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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.

++ 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

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 +++

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 went replaced "Liber " with "Principia." 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.

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.

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!

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

"They came in a shattering impact. Thunder and lightning rang from the center of our camp. All was quiet for a moment as we turned and saw a crackling dome of light fade into the air. From that dome came no sound, then the terrible roar of bolters. The bolts slammed into men near me, turning them into mere memories of living beings. Limbs sprang from torsos, heads disappeared. The firepower was well targeted in taking down our heavy weapons first, then moving on to the company bannermen and musicians. After the first shots came a new sound- the heavy tramp of armored feet and the teeth-grating buzz of power armor...but both were deeper than those I've experienced before in the company of the Emperor's Angels. They were seen then. Massive forms, more hunched and cumbersome power armor, clad in ebony and steel. Crimson wings and steel blades adorned their armor, and they moved without a single battle cry. No noise came from them aside from those of weapons and impact. They tore through our command squad and the Commissariat special forces. Lasblasts did nothing, power weapons were turned aside and blunted. These...monsters silently destroyed everything around them. I've fought beside our Astartes and against those of traitorous bent, in every battle there were oaths sworn and orders roared. Even the Enemy's forces spoke in blasphemous words, that were later removed from my soul by the confessors and others of your like. Not these men, if men they truly were. That was the most sinister thing of all, for even when one took a lascannon shot to his belly and was cored out like a grox he didn't make a single sound. I hope to never see their like again." -- Demi-Lieutenant Sigfur bon Friell, XIIth Davoi Blue-Korp, aftermath of the raid of Agri-Station Pilla. Report sanctioned by Inquisitorial Warrant. Squad Belgor The Suriel are a remnant of the Forgotten's more noble past. An order of fallen knights, now sworn to silence. Their skill in battle is well-maintained, for they are used as a hammer to crack any resistance to the Forgotten's plans. Teleporting into the midst of the enemy, the Suriel use their ancient Terminator armor to shrug off blows that would kill even other Astartes and coldly slay in a voiceless flurry of bolt, blade, and fist. Those wishing to join the elite brotherhood are taken before the Grand Master of the Forgotten, Beleth of Caliban. His heavy sword pierces their chest as oaths are recited and burning brands applied. Ritual stitches are sown through their lips and oath-papers affixed. The new brother's armor, created from that which was the dead and that which was taken, is bathed in clear water while he dons each piece. Then, ripping through the stitches mere moments from his helmet covering him, he speaks his last words. Squad Furlac "Forgotten we may be. Forgotten our lives were. Forgotten the crimes against us will never be. Vengeance is my purpose. Justice for our dead. Loyalty above all. I am the nameless, the voiceless. I am of the Suriel. Let the world mourn, for a new chapter has come." Squad Varcan

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.

With the unveiling of Lady Malys I wanted to upload my wyches drafts in a blog entry.. and then noticed I skipped some blog entries I wanted to do before.. and ofcourse now I cant do the wyches before that.. Next attempt to really keep this going commencing. Many of my blog entries will focus on drafts over my more finished work like the Dark eldar Graea character of the last entry. One reason for this is because drafts will otherwise stay on my computer doing nothing.. another is that I mostly only finish commission artwork, drafts are often just to get an idea out of my system. The first of my random gathering; Karanak, the Eightheaded daemon hound. Recently with the Karanak shenanigans I dug this one up again in support of a theory of his ( apparently not ) leaving. Karanak is my favorite khorne character, but it has for a long time bugged me that he walks around with 3 heads, not 8. ( if anyone knows the biblebook revelations thoroughly, Im raised in a relgious households with illustrated children books featuring the beast rising from the seas and well before knowing Karanak that image had a strong imprint on me.) When drawing the concept I visualised a much bigger daemon ( more slaughterbrute in size than fleshhound ) with besides the essential ties to fleshhounds also a wink towards juggernauts. I didnt pull through my initial plan to have some of the heads be juggernaut ( or metallic fleshhound ) heads, and the result might be too simple.. reflected in a bare juggernaut hindleg. Keeping with Chaos Lets get one thing out there.. In contrary to probably a large majority I prefer gravtanks for 40k.. the brick shape of 40k tanks combined with grav tanks for me evokes better the intention of their look. Even more so with chaos... Even though I was having a break from 40k back then when I saw Firefly the Reavers vehicles evoked a very strong chaos feeling for me. When a conversation came along for chaos tanks I made the following draft ( I actually have a wip extended more detailed version wich might some day feature this blog.) but I think I never posted it. While they shouldnt have legs or mouths, I imagined chaos tanks as possessed entities and one way to evoke this was have their pilot whipping the vehicle in submission. An idea I extended to a digital conversion ( for wich Im probably more known on the forums.) : ( I find it hard to believe Marines, especially Chaos marines would want to have vehicle babysit duties.. hence the chaff doing that job.) Another one of these thought experiments some time was that 40k really lacks on Trolls, Trolls are iconic for Warhammer, but their comical nature a difficult fit. Many of my ideas start as the following, a bunch of heads. For some reason just drawing the head is enough for me to grasp back the original idea I had with it.. its my doctors scribling I guess. The easiest way to do 40k trolls is to do them like any 40k greenskin... cyborg them up (1). Though for me it didnt evoke the feeling enough of the Troll as an unique auxillery to greenskin rather than an extension of the greenskin genealogy. Besides a little sidestep to nurgle (3) as nurgle can keep comical and cute and still make it dark, another step was going the "Trolls.. but they are actually aliens" thing. Both of (2) Represented giving trolls over to the Genestealer cults heritage, either a common creature on mining world that can get infected, or a side product of the generations, the top one represents A Troll as an extension of dreadjawz, but I get back to that below. (4) is an out of the box approach, Trolls as a Tau auxellery race and one of the many blind auxelery races I have drafted, for an unexplainable reason I feel a blind species adds a symbolic element to the Greater good, perhaps one of the races I read about has been described as blind and its as simple as that sticking in my brain. Weeks after abandoning this thought project I suddenly came onto (5) and no, its not simple a Cyborg troll again ( though it brings them back to the greenskin family.) my mind was busy with returning Tinboyz for Space Orks/Gretchin and I realised this too would be an interesting take on a 40k Troll. A robotic one. However, it would be a double up on Killa khans and Deff dreads, and it would miss an important organic element that gives the true troll vibe. The key of the face is that its mimicking a flawed green skin face, but in reality its an organic fungal like lifeform, that grows symbiotically in massess of scrap.. internally the fungus troggothus will connect to pieces of scrap brooding in Space orks vast Scrapyards, as they growingly observe ( or.. more terrifyingly.. absorb ) lost grotz working the scrapyards, the heap will start to mimic their behavior more and more, and to a certain point grow a limited form of sentience, at wich points some of the internal fungal mass will grow outwards to mimic a face. Over time this can lead to large Scraptroll outbreaks that offer the orks a good fight, but not rarely they follow the Orks into their waaghs while other times a daring gretchin or a cunning gruntherd will domesticate a scraptroll for their own needs. Its definitely among a long list of drafts I want to expand on eventually. But first, lets go back to Dreadjawz.. DreadJawz ? This one too originates from the same place my previous 2 blog entries came.. the idea to draw more triumvirates beyond the 3 Gathering storm offered. And like those they had to be faction mixes. Whereas the Tau joined the Necron, Orks went with the Tyranids, though eventually it a concept that stuck for me, and has more drafts somewhere. With Dreadjawz the idea was a return of RT/2nd edition GSC Ork hybrids. Though instead of a GSC investation that happens over generation, and doesnt really fit the lore anymore, it was based on one sentence about the orktarius war ( and yes, this draft is old, predating the 8th edition return to and completion of the orktarius war.) It was described that the war was so intense that even on a microbiologic level the two forces where at war.. ork spores fighting tyranid genes. And that whoever wins.. its the galaxy that suffers. I imagined the end product to be monstrous orks, capable of assimilating not only mechanical technology but also biotechnology and growing by violence and the consumption of mass. Even the esotheric getting merged they have a Waaaghmind that has the capability to control both orks, especially lesser ones, and function as a synapse for lesser tyranids. Basically, the ork/tyranid version of Ynnari, without a doomed mcguffin quest. I recently even returned them in a digital conversion as one of the imho 5 potential future Ork kill tems ( in order : Freebooterz, (Revolutionary ) Grots , Madboyz, Ork hybrids and Burna boyz ( the likeliest of them all.. sadly.) though here they are more starved outcasts of ork society. I shall end this with a Gue'vesa digital conversion, made for the same purpose ( a visual speculation on kill teams potential future.. to be continued... perhaps.)

