Tanksgiving!

o/


No I didn't go to any GW sanctioned events this weekend, but I did paint some tanks! Here is my finished Executioner. This took a lot less time that I had anticipated which was a pleasant surprise! Its a definite improvement over my old color scheme which took forever to paint!


Not wanting to go with the famed penal legions (like Colonel Schaeffer's 666th.) I've opted for the 'Mortis 8th' No fluff as of yet, however decals for the tanks are easily acquired. I'm not sure yet as to whether or not the number two represents the vehicle/squadron/company.




After finishing the Executioner I had only a few WHFB Orcs to paint but they weren't high on my list to work on. So, I was out and about on 'Black Friday' (no not the early morning madness) I stopped by our FLGS for some paint and borrowed the store's display army rhino to work on. The store has a new GW rep, who was apparently displeased with the FLGS not having any armies on display, and so donated a CSM battle force. As such, we, the local player base have started on painting it. The Black Legion was picked as it is both an easy as well as forgiving color scheme.

When assembled it had every possible accessory added to it, ugh. Several bits were summarily popped off, though the damage was done. Whatever glue they used for assembly it was taking portions of the hull along with it. The Nurgle icon was on sideways (the only reason its on this otherwise clean tank, is that there was a gargoyle stuck to the front, and after removal left a crater, the icon covered it nicely).


So anyways, the hull is basically done, and now I just need to paint and reapply the spike/trophy racks and such. I may add a bit of grime to the lower hull, but in general this will be a fairly clean tank. It looks alright I suppose, hopefully the FLGS will like it. If not, well, black covers everything on a repaint...

As the blood crazed Berzerkers prepare for battle...

Why yes, I am in fact talking about the shoppers on Black Friday, how did you know?

o/

Hello folks! Turkey day is just about upon us which means its time for a few days off, family, gluttony and Football. I There may be a bit of Christmas shopping too, though I tend to avoid venturing amongst the crazed lunatics during Black Friday. I'm baking a pie this evening, and will stay @ my grandmother's house for a few days which means I'll need something to paint in the evenings.

So I think I'll paint this tank:


My loyalist Imperial Guard tanks FINALLY sold, leaving me with the one I kept, the venerable Executioner. I've base coated it goblin green and compared to its old paint job, it kinda has a 'day-glow' look about it. Of course I'm sure (or rather hope) it'll dull down a good bit when I dirty it up. I kept my loyalist infantry, and with a few minor revisions to their roster, will have a fairly good sized penal legion (with the old 'standard' gun line still around for variety). Basically I just need (1) box of Infantry to replace the squad vox & Special weapons troopers, and to replace the Sgts. (I'm using Mordian Sgts. painted like junior commissars). When all is said and done, with what I have left, I'll have about a 1k or so list. Of course I'll also have a serious lack of anti-tank capability too, but I'll go into further depth on my new penal legion in a future post.

I've also been pondering the Exodites, and I think that'll be a 'go' (I just knew that mini from my last post was going to be trouble). Actually, to fit my idea for them, the best fit would be the Spec Ops Killzone rules from Big Jim's Galaxy in Flames. Till now I had ignored that rule set due mainly to the blanket coverage it was getting from various blogs & podcasts. Whenever everyone everywhere starts telling me that 'this is the next big thing & you need to try it' it tends to annoy me and I usually shut it out (much like Malifaux, Firestorm Armada, War Machine, Flames of War, etc.). Actually I tried War Machine a few times, I just didn't like it, which more or less reinforced my stubborn refusal to be coerced/cajoled into trying new stuff (I'm sure Murl will comment on that).

Locally there doesn't seem to be any interest that I know of for Killzone (or Kill Team games for that matter), but it does fit nicely with the idea I had in mind. I was thinking of a small nomadic Exodite clan/tribe led by a minor chieftain (DA Exarch), the tribe shaman (Warlock) and consisting of a dozen or so warriors (Guardians). Whether that would be the whole tribe (Guardians luckily come with both male & female torsos) or just a portion of it, I don't know and regardless the point is moot. That's about all I want to get. Those dozen or so minis should make for a nice little diversion in terms of painting something different. I have some more ideas to help 'fluff' them out, but those still need some more thought, so like the Penal troopers above, I'll revisit that in a future post.

