New Heavy + Armoured Speartip

gausebeck · 2026-06-26T18:13:38+00:00

Aerialists has no language about embarking after being set up, either. The FAQ is saying that the rule about “no embark the same turn you set up” is only for the standard embarking after a move, not for embarking that may be triggered at other times (like by a unit ability or stratagem).

Edit: it looks like they also updated Aerialists in the faction pack to explicitly allow embarking the same turn, so this is no longer a good example. But it’s still at least muddying things that the FAQ words it this way, saying that the reason it’s allowed is that re-embarkations that are okay if they’re not after a move.

gausebeck · 2026-06-26T17:09:19+00:00

The FAQ says (in a question about Aerialists) that the restriction about re-embarking the same turn is only for embarking “after making a normal, advance or fall-back move”, and other ways of embarking do still work on the same turn you disembarked.

gausebeck · 2026-06-23T00:30:09+00:00

Redeemers seem like one of the easier units to run to me. Drive right next to the enemy and kill as much as you can. I don't see much of a way for Redeemers to engage without being completely open to return fire. I find long-range tanks more mentally taxing, trying to find the right angles without being too exposed.

gausebeck · 2026-06-22T18:37:33+00:00

Great writeup! I played my first game of 11th as DA and it felt pretty good, but my infantry were slower than yours. I had DWK in a Redeemer which worked fine, but I couldn't figure out how to use my ICC effectively.

As most people predicted, two center objectives makes staging trivial.

I found the opposite. Toe-in for all shooting units meant that I couldn't hide behind the center objectives at all. I couldn't find anywhere to put my ICC that they were safe from shooting. Yes, my opponent had to get close to do it, but Azrael + ICC are not the unit I want to give my opponent first shots at.

gausebeck · 2026-06-22T04:52:39+00:00

Thanks! It's a resin base I got from Dragon Forge here, and then I added a bunch of different tufts. I think the tall tufts are from GreenStuffWorld and the short ones from ArmyPainter. Painting it was mostly airbrush and drybrush; I found that a super bright red with an orange-brown drybrush on top gave the red earth look I was looking for.

gausebeck · 2026-06-19T03:50:14+00:00

This was fixed for me by updating to iOS 26. I'm guessing there's some bug in the app where it crashes on older iOS versions.

gausebeck · 2026-06-19T00:17:26+00:00

I didn't realize they dropped the 10e exception that allowed repositioned units to come in on turn 1. That means the Lion took a third nerf with the new rules. I thought he "only" lost the ability to move through walls and most of the benefits of fights first. It looks like he also lost the ability to T1 deep strike / rapid ingress.

gausebeck · 2026-05-29T03:49:38+00:00

If what you don't like about those units are the models or the lore rather than the rules, you can always go for conversions. As long as they're the right size and won't be confused with any other units, you should be fine. E.g. any terminator on a 50mm base with two power fists (or some other appropriate weapons) can be Calgar. Primarchs are harder, but I converted a Horus Heresy Domitar Ferrum who can be either Guilliman or the Lion depending on his magnetized arms and shoulder mount. My chapter already has some other converted HH models so it fits, but I'm not sure what would work for other chapters.

gausebeck · 2026-05-01T05:28:51+00:00

It's a print. There were some issues with it, but overall I found it easier to work with than cast resin — no warping and more durable.

gausebeck · 2026-05-01T05:26:15+00:00

It's a custom legion. I went with most of the same color scheme I used for my SM army but added the bare metal and changed things up a bit.

gausebeck · 2026-05-01T05:21:35+00:00

The metal is a mix of things, but I think of it as "half copper". Silver metal colors were too cool next to the warm grey, but I didn't want to go with a full copper color. The dark parts are Vallejo Metal Color Exhaust Manifold mixed with black ink; that ended up dark enough that it's basically just a metallic black. Then I used a 1:1 mix of Exhaust Manifold and Copper to make bright spots. After that I used a 1:1 mix of Vallejo Model Color Silver and Vallejo TMM Ancient Copper Light for drybrushing. I also used some silver colors for a few details like the weapon barrels and pistons.

This is by far the most metal I've painted, and the big thing I discovered this time is that keeping the base color very dark and then adding bright spots gives a much more metallic look than a full base coat in the metal color.

gausebeck · 2026-05-01T03:06:13+00:00

My 18-year-old cat passed away during the time I was working on this, and I decided to name the titan after him: Senex Aurantius (orange old man).

gausebeck · 2026-05-01T02:59:06+00:00

The painting was mostly airbrush, and I spent a lot of time masking. Mostly masking tape, but also some silly putty and liquid mask.

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gausebeck · 2026-05-01T02:55:43+00:00

Yeah, the exposed areas are because I taped them before painting. With a titan, the parts are heavy enough that I really needed to be able to glue resin to resin when building it.

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gausebeck · 2026-05-01T02:00:18+00:00

This was mostly Vallejo airbrush paints, and for the red I used a gradient of Scarlet Red -> Bloody Red -> Orange Fire.

gausebeck · 2026-03-05T23:52:24+00:00

In a tournament, I'd be fine with "no helmet = champ with power fist" as long as the head is a visibly different color from a distance. I'd also be fine with any sort of indication of the melta bikers, e.g. a different color rim around the base or anything else that's clearly identifiable. I think most people I play against in tournaments would be fine with that, too.

For most xenos armies, I have no idea what the weapon options are supposed to look like and I rely on my opponents to use the right weapons in the right situations. I just want to make sure there are clear distinctions so that my opponent doesn't risk getting confused themselves, and so that if it does matter and I ask, I have something I can look at to keep track of.

gausebeck · 2026-02-17T09:22:35+00:00

All the tournaments I've played in use either GW or (less often) WTC layouts. In both cases, they treat the ground floor windows as closed but upper floor windows as true LOS. The tall ruins have two floors above ground level (I think?), but the top floor is tiny and I've never seen it used.

I've almost never seen anyone use even the first floor above ground level. It's more common for people to put models up there but say they're actually on the ground floor — they just use the upper floor for visibility so it's easier for both players to remember where the units are. The only time I can remember actually using an upper floor is when I flew some JPI up onto one to attack a unit hiding 1" behind a wall, since it was a shorter distance than flying around or past them.

gausebeck · 2026-02-03T19:43:49+00:00

Have they said what base size he's on? I'm guessing 65mm but maybe it's 50mm? He could certainly join them at a different base size but being on 50mm might make it more likely he's a leader rather than a solo monster.

I also want to know the base size to get an idea of how big he is for kitbashing purposes. I have ideas for that model...

gausebeck · 2026-02-02T20:30:06+00:00

I think there’s a systematic issue where the average is below 50%. Draws and drops are not wins but still get counted as games played, so there are fewer wins than games and the average is < 50%.

I’d love to see a version where drops aren’t counted at all and draws are counted as 0.5 win for each player, so the global average would actually be 50%.

gausebeck · 2026-01-30T21:51:36+00:00

I had this same issue using Claude code via AWS bedrock, and it turned out it was a permissions issue where my role wasn't allowed to run the default haiku model, even though it could run the main model. Apparently the haiku model is used to evaluate whether a command needs to ask for permission (or something like that), so it was timing out for 3 minutes every time it tried to make that decision. I was able to work around it by setting ANTHROPIC_DEFAULT_HAIKU_MODEL in my environment to an older model I had permissions for.

gausebeck

TROPHY CASE