Leaderboard

One of the best aspects of the Warhammer 40,000 hobby is the ability for hobbyists to make the game their own. While Games Workshop and its subsidiaries produce diverse products that appeal to a wide range of tastes, the setting itself allows for even more diversity. For example, the galaxy-spanning Imperium of Man has numerous sub-factions that range from the "little people" represented by hive gangs (Necromunda) and planetary defense forces (the Astra Militarum in the Warhammer 40,000 game) to genetically modified transhuman warriors such as the Adeptus Astartes and Adeptus Custodes. Players looking for even weirder humans can look into the Adeptus Mechanicus. Players that prefer giant stompy robots can use the Imperial Knights faction, or they can look into the Adeptus Titanicus game. And while each of the sub-factions that I have named might evoke common imagery based on the official products, most also allow for incredible diversity, much of which can be represented only through model conversions and re-purposing kits from other manufacturers. Through such efforts we might see Astra Militarum forces that are evocative of the Warring States Period of China, Orks based on the Middle Kingdom of Ancient Egypt, or hive gangs based on the American West of the 19th Century. Even more diversity is available via the physical setting. While much of the official terrain maintains consistent thematic elements, much of which is derived from the gothic aspects of the Imperium of Man and the use of Standard Template Constructs and standardization via the Adeptus Mechanicus, the whole range of Human architecture is possible. In this, it would be entirely possible for a world to have terrain that is evocative of Feudal Japan or Ancient Rome or the Chakri Dynasty of Thailand or (insert historical or imaginary period here). So why am I bringing this up? Basically, we want members of the community to have the freedom and confidence to pursue such levels of creativity in the hobby. More importantly, hobbyists should feel safe in sharing their hobby accomplishments, including those that are "outside the box," here at the Bolter & Chainsword. Hobbyists aren't limited to the incorporation of historical elements in their models/terrain - they are also free (and welcome) to explore their imaginations and the imaginations of others (i.e., mixing genres and IPs). An excellent example of this is @Trokair's Roger Roger project, in which we see battle droids from the Star Wars setting being converted for use as Asuryani (Craftworld Eldar). Or a player might even collect some space lizards and use them as Space Marines. Also, there is considerably more freedom for members to use terrain for a wide variety of games/settings. All we ask is that members make an honest effort to "WH40Kify" things. This includes ensuring that model sizes/scales work, the bases work for the game (i.e., we shouldn't see square bases on models that are supposed to be used in the Warhammer 40,000 or Kill Team games), and well as ensuring that the models are both painted and modeled in a way that they can be recognized as fitting within the setting. Admittedly, there is a lot of room for interpretation here, and we would rather err on the side of creativity. What we shouldn't see, however, is models/terrain posted here when it is not meant to be used in a game set in the Warhammer 40,000 setting. Overall, the site and the community are intended to help members enjoy the Warhammer 40,000 hobby. We don't want to stifle that by imposing unreasonable limits on members' creativity. As always, if you have an idea for something but are unsure about whether or not it will acceptable here, feel free to contact us to discuss the issue. We'll do our best to work with you.

Well I am getting married in just over 3 weeks (24 days and 7 hours), so I have to take a pause from the hobby for the next few weeks. And by hobby, I mean building and painting. I need my hobby space for some wedding projects. I have to paint all the wood flowers for the wedding, work on some of the decorations, and then it is all wedding prep with some exceptions along the way. So in about a month I will return to this Blog with more Exorcist, Psian Jakals, and Inquistion/ Imperial Agents projects. The Emperor Protects.

The core of the Bolter & Chainsword is the discussion forums. After all, the B&C started as a discussion forum in the late 1990’s, back during the heady days of online discussion forums and the 3rd edition of the Warhammer 40,000 game. Over time, we have expanded the site’s capabilities to better support the needs of our members. Something we often lose sight of is the fact that Warhammer 40,000 is a hobby with various aspects. The most obvious of these are the painting of miniatures and playing games, but there are other aspects such as modeling (converting miniatures is an art in and of itself) and developing background for the game. Each of us has our own preferences for the various aspects of the hobby that we participate in. Regardless of our individual preferences, just discussing the hobby (as we do in our discussion forums) is not part of the hobby. The discussion forums, like our other capabilities, are simply tools that enable us to engage with other members of the hobby in a variety of ways. All of these capabilities are intended to enable the site to live up to its mission statement: The Bolter & Chainsword exists to help the members of a global hobby community to better understand, engage in, and enjoy all aspects of the Warhammer 40,000 hobby through constructive discussion and the sharing of hobby-related content. The blogs are one of the most important tools at your disposal for sharing your own hobby endeavors with other members of the community, especially when used in conjunction with the galleries. While many members use the discussion forums for this purpose, that option should be considered secondary to the blogs. The most important aspect of the blogs that make them superior to [just using] the discussion forums is that all of your projects can be found very easily since they are all contained in your blogs. Each project that you pursue can be covered in its own category within a single blog, or each project can be a separate blog. In addition, you can present other content. For example, one of my own blogs includes a series of editorials about the hobby and the site in the Editorials category, as well as several other hobby projects that I have begun (and probably not made nearly as much progress on as I would like). I can start a project, let it lapse for some time, and then find it again very easily simply by going to my blogs tab instead of having to search through one or more forums. Similarly, other hobbyists can find all of my projects very easily by either clicking on the BLOGS button that appears at the top of the screen or by going directly to a member’s profile and clicking on the Blogs button that appears there. Earlier I suggested that the discussion forums serve as a secondary support for the blogs. The first application of this principle is the use of links in signatures. In this way, a member can include a link to one or more of their blogs in their signature, giving visibility and access to their blogs from any post they make in the discussion forums. In addition, members are encouraged to duplicate their blog posts in relevant discussion forums, giving relevant groups within the community more immediate visibility and access to blog posts that might be of interest to them. For example, a project that covers the creation of a Space Wolves kill team might have the main content covered in the member’s blog, with outreach posts in the Space Wolves and Hall of Honour forums. These posts might show an image or two of the miniatures in the kill team, along with some text and a link to the blog post which shows even more. Members can even post updates to those outreach posts (in addition to the main blog category). Where only covering projects in discussion forums often limits other members’ exposure to your works, interest in one project [category] gives these members much better visibility of your other projects. This provides more opportunities for members to engage with and inspire each other. Other members can comment on your blog entries, allowing for the same type of discussion that happens in the discussion forums. Blogs are very easy to create and they are absolutely free, available to all members of the community. The normal rules of the Bolter & Chainsword still apply in blogs, so you’re limited to Warhammer 40,000 content and standards of behavior. There’s a little work involved in using the discussion forums, but much of that is as easy as copy and paste (for now). Overall, the blogs provide a much better opportunity for you to share your hobby-related content with other members and we encourage you to take advantage of them.

Introduction Like many established Imperium worlds, Dakota Minor has a planetary defence force simply known the Dakota Minor Defence Corps (or DMDC). Most of its number are conscripted from the local population; a small number of citizens willingly join to escape the tedium of farm life that is prevalent on Dakota Minor. The DMDC is organised in a manner similar to Astra Militarum regiments, albeit more limited in their makeup. For the most part, it consists of dozens of infantry battalions, mechanised infantry battalions and light armour squadrons. DMDC corpsmen are on average sub-par for the standards of the Astra Militarum; physical standards, marksmanship and discipline is moderately enforced. In addition, much of their equipment is passed downed from the Asokan Rifles, (as part of an agreement between the governors of Dakota Minor and Asoka), and so the DMDC is forced to make do with whatever equipment and munitions they are provided. Their second-hand arsenal limits them to small arms, transports and scout units, along with a variety of weapons and equipment that saw limited production on Forge World Agripinaa. The undiscliplined and under-equipped DMDC corpsmen are overwhelmed by the advancing Orks, on the outskirts of Dakota Primus. Dakota Minor does not have its own division in the Astra Militarum, instead offering its best recruits to the Asokan Rifles and the Sartorian Rangers as part of its tithe. DMDC Archer-Sentinel The Archer-Sentinel is a variant of the Sentinel walker, armed with a Typhoon multiple missile launcher and a Hunter-Killer missile. It was only produced on Forge World Agripinaa and only in production for 50 years, after many Astra Militarum regiments dismissed it as “useless and redundant”. The DMDC received a massive shipment of this Sentinel variant form the Asokan Rifles in 843M41, and then-Governor Golffe believed she scored a great deal. After many wargames and simulations, it was discovered that the Archer Sentinel was not suitable for long range combat due to requiring direct line of sight, nor was it suitable for close quarters due to its high profile and minimum range required for its missile salvoes. These drawbacks were easily exploited during the Ork invasion in 884M41, whose preference for close quarters combat forced DMDF Sentinel pilots to launch their payload near point-blank or be swarmed by Orks. DMDC Archer-Sentinel, with its standard loadout of Typhoon missile launcher, hunter-killer missile and searchlight. Personalised markings are common on DMDC vehicles. The DMDC were nonetheless forced to employ these legions of walkers to hold back the Orks in the Liberation of Dakota Minor, fuelling and arming them at little as possible. Sentinel pilots were drafted from the infantry battalions, and would received the minimum training required to drive the walkers. The war of Dakota Minor would be a victory for the Imperium, but only an academic review could prove if the near-sacrifical tactics of the Archer-Sentinels were to thank for the success. DMDC 50th Infantry Battalion The 50th Infantry Battalion is one of the "esteemed" battalions of the DMDC, having been the winners of multiple wargames held annually on Dakota Minor. Their accomplishments were less a result of skill and more lack of competition. The life of the DMDC is a privileged and uneventful one (relative to the rest of the populace of Dakota Minor) and the wargames are seen by many DMDC Battalions as a large social event, with troopers engaging in fraternisation and consumption of alcohol. Despite their success in the wargames, the 50th Battallion are no stranger to the festivities of the annual wargames. DMDC 50th Battalion corpsmen holding their ground in the ruined processing plant of Dakota Primus. The Ork Invasion in 884M41 was the first true trial-by-fire for the DMDC as a whole, and they were woefully unprepared for the xeno menace. The combination of poor skill, poor discipline, and subpar equipment saw entire battalions decimated under the green tide. The 50th Battalion was fortunate to be assigned an Astartes support during the defence of Dakota Primus, the capitol hive. With the Astartes leadership, the 50th corpsmen rallied behind the superhuman figthers and fought tooth and nail against the Ork invaders. After eight weeks of combat, the Orks were eventually driven out of the hive and into the Adatok Wastelands to the north. DMDC 50th Battalion corpsmen, alongside Adeptus Astartes of the Salamander chapter, force the Ork invaders out of the hive and The 50th Battalion would receive a commendation directly from Chaplain Numasus of the Salamanders, for their "outstanding courage and feat of arms in the face of the xenos menace", during the defence of Dakota Primus. They would be the only DMDC element to receive battle honours from the chapter at the conclusion of the war for Dakota Minor. The honour was begrudgingly given by the Salamanders chaplain, but Captain R'Keth felt that the 50th's bravery in the defence of their world needed to be acknowledged, despite the performance of the other batallions. Had the Salamanders been any other Adeptus Astartes chapter, their appraisal of the DMDC could have been far more damning...

So, I know I said my next blog post would be looking at my plans for my Canis Rex counts-as… …but, I was looking at the sprue for the Terminator Librarian and trying to think how I was going to modify it to make it my own (I just don't like leaving stuff without any kind of conversion!) Anyway, sudden inspiration struck! This model: …is an old favourite of mine. It's a bit dated in terms of scale and proportions, but the character of it is just so cool. So, I figured what if I converted the Leviathan mini into a Terminator Inquisitor? Ruleswise, it's still a TDA Marine Librarian, but in terms of fluff and build it gives me a bit more freedom. A few hours of bitz rummaging and greenstuffing later and voila: Obviously, it's not intended to be a straight up copy of the original. Rather, it's just meant to reference some of the original's lovely features; the bionic leg, the null rod, etc. The head is taken from Sir Hektur (which I won't use on my Knight pilot) as it looked about right to me with the tash/goatee? I'm especially happy with the chest icon - I managed to drill out the skull, and the centre of one of the Grey Knight backpack toppers was trimmed down and slotted right into the gap! Painting wise, I'm not sure about scheme yet… but maybe the light blue chosen by whoever painted the version of the original mini above might make for a nice contrast with my Celebrants? Anyway, thanks for reading! C+C always welcome. Next time I'll look at the Knight, I promise!

The tabletop miniature wargaming hobby is a fascinating diversion, combining elements of history (or lore), artistry, craftsmanship, gaming, and socializing. Originating in historical wargames firmly grounded in the real world, the hobby has since expanded to include imaginative and fantastical settings, broadening its appeal. Where historical wargamers might devote considerable time to researching their chosen forces, assembling and painting their chosen forces with painstaking attention to detail, hobbyists in fictional settings find considerably more freedom. Some settings might provide lore to guide those hobbyists who desired to "accurately" represent forces, but most fictional settings allow players to exercise creativity, either providing loose guidance from which hobbyists could deviate or enabling (and encouraging) hobbyists to create bespoke forces. The first DIY Chapter for which I created an article was the Fists of Purity Chapter. I'll cover this article/Chapter in the article about theme, but you can read the case study here. One of the great strengths of the Warhammer 40,000 hobby is that it allows hobbyists to make the hobby their own. The diverse factions allow hobbyists to find those whose concepts and gameplay they find appealing, and many of these factions include a variety of sub-factions that serve as variations on themes, often presenting even more nuanced versions of the main factions. For example, the flagship faction of the setting is the Adeptus Astartes, the genetically engineered post-human soldiers organized into autonomous Chapters of about 1,000 warriors each. The iconic Chapter of the Adeptus Astartes is the Ultramarines, though this Chapter draws upon a Greco-Roman theme. In contrast, the Space Wolves Chapter bears a theme based upon the barbaric tribes of northern Europe, especially the Vikings, but also including the Rus, the Celts, and others. Similarly, other Chapters of the Adeptus Astartes have distinctive elements, offering hobbyists diverse choices for finding a Chapter that appeals to them, whether based on appearance, background, or rules. Moreover, Games Workshop has fleshed out only a small percentage of the 1,000 or so Chapters that are thought to exist. Many more are little more than a name and color scheme, and sometimes only a name. And fewer than half of the 1,000 or so Chapters have been named, giving hobbyists room to create custom Chapters. Similarly, the other factions of the setting allow members to create custom sub-factions, whether regiments of the Astra Militarum, cadres of the T'au Empire, Ork warbands, or any of the others. The Adepta Sororitas, though at one time more homogenous than the Adeptus Astartes, provide room for creativity, too, such as with my Order of the Faithful Sword. For many hobbyists, developing their own do-it-yourself (DIY) forces is very appealing, allowing them to flex their creative muscles. Whether they are attempting to work within the limitations and allowances of the known lore or they are mixing other genres or settings into the game, the process and its results can be very rewarding. There is no set process for DIY creation, however. In addition, there is no required end-state. Hobbyists are free to put in as much or as little work and time as they desire or have available, crafting a final product that satisfies their personal objectives. This freedom and lack of structure poses challenges, with many hobbyists struggling throughout the process. In addition, many strong-willed but well-meaning hobbyists will seek to tell others how they should create their DIYs, attempting to dictate their personal opinions as gospel truth. This often led to conflict and, unfortunately, abandoned efforts (or efforts taken elsewhere). Hobbyists don't need to focus on articles similar to the Index Astartes articles. Instead, they might focus DIY development on creating rules such as those I created for a bespoke Aspect Warrior Shrine, the Void Hornets of the Asuryani. Building on some seminal guides that I found on the Internet back in the late '90s, I wrote the first significant article on DIY creation on the B&C. Over the last 25 years, other guides have appeared here at the B&C and elsewhere, including multiple instances of Games Workshop providing advice on the subject. Each of these guides has been very good, each in their own way, and each worthy of consultation and consideration. Over the last 25 years, my understanding of DIY creation has evolved. In addition, I have found myself at odds with advice that other members have given. In most cases, points of contention were largely based on either varying interpretations of lore or advice being, in my opinion, overly restrictive. In addition, there have been developments to the official lore, whether fleshing out details that were previously unknown or undeveloped or contradicting previous information. This series of blog entries serves as an expanded and revised presentation of my own advice on the subject of DIY creation, incorporating the advice from various posts I have made on the subject over the years. As with my previous efforts, this advice will use the Adeptus Astartes as examples, though the principles of DIY creation apply equally to the other factions of the setting. The blog entries serve as the initial drafts on each subject. These will be revised based on feedback, posted as articles available for both online reading and downloading. Hopefully, the advice I provide will help other hobbyists in their endeavors to create DIY forces. These are just my opinions, however, and prospective DIY creators should not take anything I say as gospel truth. In my articles you are sure to find things that you agree with as well as things with which you disagree. If I say anything that you disagree with, you should ignore it (and I'd love to see different viewpoints in the comments). In addition, prospective DIY creators should also consult other guides on the subject, both here at the B&C and elsewhere. Though I may disagree with some of the suggestions made in some of those other guides, there are probably many more things in them with which I agree. Regardless of my own opinions on them, and despite any misgivings I may have with them, they contain valuable advice from hobbyists who have devoted considerable time to the subject and you may find that they help you in your own endeavors. My most recently completed DIY, not including the Fire Hawks (my personal version of the official Chapter you know as the Relictors) is the Nova Hawks Chapter. I feel it necessary to explain the conceit of the title of the blog category, which will be incorporated into the series of blog entries and the resulting articles. "The Principia Libertas of Frater Tyler: A Guide to DIY Creation in the Warhammer 40,000 Setting" sounds a bit poncy, don't you think? The original article that I wrote 25+ years ago was given the rather pedestrian title of "DIY Chapters: Creating Your Own Space Marine Chapter for Warhammer 40,000." That article was later followed by "On the Nature of Crusades and DIY Chapters." For this updated version, knowing that I was expanding beyond what the earlier articles covered, I wanted a title that sounded like it came out of the setting, much the way Games Workshop has presented the Index Astartes (the series of articles named for the fictional "great book of the Legiones Astartes"), the Liber Sororitas (an article in White Dwarf Magazine that similarly appears to be named for an in-universe book about the Adepta Sororitas), etc. The Insignium Astartes book mentioned the "Liber Arcanum of Grand Marshall Tolof" as one of the documents in contention for the title of oldest known version of the Codex Astartes, and I liked the pseudo-Latin format (we love pseudo-Latin here at the B&C) as well as the inclusion of the author's name. I felt it was important for this series of articles to include my name, not for chest-thumping credit but to emphasize the fact this serves as one hobbyist's opinions and not as some definitive guide. The "Liber" portion of the title was great, especially since that's also the name of the forum in which we focus DIY development at the B&C, but I wanted the title to focus on freedom (Libertas) and "Liber Libertas" sounded dumb; so I replaced "Liber " with "Principia" (fundamental principles). As for my name, I went with "Frater Tyler" instead of my display name of Brother Tyler. Both allude to the same concept - I'm [just] a hobbyist whose opinion is neither more nor less authoritative than anyone else's. As Brother Tyler, however, I'm also the owner and head administrator of the site, with a level of authority over site issues. DIY creation is not a site issue thing, however, so I changed "Brother" to the Latin "Frater" which also serves as the core word in the title of most members of the site "Frater Domus." Similarly, the sub-title of the blog category is "A Guide to DIY Creation in the Warhammer 40,000 Setting." It's not "The Guide..." - it's simply "A Guide..." No individual can claim to provide "the" guide, after all. And though I'm focusing on the Adeptus Astartes for my examples, the advice I provide applies equally well to the other factions, so the sub-title focuses on "DIY Creation" without specifying any faction. At the end of the day, this series of articles should be considered as if written by a low-level scribe in the Adeptus Terra - worthy of being ignored or incorporated into your own DIY creation efforts as you see fit. The post you are reading serves only as the introduction to this series of blog posts/articles. It will be followed by articles covering a range of subjects, including theme, format, etc. The most important thing for any DIY creator to remember is that they are the ultimate arbiters of their process and outcomes. Other hobbyists' input and recommendations should be received with grace and dignity, and should be given due consideration. There is no requirement whatsoever to incorporate any one individual's feedback, especially if the DIY creator will not be pleased with the outcome. The final goal of DIY creation, after all, is to create a force that the creator will enjoy. Other hobbyists might have opinions about the end result, but they are not in any way affected by it.