+++ INTRODUCTION +++ The Defence of Dakota Minor was a series of conflicts in 884M41, that saw the Imperium defending the Matteus Subsector’s primary food provider against invaders. With only a token battlefleet and planetary defence force to protect it, Dakota Minor was expected to fall to the invaders in less than three months. Fortunately, intervention by local Astra Militarum regiments and the Adeptus Astartes saw the invasion quelled and the planet secured for the Imperium. The first theatre of conflict was the defence of the city Dakota Primus, against the opportunistic and nimble Ork Waaagh! ChoppaTide. Imperial forces counter-assault a rabble of Orks after they breached the outer defences of Dakota Primus. +++ ORK INVASION OF DAKOTA MINOR +++ It is unknown why Waaagh! ChoppaTide showed such interest in the fecund world of Dakota Minor. As a minor civilised world with significant foodstuff production (albeit far lower than a true Agri-World), it is suspected they were simply enthusiastic about the food supplies on the planet, as well as seeing a good opportunity to engage in the “sport” of war. An Ork Stormboy charges head-on into a squad of DMDC guardsmen. The Warning: Day minus 13 Local astropathic choirs intercepted the Ork psychic missives detailing an intent to “pillage a food-stuffed world”. The planet's Lord-Governor, Hastings Freeman, was convinced of the threat and ordered a Sector-wide astropathic alarm calling for assistance. The Navis Imperialis forces were the first to arrive in orbit ten days later. The Matteus Delta Battlegroup (a detachment of Battlefleet Agripinna) formed a defensive perimeter in anticipation of Ork arrivals from the expected Mandeville points. Meanwhile, the Asokan Rifles and Sartorian Rangers regiments of the Astra Militarum declared their intent to aid in the defence, but would take several weeks to arrive. For now, the only surface defenders were the Dakota Minor Defence Corps (DMDC). The Incursion: Day Zero The Ork scrap-fleet of Waaagh! ChoppaTide approached Dakota Minor from the blind side of the parent gas giant, triggering the planet’s orbital alarms. The Matteus Delta Battlegroup were forced to quickly redeploy their battleships in attempt to intercept the Ork fleet. Physical map of Dakota Primus and surrounding regions, with force deployments and movements in the first few days of the Ork invasion (884M41). The Orks seized the advantage and charged past the meagre Imperial defences, making planetfall via their Roks. Landing in the Adatok Wastelands, they assembled their tribes and scrap columns, and advanced on the human settlements. A small contingent of Orks marched north-east towards the hydroponic hive 2-Xi, but would be promptly interdicted by the stationed DMDC regiments. The bulk of the Ork Waaagh! headed south towards Dakota Primus. The remaining Ork kroozers and gunboats continued to engage the Imperials in orbit. Despite preparing for a head-on engagement, the Imperial fleet were instead drawn into a series of hit-and-run maneouvres that lasted eighty days before a victor was determined. The Amassing: Day 2 to 8 The bulk of the Orks rallied for eight days in the Adatok Wastelands, just at the outskirts of Dakota Primus. Their leader, Warboss Gruzka Koptadrilla, was intent on building their strength before committing to an all-out assault on the hive. Imperial forces, equally unconfident, prepared their defences in anticipation of an assault. Many skirmishes, artillery barrages and air raids occured between the armies in the interim, but were inconsequential. An Ork fighter-bomber begins a strafing run on the outer defences of Dakota Primus It was on the eighth day that the Lord-Governor’s astropathic pleas were responded to by an unexpected ally: the Salamanders chapter of the Adeptus Astartes. The DMDC high command were excited by this development, and could not help but spread the word: the Emperor's Angels were coming. +++ SIEGE OF DAKOTA PRIMUS BEGINS +++ Lookie there at all da grub deez ‘umies have for us! Mount up, lads! Da mighty feast awaits us! - Warboss Gruzka Koptadrilla, addressing his tribes before setting out to Dakota Primus. Aboard his "kustom deff-kopta", Warboss Gruzka Koptadrilla warcry marked the start of the Dakota Primus siege. Squadrons of rotorcraft, scrap-vehicles, and jetpack-equipped warriors hurled themselves at the scrambling Imperial defences. Siege of the North Wall: Day 9 to 12 The Ork assault began on the north defensive wall of Dakota Primus. As Ork artillery pummeled the wall sections and emplacements, a combination of hit-and-run attacks by skimmers and foot-slogging warriors wittled away at the defenders. The DMDC forces did their best to hold them off for three days, but were eventually overwhelmed. The lack of experience and armaments made it impossible for the Imperials to hold back the tenacious invaders. The North Wall Breached: Day 12 to 15 The northern gate was breached on the twelfth day, giving the Orks free access to the city centre via St Celestine's Highway. Having exposed the weakness in the Imperial’s defences, Warboss Koptadrilla convoyed his forces through the highway and deeper into the hive. The invading forces of Waaagh! ChoppaTide charge forward into the hive of Dakota Primus along St Celestine’s Highway With the promise of "His Angels' intervention" yet to come to fruition, morale amongst the DMDC was shattered. Commanders struggle to rally their forces, resulting in disordered fighting withdrawals deeper into the hive. Strategic estimates were re-evaluated to five days until Dakota Primus fell to the Orks. Unbeknownst to the people of Dakota Minor, divine intervention was not far away… +++ ARTICLE CONTINUES IN PART II +++

