The Trophies of Judgement

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Amongst a multitude of half started/finished projects, I managed to finish at least one model here recently: my 30k Night Lords Vigilator in Scout armor (aka: Mk I Thunder Armor).

Note the pasty white skin typical of a native born Nostroman...or Neverness. lol!

The Night Lords Legion specific rules have the option of giving an independent character the 'Trophies of Judgement' for +5 Points. These give the character the Fear USR and are represented by grisly trophies of vanquished foes adorning their armor. In this case, the trophies are represented by a Salamanders Space Marines' skull (shoulda turned that around in hindsight) mounted on a spike, along with his victim's helmet, and pack adorned with a cloak of Firedrake scales (meaning he was probably a Salamander of significant rank).

On an unrelated and sad note, this model was bestowed with one of the highest honors a miniature can have: it was washed with the last dregs of my Devlin Mud supply.

:-(

Sorry, we took the weekend off.

Thus, no geekery was had. That said, we've been having a good visit with my Dad and Stepmother, and of course my Grandparents. Aside from doing some stuff around my grandparents' house for them, we went for a hike at Grayson Highlands state park in VA. Here's a few pics:

The namesake of the 'waterfall trail' on which we hiked.

Not all of the trail was nice and level as above (yes this is the trail, adjacent to the waterfall above in fact). That said, this near vertical mess was easier to traverse than it looks.

My GF and I in the obligatory selfie.

KILL TEAM!!!

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With family in town we'll not be making it to the FLGS for some gaming this weekend. That said, Jim, free of his murderous schedule of attending college and working 2 jobs for the evening, came over for dinner and a test run of Kill Team. My GF and I were running Tau vs. Jim's Blood Angels-turned-Black...erm, Red Templars as he forgot his BA codex. We had the Headhunters scenario, but lacking a turn counter, the scenario went out the window instead turning into a battle to the death!

Jim, concentrating on recalling rules he's either not used in a year, or simply not ever used at all.

The Fem Fa'Tau's Commander, in obvious good spirits at the battle's start!

The advancing Tau forces consisted of a 50/50 mix of Kroot and drones. The Kroot were chaffing at the Tau's insistence of having the drones in command (experimental AI's...grumble, grumble...).

Red ones die fasta?

Checking for line of sight, ya gotta leave it to Jim as he has all the cool toys!

Not satisfied with the flashlight, he switches to the laser pointer...

The horde advances cautiously...

Target sighted! Though it seems that no amount of Kroot rifle fire could fell that bastard!

A 'shield' drone suicidally charges into the enemy (with predictable results).

Leaving the wreckage behind, the marines advance looking for more targets.

And outflanking marine with a flamer (soon to be named 'Barbeque') roasts a Kroot!

Following Jim's lead, we decided to leave the bodies where they fell.

A Kroot down's the enemy leader. At this point the enemy was 'broken' and LD tests soon took a heavy toll amongst the enemy's ranks!

The Kroot sniper is downed shortly thereafter.

Despite 4 Kroot rapid firing into the fucker, he wouldn't die and instead toasted two more Kroot. The result was a now 'broken' Tau force. LD tests inflicted horrendous losses amongst the Tau forces, luckily the 'Leader Drone' rolled Zealot making it fearless.

The two lone gunmen who refuse to die or run away...

With all of the remaining Kroot fleeing the field (bloody mercenaries) and a few drones following suit, the Leader Drone charges the last two Marines!!!

Eventually, the drone was felled, but it managed to go about 2 full turns in HTH before dying!

 In the end, Jim won with his two surviving marines. Much fun was had during our 1st kill team mission (even though we ignored the mission half way thru). Good food, good company, and good times, can't ask for any more than that can you?

...and the terrain just keeps on coming!

o/

Just another quick shoutout to Patrick at our FLGS: Hobbytown USA who just keeps cranking out some awesome terrain for us to play on! Last night we walked in, started chatting with the gang and---OOH! New table! lol. Here are a few pics:

We (my GF & I) got to play on this table with Rob Saturdy night. I was running an Eldar Corsair allied contingent whilst she was running my Exodites. It was her first run at using Eldar and she really liked the mobility vs. her Tau, but the psychic powers really threw her for a loop. Given that the 7th ed psychic rules are very different, its probably best to just teach her those rules from the outset (even though I'm not too impressed with what I've seen with 7th ed thus far). Regardless, Rob threw in the towel in turn six, as Typhus wading thru anything he came in contact with was the only thing working for his plague marines.

