The battle of the greyish armies...

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Ultramarines holding the line. 

I was able to get another (sort of) game in this past weekend with Mike and Screech. However, as we started late (9pm), the game ended the bottom of turn two. Three factions, variable initiative and a central objective that no one was ever able to get to (anything that got close was killed in short order). Here's how it all went down...

Mike's admech, supported by a 3D printed armiger that looks a bit large to me, though with no other knights on the board, what did it really matter?

Screech's Cadians. His most notable 'action' of the night was to utter the line 'Mine's smaller so it fits in better!' (and no, I'm going to give you any context for that statement).

I had intended to field the Tau, but couldn't (and still can't) find my tau infantry case. 50+ minis short of an army, it was the Smurfs again, this time with my small, allied IG detachment, led by an inquisitor. I'll fill in the guard's full backstory at a later date, once they're all finally painted.

I won the initiative for turn one and the marines on my left flank advanced at speed. The hellblasters fired thru the terrain scaring the hell out of Screech's IG when those assault 3 plasma guns opened up! 

The conscript platoon 'took the hill' on their way towards the objective (the smurf container in the middle). Their platoon commander issued an order, but these blithering idiots were too terrified of actual combat to bother listening. Collectively I think my shooting killed one enemy guardsman on turn 1. 

Get a good look at these five who opened fire on the Mechanicus, getting their attention and summarily getting obliterated for their efforts. 

Screech's Chimera advances towards the objective and my conscripts.

Meanwhile his Valkyrie, supported by lascannons unload on the Armiger inflicting considerable damage.

Chimera? No, no that was a proxied Hellhound. The guy's been fielding Cadians for close to a decade and is still proxying tanks. Schmuck.  As you can see, in the end that conscripts were reduced to four broken individuals. They thought about running until one was executed which did nothing to help their cause. 

The mechanicus advance and unleash hell! Hammering the Valk, killing the 'hellhound' and wiping out my combat squad of Intercessors. 

The second round's initiative started with Screech and ended with me, not good for the Smurfs and friends. Here we see Screech's guard in their turn two pivot movement phase. 

The valk continues to strafe the mechanicus lines, and it, along with his lascannons finish off the armiger. Further tank fire would thin out my hellblasters, assault intercessors and drop one of Mike's chicken walker things. 

Mike's walkers punished Screech's tanks in return, taking out the Medusa. The Kataphron finished off the Valkyrie as well as my last few conscripts. 

In my last turn, the hellblasters took a few wounds off of the other proxied hellhound. Softening it up for the assault intercessors who dinged it up a bit more. 

Bereft of their conscripted meat shields, the Imperial noble (counts as lord commissar) and platoon commander were going to sneak off, that is until they turned to see Mr. Inquisitor right behind them. Instead they advanced in futility towards the objective, firing their laspistols to little effect. Whereas the inquisitor smote the nearest of Mike's walkers, taking 2 wounds off of the machine. 

At that point, it was damned near midnight and so we called it a draw. No VPs for anybody, but we were able to roll some dice, kill some stuff and have some fun, so it was all good. 

Soul Drinker Test Model

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Everyone's favorite heretical 'freedom fighters' fighting for and against both the Imperium and themselves (depending on which of Ben Counter's novels you're reading at the time).

No, no...this is not a new project. Rather its an old one that's finally getting some paint. Indeed, I started this one way back in 2019, and never really did much with them as I didn't like renegade marines armed with Goliath stub cannons (are they shotguns? are they bolters?) yeah that mainly. 

My can of primer clogged which adversely effected this a few other minis. Looks downright horrid in these pics but isn't so bad when viewed with the eye rather than the harsh magnification of the camera.

I liked the look of the conversions overall, just never the weaponry. I once tried them as actual stub cannons as well which is really a terrible gun in 40k (and rightly so for black market ganger weaponry). I didn't like the Relictors' color scheme on them either, also throwing them into their long hiatus.

