Dust Vultures on Parade

Last post left off right before I went to armies on parade. Well, I didn't win anything except the participation pin, but I was damn proud of how my army looked either way. A lot of work has gone into the Dust Vultures and having a nice board to display them on is an awesome treat. It was clear from the winners though, that if I aim to accomplish anything next year I'm definately going to need to build some big terrain pieces for the display board.

Not a lot to say about it really. Besides the fact that I'm damn proud of the achievement.

Joyce's army did a lot better than mine and came in fourth place! Rightly so, knowing the ammount of work that went into these 54 dryads, 3 tree lords, drycha, 6 kurnoth hunters and 10 tree revenants.

The week after AoP had me getting ready for another Heresy Battle again. Once again I faced Michael and his Blood Angels/Dark Angels that were proxied as Iron Warrriors. I can't even complain against the proxying anymore either as I was forced to use some proxies myself when I just couldn't get my terminator squad completed in time and had to use my chaos terminators.

Footslogging for the win!

The mission that we played was adapted from a standard HH mission which basically involved a lot of trenches, low difficult terrain and hills. Infiltrate units were not allowed to deploy via infiltrate and we earned points for claiming either deployment zones and no man's land with troops and heavy support units. Right from the start I had secretly given up on this battle seeing as I had lost my infiltrate advantage and was going to be forced to footslog my way across the board.

After turn 3 things looked a lot better I was forced to admit.

Despite my desperations before the game, things actually went surprisingly well. I made good progress along the board and, thanks to a scenario rule that gave outnumbered units rampage, the low numbers of the guys that got into combat really worked to my advantage. At the end of the battle I earned the same number of victory points as my opponent and only lost because of First Blood.

The next couple of weeks I will be concentrating on painting up as much Raven Guard marines as I can. I've done lots of assembling and have so far assembled and basecoated all the infantry that I need for the entire army. The only things I need to assemble after this are Corax and my Blackwing flyer, but hopefully I'll also have some new painted units to show when the next post comes around.

Because I'm dumb, I've decided to spend some time on a kill team unit for the local club and an Exalted Deathbringer for a painting competition as well. Will have to make up for lost time this month if I plan to finish these in time as well.

Here's a shot of the Mordheim campaign that's been going on at the GameForce. My guys got absolutely massacred in their first outing, but managed to scrounge up a wyrdstone piece all the same.

Victory or Death!

Summer Heresy

As I mentioned last week, Age of Sigmar wasn't the only wargame I spent time on this summer...

The Horus Heresy campaign is still going strong! Despite neglecting to report it I did indeed play a 1250 points battle and the group also celebrated reaching the halfway point with a megabattle where everyone got to bring their 1500 points armies.

The 1250 points battle was against the dreaded Sons of Horus! It was two infiltrating drop pod assault armies against eachother and my opponent decided to rob me of my advantage and give me the first turn while he himself put everything in reserve.

Perhaps the most important piece of dark age thech in the Raven Guard's arsenal are the ever elusive 'phantom stairs'.

At the start of turn 2 things were finally kicking off and not knowing where Lupercal's lackeys were coming from I decided to hug that ruin terrain for all it was worth. Turn 1 only saw my plasma guys drop as well as an enemy contemptor.

 This walking coffin of a battle brother needs a name for the heroics he pulled in this game. "Brother Aybek" I dub thee.

The Sons' contemptor took down my plasma dudes, but they got a few shots off first and killed the kharybdis. Luckily they were avenged later by my own contemptor. The contemptor then proceeded to kick traitor ass and hold up/murder the better part of a marine squad. My other units took the fight to a particularly nasty squad of volkite dudes. In the end everyone was getting into slapfights and cuddle-combats and the game ended in a draw.

So, having skipped two months with the 30k reports this time there is also the Megabattle to talk about. Megabattles to me are one of the main reasons I'm in this hobby. It's an excuse to immerse myself in exactly the type of battles that I keep reading about in the fiction for an entire day. Fielding and using your army in allied combinations and large scale battle situations is also a really cool change from the smaller engagements you usually play.

