IG Mutant Auxiliaries

o/

My Catachan arms & guns bitz came in, as did the two boxes of Ungor that I had ordered from the FLGS. So Saturday afternoon and evening was spent combining the two into a cannon fodder platoon.

Behold, the unwashed masses!

I have 21 in all, plus one of my renegade enforcer models (not shown) to function as a commissar/prefect/goat herder (depending on the list used). Again there was little to no additional cutting or conversion work to do. The Arms fit well enough as is. About the only issue was trying to align the left arms with the guns they were supposed to be supporting. However I tried adding in a few of the Ungor shield arms and rather liked that (eliminating the left supporting arm issue altogether). I think I'll add a few loose/slung shields to some of their backs (on models with shoulder straps).

ewww...nasty mold line on the lasgun in the center. Oh well, too late to fix it!

There's no rules for standard bearers in conscript platoons & their like, but it looked cool. Along with the random shields, it gives them a good 'tribal horde' feel. Also, as was suggested in my last post on these guys, I went with two flamers for special weapons. The odds of hitting with anything else barring a GL frag round is just about nil.

Reorganizing the Corsairs

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Upon initial receipt of the Red Corsairs, they broke down into an as follows:

HQ:
Termie lord with Chainfist, twin-bolter
Sorcerer...with stuff

Troops:
(8) CSMs with meltagun, icon, asp.champ.w/powerfist
(8) CSMs with meltagun, icon, asp.champ.w/powerfist
(8) CSMs with plasma gun, icon, asp.champ.w/powerfist
(8) CSMs with plasma gun, icon, asp.champ.w/power weapon
(8) lesser demons
(8) lesser demons
(7) lesser demons

Heavy Support:
(6) Havocs with (2) MLs, (1) Heavy Bolter & (1) Plasma gun
(1) Obliterator

Fast Attack:
(3) Spawn
(3) Spawn

Now, the spawn are still an issue to which I've no real answer as the minis are cool & the rules horrid. However after running a 1k list last night with some minor alterations (I'm trying to keep my alterations to the occasional arm/weapon and/or backpack swap as the minis are so pretty I'm afraid I'll mess them up), and ordering some more bitz today, their basic list will change to the following:

HQ:
Termie lord with MoS, Bliss-Giver Demon Weapon
Sorcerer with...stuff

Troops:
(8) CSMs with meltagun, icon, asp.champ.w/powerfist, Rhino
(8) CSMs with plasma gun, icon, asp.champ.w/powerfist, Rhino
(10) CSMs with (2) plasma guns, icon, asp.champ.w/power weapon
(8) lesser demons
(7) lesser demons
(7) lesser demons

Heavy Support:
(7) Havocs with (4) MLs, Icon
(1) Obliterator
Tank of some sort (currently borrowing a predator who's weaponry varies thanks to magnets)

Fast Attack:
(5) Raptors with asp. champ. w/powerfist, (1) meltagun
(3) Spawn
(3) Spawn

Currently the rhinos & predator have been taken from my other CSMs (the Corsairs are pirates after all). The jump packs extra MLs & a lone & unassembled CSM are enroute to make the rest of these changes a reality. As for the predator, I'm not sure if I want to buy another, or possibly get a Vindicator instead. Will have to see.

Also a note on the termie lord. Last night he came to life as the Red Corsairs' psychological warfare unit. I don't think I can properly attempt to describe the full horror of this model online (which I'm sure is something both Adam & Screech can attest to). Thus he's just something to be experienced rather than read about (and the mental scars of that experience will be handed out free of charge...).

Mutant auxiliaries

o/

I went out of town this past weekend, so nothing happened on the hobby front. However I don't post everything that I work on for just this sort of situation. One such item is my mutant auxiliary test model.

The Imperial Guard has conscripts (sometimes called 'White Shields'), the Vraks list has the 'Worker's Rabble' and the Tyrant's Legion has the 'Legion Auxilia'. Regardless of name, these units are essentially the same, piss poor BS:2 cannon fodder. Sometimes they can have mixed weaponry, and the occasional special or heavy weapon, but for the most part they just come with las/auto guns.

Generally I use Cawdor gangers from Necromunda. They're easily the best 'counts as' minis GW ever made (well, make that a distant second to the bare plastic Space Marine). However, while having 20+ Cawdor minis, I don't have enough with auto/lasguns and often proxy shotguns as such (and the proxies are always the first to die). Buying new (or even used) Cawdor guys is prohibitively expensive, so I went looking for an alternative.

