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So as per usual I've been mincing around the idea and the willpower to kick back into a Tyrant's Legion force, but the thought of redoing auxilia that I did 50 odd years ago sort of killed the mojo. Anyway, I attended an amazing event called Preferred Enemy down in Melbourne Australia the other week, it was based very heavily around hobby, good looking/thematic armies and just having a good time (it was at a bowls club, so cheap beer always helps!). It has honestly sort of rekindled my enjoyment of 40k. Sure all the 8th edition issues are still there (who ever has more dice to throw at the enemy wins.. I hate to say it..but thats all that 40k is nowadays.. target priority and list building), but while there will always be those negatives, this weekend also showed the huge positives of 40k when played in the correct 'mood'. 95% of the armies where absolutely beautiful, and the other 5% are still leagues above what we normally see down around here as 'standard' 40k tournament fodder. Not only did the armies look nice, they all had a theme associated with them. Not to mention my 5 opponents where all absolutely stellar blokes!! (Thanks to Jason, Mark, Sean, James and Chris). So all in all, great day, atmosphere and hobby! Now the PE TO's are looking at doing a doubles tournament later this year which got a good friend of mines ears pricked.. as he always wanted to do guard.. but never had a direction to go with.. Cue me informing him about our one true savior, Lugft Huron... Thus we have our doubles project!! So I'll be doing a truescaled marine (god damn do the Primaris help with this instead of the hodge podge of terminator legs and assorted parts etc that was what had to be done 'before'... ) with him converting up some Guard to fit more with the Tyrant's Legion. I'll be running a super useless, overly elite army of only 14 models, that will no doubt get chewed off the table turn 1, young Byron will be running well over double that, but actually be bringing some bits and pieces that can do work. Our Current plan is something like this: Astral Claws Vanguard Detachment Lugft Huron 'Chaplain' Dreadnaught w/ Twin Lascannon 5x Veterans w/Assorted Gear 5x Veterans w/Assorted Gear Apothecary Chapter Ancient Tyrant's Legion Straken (has marine stats, so will be a marine commander in the guard contingent ) Leman Russ Tank Commander Gunnery Seargent Harker 3x 10 Man Guard Squads Wyvern Basilisk So as you can see, the armies don't have a whole lot of synergy, but will look cool on the battle field. Byron will no doubt crop up later with some bibs and bobs, but I'll just chuck up some of my WiPs. I Started with my Chapter Ancient as I really wanted this to look like the last hurrah of the Astral Claws, so Huron surronded by hard as nails survivors, with precious chapter relics around him (Thus the Chaplain Dread, will be more an icon of hate dread based on a Leviathan chassis, the chapter standard etc). So the reason I went Chapter over company ancient is I wanted to the 2+ save so I could 'fluff' him having terminator armour. I've done a single truescale termaintor before, but there was no way to really 'mass produce him'. I've had a bag of Custodes termies rattling around the house for 6 odd months now and after seeing what @apologist managed, it put my arse into gear to try it out! I opted to go the normal terminator 'cowling' as not to have it too show boaty, as Astral Claws alsways seem a bit more a functin over form sort of chapter. It also has the benefit of making the terminator marginally 'taller due to the location of its head, so it doesn't look too short next to Huron who is based off a Horus mode.. So next up I was just going to chuck one of the new primaris banners on him, but upon research, that just seems to be standard form nowadays and is a little 'eh'.. and after seeing the excellent picture of Ancient Galatan that has been around for years I wanted by banner to be (well not that crazy large) still pretty big and impressive given it is the 'chapter banner' which always had such a big emphasis in older fluff. Cue a large basic banner. This required a rolling pin, all the baking paper and over half of my remaining GS (off to ebay I go). It also required some dancing between running it under hot water and into the freezer so I could cut out the shape and get it thin enough. Here you can see the basic out lay of it, just to get the feel. So in this pic we have it next to Huron (who still after a year needs some tidying) which shows the termy scaling pretty well next to him. I've worked in major folds into the banner, but it will stil require more selective 'creasing' in areas tonight once the 'scaffold' of it has set. Anyway that's all I have to show at the moment, I'll be finishing another 5 veterans tonight so will get some pics up of them. Most of Byron's gear is on the way to him so we'll no doubt start to see his conversions cropping up soon (I'm looking quite forward to his basilisk and wyvern).

