XBA: The Spear of Telesto

[Xenith]

A few more shots of the detailed and weathered reivers. I'm much happier with them now.

I decided to paint them as one of the 'teen' squads after Guillimans new codex, making these the 18th squad of the 2nd company, attached the the Blood Angels 4th company during the cleansing of the Baal subsector. The squad sergeant is also grizzled enough to act as a Reiver Lieutenant should the need arise.

Edited October 28, 2020 by Xenith

[Majkhel]

As somebody that has never attempted weathering for fear of ruining a perfectly sufficient paintjob I can definitely appreciate your courage  
I like the burn-marks.

[Xenith]

Yea, it's tricky, you have to be consistent with it across the army, otherwise units will stick out! My clean shiny BA are really unweathered, maybe grime around the boots at the most, but the Flesh Tearers and Flesh Eaters desrve to be a bit more battered I think. This was simply done with a tiny piece of sponge, stippling on rhinox hide, then leadbelcher over the top. Chips were done with a small line of rhinox, with a line of my highlight colour beneath to make it look 3D. 

Edited October 28, 2020 by Xenith

[Xenith]

Excelsior time!

Names?

Perfections Redeoubt

Aegis of Arrogance

Apex Aegis <- Kind of liking this one.

[Bjorn Firewalker]

Is the Land Raider gold-plated to show it's Dante's or his Sanguinary Guards' personal transport? I expected them to use a Thunderhawk or other flyer, considering they use jump packs.

 

The paint is well-applied, nonetheless.

[Xenith]

Thanks Bjorn - The captains of my force wear golden armour, to emulate the idea of a golden armoured hero leading the red and black mas of power armour - as this is a command tank, and my captains personal transport I thought it fitting that the Land Raider be gold also - it'll make it stand out, too!

[Jolemai]

Legend of Baal...

[Xenith]

I got mine!

This one will go with the GW store opening chaplain, and the Juan Diaz sculpt to give me a trio of TDA nutcases. I might convert the other plastic one to have a combi melta so I have some variation in loadout.

[Majkhel]

Oh nice! I heard he is quite big actually and does not look out of place next to Primaris.

[Xenith]

Yea, This one is quite odd, he is broad, so might fit better with Primaris, and also:

• Same rounded sprue as the SM heroes kits
• Box says "commemerative series" which they never have before, as far as I know.

It's pretty strange. I'm wondering if as they move to primaris, we'll only be seeing classic takes on firstborn marines as 'commemerative series' sculpts. 

[WrathOfTheLion]

SoB Tariana Palos is a commemorative series as well, just has old 40k logo on the box.

[Xenith]

SoB Tariana Palos is a commemorative series as well, just has old 40k logo on the box.

 

Interesting, curious to see that Lexicanum Varus isnt 'commemorative'.

[Xenith]

So I've been making a push to finally get my 4th company finished - this is rounding off the 2nd and 5th tactical squads to have 10 men, then adding a final heavy weapon marine to the 9th Dev squad. Part of the delay in building the company has been me dithering over fluff adherent 10 man units, and crunch-driven 5 man units being optimal for firepower. I solved this by giving each of my later squad leaders an alternate, magnetised loadout, so each unit can be actually taken as 2 tactical squads using 2 force org slots, and have double the weapons.

This is my progress over the last week or so. I still need to add accessories to a lot of them. I put some effort into the squad leaders, and I'm largely happy with the 5th squad, but the second squad feels a little bland to me. I need to give the marines some more character.

4th Company, Second Squad.

Tactical squad Terranostro can combat squad into: Squad 1: Combi melta, power sword, melta; Squad 2: Bolter, power sword, multimelta.

Squad currently features 2 Dark Vengeance marines. I may swap these out for something more dynamically posed and second these to a reserve company.

multimeltagunner

Squad Leader with combat blade and magged bolter arm. I actually love this combination of bits and can see him subbing in as a Lt in some games.

4th Company, 5th Squad.

