Sharks vs. Eldar, Ultramarines inbound, foam terrain painting

Brother-Ancient Spielberg prepares to take a bite out of the pointy ears.

Recently played partway through a 2500pt 40k game with Scott and his Eldar, seeing how bigger games go in prep for a planned mega-battle.  Normally giant games aren't my thing, preferring smaller stuff like combat patrol or 1000pt battles, but I'm up for some variety.  I scrimped around and by being able to take a lot of terminators as part of a First Company Strike Force was able to get enough Space Sharks to make 2500pts.

Figuring I'm more survivable in assault with the Eldar compared to being shot at by them, I plan to try to get up close quickly

More Eldar dispositions.  He has a bunch of spiders and hawks in reserve, along with war walkers.  I have a bunch of terminators teleporting in.

And the Ironclad in pod, who continues his trend of arriving, missing, and drawing lots of return fire

Scratch one gravtank.

Assault the inconvenient to reach into hab-block!

See?  Lots of attention around that dread.

Eldar reinforcements target bikers

While others drop in to harass the other flank

As long as they don't roll sixes and we don't roll ones, we're good.

In a bid to avoid fire dragons, the whirlwind tank shocks the hawks, who pass morale

Confusion!  Carnage!

We got through like turn 3 before we had to pack up, but a fun time as always.  We were both dishing out a lot of damage, but I think the Eldar would have won it in the end.

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Sonofsonsoftaurus has been interested in "little men" for quite a while, and we've been doing some small intro games.  He was still interested, and moved towards wanting his own army, and decided on Space Marines, specifically Ultramarines.  We went through what he liked and made a 1000pt list, then with some hand-me-downs, a box from the local store and birthday presents, he had the makings of an army.  We sorted out how he wanted stuff to look, and I assembled and sprayed them, getting them ready to paint.  He says he wants to paint them himself, but we will see if that lasts.

The army.  Techmarine, two tac squads, termies, centurions and two drop pods make up his 1000pt force.  Librarian, Chaplain and Dreadnought extras/fill ins for later.

HQs

Tac squad sgts. Pistol/power sword and combi-melta/lightning claw. I made use of some of the Ultramarine upgrade kit bits for these guys, and all the tac squad guys (except the metal meltagunner) have UM pads from those kits.

And finally decided to get around to painting these things, which I've had for years.  They are really nice, with lots of bits of detail.  They are also amazingly skull-free, though there might be a few hiding I haven't spotted yet. I also have a bunch of the foam ruins GW did around the same time these may encourage me to work on at some point.  These are still very much works in progress.  Haven't decided how to paint the ruined Chimera yet.  Some Sons of Taurus figures languish in the background, which I will return to after a little break from assembling infantry.