The British...I mean, Praetorians are coming!

A few posts back I showed a WIP Praetorian guard for 40k, well, I decided to go one step further and add the 208th Praetorian Infantry to my burgeoning Epic armies!

I've not quite got my head round photographing 6mm infantry, maybe I need to switch back to my actual camera and its macro settings as opposed to my (admittedly decent) phone camera.

These are the first 4 bases of what will be an 8 base Infantry Company, the models are from Baccus 6mm and aren't actually Imperial Guard, they are actually 6mm British Colonial troops with their long rifles cut down to more closely resemble lasguns.  They haven't got an extensive range of different troops so I think some creative greenstuffing will be in order to make Grenadiers/Stormtroopers.  I also managed to snag some Stormblades off eBay so the Praetorian's have the first of their armoured support.

208th Praetorian Infantry

Hailing from the Hive World of Praetoria the 208th were latecomers to the 73rd Expedition fleet, having been raised following the compliance of Dreska. The 73rd had lost almost the entirety of the 16th Michorian Samites during the compliance of the renegade humans and subsequent running space battles with nearby Orkoid forces which had been drawn towards the growing conflict.

The Praetorians were considered 'green' troops upon joining the expedition, have been recent formed and, as such, untested in the field.  Despite their untested status the Praetorians proved effective in the field, being deployed first against the Eldar during the purge of Jorn III alongside fellow Milita regiments of the 603rd Mødherne Brotherhood and the 9th Sumian Mamelukes and then again working directly alongside Legion elements of the IX and XII Legions during the Neverlight Compliance.

Being a recently founded company the 208th joined the expedition fleet with their full compliment of armoured fighting vehicles.  Standard battle tanks, such as the Leman Russ were in abundance as well as larger super heavy tanks such as the Stormblade.  

A relatively recent addition to the Armouries of the Imperial Militia the Stormblade was a tank of known provenance, having served for the early decades of the Great Crusade in the armouries of the Legiones Astartes.  However, with the discovery of STC data allowing for the creation of the Fellblade, Glaive and Falchion super heavy tanks the Stormblade found itself increasingly sidelined in favour of the more advanced tank designs.

As the crusade wore on these mothballed units found themselves being recommissioned into the rapidly expanding regiments of the Imperialis Mitia, or Imperial Army. Finding a new purpose amongst the human soldiery the Stormblade ground its way across the battlefields of the galaxy unleashing the fury of its Plasma Blastgun upon the enemies of humanity once more.

Legion Armour

As tanks such as the Stormblade fell out of favour with the Legions armoured behemoths such as the Legion Glaive were gaining a reputation as main line tanks within the Legions. Detachments such as the above, attached the the VI Grand Battalion, III Tagma of the IV Legion could be found on myriads of battlefields across the galaxy.  

Primarily deployed against infantry heavy positions the Glaive's Volkite Carronade was capable of reducing massed infantry to smoking ruin in moments and was even effective against light vehicles. The 73rd had an expansive armoury of Volkite weaponry going into the Neverlight compliance and then into the Mycenae campaign, effective as they were against the massed infantry assaults and ramshackle vehicles  

When they came under attack from, what the considered, renegade elements of the XII and XVII Legions they were forced to turn the deadly Volkite weapons on their erstwhile brethren.  The Carronades of the Glaive's proved particularly useful at scything through the packed ranks of degenerate cultists thrown before any assault by the Word Bearers.

Land Raiders and Rhinos were commonplace on the battlefields of the Great Crusade, so much so that their use extended beyond the Legions to the Imperial Army, or at least, those regiments capable of manufacturing their own.

 WIP Stuff

I've got quite a bit on the painting bench at the moment, including a pair of Mastodons, a Trio of Fellblades and a squadron of Leman Russ tanks.  But here's some shots of the next 4 bases of the Praetorians, a tiny Primarch and my first test paint for some Metalica Secutarii Titan guard.