I've seen plenty of beastmen/IG conversions online I figured that would work easily enough, and indeed it has. Usually I see Gor bodies used but that always struck me as being a bit out of proportion (which is an amusing concept when considering that these are mutants...). So I used Ungor with Catachan arms. No cutting, filing, or green stuff required, it was a perfect fit! To call this a conversion almost seems untruthful. I gave it a quick & simple paint job, slather it in Ogryn Flesh wash, and a quick drybrush when done. As such, I figure that I can crank these out in short order. The longest part of the process is waiting on the wash to dry.

So I asked the FLGS to order me two Ungor boxes, while I've been acquiring Catachan arm/gun bitz on ebay. I don't know if I'll bother with any special weapons for these guys or not. With a BS of 2, its probably not worth it. Probably not even enough chance to hit to convince a dreadnought to steer clear of them really. I dunno, will see.

Armies of Red and Black

The Tyrant would be pleased...

Actually he wouldn't, as his Corsairs took a bloody pounding, lol. Pitched battle deployment, one objective a piece, and a test run for a new army. Whenever you get something new, or just paint something, it always dies in its first game following. Needless to say, with the exception of just four models, I've gotten that out of the way.

While it ended in my loss, had the game ended on turn six rather than seven, it would have been a draw. So it wasn't a total debacle. There were of course a lot of bad dice rolls all around. On the Corsair side, I figure that having not fought in several years, they were just rusty. On the Blood Angel side, they still (for the most part) lack heads, so are fighting blind (oh & suck it you Thousand Sons! You have nothing on these guys when you consider that...)! The army has a few weaknesses that are kind of obvious, but I didn't want to add anything until first giving them a chance on their own. So causes for concern & my simple remedies are as follows:

Mobility. All infantry means lots of foot slogging. I do however have a pair of unpainted rhinos that are continually passed around from army to army, I think they will eventually find themselves a home with the Red Corsairs. I have four CSM troops sqauds, so I figure the two squads with meltaguns will get rhinos, while the two with plasma guns won't.

Long ranged firepower. There's not much of it (though unlike most oblits that I've seen, my one took a hellova lot of fire before dying). The havocs are a 'leftovers' squad of six with a plasma gun, heavy bolter and two MLs. Its a pretty bad combo. I think one of the bolter grunts & the plasma gun will join one of the plasma CSM squads to function as objective campers. That would drop the havocs to just four which is also no good, and matching the fancy bases would normally be an issue. However last night I discovered that one of the possessed/lesser demons (I believe that they're actually Strigori vampire models) is missing a wing. His base will be missing shortly as well. I can bitz order one CSM & two MLs (removing the heavy bolter) and that'll make for a 5-man havoc squad with 4-MLs. Easy fix! I also have a primed black CSM predator that's @ the bottom of the painting queue, the Corsairs thus will be borrowing that as well.

Then there's the Chaos Lord with terminator armor & chainfist. That chainfist has got to go! Luckily I have a partially assembled box of CSM termies, so a simple arm swap & all will be well!

Spawn...sigh...yes the poor ol' spawn. There are six chaos hounds on large bases that I used as spawn. Unfortunately, spawn...well, suck. Which, in itself sucks as I really like these models. Last night explaining the spawn went something like this:

These are fast attack and they're are slow and purposeful.

Why?

Because Gav Thorpe murdered this codex.

Oh. Do they have fleet?

No. They suck, that's why you never see these on the table.

(and later on)

I thought you were going to you send them towards the squad on the objective.

No, spawn have to go to the closest enemy, so they had to make a u-turn & then die to fearless saves cause they have no armor.

Being Red Corsairs, there's no hope for them in the rumored 'Legions' codex, unless it eliminates the current CSM codex altogether. Its a shame really, such pretty models that at 40pts. a piece, are literally worth their weight in failure... Make em' beasts, give them move thru cover, rending attacks, fleet, cut their cost in half...SOMETHING! Not sure what to do with them, right now as they're too pretty to sell.

...shrugs...

I also still have a $40 gift card for winning the 40k tourney, so I'm not sure if I'll p/u another Rhino (one of the pass-around-rhinos is really rough looking), or if I'll put it towards a Vindicator. Either way I think that these guys will make good use of that prize. So aside from the spawn issue, its really only minor tweaks (and a hellova lot of paint) to bring these guys up to par.

