Hail Hydra!!!

lol, well, contrary to my comment on Thursday of: "I'm not too fond of the Alpha Legion or Night Lords specific rules" I think I'm going with the Alpha Legion. Really the only part of the rules I don't like is that units w/o infiltrate or deep strike have to have a dedicated transport or else they can't be taken. When using the Legion specific rules that is...which are awesome (and allow for army-wide infiltration, so I guess that's an exploitable loophole).

Of course its probably a moot point as the army may never actually make it to 'army' status. Plus I was looking more towards assault squads (who can deep strike via their jump packs), and I do have an ancient (if somewhat beat up) rhino for a tac squad. So I guess its all good.

The Alpha Legion have always been a favorite, all the more so after reading about them in the HH novels. Also, having a Centurion-Vigilator wearing scout armor so he can operate with a recon squad deep behind enemy lines screams Alpha Legion like no other! Raven Guard maybe, but to be honest I got bored halfway thru their section of FW's HH book III.

Looking online for Vigilator images online looks like it requires all kinds of greenstuff work. However like the old predator from my last post, I also have this old (and recently stripped) model:

Thunder armor...scout armor...what's the difference?

In a word: Perfect.

Also 'recon squads' can get scout armor and so model wise they're essentially SM scouts. Everyone knows I have several of them, and whilst my shotgun squad usually does quite well, my bolter scouts have a tendency to suck ass (and do so with a disappointing consistency). So, the bolter schmucks are traveling 10,00 years back in time and are Joining the Alpha Legion. Here's a test model:

Cool looking Imperial Guard helmets FTW!

I wanted to give them helmets, and the IG vehicle gunner helmeted head fit the bill nicely (once I scraped off the Aquila). One issue with these is that only the disgustingly effete Emperor's Children can wear the Aquila on their armor. However the bolter covers it almost entirely, and well...perhaps they're masquerading as those purple idiots anyways. 

Fluffy, no? 

So these guys will give me a few existing minis to play around with for the time being. Perhaps I'll have enough to field against Bob and/or Kushial and their HH minis in a 30k Kill Team game sometime soon.

Salvage operations in progress...

o/

Waaaaaaaaay back in February of last year, I sank my old predator (the first model I ever bought for 40k) into some simple green. I was planning to strip it of its MANY layers of paint to conscript it into yet another army. At the time the Dark Angels were eying the tank, but that project (like so many of mine) went the way of ebay. As such, this poor sunken wreck remained in its watery...or rather Simple Green grave till today.

I recently downloaded the first two Horus Heresy rule books (and many thanks to those fine Russians who make such things possible), and have been pondering a small Warhammer 30k force ever since. Now, to be honest, I'd LOVE, love, love, love to have the actual FW books, but I don't have the funds to spend $100+ on just one book, much less three of them. Maybe one day...

The extra bit is from an old IG Griffon that was used as extra armor on the tank's front. I've found another of these in my bitz box, so I won't have to worry about stripping the glue off of it. I also found a brand new set of side doors, so I may just run it without sponsons.

Still a bit of crud to remove on the front and the side sponsons...

...speaking of those sponsons, if you're in the market for some, they're available here. ;-)

Likewise I don't have the funds for a 30K army either, but I do have some old minis, such as this one that will scratch that itch with minimal, if any cost to me. It still needs some clean up, but is coming along nicely. Indeed, especially so when considering that whilst scrubbing off the layers of paint, the tank looked like something from one of Nurgle's fantasies, ugh.

When Deathstars collide...

o/

Da Long Wayz Dezert Groop took on Kushial's Hello kitties of Harlech this past weekend. I took some pics, but for a more in depth battle report click on the link above. Things started out badly when I realized I'd forgotten my killa kans and my warboss!!!

What. The. Fuck. 

A squad of Kommandos filled in for the kans and Blum, a mere nob filled in for Da Masta Cheef himself.

1500 points, Big Gunz Never Tire w/5 objectives. Tau deployment, Beakies went first with no night fight (which we later forgot about)...

Turn one sees 2 of the 3 landraiders trying to flank my line.

Da Ork Ay-jis wiv LOTS of gunz!!! (and an objective)

30 Ard Boys still melted in the face of overwhelming firepower...

Da Matilda's adversary. These two would go several rounds and do little to one another in the process...

And here's where the 'Deathstars collide.' Da Beakies' Kommanda and his decked out kommand squad charges the Nobz mob launching an epic multi-turn brawl! Beside them you can see the much diminished ard boys unit.

His ard boys wiped out, Blum and his attack squig charge the closest landraider...

It go BOOM!

Meanwhile the beakies charged the battlewagon, and their krak grenades amounted to just 2 glancing hits, lolz!