This time, although I had a great time playing the game, the strategic element didn't quite come together. The loyalist side had some troubles with army selection (we were one person short, so the rest had to conjure up some extra points) as well as having almost none of the potential bonus rules that we could have won for ourselves in the previous rounds.

Nevertheless, it was nice to see everyone's mostly painted armies out on display and we had a good time rolling dice and taking models off the table. Below are some of the few pics I shot. There wasn't a lot of time for photo sessions.

My poor tactical squad. All those alpha legion dudes coming at you and you're surrounded by iron hands in boxes.

Brother Aybek leading from the front again. Thankfully he shouldn't have to walk far to get at those Night Lords.

Wore my 'straight outta deliverance' shirt for the occasion. Don't know if I want to go full emo-style for the next outing, but you never know.

Now. For one of the first times ever I did more painting these months than blogging about it, so here are some army shots for the Dust Vultures so far. And also something I just finished yesterday.

This is everything that is completely finished so far.

Master of Signal in the house!

I changed the spear into a sword after some thought on the matter. Playing wysiwyg is something I really care about and it caught me completely off guard that there are no power spears in 30k. Oh well.

Dark Furies bitches. Damn proud of this unit.

Victory or Death!

In with the old, in with the new!

It's been almost two weeks since the last post and this is mostly because I accidentally my old laptop. I have a new one now so everything is a-ok again and that means it's time for a new post!

I took some time off from work as well these weeks, so besides relaxing, I managed to do quite a bit of work on both Clan Thikket and the Dust Vultures.

Clan Thikket has grown considerably from the lone clanrat I posted last time and is joined by 4 of his mates as well as a freshly painted Warlock Engineer and two Doom-flayer Weapon Teams. Next on the list for new paint things are the rest of the clanrats and a doomwheel.

It's been so long since I painted anything fantasy I almost forgot about command groups.

This model gets the award for 'most rewarding to paint' this week.

These two were really tough to paint. Too many random things I had trouble identifying and I had to glue and paint the giant wheels on seperately. I make it a point to always assemble something completely before I paint it, but this time there was really no way around it.

I also took the time to rebase two models I had left over from my old Skaven army: A Master Moulder and a Hell Pit Abomination. Both of these are heavily converted and were staples of my old Skaven force so it feels good to see them on new bases, ready for action again. It's also nice to have these two make up a small moulder theme to go along with my skryre and verminous guys.

Don't know if I ever posted these on this blog, but they're some golden oldies for sure.

Already posted these last time, but I changed the basing a little and they're officially Moulder now in AoS I found.

For the Dust Vultures I painted up a small support squad of plasma gunners. These are to arrive via a Drop Pod that I still hope to finish painting this month.

This pic was made with infinitely better lighting at GameForce.

I used them right away in a battle for the 30k campaign this friday against Michiel's Mechanicum army. The game was a total massacre. I didn't have a single thing left by the end of turn 4. Most of this has to do with the mission, which was a break through style thing where I had to run a table length in order to score objective points. Unfortunately, running all out all the time against an army that's perfectly capable of decimating your squads with a couple of standard troop volleys, is not such a great thing to be required to do in a game of 30k. It was interesting though to see the mechanicum in action and next time I hope I don't have to play a mission like this against them again.

This is how things were after my turn 1.

Close up shot of the new guys in action.

So, lots of pics this time, but that's ok. Hopefully next post will have a finished drop pod and some progress on some new raven guard stuff for the 1250 point mark of the campaign.

Victory or Death!

Raven Guard Wins and Clan Thikket!

Suddenly, out of nothing, I seem to be totally on the ball with the hobby again.

First thing I did this week was go out of my way to paint this experiential revelation:

Perfection.

"The other side."

Please, please, please people! Don't all pull down your pants at once! This is but the first of the gimongous Skaven army that is currently in the works and shall soon flood like a swarming tide the great gaming tables of the known world!