Also, as promised, here are the finished pics of my Centurion for the Tyrant's Legion list. He came out pretty good I think and I rather like the green & yellow Salamander's helmet on the trophy rack!

Crimson Corsair

o/

Well, I finished my Centurion for the Tyrant's Legion, however I really don't like the way the photos for him turned out (a symptom of snapping a quick few shots before going to bed I guess). As such I'll retake & post them later in the week.

Aside from finishing him off though, I also started work on two more Corsairs armed with bolters. One, a newly Fallen Angel, is more or less just base coated and thus not much too look at right now. Whereas the other is finished and I now present to you the Crimson Corsair:

That's a rather impressive title for a grunt with a bolter!

Given the amount of bionics on this guy, there was a temptation to paint him up as a former Iron Hand, however the shoulder emblem was wrong and I didn't want to potenailly break something when switching out the shoulder pad, so I left it as is. The Crimson Fists are known to be few in number, between the Ork invasion of their home world, to getting their asses kicked in one of the Soul Drinkers novels (I forget which one, but it was a great read). With such losses, morale has got to falter, and this guy is an apparent symptom of that. That or the head injury really screwed up his way of thinking.

Here he is next to the my original Corsair (well, for this army anyways). The red is a little off, but reasonably close. I used the same recipe for it, but layering isn't really an exact science. Luckily though, Chaos and consistency aren't really all that compatible. So a little variation should be just fine.

One thing of note are the recessed areas on the legs & bases. They're proving to be quite difficult to reach, especially when dry brushing. So I'm predicting there to be quite a few models with black lower legs & feet!

The Tyrant's Legion, v.2

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Okay, so a few weeks back I decided to make a variant list of my renegade IG using the Tyrant's Legion list. I posted a pic of a Red Corsair to use as a Centurion and my idea for that list. Of course as you now know, that Corsair resulted in the gift of a gorgeous Red Corsair army landing on my doorstep, and consequently threw the Tyrant's Legion idea into confusion.

The Corsairs are all on custom resin bases, whereas the IG they would be leading are on standard bases. Side by side, they don't mix well and I had considered scrapping the idea all together. However the Legion army would only require a few models extra and I had already ordered some stuff to that end. So I've decided to just go with it and leave the new Corsairs as an entirely separate entity.

First off, is my new Centurion. One of the gifted Corsairs was broken & ill equipped to fit into the current CSM codex. He was missing one arm and the other had a lightning claw, which neither aspiring champions, nor TL Centurions can have. So I removed him from his pretty base (discovering that they're all pinned in place), gave him a standard base, made a head swap and then re-armed him (literally).

Currently he's about half painted. At some point I want to add sentry guns (which amusingly, are both immobile & listed as fast attack!) to this army. So I figure that the auspex in his right hand is really just his remote control for them. I wasn't sure if it would be odd having the techmarine shoulder pad, however most of the techmarines pictured in the Badab war books lack servo arms, so it's really of no concern. Besides, having had an Iron Hands army several years ago, I kinda like the idea of having a (former?) techmarine in charge (well that and having a 2 wound techmarine again).

However the one unit that really made me want to make a Tyrant's Legion army was the 'Corpse Taker'. The Corpse Taker is an apothecary who's sole purpose is to collect gene seed. It doesn't matter who's (the Tyrant isn't picky), nor does it matter if the loyalist marines who still have their gene seed are even alive! He and his 'dissection servitors' are going to harvest it anyways! I'm surprised that FW hasn't yet made any models for this unit.

I just combined the SM apothecary bitz with a regular CSM, and added a servo-skull. The dissection servitors were just given new arms from the possessed marine sprue & some old and long since cannibalised Epic Knight Paladins. Given his role, I've yet to decide if I should paint him white or not...

And as for the original Centurion. It only seemed appropriate to have him fight with the Red Corsairs proper. So I painted up the base vacated by the damaged Centurion above, demoted hm back to a mere aspiring champion (though its hard to call it a demotion, all things considered), and he's now the first fully painted model in the army. Huzzah!

