Armies of Red and Black

The Tyrant would be pleased...

Actually he wouldn't, as his Corsairs took a bloody pounding, lol. Pitched battle deployment, one objective a piece, and a test run for a new army. Whenever you get something new, or just paint something, it always dies in its first game following. Needless to say, with the exception of just four models, I've gotten that out of the way.

While it ended in my loss, had the game ended on turn six rather than seven, it would have been a draw. So it wasn't a total debacle. There were of course a lot of bad dice rolls all around. On the Corsair side, I figure that having not fought in several years, they were just rusty. On the Blood Angel side, they still (for the most part) lack heads, so are fighting blind (oh & suck it you Thousand Sons! You have nothing on these guys when you consider that...)! The army has a few weaknesses that are kind of obvious, but I didn't want to add anything until first giving them a chance on their own. So causes for concern & my simple remedies are as follows:

Mobility. All infantry means lots of foot slogging. I do however have a pair of unpainted rhinos that are continually passed around from army to army, I think they will eventually find themselves a home with the Red Corsairs. I have four CSM troops sqauds, so I figure the two squads with meltaguns will get rhinos, while the two with plasma guns won't.

Long ranged firepower. There's not much of it (though unlike most oblits that I've seen, my one took a hellova lot of fire before dying). The havocs are a 'leftovers' squad of six with a plasma gun, heavy bolter and two MLs. Its a pretty bad combo. I think one of the bolter grunts & the plasma gun will join one of the plasma CSM squads to function as objective campers. That would drop the havocs to just four which is also no good, and matching the fancy bases would normally be an issue. However last night I discovered that one of the possessed/lesser demons (I believe that they're actually Strigori vampire models) is missing a wing. His base will be missing shortly as well. I can bitz order one CSM & two MLs (removing the heavy bolter) and that'll make for a 5-man havoc squad with 4-MLs. Easy fix! I also have a primed black CSM predator that's @ the bottom of the painting queue, the Corsairs thus will be borrowing that as well.

Then there's the Chaos Lord with terminator armor & chainfist. That chainfist has got to go! Luckily I have a partially assembled box of CSM termies, so a simple arm swap & all will be well!

Spawn...sigh...yes the poor ol' spawn. There are six chaos hounds on large bases that I used as spawn. Unfortunately, spawn...well, suck. Which, in itself sucks as I really like these models. Last night explaining the spawn went something like this:

These are fast attack and they're are slow and purposeful.

Why?

Because Gav Thorpe murdered this codex.

Oh. Do they have fleet?

No. They suck, that's why you never see these on the table.

(and later on)

I thought you were going to you send them towards the squad on the objective.

No, spawn have to go to the closest enemy, so they had to make a u-turn & then die to fearless saves cause they have no armor.

Being Red Corsairs, there's no hope for them in the rumored 'Legions' codex, unless it eliminates the current CSM codex altogether. Its a shame really, such pretty models that at 40pts. a piece, are literally worth their weight in failure... Make em' beasts, give them move thru cover, rending attacks, fleet, cut their cost in half...SOMETHING! Not sure what to do with them, right now as they're too pretty to sell.

...shrugs...

I also still have a $40 gift card for winning the 40k tourney, so I'm not sure if I'll p/u another Rhino (one of the pass-around-rhinos is really rough looking), or if I'll put it towards a Vindicator. Either way I think that these guys will make good use of that prize. So aside from the spawn issue, its really only minor tweaks (and a hellova lot of paint) to bring these guys up to par.

Also, as promised, here are the finished pics of my Centurion for the Tyrant's Legion list. He came out pretty good I think and I rather like the green & yellow Salamander's helmet on the trophy rack!