Nova: Booked ticket, but changing armies

It has been an interesting 48 hours.  I frantically spent the last two days trying to assemble everything for a 2k dark eldar list to get a game in today.  Well, about 1:30 in the morning last night, while trying to stay awake I managed to step on a ravager.  Yes, crushed the sucker.  It's salvageable, but I'll need an entire new sail assembly since it smashed beyond being able to hold the side gunners.  After that I threw in the towel and came to the game today with a pseudo assembled army. 

I loaned a friend of mine my imperial guard list, full of chimeras and he proxied hydras and vendettas.  Needless to say, it was an uphill battle for the dark eldar.  I made a good showing, but in the end I was wiped off the board.  The 3 man trueborn squads were MVP's, they got a ton of downrange shots and had to be ignored in the threat priority.

In earlier news, I did book my ticket to Nova, the 40k tournament and was finally able to use some frequent flier miles to get the flights taken care of!  So I'm officially in.

So back to getting my butt kicked... it made me realize something.  In 2 months with a hectic work travel schedule, there is no way I could realistically get 2k Dark Eldar painted while getting quality practice games in.  I just would end up being frustrated all weekend long at the convention as I make a lot of learning mistakes.  Plus as seen by my crushing of the Ravager, dark eldar don't seem like they travel well with all the spiky bits.

Which leads me to, what army should I take?  I have Tau & Templar, which are pretty rough around the edges.  I also have three of the more popular armies: Blood Angels, Space Wolves, and Imperial Guard.  Now that I think about it, I have a pretty decent ork army from pulling together the gladiator list for Adepticon.  In the end I think I'll go with old faithful, my Imperial Suns (vanilla space marines).  I'm sure everyone is tired of seeing all the popular armies and I honestly haven't had the chance to get this army out very often. 

To make a decent 2k list, it'll mean a little list tweaking and adding a couple of units.  I think in the end I'll have a much more enjoyable experience playing the tournament and I can spend the next few months painting the Dark Eldar at a nice pace rather then rushing things.

Here's the list I'm thinking about bringing.

HQ: Librarian in terminator armor with storm shield, powers: null zone & vortex of doom

Elite: 5 Assault Terminators in Land Raider Crusader with Multimelta and heavy armor
Elite: Ironclad Terminator with heavy flamer and hunter-killer missile
Elite: Ironclad Terminator with heavy flamer and hunter-killer missile


Troop: 10 tactical marines with lascannon & meltagun, sergent with combi-melta in rhino
Troop: 10 tactical marines wiht lascannon & meltagun in a razorback with twin lascannon
Troop: 7 scouts with sniper rifles and missile launcher, all with camo cloaks

Fast: 3 Attack Bikes with multimeltas

Heavy: Vindicator with siege shield
Heavy: Thunderfire cannon
Heavy: Predator with autocannon and sponsoon heavy bolters

It's a fairly balanced list.  Perhaps a little light on the troops, but lots of threats.  I love the two ironclads working in tandem.  I have a lot of armor 13 & 14 against down range shots.  The land raider works as a great screen for the vindicator, attack bikes and ironclads. 

Here's what I'll need to do to prepare this for the tournament:
- Assemble and paint the vindicator.  I especially want to have fun with some freehand scene painted on the siege shield
- Assemble and paint the predator
- Fix one of the assault terminators, the old metal banner broke off.  Time for a super heroic banner to replace it!
- Repair the tech marine (fell between games and got smashed up)
- I would also like to make nice craters for my vehicles for the 6 result on the damage table.
- Some sort of travel display board.

I'll be sure to post progress and take lots of photographs.  I'll mix in the dark eldar, so no worries on that!  I almost got shiny object syndrome and picked up some tomb kings over the weekend... but that'll have to wait!