Emperor's Children Master of Signal

I thought I would share a project after a long absence of posts. After seeing how effective the Master of Signals is in previous games of 30K that I've played I decided that I could really use one myself. The barrage ability can be devastating to the other side and allowing one of my heavy weapon squads to hit on 2+ is the icing on the cake.

I wanted something a little different than the Forge World kit in Mk 4 armor. I am partial to Mk 2 so I used that for the body and an officer upgrade kit for the head. I prefer the slightly raised effect of etched brass for my characters so that was a must for this marine. The plasma pistol and the lightning claw come from the Mk 3 plastic marines. The finishing touch, which really makes this mini stand out as the Master of Signals is the backpack, which comes from the 40K Cadian infantry box.

My EC army has grown quite a bit in the years since I started on them in 2012 and I am very happy with the way they look, despite not winning very much. I plan on doing some follow up articles covering some of the challenges I've had and the solutions to those.

Warhammer 30K Team Game and the Magnus Death Star

In my latest 30K game I teamed up with my brother who plays an Ultramarines drop assault army. We faced off against an Iron Warriors and Thousand Sons duo. The game size was 5000 points a side with each player running an Age of Darkness Legion Astartes detachment and each side had one super heavy. I had a knight errant and my opponents had a legion typhon.

Bottom of turn 2. Ultramarines and Emperor's Children flank attack

The game fluctuated back and forth between who was holding on to the most objectives and it looked like the Emperor’s Children/Ultramarines duo would come out ahead. We had pushed really hard on the right flank which had the most valuable objectives. I think the turning point for my team was when Magnus entered the fight with his 10 man Terminator bodyguard. With the right psychic powers they are able to turn into the toughest nut to crack in the history of 30K. Each terminator can achieve a re-rollable 2++ save. If Magnus gets a chance to shoot he can fire as a D weapon most of the time. This allowed him to smoke my Spartan and knight errant back to back. It didn’t take long for my army to fall apart after this and my Ultramarine ally wasn’t faring much better either.

Eidolon makes a last stand with the remainder of his assault squad

My marines hopelessly defend the objective marker against Magnus's onslaught

In the end my team lost the battle due to my team not being able to handle psychic powers very well. What is one to do? I think I need to bite the bullet and find a way to write in the Sisters of Silence into my army. I have wanted to go fluffy with my list, but I have been stomped by the Magnus Deathstar one too many times now. I think psychic power heavy lists in 30K don’t have many counters other than the sisters so I feel compelled to try an allied unit in my next game and see how it goes.

Astral Claws Project Part 2

Despite the longer than normal breaks between my postings I am still working on the Astral Claws. The latest addition to my army is a unit of assault terminators. I envisioned them striding alongside Lugft Huron wreaking face.

Eventually I would like to have all of them mounted in a Land Raider Crusader since that is the best means of taking assault terminators into combat. It would be a great fire magnet, albeit expensive one.

I had a lot of fun painting this unit up and it was a nice break from painting ordinary line marines. The blue and the gun metal layered easily over the black primer. The only challenging part is the gold bits. I still use an old pot of citadel Burnished Gold, which is reaching the end of it's life sadly. I have to start with Vallejo copper, the work my way up to Shining Gold, and finally to Burnished with some 50/50 Mithral Silver highlights. I use plenty of Nuln Oil wash over 90 percent of the model.

If I am able to keep my motivation towards this project going I hope to finish up my line marines and start building up some transports. If I capitulate it will be because I couldn't resist the lure of the Genestealer Cult!

Warhammer: Age of Sigmar first battle and initial reaction

Age of Sigmar has been a contentious topic as of late since this has been one of the most drastic rules reboots since Warhammer 40K 3rd edition. I thought that I would withhold my judgment until I at least had a chance to play a game to see what it was like. I can remember not liking 3rd edition 40K when I first saw the rules, but in time I grew to like it and couldn't quite justify sticking with 2nd edition 40K. The only thing to do now is play a game.

I had a friend over and we had to establish some ground rules since AoS is a really loose set of rules. We based our forces off of a leaked set of tourney rules used by a Games Workshop store. We were allowed to take up to 5 Battlescrolls, max of 2 characters, no duplicate named characters, and only one monster per army. Each unit could have no more than 15 wounds. Seemed fair enough!