Thats my weekend sorted!

Until Next Time

  

WIP Reavers and Tiny Tanks

So after a nice break in sunny Spain I'm now back in significantly less sunny England, which makes me sad, but it does mean I can continue to work on my Axiom Maniple for Legio Metalica!

I've now finished what I started before I went away and got the super structure built for the two Reavers Hastati Lux and Victorious Endeavour.  I like the Reaver kit, not least because it comes with more weapons options than the notably lacking Warlord, I found the legs on the Reaver a little more fiddly than Warlord though (I even glued the lower leg sections on backwards on the first one!). 

Please excuse the quality. But, for those interested, yes the Warhound weapons scale well for Reaver carapace weapons.

As you can see Hastati Lux is armed with a twin linked Turbo Laser from the Warhound kit on its carapace.  Because there is no such thing as too much BWEEEEEM!  Tactically it will be rubbish at stripping shields, but it will ruin the day of any Princeps caught with his shields down! The Warhound weapons take a little jiggery pokery to fit the carapace mounts but not too much.

Victorious Endeavour is the more well rounded engine. Where Hastati Lux and Mors Incarnadine will aim to get into firing positions and likely stay put once they do Victorious Endeavour will be much more mobile, advancing ahead alongside the two (yet to be built) Warhounds Borophagus and Aelurodon (paleontological names there for anyone into their prehistoric dog species), closing the gap, stripping shields and, when it has chance, getting in close to BIFF! some unsuspecting engines with the Power Fist (I briefly considered a double fist loadout but decided against it in the end)

The beginnings of my Epic force.

I also managed to get my grubby little paws on some 30k Epic tanks off eBay. The Glaives were meant to be Falchions but due to a mix up at the other end I got Glaives instead.  Oh well, I was planning on getting some at some point anyway so its not a huge issue.

Still very much PIP!

I love these models though, whoever made them has done a fantastic job of translating the FW models to 6mm scale.  Painting tiny hazards stripes though?  I must really hate myself between these and the white/black stripes on the titans!

I haven't got myself a 28mm Mastodon, I will live vicariously through the 6mm version!

I also picked up a Mastodon (and the nice chap sent me a free Land Raider Proteus and Rhino.  The Mastodon is awesome, like the Glaives I can't overstate the amazing job done translating the 28mm model to 6mm.  I just need to get them all finished.

You'll notice a suspicious lack of infantry for my Epic stuff, that's because I want to get my hands on some of the lovely MkIII Tacticals and Breachers I've seen around various blogs/forums. It may take a while, and a lot of patience, but some will surface eventually, and then, they shall be mine! (though in the meantime, if anyone has any leads on some, let me know!).

Right! Need to get the Warhounds built tonight and then I can get the whole lot sprayed and crack on with the painting.

Until next time...

Vow Complete, Second Vow & reinforcements

It’s been a busy couple of weeks. Both in terms of hobby stuff and real life.  I won’t bore you with details of non-hobby related stuff but I will bring you up to speed on my progress hobby wise.

 First up, I finished my first vow for E Tenebrae Lux!  Those Volkites were a bit of a slog admittedly but I’m glad their done now!  Here’s the pics

 

 

 

 

You can see the Spartan in the background but I couldn’t get a decent picture of it at the time but you get the idea.  I’ve since noticed bits on some that need touching up (Chest skull on the Moritat and base rims on the Volkites for a start) but overall I’m happy with how they turned out.

So that leads me into vow number 2! Quoted from my B&C post

 I Rolltonotdie rise a second time to the challenge of E TENEBRAE LUX and vow to complete

 6 Thallax Battle Automata with 2x Phased Plasma Fusils 285pts

6 Thallax Battle Automata with 2x Photon Thruster 305pts

2 Castellax Battle Automata with Mauler Bolt Cannons 170pts

1 Thanatar Siege Automata with Enhanced Targeting Array & Paragon of Metal 290pts

for a total value of 1050 points  from the age of darkness army lists on or before August 1st, 2015. Success will bring eternal glory to the IV Legion and failure will doom me to bear the Badge of the Oathbreaker until the year-end!