++ THIS ARTICLE IS A WORK IN PROGRESS ++ PREY FOR DEATH: ++ A MEDITATION AND REFLECTION UPON THE ORIGINS AND HUMOURS OF THE MANTIS WARRIORS ++ Order Origination: White Scars (primogenitor), Marauders (gene-foster) Founding: Unknown; alleged to be the 8th Founding (Mid-34th Millennium) Region of Control: Maelstrom Wilderness Zone Strength: Recovering (as current date, M.42) Affiliation: ...Complicated… 'I have always been equally fascinated and horrified by the terrible occurrences within the Maelstrom Zone at the time of the so-called Badab Schism, a consequence of staggering arrogance and foolishness. Several Space Marine Chapters drawn into heresy by the perfidy of the Astral Claws, who left the others to bear the burden, ensnaring them into misguided alliance. The true horror of these times cannot be understated: even in comparison to the Heresy, the differences are stark. In the perilous days when Horus rose in treachery, brother indeed fought brother, but under Huron’s banner, loyalist fought loyalist, in a different shade of damnation altogether. Appeals to honour that haunt it, command it, shackle everyone involved to the millstone, making the grim voyage into crushingly deep betrayal ever more the bitter. This is well evidenced by the petitions of clemency from some of those the Secessionists called adversary, who decried the forfeiture of worlds, who baulked at the demands of hot, perhaps even hard-headed dissenters. It is this then, a tragedy upon tragedy that sustains the once great Chapter Master of the Mantis Warriors, Khoisan Neotera in his deep incarceration, from whom whence this small treatise originates. It has been complied for completeness, for the official record, for the history and future of the Mantis Warriors.' - By Hyronimus Oberon Satii Esq, Interrogator First Class of the Ordo Hereticus, by the Emperor’s Divine Providence, at behest of his master, Lord Inquisitor Garrad Locke. +++++ Whenever I sign onto a Deathwatch Game RPG in the Nook, I go to Badab for inspiration, and judging by one of the Fantasy Flight Games splatbook supplements – Honour The Chapter – so did they. Roleplay, especially PBP is a strange medium and niche. In one instance, you’ve got the fact that everyone either knows or has access to, the lore of 40k, and yet in another, you may have picked a Chapter (or be running a homebrew) that has little known history. However sometimes you’ve got that weird twilight twixt recorded lore and general impressions of a faction, which leaves a lot of questions unanswered. Games Workshop are masters of this, painting with a broad enough brush to leave room for a Player to pick out what he wants, to tell his own story. The Mantis Warriors are one such Chapter, but that approach is not good enough for me, because the deeper you can go, the better and more realistic the character becomes, the more layers can be added. What language do they use? What are their customs? What spiritual paths lead them to the Emperor? There is just no concrete information besides some awful fluff about Mantisae Religiosa. We simply do not know them – which to be fair, is par for the course for an insular, isolated people. Or do we? +++ When I came to my man from Ootheca, thankfully, I had a starting point. The Endymion Cluster is right next door to Badab, and just as afflicted by the Maelstrom Zone. It is heavily suggested that the Astral Claws are (with a few exceptions) based on the ancient Sumerians/Babylonians/Akkadians, later becoming the country we recognise as Iraq. I had researched this already for a previous character, and other projects without the scope of this forum, and this avenue provided me with a lot of material. At the time, I knew very little of the Mantis Warriors outside the Imperial Armour IX/X books or the infamous WD 101, and would go on to consider their origins, modus operandi and naming conventions to place them further East. Indeed, there are several player-made articles and artworks which would suggest their propensity to make war via hit-and-run, proclivity to ambush, and Chapter credo placing them as either ninjas or samurai. Given their iconography looking suspiciously like Kamen Rider – a 1970’s TV series about a group of motorcycle riding superheroes with a Mantis-like insect motif, (and de rigueur exceptionally tight clothing), you can easily see the conflation. So, where do they hail from? "The winds of the desert care not whose bones they scour clean." — Endymion Cluster proverb. A solid compass heading for us to take! To be fair, my conclusions are nothing ground-breaking. Further research leads me to diminish Far Eastern influence/coincidence as a primary concept; however it is useful, as we will come to later. I now believe the Mantis Warriors are not so far flung, and are more at home in the ancient Parthian Empire, a major political and cultural power existing from 247 BC to 224 AD, initially spreading from the province of Parthia, to the Northeast of Iran. The Empire itself spanned many modern countries, reaching all the way from Greece to the Indonesian isles. Their battle methodology of shoot-and-scoot, so remeniscent of the dreaded Mongolian horsemen the White Scars are based on, is another hefty clue. That empire provides us with a lot of room to work in, and is quite a nice symmetry with the Endymion Cluster itself, with plenty of tropical haunts, and empty desert spaces, over which the Mantis Warriors provide their envelope of staunch protection. What further entrenched this idea was a snippet of the heroes fighting in the Badab War – in particular, a Hellfire-configuration dreadnought, the Venerable Secarssa, the Bow of Ma'Dan. (Imperial Armour Ten – The Badab War – Part 2, p.72). I submit that this likely refers to the Marsh Arabs, the inhabitants of the ancient Mesopotamian marshlands in the modern-day southern Iraq, these wetlands also straddling the Iraq-Iran border, and once again, the propensity of archery in both the name of the Honoured Brother and his devastating equipment loadout harken back to the Parthian Archers of so long ago, the bow a weapon with an unbroken lineage of over 5,000 years. +++ At some point in time, the Mantis Warriors, like most of the White Scars’ offspring must come to terms with the haunting dark side of the Khagan’s wildling power – because like every other Astartes in the Deathwatch RPG, they have something called the Primarch’s Curse, which is a psychosis lingering in the deep hollows of the Quintessence Sacred. How this manifests is tied firmly to their Primogenitor, and so, the terrible fury of Jagatai Khan flows thickly through a Mantis Warrior’s veins, bringing an echo of this potent Primarch into the present. So, how do they deal with it? This is a question we can answer now we have an idea of where our Character and the humour of his Chapter originate. Fervour and foresight play heavily into the mix with the Mantis Warriors, with the Chapter’s spiritual core ‘tempered by Dark Prophecy’. This isn’t a surprise considering the etymology of the Chapter name (Mantis, in Greek, means Prophet). Games Workshop love doing this, leaving little breadcrumbs for us to follow, and it would be rude not to. One of the main figures within the Badab setting is Ahazra Redth, the Dust Prophet, Guardian of the Endymion Cluster, and Chief Librarian of the Mantis Warriors, interestingly an incarnation who also bears a passing resemblance to Paul Atriedes (calm down, Stilgar!) from Frank Herbert’s Dune. I submit that his name also vaguely echoes the spiritual figure of Azura Mazda, the figurehead of the Zoroastrian religion – which again – was very common in the Parthian Empire, and Persia in particular. I make no other parallels; I just found the geographical and spiritual occurrences interesting in the context of the topic at hand. In a further coincidence, Zoroastrianism contains a figure which we recognise as Ahriman, who is reasonably board appropriate, so make of that what you will. Earlier, I mentioned that we should not entirely dismiss the Eastern or Oriental inflections of the Mantis Warriors’ origins. The ecological and geographical diversity of the Endymion Cluster is quite broad, and with training grounds on Tranquillity II and Tranquillity III we find the Mantidae Bellicosa hail also from a death world of deep jungles and mountainous, windswept crags. Indeed, the Mantis Warriors’ main established base outside of Ootheca, is placed within the Valley of The Nine Winds, which could be related to either the nine cuts of the sword as recognised by the ancient Celts, or the Nine Ryu Schools of Bujinkan Budō Taijutsu, which in turn are closely related to Ninjitsu. 'Kamen Rider! Henshin!' (Transform!) +++ The transformation of the Manga/Anime et al superhero mentioned above moves him into a battle-haze, with supernatural powers and speed. Here then, are those influences which interest us, loosely aligning with the particular condition of our eponymous Space Marines, the Mantisae Religiosa. Formed into a death cult within each Battle Company, it is a strange interaction between the Preomnor Implant and that quirky geneseed we mentioned before. The battle haze is a transformation wherein a brother finds himself with tunnel vision, ignorant of anything which is outside his immediate, murderous objective, but the condition provides him with uncanny agility and alacrity, not unlike the motorcycle warrior (and of course, the voracious predator). It is here, I think that GW beats us over the head with it, thankfully stopping shy of Mantis Missiles, Mantis-hawks, and Mantis Death Metal. Jagatai be praised. ‘To think is to do – to do; is to be.’ - The Principle of Alahk Geh. Given that the Far East has used the iconography of Mantids in many forms, and has some of the most beautiful living examples of the genus, it is easy to see where the influence bleeds in. One aspect of this connection we should not ignore is the prevalence of the spiritual married with the corporeal through Shintoism and Buddhism. The first honours the ancestors, the second we regard for the teachings of balance and atonement. Coupled with the desire to follow the path of enlightenment, and stand against the darkness from our Persian-planted roots; and we now have a powerful spiritual depth without contradiction, the press towards penitence in the contemplative pose of the prayerful supplicant. Obviously there is another martial exemplar here: the White Scars principle/performance of action-as-thought: Dreadful Perfection, Elemental Force. A broad scope you could call Zen Buddhist-led Bushido. The overriding tenet we are encouraged to take from this, then, should be as follows: that there is no disassociation between thought and action in the mind of the Khagan, there should be none in the locus of force exerted by the Mantis Warrior. How Inscrutable, mysterious and apropos. Perfect -and yet, as stated above, in my opinion, this should be considered a secondary theme, an overlay if you will, to the stronger evidence of Parthian heritage. +++

In preparation for a 40k Campaign that will run at my local gaming group, past weekend I got together with some friends to get some photos of different 'scenes' that are going to be in the Campaign source book. Did I mention that one of my friends is a professional photographer? Here are some of the pics from the session - we were all blown away with the results! I'll share a post about the campaign in the not too distant future, but in the meantime do please enjoy these pictures

If I start this with a huge introduction and many words.. I will probably never start so I will dive right in. Doing my (few) Tau pieces first gives oppurtunity for some sort of introduction though, my very first Tau are some random alternate head doodles done when I was working with Kromlech.. the idea was to make more rough and "cinematic heroic" Tau heads for Pathfinders and Fire warriors. I dont think they were ever released on their store tough. It would be years before I would draft Tau again.. When the triumvirates where released at the tail end of 7th edition, the triumvirates and ynnari specifically triggered a discussion here with speculation that the ones we saw represented new superfactions ( Imperium, Eldar and Spacemarines respectively.) and there was hence and forth theorizing wether GW would.. or could, merge the more seperate xenos factions into super factions that made sense. With this I divided them for myself (maybe in the discussion too) in two new superfactions; the Necron'Tau Empire and the Xenospores (orks, GSC, tyranids.) Luckily GW didnt go that route, however such theories often serve as inspiration for doodling; The last ones I might have posted here in that conversation too, but I cant remember. ( I even made a Necron'tau faction logo ;) ) Either way the concept was duality; we have the Dioscuri.. twins (ofcourse) who suffered as part of a failed exmperimental technology. In game I imagine them able to switch at any time, Po'lux is a very range oriented character with a necron weapon, and Ka'stor is in a melee oriented battlesuit. On the other concept I wanted to merge a c'tan with tan ethereal. I didnt really like the look of the c'tan though. While Ive started coloring this, they are not finished.. and probably never will. Till the next blog post

Hello all, So, I've decided to start a new blog for a new project. (My previous army of Celebrants Chapter Space Marines isn't quite finished, as I still have a few squads to complete. They are all WIP, but to be honest I needed a break from painting yellow/orange/red!) So, for the Knives in the Shadows Kill Team Challenge this year I decided to go back to one of my DIY Chapters, the Marines Adamant. I tried a new technique of oil pin washing, and I was happy with the results: Now, while I was working on the above Team, the new Space Wolves stuff was being previewed and then released. This has inspired me to do a few more bits to build into a small Marines Adamant force. As well as being IH Successors, with all the bionic goodness that entails, the Marines Adamant are also based on and recruit from a Feral World, resulting in a quite savage and superstitious attitude, meaning that the SW bits like charms/teeth/pelts would all be appropriate to feature on my minis (and hence the blog name!) Also as IH Successors, much of the Chapter's structure is based on the characterful and awesome divergences from the Codex described in the old Iron Hands Index Astartes article (IMHO, these divergences were always well represented by the Wolves rules): Independent Households akin to the Great Company structure. Veteran squad leaders in TDA (unfortunately, no longer possible rules-wise) A focus on reliable, adaptable infantry units on foot (like GH) Obviously, any of the really wolfy units are out, although I did think about using a box of Ruststalkers to build some sort of skirmish servitors to count-as Fenrisian Wolves? Anyway, I've started by building a second squad and a character to lead them. WIP pics of these will be incoming soon!

I've been involved in the Warhammer 40,000 hobby to one degree or another since the very beginning. I've been a member of the Bolter & Chainsword community since the site's infancy - I joined when the site was less than a year old (at ezBoard) and there were fewer than 200 members. Most of my "hobby" time these days is dedicated to the site. There is a great team of staff members (administrators, moderators, sacristans, etc.) that I am privileged to serve with, all of them working to support a great community that loves a fascinating hobby. I try to get some real hobby work done every now and then, but I'm infamous for the number of never-finished projects I've started over the years. I've learned over time, however, and have disciplined myself to start small and work within my resources (time being my most limited resource); so my projects these days tend to be smaller. Most of my projects are focused on helping others to enjoy the game - things like the Indomitus project (expanding the 3rd/4th edition Space Hulk game), the Hive of the Dead (a demonstration game for pitting a lone Space Marine Scout against an endless horde of Plague Zombies), and creating homegrown rules (often as part of a team) for things like the Inquisition and Rogue Traders. Sometimes, though, I try my hand at getting a viable force for an actual game - mostly things like kill teams. My plan with this blog is to do a number of things: First, I'd like to present my views of the hobby and engage in critical discussion with other hobbyists about those views. Second, I'd like to provide an index to various rules-based projects that are intended to give other hobbyists interesting ways to enjoy the hobby. Third, I'd like to get some miniatures painted and giving other hobbyists observation might also give them a means of shaming me into getting more work done. Back in the old days I had a B&C blog named "Procrastinator's Anonymous" and that was an accurate name. Later, I created a website called "Liber Bellum" intended to do a lot of what I plan on continuing in this blog. Since the "Procrastinator's Anonymous" name was later taken by other hobbyists, I decided to switch to the "Liber Bellum" name. Hopefully I'm able to provide regular updates in all three areas, and you are invited to heckle me if you perceive any lack of progress/hobby involvement.

First off, welcome to the first part of my fall project, which by popular demand has turned out to be a Death Guard kill team (whether it will actually be used for kill team is anyone's guess, but I have a lot of DG laying around and I wanted to paint at least some of them up). The general idea is that I'll be using this blog to keep me motivated through a, historically speaking, difficult time of year where motivation can often ebb. So any comments or suggestions you may want to leave are highly appreciated! I'm going to do this as part hobby log and part painting "guide" and assorted ramblings. The "guide" part is in quotation marks because, while I have done Death Guard before, I didn't really feel I did them justice the first time around and I really wanted to both up my game a little and also start experimenting with some new techniques and ideas. So while I'm reasonably certain that what I'm doing will work, I'm also learning as I go along. At the same time, I also want to keep things relatively simple and easy as I actually want to finish the project and not get discouraged halfway through, so I'm focusing on techniques and methods that will give me a lot of "bang for the buck", so to speak. The very first step was creating a poll to see what faction I should start with (with the help of our friendly moderators @Grotsmasha and @Dr_Ruminahui - thanks so much, guys!), but the first step hobby-wise was to do a zenithal prime with two Vallejo rattle cans, "Leather Brown" and "Bone White", which I felt would give me a nice foundation for the off-white armour that I personally prefer for Death Guard. Something I don't usually do is leave the heads off, but this time I did, partly because I wanted the opportunity to give any bare heads a different skin tone, partly because I just wasn't quite sure what heads would look best on what models. Strangely enough, they looked super greenish in the light of dawn, which is actually a look I'm trying to avoid. I mean, green will obviously show up, but the overall tone I'm going for is a warmish off-white for the armour. My next step was to give them a heavy overbrush/drybrush/stippling/general mess-around, using quite a big brush loaded with "Pale Sand" (although any warm, mostly white off-white will do), then mostly dried off before being applied to the minis: I don't worry about being neat at this stage or getting smooth coverage, but I do worry about obscuring too much of the recess colours. as I want them to be quite grimy and battle-worn in the end. If I wanted them "cleaner", I'd probably follow the same procedure but give them more passes with the brush (and perhaps let more paint remain on the brush). As it is now, I just give the areas I want to read as whiter (or that I know I want to paint a transparent colour over later) a second pass with the brush, but like I said, I don't worry too much about coverage as washes and further painting will smoothen out the gradients quite a bit. That said, the amount of texture on the ridged, corroded, pitted and damaged power armour of the Death Guard is almost ideal for this method and I do think it looks pretty good already. In fact, if I stopped now and painted in all the details, I think the armour itself would work quite well - but I will of course be doing a lot more as we move along, so stay tuned

BELLIGERENTS of BADAB HOWLING GRIFFONS One wound of many. So, I'm not painting a lot of Space Marines these days, between my Tau Crusade Army and fun I've been having over in BFG. That didn't seem right. Now, I can't commit to a major project, but I can certainly muck around with single models, right? So begins BELLIGERENTS of BADAAAAAAAAAAB!! The crowd goes wild. Wanted to start out with something fiddly, so I've knocked out a Howling Griffon. Not just any Howling Griffon, however, this is a highly specific little conversion... You should see the other guy. Now, I'm not going to promise to do every model like this, being directly based on one of the original pictures, but some certainly will be. It's fun! I don't have a full army in someone else's scheme in me, I'm not built that way, but I can do a model in an existing style. Also, great excuse to try out some more freehanding! Now, I need to decide who's next...

