Final White Scars Army List

So, boys and girls, the time has come to post my final army list.

Throne of Skulls is but two weeks away, and I've been furiously painting my miniatures by night and tweaking my army list like a pair of over-ripe nipples by day. The result, as you may gather, is pretty sexy.

I've yet to test game any of these builds, and I very much doubt I'll have time to, as every moment I don't spend at work or in the gym is given over to carefully painting my bare undercoated, and unassembled army.

Is it possible to paint all of this in one week, without making my army look like an impressionist's fuzzy doodle, or having a nervous breakdown? We shall see.

Here's my list at present, with a few variations.

Captain w/ bike, relic blade, artificer armour - 180
Rune priest w/bike, axe, wolf tooth talisman - 140
5 grey hunters, w/razorback, plasma gun - 125
5 grey hunters, w/razorback, plasma gun - 125
4 bikes, 2 melta guns, multi-melta attack bike - 185
4 bikes, 2 plasma, attack bike - 185
5 long fangs, 4 missiles - 115
Aegis w/quad gun - 100
Vindicator - 115
Vindicator - 115
Vindicator - 115

The idea here is to largely split my army in two, with the rune priest hanging back in the plasma (fire support) squad and the captain offering a bit of melee boost for the melta guys, should it be needed.

The rune priest will be taking the divination deck, in most games, and jaws when I'm playing against Necrons.

I opted for an aegis rather than a bastion, as models can sometimes get too grouped on the battlements, although the bastion does give better line of sight.

The vindicators will get cover from the bikes and the razors. The grey hunters will grab objectives.

Let me know what you think!

Storm Talon kit bash

I keep getting nagged by my wife about the obscene amount of unopened boxes around the house. I have scores of tanks, FW kits, and flyers knocking around from half a dozen different armies. 

Among these goodies are two Storm Talons. I rushed out to buy them when they first launched, desperate for a bit of aerial supremacy. Then, after mulling it over, I decided they were a bit of a points sink for something that wasn't really that good. Marines can't really keep up with Guard or Necrons when it comes to airpower, so my view is that they should stick to anti-air (Telion on a quad gun, I'm looking at you).

With that in mind, I've been putting off unboxing my Storm Talons for a while, until a few days back, when the horde of unopened boxes reached a critical mass, and I got a thorough ear-bashing. 

So, on to the model itself. Despite the bad rep it gets on the internet, I don't dislike the shape of it too much. However, since we're doing a pre-heresy army, I didn't really want to just put it together as per the original build. So, once again, ebay to the rescue!

This one was relatively simple, just requiring the typhoon launcher and the assault cannons from the Storm Raven kit. 

There's a large hole where the assault cannon was, which needed to be filled in with plasticard and greenstuff. I made a bit of a botch up with it, but I'm confident that next time I'll make it look a bit more swish. 

As mentioned, the Storm Talon doesn't feature in the list which I'm currently considering for tournaments later this year, so it may be a while before I get this baby painted. 

For now, its time to put it back in its box, where it was originally. Just don't tell my wife. 

Thunder armour scouts

First of all, my apologies for not blogging for a while. My wife and I had a baby two weeks back and we've been busy fiddling with nappies and trying to get the poor little fella to sleep.

When he does finally hit the sack, I take out my other baby - my burgeoning White Scars army. With puffy, sleep deprived eyes, I've been hunched over the kitchen table cutting, glueing and rummaging around in my bits box.

I think I may have eaten a full tube of superglue in the past two weeks, just through biting off the hard crust that forms over the tips of your fingers. Sorry, I'm weird.

So, enough about my own gubbins and on to the project itself. My army list, which is constantly in flux, now includes a scout squad with sniper rifles. After a lot of umming and arrring, I finally decided against using the generic GW scout models, and instead, went on a bit of an ebay bitz finding mission.

The model above is the product of a few things I had knocking around the house. A (badly) painted MK3 torso and legs, some MK2 arms, a Cadian head, and shoulder guards and cloak from the Chaos Marauder set. This will roughly be the set up I'll be using for the scouts, when all my bits come.

It's not exactly the same as the artwork, which looks a lot bulkier, particularly in the shoulder pads. I was originally considering modelling my own with greenstuff, or picking up some of the company champion shoulder pads. However, I opted to go for a more pared down model, since they are scouts after all.

I've bought some Mk4 backpacks, but I'm still uncertain whether I'm going to use them, similarly too because scouts should be more mobile and have less cumbersome armour.

Although thunder armour was only used in earth unification armies, I reasoned that during the transition at the beginning of the Great Crusade, the legions may still have sought a lighter alternative to Mk2 armour for scout squads. Hence, some old suits of thunder armour may have been brought out and reconditioned for use off-Earth. This explains the differences between the artwork and the versions which I'm churning out now.

I'll post up some more stuff which I've been working on recently.

White Scars and Allies

I've been considering what could be the best ally combination for White Scars.

I've considered generic Imperial Guard, as well as Elysians. The thinking was mostly the easy access to Vendettas and Hydras. In particular, Elysians have Valkyries as dedicated transports, which means you can have an 'air cavalry' themed army. Theoretically, this works well with White Scars, as it is an extremely mobile list.

I made half a dozen lists, involving Guard to varying degrees. However, I kept thinking that the White Scars were more of a token addition to the list. The truth is, Guard don't really need White Scars as allies. If you're taking a marine contingent to a Guard list, then you would probably do better to have terminators, death company, etc.

Instead, what I think may be a particularly good ally option is an Eldar jetbike contingent. Jetbikes move further than marine bikes, they ignore difficult terrain and the Farseer offers an inexpensive psychic defence. In addition, Eldar have both the Nightwing and the Phoenix, both of which have the vector dancer rule, which makes them more mobile and versatile to the Stormtalon. The Eldar flyers could quite quickly become a necessity, if Aeronautica becomes mainstream.