Onwards! To Victory!

Now following that I had to change my vow slightly as I realised one of the Castellax I bought was distinctly Multimelta/Powerblade flavoured… should have checked that first really!  But anyhow here’s how they look as well as early WIP test paints on a Thallax and the Thanatar.

 

 

 

So that should keep me busy for a little while…

 In other news I’ve been working on something to reinforce my Iron Warriors and on a Militia list from Tempest.

First up, it was my birthday last week and my family was kind enough to gift me with a Deredeo Dreadnought.  I’ve got him mostly together I’m just working on a Atomantic Pavaise for his secondary armament, as you’ll see in the second pic I’ve started with a console from a drop pod and I’m starting to feed some cabling out of it,  I’ll be doing some small emitter plates on the front of the chassis once I decide how I want them to look.  I swapped the head out for a spare MkIV Iron Warriors dreadnought head I had knocking around (you know, as you do)but other than  that he’s pretty standard for now.  I’m thinking of adding some reinforced armour to the legs and chassis (similar to my ETL Contemptor), what do you think?

 

 

 

Now, the Militia list.  I really like the list, it’s so versatile it just gives you the opportunity to go wild with conversions.  So naturally I’ve gravitated towards a fully converted army, because I like to make life difficult.

Welcome to the fray the  603rd Mødherne Brotherhood! Led by their Warlord (Counts as Force Commander) Harek Stálmund! (still WIP obviously)

 

 

 

Yep, I’m doing Squats.  Survivors of the Dark Age and Abhuman Helots make perfect, Toughness 4, 3+ Save (with carapace armour) little stunties!   

I’ve always liked the Squats as an idea, but I agree with GW’s line that the race as a whole had failed to do the archetype justice and (especially as 40k has got even Grimdarker since) they didn’t really fit the setting. 

That said I do think there is a place for space dwarves in the ‘verse.  I’m in the process of trying to rewrite the Squat fluff to move them from somewhat flamboyant space Viking bikers to the resolute mining colony survivors of the Dark Age they were meant to be.  More on that in later posts.

 I took some inspiration, and in a couple of cases downright stole some ideas from the amazing work of the Brotherhood of Steel over at Iron Sleet, and they say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery so hopefully he won’t be too offended!  Honestly, check them out, they do some awesome stuff over there!

I’m working on two units at the moment, both based (loosely) around the Ironbreaker/Irondrakes box, both are still very much WIP so forgive the roughness.  The first is my Platoon Commander  using the Ironbreaker bodies and Tempestus Scion arms: 

 

The second is a unit of Ogryns, again using the Ironbreaker body but combined with a modified Centurion to make Exo Armour!  I’ve tried to copy they Iron Sleet pattern for this, I’ve made a few faux pars on this one but its all a learning curve so I’m sure they’ll get easier as I do more.

 

So that’s the first of a unit of 3 (for now), armed with a Hammerdrill (Close Combat Weapon), Heavy Breach Rifle (Heavy Bolter) and Exo Armour Suit (Carapace Armour but provenance makes it a 3+).

I’ll be working on the other two over the next few days.

Until next time…

Fluffing it.

So I’ve had a pretty quiet hobby week,  between one thing or another I’ve not got nearly as much done on my ETL Vow as I’d have liked.  In the meantime however I have started working on the background for my army a little more so I thought it would be a good time to discuss army background and what that means to you.

I think we’re quite lucky in the Horus Heresy community.  Not only do we have some amazingly talented modellers & painters, many of whom write amazing backgrounds for their creations (check out Death of a Rubricist for example) but we also seem to have a lot less of the win at all cost type of players prevalent in standard 40k, I’m not saying there aren’t some out there, they’re just less common. 