+++ PREFACE +++ After a frustrating and costly tour of the Cellebos Warbone, Kill Team Rapier (at the time comprised Alyxander, Rarai’an, Auranis and Validus) had a chance meeting with Inquisitor Jemini Malethann. He was concerned with the myriad xenos incursions within the Matteus Subsector, and was headhunting experienced Deathwatch Astartes to investigate these threats. Kill Team Rapier welcomed the opportunity to adapt their xeno-hunting skills in an arena free of the political infighting of the Jericho Reach. With the permission of their Watch-Commander, they relocated to the Segmentum Obscurus to assist Malethann's operations. Once there, they were formally introduced to the Inquisitor’s cohort and their newest Astartes members: Gorlin and Lucena. +++ EXPEDITION IV - DAKOTA MINOR +++ Kill-Team Rapier's first major assignment in the Matteus Subsector was on Dakota Minor, to investigate the growing Ork presence within the rocky forests native to the planet. The Orks had persisted forty years after their invasion of Dakota Minor, and it was speculated a new Warboss had risen up to lead the directionless Orks lurking in the forests. Meanwhile, the equally disorganised Dakota Minor Defence Corps was itching to charge head-first into the Ork-infested jungle; their confidence sky-high from their victory over the Orks decades ago. Fearing a needless slaughter and a second Ork incursion on Dakota Minor, Malethann dispatched Kill Team Rapier to soften the Ork threat before the local PDF got involved. Their mission: reconnoiter the forests, determine the Ork strength, and if the opportunity presents itself, eliminate their leader. The following transcript and pict-feed highlights are a record of their mission. ++++INLOAD BEGINS++++ +++KILL TEAM RAPIER OPERATIONAL REPORT – DAKOTA MINOR 989.924M41+++ ++FOR THE EYES OF INQUISITOR JEMINI MALETHANN ONLY++ As per your instruction, Inquisitor: a report of our operations on Dakota Minor. Events were logged as deemed pertinent. Time zero begins at 1515h 971.924M41. Composition: Alyxander (Leader), Auranis, Rarai’an, Validus, Gorlin +CARRY THE EMPEROR'S WILL AS YOUR TORCH; WITH IT, DESTROY THE SHADOWS+ +0 days, 00:00 +MANUAL ENTRY+ Deployment by Blackstar into the jungle. Gorlin and Validus scouted ahead; no resistance, no signs we were detected. Kill Team Rapier proceeded to marker Primus. +0 days, 01:27 ++VISUAL FEED STILL 001 - KILL TEAM RAPIER INTERNAL NOOSPHERE++ Kill Team Rapier enter the rocky forests of Dakota Minor, in search for the Ork warband. +0 days, 03:55 +MANUAL ENTRY+ Kill Team Rapier arrives at marker Primus (co-ord 016.32 x 047.69). Ork tracks identified. No sign of standing forces, ally or foe. Proceeding to marker Secondus. +0 days, 06:00 ++AUDIO FEED 001 - KILL TEAM RAPIER INTERNAL VOX-LINK++ VALIDUS: Bearing two-two-one. ALYXANDER: A small rabble. RARAI'AN: They may lead to the greater horde. ALYXANDER: We follow them. Auranis, acknowledge? AURANIS: Acknowledged. Gorlin, we are moving on. +0 days, 18:50 ++AUDIO FEED 002 - KILL TEAM RAPIER INTERNAL VOX-LINK++ ALYXANDER: A large horde, bearing zero-seven-three. VALIDUS: Some large Orks, but not- GORLIN: Orks approaching our position. ALYXANDER: On what bearing? GORLIN: Behind us! RARAI'AN: Specifics, Gorlin! ALYXANDER: Validus, hold here and watch that horde. Auranis, I am returning to you. AURANIS: Acknowledged. Gorlin, provide bearing on the Orks! GORLIN: ... Fifty metres ... at zero-seven-zero, approaching on foot! ALYXANDER: They will have our scent. How many? GORLIN: Fifteen... More! ALYXANDER: Hold fire. Wait for my signal. GORLIN: Die! <Ork roaring> ALYXANDER: Curse it! Rapier, engage at will! <15 seconds of non-vocal combat audio> VALIDUS: Sergeant, the horde is turning to us. GORLIN: We can take them! ALYXANDER: No, we cannot! Rapier, tactical withdrawal bearing three-three-zero. RARAI'AN: Auranis, watch your right! AURANIS: <unintelligible; cry of pain?> GORLIN: Xenos filth! ALYXANDER: Rapier, move! +0 days, 18:51 ++VISUAL FEED STILL 002 - KILL TEAM RAPIER INTERNAL NOOSPHERE++ Members of Kill Team Rapier are ambushed by an Orb mob while on reconnaissance. +1 days, 08:56 +MANUAL ENTRY+ Kill Team Rapier sighted a large horde of Orks. Estimated 200 strong, with 10 to 20 scrap-form vehicles. Were forced to engage a small band of Orks approaching our position. Half were slain, but we were forced to withdraw before the much larger horde approached our position. +1 days, 13:50 ++AUDIO FEED 002 - KILL TEAM RAPIER INTERNAL VOX-LINK++ AURANIS: I count twenty to twenty-five Ork scrap units. Five hundred metres, bearing two-nine-zero. VALIDUS: Logged. How is your injury? AURANIS: It will heal. VALIDUS: I have a reserve bolter. AURANIS: I can still carry the cannon. But thank you, brother. +1 days, 19:33 ++VISUAL FEED STILL 003 - KILL TEAM RAPIER INTERNAL NOOSPHERE++ A column of Ork armour is spotted by Kill Team Rapier, as they maneouvre deeper into the forest. +1 days, 21:26 +MANUAL ENTRY+ Multiple Ork units were sighted and numbers recorded. Initial estimates of two thousand fighting bodies and forty armour assets. Scrap units were limited to small to medium sized vehicles. Many of them scrap-walkers and defiled Chimeras. +2 days, 00:32 ++AUDIO FEED 003 - KILL TEAM RAPIER INTERNAL VOX-LINK++ ALYXANDER: Validus, another horde approaches. VALIDUS: ... No sighting of a leader. ALYXANDER: There must be a larger concentration, still within the forest. GORLIN: Filthy and wretched- RARAI'AN: Gorlin, be silent! AURANIS: It has been forty-eight hours, brother. We have sufficient reconnaissance data. Neutralising the Ork Warboss was a secondary objective. ALYXANDER: I am not leaving the fate of this world in that Corps Commander's hands. He is a fool, and they are drunk on their victory over the Orks so long ago. VALIDUS: A Salamanders' victory. ALYXANDER: Indeed. I will not settle for partial success. We will not have a second incursion on Dakota Minor. GORLIN: We are His Angels! RARAI'AN: And death is our gift. ALYXANDER: Validus? VALIDUS: Agreed. ALYXANDER: Auranis? AURANIS: ... Very well. Let us hunt this Ork. +2 days, 11:59 +MANUAL ENTRY+ Rapier continued to reconnitore the forest, in search of the Ork leader. Small mobs were engaged and dispatched. Will continue to search the forest for another 60 hours before moving to Marker Terminus for exfiltration. +2 days, 21:47 ++AUDIO FEED 004 - KILL TEAM RAPIER INTERNAL VOX-LINK++ ALYXANDER: Validus. Eyes on an Ork at bearing three-four-eight. VALIDUS: Sighted. Inloading to the feed. AURANIS: That is not the Ork leader. GORLIN: How do you know? AURANIS: Do you see the spanner sigil? GORLIN: What of it? AURANIS: That is indicative of one of their mechanic - GORLIN: How would you know this? AURANIS: The Deathwatch Librarius. Somewhere you will start to frequent once this is over. GORLIN: I do not devolve myself to study - AURANIS: This is not debatable. We study our enemies, so we can destroy them! ALYXANDER: Enough, both of you. I agree, Auranis. It is not the Leader. We are less than a kilometre from their camp now. Move out. +3 days, 01:10 ++VISUAL FEED STILL 004 - KILL TEAM RAPIER INTERNAL NOOSPHERE++ The suspected Ork Warboss is sighted, as Kill Team Rapier positions themselves for a killing strike. +3 days, 01:10 ++AUDIO FEED 005 - KILL TEAM RAPIER INTERNAL VOX-LINK++ RARAI'AN: I see the leader. VALIDUS: Bearing? RARAI'AN: Three-zero-nine. ALYXANDER: Sighted... Inloading... Auranis? AURANIS: ... A high-ranking leader, certainly. ALYXANDER: You seem unconvinced, brother. AURANIS: It is hard to judge without understanding the full scale of the Ork infestation. RARAI'AN: If there are no other contenders? ALYXANDER: I will make the call. The Ork is marked for termination. VALIDUS: Loading Kraken. AURANIS: Wait. Let me line up a shot in tandem. It may have a refractor field. RARAI'AN: Be ready, brothers. They will run amock once it is dead. VALIDUS: Neutralising... <bolter discharge> AURANIS: <frag cannon discharge> ALYXANDER: ... Confirmed kill. GORLIN: Ha! That was easy. AURANIS: Indeed, easy... RARAI'AN: What of the horde? VALIDUS: ... Squabbling amongst themselves. Infighting. GORLIN: Orks approaching, one-seven-nine! RARAI'AN: A lot of them! ALYXANDER: Rapier, engage the beasts! <heavy weapons fire> RARAI'AN: Artillery incoming! ALYXANDER: Take heading two-zero-zero. Move, Rapier! <12 seconds of over-threshold noise> GORLIN: <laughter> AURANIS: What is it, Gorlin? GORLIN: <laughter> That was not called in on us! ALYXANDER: <unintelligible; laugher?> The Emperor smiles on us. AURANIS: We should move to exfiltration. ALYXANDER: Agreed, brother. +3 days, 01:30 +MANUAL ENTRY+ Suspected Ork warlord terminated by Validus and Auranis. Squabbling and infighting immediately occured upon the Ork horde. Kill Team Rapier was set upon by an Ork mob, but was dealt with by their own artillery assets. Returning to Blackstar at Marker Terminus. +3 days, 09:11 +MANUAL ENTRY+ Extraction by Blackstar at Marker Terminus. +APPENDIX I+ Cartograph of sighted Ork encampments and estimates of force strength, as well as Kill-Team Rapier's path thro ++++INLOAD ENDS++++ +++ DEBRIEF +++ ++++INLOAD BEGINS++++ +++RE: KILL TEAM RAPIER OPERATIONAL REPORT – DAKOTA MINOR 998.924M41+++ ++FOR THE EYES OF KILL TEAM RAPIER ONLY++ Rapier, well done. I applaud your initiative. Leave the rest of them to the DMDC. Let them have their battle. Return to the Scepter. I have another assignment for you. Inquisitor Malethann, Ordo Xenos ++++INLOAD ENDS++++ +++ END ARTICLE +++

Blog entries pass and sometimes look like very similar to some previous ones. It is one of the issues when dealing with army building on base of multiples buy outs of the same Patrol Box... Yet we might eventually expect some variation if the models are fitted in different fashion, ain´t we? The Onagre DuneCrawler as already been spoiled in the FOrums, but it has been the major progress of the past week so I will "proudly" republish it there. It is also an unhonorable way to fill this post as I have little to say in fact. Little to say but not necesarily nothing "new" to share. "New" being relativa as it is probably the second or thrird time I share some Kataphron tarck units painted and waiting for the upper body. So here we are this these 3 tracks for Destroyers. I have been quite rapid with these as I started them on friday afternoon. It is one of the virtues of serial painting: once you practice your paint scheme and made all the most obvious and common mistakes, you can go faster on your second or third iteration of the same type of unit. Yet tomorrow is a special day and my agenda for next week being so full of time consuming tasks, I will probably not progress much more than that. Have a nice W.E and see you next time.

Introduction The Salamanders had come to the Segmentum Obscurus with a contingent of over 160 Astartes hailing from the 1st, 2nd and 5th Companies, along with their respective Captains, to fight in the ill-fated Yttrius Crusade (883M41). At its conclusion, their numbers had been significantly reduced; the veterans of the 1st Company were either dead or incapacitated, the 2nd and 5th Companies had been cut to half of their starting strength, and their drop pods had been exhausted. However, they still had a full compliment of Astartes tanks, skimmers and aircraft; this bode well for the weakened Astartes who could not ignore humanity's pleas for help in the Matteus Delta system. A formation of Salamanders armour moves through the industrial sector of Dakota Primus, in the early days of the city's defensive efforts against the Ork invaders. As the acting commander of the Salamanders strike force, Captain R'Keth answered the call to defend Dakota Minor. He lead his 2nd Company alongside 5th Company elements aboard their Strike Cruiser Serpentine, to the Ork infested world. R'Keth also ordered the deployment of the sacred Land Raider "Celestial Hammer", much to the chagrin of the Techmarines who felt it inappropriate to field the relic war machine without the Firedrakes. Given the surplus of armour assets and the dearth of Astartes crew, Salamanders from the 2nd and 5th Companies had to work together to ensure enough vehicles could be deployed and operated on the battlefield. Land Raider Phobos "Celestial Hammer" The Phobos-pattern Land Raider “Celestial Hammer” is one of the oldest Land Raiders in the Salamanders armory. During the Dakota Minor campaign, Captain R’Keth authorised the use of the Celestial Hammer in the later days of the war, requiring Techmarines from the 2nd and 5th Companies to crew. The Techmarines protested at first, and so too did the Land Raider’s machine spirit, but Captain R’Keth was quick to remind them of their duty to the Emperor’s people. The Celestial Hammer was the tip of the spear during the assault on the Harkon West Industrial Precinct, which has been captured by the opportunistic Steel Reavers in the last days of the war. Land Raider “Celestial Hammer”, under command of 5th Company Techmarine Fe’var, armed with heavy bolters, twin-linked lascannon sponsons and a pintle-mounted multi-melta. Rhino Gun'vek Gun’vek is one of the newer Rhinos in the 2nd Company’s armoury, and has only seen combat a handful of times. Gun’vek was instrumental in keeping the Salamanders' Tactical Squads mobile within the city of Dakota Primus, providing fire support with its storm bolter as the Astartes entered the fray. Gun’vek was the only deployed Rhino that survived the war for Dakota Minor intact; a total of nine Rhinos were immobilised or destroyed in the conflict. Rhino Gun’vek, dedicated transport of the Salamanders 2nd Company. Razorback Mir’Tar Mir’Tar is an aged razorback, equipped with the rare pattern twin-linked plasma guns and lascannon turret. It has served the 2nd Company well over the last two millennia, and though not considered as a relic like the Celestial Hammer, it is revered by many in the 2nd Company. Its most notable campaigns have been permanently painted on the left-hand side of the vehicle: the Foreshore Crusade in M39, the Purge of Venturi IX in M40, and the Starfire Campaign of M41. Razorback Mir’tar, armed with twin-linked plasma gun/lascannon turret, storm bolter and hunter-killer missile. Predator Destructor Persephius A variant of the Predator Destructor rarely seen in the late 41st millenium, Persephius features a pair of sponson-mounted heavy flamers for close-range engagements. The city of Dakota Primus had numerous road junctions and wide alleyways that were ideal for funneling Orks into kill zones for Persephius to decimate at close-range, and obliterating Ork armour at medium-to-long range with its autocannon. Predator Persephius, armed with two heavy flamer sponsons, autocannon turret, and pintle-mounted storm bolter. Land Speeders Pre'tir and Antanar Captain R'Keth sought to take advantage of the speed and maneuverability of their fleet of infrequently used Land Speeders, against the slower and disorganised Orks. Having become familiar with the Raven Guard’s tactical doctrine during the Yttrius Crusade, the crew of the Land Speeders Pre’tir and Antanar destroyed many Ork scrap tanks and skimmers in a month-long series of hit-and-run engagements. They finally ran out of fuel and ammunition on the 44th day, and the crew were forced to abandon their craft. Pre’tir was recovered and refurbished after the war, but Antanar was never seen again. Land Speeder Tornadoes Pre’tir (left) and Antanar (right), each armed with a heavy bolter and assault cannon.

We've recently been hit with the news that Hachette are launching a new magazine collection, Warhammer 40,000: Combat Patrol. As someone that bought the Imperium Magazine collection (in it's entirety), let me tell you this - you only save money if you're going to paint and play every single model. If not, you'll breakeven at best and, most likely, lose money. Let's say you only wanted one or maybe two combat patrols from the set. You still have to sell off all the rest. Here's how it'll go: Straight away, the models aren't worth as much as an officially boxed and sealed combat patrol. It doesn't matter that they're sealed in magazines - it just ain't the same. That doesn't matter anyway, right? Because people usually don't want to buy complete sets - they just want certain units from a set. Yeah that's true, but even then you have, what, 100+ sprues you need to package up and ship out. It all takes time. You can always find someone to buy, but everyone wants a deal. If you were going to list it all on eBay, people don't want to pay the same price as they could pay on a site like Wayland Games - they want to pay less. Why? Because they can probably get it online with free shipping. You could offer free shipping yourself but that eats into the amount of money you get back in the end. Then there's the competition. Think about how many people could be doing the exact same thing, who have a load of other sprues sat round they want to get rid of. Maybe they'll throw in some models from their pile of shame, too. Suddenly there's a lot of models on the market and, people being people, they'll start dropping their prices. So even though you know a model or a unit is worth £x, it'll end up selling for £y (minus the fees). You can sell in Facebook groups but you end up with some initial interest that drops off whenever you start talking prices - or they try to shave some extra cash off. This isn't just speculation - I went through all of this myself. My honest opinion is that all the extra time and effort involved simply isn't worth it. Just buy the models you want in your army, paint them up and spend more time playing the game.

Hello folks, I've been in a hobby mojo dip for the past few months, which has translated into 0% physical hobby progress and mounting frustration, in addition to the usual Hobby Butterfly Syndrome (or HBS for short). I have however managed a relatively stable online presence (if a bit sparse in terms of post count) over that time. With that in mind, I've decided to create this blog for which my objectives are: Get a post, preferably with at least one picture of personal hobby progress, published each week and keep that momentum going for as long as possible; Organise my hobby projects in such a way that I have a clear idea of what I have underway and avoid having too big of a scatter of projects but not in a way that will stifle my creativity (typically, creating army lists at the start of a project stifles my creativity and usually sounds the death knell of projects before they have properly taken off); Avoid unnecessary squandering of my limited monetary resources; Interact with the local blogging community here. To hold myself accountable to these objectives, I'll do a periodic (monthly?) review of how well I've managed to fulfill those objectives and what I will do to improve fulfillment over time if I feel I'm going astray. Now, perhaps I can write a bit more about myself. I... am approaching my thirties at an alarmingly steady speed; live, study, and work in Switzerland (Europe) though don't have the stereotypical, well-filled bank account, much to the chagrin of my hobby hoarder side; have been in the hobby since roughly 2005-2006, when a friend showed me their Lord of the Rings Rohan Warriors and got me hooked; have been a member of this community since 2009 and a moderator since 2014; first managed to complete a playable army just under a year ago and that remains one of my proudest hobby achievements; do not like the latest edition of Warhammer 40'000 and am looking at playing the game using the 3rd/4th Edition rules and codecies. Before my latest hobby mojo dip, I was busy with painting Necromunda models and one-off Space Marines from various lesser-known Chapters. Here are a few pictures from both of those projects: A WIP shot of my Escher gang, the Lazer Lynx A pair of Goliath gangers that are part of an ongoing (and very late) commission A Space Marine from the Emperor's Hands Chapter A Space Marine from the Star Phantoms Chapter Before these projects, I was working on my Black Templars. I don't have a decent army picture so here is one of the larger Crusader Squad with its Rhino APC facing off against some retro Orks found at my local club: While I was very proud of achieving that coveted goal of a fully-painted army, their tabletop performance against the local community was very poor and my work on them ground to a complete halt late last year/early on this year. However, with my (re)discovery of the 3rd and 4th Editions of Warhammer 40'000, I'm considering working on this army project once more. I was also working on a Mantis Warrior Kill Team project that was supposed to accompany a one-off Marine that I painted in 2021 but it hasn't gotten any further than building the models and giving them a spray coat of Death Guard Green. Pre-undercoat pictures of the Kill Team The "original" and completed Mantis Warrior Moving forward, I would like to (in no particular order): organise a proper work space for my hobbying; restart work on my Black Templars and create a playable 3rd/4th Edition force; finish the Goliath gang I started painting for a friend as a commission; start work on an Eldar force for 3rd/4th Edition; continue painting one-off models whenever it tickles my fancy and/or I need a bit of palette cleanser. Beyond concrete projects though, I'd like to find a sustainable way to keep my hobby mojo flame burning steadily and to rekindle that joy I feel when working on hobby projects. If you have gotten this far, I thank you for your attention and hope you enjoyed this first post on this fresh, new blog. If you have any comments or thoughts, feel free to share them below. In the time between now and my next update, take care and keep hobbying!