I mean seriously, how can you not like purple armored marines? Given that that's my favorite color, it kinda baffles me that I've never really bothered painting any marines purple outside of one or two Emperor's Children models for 30k.

Recently however I discovered the Goliath Weapons Upgrade packs had bolters (2) as it turns out per box. I would need (3) and so I found one set of bolter arms and ordered them in amidst an order of other bitz for some of my pointless side projects that I'm so fond of. 

This now bolter equipped mini looks soooo much better me thinks. Thus, I'll get that upgrade box and kit out the other two bolter grunts in my squad of five. That and likely switch my heavy bolter gunner (who has SM scout arms) to have either the cool Goliath meltagun or flamer arm as well!

Some changes for Da Groop

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That the blurred out yoof in the background is suffering from as much angst as his GorkaMorka counterpart here on the left!

Recently Neverness inquired about our (usually) annual Orks vs. Orks game. I had no idea what my army totaled up to  using the new codex, nor did I even know what was even still included in my collection. Thus, I dug out Da boyz, and tallied everything up (minus da bomma which I'll get to in a bit) and they clocked in at about 850ish points. 

Looking to up that total to 1k, I perused eBay and found a decently painted mob of 10 shoota boys, lead by a nob with a slugga and power klaw, as well as a rokkit launcha grunt for a whopping $17.50! 

There were also three extras thrown in: the above shoota boy who was headless, a poorly painted GorkaMorka boy, and an old OOP WHFB Black Ork with 2 hand weapons on a square base. 

I'm gonna get you sucka!

As you can see I repainted da GorkaMorka yoof (tis a bit shiny in these pics as I hadn't yet matte varnished him). He's pretty well equipped for just a yoof, meaning he likely knifed a Bad Moon yoof in da back (in typical Blood Axe fashion) and stole his gear.  

For the headless ork, I scrounged up a primed spare out of my bitz box, glued it in place and painted it up. The result is a decent enough match to the original paint as can be seen above. The square baser was given to Frankie as a test mini to try and see if he likes painting minis or not. That'll likely be another post in the future.

Anyways, this new mob rounds Da Groop out to bout 1k, or at least it did until the new point values were released. I'll wait till Battlescribe updates before I see if that made any difference or not. 

Da camo trousers puts the new mob squarely in da Blood Axe camp!

As for da Bomma (bleh, I hope he repaints everything but the krew), 7 years ago Admiral Drax held a contest on his blog, I won and as such he painted my Tankbustas for me as my prize. That popped up as a Facebook memory and I asked if he had the 7 year itch to paint some more Orks. 

To my amazement he did! After some discussion, we decided on my Blitzbomma which I had more or given upon some ways back. I didn't care for the direction my color scheme was going in, and not knowing what to do, I put it in its battlefoam tray and forgot about it. There it has languished for almost two years now.

Anyways, Drax and I settled on an expedited completion date of 1-3 years. So, it'll take a bit for my 'mediocre commission' as he calls it. Late last week da grots loaded up and filled da long ways fyool tanks and da bomma iz now flyin' over da sea for its extended deployment to da Ooh-kay! 

Drax's refused any compensation for this wonderous deed aside from enjoying the challenge of the project. Not content with that though, I opted for at least a little way of saying thank you. Meaning that hhere's an extra bit of kit on a one-way trip included in da box. I even gift wrapped it!

Who knows, maybe Drax will keep us updated on the project on his long-neglected blog...

NOCF Ukraine Raffle Warlocks

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Well, these are pretty! I'm still thrilled that I actually won something (two somethings it turns out). While I no longer have any Iyanden painted Eldar minis of my own, I'm sure that these two will no doubt serve valiantly in my multi-colored Corsair horde at some future date. 

As I'm sure you've gathered, I've not done a whole lot of painting here of late. Typical summertime hobbying lull. It's daylight till almost 9pm, and usually the evening hours are the best time to be outside due to the heat. 