Eventually they would take down the battlewagon. No matter as the nobz wiped out the Beakie kommanda and hiz kommand boyz (and still held an objective).

Killing off the useless Kommandos, the Landraider and Matilda (and its squad of Tankbustas) continue to trade ineffectual fire. Seriously, the tankbustas BETTER GET TANK HUNTER in the new codex, or they'll continue to be all but friggin' useless! Must've hit that thing 15 times, and only got 3 glancing hits.

At games' end, we tallied up VP's and da Beakies had 2 more than da boyz. Still, it was a good game so all was well.

Arch-Centurion Carnac Commodus

o/

This week has been crazy-busy! Seriously, we've been out, visiting with friends, family-doing something everyday this week! As such hobby time has been all but non-existent. However every now and again I save something for this sort of situation, and for this time I have Arch Centurion Carnac Commodus of the Tyrant's Legion:

Ya gotta love bitz sellers on ebay!

In the Tyrant's Legion army list, unless you're fielding Huron Blackheart himself (I don't have the model, so I won't be) then Carnac is the 'default' HQ choice. Standard Centurions are basically 2-wound Sergeants with limited options, and Legion Command Detachments are basically glorified IG  Platoon Command Squads.

Whereas Carnac has a statline similar to a SM Chaplain, if not a little better (for the most part). He also has an Iron Halo, void hardened armor (which is power armor that rerolls saves vs. blast and template weapons, but is -1" on run, charge and sweeping advance distances), bolt pistol, grenades and the 'Blood Biter'. That is a S:5, AP:5 CCW with Rending. Not bad, but not the greatest. Also his Warlord Trait allows him to reroll sweeping advance (rolls). Nothing over the top, but still decent.

His banner pole is adorned with the helmets of deceased Fire Hawks. The Fire Hawks had an axe to grind against Huron Blackheart (though not really a justified one), and were the first to respond to the Inquisition's call to reign the Astral Claws in. Attacking with a vengeance, they quickly realized that they were woefully outnumbered, and suffered heavily for it! Space Marine allies and the Tyrant's Legion troops aside, the Astral Claws chapter itself was estimated to have roughly 3500 marines in its ranks at the war's outbreak. As such the Fire Hawks suffered horrific losses and were withdrawn from the conflict before the war's end.

Thus it only seemed fitting to have my Carnac model recognize their contribution to the war effort...

My first encounter vs a Riptide...

o/

This weekend I got to play with Patrick. He's an old friend of mine, and largely responsible for painting all of that wonderful terrain I posted a few posts back! Not having played in a few years (somehow) we remedied that this past Saturday.

Storm wardens with Subjugators and an Ordo Xenos inquisitor vs. Tau. 1750 points, Big Guns never tire (three objectives, one in each deployment zone and one in the middle of the table), standard deployment. He won the roll and decided to let me deploy first. Failing to steal the initiative I went first into night fight conditions...

The mostly painted Storm Wardens prepare to walk into hell on my right flank.

My full battle line, with Captain I Killed Draigo, the Obsolete Assassin (inquisitor) and a 10-man tac squad in the Landraider.

The predator's performance in this game would not move it up any higher on the painting list, the landraider...maybe.

The Subjugators, many of whom were assembled mere days before battle.

Ugh, I dread what that thing will do...

The Tau center with the Special character tank commander inside the Hammerhead.

2 Broadsides (one is a proxy) with a pair of funny looking shield drones faced me on my left.

Turn one, the dreadnought drop podded in, scattered badly, but took out a quarter of the fire warriors. The Landraider did nothing useful aside from illuminate the hammerhead with its searchlight. The bare plastic pred failed to put a dent in it, whereas the Subjugators pred put all three hull points on it, killing it with the final blow coming from a hunter-killer missile (quite the rarity for that to actually work), giving me 1st blood!

The Subjugators heavy bolters took out the 'shield drone proxies' but the Broadsides held firm.

The Cadre Fireblade, firewarriors and riptide hammer the advancing tac squad. The brute firepower proving too much for the Librarian's 'Invisibility'.

THIS folks is what you call the proper use of cover! This pic was taken from my bare plastic predator's point of view...

One broadside down and the scouts arrive in the backfield to cause problems...

Somehow still untouched (the Tau's opening turns went badly dice roll wise) the Venerable dread wipes out the center Fire Warrior squad.

Invisibility indeed. Overwhelming firepower annihilates my left flank!

Oh yay, Faresight and friends land in my backfield and the Subjugators pred goes BOOM!

PHOTO BOMB!!! lol, compliments of Patrick's brother Matt.

With Tau appearing in the Subjugators' backfield, their Librarian with Iron Arm moves to intercept. You can tell by his absence from this pic just how well THAT worked...