So, I read the three Night Lord novels by Aaron Dembski-Bowden some time ago... I guess I liked them, though I am not as crazy about them as some seem to be. The depiction of the battles were ok and I really liked how they described how it feels to fight in power armour, but some parts were a little long... Anyways, what really bothers me since is that I don´t really understand this one character, Variel from the Red Corsairs/ Astral Claws. He is an apothecary at this space station of the Corsairs and helps regulary to ease Hurons pains from the injuries he got back at Badab. His motivations are still a mistery to me. I mean, yes, we hear that, he has some sort of past with the warband of Talos and that Talos saved his life once. But why exactly does he join the Night Lords and leaves his Corsair brethren behind? He doesn´t really seem to like them for some reason, but we still don´t get to know why... He seems quite committed to the cause of Talos and this idea of his to fulfil his gene-fathers ideas, but I don´t really understand what makes this important to him. The Corsairs seem far better equipped, organized and generally more succesful than the Night Lords who show no unity whatsoever and mostly hate eahc others guts. Why join them? As Talos said to him more or less "you owe me" (because i saved your life), he answers "Yeah, well I just saved yours" (from the reoccuring complications with his geneseed/ his prophetic gift). Which just makes total sense to me! But in the end, somehow he seems to be convinced like he got to join the Night Lords now and leaves the Corsairs. He then is for the rest of the trilogy (appearing in the middle of the second novel and joining them at roughly the end of the book) part of this Night Lords warband and seems to be a crucial character until the very end (appearing in the epilog years after Talos´ death). Could someone explain me why he is doing, what he is doing? I might have mixed some things up. If that´s the case, I´m sorry. It´s been a while since I read the books and English is not my first language, thus I sometimes don´t remember things that good as in German. Greetings, Velype

Hey all, About half a decade ago a completed a large Tyrant's Legion army, which coincided well with the release of 6th (all the allied rules om nom nom). I first fell in love with the Tyrant's Legion back when I first borrowed the Badab War books off of a mate. I also loved truescale marines, but to me they needed to compared to something to really show off their size. So obviously before the advent of 6th, the Tyrant's Legion was really the only 'legal' way of doing it. Anyway here is a pick of my efforts from a few years ago: http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-KiE3UxxAJV4/UD7JrfKPzmI/AAAAAAAAABo/F74e_P91cv0/s1600/20120829_185236.jpg So was quite happy with them at the time, and they are probably still serviceable now. Now with the advent of readily available truescale fodder (weather it is plastic HH kits or Primaris) and a wealth of 'correct' pieces of kit for the auxilia (plastic Autoguns now a thing, stuff like Victoria minatures etc) I thought I'd try a reimagining of the 5th Tyrant's Legion. Now to just leeroy jenkins into it, I started a Horus-Huron conversion many years ago (only 'bigger' terminator army available at the time) and never got around to finishing it. So I've recently pulled my finger out and laid into it with wanton abandon. The imagine below is what he looked like for the 2.5 years he was sitting on the back burner: Now was pretty happy with him there...was basically sketched out. He was even just using the 'basic' ghost razors (think about how small they would of looked) But I've gotten a little bit better with GS and converting in the last few years so opted to really lay into the bastard. I worked with the picture of him from the Badab Book and tried to 'tick' off all the major pieces of him and his model that stood out to me, this is where I'm at now. To me the orginally Lugft Huron model (same as Culln) didn't have enough 'going on' for a full blown chapter master, so I went a bit nuts on him. To me this is much later in the war Huron, rarely dis armours, is starting to really lean more toward the sketchy, dark character he was by the end. I opted to swap out Horus Cloak (was going to sculpt a lion skin on top of the 'joiny' bits) but I just before being happy with the model I saw an Angron cloak floating about and whipped that on him. Sculpting isn't as amazing as the FW on the fur (is my one major weakness) but hopefully the style looks similar to the FW stuff. I think the skull and chains also lends it to the darker, later Huron. I will also be intending on painting the fur as a tiger's skin. Tie it in a little bit with the Tiger Claws, maybe a gift from their leader or some :cuss. Any way, that is as far as I've gotten with him at the moment. I'll be using 'Ultramarines' as the 'Astral Claws' keyword, and I'll be using 'Catachan' as the 'Tyrant's Legion' Keyword (this is mainly due to Straken being essentially a marine, so he'll probably end up being Carnac Commodus or some such to a bunch of Auxilia (Conscripts). Anyway, if using the Ultramarine rules, I obviously needed Huron to be puppa smurf.. So just swapped out words in his rules to make him Lugft Huron (no stats or anything changed, just flavour words etc) Anyway, after that giant post, I'll try and keep this kicking along at a decent pace as I've just completed a Kreig Army, so this one will be more of a modeling project than a "need this army done quick to use" sort of thing :P. Also let me know if I've missed any blatantly 'Huron' things on his model, I tried to tick all the 'flavour' off (necklace etc) but let me know!! Thanks for reading!!