So everyone in the USA, be sure to enjoy your holiday and of course to eat too much! As for those overseas, well...I hope its a better than average Thursday for you (and by all means in the spirit of our holiday, be sure to eat too much for your dinner too).

Lesser Demons and other dangers...

o/
I wasn't in the mood to paint anything in particular this week, so I just grabbed a random handful of minis and three actually got painted. First up Lesser demons:

Actually I just painted the blue one in the middle (though I did flock the other two as well). I'm always asked 'Why aren't they red?' Well, because demons in the chaos codex suck! Hence the odd colors to differentiate them from Bloodletters. Reduced to the lesser demon state, these guys obviously failed in the eyes of Khorne and are now suffering in their own private hell. I have a sprue of five Pink Horrors on order which will also be painted various colors (but not pink).

Next up, an Exodite and a WHFB Orc:

Strange bedfellows these two are.

The Orc is nothing special, I really should paint some more of those, but WHFB is kinda low priority. I did enjoy my only game of 8th ed., but I haven't exactly been in a rush to try it again either. The Exodite on the other hand is a very dangerous mini for me.

Of course not as dangerous as he was for that Rat & 'Mon'keigh'.

Minis like this often end up forming armies. I've had Eldar armies before, three separate ones going all the way back to 2nd. ed. (the token 4th ed. DE starter force not included), but that's an army that requires finesse. Something which I have none of. However while digging through the bits box last week looking for something, I kept finding Eldar bits and figured I could build a mini from them (never found whatever it was I was looking for originally). I had most of one, but lacked legs and the back was pretty gunked up. Another troll through the box found a metal Dark Elf (sans spear), the rat cloak, and enough to piece together a splinter rifle. Whether that was taken as a trophy, or these guys deal with both their Craftworld & Dark kin is anyone's guess (yes,the fluff may actually state a 'yes' or 'no' but this guy doesn't have access to to such knowledge as I have no Eldar codices). So I put it all together & wahlah! An Exodite. The wild environs and 'rustic' lifestyle of the Exodites (relative to the rest of the Eldar) also sorta justifies me painting him up as a dirty model.

Dirty Eldar? Sounds like an oxymoron!

I always liked the Exodites actually. Could I realistically make a viable army of these guys, I doubt it. Should I try, an emphatic NO! Will I? Sorta, maybe. Probably be a kill team sized unit at most. I was thinking of doing a DE kill team, but despite the pretty new models, I'm kinda 'meh' towards the idea. A kill team is more of a foot slogging bunch I think, and that doesn't fit the DE in my mind. In the end, it may just be an opportunity to paint something different, that will sit on the shelf till the novelty wears off (sounds like my last War Machine army), and it eventually winds up on ebay (because we play kill team next to never around here).

We'll see I suppose.

Deathscreamer

That name brings to mind the original Tyranid Carnifex, until I then recall that it was instead called a 'Screamer-Killer'. Anyways...

o/

So, I've been tweaking around my Purge/Blood Eagles list and thought of Swapping my HQ's around. Normally I run Ivan as a sorcerer, and Exedore (doubt that name will work, as I still call him 'George' then correct myself) as a Lord. After the repaint and name change, I thought to move Exedore to a sorcerer, omitting a lord choice all together. I know people swear by demon princes, but I've gunned down enough of those with lasguns to ignore the supposed 'only viable HQ choice' (and I also use the DP model as a greater demon which dies just the same, but only for about half the points + a champion which is much cheaper).

Now, usually Ivan just has his trusty 'doom bolter' and no marks, but I was reading through the Demon weapons entries and happened on the Tzeentch 'Deathscreamer' which when given to a lord is far better than a sorcerer with doom bolter. It requires a mark of Tzeentch, but that's both cheap & useful, so no issue there. However the Deathscreamer rules, when combined with the Demon weapon rules seem broken if taken literally.

