fitting with the new kits. Nick over at CHS, told me that after the first run, he had the masters corrected... so from what I know the second gen castings should work with the modern Chimera."

The areas in black sharpie on the side panels is material that I had to remove for this kit to begin to fit together.

In this photo you can see the saw being held flush to the side while cutting the excess material away.

Here is a photo from the other angle, you can see that you will be leaving a small amount of resin less than 1/8th inch thick.

Now the sides fit the plastic box and we can get to the gaps that need to be filled.

After My first WiP post Nick (the man behind Chapterhouse Studios) commented on my post.



"The reason why you had to make so many cuts is because you modified how the sides fit on the center hull. The kit should have fit fine if you used the existing cuts, but you wanted to move the side hulls lower in relation to the center hull.
It also looks like you moved the center hull forward relative to where it fits normally on our kit.

Do you have any photos of how it fit before you tried to modify the resin pieces? Looks like you did many cuts to modify how you wanted the kit to fit and that was a PITA (as is cutting resin).

Send nick@chapterhousestudios.com an email asking how it should fit to save yourself some trouble if you have questions."

To the left is a picture from Chapterhouse's website of one they painted up, you can see the misalignment next to the heavy bolter.  While talking to the designer he indicated that this is incorrect.  If you assemble the kit with out modifications listed above you will end a misaligned kit like the one shown at the left.
My reply to Nick:
"To answer Nick @ Chapterhouse (thanks btw) I aligned the side panels using the angles on the plastic chassis and the rear door as seen in these 2 photos.  Had I used the existing register keys on the resin kit the side panels would have been shifted up about an 1/8 of an inch resulting in a gross mismatch and a bad looking kit."

I added a small strip of plastic to the bottom front of the chassis to bring the bottom of the hull in-line with the side panels and to give me an hard line to bring the filler up to.  Other than the gaps visible in pt1 this is the other major area to work on. this is a result of the original sculpt not having the right angle to line up with the plastic chassis.  A problem but not bad considering its a resin/plastic hybrid made by 2 different companies (also the front bumper piece will cover much of this up).

I was going to fill the front gap with GS but changed my mind and went with a thin band of plastic card. so that I could have a smooth finish.  In the left hand corner of this photo you can see some GS building up the edge of the vehicle.  Once I got the GS sanded level with the plastic chassis it began to peel away b/c it was so thin.  I had to use a different method to fill this area and build it up to a proper flat panel.  I used Baking soda and super glue to fill it.






For those that are unfamiliar with the method, Baking soda is a super glue accelerant and filler. Pack the gap level with baking soda and add a drop or two of thin super glue, it will set nearly instantly and be nearly transparent. It is actually over the GS in the above pic.

I am changing the front end a little bit, the bottom half will be set at a slightly different angle using another band of plastic card and then it is ready for the bumper.

Speaking of the bumper, this is the only piece to have any bubbles or voids (seen in black sharpie) and they are small & easy to fix.    Far better quality control on the casting side than Forgeworld, Finecast, or most other resin companies I have used.

Almost finished, front panels have all been sanded and blended.  Once again this was done with greenstuff for the deep gaps and superglue & baking soda for the very shallow voids. Then wet sanded with 400 grit sandpaper.

I have decided to remove most of the rivets, and at least prime it in a very nice shade of gray.  

Front panel before filling and sanding.

Front panel after sanding.

Primed and Ready to Go

You can see that the panels now line up (I also removed most of the rivets), compared to the CHS picture showing the panel misalignment.

Buyer Reviews / Chapterhouse Studios Farseer/Warlock on jetbike

As a retail business owner and an avid hobbyist I often find myself looking for other buyer reviews before buying from webstores. I thought I would start a series of reviews on the webstores I have purchased from and the products I have bought. I hope this is helpful to you all.

This time Chapterhouse Studios again, I wanted to get the Farseer and Warlock jetbike conversion kit.

If you look you will see that the Spear on the bottom left sprue is broken, a replacement was included in the package.  It was nice to see that the company caught a miscast and included the needed parts in the pack without a need for the end buyer to complain.  Forgeworld and Failcast should take note of this level of attention to detail.

Again Chapterhouse was great to work with the sculpts and quality of the casts were great as well.
A+

Buyer Reviews / Chapterhouse Studios Lashwhips

As a retail business owner and an avid hobbyist I often find myself looking for other buyer reviews before buying from webstores. I thought I would start a series of reviews on the webstores I have purchased from and the products I have bought. I hope this is helpful to you all.

This time Chapterhouse Studios again, I wanted to get the Tyranid lashwhip kit.