311782126_10160328616435797_5619210022339024935_n Real quick one as im knackered but im really happy with how my Knight Errant Sister came out, the concept being that she is either the last member of an Orphaned Vigil or perhaps a particularly grizzled Knight or Solo operative, either way she works alone, is armed to the teeth and perfectly willing to use it all :D That and i spotted the Vampire base mini had definite potential! It hasnt gone perfectly but my keen needed an outlet ;)

This kill team will consist of two Deathwatch fire teams. I'm going to limit the number of official Chapters that are represented, however, focusing on more obscure official Chapters and DIY Chapters of my own creation. In all likelihood, I'm going to revert to the original color scheme that we used for the Legio, as seen on this model painted by @Chronophague in 2003: That version of the color scheme featured the black armour, red helmet (you can see it hung on his belt behind the grenades), and red weapons casings that we are familiar with. The left kneepad is white, indicating that this battle-brother belonged to the Light of the Emperor Great Company. At that time, the left shoulder pad field and chest decoration were bone in color. I don't recall exactly why we formally switched the chest decoration to white and the shoulder pad field to red. If you look carefully, you can see that the =][= on the Deathwatch shoulder pad is red. Most of the entries to this contest followed the "bone" theme, though not a few used different colors for the chest decoration and/or left shoulder pad field (typically white, silver, red, or black). A good example of a variant color scheme used in that contest can be seen in the model painted by @disinfect. While the left shoulder pad uses the bone coloring, the chest eagle is painted white; and the model incorporates the black and white checkerboard pattern on the right boot to indicate veteran status. As you can see, we allowed a bit of creativity in color scheme when we first created the Legio; and I think we need to return to that to better support the varying preferences of players. You can see the other images from that contest here (we distinguished between the mod entries and the Frater Domus entries, but all are collected together in that album). So the scheme I'm going to use is: Black armour (duh) Red helmet (duh) with green eyes Red weapons casings (duh) Red left kneepad or decoration upon that left kneepad (for the Blood of the Emperor Great Company) Bone chest decoration Bone left shoulder pad (Legio) field Red =][= on the left shoulder pad (I'm using the Deathwatch pads and the inclusion of the =][= indicates that these Legio members have served with the Inquisition) Silver skull on the left shoulder pad Right shoulder pads (parent Chapters) in a variety of colors, see below Why am I reverting to the "bone" theme? In short, since I'm building this kill team to introduce a group of players who are relatively new to the hobby, I'm not sure if they're familiar with the various Chapters of the Adeptus Astartes. So I want them to be able to describe the models based on the color of their parent Chapter badge. By switching to the "bone" theme, I can include Chapters whose shoulder pads are red. Assuming each member of the squad has a different color for their right shoulder pad, I have blue, red, yellow, orange, purple, green, black, white, silver, and gold. And since my freehand painting skills suck, I'm only using sculpted shoulder pads. At this point, I have identified the colors, icons, and parent Chapters of the first fire team (of the first squad), the icon and shoulder pad color of the rest of the first squad, and icon of the entire second squad. Most are DIY Chapters of my own creation, with only one member of an [obscure] official Chapter in each squad. The planned fire team of the first squad consists of: White fist on blue disc, possibly surrounded by a sunburst (Fists of Purity Chapter, DIY) - Sergeant White hawk head on orange (Nova Hawks Chapter, DIY) - Fighter Bronze bull head on purple (Khalkotauri Chapter, DIY*) - Warrior Black griffon on yellow (Emperor's Knights Chapter, DIY*) - Warrior Gunmetal crossed swords on black (Guardians of the Covenant Chapter, GW) - Warrior White Maltese cross on green (Storm Angels Chapter, DIY*) - Heavy Gunner This leaves me with white, red, gold, and silver for the fields of the remaining members (with icons given contrasting colors). It will be important to distinguish these four shoulder pads from the Chapters that I named for each. The rest of the first squad and the entire second squad consist of: skull (this is the Silver Skulls shoulder pad from the Deathwatch kit) talon (the Brazen Claws shoulder pad from the Deathwatch kit) skull and halo (the Novamarines shoulder pad from the Deathwatch kit) gauntlet (this is one of the original metal Iron Hands shoulder pads) wolf/hound head (the Ragnar Blackmane's Great Company shoulder pad from the Deathwatch kit) starburst (this is one of the original metal veteran shoulder pads) skull and crossbones (this is one of the original metal Death Company shoulder pads) dragon head (this is the Salamanders shoulder pad from the Deathwatch kit) raven/bird (this is the Raven Guard shoulder pad from the Deathwatch kit) lambda (this is one of the original metal devastator squad shoulder pads) fist (this is one of the original Imperial Fists shoulder pads) flames (this is one of the original Legion of the Damned shoulder pads) skull on a Maltese cross (this is one of the plastic Black Templars shoulder pads from the old upgrade sprue) freehand! (I figured I should challenge myself with one of these models) I may decide that some of the second squad members are from obscure official Chapters. Options include: Angels of Fire (flames) - yellow/orange on red Angels Redeemed (I'd have to use the Dark Angels shoulder pad from the Deathwatch kit) - white on red Contenders (fist) - red on silver/light grey Crimson Talons (talon) - red on white Dark Brotherhood (skull on Maltese cross) - red skull and white cross on grey Hawk Lords (raven/bird) - yellow on purple Iron Fists (fist) - gold on blue-silver Knights of the Raven (raven/bird) - black on silver Red Wolves (wolf/hound head) - red on black Shadow Wolves (wolf/hound head) - white on black Subjugators (fist) - black on green Imperial Paladins (skull on a Maltese cross) - white skull on yellow cross on blue If I decide to do this, I'll be limited by the self-imposed requirement for different colors on the shoulder pad fields. I could make the freehand shoulder pad an obscure official Chapter, doing something that I might reasonably hope to render such as: Crimson Guard (crossed red axes on yellow/gold) Dark Hunters (white axe on blue) Emperor's Hawks (white wing on red) Masters of Protelus (blue axe on white) Storm Callers (yellow lightning bolt on black) Storm Giants (red lightning bolt on bone) War bearers (crossed black axes on green) Note that I've ruled out Second Founding Chapters such as the so-called "First Founding" Chapters, Black Templars, Brazen Claws, Crimson Fists, Mortifactors, Nemesis, and Silver Skulls, as well as more well-known Chapters such as the Howling Griffons, Novamarines, and Sons of Medusa. I've also ruled out those Chapters known to have participated in the Abyssal Crusade. There are probably other official Chapters I could choose from, but those named above were found in the Insignium Astartes, Successor Chapters (booklet in the limited edition version of the 7th edition Codex: Space Marines), and How to Paint Space Marines books as well as the Index Astartes article about the Chapters that participated in the Third War for Armageddon. My focus is the first six models (colors and Chapters already decided upon), so the rest of the decisions are academic for now. If/when the time comes, however, I'll consult other sources to find the full array of official Chapters. I'm pretty sure that both Sergeants will end up having a blue shoulder pad, both fighters will end up having an orange shoulder pad, both heavy gunners will end up having a green shoulder pad, etc. I'll probably differentiate by having different shades of the colors - so one of the Sergeants will use a dark blue and the other will use a light blue. Since a single Deathwatch fire team composes a full Space Marine kill team, and since each operative type other than Warrior can only be included once in the kill team (remember - I'm using the 2021 version), this means that I'll effectively have two options for each operative type. Since my Fists of Purity Sergeant has a thunder hammer and bolt pistol, the other Sergeant will have a different weapon combination. Likewise, my Storm Angels Heavy Gunner has an Infernus heavy bolter, so the other Heavy Gunner will have one of the other heavy weapon options. Decisions, decisions... And just to manage expectations, don't expect my finished minis to match the quality of painting seen in either of the Legio mini-me's that are shown at the top of this entry. * It has been a while since I created any DIY Chapter articles, so I hope to develop these three Chapters (Emperor's Knights, Khalkatauri, and Storm Angels) to exercise some creativity. I also plan to update and revise the Fists of Purity article, removing the more egregious of my errors and [hopefully] improving the quality of the article. Each of these will be conducted as separate blogs, though I'll cross-link to them in this blog.

The Flesh Wyrds of the Marines Adamant are skilled apothecaries and genewrights. Given the independent nature of the Households - each one responsible for its own recruitment and implantation procedures - these masters of Astartes biology are vital to the continued existence of the Clan Companies, and of the Chapter as a whole. As such they are highly respected, a key part of each Warleader's command headquarters. Usually at least one of the Flesh Wyrds from each Company will have a seat when the Clan Council meets. Furthermore, considering the Households’ disinterest in the teachings of the Adeptus Ministorum, or even the Reclusiarchy, it is perhaps not surprising that these Wyrds have become the carers of not only the battle brothers’ flesh but also of the spirit within. It is they who assist the Chapter's brethren to control their disgust at the weakness of others’ mortal forms, directing their spite away from their squadmates and towards the enemies of Humanity. As such, the Flesh Wyrds are typically found in the forefront of the Marines Adamant battle lines, both to protect the Chapter's genetic legacy and to inspire their kin to greater acts of hatred and fury. Ok, although I’d hoped to get started on undercoating/painting the previous units, I haven't had a chance to get stuff out. So, for now, here is another update with a new character build. A Flesh Wyrd, which as you can probably guess is a counts-as Wolf Priest. However, while the WPs are more like Chaplains that also handle the role of Apothecary, a Flesh Wyrd is at the opposite end of the spectrum, an Apothecary that also looks after morale. Hence the choice of bits: Its mostly built from an Assault Intercessor, with the torso front from the Repulsor crewman to show the link to the AdMech. The power hammer obviously represents a Wolf Priest's Crozius without showing the religious aspects. The rest is largely Apothecary pieces leftover from another project, with a narthecium created from chopped up bits and GS:

The Spirit Wyrds, colloquially known by many of the Marines Adamant Clans as ‘Storm Walkers’ or ‘Speakers of the Mists’, form the Chapter's Librarius. As such, they are powerful psykers, attuned to the mysteries of the Empyrean and the ways of the countless vaettir of Halstarrig. The Storm Walkers usually dwell in voluntary isolation from the rest of their brethren on Halstarrig's second moon, and are not technically considered as part of the Chapter's command structure, each Wyrd instead free to choose his own path or task as the spirits reveal it to him. Most commonly these seers act as advisors to the ten Warleaders and observers for the Clan Council. Though some Household commanders might not always wish to have a Speaker decide to join their force, it would be a very rare thing - a very inauspicious thing - to refuse their presence. So, as mentioned, a character! I got a Tigurius mini for a tenner (very happy with that!) and I knew immediately that I wanted to include it as part of this force as a counts-as Njal to lead a squad of Grey Hunters. Spirit Wyrds are very shamanistic in their understanding of the Warp, so I wanted to convert him to highlight that slightly feral feel. Obviously the Ultramarine badges needed to go, and I added some GS fur and a rune-stone with a tribal glyph picturing the warp! I also thought his staff would be a good opportunity to change his outline. I thought a twisted wood ‘wizard's staff’ might be a nice option, not usually seen on Librarians, so I took a few lengths of different thicknesses of wire and twisted them together. Once I had the shape I wanted, I coated the frame in several layers of liquid GS to get the effect of a branch. An end cap of regular GS was fairly easy to add. I thought the skull - marked with an ‘X’ - might be a relic of the Chapter Librarius, perhaps the remains of an IH Librarian who was one of the original members of the Marines Adamant Founding cadre? The antlers must be an addition from one of Halstarrig's native fauna! The hand needed a bit of sculpting, so I covered up any ugly ‘sausage fingers’ with a purity seal and an added totemic feather. I'm not sure about psychic effects on a mini, but I was considering doing some wisps of ethereal mist curling up and out from where his staff is touching the ground, maybe even adding some spectral faces/figures if I can get hold of any Nighthaunt Spirit Hosts bits? Not 100%, though… anyone got any thoughts on that?

Hi Folks, It is time to move, or rather prepare the moving. There are 7 days lefy before starting loading the truck. And I packed all the stuff I jealously want to keep for myself and, if possible in good shape. But 30 years of Hobby is a big volume of stuff. And some models requuire very specific care if one want them to arrive at destination in a single piece. Past weeks have therefore be spent reinforcing boxes and tray, cutting foam spacers, revarnishing some models, just in case... Which were the trickiest models to pack? As one may guess, Cawl and its AdMech minions, especially Sydonian dragoons, Freeblade Knight for its size, Flyers such as Corvus Black Star and Storm Eagle. And the Yncarne. I can only hope my protective measures will be enough. In the end it is a huge amount of cardbox crates. It is impressive how much stuff was packed in my closets. You see things that are still in process of being packed. But there are also 3 more big plastic crates not pictured. With more scenery. Lattest years passed at building lots of buildings plastic trees, hils and gantries allowed getting very fun KT tables but it is a lot of stuff which packing leads to big volumes... Paint pots and modelling supplies are also a non negligible amount of stuff requiring special care - spillage of opened paint pot is not something one wish to experiment, do one? But bitz and spent sprues management is really an issue: almost 2 crates. I should try to sell them to the owner of a bitz ebay shop, at a symbolic price, just to get rid of them while avoiding simply getting these tiny plastic bits ending as a waste... 7 days to go and so much other things to do. See you once arrived at the other place. PS: I also found back stuff I had forgotten for years - Dwarf Flame Cannon, Tankhol the grey seer, Spore mines... The flame canon (the genuine model with big barrel) made my day! PS: Apologies from the XMas tree for its participation in a photobomb...

Finished my sword brethren.

Been steady picking away at my Ratlings team for the last week, and been making slow but steady progress. I swear, ratlings are basically guardsmen on hard-mode. "Oh you want to paint bare faces? What if they were even smaller and always squinting?". I do really love this kit, but if you don't like painting faces its certainly one to avoid. Or don't. They're small enough most people wont see them anyway - live your life. I have two young children (4 and 6), a spouse that has recently started a new business requiring a lot of their time, an engaging full time job and a lovely home that requires constant maintenance and repair. Hobby time does not come freely in my house at the moment. I long for the days of my youth where I could paint for hours on end, however the reality of my current situation is that I often have to make the best of what I have. And what I most frequently have is 30-45 minutes after the kids go to bed and I finish up chores, before I go to sleep myself. I'm fortunate enough to have a dedicated hobby space that allows me to leave my projects out, ready to be picked up and put down as the opportunity arises, and children that occasionally enjoy painting along side me (on two old AoBR Dreads constantly re-primed for their efforts. Even in death they still serve) I mention this because my biggest hobby "win" this last week was something my kids helped me with, testing my new static-grass applicator. As the dust from the holidays settled I found myself with a few gift-cards and after doing a bit of research I purchased the Woodland Scenics "Static King" tool, along with the power cord. TL:DR on that is that it might not be the best on the market, with the power cord its among the top performers for an affordable price, and was easily available on amazon (no local store carries the tool unfortunately). I'd been wanting to try out the applicator since it had arrived and this weekend provided a great opportunity. My kids helped apply watered down elmers onto two cast-off pieces, shake the applicator, and apply some of their mother's hair-spray to the grass in between applications. The results were really great! The longest grass didn't apply entirely how I would have liked, but I believe that was operator error on my part rather than the applicator not being able to properly apply longer grasses. The more I apply the more skills/tricks I hope I'll accumulate, but honestly if this was as good as it could get I think I'd still be pretty satisfied. I can definitely see problems with crushing/compressing the fibers with repeated uses/play, meaning this will likely see more use in building display boards and dioramas than it will with high-use minis, but for this project its already a lock, and I'm VERY excited to finish up painting these minis so I can get to work on their bases.

January Progress In trying to keep my new years resolution of posting on my blog more regularly, here's the first update for the year: First up we have the models I need to clear off my desk before the Aeldari deluge begins - The company heroes i got for Christmas along with a squad of incursors and another of Infiltrators, left over from buying a few too many models to create my Phobos kill team. Next we have my Xmas present to myself, a full size mark X helmet, that i got as 3d printed parts on Etsy to build and paint. Shown worn by my wife. Incoming Looks like there is going to be a lot of space elves in my near future, I've preordered all the new Aeldari models as well as the codex, cards and the reboxed war walkers, all of which should hopefully arrive at the weekend. I also took out a subscription to Combat patrol from issue 19 to hopefully pick up the Aeldari and chaos issues, the first batch of which arrived last week. As well as the Chaplain on bike and the farseer I was expecting they also sent me Cheif librarian Tigurius, all of which got a the kitbashing treatment, the farseer and chaplain to distiguish them from the existing models I have and tiggy to remove any trace of the ultrasmurfs on him so he could be repurposed as a librarian for my own chapter. As usual any comments and critiques welcomed.