I had an excellent week in the world of Geekdom!

o/

Now, as some of you may recall, about three weeks or so ago, I posted a photo of a Red Corsair that I painted up to use in a FW Tyrant's legion variation of my Traitor Imperial Guard. I had a badly painted (by my standards now) Red Corsair some years ago & kinda liked the idea of resurrecting them. Well another blogger whom (we collectively decided) shall remain nameless posted comments (since removed to maintain his anonymousness) mentioning that he had some Corsairs with no purpose to him and would I be interested in any of them? I asked for photos to see what he had & not having any he said he'd get back to me.

Two or so weeks slid by with no pictures forth coming and I figured that with in the daily grind the idea was lost. Its all good, such things happen. However the Sunday before last I received an email telling me that 'I just sent them to you & I want absolutely NOTHING in return!'

What? Huh...wait a minute you can't do that!

Actually, yes he can. Anyways, I figured it was just a squad or so, till I came home Wednesday to find a big box on my front porch! He didn't send a squad, he sent an army! An amazingly well converted army!!!! He got the army in trade in 2008 and took no credit for any of the work done to it. Whomever it was that did all of the conversion work, did an fantastic job of it! Seriously, this is professional quality work in my opinion! In all honesty, I still can't believe these minis were just given to me. The generosity of someone I know only via blog comments, posts & email can be quite stunning! Here are a few photos of the 70+ minis that I received...

Simply amazing!!!

Trust me, you will be seeing many more of these beauties here in the future!

Also, yesterday I took the renegade IG to the biweekly Morristown 40k tournament, and after defeating GK & 2 other IG armies, I won! (sorta) Due to time constraints, there really wasn't time to finish it out to see who would take 1st & 2nd, so my opponent suggested we split the prize $$$ 50/50 & the tourney win, worked just fine for me! Not having much in stock, though willing to order whatever I wanted, I just took a gift card & will have them order me something just prior to the next time I return. Also, while not an uber competitive tourney, I would like to point out to all the WAAC people on 'teh interwebz' that a gun line IG army can in fact still win tournies!

The desolation is killing me...

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So, in an attempt to prepare for another round of fighting in the wide open nothingness of Morristown this coming weekend, I decided to remove most of my terrain in an attempt to recreate a similar battlefield at home.

It feels like I've gone back 10 years to when I first bought the game board.

Barren as the table looks there, I would have LOVED to have had even that much terrain available at the tournament two weeks ago (in Morristown's defense, they are new to hosting tournies & the guys who often bring terrain didn't show).

Anyways, I fielded the renegade IG vs. Banner Elk's Blood Angels again, and almost got tabled. That said, I did fight to the bitter & bloody end (yes all seven turns) and caused some serious casualties & concern along the way.

Pie plates were landing everywhere and as per the Guard usual, they caused the vast majority of the damage. When the enemy closed on my position, the pie plates were fired/dropped practically on top of my own positions! Indeed, the Master of ordinance practically did call in a shot on his own postion (to no avail).

At left you can see the basilisk-turned-assault gun direct firing at nearly point blank (ok, that really is point blank) range! It scattered only taking down two blood Angels and really scaring the crap out of the Manticore's crew!

Whereas at right you can see the desperate master of ordinance calling fire down on an impending dreadnought. However that shot scattered wildly off course to no effect. It seems that I still have no real defense against a drop pod dread. Despite the presence of a veteran missile team, and SIX lascannons which had orders twin-linking their shots, they STILL couldn't do anything!!! All I can assume is that the crew soiled themselves in panic once they saw what came crashing down amongst them!

While the lascannons were failing, the 31 man blob squad was taking an inordinate amount of enemy fire, and then proceeded to tie up an assault squad, sanguinary priest and a so-called 'recluse' (though there's no relation to the spider from what I understand).

Here we see the last dregs of the blob squad-tar pit, moments before fleeing the headless horrors of Sanguinius.

The 'hero of the game' however did not get photographed. That 'hero' you see is my lone Chimera which despite an ungodly amount of fire that was directed at it, was able to cross the soccer field and deposit it's cargo inside 12" of it's target unit! Statistically it should have died well short of that... It wasn't photographed as....well, you see its like this. Its an ugly, decrepit, piece of shit that I've referenced in the past in regards to 'buyer beware' issues with ebay. Though after last night's performance, I'd say it really wants some paint. And it might have gotten it too, if it weren't for those meddling kids! Umm...no, rather it won't due to the surprise that arrived on my front porch yesterday! What surprise you ask? Well, I'll get to that next time, leaving you with just a preview for now...