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

Having recently finished painting Heavy Intercessors and a Gravis Captain (3rd Company Captain, Kaius Timaeron), I’m still committed to getting a 2,000 point force for this army painted up over the coming months (on top of the 4th Company Boarding Patrol units I’ve already done!) – so that means straight into painting the next units, two Desolation Squads. With the Crusade campaign I’m currently running/participating in, I’ve added a bit of additional pressure for myself, by aiming to get certain units ready for milestones in the campaign. The Heavy Intercessors and Gravis Captain are part of that plan, and I’ve managed to fit them in to be able to take part in the second part of the campaign, with bigger battles as everyone’s Crusade Roster grows. I’d like to get the Desolation Squads done for the end of the Campaign, but to be honest I know they won’t be fully painted for that deadline (end March). They’ll get finished, just if I want to use them in games before the end of the campaign I’ll have to tolerate them being part-way done! Still, I’ve got a plan for painting my units, which includes – believe it or not – a schedule of what I need to paint when. Based on my initial experience painting the first units I completed – Assault Intercessors and Hellblasters for the Boarding Patrol – I can realistically paint two units of 5 Marines, plus a character, over three months of evenings. So I know, for example, I’ll need the best part of a month (!) just to highlight the armour. (Believe it or not, this actually helps me – though I did show a friend and he said it made him feel anxious looking at it!) So as I start the Desolation Squads, I’ve become aware of the risk of getting a bit of hobby burnout, due to putting ‘pressure’ on myself by having a schedule. This isn’t helped by the fact I wanted to literally make a start on these straight at the start of the month/new year, but I didn’t quite have them ready to begin painting – then I caught one of Nurgle’s blessings that have been very prevalent this winter, meaning I didn’t feel up to do much of anything for several days. Hobby burnout is real – there’ve been a number of posts on this forum in recent months. It’s something I’ve experienced myself, leading to my taking a four-year break from building or painting any 40k miniatures. For me, what can lead to burnout is trying to paint to deadlines (ironically, what I’m kind of doing at the moment!), coupled with having over-ambitious goals of what I’m wanting to paint in a specific amount of time. When experienced burnout last time, it was compounded by having spent the best part of 7 years mainly focusing on one project (my Chaos Marines, the Legion of Taurus), and finding that the paint scheme I chose (and the standard I wanted to paint them to) was time-consuming and painstaking. My ambitions for getting things painted for that army were often thwarted by the length of time it would take me to paint what I already had built! I’ve been able to deal with the second of these three things through a combination of knowing how long it’ll take to paint a couple of units (as stated), and also being flexible about my ‘deadlines’. Thankfully, the timeline I’m trying to follow for this army is by and large my own, there are no external factors (such as painting for a competition or to get certain units ready for an event like a Tournament). So if anything ‘slips’ then really there’s no detriment. I can also be flexible, swap something out if I want to paint a different unit (or move on to a different project altogether for a change!). The last burnout factor, I’ll admit, is a risk for this army. Whilst I’m enjoying painting these more than I did my Chaos Marines, by the time I’ve done the Desolation Squads that’ll be almost 40 Marines I’ve painted consecutively in this colour scheme – it’s at this point that doing intensive, time-consuming parts (like the armour highlights) is at risk of becoming repetitive, taking the enjoyment from this project. Again, to mitigate that, I’m currently painting an Apothecary alongside the Desolation Squads – a break from Grey armour! Also, a new challenge for me, as I’ve never painted White armour before. In recent years I’ve found that it helps me see a project through if I’m actually working on 2-3 things at the same time; I’ll balance out a more detailed, time-consuming project (like these Ashen Sentinels) with something I can get done quickly. When the pandemic hit in 2020, with the extra time on my hands I broke out some old Marine minis I’d had in boxes for almost a decade, and using faster techniques (thinned paints and washes to simulate building up highlights rather than painting them all on. I did 60 miniatures in 6 months – it had taken me almost as many years to get the same number of Chaos Marines done when I was doing that army! I took what I learnt, and in the following years I painted armies of Death Guard and Nighthaunt employing the same techniques; in this day and age of Contrast and Speed Paints, it’s easier to get results that look good for tabletop standard, and get a larger number of miniatures done quickly. This year I’ll be painting Necrons as my ‘speed project’ – letting Contrast, washes and Technical paints over sprayed Leadbelcher basecoat do the heavy lifting. Contrast, Technical paints and Shades made these armies possible! Does that mean my ‘schedule’ for the Ashen Sentinels will slip? It doesn’t have to – I can fit the Necrons in on my lunch breaks when I work from home, but my evening painting sessions will still be focused on these Marines. But having something else to build and paint can break up the process of doing the Marines, and offer something different by way of a change. Saying this, I’m still aware the risk of burnout is real, certainly when it comes to this army. But knowing what can trigger it, and trying to address or mitigate those things will certainly help when it comes to avoiding it. I’m very invested in the Ashen Sentinels as my main 40k army for the foreseeable future – but it doesn’t have to be my sole focus, if it ever feels like it’s not a ‘fun’ project to paint anymore.

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.