Since I'm working on a kill team for the Knives in the Shadows 2025 challenge (you can enter the challenge here, and since that challenge requires me to provide some background, I felt it appropriate to discuss the reasoning behind my (poor?) choices. If you examine my pledge in that challenge, you'll see that I committed myself to a kill team from the Fire Claws Chapter. Most of you will probably recognize that name, and many of you may know that it is the original (?) name of the Relictors Chapter. If you're not familiar with the background of the Relictors Fire Claws, or even if you are and just want to see what I know, I examined some key elements of that lore in this article. I didn't give my own theory about the Chapter in that article, however, as I wanted it to serve as a launching point for discussion of different theories (rather than promoting any one in particular). One of the interesting things about the Relictors Fire Claws is that every hobbyist has their own take on the Chapter. We've seen several other members present their Relictors Fire Claws over the years here at the B&C, and each is different and distinctive while drawing upon the same reservoir of lore. Back in 2021, I committed to my vision of the Fire Claws in another community challenge, the Liber Astartes Swap Challenge. That challenge required participants to create a DIY Chapter (or Heretic Astartes warband), and then for submitted Chapters/warbands to be randomly assigned to other participants. So participants had to develop sufficient information to give the other randomly assigned member an idea of what the DIY Chapter looked like so that they could assemble/convert and paint a model representing a member of that Chapter. So I had to come up with something. Before I present what I decided upon, I think it might be interesting to discuss the evolution of my ideas over the years. I've been a fan of the Relictors Fire Claws ever since they were first introduced during the 3rd edition of the Warhammer 40,000 game; and my views on the Chapter have evolved over the years. In fact, at this point it would be fair to say that there are two different theories that are in competition within my squirrely brain, though I definitely favor one. Actually, there are two origin theories and one current status theory (both of the origin theories feed into the same current status theory). Before we get to the theories, however, here's a very basic description of how my vision of the Chapter has evolved over the years. Note that this has all the weight of a feather - it's nothing more than my own personal take based on my attempts to reconcile the known lore and incorporate my own views (some of which aren't quite mainstream). So take this with a grain of salt - I'm not saying that this is the way it is - only that this is the way that I prefer to think about it. First and foremost, I intensely dislike the notion that the Fire Claws simply accepted the "Relictors" cognomen. The Adeptus Astartes are proud - proud of themselves and proud of their traditions. They are the Fire Claws Chapter and have carried that proud name since the Chapter's founding during the Age of Apostasy (M36). If the events of the Captor of Sin took place in the later centuries of M41 (which is what I infer, though the lore never explicitly states this to be so), the Chapter carried that proud name for over five millennia. It's difficult for me to envision the Chapter deciding to change their name to "Relictors." I think it much more likely that "relictor" was simply a term that connotated that the subject collected and used the artifacts of Chaos - something that would denote radical tendencies (in the language of the Inquisition). I hypothesize that the term had come into use long ago, most likely when one or more individuals/organizations followed the practice, and the term had come to be a sort of code word. To me, it seems much more likely that third parties began calling the Fire Claws by the "relictors" name, both describing their observed (suspected?) practice and condemning it. If that is indeed what happened, then the Fire Claws should have been insulted by the name. After all, the source of the Relictors Fire Claws deciding to collect and use Chaos relics was pride. They were prideful in thinking that they could wield such relics without succumbing to corruption. To me, it would have been more plausible for the Fire Claws to be indignant about the "Relictors" name, not adopt it with pride. Another issue to consider is that the skull icon that we refer to as the Chapter badge/icon was actually a penitent marking. This means that the Fire Claws had some other image as their Chapter icon. In the early evolution of my theories about the Chapter, I assumed that the grey and black color scheme was carried over from their Chapter approved Fire Claws livery and that the leering skull icon replaced the original Chapter icon to indicate that the Chapter was on its century-long penitent crusade. Just as important, upon successful completion of the crusade and being granted the Emperor's forgiveness, the Chapter would remove the penitent marking and resume use of its actual Chapter badge (though I could see [some] survivors of the penitent crusade incorporating the penitent marking into their panoply as a permanent reminder of their brush with heresy. So when I first began planning a Relictors Fire Claws army, I looked at the Chapter shortly after the incidents of the Captor of Sin but prior to being sent on a penitent crusade. My Relictors Fire Claws, then, would bear the original Chapter icon. Here's what I first conceived: I used the talon image from the Brazen Claws Chapter, turned it to reach upwards (instead of forwards), and incorporated a flame motif such as the Salamanders and Fire Hawks Chapters often used. I really liked how the 3rd edition rendition of the Salamanders Chapter incorporated individualized flame decorations on armour, as well as how the Fire Hawks similarly decorated their armour with flames, so I took the yellow flames of the Salamanders and the red flames of the Fire Hawks and used orange for the Fire Claws. As you can see from the shoulder pad rims, I kept the rest of the color scheme for the Chapter as shown for the Relictors. At one point, I even used that design on an image from the B&C's Space Marine Painter, resulting in: That's a veteran sergeant wielding a power sword. Later, the Angron's Monolith novella revealed that Chapter's original scheme was black and orange, though the arrangement of those colors was never described. So I went back to the drawing board, this time coming up with the scheme below: And this was where the Fire Claws Chapter sat within my brain until the LASC 21 challenge arose. While I loved the black flaming arms of the second scheme, it bothered me that I was limiting the concept of the custom flames that had been inspired by the 3rd edition Salamanders, and which were reinforced in the Horus Heresy black books. So I went back to the drawing board again, coming up with a scheme that allowed for more custom flame designs while using predominantly black and orange armour. The main design conceit here was making the hands orange while leaving the rest of the arms black. This played on the "fire claws" idea, substituting hands for claws. This also allowed me to use personalized flame decorations on models. The concept I used in my artwork was that the more senior the Fire Claw, the more likely they would be to have more personalized flame decorations. For example, the (assault) Veteran shown below only has personalized flames on both wrists whereas the Captain has personalized flames on both arms (up to the shoulder pads, modifying the Chapter icon somewhat), on both legs, and on his loincloth. The black flames on the loincloth are actually significant in that they indicate that this member of the Chapter has passed whatever tests there are to wield the relics of Chaos in battle. My original idea was that such members would be identified by a black laurel. I finally decided that there might be options for these indicators, including the (original) black laurel, the black flames, and a white crux (which the Captain above also has). So my conception of the Relictors Fire Claws Chapter is that they dislike the "Relictors" name and color scheme, and that they reverted to their original Fire Claws livery at the first opportunity (though my personal Fire Claws models would represent the Chapter prior to their penitent crusade). My basic view of the Chapter is that they are prideful, almost to the point of hubris. They see themselves as morally and spiritually superior, able to wield the relics of Chaos without taint or corruption. They are doing the Emperor's work, not succumbing to heresy. Their warrior cult is one of purity and stoicism, enduring hardships in their never-ending quest to fight for Humanity and the Emperor. Origin theory 1, the one I favor, is that the key elements of the Relictors Index Astartes article are correct. If you want to see origin theory 2, click the NEXT PAGE button that appears at the top and bottom of this post. Otherwise, you can skip forward to my current status theory. As for the Fire Claws Chapter's current status, I like the notion that they have Primaris among their ranks, but I think that the rendition of Primaris in the Relictors colors was wrong. By my way of thinking, that was a notional concept rendered by some scribe who was familiar with the Chapter as the Relictors, but who never saw them after the Torchbearer fleet actually arrived at Neutra and delivered the Greyshields. And this was all for good reason, because I enjoy the notion that the Torchbearer fleet that travelled to Neutra was special, that Roboute Guilliman was accompanied by a much larger contingent of Adeptus Custodes as well as members of the Inquisition and, perhaps, one or more other Chapters of the Adeptus Astartes. I think it would have been fitting for Roboute Guilliman to have purged the Chapter of all members of the Conclave, forcing the Chapter to return to its Fire Claws colors and installing Primaris in officer positions. I can see this as a revision of the old story about the Grey Slayers from the 1st edition of the game, replacing the Grey Slayers with the Relictors Fire Claws and adjusting the elements of the story to align with the Fire Claws. If Games Workshop/Black Library ever paid me to write about the Relictors Fire Claws and didn't force me to the party line, Roboute Guilliman's purging of the Chapter would be my choice. If you're interested, I present a version of the Fire Claws' path to damnation (i.e., the Inquisition manipulating them) here. That's my story and I'm sticking to it. If you're interested in my other theory (which I decided to not use), click NEXT PAGE. If you just want to read about the Fire Claws kill team I'm planning for the Knives in the Shadows challenge, you'll have to wait for the next installment. This theory attempts to reconcile two things: The mention of the (a) "Relictors" Chapter operating in M33 (when the Index Astartes article told us that they are believed to have been created during the dark days of the Age of Apostasy - M36), and The notion that the Chapter may not have been indignant at the Relictors name, that they chose it. This theory is that there was a Chapter known as the Relictors back in M33, and this was the same Chapter that would later be known as the Fire Claws and then the Relictors (again). A Chapter active during M33 would have to be from the 7th or earlier founding, and could possibly be some (unknown?) 2nd founding Chapter. This Chapter wasn't originally known as the Relictors, but had some other name. For some reason, however, they began collecting and using the relics of the Great Enemy; and when this became known to others, the Chapter began to be called the "Relictors" by others. Few knew of this practice, however, and the Chapter was able to operate relatively unmolested for millennia. With the Age of Apostasy, however, and with Goge Vandire's antipathy towards the Adeptus Astartes, the Relictors Chapter saw an opportunity. They re-branded themselves as the Fire Claws, likely adopting a new color scheme and claiming to have been founded in M36. Their prior practice of collecting and using Chaos relics was repressed, though the members of the Librarium knew about this practice. The Chapter's influential Librarium preserved the secrets of the Chapter, but inculcated warrior cult practices that emphasized spiritual and moral purity. When Decario defeated the Excoriator with the daemon prince's own Chaos weapon, and with the added influence of Inquisitor De Marche, the Librarium was finally able to restore the previously proscribed practices. The Chapter then proudly reverted to its Relictors cognomen and livery (whatever the Chapter's icon was, it wasn't the leering skull penitent icon). And then everything went pretty much as the official material has described, though it branched into my current status theory (click PREVIOUS PAGE above/below and scroll to the bottom for a refresher). That's my very different and much more grimdark theory. I still favor origin theory 1, but the notion that the Relictors Chapter of M41 is just a continuation/resurgence of the original Relictors Chapter of M33, with all of the conspiracy and deceit, makes for an interesting story. Still, I'm sticking with the prideful Fire Claws version and not the relapsed Relictors version. If you just want to read about the Fire Claws kill team I'm planning for the Knives in the Shadows challenge, you'll have to wait for the next installment.

YTHIRIL WILD HUNTER HOST SHROUD RUNNERS Those who roam beyond the Cold Iron Stars. Precise and true. Bound as it is to a slow, languid procession around the spior- ad a' bhàis - The Doom Spiral - Craftworld Ythiril must send its children out far afield to watch for threats to the long watch. More integrated into the Craftworld than most who walk the Path of the Outcast these rangers often choose to go to war in the style of Ythiril, joining the Wild Hunts on seeds fit for their purpose as harassers, scouts, and sharp-shooters. Rider pairs are often lovers, siblings, or bond-mates, all the better to act as one. - At 80 points a unit I'm going to be working on this little force for a while. Still, it's a fun scheme, nice and methodical, and I think it's coming together nicely with the very grounded, earthy tones and pops of warm spot colours. Need to work on my gems, though. They're a bit naff. These kits were a nightmare to put together. I do everything in assemblies, which meant assembly riders and bikes separately. Easy enough to get away with that on the Windriders, but the cloaks on these elves made it... Less fun. Ah well. Not like I'm likely to do a second squad on these. They're nice to have, but not really the focus. I have a box of Shining Spears ready to go next, and a possible Fire Prism in my immediate future. I was tempted to go with JUST bikes, but no, I think adding in a tank or two works. Eldar tanks are all so zippy anyway, they fit. Just need to decide if I want to grab a Hornet or two... Decisions, decisions.

I recently painted up a small fraction of my (many, many) Daemons, as a vow for the Call to Arms. I basically just threw together whatever Tzeentch stuff I thought would be fun and pledged them. It had the added benefit that I was able to use them for a game of Old World (as I could just make all the stuff I had pledged into a - pretty ineffective - army), so that was a big help in keeping motivated. I lost the game, of course, but now I have a bunch of my Daemons painted!

This blog post started life as an effort to better educate members on the benefits of Pages/Articles after some posts, especially the one by @INKS here. The information herein goes beyond Pages/Articles, however, so I decided to locate it within my blog and then link to it in the aforementioned discussion, and maybe also in the Amicus Aedes forum. Realistically, this is just a precursor to something that should be either an article or a series of articles. It is being presented in this abbreviated format, however, in the interest of time (i.e., getting the information out there now) as we lean into making the Pages/Articles feature public. A key issue is understanding the various features that the site offers. These include: Blog Club Discussion Download Event (i.e., Calendar) - I'm not going to discuss this feature much herein) Gallery Pages (hereafter referred to as Article) The features that are well understood are discussion, download, and gallery. These features are mutually supporting and distinct from each other. Conversely, the features that are not well understood (and woefully underutilized) are blog, club, and articles. As you will see below, there is a lot of overlap, but each serves a distinct purpose. Discussion The core feature of the site, and that for which the site was created, was discussion. As the name implies, discussion is about various members providing their viewpoints/responses to various topics, engaging in a discussion with each other. The methods for formatting discussion posts transfer over to the other features. Discussion also supports the other features via the ability to post comments, notably in the blogs, galleries, and downloads. When members submit new downloads or articles, discussions are created to announce those additions and provide visibility for other members. Since the other features came later, discussion has been used to emulate/bastardize those other features. For example, members often use discussions to present their blogs instead of using the actual blog function. Similarly, many articles are presented as discussions rather than via the actual article function. These emulations/bastardizations are functional and familiar, but they are sub-optimal, underutilizing the site's capabilities (for reasons that will be demonstrated later). That said, these emulations/bastardizations are effective (so we're not going to stop anyone from using them), though they are less effective than the actual features. One aspect of discussions that many members don't notice is the archiving process. In the process, the site software automatically archives a discussion topic after a period of time. Once this happens, members can neither edit posts nor submit additional replies to that topic, effectively locking them. Gallery The use of the gallery feature allows members to host images online so that those images can be used in the other site features, such as displaying an image of a painted miniature or a header image for a club/blog. Members have other options for hosting images online, but the B&C galleries are convenient and free. Since the hobby is so visually intense, the ability to display images is essential to effective discussion. Download If you look at the top of the page, you'll see the site's mission statement. A key element of that is the final sentence - the sharing of hobby-related content [to help others enjoy the hobby]. While images (see gallery above) are an obvious element of that, there are many non-image forms of content that members can share with each other to fulfill this portion of our mission statement. Over the years we have seen myriad types of files shared via the downloads, including roster templates, homegrown rules, decals, missions, etc. In many cases, these content types can be shared via discussion, but the ability to download files provides much better control and enables more efficient printing of these files. An announcement is created in the discussion forums any time a file is submitted to our downloads, and members are able to comment in that discussion or directly to the file page to provide feedback to the content creator/submitter. Blog A blog bears a very strong resemblance to a discussion forum, but where the structure and scope of the discussion forums are controlled by the B&C admins, each member has control over their own blog. The real value of a blog is that a member can have a central location for all of their various projects. Discussions might fall off the front page, so if a member decides to update a project, they may have to perform some level of searching to find an existing project discussion (and there are various ways of performing such a search). If a member has a blog, however, they simply have to open their blog to narrow their search down, making it much easier to find the project they're looking for (and for others to review all of a member's projects without laborious searching). One of the great things about the blog feature is that it provides members with a convenient and free way to present their own blog, saving them from having to host/download some other blog software and learn how to use that software. Club The club feature is easily the best of the new features (since the site update a few years ago). Clubs fulfill a variety of purposes, limited only by the community requirement that a club be relevant to the Warhammer 40,000 hobby and members' imaginations (with the caveat that we won't approve of clubs that effectively duplicate public discussion forums - for example, we don't need a club for fans of the Dark Angels since we already have a discussion forum for that purpose). Clubs may be created to focus on products (e.g. 40K Action Figure Afficianados for fans of the JoyToy and McFarlane WH40K action figures), allow for coordination within specific geographic areas (e.g., the Europe club for those WH40K issues that are specific to the members of our community that reside upon that continent), allow for coordination within WH40K game clubs or stores (e.g., Metal Head Armory in Phoenix, Arizona, USA), development of homegrown rules (e.g., The Chronicles of Saint Katherine's Aegis), etc. One particularly great capability that clubs provide is the ability for members to work on group projects without the need for B&C administrator support. In the past, we had the Special Projects forum in which members could create discussions to coordinate efforts in a special project (typically working towards the creation of some set of homegrown rules). Particularly complex projects often required the creation of dedicated sub-forums, allowing participants to have multiple discussions for better organization and partitioning of their project; and the creation of such sub-forums required administrator approval and a degree of work on the part of the approving administrator. With clubs, however, members can simply create a club dedicated toward their project. The really great part, though, is that the club owner/creator can include various features in the club, including one or more discussion forums, files (i.e., downloads), galleries, and events. This enables participants to upload project-specific files and images within the club, and to coordinate efforts on their own calendar. The club owner/creator can decide upon the features that will be available in the club, and these features can be updated later. The only hurdle with the clubs is that clubs must be approved by administrators, but with no other effort on their part, speeding things up considerably. In addition, club owners/creators can be given permissions similar to those of moderators within their clubs, allowing them to control content more easily without the need for administrator/moderator intervention (though they won't have disciplinary permissions). Overall, clubs provide members with a great deal of freedom, better supporting member-created content with much less need for moderators/administrators. Article The (soon-to-be) newest feature is the pages (article) feature, which resurrects the functionality that we used to have in the Librarium (way back in the day). The key distinction between articles and discussions is that articles are a way for an author (or authors) to present their content to others, much the way articles are published in magazines and journals, whereas a discussion is much more open and anyone can participate. If a member has conducted a lot of research on a subject and wants to present their conclusions to other members, an article is an excellent format. If a member wants to debate issues or if they have questions for which they desire answers/feedback, however, a discussion would be a better format. As with downloads, the submission of an article creates a discussion that serves as both an announcement (providing visibility to other members) as well as a medium for others to provide their feedback on the article (and which the article author may consider for possible updates to the article). Articles can have different origins. For example, a discussion topic may prompt a member to compose an article, whether some discussion of lore, the presentation of their homegrown Chapter of Space Marines, etc. Alternately, a member may complete a project that they presented in their blog, then they might collect the blog (or highlights thereof) into an article. Or a group may develop some project, presenting the finished product as an article. It is also very important to identify the relationship between downloads and articles. Each of these features enables members to present the same (or similar) information via different mediums. The articles [pages] function allows for online/digital presentation of content (that is formatted based on the user's device), whereas downloads allow for that same information to be presented in a format that can be printed (in a format defined by the author). Many of you may be familiar with a variety of online libraries such as those that are available at learning institutions; those online libraries allow members to view an article online and often to download that article (typically in .pdf format). Our software doesn't allow for online presentation of a .pdf, unfortunately, but the online format (via the articles feature) provides better accessibility that is tailored to the user's device. There is no automatic linkage between the two features, unfortunately, nor is there (and there will not be) any mandated requirement from the site for members to submit content in both formats. In my ideal world, however, members will take the time to develop content in both formats to better support the various needs of other community members. At this point, all we can do is provide incentives to those outcomes via achievements/badges (i.e., the system tracks your content submissions and awards badges at different thresholds). The most important thing to realize is that all of these features exist within an ecosystem. Each has a specific function and works best for different types of outcomes, though there are many commonalities. Yes, the discussion feature can be used to emulate blogs and articles, but blogs and articles each do their own thing better than discussions. Many of these features support or are supported by various other features.

