Rogue Stars, the 2nd round...

o/

My grumpy little alien Bob.

We interrupt all this Space Marine goodness for a game of Rogue Stars with my Beloved Wolfy and our buddy Hoss. We were all using the same crews as we did in our first game, though in between this game and that one, Hoss and Wolfy's crews had another, separate skirmish which she won handily.

The objectives were six randomly placed, and unmarked loot tokens. Three were duds and three were worth VPs if they were hauled off of the board by a player's character. So two rival pirate crews trying to steal stuff and a Star Cops crew trying to stop them and recover the soon-to-be-stolen goods. Well that sounds about right.

This isn't really a battle report, just a few photos and highlights. 

The battlefield from Wolfy's point of view.

Taco's typical run forward and shoot something! In this case, Hoss's 'super stealthy ninja chick' near the shuttle in the background, putting her out of action. Whilst Hoss's Star Cop Sergeant skulks around in the background.

Wolfy's Bruuna. That's such a badass looking mini, though I'm a little less fond of her after she gunned down my crew's leader Catalina and then tried to shoot my medic (Bucket) as the robot was administering first aid!

Wolfy's Malakite as she pumps yet more rounds into my already bullet riddled Taco. Taco did manage to graze her with a shot, but didn't stop her from grabbing that loot counter that she's standing on and fleeing the field with it.

Over the course of the game, I managed to successfully steal 2 loot counters via Bob and ZOTT! (my minion bot who I didn't manage to get a pic of) and I took 1 enemy model out of action (shot by Taco) for a total of 9 VPs.

Wolfy managed to steal one counter as well via Malakite, and she also took 2 enemy players out of action (including my leader, Catalina) also for a total of 9VPs, so the game ended in a tie.

Hoss's Cops didn't recover any of the loot or capture any pirates, but did take Wolfy's leader B'Yonsae out of action for 3VPs.

All of the wounded were either carried off or (in the case of my robot Taco), managed to limp off of the field. The recovery of wounded crew members is quite necessary, as those lost on the field of battle could potentially die afterwards.

Likewise, as we keep using the same crews, the end-of-game VPs turn into XPs to improve the crew for a later games. Rogue Stars is a fun little diversion from the other games we play, and the closest we've come to finding something akin to RPG campaign (well, in the vaguest of terms I guess).

As you might expect, fun was had by all, and we're hoping to play again next weekend.

My next Kill Team:

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On a totally different note, our local painting prodigy Mac (he's the guy I gave my Red Corsairs army to and his sidekick Zac) have finally started their own blog! Go and check it out: The Obsidian Tower 40k.

PRODUCTION! PRODUCTION!

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I have nothing on the Mordian 7th blog in terms of sheer numbers, but for me this qualifies as mass production:

These bolter grunts will fill out the ranks of my Alpha Legion army (which still does nothing to help me deal with tanks...) & moonlight as Blood Angels on occasion. In the rear you can see two of my WIP Angels Irrelevant (or whatever they will be called) Kill Team Marines.

Originality in 40k

Yeah, good luck with that...

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I was talking about custom space marine color schemes the other day with my buddy Sam. He had come up with a 'new' color scheme for his Kill Team marines, Purple and gold. Like the Hawk Lords I asked? and his shoulders just slumped. lol, no worries dude, finding an original color scheme in this game is nigh impossible. I mean hell, that's also the pre-heresy Emperor's Children colors...but whatever. So I just told him to go with what he liked and don't worry about it.

Not only is this an inconclusive list of Space Marine chapters (wait, where are the Smurfs?!), but its also an inconclusive list of the marines I've fielded over the years (which includes those missing Smurfs, the Storm Wardens...etc.).