In all seriousness, I'm really glad I got this out of my system. I've been putting off painting a clanrat because I wasn't sure about it tying me down on a colour scheme, I wasn't sure how to do fur right and I didn't have a plan for the skin either, and all sorts of silly excuses. I finally did it and it was amazing fun. I'm happy with my choice to go for a dark green with blue accent and although the skin took me a couple of tries, I'm really happy with the end result. The base is not done yet obviously and I plan to add some high summer grass tufts to get a sort of 'forest' look for my rats. Asuming I'm going on with the dark green/forest rat theme I've also decided on a name for the clan: Clan Thikket. Maybe it sound dumb but somehow this is the stuff that get's me inspired for an army.

Then, on friday, I finally had the 750 points battle for the ongoing Horus Heresy campaign and boy was it a good one. I was playing against Michael who had a combination of Blood and Dark Angels but was using them as Iron Warriors (because there weren't enough traitor armies in the campaign). He had 6 special terminators with cyclone launchers, a unit of 20 marines and a unit of dakka predators. I had a land speeder with multi melta and grav gun, a close combat contemptor, 2 units of marines and a chaplain. We had to claim objectives and were under raging inferno rules which meant we each had a 40mm, 3d6 scattering, S5 within 6" inferno bomb to drop on eachother. These rules were insane and almost all casualties suffered were due to inferno hits.

Turn one had me infiltrating and advancing in an attempt to go for the throat. This plan immediately backfired when one of the inferno bombs landed right in front of my path.

Due to the nature and 40mm + 6" radius of the inferno templates (we used Naut's half-painted terminators), both our plans fell apart quite fast and by turn 5 we were reduced to simply trying to claim an objective and stay alive with the models we had left.

One of the last turns my second squad had arrived from outflank in turn 3 to claim an objective while the first squad was reduced to the chaplain and the sergeant. Contemtor was long gone and the land speeder arrived in turn 4.

In the end we both managed to hold on to two objectives and it came down to the special victory conditions. Due to my chaplain and sergeant surviving and managing to wreck his tanks, Michael only had First Blood, while I could claim Last Man Standing and Slay The Warlord. Basically pulling this victory right out of my ass on the last turn. It was a great game though and every dice roll we made felt like a make or break situation. Battles like these make me curious to see what's going to happen at the 1000 point level. Winning this battle was pretty critical as well because a loss for me would have meant that this round would have went to the traitor side. 750 is now the first time the loyalists came out ahead which was nice to see for a change.

So, that's about it for this week. Now on to the next batch of rats and ravens!

Victory or Death!

I'm Actually Gaming!

Wow. I totally forgot to publish the last post..

That's embarrassing and basically means this one is going to be a long one. I also don't feel like retyping the whole thing, so you'll have to imagine a bit of a timeskip in between. Anyhow!

I played a game of Ninth Age recently. I got out my old Empire army for it, which had been gathering dust ever since the release of 8th edition made it obsolete. What is pretty cool is that it seems that the army has now become really poweful in the Ninth Age system. Check it out in the pics below:

Turn two. The first important combats are starting to erupt.

The game was against Dirk and his yellow Orc army (lovingly named the "Pizzkidzz"). The game was pretty fun as we quickly found out that the game is very, very much like old Warhammer Fantasy. The downside however, was that we spent so much time flipping through the pdf's that we weren't able to properly finish the game. Also, my detachments formations are still not legal (I have them in 3 by 3 blocks). All in all I can't give the game a good verdict yet other than that it's an admittedly more balanced version of Warhammer Fantasy that you can get for free and will probably remain relevant for a couple of years. Good for anyone with an old fantasy army, not so good for introducing new people to the hobby. Then again, the game itself is in a self-declared Beta stage right now so comparing it to fully supported games such as AoS and KoW may still be premature.

Close-up of the big savage orc unit. Tough to kill units all around.

In more recent news I've played the second game of the 30k campaign that's still going on at the GameForce. Incidentally this game was also against Dirk.