Demon weapons:
•Are a power weapon
•Require 2 hands
•Grant the wielder an extra D6 attacks (unless you roll a '1', in which case you take an automatic wound with no armor save and make no attacks)
•and have the additional benefit as detailed per Chaos mark.

Those essentially being:
• Undivided: +1 strength
• Khorne: ungodly potential number of attacks!
• Nurgle: Poisoned 4+
• Slaanesh: instant death regardless of toughness (I wonder why I don't see this one more?)
• Tzeentch: 'can' (will come back to that word) make a shooting attack @ ST:4, AP:3 Assault D6, 24" range. If you roll a '1', you get no shots & instead take an auto wound with no armor save.

Now, it says 'can' make a shooting attack, but nothing in there states that it replaces the HTH attacks, like its an either/or kind of thing. Personally I think that the shooting profile replaces the HTH profile, and you end up with a lord that's a potential shooting monster, yet only has 3 savable attacks in HTH (which is presumably why I've never seen this piece of wargear on the table top). BUT 'rules as written' basically says you get both (which just sounds broken), while 'rules as intended' (I think and is how I will play it till proven otherwise) is that the shooting profile replaces the HTH characteristics.

I checked the FAQ, but it mainly focused on Typhus, and the stupid 'lash' issues. I didn't see any mention of any other demon weapons at all. So I'll ask all of you out there wandering through the blogosphere, which do you think it is?

Soiled again....

o/

I delved back into working on the The Purge again this weekend. Repainting my previously stripped Chaos Lord George Lupus. George used to have the 'standard' Plague marine paint job which while a nice looking, was too bright to try to match to Purge marines. So here he is:

This is an old mini, Rogue Trader era I think. His power sword is from an old Ork weapon sprue (RT/2nd ed. era as well) with a newer CSM backpack & the standard is from some old Night Goblins if I recall correctly. One thing I hadn't noticed when I painted this model last time around, is that the little Nurgling on his shoulder has actually crapped all down the back of it!

That's disgusting!

I'm not sure if I'll keep the name though, I'm kinda tired of it, I certainly know my local opponents are. The name had more significance back when he led my old Lost and the Damned army which was named (yup, you guessed it) The Rebel Alliance! I've been leaning towards Exedore, who was a character I always liked, and was of a smaller stature as well. That sorta fits wit my desire to use him as a Sorcerer rather than a Lord I'll see I suppose. The name George Lupus name has been around for so long, it may not go away.

Beyond that, I started on some more plague marines, seen below:

The aspiring champion with the twin-bolter was my acting Chaos Lord while while George was losing his identity in a tub of Simple Green. I really like that model though, and he's next on the 'to paint' list!

Fighta-Bomma Konvershun idea...

Photo property of Gamesworkshop, used without permission, blah, blah, blah...

Look at that goofy shape, its gotta turret, its even RED! Maybe have a few Grot Bombs slung under the rear where the dreadnought is supposed to go...

Dis haz Fighta Bomma written all over it!

So umm...I thought we did this for fun...right?

o/

Its been a while since I ranted on here, so its time to fix that.

Ahem...

Why do we play these mini games anyways? (just skip the addiction part, the only cure for that part is financial ruin, moving on...) I thought it was fun. not to win at all costs (WAAC) not to intentionally piss off your opponent, not to cheat, and not to play for a tie as an overall strategy (I'm not referring to the mid-game realization that I can't win, so I go option 'B', a tie)

I was listening to a 40k podcast the other day which was going over the IG codex and it really pissed me off. Apparently, the only way to play IG is with the 'all mech/vendetta, all vet., all melta list'. Everything else is pretty much pointless & to use it you pretty much don't know what your doing. WAAC on the air waves I guess. Everyone sits in their passenger compartments tiddling thumbs while their chimeras blast away, vendettas outflank & lascannon you to death, and then turn 4-5 the chimeras lunge forward for objective grabs & meltagun drive-bys. Maybe they're hard core tourney players & can think of nothing else, but as an opponent would you find playing vs that fun? I've played vs. variations of that more than once, and...it sucks. Quote: 'If I see an IG list at a tourney, all I really need to see is their heavy choices, the rest of the list I already know, so their list is pointless...' In a tourney maybe, but no narrative, theme, fluff, nothing? Now lets broadcast that opinion to the geek world so that newer players start to see that this is the way to play...

