Category: Sci-Fi Wargaming

Every 40K force needs its background fluff and the random assortment of stuff that is my Apocalypse force certainly does. Part of my problem is that I like tanks, so I have a lot of them, but I also like experimenting, so they have lots of different paint schemes. So the answer is a brigaded force of the remnants of other formations, which fits well with the endless war theme of 40K. So this is a kampfgruppe for what we shall call the Lernean Crusade, essentially made up of the remnants of 3 different formations from different planets, each formed round a centrepiece super-heavy vehicle.

The first force is from a standard agri-world. The centre piece is the Baneblade, camouflaged with a Cream and Light Green large blob pattern washed with brown ink and aged. The infantry will be standard Cadians in the same colour scheme. Vehicles will be all of my PzIV conversions, so that will be the standard chassis for everything other than the Baneblade. At the moment that is 3 Leman Russ (one with autocannons) and 2 Basilisks.

The second force is from a hive-world. The colour scheme is very dark green-grey. Infantry will be Death Korps types, but using the new Wargames Factory shock troop figures – the head with the coal-scuttle helmet and the gas mask. Centrepiece is the baneblade with the 4 sponsons and the short-barreled main gun. The standard chassis will be the Chimera chassis – currently 1 Basilisk and a Chimera, which is unfortunately well painted in force 1 colours, so that might be loaned over for the mean time, as they probably don’t need transport vehicles.

The third force will be from a desert world and will have the Stormsword as the centrepiece. Haven’t decided on colour scheme yet but rather than earth style yellow desert I will try and go darker into dark-red and brown so that they fit better into the dark grey apocalypse city-scape. Vehicle chassis will be Rhino – so Rhinos as Chimeras and Predators as Leman Russ (the predator is my fave 40K model). Infantry will be Wargames Factory again, but with the helmets with the integrated visors (the very Star-Warsy ones).

Thats the thoughts so far, just need to start realising them.

The big question with the Eldar list is what weapons to mount on your various vehicles. This is a pretty complex question, and varies depending on the vehicle and your opponents, but here are some initial thoughts for the Vyper.

The common factor is that its always fired at BS3 on a Vyper.

Firstly against common infantry types:

Kills per turn:	Imperial Guardsmen	Tau	Space Marines
Shuriken Cannon	1.25	0.63	0.41
Scatter Laser	1.11	0.83	0.56
Star Cannon	0.83	0.83	0.83

So far, so unexpected. Shuriken Cannon is best against Imperial Guardsmen, Star Cannon is best against Space Marines and Scatter Laser is best all-rounder. Now we need to consider the costs of the weapons. Originally I looked at it as the marginal extra cost of the weapon, but for a Vyper where the weapon-load is all there is, I want to look at it as the total efficiency of the vehicle in three different configurations. I have added Spirit Stones to the vehicle as well.

Configuration	Price	Imperial Guard	Tau	Space Marines	Average
Shuriken-Shuriken	70	3.57	1.79	1.19	2.18
Shuriken-Scatter	80	2.95	1.82	1.22	2.00
Shuriken-Star	90	2.31	1.62	1.39	1.77

The average column here is a bit of a delusion, as it assumes that each of these three will crop up with equal chance. If we assume that Space Marines (and Necrons who have basically the same profile), crop up twice as often as Tau who crop up twice as often as Imperial Guard, then the overall efficiency changes, but not by much. Shuriken-Shuriken becomes 1.70, Shuriken-Scatter becomes 1.64 and Shuriken-Star becomes 1.59. The efficiency has decreased in each case because Space Marines are harder to kill but the relatively minor changes in Space Marine killing efficiency are still outweighed by the massive differences in Imperial Guard killing efficiency.

Conclusions

The overall conclusion is the one that I went into the exercise with as a gut-feeling – for 5 pts its hard to beat a Shuriken Cannon. The interesting thing is how similar in killing efficiency the three different payloads are against Space Marines.

I think that at the moment though, I might go for compromise and equip my Vyper with a Scatter Laser and Shuriken Cannon, if only because I have a spare Scatter Laser from a Falcon that I converted to a Wave Serpent, which allows me to use the Shuriken Cannon that came with the Vyper to upgrade the on-board Shuriken Catapults to a Shuriken Cannon. Why GW never designed their Eldar vehicle sprues to actually have the various options that are possible on the vehicle I will never know – but that’s a whole topic on its own.

I’m thinking of starting a very themed non-Tau Tau army – lots of drones and ‘suits and allied races.

The big question is the Tau colour scheme. I want to avoid the standard brown one, although I like it and I want it to be different from the other ones at the club. Attempt #1 is a red-blue colour scheme – which hasn’t turned out as bad as I thought:

Gubbins – Regal Blue highlighted with Shadow Grey

Surfaces – Bestial Brown u/c, Scab Red topcoat, highlighted with a mix of Bleached Bone and Scab Red.