Despite a valiant packing job, the spear hand snapped off in shipping, though as you can see it was easily repaired.

My old Iyanden minis would have been ashamed were they ever to have stood too close to these guys.

That said, I have painted a very little, but I'll save those minis for my next post as these two simply put them to shame!

Skitarii Color scheme change and another Surprise!

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As my IG Conscript platoon is/was starting to become a mind numbing slog, I decided to paint something else to break up the monotony. Pleased with the recent performance of my little Admech contingent's debut (before getting all but wiped off of the table), I thought I'd paint another mini up. 

The aura of radiation leakage is working wonders on that little tuft.

However one of the reasons I had stopped after painting just one and a half minis previously was the color scheme was both laborious and just kinda okay looking to me (sorry I don't have a 'finished' pic of that WiP mini handy). 

The mini above however I cranked out fairly quickly & easily once I'd painted over the prior, partial paint job in all black.  

That decal implies a questionable allegiance to the Imperium...

Its principally black, leadbelcher and brazen brass, with red for hoses and a handful of others for minor details which don't warrant any concern for consistency. I washed it lightly with Agrax Earthshade and drybrushed afterwards with bleached bone. It is simple but respectable look I think. 

It would appear that the IG heavy bolter or autocannon gunner died with his weapon...

The uncropped version of the first pic above which was photobombed by our 85lb Australian Shepard and his half deflated soccer ball in the background!

In other news, Saturday morning I was checking my email, saw the ubiquitous 'YOU ARE A WINNER!' and almost deleted the mail out of hand. Luckily my eye caught the NOCF and whoa wait a minute! Turns out I won a pair of Iyanden Warlocks (who's colors are the same as the Ukraine's) in this year's raffle! I've been entering for several yers now at about $20-$30 at a time without ever really expecting to win. 

It's always for a good cause and ya never know, there's always a chance. Well, apparently this year was my chance, huzzah! Here's the full winner's video here. I'll post pics when my new minis arrive which ought to be soon as I just received the shipping notification from the USPS. 

Cheese, Smelly Cheese & the Smurfs

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This here is my blog, and if I want to call both of my opponents cheesy while claiming not to be myself, then you can just accept that as gospel and not some sort of Imperial propaganda. 

Just saying, lol. 

I met up again with Rob and Mike for another game of 40k, I tried to lure in Neverness, but he's still lost in the warp it seems. 1K each, central objective, (as it turned out, not so) random initiative and firing into enemy combats, just like the last time. 

The smurfs deployed in my center. Not pictured but on their right were 5 hellblasters, Captain Horridus and a 7-strong firstborn tactical squad from one of the reserve companies.  

On my left was my first ever deployment of the Adeptus Mechanicus. They're from one of the unnamed custom forge worlds and their bonus was +6" to their carbine's range. The painted one is Ordo Mechanum Inquisitor MS-D05, and to his left is Techno Archanologist 808-Linum, as well as an X-101 class servitor.

Mike as you can see brought the 3D printed cheese. The wraith guard with shield and spear is a proxied Farseer as he has yet to find a file for one of those. 

With his Necrons still snoozing away somewhere, Rob opted for his good ol' Nurgle psychic shenanigans list (though as we would later learn, the Eldar had shenanigans in spades as well).

Turn one and I made a general 6" advance with the assault intercessors advancing 11" right into range of the Wraithguard who summarily slaughtered them to a man!

The Legions of Nurgle reveal themselves enmasse (to me anyways, I'm sure Mike could see them all just fine from his side of the table).

The Marines decide to stay in place and just blaze away ineffectually at the wraith guard from afar, wounding 1 in exchange for another dead marine or two thanks to the wraith lord.

I was rather enjoying the 24" ranged carbines (ineffective as they were against wraith guard), Mike however was not amused and removed that squad from the board. 

With bolters proving worthless, the hellblasters softened up the nearest squad of plague marines, before sending in the firstborn to finish them off. While a successful endeavor, this would be a multi-turn brawl that would take a marine or two of mine with them.