Another slow day at work, another blog post to archive a previous project. When the Strike Force Justinian Kill Team was announced/revealed I got to work on a conversion. The stock models are fine, but I'm not a big fan of the Ultramarines and didn't feel like shelling out cash when I had most of the models/bits on hand. The one exception I made was for the captain, because I needed both a powerfist/plasma pistol...and white-scars bits to accompany the upgrade kit I'd picked up ages ago on a whim. I ended up kitbashing Kor'sarro Khan and Messinius. I probably could have found a powerfist and plasma pistol elsewhere, but the horse motif on Messinius's p-fist was too good to pass up...and I was excited about the project. I had previously painted up a box of eliminators as Space Wolves for fun, so one of them took a plunge into some simple-green to be reborn a Son of Chogoris. The Heavy Intercessor was a bit trickier. I didn't want to buy a box for just one model, but I had some aggressors from a start-collecting SW box that I was never going to build, so I got to work kit-bashing. I had a Deathwatch Frag cannon that passed the sniff test to look like a heavy bolter, and after a LOT of painstaking trial and error managed to get the ammo-belts from the aggressor models to look like a decent ammo belt for the HB. The reamaining intercessors also came out of the start-collecting box, and with a few upgrade bits were ready to serve their Kahn. The top-knot and grenade/smoke were both donated from some orks (don't tell the Scars) Painting them came together fairly quickly, I went with the GW recommended scheme and colors straight from the website...with the exception of the white, since I don't truck with citadel white's and nothing beats Titanium white ink through and airbrush for my money. I wanted to go big with the weathering, since it was a skill I wanted to practice. I also finally took the plunge on pigments, which was a medium I'd never worked with. I tried a few different application methods and found that overall I preferred dry application and then sealing it with my varnish. Applying it "wet" with sealer ended up too muddy, and trying to apply the sealer after yeilded similarly dark/muddy results. Since my head-cannon for the team was fighting in Monument valley in SPAAACCCEEEE the muddy look didn't do it for me at all. The rocks for the baes are just that. Rocks. I went into the back-yard with a hammer and chisel, and went to town on some slate pavers we'd used for a garden boarder. They tended to break in longer, thin-ish pieces. The biggest one's were set aside for the board (more on that later) and the smaller pieces were distributed among the baes. As stated earlier my idea for the bases/board was monument valley, and I tried to capture that vibe as best as possible, with some added color variation just to break up the visual. Once the bases were done I got to work on the board. This was the first board I'd ever attempted. I've been a long-time lurker in various terrain building/hobby blogs to have a general idea of what to do, and decided to jump in with both feet. I played around with various arrangements/builds, I knew I wanted dimensionality, and to include a bike in the board, because White Scars, so I needed something that would accommodate that. Once I had the general layout settled, I decided I wanted to incorporate more of the stones from the garden into the board to tie the models and the board fully together. So I got to work cutting out parts of the board and replacing some of the foam with stones. I carved out holes for the bases in the foam and used spare bases as placeholders. This ended up being a bit of a bad idea. The end result has the bases blending smoothly with the board, but they are kind of a mother:cuss:er to remove/replace. Oh well, lesson learned. Once I had the layout more ore less settled I used air-dry clay to build up the foam and better incorporate the rocks. Because I'm impatient the air was assisted with a hairdryer. The clay dried with huge cracks, and would easily lift if pulled on...not sure how or if that can be remedied for future projects, but since it wasn't my final layer I didn't worry about it too much. When in doubt, cover it up I guess. Next step was the terrain paste. I primarily used Agris Earth from Vallejo, spread pretty much across the entire board. I wanted the rocky breakup, but also to seal down the clay. Next up was Martian earth terrain paste from Huge Miniatures. This is a smoother terrain paste that I wanted to use to signify where the marines had been walking, breaking up the dried earth and making it more fine, driving up dust Satisfied with how it looked, the next step was painting. I didn't know how the stones would take paint. I cleaned them off with dish-soap and water before bringing them inside, and decided to use a primer across the whole board just to make sure I could control the colors more easily Once I had the basic colors in I used pigments to drive up the "churned desert" look I added some dried bushes/scub to help break of the desolation. I kind of wish I had added more color just to break up the tone of the board, but I didn't have any cacti style terrain bits on hand, and am still happy with the overall result. In creating this post I actually realized that I don't have any "final" pictures after having added the bike so that can be a follow up post in this particular thread at a later date. Maybe I'll go back and add some more color to the board to break it up as well. who knows. Overall it was a great experience and broke down my mental barrier about taking on a project like this. I learned a lot, and I've taken those lessons to future projects. One final note, if you're going to use stones for a terrain board, do yourself a favor and put a sheet of plywood or something more solid as a base, because this thing is heavy as :cuss:. *edited to remove superfluous picture

KY'VASH RECON CADRE PATHFINDER TEAM 01 Pathfinder Team 01, Pulse Carbines & Rail Rifles. Active in Sub-Sector Vyndax, the Fire Caste of minor sept world Ky'Vash lacks some of the heavier equipment of the core septs, but has proven to be a thorn in the side of Imperial colonial and extractive concerns within the region. Ordo Xenos representatives in the Sub-Sector have tracked reports of T'au recon and infiltration forces on multiple worlds, striking from hidden forward bases and ambushing supply convoys in the less industrialized and built-up Imperial holdings. Ky'Vash Pathfinder units range ahead of more substantial units and support platforms, quite literally 'finding paths' for less mobile segments of the strikeforce in the dense woodlands found on many of the once-terraformed worlds of Vyndax. Shas'la with Pulse Carbine. Shas'la with Rail Rifle. Shas'la Drone-Control Specialist. Shas'ui Team Leader. Note the bonding knife attached to her fatigues. - New Year, New Army! Also new blog, because it was about time. We'll see how I like doing things in here. Having spent most of 2023 building a non-optimal, primarily infantry space marines army, I've decided to do something different for 2024: That, but with T'au. Look, I like infantry! They're fun! This will, eventually, have a Hammerhead and maybe some Crisis Suits, but for now we're doing camo-clad footsloggers. The camo itself is a mix of AUSCAM woodland camo with what appeared to be a one-off Tau Piranha model I found online from like... 2018. This will be the standard scheme for the whole army, though the Pathfinders have more cloth, and thus actually less camo than the Firewarriors will have. Probably. I may end up leaving them with more black armour, we'll see what happens. Drones are pending, we've had some MOIST days, so they're waiting on my painting desk, unprimed.

Xaphan lead his Forgotten against the Night Lords, seeking to punish the masters of terror for their ambition and lack of discipline. For the Night Lords terror itself was a goal, thriving on the horrified cries of the enemy and civilians rather than focusing on strategic objectives. The Warmaster and the Forgotten's Grand Master had given the warbands specific goals for the campaign and Xaphan was determined to achieve them. The warlord known as Resk of the Midnight Claw would have to be shown the error of overreach, of indulging in his personal desires. The Forgotten storm into Resk's base, bike squads roaring and Terminator squads slamming into the ground via ancient teleportariums. Xaphan smashed his crozius into a screamimg Helbrute, the relic weapon cutting through the insane monster's chasis and sending it to it's Gods. Sar Ornias, the brutal Master of Executions and leader of Chosen, cuts down both Resk and his Sorceror with the skills of Old Caliban's Knightly Orders. Havoc squad Kushiel, the Predator Sauriel, and both Legionaries squads pour fire into various Night Lord Astartes. Not everything goes the Fallen's way, the Night Lords are no cowards even if they are surprised and on the back foot. Chosen in midnight clad kill off the Forgotten Raptors, while the Helbrute and Forgefiends destroy Predator Sauriel and a bike squad before falling. Still, the message was sent- follow the Forgotten or pay the price. Follow the Warmaster's plans or be destroyed. Forgotten versus the Night Lords Mission - Final Stand Points - 1750 Final Game of Phase 2 Forgotten win the battle, 11-6 (Forgotten were Attacker, went 1st). 1 SAP gained from Victory (held Defender deployment objective at end), 1 SAP gained from Strategic Dominance, 1 SAP gained from Prime Macro-Ordnance. Chaos Glory points gained 5. New path totals (7/7/8), now Favored in all paths. Use Warfleet bonus to Increase Supply Limit for 0 RP. Do not use either other path bonus. Gain 1 Battle Trait for Xaphan from Personal Glory. Did not gain second bonus from either other path. No unit gained Battle Scars Units upgraded Terminator squad Furlac - gains Grim Survivors (Once per battle gain a 5+ FNP, or a 4+ if below half strength, until the end of the phase.) Xaphan - gains Chaos Boon Unholy Speed (add 1 to Advance and Charge rolls) -- Maxed out for upgrades Sar Ornias (Marked for Greatness) - Conversion Field Artificer relic (Unit gains 5+ invuln versus ranged attacks. On an unmodified 6 to save, enemy receives 1 Mortal Wound) Havoc squad Kushiel - gains Despoilers Without Mercy (+1 to BS) Overall- Victory - Forgotten SAP - +3 RP - gain 1, Total is now 4 Supply limit - 2250 to 2450 Crusade points - Goes from 24 to 28 Round 1 Forgotten turn 1 - All the Forgotten move up, Advancing and moving onto the middle two objectives. A good shooting phase knocks out one of the Forgefiends of the NL, and severely depletes the Legionaries camping on the enemy deployment objective. The bike squad near the middle charges the remaining Forgefiend to hopefully tie it up, but bounce off it and lose a bike. Night Lords turn 1 - The Helbrute and remaining Forgefiend destroy the Predator, while the rest of the NL focus on Cypher and the Chosen squad. Cypher goes down, but manages to kill off several Noise Marines, while the Chosen squad gets whittled down to a mere two Chosen and Xaphan (with his disciples).The Helbrute charges in and finishes off the bike squad in combat with the Forgefiend. Round 2 Forgotten turn 2 - Raptors, 2nd Chosen squad, and Legionaries in a Rhino all show up from reserves. Legionaries Prime Macro-Ordinance, the Havoc squad's missile launcher miraculously kills the Forgefiend and Xaphan with his remaining Chosen move to charge the Helbrute. Xaphan smashes the Helbrute to bits in the end but loses his Chosen and Minions to the Warpsmith/Helbrute. Xaphan and Warpsmith locked in combat. Sar Ornias' Chosen plant a bomb. Night Lords turn 2 - The remaining Noise Marines from both squads blast Xaphan off the board. Due to the mission rules, the Defender's reserves don't show up until turn 3/4, so what little remains of the NL hunker down. Round 3 Forgotten turn 3 - Two squads of Terminators drop into the battlefield, one near the enemy objective and one reinforcing the middle two objectives. Raptors and Terminators charge in and kill off the remaining NL on the backfield objective. Night Lords turn 3 - Chosen and a Nemesis Claw with Sorceror drop into the enemy backfield. Nemesis Claw manages to kill off the Terminators, while the Fallen Raptors fight back and do minor damage. Raptors Take to the Skies at the end of the fight phase to go back into Reserves with their three remaining members. Round 4 Forgotten turn 4 - Legionaries squad on the middle objective (that was sitting there the entire game) move up to plant a bomb. The Chosen squad containing Sar Ornias moves to charge the Nemesis Claw, Ornias kills off the Sorcerer and the Chosen finish off the rest of the claw. Due to a Surgical Strike mishap, the Raptor squad loses another member and then a fourth when his plasma pistol explodes. The single remaining Raptor Champion stays in place, not daring to face an entire Chosen squad himself. Night Lords turn 4 - To stop the game from ending, the Night Lords need to do two things; kill two or more units to tie the Forgotten's kill tally, and remove the Chosen squad from the backfield deployment objective. To do this they drop a terminator squad in the back, and a Raptor squad near the middle objective to kill a lone Havoc in the midst of termies. The NL Chosen squad kills off the Fallen Raptor Champion easily. The firepower from the NL terminator squad does not kill off Sar Ornias' squad, nor does their Charge, leaving the Master of executions and a Chosen alive (Ornias would go on to kill the NL Warlord on the return stroke). The NL Raptors similarly fail to kill off the Havoc, their firepower split and the Forgotten termies Heroically Intervening into them and interrupting their fight before the Raptors can get the kill. With the Night Lords Raptors smashed off the table, the game ends with the Forgotten winning. Thoughts Fun little game, as both the NL and I are in the same alliance, so we really are allies. Thematically this is Xaphan deciding to give the NL a smack and make sure they stop being uppity, to get them to fall in line with his/the Warmaster's plans. It worked out well. Final Stand is an interesting mission with some very asymmetric elements- both the NL and the Forgotten are not really set up to be Defenders in the traditional sense, as we have lots of fast moving/not-very-durable units. The NL has the advantage versus the Forgotten when it comes to defense, with twin Forgefiends and a Helbrute packing quite a decent punch, but it just wasn't enough. The whole mission favored the Attacker with these two armies, so I got lucky in that sense. Still, my plan worked and I was able to both plant bombs and hold the center every turn I was able to, giving me lots of experience and bonus SAP. Overall this was a game that really worked well for me, but I could totally see smashing up against a defensive-based army and bouncing off.

Hello and thank you for looking at this little blog. It will be about my Forgotten, a Heresy-era Dark Angels force that has taken a bit of a journey to become what it now is- a Chaos Marine force in a local Nachmund Gauntlet Crusade campaign. This first entry is most likely to be the most boring, with no pics or lore or gameplay, just a winding story of how the force came to be. So, if you aren't interested in the self-indulgent personal history digression of a middle-aged hobbyist, feel free to pass on and wait until I get up some more entertaining content (no judgement). I'm currently forty years old, and started up 40k/wargaming in my early teens. Like many other players, my first models were Space Marines and for years I had an ever-growing collection of them. I was also young and dumb, so wound up becoming fairly obsessive in my hobby and began to buy up every "army of the month", sinking a lot of money into various boxes (whatever the equivalent to Combat Patrols were back in 3rd/4th ed) that got built but never painted. In fact, I don't think I ever had a full painted army in the first eight or so years in which I started the hobby. Anyway, I married my wife in my early twenties (around the beginning/middle of 4th ed I think) and realized that the hobby was too much of addictive obsession that was getting out of control; I decided to quit and got rid of almost all of my 40k stuff. Roughly $5k worth of stuff (probably something like triple/quadruple the value now) of models, books, and equipment were summarily thrown out or put into a box and forgotten about. Fast forward ten-ish years (roughly 2016-2017). I had stayed somewhat in the hobby space, reading the occasional BL novel and playing some of the various video games, but considered myself more of a PC/console gamer than wargamer anymore (was heavily involved in EVE Online and MWO). I was getting burnt out with PC gaming though, had recently stopped playing both of my big games and was looking for another diversion. I work night shift, so have quite a lot of time to research/read/do my own thing when work calms down and nothing happens- a coworker noticed me reading a BL novel and asked if I played. Chatting with him, I felt the urge to get back into the hobby. Rummaging around in my basement, I found a box that contained quite a bit of old SM stuff that had survived my purge and so I dug out some models. The HH rulebooks had just dropped, so I read through them and decided to create a force of Dark Angels, which were the Legion that I had liked for a long time. So I created my Dark Angels force, from the remnants of an old army and a lot of random eBay bit lots purchases/3rd party. I wasn't yet playing again, but the impetuous was there and I had begun to paint. After a year or so I had something like a 5k points worth army of painted DA, quite a bit of it magnetized, that was looking ok and I felt the need to start playing again. Then 8th ed 40k came out and I had another work buddy ask me if I wanted to play, so I left the HH sphere and made the Forgotten: a time-warped force of Heresy-era DA that were deployed to reinforce the Unforgiven in their fight against Chaos. My Dark Angels weren't really up to snuff in 8th ed, being worse than Primaris marines and not having quite the firepower needed to compete. So, they were regretfully put to the side as I began some different armies- Knights, Necrons, eventually a Primaris SM army. I had always loved my Forgotten, but they just weren't really something that worked on the battlefield for me, so they became more of a display army that I was proud of completing even if I didn't play them anymore. My hobby/gaming journey continued, as I attended some more competitive tournaments as a player and began to TO for a local store in small, 16-man tournaments myself. The tournaments I ran/run tend to be pretty casual, as the local scene isn't really competitive and I'm more interested in having the hobby grow/everyone have an enjoyable experience. There are plenty of more competitive tournaments/organizations close to us, but our local area is just not a strong one for competition. About two months ago I was at the end of a local store's grow league- playing my Imperial Agents/Inquisition themed army that got totally destroyed continually (but was fun because it is a great way to introduce new players to the game). Another player came up to me and asked if I wanted to join a crusade campaign he was going to start up. I'm always down for some more gaming, so I said yes even though the last time I had looked at crusade rules was maybe early 9th edition. So, I pick up the Nachmund Gauntlet book and got to learning what Crusade was and how it played out- turns out Nachmund had sort of Grand Alliances that piled together to fight for specific areas, rather than each individual army fighting for just itself. Then I got a message from the Arbitrator (necromunda term, but appropriate), who asked me if I had a Chaos army to play with. He wanted at least one experienced player to be each alliance's Warmaster and I was one of the most experienced players in the campaign. He was repping the Xenos faction and another experienced crusade player had Imperials, so wondered if I could handle Chaos. Now, I have a few armies, but not one that was really considered Chaos.... but I did have the Forgotten. So I said sure, I'll do Chaos and here we are. The Forgotten have now become Fallen, bitter veterans of a thousands-year long campaign against an Imperium that forgot their sacrifices and turned them into the enemy of convenience. They are uncorrupted by the Chaos powers, sustained by their hate and resentment.

Hi Folks, As a star bearing Marshal never rides alone, he comes down to town with his mobsters. A gang of black trench coated cyborgs fitted to sting you with their dart blasters. The kit bashed Marshal has been painted as per my now standardized paint scheme so that he (it?) fits in the aesthetic of the rest of the army. The Secutarii Peltasts were on my rooster for a while now. I took the opportunity of a big hole in my schedule in order to build and paint them. These lads are one of the few exception to my paint scheme: being bound to Titan Legions and not to the Skitarii armed branch of the Adeptus Mechanicus, I get them with a slightly different colour: Black Trench with red inner liner and metal armour. Not something so new as they are as per my Hoplites previously disclosed. The squad's Alpha has been personnalized usinfg the servoskull clipped from the Marshal set. I indeed felt that I needed something to make him visible as the pointy finger provided with the FW resin upgrade kit found a better use. A Scanner holding Peltast, an option left opened in the Legend Datasheet, is indeed a nice tool in a Peltats unit. See you latter with a next project for AdMech. I still ahve 2 Magos, 3 Serberys, 5 Pteraxii and 5 Stalkers to be painted. So, some work in persperctive.

Hi Folks, After a while disconnecting from the hobby due to material contingencies including a home relocation (New Year / New Job challenge), I resumed this quarter hobbying with a small KT for the challenge hosted there: https://bolterandchainsword.com/topic/384972-knives-in-the-shadows-sign-up-thread/?do=getNewComment I selected the team on the basis of simple criterias: - being usable in 40k as a standardized unit - completing holes in my Aeldarii forces - bringing tactical options I do not have. The Harlies were the way to go, as they can climb onto the converted Venom I built 25 years ago or so and bring interresting dirty tricks with the Jester and the Shadowseer. And it is a set of mini that is relatively low on budget. So here I went. The assembly was not that great. Troupe member benefit of a poorly designed assembly leaflet. Arm selection and positionning is especially ill indicated and getting a proper pose is a little bit more demanding than for other kits. But the Jester is probably the model that is the less user friendly of the mob. His calf is the part which positionning is among the worse designed I have seen for a while. Anyway, it ended being assemblied more or less properly. Painting was a little bit more challenging and I rapidely gave up painting checkers and diamonds. Yet the decision to go to a more simple scheme resulted being eye catching enough. The results are here bellow: The Lead Player requires some small corrections on the transition between clear and dark colours. Yet the biggest deception of mine is that I still have not found in which crate I put my snow flock. Basing will require being completed latter on. Next step is to set a small narrative and my contribution for this challenge will be completed. See you soon.