Speaking of, I've also been searching for a chapter to use for my newly acquired 40k space marines for Kill Team ($20 for a NIB tac squad, why yes thank you!). However it seems like I'm just looking at the same old, same old, and/or rehashing something I've run before. In looking online for a bit of inspiration, I mis-read the name of the Angels Revenant and me being me I just ran with it, coming up with the following:

The Angels Irrelevant 

In keeping with their chapter name, this enigmatic chapter of Adeptus Astartes is all but unknown. An official search into the Imperial Archives of Terra, instigated by the Ordo Hereticus revealed little to nothing. It would seem that the the adepts responsible simply couldn't be bothered to record anything for posterity. No chapter lineage, founding date, home world, fleet and/or unit strength, only the rare and scattered reports of an unknown Astartes chapter engaging in small unit surgical assaults (indeed, they were the same such reports which lead to this investigation in the first place). The knowledge that there is more known of the so-called Legion of the Damned than there is of the Angels Irrelevant alarms Ordo Hereticus to no end… 

The only troop types thus far encountered have been Tactical and Scout marines, and never numbering more than a dozen or so individuals at any one time. Leading investigators to assume that their total Chapter strength to be less than one company. 

The name 'Angels Irrelevant' is only known due to a single, garbled vox intercept of inter-squad communications, believed to be rallying their battle brothers to prevail upon the enemy.

Livery is black and dark grayish-blue armor with a dull silver Aquilas. Tactical Arrows are displayed on the helmet and presumably display the company color. Scouts wear black armor with dark grayish-blue fatigues, but neither tactical marines nor Scouts show any other insignia aside from their chest plate Aquilas. 

Gee, that sounds familiar...

Curiously, a few tactical marines have been seen wearing Deathwatch heraldry. However inquiries into the matter sent to the Ordo Xenos have been ignored by the highest levels of the Ordo.

So will I use that? I'm so indecisive (like you couldn't already tell...), all I can say is: maybe. Then again I have a bunch of cool, custom decals that would work for the Black or Star Dragons so maybe I'll choose one of them instead. 

Or, maybe something all together different...who the fuck knows at this point.

Blood for the machine god!

o/

It seems that Bob and Screech beat up on me so badly in our game of Kill Team that I awoke Sunday feeling like my shoulder was destroyed. Seriously, no idea what happened to it, but luckily I already had this post's mini painted up and ready to go:

Actually, my techmarine-now-Forgelord was painted years ago. All I did this go round was add a 'IX' decal for the Blood Angels Legion, as there wasn't enough room for a BA icon, and added some 'blood for the blood god' paint onto his 'heavy chain blade'.

They match fairly closely despite the techmarine being painted years ago.

To that i added a new 30mm base with a creepy little cherubin-cyber familiar toting a rad grenade. Blood Angels need one less to wound in HTH combat. The rad grenade lowers the toughness of an enemy unit in the 1st round of HTH, so with the Forgelord attached to a tac squad, these boys will be wounding on a 2+ which is a frightening prospect for any enemy SM unit!

Which means they'll most likely just get shot off of the table instead.

Where the fluff meets the sprue...

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So…this is a little bit of a rant the percolated out of the comments that Greg Hess and I exchanged on my previous post regarding the new, plastic Mk III Space Marine sprues. Just give me a minute to practice my crotchety old geezer voice...

After assembling 40k space marines for for years, as well as the more recent Mk IVs from the Betrayal of Calth set, I (apparently wrongly) expected GW would follow the same tried and true route with their new Burning of Prospero Mk III tactical marines. Yeah I know, stupid on my part right? Right.

Complaint #1: Why in the hell are the legs in 2 pieces? 

Wait what?

Seriously, aside from taking longer to assemble, and taking up more room on the sprue, what does that add? The poses aren't more dynamic. Hell, if anything they're more static than the norm! (see Complaint #4 below) Forgeworld could make the legs in one piece, but GW could not…apparently do so in plastic. Also the mold lines are quite hard to remove due to the myriad collection of rivets all over the place. Greggles has subjected himself to correcting that nightmare whereas I have decided that they're not visually bad enough to warrant me doing more damage than good (to the rivets) to bother trying to remove them. 

Complaint #2: Why in the hell are the back packs in 2 pieces?

Um...seriously?

Yes apparently the legs weren't enough, meaning now we have 2-part backpacks. No idea why that was necessary either, its not like they're a really funky design or anything. The design is nothing worse than the CSM backpacks. No, they were just made to take up twice as much space on the sprue for no conceivable reason. Makes me wonder if this was an attempt to make life difficult for ebay bitz resellers that failed or something...