Rob had gotten to the objective (the ruined building in the middle) first, earning him a VP or two. It was also at this point that the Smurfs and plague marines pondered joining forces against the nigh unkillable Eldar. Mike's dice were rolling good and shrugging off most everything we threw at him. 

Realizing that the X-101 had a grav-gun meant it died next with the inquisitor taking 3 wounds as well. In fact, the only Inquisitorial thing that MD-D05 would do before dying was iron willing an Eldar psychic power off. 

After some more generally fruitless shooting, Rob's Daemon prince and the surviving death shrouds prepare to charge into melee...

...however the wraith guard overwatched and using some side-boarded 6's via the strands of fate of some such chicanery, they obliterated Rob's daemon prince!

The first born having finally dispatched the last plague marine advance and engage the stupid poxwalkers who all but one die as usual. The rest of my surviving army shoots at the lead wraith guard squad reducing them from 3 models to just 1. bleh!

I'm sure that the eradication pistol is a damned fine weapon when it's shooting at something that isn't toughness 8!

As the pox walkers pop up out of the ground like daisies to further bog down the firstborn, more terminators wade into the scrum on the other side of the objective. At least nobody was getting any points for it now. 

808-Linum charges in to meet his destiny...

...and suffers 2 wounds for if troubles. We later learned that had Mike read his rules properly, 808-Linum would instead have been reduced to a fine mist!

The plague marines and firstborn exchange a few potshots but little becomes of it. 

The wraith guard turn away from my smurfs to engage with the far more dangerous terminators in their midst. 

As usual, the entire surviving smurf contingent unloads on the wraith guard, killing the last one from the front squad and wounding another.  

Well that was fun despite feeling like I was totally outclassed! The all wraith guard list has always been the cheesiest in any edition when it has been available (the only time I've crushed it was with an IG armored company). 

That said, to his credit Mike only chose it because it looked cool rather than knowing how good it was. Had he actually read more than just their most basic rules and stats they would've been so much worse!

We weren't sure of the total VP count, Rob had 1 or 2, and neither of us had any so the point was moot, and the Plague marines claimed the victory. 

A little more meat for the grinder...

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Their bases are decorated with the detritus left behind when Guard units that were far better trained and equipped than these schmucks were previously lost in battle. I'm sure that such realizations will work wonders for their morale...

I completed five more guardsmen over the weekend, four lasgrunts and their platoon sergeant. I'll be running the lasgrunts as conscripts, whereas sergeant Tharkins will serve as platoon commander. This whole lot is technically the palace guard of a Hasslefree Miniatures mini that I'll be using as an Imperial Noble  which will be fielded as a  'counts as' Commissar (I'll explain it all later in a future post), once I figure out where it's mini case is buried in the basement. Speaking of, the mountain o' boxes is dwindling, so hopefully you'll not hear me whining about that for much longer.

Sorry Zzzzz, they're still not carrying enough stuff for war. 

That said, with Tharkins at the helm, these (along with their still unpainted brethren) can for now serve as an allied but nameless local PDF combat patrol of whatever war torn world my Ultramarine army shows up to do battle on. Whilst I have three separate marine armies, these guys are based in the same manner as the Smurfs so will likely fight with them most of the time. I almost never remember to use marine doctrines, so adding in a little bit of allied cannon fodder technically won't cost me anything rules-wise. 

I plan to use the Disciplined Fire regimental doctrine (rapid fire at 18" rather than 12" as is normal) for these guys. However, due to their poor training and inexperience, I plan to relabel that in my army lists as Panic Fire. 

Also, before Neverness anybody asks: No, this will not be morphing into an army in its own right. Especially since I'm just a little bit past the halfway point of 21 guardsmen and it's already turning into a slog. Were I inclined to start a stand alone IG force, I have 30-40 Chaos cultists, Blackstone Fortress traitor IG and an unbuilt tank or two to form the basis of an army should the notion strike me.