Hoofin' It

My Hive Tyrant is slowly progressing. I put in an hour working on his feet this weekend, but forgot to take anything more than very preliminary shots. Here's some photos of the underside of his hooves:

Yes, they look pretty rough in these shots. I took them right after I got the Brown Stuff in place. Yesterday afternoon, after it has cured, I took a file to the surfaces and smoothed them out. The hooves are now flush with the outsides, and the interior has been cleaned up and smoothed out.

Tonight I plan to add the fleshy 'sole' area, as well as the 'frog'. That's the hard little bony area that will extend from the back to the interior. (It pays to have a wife who used to own a horse.)

I also fiddled with army lists for the FLGS tournament this weekend. I struggled a bit with deciding what type of a list I wanted to run. I thought about a Dreadnought list, led by a Master of the Forge, but I haven't figured out a good way to run that yet. I own four Dreads (one an Ironclad) with a mess of arm options, but just haven't ever had any success with running that many. I think I need to either run a full six (after I build and paint the two I have waiting), or get some drop pods into the mix. Dreads simply cannot walk across the board, and don't have the volume of shots needed to be reliable fire bases. I've tried in the past to do a mini phalanx formation with two Dreads with assault cannons and heavy flamers marching forward led by the Ironclad, and a Venerable standing overwatch behind them with a lascannon and missile launcher. It works ok, but not well enough to be a threat that takes heat off my Troops lots.

I then thought about taking a very vanilla list with a Librarian, a couple Tactical Squads, a Thunderfire, and two five-man units of Devestators: one with heavy bolters, one with missiles. This was the "let's kill the new Daemons" list, but I found it boring. Plus, there are only two reliable Daemons players at our shop, and tailoring a build to give those two players a run when the field is typically 12-16 is stupid.

I decided to go back to my area of expertise, and run bikes. I was inspired by a post over at Apostates Anonymous regarding bikes. At the end of the post, the author talks about how he's underwhelmed by his Bike Command Squad that is tooled for melee. Too many points for limited return, essentially. I thought about my own Command Squad, and realized that it lands in about the same place. Too many points for what it does, and I run an even gimpier version (Champion, Apothecary, Banner Bearer, Powerfist, Power Axe). So, I decided that I'm going to run bikes this month (at 1500 points, btw), and do so without my Command Squad.

Here's a general outline of what I came up with:

Captain in artificer armor, relic blade, storm shield, bike

Bikes One, 5x, combimelta, 2 meltaguns

Bikes Two, 5x, combiflamer, 2 flamers

Bikes Three, 5x, plasma pistol, 2 plasmaguns

Bikes Four, 5x, powerfist

2x Attack Bikes, multimeltas

3x Attack Bikes, multimeltas

Hyperios Whirlwind

Hyperios Whirlwind

2x Landspeeders (see blow)

It's a fast list with some semi-mobile anti-air fire. I largely put the Hyperii in because I just got the book for them and want to see how they work. Couple hundred points for a gamble.

This is the first time I'll have ever run four small bike Troops. Normally I run three six-man squads. I wanted to see how having one wild-card unit would work out, where I can just let them sit out of LOS or something. That's what the fourth squad is for, with its powerfist and no other upgrades.

The only decision I have left is how to arm the land speeders. I typically run them as Typhoons for four missiles per turn. It's reliable, flexible, and has range. But I'm also thinking about alternative loadouts. First is assault cannons and heavy bolters for some serious small arms fire. Half the range of a Typhoon, but double the main gun shots. Assault cannons are a funny creature in that they're very generalist. Not high enough strength to be brutal, but with enough shots to get the job done against light AV and small units of troopers. Same points cost as Typhoons as well.

I also thought about a cheaper version that replaces the heavy bolters with multimeltas. With the change to AP1 in 6th Edition, melta is spectacular against anything with an AV. Of course, they have half the range of a Typhoon, and a quarter when going for melta range. They do match assault cannons though.

The range bands of assault cannons and multimeltas aren't as much of a problem for speeders, though, as they can move rapidly, or even deep strike. With the changes to the mishap table, deep striking a couple land speeders isn't a huge risk. The real risk comes from enemy interceptor units.

So, with the above list, which would you run?