A Curious Construct(ion) project...

o/

Huzzah!

So, a little over a year ago, good ol' Col. Gravis launched a little kickstarter campaign for a steampunk gun carriage set. All to happy to fund a fellow blogger (and get a cool looking toy in the process), I backed it as did many others. The gun, and its many options arrived relatively close to on time (unlike say, Palladium's Robotech Kickstarter debacle-in-progress).

Anyways, when my gun carriage arrived, the army it was intended to go with had already been sold off on ebay (so typical of me), and so sat unused for almost a year. Aside from my small Grymn force, I lacked any human-based infantry to field it (I can't see Spess Mahreenz using steampunk weapons...though considering the Mechanicum's clockwork technologies, I could be wrong in my thinking). My Grymn are kinda too futuristic looking (and small) to go with it as well, and my cultist horde (currently on ebay) didn't use heavy weaponry either.

Then the other day I had an idea for it. Sadly, my idea was inspired by a news report on the tragic war in the Ukraine, where the Russian separatists raided a military museum for its exhibits (to presumably send back out to the front lines). Whilst I intend to use the Grymn as both IG/AM and Tyrant's Legion auxiliaries (more on that in a later post), I pondered: What if the Grymn were locked in a war that was going badly, and had to resort to similar steps?

Despite their technology (roughly equivalent to the Imperial Guard/Astra Militarum), against any given opponent in the 40k universe, these little guys/girls would be at a distinct disadvantage. Short statures, reduces their perspective on just about everything, war included (and look at just how well that worked for the Squats!). For an example, the primary infantry heavy weapon of my little collection is the light machine gun (read: Heavy Stubber). Basically I'll pay the heavy bolter price for an inferior weapon, such is the cost of proxying. The Grymn are simply too small to haul heavy bolters around…or are they?

Here's the basic idea, the Grymn will be removed from her separate base of course.

Besieged and desperate, the Grymn have resorted to raiding their own museums for antique (but still deadly) weaponry. Also, lacking in troops to man these cumbersome artillery pieces (which to these little guys, is exactly what a Heavy Bolter is, albeit in the direct fire support role), they've likewise rounded up their menial support bots to use as gun crews under the direction of a gunnery specialist.

Listen up you miserable little drones!

The Grymn miniature range lacks any minis that would be suitable as the typical gun crew of an Imperial guard sized heavy weapon. Typically, a heavy bolter IG base has 2 guys firing a gun too large for them to realistically move. Kinda like the Leman Russ turret that has a barrel so big, there's no way the crew could load and fire such large shells in such small turrets.

So in 'forging my own little narrative' (my guess is GW was hoping I'd use more of their products than just a 60mm base), my 'gun crew' is more of a little vignette depicting a (probably none-to-happy) Grymn soldier giving her new charges a crash course in the use of antique weaponry! Indeed, I'm sure that being put in charge of an obsolete gun, and a crew that will probably function like the robotic version of the Three Stooges at war would certainly sour her mood. Especially when you consider their (or rather her) life expectancy on the grim-dark battlefield of the future!

Rather than paint all three bots in a uniform color scheme of my Grymn forces (no longer white and O.D. green, but a much easier red and brown),  I'm tempted to paint the newly drafted gun-bots in a variety of colors (leaving the one that's already painted as is). I figure that it would best represent their various former occupations (i.e.: gardener, laundry folder, paper pusher, toilet scrubber, or whatever), as well as the tastes of their previous owners. Rather than simply programable machines, I see these little bots as being more like C-3PO from Star Wars (i.e.: a sentient A.I., replete with their own personalities and quirks).

Things will be busy around here the next few weeks (we'll only be able to get to the FLGS once in August!), but hopefully I'll be able to get this done sometime soon.

Meanwhile, cork-screwing thru the lower atmosphere of Endor....

...we played our first X-wing demo.

Kushial loaned me an X and Y-Wing, while he used an E-Wing. Whereas my GF teamed up with my old friend Johnny (who made his first appearance in 5 years) with a pair of TIE Interceptors a piece.

Apparently Endor isn't all forest...

