Those Who Thirst vs. Blood Angels (first game ever)

Those Who Thirst saw their first action on 11/13 at my local hobby shop just hours after the last models were undercoated. I played 1000 points against a Blood Angels player twice in a row. In both cases the table had sparse terrain (just six buildings on an 8x4 table) and we set up on long edges. No scenario was used, just fight til someone is tabled. Not my preferred scenario, but as the new guy I didn't want to make a stink about it.

Those Who Thirst
Combat drugs roll - run on 3d6 inches
succubus: agoniser
7 wyches: 1 hydra gauntlet, hekatrix w/ agoniser, raider w/ flickerfield
10 wyches: 2 sets of razorflails, hekatrix w/ agoniser, raider w/ flickerfield
10 kabalite warriors: splinter cannon, raider w/ splinter racks and flickerfield
10 kabalite warriors: dark lance
6 reavers: 2 cluster caltrops, 2 heat lances, arena champion w/ power weapon

Blood Angels (from memory)
Astaroth
7 death company: jump packs, 2 power weapons, 1 power fist
death company dreadnought: blood claws
8 assault marines: power fist

He won the roll-off and chose first turn. He deployed the assault marines and dreadnought pretty much right in the middle, with the death company and Astaroth a bit off to the side. I put a little distance between us, but not much. Three raiders next to each other, bikes and stationary warriors behind them.

First turn:
He zooms everything straight at me, runs, and pops smoke on the dreadnought.

I move up, drop both wyches next to the assault marines on the side opposite where the death company are coming from. They shouldn't be in charge distance to counter assault. The splinterboat moves into rapid fire position. The reavers turbo boost over the assault marines and carve a couple of them up.

I direct my dark lances at the dreadnought, and I pop it despite the smoke launchers. The splinterboat brings down a few marines. In the assault phase I charge with both wych squads and my succubus. The assault marines are made short work of.

Second turn:
His death company ended up being EXACTLY six inches from ONE wych. Crud. When he wounds on 2+ and rerolls to hit AND to wound rolls, I don't stand a chance. Even going first, he easily wipes that squad of wyches.

Fortunately, now the death company are sitting alone in the face of my entire army. I turbo boost the reavers over them, empty the fury of all four dark lances and the splinter boat into their faces, and even make use of those li'l splinter pistols the wyches have. Only a few go down, but the rest are taken apart by the charge of my other wyches and succubus.

In only two turns, the game ends in my favor.

We played a game after that which I don't have time to write about in any detail. The short version is that he replaced the assaulters with bikes, which he flanked with to carve up my stationary warriors, but this time both wyches got the charge on his death company, negating any rerolls. It took two full turns of combat, but they wiped them. Unfortunately I can't hurt the dreadnought in assaults, so he was able to take out a wych squad that way, but after rolling five or six consecutive 1's on my dark lance shots, I eventually brought it down.

First pictures and painting selections

A collection of photos of all my currently painted models (and unpainted raiders). Click here.

There are actually three raiders, but two are identical. The unique one is that which has all the extra bits on it. The little spikes on the sides are a huge pain in the ass to attach, but my succubus has to ride in style, you know?

Most models are primarily just a black undercoat. Some have had chaos black directly applied if necessary. The highlights are liche purple. I tried hawk turquoise and blazing orange highlights as well, but settled on liche purple for the darker coloration. This is what pushed me towards my background fluff.

The bronzy parts are just that: dwarf bronze. Such parts on the bikes and warriors were also washed with watered down boltgun metal to dim the color a bit, while the wyches keep a brighter color. All dark eldar skin is done with dheneb stone, while the flesh tabards are, somewhat ironically, elf flesh.

The wyches in my list are split into two squads. They can be distinguished by hair color: one blue, one orange. The succubus, while riding with the orange squad, has her hair painted half with each color. There isn't a succubus model out, so I went for the Lelith Hesperax model, making this the only non-WYSIWYG model in the army (being modeled without an agoniser).

Speaking of agonisers, I agonised (hurr hurr) for some time over how to paint these. The 'Eavy Metal team has all kinds of crazy lightning shit painted on theirs and that is FAR beyond my somewhat limited capabilities. In the end I decided to paint them with dheneb stone and then slather watered down hawk turquoise all over to create what I had hoped would appear to be an uneven, flickering coat. It's not perfect but I'm satisfied with the results.

I still haven't decided what to do with the bases. I feel like painting them green might take away from the darkness of the models, but that does seem to be how most of the tables at my hobby shop are set up.