Tactical squad Jovor can combat squad into: Squad 1: Storm bolter, Grav cannon, power maul; Squad 2: Combi grav, lightning claw, grav gun.

Grenadier - the landspeeder faces with the grilles are so angry. This huy I see as a tech-adept/techmarine in training/rhino driver and has the requisite Ad/mech icons and additional tech gubbins. Some treat him with suspicion, but his skill at arms has cemented his position and earned the respect of squad Jovor.

Squad leader with magged combi grav, combat knife and lightning claw. I converted this guy almost a decade ago from a tutorial on making mk4 marines from current plastics, he came out well, but I've never been sure where to use him in an army. The time for that has stopped, and he goes in my BA. Both arms are magged and he has a LClaw for when he's leading a combat squad.

Flesh Eaters Outriders

I've found a way to further divide outrider sprues for ease of painting, basically two cuts and you can assemble the whole bike:

End result

Then assemble as normal. Marine leg+ exhaust is now one part, and thr bike can be sprayed whetever colour you like.

Thanks for looking!

Edited November 9, 2020 by Xenith

[Majkhel]

I admire your push at completing the 4th! I myself get distracted all too often by shiny new toys :)
Loving the angry grille! And indeed really neat job on the mkIV armour.

 

That Outriders tip will help me immensely, thanks for that! I still have 3 + Chaplain conversion to build + 2 spare (Librarian/Captain/Priest perhaps?)

[Xenith]

That Outriders tip will help me immensely, thanks for that! I still have 3 + Chaplain conversion to build + 2 spare (Librarian/Captain/Priest perhaps?)

 

Yea, it basically allows you to assemble all the parts of the bike that will be in chapter livery, and still be able to access the engine for painting etc. Do a dry fit before glueing, the feet are a little tricky as the pedals kind of sit inside the bike panels. If you do a straight vertical cut on the part I show, you shave off a tiny (hidden) corner of the pedal, but it should fit more easily. 

 

 

I admire your push at completing the 4th! I myself get distracted all too often by shiny new toys

Loving the angry grille! And indeed really neat job on the mkIV armour.

 

Thanks! I think it's my most-failed-vow. I've resolved to finish the company every year since 2016...   Maybe 2020 can be good for something after all!

[Xenith]

Been working on a few things in between nids - I'm making progress on the Excelsior, and I've painted up an Infiltrator Helix adept, with the comms guys and another infiltrator as a palate cleanser from the gold. 

[Xenith]

Got in soe more painting on the Excelsior, added gubbins to the tactical marines who are now ready for undercoating, and I had a play around to realise a concept that's been floating roud in my head for a while:

Mk4 body and left arm, Chaos bolt pistol and vambraced arm, aquila pattern jump pack.

[Xenith]

Started my first game of 9th last night:

2000pts:

Cawl

2x5 rangers

3 shooty kataphron servitors - plasmas, 5++ stratagem

3 Kastellan robots with 3x phosphex

1x controller

3x isydonian dragoons

5x Serberys raiders

2x armiger with thermal cannon and chainglaive

1x armiger moirax with siege claw and volkite

BA

Captain on bike - thunder hammer, storm bolter, shield eternal - warlord - sword of the imperium

Phobos Librarian - mind raid, tenebrous curse, armour indomitus

Sanguinary priest - jump pack, teeth of terra - selfless healer

6 infiltrators, helix adept

5 incursors

5 tactical marines - hand flamer, flamer

5 tactical marines - heavy flamer

drop pod

5 vanguard - jump packs, 3 fists, 3 swords, 5 shields

7 vanguard - jump packs 3 shields, 2 swords, 2 fists, 1 with 2 chainswords

10 death co - jump packs, 2 fists, axe, maul.

5 Sanguinary Guard - 3 swords, 2 axes

5 devastators - 4 plasma cannons

5 devastators - 4 lascannons

Secondaries

Bring it Down (3pts/vehicle)

No man's land special (take central objective)

Domination (more objectives than opponent)

This seemed like it might be a rough game from deployment. Everything clustered within 9" of Cawl to get some +1S to heavy weapon boost, but will be ripe for an orbital bombardment to break up that formation.