The Black Riders (Marcachi Dubh) are a small, roving fleet of Eldar Anhrathe, under charter to [REDACTED] as of this writing. Their force balance tends to skew towards more strategically mobile, less logistically-bound assets — either swift-moving jetbike-mounted raiders, speeders, or pedites. Their colors are as riotous and non-uniform as expected of Corsairs, yet a distinct preference for darker tones has been noted fleet-wide. Overall, the temperament of the Marcachi Dubh could be described as phlegmatic for Corsairs. This could be attributed to the marked presence of former members of the Eldar’s religio-military orders in their ranks, or to the philosophy they hold. Unusually for Outcasts, the several Coteries of the Black Riders encourage a sort of martial code of honor amongst their lot. While this restrains the worst impulses one might expect of their sort, it does not lessen their savagery against their foes. Hard to tell what they want, these Eldar mercenaries. Seems like they’re just here for the scrap, sometimes. They sure cut through the Partisans like Betcher’s Bugs, though![ //Anonymous] Notably, the Marcachi Dubh had a marked rivalry with the Dain-Mir Eldar, for a variety of reasons. Firstly, it seems that the two had chosen opposing sides of the war, with the Black Riders choosing to seemingly throw their weight behind the loyalists. Secondly, there seemed to be the element of vendetta. At some point, the Dain-Mir appeared to have wronged the Riders, such that the wrath of the entire band was turned upon the Craftworld. Powerless to put paid to their foes, their alien psyches collectively turned to obsessive vengeance-seeking: You pay — in blood or goods, Dhain-Muir. Since the latter is out of the question… [[//Baron Ra’tar]]

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 DEVILFISH APC TY7 'Devilfish' Armoured Personnel Carrier. Infantry-heavy T'au forces often rely on Devilfish-Chassis vehicles for transport and fire support, the TY7 Devilfish having remained in service for much of the T'au's recent military history. The ubiquitous T'au anti-gravity technology is here used to ensure full viability over all surfaces, and when paired with the oversized engines allows for aerial insertion alongside battlesuit units. While lightly armed - similar to many Piranha variants, despite being more than twice the size - the Devilfish is durable, agile, and a proven cog in the T'au military machine. KyVashi vehicle camouflage is intended to break up the outline, rather than somehow hide what is, in essence, a main battle tank lacking a turret. Alongside paired Gun Drones, the Devilfish's main armament is a Heavy Burst Cannon, a high-output variant on basic T'au plasma-pulse weaponry. - The Call to Arms continues! This is my first real tank since I returned to the hobby, which is funny, because it was also my first ever! T'au being my first army as a kid, way back in 3rd Edition, it was funny to discover that the Devilfish kit hasn't changed at all. Same odd lines and awkwardness, but fun all the same. It's a very pleasant model to hold, the curved lines just feel nice, and I've caught myself handling it more than I probably should. I'm now on to the final section of my second vow: More fire warriors, and my Commander. We should have enough time to get that done, before moving on to a final, smaller 3rd vow! Wish me luck. And wish me luck using this thing to deliver Breachers into close range. Pow pow!

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.

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!

Man did I fail hard and immediately at posting once a month! Good news and bad news. Good news, I’ve kept intermittently painting through the first year of grad school. Bad news, I didn’t get anything photographed until just a few weeks back! Here’s a collection of some completed models and some WIPs from the last year.

Hi folks, After 5 months and a half, I finally completed my Plodding along vow. Last part was the Necromunda market. This set was initially selected in order to represent a sumptown or refugee tents installed among the ruins of the Sector Fronteris that is the core of this table. I did not enjoy painting this set. Too much small stuff that are not really useful or necesary for a gaming table (Mugs, Mung vases...) except for marking objectives, but hey, Objectives markers I have already so many... The assembly is also delicate and the tents very fragiles. It will be nightmare to store safely. As an illustration on how fragile, one sprue came with a pole broken (from factry as the bit was missing). As such I decided to base this tent and use some Tamiya sandbags to hide the missing part. Can you hide something that is not there? In the end here is the result. Some overview shots, still on the workbench; Some detailled views, inc. the Kornflakes tent. I may eventually add some touches on the fence made out of the weapon dispenser grid. I am thinking about adding some guns I have from old Ork kits, SM scout snipers and AdMech Rangers. Might be less Necromunda and more 40k looking... With this completion, it is time to think about the rest of the year. CtA2024 will keep me busy all summer long. but from Oct to years end, I might eventually include a second Plodding along vow? I still have 2 kit bashed tanks (a Land Raider and an Aurox) that may be good candidates. But they still need some serious plasticard job... See you in a future entry about that. Maybe.

SESSION ONE: Just a quick one since I had some time today, and so I went delving in the boxes, the miniatures shuddering from fear and fright in the back of my attic, and I found the hull of a Land Raider Redeemer/Crusader with a goodly few bits. This fired up a few neurons, and I pored through the pages of Imperial Armour IX and found a very intriguing bit of artwork, namely the Howling Griffons Land Raider Prometheus. Well, you know, the FW kit has been out of production for ages, and there are a good few tutorials about, but I decided to go ahead and eyeball it, spending some time building the ABSOLUTE UNIT to the right. Unfortunately, I don't know exactly how I built this. I just saw parts and glue, and...yeah. I'm a little scared. I don't have the skill to completely render a full LR Prometheus, but I can have a crack at the sponsons. Unfortunately I was only able to complete one, and while it doesn't elevate, it does traverse, so I'm fairly happy about that. I've also decided on building it with assault cannons and the back of a Whirlwind launcher I found, and mounted by chopping up a spare Predator turret ring. Yes, that is the abomination (the Mazer-dubbed LR Khymera, after the Badab War Khymera campaign) to the left. I also unearthed a Vindicator...with the dozer blade... Send help?

Right lets try this again So finished all my infantry and started my tanks, changed tank scheme part way through because it was too bright. Painted all the tanks looked back at the infantry had a mild breakdown at the difference in brightness and stripped the infantry #winning lmao Either way the bulk of the tank are done aha