In short, despite a few good hits in early, they kicked our asses. My two ships went down quickly, and Kushial managed to string em' around for a few turns, but even his beloved E-Wing couldn't survive vs. 3 interceptors.

It was fun though, and expect to see more of X-Wing on here in the fufutre.

:-)

Ward-Master Lorgath Maclir

Master of the Storm Wardens

Imperial Commander of Sacris

Lord Protector of the Northern Halo Marches

Marshal Designate Imperialis of the Ninth Convocation

Bearer of the Hideous Mold-Lines

 lol--wait what?

Yeah, this guy has some bad ones. I really didn't see them till I hit him with a wash and yeah...about that. Washes can really pretty up a mini, or they can scream: BAD! BAD! BAD!!! It seems as though this mini was telling me: 'Hey you lazy fucker, why didn't you do this the right way?' Yes I was being lazy, just painting over what was already there, didn't simple green and strip it. The banner pole was snapped off, so I cut off the stub and tried to smooth it out. The paint job looked pretty good till I hit it with the wash. It all kinda fell apart after that.

...sigh...

Oh well, good enough for now I suppose. I may have to go ahead and Simple Green the other termies before painting them though. I would have liked to have said, that when Maclir met his first foe in glorious single combat, he was victorious and damned the aforementioned flaws! but...

SQUIGGOTH! SQUIGGOTH! BLAAAAARRG!!!

Sadly he was defeated before he even made it out of the light box, lol.

Termies!

o/

Taking a step away from the Tyrant's Legion this time. Instead my next installment of Black Consuls-turned-something-else features these:

Their bases are decorated with Ork bitz, because we all know they're easy to kill...

These older, metal and static posed Termies will work just fine with all of the 2nd ed minis in my Storm Wardens' army. I don't think I've fielded a full terminator unit (referred to as: Inheritors in the Storm Wardens Chapter) since I had my old SIlver Skulls army, so its been quite awhile. The captain model will be used as Chapter Master Lorgath Maclir. He's already ben primed as you can see, and with luck I'll have him painted before the week is out. As for the squad, they have the options of an assault cannon, or a heavy flamer along with a chainfst or two.

Retaliator Squad

o/

This week's project was getting my Tyrant's Legion Retaliator squad ready for this coming weekend. Well, mission accomplished (paint not included):

We will confuse the enemy with our mis-matched color schemes!

Normally an Elite choice, my warlord: Arch-Centurion Carnac Commodus (center) makes one Retaliator squad a troops choice. A Retaliator squad is really little more than a glorified assault squad, that trades jump packs (meaning yes, they'll be riding in a Rhino) for combat shields and void hardened power armor.

Void hardened armor allows them to reroll failed armor saves vs. blast and template weapons (assuming they got a save in the first place). However that bonus comes at the cost of -1 to run rolls, charge rolls, and sweeping advance rolls. That's somewhat mitigated by Carnac's fixed warlord trait that allows his unit to reroll failed sweeping advance rolls.

No, he's not the Sergeant, but he wins the prize for the coolest pose in the squad!

I was hoping to have 2, 20 man Legion Cohorts for this weekend, but having just counted a short while ago I came up 5 short. Oh well, I'll tweak my list and fill that deficit up with something else I guess as we're kinda busy the rest of the week.

Another batch of Tyrant's Legion converts...

...literally! :-D

lol, notta whole lot of time for hobbying this week. Actually, it was a litte bit of a rough week for me. Whilst I've been a gamer for decades and cutting my fingers while converting minis is a daily occurrence. When I wanted to slice a bagel in two on Monday, the knife slipped and I made one hellova slice in my finger instead. Lovely. No stitches were needed, but my GF wouldn't let me use knives for the rest of the evening!

Skipping forward to Friday, and finding out that mother-fucking yellow jackets took up residence in the flower bushes out front while I was mowing really, REALLY sucked! Toss in a delayed allergic reaction (I never was allergic before), followed by a steroid shot for lunch Sunday, and uh yeah. I'm plotting and insect annihilation for later this week!

Anyways...

