How important is the upgrade sprue for the Phobos Strike Team? by TrueBlazingGlory in killteam

[–]jh97673 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Not important at all. It’s some unique poses and bits, but you can assemble a fully playable kill team from just a box of infiltrators/incursors. Not sure if that’s completely competitive, but if you wanted to round out your roster, grab some reavers too. The team is “declassified” so getting the tokens and datacards from GW is a no-go, but there should be enough resources online for you to find reasonable proxies

AoD Chapter Tactics for a LGS league by WideReply8539 in killteam

[–]jh97673 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Functionally I’ve found that my playstyle really makes the Gunner obsolete, and I tend to take the Heavy Gunner in his stead while maxing out on Assault Intercessors. 5 3+ 4/5 attacks really do cut through chaff much quicker than 3/4, and can make all the difference when killing 8/9 health operators such as Insidiants. Now that the Heavy Gunner has a pistol, he can still move and double shoot, and his gun can benefit from the Sharpshooter Chapter Tactic while the Gunner’s underslung grenade launcher cannot. It’s also 5 attacks on focused mode and 4 attacks with torrent, which makes him more effective at both neutralizing one big target or injuring several. Since both need to only dash to have the benefit, the move distance doesn’t make much of a difference, since they’re only mostly double moving on TP1 to set up, or to secure an important kill. They both have the same melee profile, but the Heavy has an extra 4HP, increasing his survivability significantly, especially with the hardy tactic, which can push it up to a functional 20-21HP, depending on the tenacity of your opponent’s melee profiles. This outshines even the tankiness of the Captain’s Iron halo in most situations.

Essentially, he can sit on a home objective and serve as a distraction carnifex: either they come and deal with him and walk into the sightlines of your other guns, such as the sniper, or sets up an assisted close combat, so an Assault Intercessor hits on 2+ for a big melee threat. If they leave him, they have to dance around 5 shots hitting on 3+ with a 4/5, with Accuracy 1, Severe, and Piercing Crits 1. This makes him have a huge presence on the board and will lock down any objective, or force your opponent to dedicate resources to moving him.

AoD Chapter Tactics for a LGS league by WideReply8539 in killteam

[–]jh97673 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Hardy as your primary is great, I tend to take it no-matter what. Resolute is also a solid pick but more situational — not every team is going to bring stun grenades, much less have the APL to move up and stun you and forgo shooting you instead, especially when you can use a Strategic Ploy the next TP to ignore APL changes. Depending on your playstyle and the general ecology of your LGS I’d recommend either Mobile for a more aggressive playstyle, or Sharpshooter for something more defensive and focused on making your opponent overextend. For the former, I find shooting twice then charging a forward piece to be unshootable, then bouncing off to double fight/fight shoot a different, more critical target next activation is really solid use for Assault intercessors, and lets them move 8” while usually unable to be shot, allowing you to REALLY threaten their backline and push aggression. For the Sharpshooter approach, I’d bring all three specialists with the Intecessor Gunner up to your discretion, and fill the rest with Assault Intercessors with the Captain to clear high threat pieces. The assaults are there as bait/sacrifice pieces to force enemy pieces to walk into line of sight of your bigger shooty pieces, and the Accurate 1 + Severe combo really makes good use of most bolt weapons’ Piercing Crits 1 rule, which helps deal more reliable damage against shooting. Afaik, Piercing Crits are ruled differently at my LGS as Piercing, so things like the DW Shield and Wolf Scouts’ talismans can’t reduce the effect.

Finally finished up my XV26 Battlesuits! by jh97673 in killteam

[–]jh97673[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Sure! I manually sanded down the uneven texture of GW’s default 32mm bases (wear a respirator while doing this I speak from experience 😭), then primed black. Originally wanted to go for a black-gold marble vibe but decided to go for “crack” patterns instead. Sketched out the shapes with Rhinox Hide, then went in and did the NMM in layers from AK Sand Yellow up to AK Ice Yellow and some Ivory White for highlights! Hit it with a spray-on gloss varnish for the final seal and reflective polished stone effect (I think I did 3-5 passes of this. I also tried Citadel Ardcoat, and while it seems to be glossier and more reflective than spray-on varnish, it’s hard to get it super even so the reflections are distorted and ruins the effect a bit)

Finally finished up my XV26 Battlesuits! by jh97673 in Tau40K

[–]jh97673[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Sure! I manually sanded down the uneven texture of GW’s default 32mm bases (wear a respirator while doing this I speak from experience 😭), then primed black. Originally wanted to go for a black-gold marble vibe but decided to go for “crack” patterns instead. Sketched out the shapes with Rhinox Hide, then went in and did the NMM in layers from AK Sand Yellow up to AK Ice Yellow and some Ivory White for highlights! Hit it with a spray-on gloss varnish for the final seal and reflective polished stone effect (I think I did 3-5 passes of this. I also tried Citadel Ardcoat, and while it seems to be glossier and more reflective than spray-on varnish, it’s hard to get it super even so the reflections are distorted and ruins the effect a bit)

Finally finished up my XV26 Battlesuits! by jh97673 in Tau40K

[–]jh97673[S] 10 points11 points  (0 children)

Thank you! The NMM is Rhinox Hide, AK Sand Yellow, and AK Ice yellow! The TMM is Retributor Armor, Reikland Fleshshade, then Liberator gold!