+++ INTRODUCTION +++ The Defence of Dakota Minor was a series of conflicts in 884M41, that saw the Imperium defending the Matteus Subsector’s primary food provider against invaders. With only a token battlefleet and planetary defence force to protect it, Dakota Minor was expected to fall to the invaders in less than three months. Fortunately, intervention by local Astra Militarum regiments and the Adeptus Astartes saw the invasion quelled and the planet secured for the Imperium. The first theatre of conflict was the defence of the city Dakota Primus, culminating with the last stand in the city's centre known as the Bastion. The "Forge Brethren" (Salamanders 5th Company, 5th Tactical Squad) hold ground against an Ork onslaught, as the DMDC soldiers continue their withdrawal. +++ THE LAST STAND AT THE BASTION +++ Despite the assistance of the Salamanders, the Imperials could not stop the numerous Orks' advance through the city. What had worked against the Orks was the narrowing of passages and blockage of easy-access routes toward the city centre, preventing their vehicles from going further. Driven by impatience and the chase of the good fight, the greenskins contently abandoned their vehicles and proceeded on foot. Ork invaders proceed on foot through the narrowed passages towards the Bastion, leaving their scrap-vehicles behind. The Bastion - Day 54 to 63 The Imperial forces rallied at the Bastion, the heart of Dakota Primus. They prepared for what would be the Ork's final assault, knowing that defeat would ensure Ork control of the city. Imperial elements were positioned at key points in or around the Bastion: defending infrastructure, guarding cilivian shelters or establishing kill-zones in alleyways. The Salamanders continued to distribute their forces amongst the Imperial forces, sometimes only one per DMDC platoon or at most a non-contiguous combat squad. Salamanders and DMDC forces defend the entrance to civilian shelter "N5". The first few days saw numerous skirmishes and probing attacks against the Imperial defences. Slowly but surely the defenders were wittled down, either slain at their posts or forced to withdraw in a staggered manner. Even the Adeptus Astartes were overwhelmed by the onslaught; their genetic enhancements were no matter for the Ork's weight of numbers. As such, they too joined the DMDC soldiers in their withdrawal. Little did the Imperials know that the Orks had in fact exhausted the bulk of their own forces attempting to penetrate the city. Realising that they had overextended themselves, the Warboss fled the city with his deffkopta fleet to rearm and rally the remaining Orks at their Rok landing site. Thousands of overly excited Orks and gretchin were left behind, with nowhere left to go but forward. The Final Stand - Day 64 The Emperor and His Angels are watching. Let none of us be found wanting! For Dakota Minor! For the Emperor! - Lord-Governor Hastings Freeman addressing the DMDC soldiers on the Bastion’s paraphets. By the sixty-fourth day, the Imperial defenders were pushed to the base of the Bastion's centre spire. The Salamanders had lost few of their own, but the DMDC's casualties were significant and few remained to defend the spire. To make up the shortfall, Lord-Governor Freeman ordered the various labour guilds and unions to be pressed into service. Thousand of Imperial citizens who had spend their entire life as farmers, labourers and fertiliser producers took up lasguns in defence of their world. Able men and women of the Agri-Labour League (left, centre) and the AmSul Cooks (right), needed to take up arms against the final Ork push. With gleeful abandon, the Orks launched their assault knowing it would be their last great fight. The Salamanders were conditioned for the assault, but with boltguns and flamers running empty they struggled to hold the enemy back. The DMDC soldiers and citizen militia fought back with lasgun and bayonet, but man-to-Ork they were still inferior fighters. In short time, the Imperials were engulfed by greenskins; even the Lord-Goveror and the DMDC command staff were surrounded. Captain R'Keth and Lord-Governor Freeman, along with the remaining Imperial defenders, make their last stand at the Bastion. It was then that intervention of another kind arrived on Dakota Minor. On the same day, reinforcements hailing from the Asokan Rifles and Sartorian Rangers had arrived in orbit. Tens of thousands of soldiers grav-chuted into the city to support the beleaguered defenders of Dakota Primus. The jubilant Orks were undeterred, but still were bested by the superior and freshly supplied firepower. With the battle now tilted in the other direction, the Imperials began coordinated efforts to push the Orks out of the city centre, and continue on to sweep the outer hive districts and destroy any remaining Ork presence. It would take another one-hundred-and-thirty days before the city was declared "Ork-free". +++ AFTERMATH AND LEGACY +++ The reprieve provided by the Sartorian Rangers and Asokan Rifles allowed the remaining defenders to rally and push the Orks out of the city and back into the Adatok Wastelands. Captain R'Keth convened with the human leadership and emphasised the need to maintain momentum to ensure the Orks' total defeat. With their combined might, the Imperial forces began their counter-attack to destroy the xenos invaders and stop the invasion. By the end of the war, it was estimated that thirty-seven percent of the city was destroyed or damaged; it would take six decades until it was rebuild to its original state. The battle of Dakota Primus would become a integral part of the city's culture. The Imperial victory imbued a newfound pride and confidence in the local populace, and created many tales of heroism, defiance and His Angels' interventions. Most notably, pict-recordings of Lord-Governor Freeman combating the Orks would be used for propaganda profusely for decades to come. One of many propaganda posters featuring Lord-Governor Freeman during the battle for Dakota Primus. +++ ARTICLE CONTINUES IN PART IV +++

Time for another, thematically unfocused blog entry, as Im trying to stay more active this time. As said before, and I will probably say it more.. but a lot of my drafts and scribblings that are not commissions are challenges I give myself. The recent leak of Lady Malys made me go through my drafts folder in search for : Its a reinterpretation of the one Dark Eldar character probably never coming back, Kruellagh de Vil. The idea was to reinterpret her as a character that would be equal parts Kabal, Wych and Covenite.. and much more corrupted than her previous incarnation while suggesting some similar elements... including her naughty variant. To do that the idea was to reverse the "colors" ( inspired by the red skinned wrack studio paintjob ) so her red spandexy suit becomes her flayed skin, and what was her one piece of bare flesh in the SFW studio paintjob is now the mask instead.. a shattered harlequin (probably) mask to cover her mouth. I never gotten further than just the head draft though. This is unlike the before mentioned triumvirate projects.. wich I pushed much further. Previous blogs I featured my Tau creations, one of the Dark eldar ones and the Dreadjaw Ork, wich was 1/3th of a Tyranid-Ork triumvirate, the second third of that project ofcourse had to be a genestealer cult character As before I held to a certain "rule" and one of wich was there is always a more regular Infantry sized one among them ( Greyfax, the Visarch, Cypher.) This role is for the Asteroid Mining overseer. While I actually forgot the name, he was supposed to be a named character. Wich seems strange for Genestealer cults ( but then again, yes, they are doomed.. but their entire fluff is about generations.. a genestealer cult named character actually makes as much sense as a Imperial guard named character who too have "short" lifespans in the galactic sense. The last one for the Necron-Tau triumvirate however has had a very long lifespan, and while the eventually released ( remember alot of these drawings are very old now.) actual Silent King is vastly different, this was my interpretation : A huge influence on the concept came from one of the transformers movies ( I dont like them, so I dont remember wich.) in the desert there is a hermit megatron with robotic fleas and everything. This combined with me seeing the silent king back then as a sort of hermit that needed to look as if he never went to stasis created a good mental starting point. Another concept I wanted to convey is that he is in control of the endless swarm, while not carrying a shard of the C'tan himself... this added the idea of a swarm of scarabs engulfing him. Its my only necron character ever and I must say I didnt really got the feeling right, although Im very happy with the vulture, its not my only undead though. I dont know if its appropiate for this forum but coming past these I also wanted to include them.. as a footnote so its not too bothersome that these are AoS drafts : This is a Deid Bel, a midsize centrepiece concept of a "Death" faction idea ( there is more.) that takes the WFB Albion supplement's 3 miniatures and evolve it to an entire faction ( wich was AoS's thing.) and entire army of grave golems. ( this is not entirely true, the core troops, wich I have many more concepts for, are actually retro style mummies of the non egyptian kind.) Until recently, AoS did not feature normal horses ( its actually a thing I liked.) and this interpretation of a vampire horse ( mixing in wolf and bat elements ) is one of my rarer horse attempts ( there are a lot of centaurs though, including Ynnari ones... Ynnari centaurs !? I will come back to that later ;) ) I leave it at that for now.. more soon.