Bleh. I'm not a regular subscriber, and promptly 'unsubscribed', moving on to my next rambling bit...

Playing for a tie as an overall strategy. Huh? I've seen this several times over and again last week. Here was the set up: capture & control scenario, pitched battle deployment. We have a local player, who ALWAYS puts his objective on the top of a building. Not, like the 2nd floor, but the 4th or 5th if not the roof top (we have some tall buildings @ the shop). Invariably this is done vs. an army that has no jump infantry available (we're a small group & our armies hold few surprises). Meanwhile his opponent's objective is in a reasonably approachable place (i.e.: in a table corner, and/or no higher than the 2nd floor of a building/ruin). The most recent case in which I saw this was vs. a Foot slogging Thousands Sons army, and I figure that it would have taken 4-6 turns of them doing nothing but running to maybe get there (ignoring the entire Necron army facing them including the ones in said building). Meanwhile the Necrons hunkered down in deep cover, and never advanced. The only thing going forward was the Deciever who's sole intent was to contest the enemy objective.

He never intended to win, just to tie.

The Thousand Sons player was pretty pissed off @ the end of the game (General Pickett didn't enjoy his similarly suicidal charge into the enemy guns either), which as expected, ended in a tie (the deceiver was rendered into a chaos spawn midway across the table). Now what was the point of that? Who really goes into a game without even trying to win? And while I'm bitching about this particular game (that I didn't even play in), the Necrons 'forgot' their destroyer flying bases (again), then tried to claim cover that they would have been above were they actually on their bases...

I mean, you don't have to throw an opponent a 'soft/easy' army to have a fluffy fun list. You don't even have to be close to winning to have a fun game. Some of my most memorable games, that are joked about years later are the ones where my army crumpled like tin foil, and ended with the last model making a suicide charge across the table. I fondly recall one of those now:

Okay dude, you got one guy left, you wanna just cede the game?

OFFEND ME WILL YOU?

SHING! (yes I said that, it went with the simulated motion of my commissar drawing his sword)

I CHARGE THE HIVE TYRANT! DIE YOU ACCURSED MONSTROSITY!

(Due to his trusty refractor field he survived for two rounds vs. the hive tyrant, and the legend of 'The Venerable Commissar Borg' was born...)

But that was a game, in which my army was literally murdered, yet, the opponent's intent was to have fun, and we BOTH did have fun. But it seems that all to often anymore, that there is a slowly expanding attitude that winning is everything (from a game play point of view, painting is something else entirely). Spectacular paint jobs & dialogue aside, I think one of the reasons that The Gentleman's Ones has been so successful as a blog, is that b.smoove focuses on the narrative as much as if not more than the game play itself. I'd really hate to think that that sort of view point is starting to be an anomaly, rather than the norm.

....

...and then Da Masta Cheef, steps back too far, and falls off his soap box. Dazed & confused, he has no idea as to whether or not any of the above made any sense, nor does he feel like editing (as it probably doesn't, which means he'd just delete it). So, if it doesn't, well then he apologizes for subjecting you to such drivel assuming you read this far, but rants are like that, they just kinda come out, with little if any rational thought put into them).

...and...off they go.

o/

Well, after I 'finish' an army, I get bored with it and sell it. As such, my loyalist Imperial Guard army has landed on ebay here (shameless plug I know).

Now I just need to wait or the inevitable screaming & bitching from Murl & Screech...