I decided to field a purely Tzeentchian daemon army while my friend brought his Skaven Plague Monk army.

My army consisted of:

Lord of Change
Tzeentch Herald on Disk
Pink Horrors (10)
Flamers (7)
Screamers (5)

 

My opponents army consisted of:

Lord Skrolk
Plague Furnace
Plague Monks (15)
Plague Monks (15)
Plague Monks (15)








We set up per the normal instruction and deployed along the short table edges. The Skaven finished setting up first so they got the first turn. It was a sudden death mission because the Skaven outnumbered me by over 1/3. I wanted to utilize the mobility of my army and made the sudden death choice of having my Herald on disk survive 6 turns. Knowing this after set-up didn't give the Skaven many options so they all moved forth knowing that the target was within my deployment zone.

My 1st turn was more eventful. Most daemons have the ability to allow chaos wizards to summon that unit being fielded. I decided to summon another Lord of Change since I had a spare in my collection. My roll was successful and much to the chagrin of my opponent I got a free greater daemon. To add insult to injury I was also able to summon a unit of 3 flamers. I moved the rest of my army into position to delay the Skaven horde and kept my Herald back on the arcane graveyard that helped with spellcasting.

On the next turn we had to roll off. I was hoping to get the high roll thus getting back to back turns, which would be quite devastating for my opponent. I ended up losing the roll and waiting for the Skaven to position for my impending charge.

The Tzeentch daemons set forth on turn two and I was going for a strong right hook with most of my army while my horrors bought me time on the other side of the battlefield. I had no successful summoning on turn two, but the flames caused 6 wounds to a nearby plaque monk unit before the screamers charged in to cause another 6 wounds. The Skaven didn't cause any casualties to my screamers so my battleshock roll was an auto success. The plague monks weren't so fortunate. They auto failed due to the high amount of wounds taken and lost the remainder of their unit.

Turn 3 saw the Skaven counter attack. Again, they won the roll off and got to start the round. The next nearest unit of plague monks charged my screamers and managed to cause a fair amount of wounds. I had two screamers left to counter attack causing three wounds. After battleshock I had one screamer left and the Skaven lost 3 more plague monks. On my 3rd turn I disengaged my last screamer to do a fly by attack and positioned to wither the plague monks with another round of shooting attacks.

It was by the end of turn 3 that my opponent wanted to concede the game. With having taken so many losses and not able to keep up with my summoning he didn't want to continue the uphill battle. I was in agreement. My army was cheesy mainly because of the summoning. It was too easy to pull off.

Unfortunately without points this system lends itself to some easy abuse. It may work out well right out of the box, but for established players of Warhammer more fine tuning will definitely need to take place. I don't feel completely negative about the game however. It does have some merit. I like how it's fast paced and the rules are free.

Here's a quick summary of the pros and cons:

PRO

Free rules
Fast paced
Easy to comprehend

CON

No structure for army building
Over simplified all phases of the game
Too much randomness

After the game I had a conversation with my friend and we both felt that Age of Sigmar would have been a good addition to the GW lineup of games, but it is not a suitable replacement for the Warhammer Fantasy we have played all these years. I won't be playing any more AoS for now. I hope to see more structure added to the game and then I will reconsider. If no changes are made I foresee a lot of veteran players dropping off in favor of other systems.

Warhammer Rumours, Changes, and How To Deal With It

Oh what to do about changes to your favorite game or hobby...

 

There have been some rumors flying around to big changes to Warhammer Fantasy Battles, a game that I have played since 5^th edition and actually started liking since 6^th edition. I have seen many changes since I’ve been involved in this hobby and some have been positive and some not so much (still not happy with the current skirmisher rules). Despite my instant dislike of the prospect (if true) of moving the bases over to rounds instead of squares/rectangles I’m trying to take a balanced look of what that might mean. Will the system be more flexible/lenient for basing like early editions of 40k were? I remember when it wasn’t an issue to have bikes or daemons on rectangular bases. As a matter of fact you could still find old ‘eavy Metal pics out there showing the combination of basing styles. Back then daemons were only supplied with squares so unless you wanted to buy separate rounds then you just used what came with the kit.

 

Will I be unusable in future rules incarnations?