I had a fight with some orks last night - my first game of 40k in some weeks, and maybe only my third since 2023. Needless to say, I'm a bit rusty, but keen to get the Eldar on the table again. Eldar Warhost 1.5k Warhost (1490 points) Aeldari Strike Force (2000 points) Warhost CHARACTERS Autarch (90 points) • 1x Dragon fusion gun 1x Star glaive • Enhancement: Timeless Strategist Farseer (85 points) • Warlord • 1x Eldritch Storm 1x Singing spear • Enhancement: Gift of Foresight BATTLELINE Guardian Defenders (100 points) • 10x Guardian Defender • 1x Heavy Weapon Platform • 1x Bright lance DEDICATED TRANSPORTS Wave Serpent (115 points) • 1x Shuriken cannon 1x Twin bright lance OTHER DATASHEETS Dark Reapers (90 points) • 1x Dark Reaper Exarch 1x Missile launcher • 4x Dark Reaper Dire Avengers (150 points) • 1x Dire Avenger Exarch • 2x Avenger shuriken catapult • 9x Dire Avenger Falcon (130 points) • 1x Bright lance 1x Pulse laser 1x Shuriken cannon Fire Prism (160 points) • 1x Prism cannon 1x Shuriken cannon 1x Wraithbone hull 2x Howling Banshees (90 points) • 1x Howling Banshee Exarch • 1x Executioner • 4x Howling Banshee Rangers (55 points) • 5x Ranger Shroud Runners (80 points) • 3x Shroud Runner Vypers (65 points) • 1x Bright lance War Walkers (95 points) • 1x Bright lance 1x Scatter laser Warp Spiders (95 points) • 1x Warp Spider Exarch 1x Death weavers 1x Powerblades • 4x Warp Spider Orks had Warboss + 20 boyz in battlewagon Warboss + 10 nobz + 10 boys in battlewagon beastboss with 3 squig riders and true dapper head slapper Speedboss on defkilla trike with 3x bikers. 4+fnp relic. 2x 11 grots and herd. Mission: 5pts per objective, max 10/turn, 5 per objective held at the end, twist is can pick 3 secondaries and discard one, diagonal deployment. I went first Turn 1 Eldar I drew hold the middle and no prisoners, pretty tricky for Eldar, having to sit in the middle of the ork lines. I figured I could at least take one trukk down. The serpent with banshees moved to be wholly within 6" of the centre, about 10" away from the wagon with the boss and nobs. The guardian lance poked out, I forgot to move the farseer for guide, the falcon with reapers star engined to the centre to draw a bead on the battlewagon, the prism moved up to get a bead on some grots, the shroud runners moved forwards to target the grots on their home objective. Shroud runners scatter lasered 10/11 grots off the home objective, unfortuately leaving one alive, and rifled the battlewagon, knocking 2 wounds off and preventing it from getting cover. The walker then scatter lasered the squighogs causing a wound, then lanced the wagon, doing no damage but targeting it so the rest of the army got +1AP against it. The banshee serpent lanced the wagon getting a solid 8 wounds, then the falcon finished it off, 10 boyz got out to reinforce the home objective and 10 nobz disembarked towards the banshee serpent. The reapers, lacking their falconed target now fired into the other wagon, doing 3 damage. The prism killed a few grots. but otherwise achieved little. I score 5 for holding central objective and 2 for killing a unit. Orks 0 -Eldar 7 Ork T1 Orks draw hold the middle and storm hostile, something they'll easily get this turn. The nobz moved towards the banshee serpent, the bikers and trike moved down my right flank, and the squighogs moved towards my left. everything unloads into the banshee serpent that pops -1 to hit, and then fades back D6+2" for an 8" move away from the nobz. Incidental fire kills a reaper and knocks a wound off a shroud runner. Orks score 10 I think for both secondaries. Orks 10 Eldar 7 The battlefield after Ork T1 Movement Nobz advance on the serpent, which fades back after the wago shoots it, leaving it high and dry. The bikers advance to target the runners, but only cause one wound. Bigly Squiglies. Eldar T2 1 objective for 5 primary I draw deploy homers and engage. Great, I have to move out into the middle. This is the turn where I think I lost the game in being too aggressive and overcommitting. Nothing can get wholly within 6" of the centre for homers, and nothing can get fully into opposing dz. Prism move up the left flank to try and kill the grots, shroud runners position to maybe try homers next turn, serpent disembarks 5 banshees then moves about. The Vyper comes on from reserve. Spiders, avengers and guardians all move out from their buildings to try and kill the nobs. The war walker gives +1 AP, the farseer gives +1 to hit, the shroud runners strip cover from the nobs, then the avengers spiders and guardians unload into them killing all but 2 and the warboss Other lance fire kills the other battlewagon. 5 banshees charge the remaining nobz, killing them nd leaving the warboss on 1w. Damn. Warboss strikes back killing 2 banshees. I get engage for 3 but no homers. Orks 10 - Eldar 15 Ork T2. 2 objectives for 10 primary He draws bring it down and capture enemy outpost. A WAAGH! Is called. The Warboss falls back from the banshees, and I seize the moment into the serpent protecting them. 10 boyz + warboss move to withn easy charge range of my guardians and avengers, squighogs+boss move to multicharge the prism and vyper, the trike and bikes move to 1" away from the serpent and close to the shroud runners for the multicharge. The boys thatcame out of wagon 1 run off their home objective and want to charge the serpent. I'd parked my units way too close together and set myself up for 3 multicharges tagging 6 of my units. Whoops, I didn't think he had the movement. Live and learn. Squig bomb knocks 2 wounds off the vyper, pistols and such kill 3 warp spiders. I was saving fade back for the reapers or avengers but I think it didnt get used this time. I could have maybe used it on the vyper or something to make a multi charge harder. Warboss and boyz multicharge the war walker, guardians and avengers, squighogs multicharge prism and vyper, bikes charge serpent and shroud runners. Damn. This is where it gets interesting. Or less bad for me. The warboss+boys attack first, the warboss goes into the war walker, but fails to kill it. The boys split into the avengers and guardians, I pop -1 to hit on th avengers. The guardians + farseer are wiped out by a million sustained 5+ attacks, all avengers are killed by the autarch lives, somehow, on 2w. The squighogs send one bloke into the vyper, the other 2+boss into the prism. 2 wounds done to the vyper putting it on 1, and ...only 6 wounds onto the prism! - it lives! The bikers annihilate the runners, however the bike boss and boyz only manage to take the serpejt down to 1W. At the end of that turn I have a war walker on 3w, a vyper and serpent on 1w, and a prism on 6w. If he hadn't got greedy and multicharged he could have had the full 8pts, instead he got none. Gutted. The autarch strikes back, killing 3 boys, another by or 2 is killed by the serpent. Orks 20 - Eldar 15 End of Ork t2 movement, the krumpin commences. The squighogs charge the vyper and prism, leaving the vyper on one wound... Eldar T3. Zero primary this turn :( Hanging on by a thread, I draw assassinate and still have homers. The banshees jump out, 3 banshees stand between the warlord warboss and 10 boys assaulting the serpent ready to go into either, the other 5 run out and go for the warboss+boys that killed my guardians and locked in with the autarch+walker. the prism falls back 17" towards my table edge with swift agile drawing a bead to the biker unit and then pops feigned retreat so it can shoot. the bikers were the target as they were in the mid board, while the squig hogs were off to the far edge, and perhaps out of the game. The vyper sped off to their back table edge to divide the squig hogs attention. The spiders flickerjump 24" to stand next to the lone runt herder on their home objective. The serpent falls back 14" onto their objective also. Autarch falls back 7" onto my home objective and 9" from the edge in case I want to webway him. The rangers fnally come on in their DZ and deploy some homers. Banshee pistols go into the warboss and with some luck, he dies. War walker shoots the scatter laser into it's own combat, and the lance into the bikers killing one. Reapers fire into the bikers, killing another, the falcon lances the bikers, killing the last one and knocking 3w off the trike, which somehow has a 4+ FNP! Spiders hose down the runtherd and claim their home objective. The 3 banshees go into the 7/8 boys on the centre, leaving 2 alive, who then kill 2 ladies. The 5 banshees go into the avenger killing boys and murder about 6, leaving 4 and the boss. The warboss then kills the war walker and the boys kill 2 banshees. I manage deploy homers and assassinate for 10pts. As the orks just killed a vehicle, at the end of the turn they score bring it down for 3 - he should have gone into the banshees! Orks 23 - Eldar 25 End of my turn, the exarch is locked in with 2 boys, with her aspect token intact. In ork T3 she'll kill them both and claim this objective. Ork Turn 3 Score 5 primary, he has capture enemy outpost and something else - table corners I think, which gets swapped for secure no mans land. Little movement here, the squighogs go after and kill the prism, the trike chases down and kills the serpent - fires some pistols into the spiders which are saved and they fade back to the other side of a ruin. banshees exarch on the centre kills the 2 biys using a shrine token, claiming the centre, the others get killed down to just their exarchs, who then kill the boys. Gets no mans land for 5. orks 33-25 eldar The squigs chase down and kill the prism, finally. The other unit of banshees selling themselves to keep the orks off my home objective. Only the exarch survives. At this point we call it as it's like 11pm. 40k takes way too long these days. End of the game, it's 2 objectives each so 10-10 End score Orks 43 - 35 Eldar That was a surprisingly close game considering how I got butchered in t2. I think I could have held back another turn, but I didn't have enough firepower to take down those nobs without expsing myself. I should have kept the guardians back on my objective as they contributed little. I really felt the pain of not being able to jump shoot jum with many units, and I think Asurman will be a near must-take purely for this ability. 6 agile tokens was maybe too many and I didn't find myself using them, I could maybe swap that enhancement out for the phoenix gem or something to be a real nuisance.

Theoretical It's largely unnecessary (and generously self-indulgent) to explain the concept of Compulsory Unit Selections to the B&C crowd. With his previous experiences in 3rd Edition Age of Sigmar (playing the big orks whose name escapes me - 'Ardboyz? Irongutz?), my opponent grasped the concept pretty quickly. Personally, I first learned Compulsories during my initial forays in Warhammer, playing Horus Heresy from 2015 until the first rendition's untimely demise (there's another conversation to be had elsewhere about the HH2.0 update and the loss of "the magic" that made that system appealing). We both enjoy playing around inside of tight boxes of rules, and I find that limitations and regulation breeds creativity, to a certain point. At no point, however, have the 40k rules writers ever needed to convince Space Marine fans to take Tactical Squads - they're the in-universe and tabletop backbone of a Codex-Compliant Company (or Demi-Company), and a great hobby exercise - an opportunity to showcase the distilled essence and character of a Chapter. The colors, heraldry, and any weird quirks can be presented and not overwritten by duty-specific wargear or markings. Practical I committed to make the two identical Tactical Squads of my 1,000pt list the first units I completed in the project. Tactical Squads Andreus and Mattean are 5th Company's 1st and 2nd Squads, and in 5-man form, both armed with a Plasma Gun. The Sergeants are armed with Power Swords (denoting induction into the Velocitari), wear laurel wreaths (denoting secular rank and the stewardship of a particular shrine on the Company's Charge-World), and each wear a copy of the Lectio Divinitatus on their hip. Their tilt-shelds display the 5th Company's battle-heraldry, a simple-to-freehand red stripe on a grey field. I tried to add some sort of gubbin or bit to each Marine - a purity seal there, ammo and grenade pouches here, etc - just to add some interest to the units. Painting itself was a pretty straightforward tried-and-true method. For the undercoat, a tricolor zenithal + purple wash + drybrush, to create shadows, add depth to recesses, and strengthen highlighted areas without any sort of cerebral labor. After that, I added colors (sometimes all at once, sometimes progressively layering) with speed paint. The lack of any sort of finesse will show to the trained eye at 2" away, but I'm at a stage in the hobby where I really don't mind okay-painted minis, so long as I get to roll dice and make pew-pew noises.

A Little Background I have always been into model making from my earliest Airfix kits as a child, I then picked up my fist warhammer miniature at the age of 12 and was hooked on the hobby and my model making followed that direction. During the early days of WH40k Rogue Trader with the lack of larger models we had to kit bash our own, with many of my early Airfix models being sacrificed to this end. Any of you old enough will remember the White Dwarf articles on building your own and I was the proud owner of the skimmer made out of a roll-on deodorant and the original Whirlwind with the rocket launcher made from a 40mm square base and some plascard. As well as Airfix kits part from all sorts were sourced as the basis of new designs such as Zoids and GI Joe toys, I had several old plastic ice cream containers full of all sorts of buts to filter through. My Father was also a hobby model maker but focused on making naval vessels, for which he used a lot of plascard, a material that I embraced scratch building several bunkers based on templates published in White Dwarf, but always adding extra part to my own taste. When it came to choosing a university course I applied to study 3d visualisation and animation, but back then there was only place in the country running the course and with only 25 places available and over 400 applicants I realised that I probably wasn't going to get in with my grades, so I had a re-think and decided upon architecture, which seemed to combine a lot of the design aspects I was interested in. During my degree I Learnt CAD as well as producing numerous models for my projects all of which I enjoyed. After my placement year in a practice and the first year of my post-grad I decided becoming an Architect wasn't for me, as I excelled in the CAD/BIM modelling, but had no interest in dealing with clients and contractors. So I pivoted to becoming an Architectural Technician, which I have been for the past quarter of a decade, in which time I have learnt numerous CAD/BIM and 3d Modelling/visualistaion packages. First Steps My first encounter with 3D printing was in 2017 when the architectural practice I was with at the time purchased a fairly basic DLP printer to help with producing a model for a large masterplan we were working on, with me modelling in Archicad and then printing the individual basic shapes for buildings. About this time I decided to enter the Armies onParade competition at my local GW, so I planned out my 600x600mm board in 3d on the PC, part of which featured an entrance to a subterranean base set in to the side of a cliff face. The cliff and the majority board where to be shaped out of insulation foam, but for the doors themselves I decided make use of the office 3d printer and set off a print before leaving one evening to collect in the morning. I was happy with the result although the detail wasn't great and took a bit of sanding. I also decided to print a name plaque for the board, but decided as this was more prominent the quality of the office printer was not good enough so sent the file to Shapeways (RIP) and whilst it wasn't cheap I was more than happy with the print I got back. After this I had no real need to print anything else and at the time to get anything of a decent quality seemed prohibitively expensive. I still modeled a few odd things and even put a few things up on the shapeways store, such as a bolt rifle I had created as a learning exercise, but nothing really came of that. Current Situation A couple of years ago I finally bit the bullet and bought myself a resin 3D Printer, as I had judged the quality to cost ratio for new printers had gotten to a point I was happy with. I bought an Elegoo Mars 3 and the wash and cure station as well, both of which had a fairly small footprint that I could find space for. This opened up a world of possibilities for me, with discovering the wealth of models available on sites such as Cults3D, I was left with the big question - what do I print first? At the time I was playing in a Bloodbowl league with some friends and wanted a Rat ogre for my skaven team and didn't like the available forgeworld option at the time, so this was the obvious choice. I sourced an STL file for decent model which printed well with decent detail, which I lovingly painted and based for me to put it on the pitch with other models only to discover one of the big issues I have with 3d printing - scale! The model was about 1.3X to big, which not noticeable at first, when put alongside the GW models just looked wrong, so I ended up buying and converting a couple of Island of Blood rat ogres from Ebay, which I was more happy with. I'm not one of these people who see 3d people as a way of saving money or avoiding paying for official products, but as a way of enhancing my hobby experience, the only full models I have printed have been ones I cannot buy from GW or are alternate versions of official miniatures that I already have to provide variety in my armies. I mostly use 3d printing to print custom parts for my models enabling me to give more individuality to them than I could with just kit bashing. I also print a lot of bases and invested in a kickstarter for cutomisable 3d nameplates, which I have printed for many of my kill teams. My Own Designs In many cases I have not been able to find particular parts I wanted, and so turned to modelling them myself, originally I used the CAD/BIM software I use at work, but more recently I have been learning Blender, which is free and a lot more usable for this kind of modelling. It is quite a step learning curve, but there are plenty of good tutorials out there, I recommend Artisans of Vaul on Youtube who specialises in modelling for 3d printing minis. These are some of the bits I have modelled for creating my Primaris Deathwatch killteam as seen in my last blog post, although in the end I didn't use all the parts, I uploaded them to my Cults account to sell for a minimal fee and they seem to have been quite popular. I created my cults account about the same time I got the printer and have uploaded a lot of the things I have made mostly put on there for free, but the few I have charged for have made me a bit of money, over £120 since I started, which is nice and not what I created them for in the first place. If you're interested you can see my available files here. The Future? As I get better at modelling I want to try bigger and more complex models, I have already blocked out and started modelling parts for a Tau gunship and even what will hopefully be an overlord, although I have no idea where I'm going to find the time I would need to spend completing these. I've also been thinking about getting a larger printer at some point as my current one is fairly limited in print area, meaning if I wanted to anything larger than that, it would need to be cut up in to smaller parts and the re-assembled which from recent experiments is a real pain. The latest DLP printers have much better quality output and I'm seriously considering something like the Bambu A1 as a possible purchase for printing larger pieces such as scenery. I recently brought a larger piece printed on a DLP machine as Xmas present for myself via Etsy - a full size Primaris Intercessor helmet: (as modeled by my very understanding Wife and painted by me) Anyway, I just wanted to let you know where I am with regards to this aspect of the hobby, let me know if you have any thoughts in the comments.

As part of the knives in the dark competition I started work on the Ratlings Kill Team, and their Ogryn allies. Special thanks to @Lysimachus for putting together this competition! I officially got started painting these models on Jan 12th, priming adding a zenithal to the team Assembling the team went pretty quickly, the ratlings were even smaller than I anticipated (notsurewhatIexpected.gif), but none of the parts were particularly fiddly. I'm going to magnetize the arms of the bullgryns at a future date, should be nice and easy thanks to the huge voids on the interior of the shield arm and the weapon arms respectively, but for now they're just kinda hanging out. I threw in the "Provisionally Prepared" model as well, might use them as part of a display board, might use them as an desk ornament at work, either way they're getting painted up to match the rest of the irregulars. I didn't have a particular paint scheme in mind when getting started on these boys, and as a result I was a bit slow-going on my base colors. I jumped in on skin tones just because I knew I wanted to do a variety, and had some fun mixing up different skin tons for just about all of them...even if its VERY subtle, so subtle you might question why the effort was made...but it was... Eventually I found the idea of a scheme I enjoyed (Prairie Ratlings) and the base colors started getting applied with a bit more zeal. All in all the project is moving at a pretty good clip. The ratlings are among the smaller models I've ever painted, small enough that I kind of wish I'd done them in sub-assemblies as I'm having to do a TON of touch-up painting on them. The flip side is that they're so small they paint up very quickly to start, so its a mixed bag. I'm enjoying working on the Ogryn's most at the moment, first time I've painted any and they're a fun sculpt. I picked up basing supplies for them yesterday, but will have a to wait a bit before I can get a test base mocked up as I'm waiting to buy a static-grass applicator, the idea being the team is operating in a meadow-like area, a first for me to try

I recently started experimenting with oils, opting to smear a magenta/purple oil wash on my Great unclean one (on the tentacles, stomach and guts) with rather good results, if I do say so myself: So, yeah, oil washes are good, if you want to use them, but what if you don't? Well, have no fear, I still have some tips for you! There's a little oil wash on the back here, but much of the purple/magenta is actually done only with thinned acrylics and some washes and contrasts. AND, it was surprisingly easy, as I basically just splattered it on semi-randomly and let it dry, not caring if it dried slightly blotchy (in this case that was just a bonus, as it would look gross. On a less nurgley model, I would thin with contrast medium rather than water, to avoid splotchiness and keep the effect more subtle). My GUO did take a while to paint, but if you like it, I have some very good news for you: it didn't take very long and I didn't really do anything difficult or use any strange products or chemicals. Apart from the newly added effects, everything was done with a couple of brushes (some big cheap ones and my regular model brushes), regular GW acrylics, a couple of shades and contrasts, some sand and some Nurgle's rot for the base. I didn't do any fancy techniques like wetblending or the like either - in fact, many areas aren't really shaded or highlighted at all, if you look closely and I purposefully didn't even pick out all the little details (for artistic and laziness reasons). Here's how he looked before the oils (regrettably he's upside down, but I was living in a no-gravity environment at the time...) Assuming you like the result, I think the big thing to take away from my GUO is that painting models that are almost all skin/flesh doesn't need to be difficult at all, as long as you avoid the biggest pitfall of all: having all the skin be the same base colour, highlight and shade colour, because no matter how well you do it, it can easily come off as a bit boring and "plastic toy" looking. As far as I'm concerned, the only real key to making a big figure like this look good is to have different colours mixed in here and there, so the overall result is varied - it will look much more "natural", even if you're not a master of placing shadows and highlights, simply because real skin is not the same colour everywhere on your body (well, I assume not, I can only speak for myself, of course...). We don't get the same problem with smaller minis, simply because they're smaller, so the skin being the same colour everywhere isn't as noticeable. Here's another example: Incidentally, we see the same thing with terrain, where painting it like you would a regular miniature sometimes ends up looking worse than doing something much simpler that just looks better at that scale. But more about that in another post And to finish off, a couple of shots of some poxwalkers I'm experimenting on. One has had an all-over wash of the same purple/magenta wash taht I used on the GUO, another has had a more targeted application and the last one hasn't had any at all. As you can see, oil washes seem to have a lot of potential for painting skin and gross features, but it's not really a necessity at all, as long as you're not too afraid of putting different colours into the skin areas.