+++ INTRODUCTION +++ The Defence of Dakota Minor was a series of conflicts in 884M41, that saw the Imperium defending the Matteus Subsector’s primary food provider against invaders. With only a token battlefleet and planetary defence force to protect it, Dakota Minor was expected to fall to the invaders in less than three months. Fortunately, intervention by local Astra Militarum regiments and the Adeptus Astartes saw the invasion quelled and the planet secured for the Imperium. The first theatre of conflict was the defence of the city Dakota Primus, which saw the arrival of the Salamanders Space Marine Chapter amidst the Ork siege. The Anvilbreakers (2nd Company 2nd Tactical Squad) charge the greenskins, engulfing them in burning promethium +++ DESCENT OF ANGELS +++ Salamanders Captain Ikarus R’Keth could not ignore the astropathic plea for assistance for the nearby world. Additionally, their Chaplain Kessus Numastus expressed concern for the lacking faith amongst their battle-brethren after the failure of the Yttrius Crusade. Both saw an opportunity to find atonement and redemption in the defence of Dakota Minor. Meanwhile, the beleaguered DMDC forces were being overwhelmed at every turn. Even the Ork servant races were proving to be superior to the underequipped and poorly trained PDF soldiers. DMDC troopers engage a gretchin horde and one of their many scrap-vehicles. The Salamanders Arrive: Day 14 With their drop pod pool depleted from their previous campaign, the Astartes mobilised to the surface via Thunderhawks and Stormravens. This delayed their efforts to bolster the local defences, taking eighteen hours to fully deploy from orbit. Their first target of priority was the Orks moving towards the hive centre along St Celestine's Highway. A strike force of Astartes skimmers, bike squadrons and aircraft engage the Ork flyers that had persisted in guerrilla strikes throughout the conflict. Though the Salamanders rack up an impressive kill tally, they exhaust their ammunition quickly. They are forced to withdraw for resupply and are ultimately unable to stop the flow of innumerable Orks through the outer hive districts. Salamanders Bike Squadron "Quicksliver" (5th Company 9th Assault Squad) engage enemy units along St Celestine's Highway. The remaining Salamanders units would deploy deeper within the Imperial battlelines. The action is not a tactical one but an inspirational one; to restore the morale of the panicking DMDC forces, who had come to believe they were forsaken by the God-Emperor. +++ WITHDRAWAL INTO THE CITY +++ We must turn about this disaster you have set for yourselves. The greenskins are flowing like hot slag through the city. We can slow them down here, until their momentum breaks. - Captain R’Keth, directing the Dakota Minor command staff on the chokepoint strategy. Captain R'Keth met with the DMDC command staff, and together they devise a strategy to create a series of strategic chokepoints within the city to delay the Ork advances. The Chokepoints: Day 18 to 45The majority of the chokepoints were positioned on arterial roadways leading from St Celestine's and St Arabella's Highways. Each were designed to funnel the greenskins into Imperial kill-zones. In addition, numerous narrow passages, bridges and tunnels were closed to redirect or delay the Ork advances. In many cases, these access ways were demolished by the DMDC with explosives. Tactical map of Dakota Primus, displaying Ork and Imperial movements after the implementation of the chokepoint strategem. With the Salamanders now distributed amongst the local defences, the Imperial forces prepared for prolonged defensive actions. As the Orks confidently marched through the narrow road sections, they are savaged by fusillades of Imperial lascannons and missile launchers. The resulting wreckage formed their own roadblocks against the xenos advance, though it was a double-edged sword: the Imperials were also blocking themselves in. All chokepoints would hold for twenty-five days. The frustrated Orks eventually make a concerted push on foot, abandoning their mechanised assault. The rush of greenskins through the hab blocks, sewer pipes and structures, saw many Imperial chokepoints overrun on the forty-third day. Many Astartes and DMDC armour had depleted their fuel and ammunition, and their crews were forced to abandon their vehicles. As a result, Captain R’Keth ordered a fighting withdrawal towards the city’s centre. Meanwhile, Imperial air forces were persistent in intercepting Ork flyers, to maintain air superiority over the hive. By the forty-fifth day, they are successful in securing the airspace, but are of limited assistance within the depths and narrow passages of Dakota Primus. Salamanders Stormhawk Interceptor "Ember One" executes a strafing run on Ork infantry formations Reinforcing The Bastion: Day 50 to 54 For the next five days, the Imperial forces rallied at the “Bastion”, the central Administratum hub at the heart of the Dakota Primus. Lord-Governor Hastings Freeman convened with the Salamanders Captain and the DMDC command staff, to prepare a last stand. Meanwhile, the greenskins continued to march unto the Bastion on foot… +++ ARTICLE CONTINUES IN PART III +++

Well, I did something in the hobby.....I pulled out the models for my 1000 Pt Adepta Sororitas list I have been working on. Plan is to repaint bases and paint theses specific models. My list: 1000 pts Hallowed Martyrs Characters Canoness: Warlord, Plasma Pistol, Power weapon, Rod of Office, Mantle of Opheila Palatine: Palatine blade, Plasma Pistol, Through Suffering. Strength Imagifier: Bolter, Bolt pistol, close combat weapon Battleline 3x Battle Sisters squads: Superior (add power weapon), Ministorum Heavy Flamer, Meltagun, and Simulacrum Imperialis Other Data Sheets Celestian Sacresants: Superior Plasma Pistol, Hallowed maces Dominion Squad: Superior Power Weapon, 4 Meltaguns, Simulacrum Imperialis Retributor Squad: Superior Power Weapon, 4 Heavy Bolters Seraphim Squad: Superior Plasma Pistol, Power Weapon, Dual Inferno Pistols Zephyrim Squad: Plasma Pistol, Sacred Banner Outside of the Characters, most of this is unpainted and only a few are not primed. So I have a lots to paint, which is fine. I am hoping this is the motivation I need to get back to painting. Retributor Sister Alana (WIP) Battle Sister Squad- half done Imagifier- Name pending Palatine- Name Pending Canoness Commander Luciana Silvaya In other Adepta Sororitas news, I bought another FOMO Canoness I was not happy and not upset with my original model maybe I will redo her.... My other purchase was this battleforce.... so more stuff coming soon