 

 

Supposedly, per the rumors using square bases won’t be prohibited. If this is true then that’s fine, but one of my concerns is how the community will adapt the increasing absence of squares over time. Last time I played in a tournament (which was a few years ago) basing standards were enforced for 40K, which meant I couldn’t use any of my old daemons unless I rebased my models. NO THANKS! I don’t know for sure what the GW stance of this was, but they definitely moved away from the tournament scene over time and the community filled the void. If I were a big tournament player these days like I used to be years ago I would be very anxious about what this could mean for my Dark Elves. I had recently put a lot of work into them and the idea of having a major change that limits how they play in the near future bothers me to the point of halting all planned work I was doing on anything Warhammer. 

 

Back in the day squares and circles fought side by side...

 

I’m at a just wait and see mindset right now. This could all be blown out of proportion and we could just be suffering from the “sky is falling" syndrome. One option that I’m considering is maybe sticking with my favorite edition of Warhammer. I still play AD&D 2^nd edition. I didn’t like what happened to 4^th edition D&D and was tired of feeling compelled to have to purchase the newest set of rules. I liked the wonkiness of 2^nd edition rules and I have a group who is willing to play them too. We make changes to the rules as needed to fit our group. If I were to do this with Warhammer I would miss out on some of the new shiny minis, but at least I wouldn’t feel like I had to buy a new edition every few years to stay current; just some food for thought.

Hobby Tip: Basing Before Primer Application

 

 

 

I have seen a lot of painting articles out there that call for basing the model as the last step. For a long time this is how I would base my own models, but I would often dust up my just complete paint job or splatter some base paint on a foot or leg unintentionally. This would cause unnecessary rework and I considered changing up the order of steps. I thought that perhaps basing the model would be more appropriate during the assembly step just prior to the primer. There are a lot of scenic basing techniques that follow this very method. If you are just following this simple process do your basing in this order and see if it improves the time it takes when the model is complete.

 

 

Termites that got the sand bath

1.       Apply a white crafting glue that is dilutable with water (Elmer’s works if you want a cheap solution. Use a standard brush (not your best) to spread in an even layer.

My slightly frayed glue brush

2.       Coat or dip in a sandy medium. I prefer the Citadel brand, but there are plenty of cheap options available. Lightly tap off the excess sand.

3.       Use about a 50/50 mix of glue and water. Lightly dab the mixture onto the sand to create a light sealant over the top. I usually apply this step fairly quickly after shaking off the excess sand because I can relocate grains of sand that ended up on the model back onto the base per my intent.

4.       Allow to completely dry before primer application

 

Hopefully these steps will save time for those of you new to building minis or those who are looking for different techniques.

 

 

The finished termite

 

Emperor's Children Project Progress

Jeremie here giving an update on my Horus Heresy project. So far so good with the Emperor's Children paint scheme. I have been working on these for the last month along with some other projects (Dark Elves and Flames of War Soviets).

I decided to paint the armor with liche purple and highlighted with 50/50 emperor's children and liche purple. The base is done in a charcoal black basecoat followed by a heavy drybrush of graveyard earth and light drybrush of administratum grey. I opted to use decals for ease of not having to do freehand painting. I highly recommend using Microsol when applying decals since it softens them and makes application on curved surfaces much easier.

I expect the rest of the unit of 10 to be completed within 2 weeks which means I painted up 10 marines in a months time which is fairly good pacing for me.

Horus Heresy Project

I recently have gotten back into building a Heresy era army. This has been on my to do list for quite some time. It was only with the steady releases coming out of Forge World that made this project easier to do, but at a price. This will be one of my more expensive projects due to the large amount of Forge World models that this project will require. I know that there are cheaper conversion options out there, but I considered the time factor involved of all the converting and decided to pay the higher price in order to have a faster assembly and focus on the painting portion.

Some friends in my gaming group decided to build a Heresy era army together in 200 point increments so as not to break the bank and allow ourselves time to build and paint up our forces. Once a month we will schedule a game day to test out our Heresy era armies. Our first set of games will be Kill Team rules. Eventually we will move on to battle scenarios out of the Heresy books from Forge World. Once we have forces large enough (around 1500 points) we will start participating in the Horus Heresy gaming events that one of my FLGSs hosts about once a month.