About all of my hobbying this week was spent 're-arming' more Black Consuls, turning them into Astral Claws for my Tyrant's Legion Cohorts. In some cases its only adding a base, or a bit or two, but there have been a lot of arm swaps, and this week will be no different. I've also added in 2 marines from my existing extras:

The Latest recruits for the cause!

The assault marine with the combat shield will lead my Retaliator squad. Whereas the former Techmarine will take the role of Centurion. He can control the Sentry Guns with his techno-wizardry, while keeping the Legion Auxiliaries in line.

This guy came from our FLGS bitz swap night a little ways back. I've always liked this model, and equipped him a little differently (he already has the 3 color minimum!) than the one I already have. Will probably put them in separate squads too.

I found and used several old Iron Hands' bionic arms on these guys. Also, I'm thinking that once painted up, it'll be hard to tell whether its a Daemonette or Eldar Corsair's head...

We didn't make it to the Saturday gaming either as we went to a friend's (3rd!?!) 30th birthday and (unbeknownst to her at the outset) engagement party! We had a great time (and she said 'yes'). Plus it was bit of a break from game nights is always good every now and again, but we'll be back there this coming weekend.

The demise of the Black Consuls...

o/

Some ways back, Necron Bob (who no longer has Necrons nor, at this point anything 40k) sent me a message asking if I wanted an old 40k tank that needed some TLC.

Sure, why not?

After some scheduling issues, keeping us from meeting up, he was in town last weekend and stopped by the FLGS whilst we were all gaming. He didn't have just 'a tank' rather he had his old Black Consuls army in its entirety! Holy crap, really? 'Keep it, trade it, sell it, do whatever you want with it its yours.' Damn, that was a surprise!

I haven't seen this army in many years, not since before Bob moved out of state. Prior to that time I fought against it quite regularly. Bob was ever the good opponent, fun to play against and yet always making for a hard fought game (skills that serve him well in his current preference for winning WHFB tournies with alarming frequency). 

All of the green Predator's missing parts were included too!

Indeed, whilst the army is in need of some serious TLC, its nothing insurmountable. For a short moment, I pondered using them as a separate marine army, but figured that I would grow bored with one of the (at that point) three marine armies and dump one on ebay. So instead I decided to fold the majority of them into my two existing armies: The Tyrant's Legion (Astral Claws) and the Storm Wardens.

I ordered a bunch of combat shield arms off of ebay to change the assault marines w/o jump packs into a Tyrant's Legion Retaliator Squad.

The first bunch of (literally) rearmed marines.

The 1st repainted Astral Claw!

 The Tyrant's Legion allows me to field 20 man blobs of marines with ATSKNF, this looks like the quickest and easiest way to be able to field that! The Storm Wardens and their old static poses will fit nicely with the old school termies, giving that army a much needed boost. Whatever is left will probably be folded into the ANGRY MARINES!!! (though that will leave me with a tyrannic war veteran that I don't quite know what to do with).

Additionally, there was a considerable pile o' bitz. In separating out the 40k and WHFB bitz to be dumped into their respective bitz boxes, I found an old Inquisitor in terminator armor with psycannon and null rod, along with enough Necron Scarab swarms to make 3-4 bases of the little buggers for my GF's small but apparently growing Necron force.

Another brand of geekdom!

One day a little ways back at work, my friend Ryan asked if my GF and I liked pinball. I said yes though neirther one of us could remember the last time we'd even seen, much less played a pinball game. Ryan said he had some and invited us over for (an excellent) dinner and to play. Holyshit folks, check this set up out!!!!

He has 14 pinball machines total, though a few are in varying states of repair.

Not the original display, but certainly a good one!

Kinda dazzling isn't it?

Of all of the game I played, this one was my favorite!

This is planned to be mounted above the game display pictured above.

This would really have pissed me off were I feeding quarters into it. I think 4-5 balls were gone before I even managed to hit one with a paddle!

Antique Roadshow...this one you can have as many as 3 balls going at once!

Sadly the Judge was currently under repair.

The first thing you see as you open the door to his arcade! Note; the box to the left is a new Wizard of Oz Pinball prototype that hasn't even been officially released yet! On the right is a still wrapped up Tron II pinball machine.

Spiderman has always been my GF's favorite super hero!

This one is upstairs!