Hi folks, After a while developping my AdMech Aemy, I've reached a point where I can consider that the mustering is now completed. It means that I am now entering in the cycle of Blobbing the army: buying more stuff that I do not necesary need but that I need for FOMO. Or, as an excuse anyone can believe, in order to get more options in order to gain flexibility and align new units adversary are not used too. A typical example might be 3 Armingers instead of 1l Styrix Knight... Surprise! Yet I will start with something more humble. A Skitarii Marshal. But this second one wil be kit bashed. So that I have a little bit more of visual variety. Most of the stuff is still taken from the standard Marshal blister. Some weapon swaps, using the multi barel Rad pistol, a spare Axe from my previously kitbashed Engine Seer... Et voilà! With the gun swap, some spare antenas and a head from Serberys riders gives this lad a nice touch of a potential former enlistment. l It is now time to paint this chap. He will march to war along some Secutarii Peltasts I have WIP too. May be the cut servoskull of the Marshal will find any use to personnalize the Alpha Peltats which is a little bit bland. See you later,

Hi Folks, Today's contribution will be a different one: the narrative due to come along the painted minis for the "Knives in the Shadows" challenge. An exercice I am not very familiar with. Let's see how it sorts out: ____________________________________________ The master of the Esdainchii was carefully watching at the stage. The troop was jumping and flipping around, dancing a Masque very few had seen played, even among the near immortal Asuryanii. As far as time and age might have any meaning. The plot looked so archaic and old that it depicted a storyline older than the Fall. Older than the war in Heaven. Older than his of race or its gods. A secret story. It set a cosmogonic theme, revealing the preexistence of the Black Library to anything else and giving a small and very limited insight on the true nature of its darkest guardians. Everything else around and inside the Library of Chaos came later. Even Cegorach. It might make uneasy even the most hardened Solitaire. But not the Shadowseer of the Esdainchii. He already knew that some darker places and secrets may exist beyond the darkest known ones. He knew, because he felt, saw, and lived it in his flesh and in his soul once having been touched by the guardians. A nearly meta-empirical experience. Not even the most powerful Farseers of Ulthwee could imagine the depth of his true secret without being consumed. The Dance was not really telling any story. No one could pretend understanding the meaning of the ballet, its cabalistic nature. While pretending depicting a Masque about the genesis of the Black Library and its discovery by the Old Ones, it was in fact a ritual. A forgotten, and somehow forbidden one, which purpose is to trap new Dancers for the Troupe. The potential recruits should connect with the secret, without being aware of this connection. This is the Shadowseer’s task for today: trapping recruits. For more than ten millennia now he was filling his Troupe’s ranks with souls that were not even aware that their lifes and decisions did not belong to them anymore. He embraced this quest on purpose of maintaining alive the secret and, someday, finding his successor. Millennias ago he had to overcome his own disgust at the idea of being at the manoeuvre in the process of confiscation of freewill of his blood brothers in order to reshape them as members of his Troupe. He went though the very same process. He knew it meant crossing an ocean of infinite darkness, until eventually being touched and reborn as a Shadowseer. The psychoharpist sat on the edge of the stage was reacting to the Dance. He could see it in his glaze. Soon this soul will stand up and join the Dance. The Aeldar did not control his fate anymore. Should he survive the Dance he will become one among the Harlequins of the Esdainchii. And the Troupe will then leave the Craftworld while its new member will walk his first steps on a one-way trip to his true fate. The Esdanchii are a mysterious Troupe even under Harlequins standards. They appear very punctually, less than once per millennia or even lesser. They play a Dance that always see members from the assistance joining the stage and eventually dying on it. They then disappear until a next performance but most of the time no one ever hear about them again. They seem to live a secret life deep in the Webway, beyond the mortal dimension. Since the event called by the Mon’Keig “the opening of the great rift”, the Troupe started however being seen in the real world more frequently. Though it looks it holds its own agenda and it is not that clear if they fight with, along or coincidentally at the same place as the Aeldarii hosts or the Drukharii raiding parties they might join. This agenda of them looke like being more focused on a specific aspect of the battlefield than any thing else. Physically and litterally. It looks like they are harvesting some stuff, not even being really interested in killing the enemies of the Asuryanii. Yet most of the time, their apparition is more likely to be reported by non-Elder races, telling about the Troupe coming to their place and performing its ballet even under the direst battle circumstances. Some among the observers of this Troupe’s actions reported some strange behaviors, witnessing that apparent objective of the Troupe was just to collect a single piece of gravel or a fistful of sand from the battlefield. Once this task completed, they just vanish as ghosts, their objectives, whatever it used to be, fulfilled. What for and why? The Master of the Esdainchii do not even know himself how the nature of the offering is defined: why harvesting such a specific grain of dust matters more than another one? Yet he is fully aware that this duty his Troupe completes is the only tithe that satisfy the primal guardians of the Library of Chaos and keep them contained in the deepest and darkest keeps of the Black Library. This is the mission they received from Cegorach himself: acting as intermediaries between the current reality and the reality of old, that predated anything, so that the latter does not overflow the dimensions the children of Asur settled in. The Esdainchii guard the dam and keep its vanes closed. A curse among the curses. ___________________________________________________________ And... that's it. See you folks.

CRUSADE GAME 3 - TAU VS GROTS Fearful symmetry. After a wait, we've now had our second game day for our new Crusade. After a strong start, this was a rough one for the Recon Cadre, but hey, it happens. Regressing to the mean of my gaming by losing horrendously. Game 3 was against Kieran's Waaaagh! Grot-Snicker (or was that Grot-Snikah? Unclear) and a veritable horde of big robots and constructions. Killa Kans built from battlesuits, Grot Tanks built from who knows what, and a warboss built from... Well, a warboss. Messily. It's a fetching little army, and heavily converted, which I always love to see. They fly now. Anyway, this was a total blowout. Kieran stomped me into the dirt, taking minimal casualties. I believe I ended up taking down... 2 Killa Kans. And some grots. Not my proudest showing. Not much else to say, either. This was just a drubbing.