Also between Black Library and Forgeworld we have an excellent starting point to go from.

 

Something like that…

 

Now obviously the amount of backstory you want to give your army is entirely up to you, you might just want to go as far as their current campaign, a few campaigns worth or (if you’re a bit OCD with it like me) their entire campaign history! And it can be as detailed or vague as you like, especially if its written as a retrospective (in a similar fashion to how FW writes their HH series) as a person reviewing data and records from a time already past, that way gaps in the timeline can be explained as missing or damaged records that you can fill in later.

 

I'm sure it was nothing important.

That’s the approach I’ve taken, I started off with their current campaign and has kinda been working backwards from there.  The other things you’ll want to think about are where your army is fighting, who they’re fighting and one that is less obvious, when.

Where they’re fighting will mostly just dictate your choice of basing, but it will also have an effect on how much source material you have to begin with, if you set your army in the heart of the crusade fleets like the 63^rd for example, there is much, much more information available, which means your slightly more tied down to established events than if you choose the fringes of the expansion which that then gives you more creative freedom, so both have their merits and drawbacks.

Who is an interesting question in the context of the Great Crusade/early Heresy Era, since the Expedition Fleets were conquering worlds over the breadth of the galaxy it really gives you scope to come up with some totally bizarre concepts for enemies and obviously ,the later into the Crusade and then into the Heresy you get your enemies will change again as you inevitably get drawn into the civil war, no matter which side you’re on.

Which brings you finally to when, and not just when in the timeline, if your backstory is part of a campaign, how long has your army been in the field?  If you set your army mid campaign it can make for some interesting list decisions, using odd numbered troops in squads to represent casualties that haven’t yet been replaced or using full squads but with a few members having slightly different markings to represent units that have been amalgamated due to casualties but not yet had time to update their designations.

I like to make work for myself, so I settled on an expedition fleet not mentioned in the books set in an area of space with very little background information.  The locations changed twice, originally it was to be an extended campaign in the Halo Stars, that then moved to the Ghoul Stars (for somewhere a little more remote) and finally to the region known as the Death of Reason to tie in with something I have in mind for the armies future. I did give myself one concession however in that I picked Orks and Eldar as the primary adversaries for my army although I do plan to explore some xenos and human foes for their backstory as I fill in the gaps of the expeditions history.

From reading other people’s backgrounds as well as writing my own I’ve noticed everyone has a slightly different style, much like novel writing, which I suppose isn’t that surprising, it’s still worldbuilding, just within an established canon. I find I work best when I start with broad strokes, for example I decided early on that the company would aid in the defence of Metalica Forge World at some point, thus being joined by a demi-legion of titans from the Legio Metalica, they would also fight at Neverlight, simply because I liked the name and there’ve very little information about it giving me free reign, I knew the company would remain loyalist once news of the Heresy reached them and that in trying to return to the Imperium their journey would take them, battered and a fraction of their former strength, to Macragge,  I had to do a bit of rethinking with dates once Betrayer came out as the ruinstorm would essentially block them from getting to the Ultramarines until the end of the war, so now they arrive around the time that Know no Fear ends.  Sometimes you have to go back and change things, sometimes you don’t have to but you want to because you think of something that appeals to you more, makes more sense, or just works better.

Forgeworlds timeline has been very useful (check out Battle Bunnies for their timeline going back into the Crusade)

 

It’s also worth mentioning as it is in a similar vein, your army is what you choose to make it.  I’ve been criticised in the past that my Iron Warriors don’t have enough siege guns in the list, but the legions are so vast and varied at this point, sure the Iron Warriors might be known for their siegecraft, and in the background I write for them I certainly intend to show that the 6^th can bring the heavy guns out, but their current campaign, fighting small to mid-sized skirmishes against speed freak Orks and fending off intermittent hit and run raids by Eldar, doesn’t call for them.  At least not in the numbers everyone seems to expect me to field.

