Frontkick tournament - Debrief

The Frontkick tournament was played this week-end in Carrières, close to Paris. 36 players, with 5 games and swiss round pairing over 2 days.

As usual, a great event, relaxed, pretty well run by the Captain, and the first tournament to open the 2013/2014 gaming season after the summer pause.

First a couple of pictures of an incredible army, the alien inspired tyranids of EDLR, winner of the best painted award :

EDLR flying prince

EDLR army and  winner of the best painted award

Sadly I did not get to play against it but as all EDLR works, it is visually stunning. I have played against Edlr tyranids since the nineties and I think this is his 3rd iteration.

I played against 5 tournament regulars:
First game against Padre with a GI/SW list,

Second game against Wilme (the French ETC Captain) with his ETC Greyknight list:

Third  game against Manix with Dark-Eldar/Eldar (sorry no-pics).

Fourth game against Lex-A (another member of the French ETC team) with a stunning Deamons and CSM alliance :

and finally Fifth game against Mogor, with a very good pure deamon list.

The venue was nice, about 20 minutes drive from Paris, with plenty of room to play:

I came with my eldars, with my newly painted Paladin Knight house as a Tau ally:

A pretty hard list with plenty of firepower and nice combos as might be expected of an alliance of 2 of the newest codexes...

On the right side you can see my eldar main force, using Iyanden rules.
Farseer on bike
10 Guardians in holofield and shuricanon, scatter laser wave serpent
7 Dire avengers in holofield and shuricanon, scatter laser wave serpent
3 Jetbikes with shuricanon
Wraithknight
3 Shadow weavers
3 Dark reapers, exarch with fast shot and night vision.

Here you can see the knight house, count as Tau:
On the top left : Technoadept on combet chassis: Tau commander with missile pods, drone controler and split fire, 2 marker drones (servo-skulls).
Just below : house serfs with a techno adept : 10 kroots and a kroot hound.
bottom right: Servo skulls : 4 marker drones
top right: Paladin knight : riptide with ion, fusion blaster, early warning overide, skyfire.
Behind :  Missile platforms: 2 broadsides with 2 missile drones.

I got a nice 16/20 in  painting  which combined with 3 victories and 2 losses led me to 9th place.

Time to reload,
Ica

Mechanicum : paladin knight and enginseer retinue

After the missile platforms I decided to continue my mechanicum forces with an enginseer from FW and a Knight Titan :

The enginseer retinue is slightly converted from dark Vengeance cultists, with all chaos markings removed and some hoods and bionics added.

For the paladin, I decided to convert it a bit, reducing the size of the canon and adding a shield in place of the sword. I intend to play him as a count as riptide, so it made more sense.

Time to reload,
Ica

Drone walker to mechanicum missile platform

I finally took the time to convert the ramshackle drones walkers:

First a quick review of the product : I got them within 2 weeks of ordering, with nice cardboard and bubble paper packaging. All parts for each models were separated into small plastic bags, nothing got broken and everything was there.

However the cast quality was only so-so. The resin is hard and brittle, with sometimes large holes (1mm diameter) and other small casting flaws. Pretty much the quality I espect from my own casts so a bit disappointed there.

Details are crisp though and the parts can be corrected (think a bit worse than forgeworld quality).

It was okay for my purposes as most of the flaws where on the "thigh" part that I would need to cut to fit the model on a 60mm base.

To do that I cut the thigh and replaced it by a small plastic ball wedged between 2 green stuff blobs, smoothed to either side.

The missile launchers of course come from the GW Valkyrie kit and are magnetised to the back with a small platform made with a bit from the campaign supplement and plastic sprue.

 I made 2 of those with a slightly different paiting pattern to experiment the Jihess style  way of fast painting.
With an airbrush and a sponge I finished them in about 6 hours.

Time to reload,

Ica