Tabletop Teacher

... for a poor Farseer, who was brought low, and bended of spear, by the hands of a two year old. To be fixed as soon as I can get my hands on some green stuff. Look at this not as a tragedy, but as an opportunity for conversion. Just as planned... Thanks for reading. If you liked what you saw, and you want to help out, please leave a comment. Sharing this with your friends, and following me on Twitter , Facebook or Google+ would also be hugely appreciated. If you have anything you want me to look at, let me know in the comments below. I'll probably be able to write an article about that topic within a day! If you really love what I do here, you can make a one off donation at my  PayPal , or become a true hero to table top education and make a regular donation to my  Patreon . Every Little helps!

This year I've decided to get into more external competitions, and I'm starting with the local Games Workshop Brushido competition. The rules are simple for this one, and I'll just repost the Facebook page : Its the new year, and so we all should have had some cool hobby related gifts, or we have some in the pipeline to pick up, so this is the opportunity to get painting them! It's open to to scenery, characters, tanks, monsters, you name it; as long as it was bought from GW Guildford in the past month. Get your brushes ready! This particular competition is based on the painting and basing of anything bought or received from Christmas or in the month of January. It MUST be bought wholly from GW Guildford within the months of December or January. Judging day is on the 29th January 2017 at 2pm at Games Workshop Guildford. You MUST sign up in store by no later than the 28th. There will be two age categories: Neop hyte's: 16 and under. Stormcast: 17 and...

I'm starting a new Eldar Army for 2017, and I thought I'd show you the 450/500 point base. Click to embiggen. The test jetbike is there, as is my original squad of Guardians from when I first got back into the hobby. Very much a work in progress, and I'll be uploading how this was made over the next few days. Until next time! Thanks for reading. If you liked what you saw, and you want to help out, please leave a comment. Sharing this with your friends, and following me on Twitter , Facebook or Google+ would also be hugely appreciated. If you have anything you want me to look at, let me know in the comments below. I'll probably be able to write an article about that topic within a day! If you really love what I do here, you can make a one off donation at my  PayPal , or become a true hero to table top education and make a regular donation to my  Patreon . Every Little helps!

I'm starting a new Eldar army for 2017, and will be doing some naming competitions for the elements of the army. The Eldar in the army are a splinter faction of the Lugganath craftworld. They have been heavily influenced by the Corsairs that wander freely around Lugganath's docks, and have struck out on their own with a colony ship to start afresh away from the oppressive grip of their Farseers. Here is the first prototype Windrunner jetbike, showing the base colour scheme. I'll be adding details on later depending on how they do in battles, but take a look! Happy Monday! Thanks for reading. If you liked what you saw, and you want to help out, please leave a comment. Sharing this with your friends, and following me on Twitter , Facebook or Google+ would also be hugely appreciated. If you have anything you want me to look at, let me know in the comments below. I'll probably be able to write an article about that topic within a day! If yo...

It's an inflammatory title, but it's hard to escape the depth of failure for this unit. I think the strength of the feeling here stems from how much I wanted the Thousand Sons to succeed after decades of being second fiddle to the other Chaos Cults. I also really wanted them to come back strong after being so maligned in the lore and fluff. Since having their home world crushed and their honour dragged through the mud, I wanted them to have the battlefield presence they deserve as powerful psykers. But let's get to the point; the Thousand Sons Rubric Marines fail in their battlefield roles. Here is a table listing the average abilities of our comparison units. To remind you of them, they were chosen for roughly equivalent army roles, points cost and wound size. They were paired Librarians, tactical and Chaos Marine squads led by their Mastery Level 1 psykers, and a bike squad with a Librarian. Click to see the failure. Now on the surface, it doesn't look t...

We've looked at the offensive potential of Eldar Scatter bikes compared to a non-special weapon White Scar biker squad. With the assault potential of White Scar Bikes taken into account, the difference between the two becomes slimmer and slimmer. But now we look at the defensive value of each unit. There are some Psychic powers that can take effect here, but both units will have access to something similar. Jetbikes can receive Shrouding from Warlock Battle runes, whereas White Scars can receive it from Telepathy. Since both can receive the same buff, we can discount it as a controlled variable. Guide used in the offensive shooting analysis could not be discounted because bikers have twin-linked bolt guns, meaning that the similar Divination power would be useless on them. This is a simple analysis, assuming the same number of hits on each unit. We go through various strengths and APs, coming out with an average value for both wounds taken and then wounds after saves....

Following on from yesterday's discussion of overpowered Scatter bikes and their prowess in shooting, we now look at how they compare to White Scar Bikers in assault. As you can guess, the White Scars come out on top: Unit Scatter Jetbikes with Guide White Scars bike at 24 Attacks 6.0 6.0 8.0 8.0 Hits 3.0 3.0 4.0 4.0 Hammer of Wrath         3 1.5 1.5 3.3 3.3 4 1.0 1.0 2.7 2.7 5 0.5 0.5 2.0 2.0 6 0.5 0.5 1.3 1.3 7 0.0 0.0 0.7 0.7 8 0.0 0.0 0.7 0.7 Normal Wounds         3 1.5 1.5 2.7 2.7 4 1.0 1.0 2.0 2.0 5 0.5 0.5 1.3 1.3 6 0.5 0.5 0.7 0.7 7 0.0 0.0 0.7 0.7 8 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 Total Assault       ...

The prevealing wisdom is that Scatter Bikes are completely overpowered, and are one of the major reasons why Eldar players find it difficult to find games.   But can we prove it?   To show how good or bad the Eldar are, we need to find an equivalent unit that can match it. The reasons/rules which make the scatter pack good are as follows:   Bike mobility Objective secured Long range weapon Very far Turbo-boost Jink Assault moves High strength weapon We could probably leave the post there, but I like to go a little further in analysis. The closest match to all this would be a White Scar biker unit. Depending on the formation you take you can achieve either Objective Secured or an assault turn move, they match the mobility in the movement phase, and have a slightly better jink and Move through cover to match the turbo boost of the jet bike. I'm aware that you can't compare the mobility of jet bikes to Space Marine bikers, but it's the closest we'...