Left to right: Me, Rob, Billy, Rosco, Scott and Joah.

Also, in a both unexpected and unplanned event, a bunch of the old crowd from when I moved to TN some 15ish years ago all showed up and we took a coupe of group photos, as who knows how long it'll be before we're all in the same place again...

A few new toys for the Fem Fa'Tau...

....oh stop it and get your minds out of the gutter!

lol, just a quikie post this time, forgot its Wednesday night and time for a new post. Anyways, I've purchased (or just assembled stuff that we've had in a box for a long while now) a few new additions to my GF's Fem Fa'Tau army and have been working on them this week. Ironically she's going to give my Exodites a try this weekend and I'll be fielding her Tau.

So here's what we have:

A new Piranha (the green is just primer).

Pulse Accelerator and Grav-Inhibitor drones for the Pathfinders...

A pathfinder with Shadow Sun's unhelmeted head, and a (now defunct) Paulson games Sashimono made for an easy Dark Strider conversion.

The Red Corsairs in all of their Glory!!!

So, as some of you may recall, a little over 2 years ago, I was given an amazingly converted Red Corsair army by one of my readers (a concept that still boggles my mind!). However aside from painting a model or two, I never did anything with it and eventually passed it off to Mac, one of my friends here locally. Mac is, at most maybe 19, and is easily the fastest the painter in our group. Likewise he's arguably the best painter we have as well. Indeed, if you'd like some of his painting tips, check this out.

Mac is a bit of an elitist in that he won't bring an army to the FLGS unless its fully painted, so we haven't seen the Corsairs till this past weekend. In their battlefield debut, he fielded 1k of them against my GF's FemFa'Tau (and was victorious in doing so). Here's a gallery of the minis:

You can see why this guy left the Space Wolves: he brushes his hair!

He added some Raptors to the army, and the flesh hounds function as spawn.

Looks like there's another Fallen Angel to add to the Dark Angels' list...

Love the way the red just pops on all of these guys!

Check out that free hand work!

The full 1k. He still has another 500 or so points to go!

Okay seriously, given the speed with which he paints these models, and considering the level of quality, I think Mac ought to look into starting a painting service in order to finance his hobby (at his age, this game is beyond his pay scale!). I mean, wouldn't you guys pay to have an army that looks like this???

Warhammer 30k preparations

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This week I've managed to squeeze in a little bit of hobby time. In doing so I cleaned up my original predator a smidge in preparation for giving 30k a try this weekend with Scott. I also added a few bits and bobs. Spikes with the heads of those victims of Istvaan IV, a spare fuel drum, and a havoc launcher which I acquired in last weekend's game night bitz swap.

Headlights? Night lords don't need no headlights! (The more I looked at the Alpha Legion rules the less I liked them...)

I plan to plasticard over the sides (including the hatches) to look like spaced armor. Plus that will save me from trying to scrape the old dried glue crud from around the hatches. In case you're wondering there's a crew access hatch under the fuel drum, best not to suffer a penetrating hit though, as odds of getting out of the inferno before dying is debatable.

For all the Tim Conway fans out there, its: DORF ON ROBOTS!!!

Another fun addition has been my Magos Dominus to lead my Mechanicum forces. Not wanting a techmarine to lead the droids (proxied Necron Immortals for this first outing of 30k). I also don't like any of the engineseer minis aside from the old GW SKULLZ models which go for exorbitant prices on ebay. So after some perusing ebay I found an old, and reasonably priced Chaos Squat in exo-armor (the Nids hadn't reached the galaxy yet).

Being the runt that he is, I decided to outfit him with an 'Abeyant'. That's a mobile unit that give the 'magos' move thru cover, it will not die, very bulky, hardened armor and an additional wound. Most important of all, it means he'll be able to see over walls too!

:-D