Mind you I didn't sell all of them. I pulled out the storm troopers for use with my Inquisitors, and Sgt. Pepper & the Company standard bearer will be going to an Inquisitorial retinue as well. I still have:

Commissars Naxos, Niro & Borg
The Podunks (who will graduate from Conscripts to Penal troops)
The podunk Sentinel
The Psyker battle squad
The shotgun Vet Squad with Chimera (the MP's)
...and the Executioner
(edit: I kept the Cyclops too!)

I've been thinking of doing a penal legion for a while, and with the above I have a decent start to one. With the above I have about 800ish points, which will work well enough vs. some of the newer players @ the game shop. They tend to have smaller, odd point sized armies. That way I'll have something to throw at them rather than just butchering a list to fit. Most of those are also unpainted/need to be repainted as well, so that'll keep me entertained with IG for a good while (when I'm not painting the Renegades of course).

And NO, the Renegades are NOT for sale!

The Boys in Blue

No, no, no, not the Ultramarines, I sold that army years ago…

As you can see, I painted up four AoBR tac. Marines up as an Alpha Legion squad yesterday to go with the ‘Deathwatch’ sergeant I had painted previously. I darkened the blue a bit, using a base coat of Mordian blue with a light dry brush of enchanted blue. I had to redo the shoulder pad on the Sgt. Asmadore (named after a character in the book The boys from Santa Cruz. Good book, read it sometime) as a result; I also tweaked his paint job a bit. Adding the green helmet strip to match the rest of the squad, and changing the eye lens color to blood red, as the purple had little contrast (especially on the Mordian blue guys). I ordered a SM captain banner off of ebay today. I’ll add it to one of the grunts, and use it as the squad’s ‘icon to Chaos Glory’.

This squad will pull double duty between my Vraks militia and CSM armies. In the Vraks list, FW actually suggests using loyalist marines painted as Alpha Legion with the line ‘we’re in disguise’. Whereas with the CSMs, on the one hand I have The Purge, a Nurgle worshipping warband, that’s hell bent on the extermination of all life and on the other I have the remnants of my Blood Eagles. A warband that was shattered by the experiments of Fabius Bile. Those few that remain now worship Malal, and are intent on destroying the forces of Chaos.

Not exactly likely allies.

Indeed if anyone could form an alliance between those two, it would be the Alpha Legion. Though to what end or purpose, only Tzeentch (if anyone at all) would know…

No time to dwell on that thought though, Murl's 13th Cadian is advancing in this direction, and I need to set up the table and prep the CSMs for battle!

See ya.

The state of the Party.

o/

Well there's another Dark Heresy game session this evening, and we're still waiting for our first casualty. The 'Arbitrator' won't be with us this evening, due to real life interference, however as his character is literally on his last legs, the loss is minimal. We figure he'll spend the session unconscious in the medicae tent. Our GM hasn't yet gone for a 'TPK' though he's edging in that direction as we're all in a fairly sorry state. Currently the party is as follows:

Jusu, Arbitrator: (1) fate point has been burned, only has 2-3 wounds left, and as I recall his chain vest is in tatters. IIRC, his second string character is a carbon copy with a new name (boring...).

Ishta, Assassin: I'm pretty sure she took a hellova beating last session and is running dangerously low on wounds as well, she hasn't burned any fate points yet though (I think).

Rube (that's what I call her, can't recall her name & as a Scum won't bother to try), Pysker: Rube's rather fond of slinging her witchery around. However I'm pretty sure she had to burn a fate point last round (or is close to it). She also seems to have drawn the eyes of the Dark Gods, damned near summoning one of their minions which resulted in some insanity points for everybody.

Arty (short for something too hard for a lowly scum to pronounce), Guardsman: Our resident 'tank' Arty's down to about 2/3 wounds, but over all is in the best shape. Of course in hand to hand combat, he's as impressive as watching a Tau Fire Warrior trying to take down a Space Marine.