I invited my friends to provide updates on this blog for what they are building. I will share in this post where I am at with my first unit of Space Marines. I decided to go with Emperor’s Children for my legion (to be later supported by Ad Mech) since I have a Fulgrim sitting on my shelf that I ordered last year. I went with a fairly basic look for my marines since they are the grunts of the legion, I did some bit swaps for the sergeant since I wanted his pose to be more dynamic.

 

 

Getting back into Warhammer Fantasy (brief battle report)

It’s been awhile since I have played a game of Warhammer Fantasy Battles, but with the new End Times supplements being released I have a rekindled interest. What I did was get together with one of my gaming buddies and we played a 750 pt game. I ran a Chaos Daemons army themed around Tzeentch and my opponent ran a Lizardman army heavy in skinks.

 

We are trying out a new protocol that I have never fully employed in my games of 40K or Fantasy, but is a big factor in what this hobby is all about- running a fully painted army! I had a friend recently return from a trip out to France and he stopped in a GW store just to see what it’s like and he said everyone had a painted army, even the younger kids. I would like it if we did more of that in my gaming community because nothing looks more lame then running unpainted armies on the battlefield. Enough of that rant.

 

The game started off with a bang, the winds of chaos were strong in Tzeentch’s favor. My units avoided getting sucked back into the warp while the Pteradons and Chameleon Skinks weren’t so lucky. I blasted the skinks with Tzeentch’s fire from the Changeling and the Pteradons suffered the ill effects from the winds of magic.

 

 

 

The battle was in my favor for the first 2 turns, but by the 4^th I was struggling once the Lizzies closed in for close combat. The Changling got lucky and bested the skink general in close combat, but every subsequent turn the skinks and kroxigors would wear me down. Even my Flamers and Screamers couldn’t break them.

 

On the 5^th turn the skinks and kroxigor units finished off my remaining Flamer unit. Lizards won the day.

 

Even though I lost I have been inspired to work on more WHFB and get some more games in. (and yes, I do know that I don't have the right bases... Working on it)

 

Epic Armageddon Project

I have recently had a renewed interest in a classic GW game called Epic. It’s currently supported by the online community after GW decided to pull the plug on supporting their specialist games line. It’s more properly known as NetEpic Armageddon these days.

Funnily enough my interest was rekindled by the Squat race being added back into the rulebook fluff in the 2 most recent editions of Warhammer 40K. I had some old models from second edition in my display case and thought how cool it would be to have an actual list back in Warhammer with all the awesome warmachines that they had available in Epic. I thought it was a long shot if this were to ever occur in 40K, but then I was thinking that it would be fairly easy to get back into Epic and I could run a Squat army in that game.

I did some research online and found that the rulebook is currently free as a .pdf, which is nice because I wanted to avoid have to spend $50.00 on any books (here’s looking at you hard-bound codecies)..... There is also a living army list (it receives updates based on playtest data) that covers a wide variety of Epic scale armies. Some lists are clearly listed as Tournament Ready to Experimental. Although my primary interest was in running a Squat army I was also eyeing some future project armies like Necrons and Dark Elder, “but GW never made those armies!” I can hear you say. That’s correct, but there are other industrious hobbyists out there that have. Keep in mind, GW defends it’s IP seriously. I personally feel it is to their detriment in some situations, but it’s their ‘right’ and some would say ‘obligation’ to do this. Exodus Wars makes Edenite models that make convincing Necron infantry. You can get “death bot” or “space pharaoh” models off of Shapeways for their vehicles. You could event design your own if you are good at 3D modeling. Onslaught Miniatures makes Stygian minis that make convincing Dark Eldar units in Epic. If you would prefer a classic line of Epic minis there is also plenty being listed on Ebay for cheap to average prices.

So in summary, NetEpic Armageddon is:

• Relatively cheap to play. My 2000 points of Squats cost my around 120.00 USD
• Supported by a dedicated group of people on the Tactical Command forum
• Grimdark in theme and designed well rules-wise
• Super easy to paint up

I will be posting my works in progress and would eventually like to see if my community is interested in eventually doing an Epic League/Campaign.

Assembly of my brotherhood warriors

My 40K Squat Warrior paint scheme was transitioned to Epic