The mission however, was not quite a success as we had to place objectives which one of us had to destroy and the other had to protect. I was assigned the protecting role, but was also informed that objectives had to be deployed before we were allowed to choose sides. This made setting up the objectives very difficult and I ended up placing them somewhere in the middle. When I then lost both rolls to pick a side as well as the roll for first turn I could only watch helplessly as 2 objectives got immediately taken out in turn 1. Dirk's army spent the rest of the game running away. What also didn't help is that I had chosen to field a contemptor while the boards we used had passages that were consistently too small for a dreadnought to pass through. Nevertheless, it was a short game and I still had fun throwing dice against Dirk's nicely painted Death Guard.

Seriously though. I'm glad we're not doing zone mortalis anymore next game.

 Now! For the painting part of the blog post.

Two weeks ago I had this standing on my painting table:

It's going to be a busy month.

Here's what I managed to complete:

Can you read the text I wrote on his chest flag things? Pretty pleased with myself that I kinda pulled that one off.

Chaplain dude. Is this the time to start naming things? Maybe flesh out the fluff a bit?

And the first of the Skaven!! Unspectacularly they are rat swarms. Still took me long enough to paint up though. Warlock engineer is next on the list.

So that's all for this post. I tried not to keep it too long this time. There's a big forge world order coming in this week and I also finished the Legends of the Age of Sigmar: Pestilens novel which I kinda wanna do a book review for. I already talked about the latter on the latest episode of Skavenblight Radio, but a more thorough review on here would probably be a good idea also. So! Fingers crossed for next week guys!

Victory or Death!

It Lives!

First out the gate I have to mention a new thing I've been involved in:

Amazing isn't it?

I've been talking to SkavenDan through UnderEmpire.net for a while and I basically agreed to become a co-host to the show. The first episode I feature in (Episode 12 - It Lives!) went live last friday and so far I haven't heard too much complaints. Personally, I still have some things I'd like to work on, but I'll probably get there with practice. Big thanks though, to SkavenDan for allowing me to join in on this and I look forward to the next recording.

Also, as you might have heard on the podcast, I'm going to start looking into Age of Sigmar soon. I don't think I mentioned on this blog, but I moved house last summer. There's still a huge chunk of unassembled and unpainted Skaven lying around and AoS might be the perfect excuse to get started sorting that out.

Just a small sampling of the unassembled hordes inhabiting our new attic.

Now that the whole idea of an advancing storyline and 'pointless' gameplay have had some time to sink in I've re-examined my initial reaction. After reading some of the books I think I might actually enjoy AoS a lot. To me it seems like AoS is increasingly intended for people who enjoy gaming from a background perspective. I ramble about this in the podcast a lot as well, so I'll leave it from the blog and just say that you should expect to see more Skaven models on round bases here soon.

Now for the real progress! The first 5 Dust Vultures have been painted and are looking mighty fine if I may say so myself.

Shit pictures, but you get the idea.

I've got the first battle for our local Horus Heresy campaign coming up next week, so next post will probably contain a small battle report with more painted miniatures. It's a small 250pts zone mortalis style battle against Night Lords so should be fun to see.

Victory or Death!

The Dust Vultures - Raven Guard, 6th Battalion, 4th Company

6th battalion, 4th company of the XIX legion or the 'Dust Vultures', as they came to be known during the early stages of the great crusade, trace their origins to parts of the original XIX legion during the unification wars. Infiltration, patience and swift action were trademarks of the style of warfare employed by the legion that was orignally known as the hidden hand of the Emperor. 

The 4th company gained their monniker during deployments alongside the Luna Wolves legion under the command of Horus. Their ability to infiltrate and lie in wait at key locations proved invaluable to the Luna Wolves commanders. These commanders frequently sent out the 'Vultures' well before sector attack strategies were being formulated. The 4th company would then arrive in stealth and autonomously deploy squads at strategic locations. Their survival skills and independent operation allowed them to gather intelligence, disrupt and identify critical enemy sites for long periods of time. 