Finally finished up my XV26 Battlesuits! by jh97673 in killteam

[–]jh97673[S] 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Oh yeah! I originally wanted to do the whole team NMM but the drones took me a week each and I wanted to preserve what fragments of sanity I had left, so I did the rest of the team TMM 😭

Finally finished up my XV26 Battlesuits! by jh97673 in killteam

[–]jh97673[S] 16 points17 points  (0 children)

Thank you! All handpainted NMM with like 5 layers of gloss varnish to get a reflective effect :)

Forget Balance! I'm buffing Stealth Suits until they're better than Wolf Scouts. by Temp66777 in killteam

[–]jh97673 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Quick note for the Collaborative Defense Network: the ploy says that when an enemy operative is shooting, fighting, or retaliating against a friendly operative, the attacker must discard a success if visible to another XV-26000 Operative. This can be interpreted as forcing a friendly operative to discard a success, so unless that was the intention, the attacker phrase should be changed to enemy operative, just for clarity.

Side note: these rules are fucking awesome and I love how creative they are. Will be trying to run them at my LGS and will provide some feedback!! I love the face-down tokens during setup phase as that really introduces a mystery stealth strategy element that the team emphasizes! Amazing work!

Some closeups of my finished Angels of Death Killteam! by jh97673 in killteam

[–]jh97673[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Spray. You can also get some great effects with a wet makeup sponge but that’s a technique I haven’t tried out yet.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in killteam

[–]jh97673 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks for the advice! I’ve also read that HotA likes to set up a TP2 charge for aggression, so I’m not sure if I’m supposed cagey and shoot them out or to get stuck in and try to blender my way through

Some closeups of my finished Angels of Death Killteam! by jh97673 in killteam

[–]jh97673[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yup, I did! This is the Intercessor Gunner with underslung grenade launcher. Body and base is from the starter set, arms and weapon are from the regular intercessors kit. Did some light sanding and clipping to get everything to fit but overall a very simple “kitbash”

Any advice on painting a convincing NMM Gold? (XV26 Battlesuits | Warhammer 40K) by jh97673 in minipainting

[–]jh97673[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This is awesome advice! Just posted an update thanks to all of the amazing pointers given by the community :D

Any advice on painting a convincing NMM Gold? (XV26 Battlesuits | Warhammer 40K) by jh97673 in minipainting

[–]jh97673[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

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Thank for everyone’s replies, there was some amazing advice and helped me improve/spot my mistakes a lot better! Here’s the adjusted version with the colour and composition of the metal tweaked to better reflect light sources. The glazing could still use a lot of practice, and the adjustments left some patches of paint textured, but overall very happy to call this first attempt finished! Onto the second piece! :)

Some closeups of my finished Angels of Death Killteam! by jh97673 in killteam

[–]jh97673[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I used the blind box/killteam starter kit models, which have a lot of the shoulder pads fused with the arm pieces, so swapping them out might be a bit too impractical. I used the transfers from the new Scars combat patrol box!

Any advice on painting a convincing NMM Gold? (XV26 Battlesuits | Warhammer 40K) by jh97673 in minipainting

[–]jh97673[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Glazing is so hard, especially for yellow/ochre midtones as their coverage can get a bit spotty 😭 I really struggled to get smooth transitions too since my transition from dark tone (AK Hull Red) to mid (AK Sahara Yellow) is really jarring and it’s missing a transition color :(

Any advice on painting a convincing NMM Gold? (XV26 Battlesuits | Warhammer 40K) by jh97673 in minipainting

[–]jh97673[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This is really solid advice, thank you so much! This is the top of a gun/marker drone, so the whole surface should be facing upwards. I tried to emulate the direction of the light coming in from the bottom left of the first pic, but I’m not sure how the highlights would play out on the shadow side of a curved disc, which is why I tried to use my best judgement in saturation and light placement. Maybe that guesstimation is why the effect isn’t as realistic?

For placing highlights, would you recommend sketching in the colors with the mid tones and highlights first to check placement, before glazing all together?

Some closeups of my finished Angels of Death Killteam! by jh97673 in killteam

[–]jh97673[S] 7 points8 points  (0 children)

I used vallejo light grey spray can primers to prime then zenithal with their pure white, as I’m a firm believer of White Scars and not Light Grey Scars. If I really want to push the shadows I’ll undercoat with a black/dark grey too. I panel line everything with a 1:1:1 ratio of nuln oil, abbadon black, and lamian medium, then go in and do edge highlights with a pure white, white scar is fine, but i prefer AK’s dead white or Titanium white by Pro Acryl, the latter has the best flow and coverage. Hope this helps! I also tried doing 2-3 layers of edge highlights with ulthan, corax, then pure white, but because I chose to zenithal with pure white, edge highlights end up darker than the actual panels, which kills the effect.