Picture heavy post A group shot of my 30k deathguard now they're done A long time in the works

Being a Catholic who joined The Church as an adult I am often asked how it is that I came to find God, and my answer generally holds great interest in the many 'cradle Catholics' who ask. My wife has on more than one occasion suggested that it was my finding of faith that inspired my love for the Sisters of Battle - the faction I've been collecting for the last year - upon seeing their exuberant Cathedral-Cannons on wheels (as she calls The Immolator Battle Tanks), rosaries wrapped around bolt-guns and simulacri. (An Immolater - check out the Reddit profile who shared this great piece here) 'No' is the answer, of course - as I had actually began collecting them before my finding of faith... I swear! But similarly to the popularity of this question within The Church, I find that everyone who pursues this amazing hobby has their own origin story of how it is they came to find themselves pouring over these exquisitely detailed plastic miniatures, their stories and their game that hold such a special place in our hearts. "So how did you get into The Hobby?" For the vast majority of people their answers will fall into one of three categories: a) I walked past a Games Workshop and went inside because I thought it looked really cool. b) Friends or older-relatives introduced me to the game. c) I got into it through the books/lore. I can't actually think of any other 'broad categories' of answer to this (in)famous question... if you can, can you let me know in the comments below? But, as the face of the hobby has evolved over the last few years and continues to do so, I wonder how these typical answers will change and grow. Especially as the hobby starts to enter more of the mainstream! No doubt aided by the burgeoning value of Games Workshop following their steady pre-pandemic growth followed by their Pandemic-explosion in business and the developments being followed closely by many in their negotiations with Amazon about a TV series with Henry Caville, there are signs all around that Warhammer is becoming more widely known as a hobby to share and enjoy. For example, this post I recently shared on my Threads (below). However the question is answered, there's always a unique spin for each partaker of the game. It usually gets the nostalgia going and is a reminder of simpler times. I was about 10 years old when I first became exposed to Warhammer. A family friend whose son was about 6-7 years old than me had a major home clear out and from them my twin brother and I inherited 'The Box'. 'The Box' was a large container of toys and other such things that didn't survive their cull and were promptly taken off their hands by my mum and dad. Within the box were toy cars, action figures and that sort of things but nestled right at the bottom was... a 3rd Edition Warhammer 40,000 rulebook. Paperback, with the famous Black Templar Illustration on the front. Now you may be looking at my profile picture and thinking that there's no way I was 10 years old in/around 1998 when this was first published and... you'd be right! Even then it was old and battered, but it was enough to ignite a passion in our young hearts that would continue to burn to this day. The topic of the introduction of The Warhammer Universe to the young and inquisitive mind is a subject that requires its own article another day! But suffice to say it was... horizon expanding. From reading that book obsessively cover to cover we dragged our poor mum to the Games Workshop in Central London where The Battle for Macragge was all the rage and the rest, as they say, is history. I wish that I still had that copy now, but, growing up is first abandoning our childish ways and then reminiscing about the lost pieces once we realise that our happiness is worth pursuing even if doesn't fit the idea of what others think is 'cool' around us. I was heartened to see when searching for the above image on google that there are many copies going cheaply on eBay...! Warhammer has had a profound impact on my life. As a bit of an odd-ball child/teen with a lot going on at home it gave me both a creative outlet and a place/community where I could go and actually interact with others in an accepting and healthy environment. I look back now at my childhood and really thank God that the hobby came into my life when it did. And now as an adult, I returned to the Hobby in 2019 with the aim of once more making friends and finding a counter-balance to my extremely busy and demanding professional life and, five years later here I am! So let me know down in the comments, what's your origin story? With best wishes, Mini Painting Mike. PS: If you've made it this far down my post, thank you for sticking around. This is the first of what I hope will be many blog posts and articles I will write and share here about the hobby, my hobbying and other things related. From my painting projects, to games, to hobby-life in my world and discussing developments in the wider Warhammer/hobby-landscape.

KY'VASH RECON CADRE GHOSTKEEL STEALTH BATTLESUIT XV95- 'Ghostkeel' Battlesuit, piloted by Shas'vre Ay'aata. The still-developing industrial base of Ky'Vash precludes the deployment of some of the largest, and most expensive T'au battlesuits, as does the operational preference of the Sept Fire Caste. Having developed an identity that favours a mix of stealth, ingenuity, and a certain rugged self-sufficiency the most dramatic of T'au hyper-weapons have proven to be a poor fit. One exception, however, is the Ghostkeel. Despite the larger frame, and difficult material investment for the more specialised systems the XV95 has proven to be a fine addition to the Ky'Vash method of war, serving to provide anti-vehicle or elite infantry punch in ambush, and serving as a deployable mobile weapons platform able to keep up with the far-ranging Recon Cadre ground forces where suits such as the Broadside or Riptide would struggle. Both the primary and secondary armaments are able to be switched out between engagements, chosen based on forward observations made by Pathfinder scouting teams. Armed with heavier main weaponry than standard Crisis Suits, the main advantage provided by the Ghostkeel is a powerful suite of electronic warfare and photonic displacement systems. The suit is, of course, too large to be a true Stealthsuit, even behind a baffle of generated fields, but the various holographic projectors and sensor-baffles included within the hull make the Ghostkeel a difficult machine to target, let alone hit with most firepower that would be sufficient to take it down. It is for this reason that the suit includes a small 'hive' of sub-system drone minds, each slaved to one of the vital defensive systems of the suits, operating the various countermeasures faster than the living pilot could, even if they could split their attention from movement and weapon activation. The Cyclic Ion Raker, an example of suit-scale T'au Ion weaponry, rightly feared. As a specialised suit with limited command or communications functionality, the Ghostkeel is piloted by Shas'vre, similar to those who lead Stealthsuit Teams - and often, in fact, elevated from having done so for several years - and is often the final position held by a Fire Caste warrior who has moved through Pathfinder-sourced development streams. Some do eventually graduate to command positions as Shas'el, or even Shas'O, but most end their careers within the cockpit of an XV95, one way or another. - That was a delightful little project. The largest part of my current Call to Arms vow, this beast of a thing was assembled over the week, and painted in two long sessions this weekend. Full magnetised, too! Not, uh... Quite as finest done as I could have, but I'm sure the slight misalignment of the secondary weapons is hardly noticeable. I was worried that it wouldn't have enough camo on it, but it seems to have come together OK. The extra pop of bronze is nice enough that I may go add it to my Stealthsuits, too. Not worth doing on the basic infantry, but for anything more elite, or more shooty, it fits. Next up: a Fireblade!

It's been almost a year since I have posted anything on this blog and my 4th company project fizzled out as real life took hold for the majority of last year. So I decided that for 2024 I am determined to get back on the hobby horse as it where. The intention is to set aside 2 nights a week to sit down and do some hobby and with this I have switched my focus from 40k to Kill Team as I think that getting several kill teams painted up is more manageable then a full 40k army. After re-reading brothers of the snake and the two Urdesh books, I was in the mood to go back to my Iron Snakes. The current plan is to theme the kill teams around the enemies found in the Reef stars so to start with Orks, Dark Eldar and Chaos space marines while I plan to do the Iron Snakes as a more modelling project they will still be useable for Kill Team

In 884M41, the Lord-Governor of the civilised world Dakota Minor, petitioned the aid of several Space Marine chapters to crush the ever increasing Ork presence on his planet. Two chapters responded: the Salamanders and the Black Templars. At the eleventh-hour the Black Templars withdrew their support with regrets, and so the Salamanders alone came to the Lord Governor’s aid. The Salamanders force was led by Captain Ikarus R’Keth, commander of the currently under-strength 2nd Company, and was supplemented by elements of the 5th Company. Alongside a detachment of Battlefleet Agripinaa, the small Salamanders strike force broke the Ork fleet surrounding Dakota Minor and made planetfall. Despite being understrength, the Salamanders easily repelled the poorly coordinated Ork forces from the cities, and along the way inspired the local populace to rise up and fight the invaders. After three months of conflict, culminating in the total annihilation of the Ork Rok fortress (which had brought the Orks to Dakota Minor in the first place), the Imperial forces were victorious. The Lord Governor marked the victory with four days and nights of feasting (as was the custom on Dakota Minor), of which the Salamanders were the guests of honour. Unfortunately for the inhabitants of Dakota Minor, the renegade warband known as the Steel Reavers saw this as an opportunity to strike the planet. Their optimism proved to be folly, as the Imperial forces were quick to react to the newly invading forces, and able to match them in head-on engagements. After only a mere three weeks of fighting, the Steel Reavers were repelled and the Imperium again declared victory over Dakota Minor. Despite their defeat, the Steel Reavers were able to steal whole swathes of exotic resources and transport ships and take them to orbit, while the Imperial forces were occupied in combat. In addition, Captain R'Keth was slain in combat by a Chaos Space Marine champion. The Battlefleet Agripinaa detachment remained in orbit for several months in anticipation of a follow-up attack, though none came. The Salamanders forces were recalled to Nocturne shortly after crushing the Steel Reaver invasion to rearm and to assign a new 2nd Company Captain, whom would be Pellas Mir’san.

So, after several months and a handful of terrible looking models on my desk, I think I have settled on a scheme for Hive Fleet TBD. That's about the only thing I have settled on, though. No name, no fluff, no idea how to base. I am not in much of a hurry, though. I want to take my time and just paint for the sake of painting more than trying to finish a list. That always leads me to make stupid mistakes.

Greetings Brothers, Some of you might be familiar with this project since I've been posting progress reports in the WIP subforum. You can see more work-in-progress photos in my thread. However, since I managed to finally complete the model, I thought that it's a great pretext for trying the blog function out. The project nearly turned out to be overwhelming. It took me way more time and required more skills than I anticipated, especially when it comes to handling Milliput. Nevertheless, despite the problems I encountered and the time it took me, I am quite happy with how the model turned out. The final product is a far cry from what I initially wanted to achieve and/or roughly envisaged the conversion to be but by no means is it bad. The main source of my problems was that I didn't do enough research and designing before starting work. I wanted to make the Redemptor more like the Castraferrum dreadnoughts, along the inspirations below: Clearly, I failed to thoroughly consider what made these conversions work and make the model look more like a 'true-scale' Box Dreadnought. Instead, with just a the vague impression and a set of ideas what I wanted to change and what I wanted to add, I started work, quite unconsciously taking more cues from the design of a Leviathan or Contemptor Dreadnought, than the design of a Castaferrum. The final result is quite different from what I wanted. This doesn't mean that I'm dissatisfied with the final product or the hours I spent on the project - I can quite confidently state that I'm quite happy with how it turned out and how the journey ended. I think that I managed to fix a lot of issues I take with the Primaris aesthetic and, overall, to my taste, the model is an upgrade to the vanilla Redemptor. A lot of this results from reducing the 'roundness' and plainness of the original (legs, shoulder guards), as well as shedding some front-heavy weight (the extra armour and the way the hull weapons are mounted on the original). And some side-by-side comparisons with a vanilla Redemptor Dreadnought: Shoulder guards: Including greebles on the back: Leg guards/greeves: Torso/hull:

Or: It's Fistin' Time! 22 September, 2022 After a series of stinging defeats and anaemic offerings to the Blood Father, the World Eaters are eager for a worthy fight. Kratus, in particular, is determined to prove his worth as a successor to the Hand of Khorne. As scattered bands of Cruentes stalk the streets, they encounter a scouting force of Imperial Knights, presenting them with an opportunity to take some worthy trophies. Since the last battle, I used Repair and Recuperate to remove the battle scar from Thrax, the Exalted Champion. It appears his pact with a shadowy daemon has instilled him with new confidence... Kratus and Thrax lead this force, composed of all three Berzerker squads led by Validon, Dreior and Gorm, and backed by a Cultist mob and Bardûl, the Spawn. Eager to salvage his reputation and silence any possibility of usurpation from within his ranks, Kratus seeks to draw the Eye of the Gods (kill characters or vehicles) and solidify himself as an Instrument of Vengeance (Path of the Righteous - kill characters or units bearing relics). In this mission, half of each player's units (rounding down) must start in Strategic Reserve, at no cost. With seven units in my army, I opt to keep Kratus, two Berzerker squads and the Cultists on the board. Thrax leads a reserve band of eight Berzerkers and the Spawn. The objectives for this mission are simply to kill enemies and end the game in the opponent's deployment zone. We also set up a couple of supply cache secondary objectives, per our campaign's rules. Performing a special Action on these objectives would provide free uses of certain Requisitions. A wave of determination sweeps over the World Eaters, and although my opponent gains first turn I decide to use Apoplectic Frenzy to sprint almost everyone forwards. In the Knights' first turn, their warlord, Prince Arthur, shimmies between two ruins to draw a bead on the Berzerkers on my right. In a storm of extremely accurate firepower, six Berzerkers are blasted apart. On the left, one Berzerker is downed by an autocannon from the shooty Armiger. Following up on his successful shooting, Prince Arthur barrels between the ruined buildings to charge and easily destroy the two remaining Berzerkers. Kratus, still suffering from some Deep Scars, cannot use Heroic Intervention. (Our campaign has a house rule where a unit can only use the Repair and Recuperate requisition if they sit out a battle, and Kratus has been fighting in every battle since gaining that scar.) In response, I abandon my original plan of using the Cultists to just nab some supplies, and instead hurl them at the Knight along with Kratus. If push comes to shove, they can use Fury of Khorne to help get a few extra wounds in if needed. The Berzerkers on the left instead head over to pick up those supplies...but I forget that they have the Battle-weary scar, preventing them from performing Actions. Dangit. Kratus leaps from the corpses of dead Berzerkers to latch onto the Knight's carapace. With the help of the Wrath of the Chosen (+1 to hit with Terminators or Chosen) and Stoke the Nails (puts the unit into Wanton Slaughter) stratagems, as well as his various abilities, Kratus drives his chainfist repeatedly into the Knight's body. Inflicting an impressive 27 damage, Kratus manages to rupture the fuel cells of Prince Arthur's mighty steed, causing a catastrophic explosion that kills several Cultists and wounds the Chaos Lord. Seeking retribution for the demise of their Warlord, the two Armigers in reserve start racing towards Kratus. Six cultists (and a couple of Berzerkers on my left) are slain by the Knights' firepower. Wading into the Cultist mob, the Armigers make short work of the mortals and their remains are sprayed onto the walls of the nearby ruins and silo, leaving Kratus decidedly vulnerable. In my second turn, Thrax and his Berzerkers stream in from Strategic Reserve, taking advantage of the ability to set up closer to the enemy if you arrive close to your own table edge. Thrax's aim with his combi-melta is uncanny, scoring a direct hit on one of the Armigers and stripping six wounds off it. Elsewhere, Bardûl wanders onto the table near my opponent's deployment zone, ready to wander in on the last turn to earn some endgame VPs if things go badly. Meanwhile, Gorm's Berzerkers stalk through the ruins, hoping for a long charge on the Armigers to help out the Chaos Lord. Unfortunately, everyone except Kratus fails their charges. I guess it's down to the Hand of Khorne, now! Kratus has an impressive nine attacks on the charge, so I allocate three to the wounded Armiger and six to the other. Using the Wrath of the Chosen and Stoke the Nails stratagems again, he gains an absurd number of attacks from exploding 6s, but even so he barely finishes off the wounded Armiger and, with a lucky Command Re-roll to wound, he destroys the unwounded Armiger. Unfortunately, Kratus's luck can't last forever. The last Armiger sidesteps the ruin and unloads his autocannons into the Chaos Lord, who fails two of his 2+ saves, so even a Command Re-roll wouldn't help. High-impact, explosive rounds tear into Kratus and he crashes to the ground, ending his rampage. In my third turn, Thrax and all the Berzerkers hurl themselves at the last Armiger, eager for the kill. In the Knights' fourth turn, he knocks out a couple more Berzerkers from Gorm's squad, but the writing is definitely on the wall. Thrax and Validon's Berzerker squad pack into the last Armiger, with Thrax severely damaging the machine (seriously, I can't seem to roll 6s to save my life with Gorefather), and it is easily dismantled by the Berzerkers. What a brutal game. I made one mistake in sending my one Berzerker squad that can't perform Actions after some objectives that require Actions, but other than that things went unbelievably well, and probably need to start screening Berzerkers with Cultists to prevent them from getting charged so easily. I also kept forgetting to use the Skulls for the Skull Throne stratagem, since all of the Knights were Characters. But I think that would've just been rubbing salt in the wound at that point! Result: 50-10 victory Kratus's Personal Glory: 1 -> 7Khorne's Dark God Glory: 6 -> 5Cruentes' Warfleet Glory: 7 -> 7 I only gain four Chaos Points for the victory, but with Kratus killing the enemy Warlord and two more characters/vehicles, he gains another three Personal Glory points. I put another three Chaos Points from the victory into Kratus's Personal Glory (I think he deserved it!), catapulting him from being Forsaken to being Favoured! Evidently, his followers were impressed by his showing in this game. Unfortunately, Kratus does fail his Out of Action test, and it turns out that one of his legs was turned into a pulpy mess by a hail of mass-reactive rounds. His body has not yet accepted the crude bionic replacement, giving him the Lost Leg battle scar (-1Mv, -1 to Advance and Charge rolls). Oof. However, he gained a whopping 8XP from the Eye of the Gods agenda, and a further 4XP (and 2 Righteous Inspiration points) from the Instrument of Vengeance agenda, plus he killed three units and was Marked for Glory for a total of 17XP (including the one for fighting a battle). And this is the part I've all been waiting for: Kratus finally levelled up to Heroic rank, giving him another chance to roll on the Chaos Boons table. He already has serpentine fangs (13) and a scorpion's tail (21), and if I roll either of those two results again he gets to join Bardûl in the ranks of spawndom. I roll the Chaos Boon - and get 23. Warp Stalker (reroll Advance and Charge rolls). My heart skipped a beat on the first D3 roll, but that result was a very good one, and partially offsets the Lost Leg battle scar. Kratus is now at 47XP, so levelling up to Legendary rank is realistically only a couple of games away. And who knows what awaits him when he does...

Well brothers & sisters the Sicaran is in the books now! I completed this in what is record time for me. Normally a model like this would take me a month likely two but cranked it out in a few weeks. This is mainly due to my other hobbies not producing right now, I don't Salmon fish and the fall Steelhead aren't really running yet plus the large migration of waterfowl hasn't been cold enough to drive them south however likely the biggest factor is that BCK has this contest going on here currently. Still time to enter if you haven't yet .