In the Ashes of the Thorns And who are you, the Tyrant said, that I should bend the knee Twelve high Lords on a far-off world, ‘tis all that I can see By a gilded seal, or a silver’d one, a Lion has his Claws And mine are cruel and sharp, my Lords, more cruel and sharp than yours. And so it came to pass, that in the 903rd year of the 41st millennium, a century before the Imperium would be shaken to its core and everything forever changed, Lugft Huron, Lord of Thorns, Chapter Master of the Astral Claws, and self-proclaimed Tyrant of Badab, did declare "just seccession" from the Imperium and, in so doing, ignite what was then the greatest conflict of our age. Alas, such was not to be, and if we could have seen what was yet to come within the next, darkest millennium, we might have counted ourselves lucky to be spared the horrors that came after Badab. Brother fought brother in a decade long war that saw seventeen warrior-brotherhoods of the Adeptus Astartes clash against each other in open conflict. Billions died and entire Chapters of Space Marine were condemned to crusades of Penitence, and even now, considering the horrors they would have to confront before that term was ended, it is impossible to say whether or not they survived. The war was brutal and bloody, with countless tales of equal parts valor and dishonor. These stories are too numerous to be told in full here. But even among every engagement throughout the war -- the Fires of Sacristan, the Angstrom Incident, Crow's World, and numerous others -- there is one that stands head and shoulders above the rest by the sheer measure of its violence and the gravity of its consequence. I speak, of course, of the final battle, the Siege that ended the War. I speak of the moments after the Tyrant found himself to stand alone among his manse in defiance of the Imperium of a Million Worlds upon his shadowed Throneworld. I speak of the Siege of Badab Primaris, and the Fall of the Palace of Thorns, when Lugft Huron, the Lion of Badab, died, his Claws with him, and something terrifying and black-hearted born into his place. Badab Primaris 913.M41 Long and hard had been the war, and many had already died among the Chapter. Yet more would die before the end. The smoke rising from the south meant that Surraek’s force had encountered the enemy. Most likely he and his charge of the Chapter now numbered among the honored dead, if the reports of the ferocity of the Carcharadon Astra were to be believed. Bashar Reyne glowered at this realization. This meant that unless the unlikely happened and they were reinforced, or the impossible happened and Surraek had actually survived the assault, he was the ranking officer in this sector. Turning away from the spiked parapet he stood at, he faced his command. Two depleted Tactical Squads lay at his disposal, his own and Cinnebre’s. Not enough. Not nearly enough, he thought. The Sharks had been reaping across Badab for days now, leaving a red wake behind, and they would be here in a matter of hours. The Claws would die here, he knew. There was no escape. Not now. Perhaps years ago, in the early days of the war, there might have been the possibility. But after ten years of fighting those loyal to the High Lords, ten years, brutal and bloody and restless, there was no return. The die had been cast and nought would change the number it showed upon its upward facing, save for the sweet release of death. So here the Astral Claws would make their final stand – upon the surface of their home – and so here they would die, but not before they reaped a terrible price from their attackers. A feeling came over Bashar Reyne then. Throughout the brutal centuries of his life, from the day he was first chosen to be a Neophyte of the chapter, through his days as a Marine of the Line in Tactical Squad Kherradan, through Veterancy and through his days serving first as a Sergeant, and later the honor of Veteran Sergeant, it was a feeling he had never known throughout war and strife. Peace. Reyne very nearly smiled at this realization, that he had accepted his final fate, but outwardly the grimace upon his face may well have been chiseled from stone from all it showed. A careful observer might have noted a slight shift in his eyes with this thought, but been unable to recognize it. Such a thing requires context, after all, and Bashar Reyne was not a Space Marine known for levity, but rather harshness and ill-compromise. To his men, only one thing he had to say before the end. “Die well.” It was a promise, as much it was an order. As the lights of hive spires began to go out as a wave approaching, heralding the arrival of some great cthonian marine predator, and a deathly silence began to replace the sounds of gunfire in the distance, Bashar Reyne ignited his power maul and awaited his end. Requiescat in Pace Veteran Sergeant Bashar Reyne of the Astral Claws Depicted as he was after taking overall battlefield command after the death of Tyrant's Centurion Surraek, Badab Primaris <urban combat//Zone Mortalis>, 913.M41. Confirmed KIA. Body found dismembered.