He buys/sells them at shows/cons' swap meets. He also replaces the lighting with LEDs, put real speakers in them rather than the el-cheapo speakers they come with, and as you can see, many of them are even signed by their original designers!

Not content with just pinball, Ryan also has all sorts of movie memorabilia. Some of his own creation, and some purchased, all quite impressive though!

Any Hellraiser fans out there?

Yes he acid etched the brass himself!

He made this and brought it to be signed by the MST3K creator but the guy didn't have any of his...um, puppets(?) for promo pics so he used Ryan's. Just add it a bit of photoshop and...

...tah dah! Dozens of fans got signed glossies with a fan made Tom Servo!

All in all we had a great time and are sure to be back!

Now that the shock and abject horror has passed...

...lets see what we can do with our new lousy codex (vs. the old lousy codex).

We were properly prepared, why do I say that? Note: the tissues on the shelf in the background...lol.

Thus, Da Long Ways Dezert Groop took on the Fem Fa'Tau last night in their new codex battlefield debut. Unsurprisingly, they lost but truth be told, da boyz fared better than I expected.  The dice went thru periods of good and bad on both sides, though my GF is getting tired of the 'you can't roll any higher than a 2' syndrome her dice have been addicted to for quite some time now...that said, she rolled a whole slew of 6+ disruption field saves at the end!

Anyways, a few things I noticed during the game...

First up, Ork Witchfire psychic powers. Yeah, great. I need to cast and not perils (perils was my 1st wound suffered in the game), not be denied (and there she goes with those 6's again), and then have to roll to hit with a BS of 2??? BS indeed, thanks for that GW. The only spell that managed to work during the (short) lifespan of my Wierdboy was 'da jump' which tellyported da shoota boys across the table. They summarily gunned down the Pathfinders only to be pie plated into oblivion shortly thereafter. So that was a wash.

Basic Meks get all sorts of cool weaponry, but only ever get a 6+ save. So why would I ever put a 30 point killsaw on one of those? One Mek manned the Kannon (and the grots managed to hit a lot with said kannon, damage however...), one Mek disappeared in the a hail of burst cannon fire (more on that below), and the other died the first time he pulled the trigger on his Kustom-Mega-Blasta. Yes apparently the option of putting eavy armor on cheap characters was, like so many other things, too much to ask for.

Speaking of eavy armor, it felt like a knee-jerk reaction to put it on every boy that could get it, but that's exactly what I did. So spread across the army, eavy armor costs almost equaled the price of a Landraider (gulp!). That said, when the outflanking hordes of stealth suits, Shadowsun, and Kroot showed up, it was a godsend! Instead of having mobs simply evaporate (like the attached mek did), they actually absorbed a good bit of damage and were able to stay in the fight! Indeed, that's the only reason I had any troops left after turn 2! Would have been nice if GW discounted that a bit on regular boyz though. :-(

I added a nob and another grunt to my Tankbustas this week, bringing the mob up to 10 boyz.

Da Tankbustas. They did good, if not too much overall. Tank Hunter was not only long overdue,  but works well (though unfortunately, so do disruption fields). The mob of 10, in a Battlewagon, with a grot rigger, and a mek w/KFF and Gitfinda was something the tau could not crack (thankfully). Only used the gitfinda once when the wagon stayed put, but I in turn hit a Hammerhead 8 times! (3 disruption field saves later and we're moving on to another subject now...).

Stupid Mob rule!

Da Mob rule. Ah yes, the 800lb Gorilla in the room. Luckily, my boys were rolling low on their LD checks, and I didn't have to roll on that damned chart till the bottom of the last turn (we ended on turn 4 as I had to get up early for work). Yes the boss pole is essential as it saved my ass (I have more on order from ebay), and thanks again to the eavy armor, my warboss only managed to kill 1 of da boys whilst restoring order.

So in conclusion? Meh.

Aside from the eavy armor buff, and tankbustas not being entirely useless, i think my army is in much the same place it was before with the old dex. One thing of note, after building my army and looking at what was left out of my list, I have a lot of orks (and that's not even counting the equally massive Eleet Grot Mountin Duvishun)!