These look great, but the size is way off in my opinion, so much so that for me they are unusable.

Once again Chapterhouse Studios was great to work with, but I cannot recommend this product.

Chapterhouse wheeled chimera pt 4

COMPLETED PROJECT SUMMARY HERE

Base coat of primer and many rivets have been removed.  I am very happy with the finished product on this kit.  Stay tuned for my next post, it is not gaming related but promises much awesomeness.

Just a little hint.

Chapterhouse wheeled chimera pt 3

  COMPLETED PROJECT SUMMARY HERE

Almost finished, front panels have all been sanded and blended.  Once again this was done with greenstuff for the deep gaps and superglue & baking soda for the very shallow voids. Then wet sanded with 400 grit sandpaper.

I have decided to remove most of the rivets, and at least prime it in a very nice shade of gray.  So that it is both painted and capable of annoying Corey at the same time.

Front panel before filling and sanding.

Front panel after sanding.

Chapterhouse wheeled chimera pt 2

   COMPLETED PROJECT SUMMARY HERE

To answer Nick @ Chapterhouse (thanks btw) I aligned the side panels using the angles on the plastic chassis and the rear door as seen in these 2 photos.  Had I used the existing register keys on the resin kit the side panels would have been shifted up about an 1/8 of an inch resulting in a gross mismatch and a bad looking kit.

I added a small strip of plastic to the bottom front of the chassis to bring the bottom of the hull in-line with the side panels and to give me an hard line to bring the filler up to.  Other than the gaps visible in pt1 this is the other major area to work on. this is a result of the original sculpt not having the right angle to line up with the plastic chassis.  A problem but not bad considering its a resin/plastic hybrid made by 2 different companies (also the front bumper piece will cover much of this up).

I was going to fill the front gap with GS but changed my mind and went with a thin band of plastic card. so that I could have a smooth finish.  In the left hand corner of this photo you can see some GS building up the edge of the vehicle.  Once I got the GS sanded level with the plastic chassis it began to peel away b/c it was so thin.  I had to use a different method to fill this area and build it up to a proper flat panel.  I used Baking soda and super glue to fill it.







For those that are unfamiliar with the method, Baking soda is a super glue accelerant and filler. Pack the gap level with baking soda and add a drop or two of thin super glue, it will set nearly instantly and be nearly transparent.  It is actually over the GS in the above pic.

I am changing the front end a little bit, the bottom half will be set at a slightly different angle using another band of plastic card and then it is ready for the bumper.

Speaking of the bumper, this is the only piece to have any bubbles or voids (seen in black sharpie) and they are small & easy to fix.    Far better quality control on the casting side than Forgeworld, Finecast, or most other resin companies I have used.

Assembling a Chapterhouse wheeled chimera kit

So I got a wheeled chimera upgrade kit for my Necromunda Arbites.


COMPLETED PROJECT SUMMARY HERE

Here is a walkthrough and review of the kit.

1 It does not fit together, at all.  If you do not have a dremel tool, good razor saw and files this kit is not for you. If you have not worked with resin kits before and do not have patience skip this one.

The areas in black sharpie on the side panels is material that I had to remove for this kit to begin to fit together.

In this photo you can see the saw being held flush to the side while cutting the excess material away.

Here is a photo from the other angle, you can see that you will be leaving a small amount of resin less than 1/8th inch thick.

Now the sides fit the plastic box and we can get to the gaps that need to be filled.

Buyer Reviews / Chapterhouse Studios Spore Pod

As a retail business owner and an avid hobbyist I often find myself looking for other buyer reviews before buying from webstores. I thought I would start a series of reviews on the webstores I have purchased from and the products I have bought. I hope this is helpful to you all.

This time Chapterhouse Studios http://www.chapterhousestudios.com/webshop/, I had been looking for a good model to use as a Tyranid Mycetic Spore pod.

I found probably 6 or more different companies that made "counts as" spore pods.  Chapterhouse was my second choice behind armorcast, however after I got my armorcast pods in i felt they were way to small to be used as spore pods even thought they were good for terrain

My Experience in ordering from Chapterhouse was outstanding.  The monday after I placed my Chapterhouse changed the casting company they use,  they kept me informed of the delay and everything went smoothly.

The Pods I received were top-notch.  the casting quality is the best I have seen from any resin company (Forgeworld, Armorcast, Dark Arts), and the pods are on the same size scale as the space marine drop pod.

I will absolutely do business with Chapterhouse Studios again and recommend them to others

I also love these spore pods and give them a 5 out of 5.