Having gone a few rounds in HTH losing once and fleeing form the broadsides. The scouts are reduced to just their Sgt., who succeeds in wiping out the Broadsides, and saving the Dread from anymore railgun shots to the back (especially as it was already down 2 hull points at this point...).

Oh great, MORE of them...

The last few Subjugators fight bravely, but are wiped out by overwhelming firepower (this seems to be a theme with the Tau...).

Thus my left flank, like the right before it (and my other predator) cease to exist.

The landraider disgorges its cargo into HTH with the monster, to no avail...

The Storm Wardens use their White Scars' chapter trait to leave HTH (and the inquisitor) behind via hit-n-run. Their intent was to avenge their dreadnought which had just fallen to the Cadre Fireblades' EMP grenades (at the expense of his accompanying fire warriors), but the game ended.

4" from the objective, idiot.

Tallying up the final scores, we came up with not a whole lot. Nobody had any objectives, I had 1st blood and line breaker with the lone scout (and only just barely). Whereas Patrick only had line breaker giving me a 2-1 victory. Had he kept his squad on the objective rather than try and kill the dread, he would have had me, but vengeance took over it seems...likewise had I not moved the landraider too far away from it's objective...

In the end a good close game it turned out to be, so we were both happy with it.

The Riptide didn't do too much, as it was his 1st game with it and as my GF doesn't have one, I couldn't help him much with the rules for it (he's new to the new codex and so hadn't heard of 'supporting fire' till I explained it to him, lol!). That said, a dozen shots per turn via nova charged burst cannon was murderous! Beware of that folks...

Riders on the storm...

lol, I've had that song stuck in my head for a few weeks now (which isn't a bad thing really). It came up in a conversation my GF and I were having and it struck me as rather appropriate for a title of this post. That's because I finished my first Storm Wardens' Biker! Here he is:

I haven't fielded bikes in years and this guy is the first of my (current) squad of 3. The other two aren't assembled yet.  I hope to get some more, as I doubt 3 guys riding around with twin-linked bolters will do much on their own. I also plan to get an attack bike to (eventually) flesh out the unit. Once I have the extra bikers, I'll convert one into a chaplain to lead the squad (and keep them from fleeing off of the table as I recall my bikers doing far too often when I last had a squad of them...).

For now though, I have two more bikes to finish (hopefully that plan will go better than my finishing the battlewagon from last week which never happened).

Here's that song, just in case its rattling around in your head now too! :-D

OMG the Terrain!!!

o/


Just a quick post that's really just a shout out to our FLGS.

Lately the turnout at Hobbytown USA has been pretty good, and terrain has been at a premium. Granted, the terrain we have is really good and there's already a lot of it by most stores' standards (going off those that I've been to in the past, some of which were also quite generous in that regard). The weekend prior to this past one we had 7 tables, of which 2 had 3 players at them. The owner stopped by to see how things were going and we asked for more terrain.

Well damn did the store and it's employees (who did all the assembly and painting) deliver!!!

The photo above is our SECOND painted and flocked Realm of Battle board! With a second painted Bastion, and as you can see with a Wall of Martyrs (possibly more than one), a Firestorm Redoubt, along with an aegis defense line! Its not all painted just yet, but pretty damn close, and its also painted pretty damned good too!

Also the table it sits on has a lip around the edge which keeps the RoB sections from sliding around (always an issue in the past). As such, I was told that they're making another for the other RoB as well.

With teh interwebz is constantly maligning GW's 1-man store concept and whatnot (not an issue for us because there are none within several hours drive), and saying the FLGS concept is dead and gone with the advent of online miniature purchases. I thought I'd just mention that the friendly local game store, for us anyways, is still be THE place to be for local and friendly gaming!

Da Battlewagon iz gettin some action!!!!

lol, indeed.

See for yourself:

NOOOOO!!! Don't reroll the difficult terrain check, we WANT to be stuck...

It was her idea, honest...

lol, after its stellar performance in last week's game, I figured the battlewagon deserved to be something other than glaringly white. So I re-primed it all black, and then drybrushed the whole thing with Ironbreaker paint. I then started a tri-colored camo scheme of the original black/ironbreaker combo, Mechanicus Standard Grey and Stegadon Scale Green.

Whilst the little bitz and details will be colorful as is Orkily appropriate, I wanted it to have more color. Thus as you can see, in a prior battle wiv da Blud Angles, it took a serious hit to the rear krew kompartment. However da boyz were victorious, and managed to repair it with some salvaged scrap from the beakie's wrecked tanks!

At this point, its only about half painted. However I'm hoping to have it finished soon as my recent purchase of a tactical squad really has me wanting to build my Astral Claws!