Ultimately, whatever you choose, there’s no wrong way to flesh out your backstory.

Until next time.

++E Tenebrae Lux++

I love a good challenge.  Especially hobby challenges, they bring out a real community spirit, more so than normal (I’ve found over the years that the Heresy has an amazing community, especially compared to normal 40k). 

With that, Bolter & Chainsword has started their E Tenebrae Lux painting challenge.  For those not familiar it’s an inter subforum painting challenge. Each subforum (Chaos, Space Marines, Horus Heresy etc) collects vows from its members (up to 5 vows of up to 3k each) and then the challenge begins, paint your vowed models before the challenge ends and your team gets the points equal to what you’ve painted, if you fail then you lose the points not only for that vow but for all your vows.  So vow carefully! 

I must admit I watched the challenge last year,  I was having a bit of a hobby lull at the time and didn’t really feel up to it anyway.  This year though I’m ready (well, ish) and really looking forward to it.  If anyone’s thinking of entering, remember your vows need to be in before the 1^st of June so you have 10 days to decide! 

My first vow is:

 “I Rolltonotdie rise to the challenge of E TENEBRAE LUX and vow to complete:

Legion Moritat with Volkite Charger, 2x Volkite Serpenta & Refractor Field (125pts)

Legion Heavy Support Squad with Nuncio Vox, Augury Scanner, Power Weapon & 9x Volkite Culverins (240pts)

Legion Contemptor Dreadnought with Plasma Cannon & Plasma Blaster (205pts)

Legion Typhon Siege Tank with Lascannons, Armoured Ceramite & Havoc Launcher (425pts)

from The Legions Astartes Crusade Armylist of total value 995 points on or before August 1st, 2015. Success will bring eternal glory to The IVth Legion and failure will doom me to bear the Badge of the Oathbreaker until the year-end!”

and here’s how that looks!

 

Pizza box is not part of pledge... 

I just finished putting the Culverins together last night, which was awful, getting those belt feeds to line up and not snap was a singularly painful experience but I’m glad the units done, if only so I never have to go through that again! 

I quickly primed them this morning so here’s a few primed shots:

 

 

 

 

 

You’ve probably noticed a lot of volkite love in my force so far (I’ve also got a Tactical Support Squad with Calivers in the pipeline),  a strange choice for the primarily siege focussed IVth Legion.  I’ve been writing background for this force for a long time based around my regular opponents, the main one being Orks so I figured even the notoriously stubborn Iron Warriors wouldn’t ignore the obvious benefits of Volkite weaponry against the relatively unarmoured Orks and so a Volkite toting Moritat, two Volkite armed squads and even this contemptor was originally meant to be armed with a Volkite Culverin.

 

Hopefully I’ll see some of you over on B&C!

 

Until next time!

Bulkhead Breached & Sparkleburst!

The first five Breachers are done! Well, they’re not weathered yet but I think I’ll do that in batches, maybe when I’ve done the other five? I dunno, I’ll see how it pans out.
 

 

 

 

 

The shields look really bare to me at the moment but I can’t decide what to do with them to break up the big black block.  A stripe maybe? Quarter it?  Any suggestions?

Next up on the Iron Warriors is going to be the Cataphracts with power axes.  I’ve not made any real progress on them yet so no pics for now.

In other gaming news I’m expecting the imminent arrival of my Super Dungeon Explore: Forgotten King set so in preparation I’ve dragged out my SDE base set to crack on with painting it, I think I’ll alternate between this and my IW’s for a while, should stop me getting bored of either. 

Anyway,  here’s what I’ve got painted so far from the 1^st Ed base set and expansions:

 

 

 

 

 

I should probably start working on the spawn points…

 

Not a big update today, thought I’d keep it short and sweet but I’m hoping to get quite a bit done over the weekend so more pics next week!

Until next time…