Last weekend I went to the Route 66 GT Kill Team tournament in Sepulpa OK, and ahead of that tournament I decided to challenge myself to go from sprue to painted on the 4 additional marines I needed to round out my team. Angels of Death is the new marine Kill-Team for the new KT24 edition, which combines Strike force Justinian and Intercession squad from KT21. In order to round out my list I needed to add a grenadier, a grenade launcher gunner, an omni-sergeant (intercessor and assault flavors), and an additional assault marine. After digging around in the bitz box (and sacrificing one previously completed model for the grenade launcher) I had 4 pretty good looking bodies! Chain sabers, helmets and decorations all came out of the White Scars primaris upgrade blister, grenade arm is from the Raven Guard upgrade blister. The power sword and hawk are both part of the Kor'sarro Khan mini (the body of which made up my captain, officially using all parts of the Kahn for this team. I absolutely love the "movement" of the assault marines, the grenadier in particular is probably my favorite model, looking like a coiled spring ready to explode in motion. I detailed my paint scheme in the previous post so I wont go back into it here, but painting them came together pretty quickly I'd mostly finished painting them by around Wednesday, and started in on the bases. I still had plenty of stones saved from the last time I worked on these models so I dug around for a few good fits, and then proceeded to try and revitalize dry terrain paste to re-create the desert ground. Unlike the model paint scheme, I kept next to no notes on the colors I used on the bases, so I had to tinker around until I found colors that pretty closely (though not exactly) matched my previous models. Despite being a bit frustrated by the experience I'll learn nothing from it because I didn't write this one down either. Apparently I'd much rather work harder than smarter. All said and done though they fit pretty seamlessly into the display board, and I would wager 9/10 people can't spot the difference without really studying them. All said and done I finished with these models by Thursday, 3 days ahead of my need-by date. I love these models and really enjoyed taking a break from my terrain projects to knock them out, the grenadier is one of my new favorite models I've ever made. The event itself was also a blast, met and played against a bunch of great people, managing to take home both first place and best painted!

Hi folks, As a tribute for this Orktober 2024, my contribution is of a single grot. But such a Grot! An imperial Grot, with all the glory associated to His status. OK, not this one, yet the colour scheme is a great source of inspiration, even if green skin does not match with green jacket. But the Napoleon Grot of mine, gift from an Ebay bitz store (I probably spent too much that time. Again), deserved being close of the historical figure. Cream/White dirty pants and jacket under a grey trenchcoat. The hat is probably a archeotechnological item of dark ages of technology; allowing an improvmenet of the natural and commanding presence of the lad. His sling is probably set with [PRECISION] and [DEVASTATING WOUND] keywords. I bet a single stone might break any so called Imperator Titan down if well placed... A nice small, yet imperial, distraction, before going back to the workbench. See you

The Exorcists Chapter One of my favorite Loyalist Space Marine Chapters is Exorcists. I am torn with them being Sons of Dorns or are they Successors to Grey Knights. Currently I am reading the Kindle short stories "Within These Walls" ebook and then I'll read the "The Empty Place" from the Successor Novel before reading "Oath of Damnation. " This is one army I have thought about starting and never have. But I am thinking possible a Kill Team of Scouts and a boarding action may be in future, One of my ideas on painting them was rub and buff armor, gloss coat, add decals of hexagrammic wards, clear coat, and red clear coat the armor.

I mentioned in my last blog post that I was intending to participate in this years call to arms, well I've gone and done it! The extent of my pledge can be seen here: Call to arms 2024 - Drakheart Whether I have bitten off more than I can chew remains to be seen, but after just over 2 weeks work, I think I'm making reasonable progress, just not sure if I'll be able to keep it up. Anyway here's what I've managed to achieve so far: I started with the vehicles as I find these quite quick to complete, for the points they give- Devilfish Barracuda The store anniversary exclusive Ethereal, quite like this sculpt and happy with how it turned, although in typical fashion taking the photos I noticed a detail I missed. Enforcer Commander - with 3d printed sheild in translucent resin and given a blue wash , not sure the OSL glow in the centre quite works, but happy overall. A squad of sunforge crisis suits , giventhe same shield treatment, although in hindsight I should of used the smaller sheilds on these and the larger on the commander. The urban camo effect i'm aiming for on these was a lot easier on the larger surfaces of the devilfish and takes a bit of time, but I will persist as the rest of my army is currently painted in this fashion. So 32 points worth done out of a total of 118 so far, if I can keep up this pace I should be ok to hit the 15th Sept deadline. I have already started on the next batch, the cadre fireblade and Breacher squad, which I managed to get the base colours on yesterday afternoon.

SESSION FOUR: I was harping on about doing a medical diorama based on the Howling Griffons actions at Khymara, and thought I had the parts, but I do not. However, I do have legacy models I will never use, belonging to armies I no longer have - I might have mentioned that. Anyway, I got to reading again, and found the segment about the death of Chaplain Armand Titus, hero of the Caradryad Campaign, which was the last action the Griffons prosecuted before the Badab War. Now, Khymara was a defeat for the Griffons, with the Executioners Space Marines butchering 70% of the 250-strong Loyalist Force. They had them at their mercy, but left them alone as soon as they became ineffective and all objectives were complete. One of their number refused to surrender. Armoured in his Dreadnought sarcophagus, and equipped with a power fist and twin-linked lascannon, he fought until his destruction. When the Griffons emerged to find him, they came upon his body, carefully laid out, surrounded by the broken weapons of his enemies, and a torn Executioners banner in his silent fist. Unfortunately, the Chaplain Dreadnought model is both expensive and rare, so I would never hack, chop and slice it up. I could do a little tribute to that magnificent end, though. I did drill up and hack his lascannon arm as well, with one of the barrels burst, but I have lost the image. I'll replace it if I remember. The model is technically finished, but I would like to try and add the banner, or maybe a Griffons' banner to add more colour to it. In other news, a very kind and generous soul (who is also obviously influenced by the Warp, obviously) has sent me some miniatures to complete another project mentioned earlier in this blog. I did have some bases like the one under the dreadnought made up, but this was wrong for the proposed camouflage scheme for the Sigmar VI Insurgency Force, so I made some more which will be desert themed. I do have one problem with this - there is almost no official fluff about Sigmar VI at all. I will have to do a lot more digging. Well, that's it. Hope you enjoyed, and thank you everyone who comments and reads the blog.

Due to being off work a week for surgery I've caught up on some modeling Somewhat depressingly the infantry here are less than a third of the total in my 3000pt list aha. I'm now off to lazily build 7 whole stormcast models over a weekend