Complaint #3: Why aren't there different heavy weapon options?

Sure the heavy bolter looks cool (I would know, I have a dev squad full of em), but we all know that MLs are much better at killing marines and vehicles. The ML (or something else) was no doubt omitted due to the extra amount of space that was wasted by the legs and backpacks.

Complaint #4: They all have really static poses.

Swivel your helms to the left, then swivel 'em to the right...

Yes, yes, assault marines and Wulfen aside (do the Wulfen really even qualify as marines?), Spess Mahreens aren't known for super dynamic poses. That said, let's give a big and hearty WELCOME BAAAAAACK to the 1980s and its super statically posed Space Marines! I'm not saying I wanted more Karate Kid posed minis (that Wulfen is bad enough to not be repeated), but at least the Mk IVs had some possibility beyond just swiveling the head from one side to another, the Mk IIIs? Well, yeah that's just about all they offer. Hasn't technology evolved since the the days of spin-casted lead minis? Thanks to cutting edge design, we now have CAD, injection molding, and the same static poses as 30 years prior. Woot!

We all know that fluff-wise, the Mk IV armor was an improvement over the older Mk III design, but as a fluff-player I have to say:

 'For fuck's sake GW, did you have to include that little bit of history in the damned sprues?' 

Whilst I like the armor's aesthetic appearance, I'm sure you've figured out by now that I'm less than pleased with these new minis. I like em, but I also don't like em...I dunno, I suppose that any future 30k tactical marine purchases will likely be either more Mk IVs, or else Mk VIs poached out of 40k tac squad box.

Like a shot out of left field!

o/

On the red sand, this guy's actually camouflaged!

Here's my Blood Angels test model. This is one of five (sounds like something from the Borg's collective, lol) Chinese recruits, purchased via ebay back around the time that the Betrayal of Calth had just been released. I wanted Mk III marines, more than Mk IV's, but couldn't afford the Forgeworld originals. The quality was decent enough at the time, but I never actually built any of them as I was working on the Mk IV's.

Then the Burning of Prospero came out, and I bought a single Mk III mini via ebay and yeah…side-by-side, the quality of the plastic mini vs. my Chinese knockoffs was startling. As such, they were punted out of the 'to-build' queue and all but forgotten until I drew up an army for my 30k game with Bob. In double checking my numbers, I found I was one mini short, and so I built this one to fill that hole in my roster. 

The Chinese recruit prior to his first death in combat...

Following that game, I went back to build the rest. I knew they had issues, but figured I could get 2-3 more out the remaining four, but they were so poorly cast that during my attempted assembly I threw them all out in a fit of nerd rage! In hindsight, I ought to have kept the helmets to decorate bases, but oh well. That's my only regret at this point.

At the time of purchase I wanted something cheap, and that is exactly what I got.

Skipping back to the present, I figured I'd paint this mini up as a squad of plastic Mk III's was just purchased via ebay. Had this mini not been painted prior to their arrival its likely to have joined its brethren in the trash dump! That said (and for whatever stupid reason), I didn't want this mini mixed in (again) with my Alpha Legionnaires. Thus, on a whim I painted him as a Blood Angel. 

Old, fugly pic. This mini will
be rebased and get a BA decal.

The intent was to give my non-denominational Techmarine a new lease on life as a BA Forgelord. Add in a tac squad and possibly my half-painted predator redone in BA colors (more on that in a later post) and that would make for a nice little loyalist allied contingent to back up my Outremar. 

I lack the numbers necessary to siphon models off of my Alpha Legion army to build a new faction, however if I put the bolter grunts to the back of the painting queue, as bare plastic marines they can fight for either Legion. Works for me since I have close to 20 tactical support and devastator Alpha Legionnaires to paint anyways.

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For my personal reference: this paint recipe is waaaay simpler than the one for my Alpha Legionnaires. Indeed, I was able to match my Techmarine which was originally painted who knows how long ago!

Blood Angel paint recipe:

Base coat of Mephiston Red, trimmed in whatever bolt gun metal is called now.

Then slather on Agrax Earthshade. 

Once dry dirty & touch up as normal.