To the Inquisitor-Legate in command of Imperial Forces in the Badab War: Dear Inquisitor, This message will be passed on from one of your agents directly to you, I apologise for the nature of the delivery but I feel the situation requires it. It has recently come to my attention that Chapter Master Lufgt Huron will not back down from the position he has been forced into, to him the mere thought of surrendering what was given to the Chapter he now commands is impossible in his mind. Despite this befitting an Astral Claw it does cause me grave concern. Who I am and what I plan on doing is of no importance yet, however I understand that given the Betrayal at Grief that simple trust is something that neither side can afford to give. As such I have attached some note worthy locations that your Agents in those systems will be able to verify after knowing what to look for. I await your response. Regards, A Member of the Maelstrom Warders ---- ---- ---- Pic-Capture Sagan System Sagan III #~- Error Exact Location Unknown Administratum Complex ----- Upload complete ---- Unknown Astral Claw ---- Pic Capture Inquisitorial Stormtrooper Squad Attached to Inquisitor Kaylai Squad KIA Inquisitorial Retinue KIA Inquisitor Kaylai MIA ---- Audio Located Uploading --- Upload Complete Voice Matched Inquisitor Kaylai We forgot that the Astral Claws are Lions. Yes they fight to the death when they deem it vital, yes they fight in the silver and lapis, but we forgot one thing about them. They are Lions. They Hunt, and they will wait for their Prey to fall into their sights before striking. They are Lions afterall. --- End Log Inquisitor Kaylai didn't even see it coming, she was searching the genatorium sector of the Administratum Complex. She had a full squad of Stormtroopers, equipped with Plasma weaponry, as well as her own small retinue. That should have been enough. It wasn't. Five Stormtroopers died first, two of which had the plasma weapons, four had time to raise their weapons but only one fired before they were killed as well. It didn't fire, it cut, it stabbed and it bludgeoned with is limbs. Without stopping from where it had been hidden in the wall, they didn't hear the thrum of it's Power Armour over the generators and that was what killed them. Her retinue was dead, Commissar Freia died last. The Lion's combat bade shoved into her eye socket, her head was too small and a third of the blade protruded from the back of the skull. With a flick Freia's body was thrown to one side and Kaylai looked up into the Lion, seeing nothing but death. She didn't fire, her laspistol - however well crafted it was - would hardly damage the paint, instead she raised her Power Sword but the Lion just stared at her. 'I am not here to kill you, Inquisitor Kaylai. Agent to Inquisitor-Legate Jarndyce Frane.' 'Then why did you kill them?' She started to back away but the Lion stalked forward after her. 'They were in my way. You will come with me.' 'And it I don't?' It moved just as quick as it had done when it first struck, one second her Power Sword was pointed at it the next it was on the floor with her hand still attached. She clamped down on her arm, trying and failing to stop the blood loss. She didn't see the Lion with her sword. It pressed it against her forearm which now ended just before the wrist and she screamed at the pain. 'You will live.' Consciousness fading, she saw the Lion reach out and grab her. 'Someone needs you as a messenger.'

Musical Accompaniment http://i.imgur.com/SwVkTqj.jpg http://i.imgur.com/uXLLZ3d.jpg Our Honour was Loyalty For more than five thousand years, the Astral Claws stood shoulder to shoulder with the finest of the Imperium's warriors, their deeds legendary and their honour unquestioned. Loyal to the Emperor's throne, they exemplified the ideals of the Adeptus Astartes, strong and fearless as the golden lion of their heraldry. It was their glorious record of exemplary service that saw their standard placed in the Hall of Heroes at the Eternity Gate and won them the singular honor of command to the Maelstrom Warders. And above them all was Lufgt Huron, a true hero of his age, believed to be second only to legends of ancient past. The Astral Claws watched over the Maelstrom and paid the blood price of vigilance. When brothers fell and were drawn away, they remained ever watchful. When the caress of madness and corruption spilled into reality, they remained ever watchful. When their pleas for aid were met with not but silence, they still remained ever watchful. Fate is a cruel and pitiless wheel that spins the thread of an eternal tragedy. Perhaps Fate might have written a different path if another had sat on the throne of Badab, but it was Lufgt Huron who took the crown of thorns and assumed the mantle of eternal guardian to the Ruin Storm. The Astral Claws stood at the teetering precipice of annihilation, of failure in their duty to the Emperor. In pride, the Astral Claws sought to defy the hand of Fate. In desperation, they did everything to uphold their loyalty and sowed the roots of their own damnation. Pict-feed taken at the siege of the Palace of Thorns, subterranean sewer system Subject Unknown - Status Unkown ...... Commencing imagifier correction Processing...