At the time the main body of the assault force arrived, the world's defense infrastructure would be severely broken, allowing for an alpha strike to take entire continents nearly unimpeded. The vultures, having usually expended most of their resources during these long waits, would often be found lagging behind the main assault lines mopping up survivors and discouraging retaliation. 

Some Raven Guard during the Horus Heresy

At the time when the XIX legion primarch, Corvus Corax, was discovered, the legion entered a period of reorganization to suit the new Primarch's needs. Many companies similar to the Dust Vultures were disbanded and sent on nomadic crusades. During these changes, the 4th company happened to be deployed in the Kehrfells system and escaped scrutiny as their extraction was deemed too hazardous.
 
A decade later, when the reformed Raven Guard finally arrived in the Kehrfells system, they found the local xenos civilization significantly weakened and the system was taken by Corax within weeks. Impressed by the patience and planning displayed by the 4th company, Corax allowed the terran-born vultures to remain active among the new legion.

During the following years, due to their involvement in the warrior lodges, the Dust Vultures would later also be selected to participate in the Battle of Gate 42. Major losses were suffered by the company during this battle. The surviving remnants however, would later prove to be extremely loyal to their primarch and of great value during the tragedies following their deployment at Isstvan V.

The beginnings of greatness!

So, there you have it. I will be building a Raven Guard force for the coming months to participate at a 30k campaign at my local store. Expect painting progres, battle reports and fluff development of this brand new company of Raven Guard marines!

Victory or Death!

Glimpse into the Golden Age: Battle 5

So, last friday, another battle for the campaign went down. It's kinda scary because we're about over half-time with the campaign and it's still going! I'd have to knock on wood, but it almost seems like this one might actually be able to make it to the end...

The battle I played was against Remco (Confessor Theodoris on the forums) with his sisters of battle. His list is kind of famous at the club for doing well in tournaments and stuff "despite" it being a sisters list. This kinda put me on my guard and also pretty much halfway into writing down a loss.

Totally unnessescary of course as the battle turned out to be just a plain 'ol draw. Well, not quite plain as it was a really tense battle in the end which could have swung a lot of ways before the final dice was rolled.

Turn 1: The big trench in the middle is supposed to represent a river (something that was required for the mission). We obviously didn't have a lot of river terrain at the store.

The battle started out bad for me as my defiler got shot down right away and my lord got killed by Saint Celestine (which I believe his unkillable special character was called) a couple turns later. My rhino unit compensated a bit by surviving an outflanking sister unit and killing them off in revenge, claiming a special mission objective afterwards (you needed to get two of those for 1 vp). When my deepstrikers came tried to use a termicide unit (3 guys with combi meltas) and an obliterator to kill off his two nasty S8 AP1 tanks, but I only managed to kill one before I lost both units. I used my daemons to kill off celestine and her unit of flying sisters1.

Celestine is apparently best dealt with though superiority in numbers.

At the end of the battle my only shot at a draw was to hold on to my home objective, as I wasn't going to be able to get him off of his, and score 2 mission objectives, for a single vp, to counter his 'first blood' vp. I also had to hope Celestine stayed dead of course...

End of the battle: I only had a single daemon claiming that objective... Thank the gods for fearless units!

So a draw it was!

In other news: I am getting the new Horus Heresy book from forgeworld. I'm not planning on starting a pre-heresy force in any sense of the idea (at least not before I win a fucking lottery or something), but just think of all that juicy fluff, people. Oh that juicy fluff!

I'll also be getting the new chaos codex of course. But so far I find most of the models ugly. Especially the dragon. It looks really wierd and not at all like anything that would fit into my chaos army as I built it. Wtf is it even? A mechanical dragon? It doesn't have a crew as far as I can see... Is it some sort of daemon? Why would it wanna help chaos marines? Is this something that one would see regularly among a random chaos marine warband or is it tied to a particular legion? It's just too much nonsense for me right now.

Left: Awesomeness. Right: Dafuq..

Oh well, I guess I'll read all about it next week and in the meantime...

Death to the False Emperor!

1) You might have noticed that I don't remember unit names for sisters very well by now..