Yosef, Scum (Me): I'm down to a little less than half wounds and am running dangerously low on bullets for my trusty revolver (which was responsible for the eliminating of a truly gratifying number of fleeing civilians). Indeed when the test against insanity was rolled, Yosef, hearing the call embraced it wholeheartedly. I didn't get enough insanity points for a mutations roll, but came close.

So where to from here?

Well, Yosef has lasted longer than I expected, but isn't doing to well either. I do have my 2nd string character Ekon ready, however we already have an assassin in the party (assuming she survives and/or has an assassin 2nd string as well). So instead I dropped Ekon back to my 3rd string (despite his cool fluff), and created a Scholar as my new 2nd string. So far none of us have wanted to play that sort of character, so I figured 'what the hell' and made one last night. His transfer info (fluff?) follows:

The Inquisition sent us, we're here to help...

o/

No progress has been made on the Grot Spee, typical. I have been kinda busy though with real life stuff. About the only thing that I've done in the past two days was assemble & paint my Alpha Legion 'Sergeant'.


The shoulder is enchanted blue, & doesn't look nearly as bright in person, however there isn't enough contrast between that & the Legion decal to really show in the photo. Looks just fine on the mini though.

Go figure.

This is kindova 'Frankenstein' of parts, but after finding a Deathwatch shoulder pad, I just had to use it! The signum is purely decorative, but like the DW shoulder, looks too good to leave in the bits box. I could have used the DW bolter too, but I liked the look of the Templar bolter that's chained to the forearm.

I have no plans for an Alpha Legion army, however the Vraks list allows for a single Alpha squad as an elite choice, and they can also fight with my CSMs. The Vraks list suggests painting up loyalists as Alpha legion, so that's what I'm going to do. My current plan is for a 5 man squad with the remaining four guys being from the AoBR set. Besides, to some podunk PDF commander, any marines that answer a summons for help are sure to inspire awe. Even more so when considering the fact that their leader is bearing Inquisitorial insignia!

The poor bastards would only realize who's side they're on after its far too late to turn back...

IT'S HERE! IT'S HERE!!!!

o/

I guess that when you pre-order something from Forgeworld, you get the express shipping, because only after a week after the ship date, my Grot Mega Tank has arrived, huzzah!

Behold, Da' Grot Spee:

So named after the infamous WWII German pocket battleship.

I trimmed off a few of the gates (just a quick & ugly trimming) to get a rough idea on how it'll go together. Assembly looks to be rather straight forward & simple. Its a good thing too as the instructions are rather spare. Several of the gates that I trimmed off are so big that I'm tempted to keep them for use a tank traps or something. I wonder if all completely FW tanks have gates that large? Seems like a hellova waste to me.

One thing FW doesn't provide is a good size comparison, so until it arrived I had no idea as to how big it was going to be. As you can see, its a bit larger than an Ork trukk.
The weapons options included for the turrets are :
(2) Grotzookas
(2) Big Shootas
(1) Kustom Mega Blasta
(2) Rokkit Launchas
(3) Skorchas
(1) Boom Kanister
and the aft, starboard sponson has a big shoota molded onto it by default, though I doubt it would be hard to add a different weapon in that mount.

This will be a work in progress over the coming months, a model this expensive (the bulk of my unpainted Blood Eagles as well as my Rogue Trader BFG fleet were sold off to compensate) shouldn't be rushed through assembly & painting.

...and now back to our regularly scheduled programming...

So, I was going to post the following originally:

It was nice to kinda take a week off from gaming. Doing the 'family thing' for a few days and shoving gaming to the periphery of my mind. This past Saturday we went to Sevierville, TN to go on a zip line tour (part of Mom's 'bucket list').

Here I am on the first run and as such still somewhat an unwilling participant. However by the end of the 2nd run (we went on 6 in total) I really started to have fun, and in the end I'd readily go again.

Yesterday I eased myself back into 40k by finishing off my first squad of The Purge.

After which I assembled my next squad of seven (Da Grot Spee will delay their painting though).