Here's the contingent for now:

Farseer w/ runes of witnessing/warding, jetbike, singing spear - 113
6 Guardian jetbikes w/ 2 cannons - 152
= 265 points

I may also take a second smaller squad, holding it in reserve to capture objectives late in the game.

The most characterful Eldar army for this kind of contingent is Saim Hann. This would go with White Scars in that they are both born in the saddle and have the similar 'wild rider' fluff.

However, I'm not a big fan of the red. I was considering starting a Mymeara army, modeled in Imperial Armour 11, as they are a stunning ethereal turquoise. I'm also considering using 'glacial' resin bases for my Scars, so this light blue would kind of match..

Now I just need to find a reason to explain why White Scars Legion, embarking on the Great Crusade, would take filthy xenos Eldar allies. It's not because I'm a beardy bastard, honestly.

Jagged Red Lines

Hey all, so here's my first test model painted. I'm quite happy with the results.

I used the guide for painting white from June's White Dwarf, using the new layer paint Ulthuan Grey and then highlighting the edges with the appropriately named 'White Scar' layer paint.

I experimented with a few different painting techniques on test models before I painted. I initially purchased a pack of clip-together marines, but I wasn't happy with it as a base, so put together a MKIII armour torso and legs to use to test some techniques.

I purchased some time ago the Let's Paint: White Scars DVD. The painter recommends a basecoat of Vallejo Azure (Shadow Grey), building up layers of highlights until you get to white. To give some indication of how long that takes, the DVD is four hours long. I tried it using citadel paints and it took me two hours for a single model. The results were pretty shoddy too. I find that when painting White it's better to keep it simple.

The pre-heresy time is by far the most interesting period, not least for White Scars, as it was before they adopted the Codex Astartes. This means that a pre-heresy White Scars army can get away with all sorts of tribal adornments, such as the horse skeleton here. In addition, they didn't have the stupid 'this way up' arrow on their right shoulder pads. This means that I can paint some tribal-looking jagged red lines (yes, that's why I gave this name to my blog).


I also plan to have some gruesome trophies on the bikes, further down the road: some skulls on spikes, or hanging at the end of chains (the marauder sprues are excellent for this).

My Vision of a White Scars Biker

This is the first of my pre-heresy White Scars. As mentioned, I abandoned the idea of jet bikes in favour of GW bikes.

I've used a plastic skeleton horse to decorate the bike. I removed the spine from the horse and splayed it out across the bike. It involved a hell of a lot of trimming and cutting. I broke a few ribs of the horse, and cut a chunk out of my thumb (ouch) but on the whole it was fairly straight forward. Ask me that after I've done fifteen of these, and I might give you a different answer.

I had to green stuff one section on the neck. I'm pretty poor at sculpting, but hopefully I've done a decent enough job so you won't notice it once it's sprayed up.

I can imagine that it may be fairly difficult to paint and shade the white, in between the ribs, but I'll come to that later on.

The plume is from an Ork boy head, and the lance is obviously from a Grey Knight.

I love the fluff of White Scars, and even took a bash at writing a short story for Black Library. However, I don't think the Mongolian background for them has been fully explored. The Hunt for Voldorious wasn't too bad, but I gave up halfway through 'Savage Scars' as there really wasn't anything to distinguish the White Scars from any other marine chapter. My favourite White Scars fluff has to be an (extremely) short cartoon in Warhammer Monthly called 'Pilgrim'.

I'd like to think that it's common practice for White Scars to mount the skeleton of the horse which served them in a previous life, on their bikes. That way the spirits of their horses continue to ride with them and guide them in their new lives as Astartes.

6th Edition White Scars List

I

Before I start, don't you think the guy on the far right in this picture looks remarkably like Tadanobu Asano (who played Genghis Khan in the film Mongol)?

So, as mentioned I'm planning on attending the Throne of Skulls tournament later this year (my first ever tournament!).

I really want to take my White Scars, so I've been reading up for the past few months on bike-army tactics

The list I've been focusing on, from the website above, has been up until now as follows:

1500 points
Captain w/ bike, relic blade, artificer armor
Bike Squad w/ extra bike, 2x melta guns, attack bike, multi-melta
Bike Squad w/ extra bike, 2x melta guns, attack bike, multi-melta
Bike Squad w/ extra bike, 2x plasma guns, attack bike
Bike Squad w/ extra bike, 2x flamers, attack bike
Landspeeder Squad w/ extra landspeeder, 2x typhoon launchers
Landspeeder Squad w/ extra landspeeder, 2x typhoon launchers
Vindicator w/ dozer blade
Vindicator w/ dozer blade


(Hat tip to the excellent 'Red Archer' for this).


However, the inclusion of allies, plus the dominance of flyers in the 6th edition, has led me to make several important changes.


I have still to receive my rule book through the post, so cannot say for sure that the following list is 'road legal', but here's what I came up with this morning.

The Vendetta squadron may be particularly difficult to manoeuvre, so I may swap out one for some kind of fortification (with anti-air).



Captain w/bike - 135
Bike squad w/2 bikes/2 melta guns/attack bike/ mmelta - 210
Bike squad w/2 bikes/2 plasma guns/attack bike/ - 210
Bike squad w/2 bikes/2 plasma guns/attack bike/ - 210
Stormtalon w/TL Lascannon - 150 points
Assault squad w/five marines - 190
Allies:
Company command squad - 50 points
Platoon - 2 squads - 100 points
Vendetta w/ sponsons -140 points
Vendetta w/ sponsons -140 points
Vendetta w/ sponsons -140 points