I deployed mostly in cover, death co and sanguard deepstriking, 2x5 tacticals in a pod.

Took us a while to get going, so we had to pause the game, but after Mechanicus T1 they killed both my dev squads, leaving me with little ranged weaponry nd a charge across the barren plains. It'll be hard to break into that line.

[Thoridon]

I hope you don't mind me saying but that board is set up to give a massive advantage to any shooty army going first. Hardly any line of sight blocking terrain to deploy behind and anything assaulty has to cross a big open space to be able to charge as you pointed out.

 

Tough to compete with a shooty castle in the corner there!

[Majkhel]

Totally agreeing with Thoridon here ;)
Good luck, brother!

[Xenith]

Oh yea, I'm at a huge disadvantage on the table, but this is a quickly put together gaming night, hopefully the first of many. Plans are to get more terrain together going forward, including a lot more LoS blocking.

In addition, the mission we rolled, No Man's Land prohibited my Phobos stuff from deploying forwards, further crippling my mobility/ability to engage.

[Xenith]

So we managed to finish off the game last night - I think we had way too many points for a first game of 9th, and it took ages. Between set up, mission rolling, terrain, secondaries, canticles and rerolling, and general rules checking we managed 2 turns each in 4.5 hours...

Ultimately, at the end of my second turn, we were out of time and my opponent conceded - admittedly it was pretty much over for him. From the image above, this is what happened:

Red is my turn 1, orange my turn 2, light blue his turn 1, dark blu his turn 2.

The pivotal moment was really the anti-castling stratgem Orbital Bombardment. I put that token right in the middle of the castle within 3" of cawl. This forced him to move forward and open himself up to charges in his T2.

Drop pod came down in the middle to offer some cover to my advancing vanguard who hid behind it. The serberys fled from my vanguard charge, but put themselves in front of the tactical marines, and then the vanguard who managed a sneaky charge over the pod. In the meantime my incursors advanced to take an objective, infiltrators geld one, and my left vanguard held one, giving me 4/5 objectives netting me domination points.

End of my T1.

An armiger moved over (14"?!) then charged my chapter master and priest, he took the master down to 1W, then died to return attacks from the THammer and Teeth (amazing). He then does an auto-explode stratagem and rolls 3's for both master and priest, killing the former and dropping the latter to 1W. The other armiger shot and killed all my incursors, with support. Vanvets killed the serberys and consolidated toward the kastellans.

Start of my T2 I have 2 objectives for 10 primary, 3 domination points, from last turn, 1 no mans land, and 5 bring it down for a walker and the armiger.

Then all hell broke loose. the full-strength vanvets jumped over the kataphrons and landed 2" away from Cawl and the kastellans. The death co came in on the right and the sanguard came in on the left where the captain just died, aiming to take down the moirax. Sanguard charged, failed on a 7, command reroll to get in on a 9, 10 with chapter tactics. The death co charged the kastellans, overwatch missed everything despite full rerolls, and a 10 on the dice saw them get in.

End of my T2

We didnt have time to do my actual combats as the store was closing, but my opponent conceded. I dont think it would have been pretty from there.

All in all, I was pretty worried about the Ad-Mech, however looking back, I only lost 10 marines in T1 and 10 in T2, which is really not a lot - either marines are a lot tougher or I didnt get the worst firepower from that codex!

Edited November 19, 2020 by Xenith

[Majkhel]

Did I see some cheeky movements with's Moirax's smaller base? 
Great work, Xenith! It was an excellent move to use Drop Pod to block LoS.

[Xenith]

Did I see some cheeky movements with's Moirax's smaller base? 

Great work, Xenith! It was an excellent move to use Drop Pod to block LoS.

 

Nah, it was cool, opponent explained and we made measurements based on 100mm - a few things were blocked like trying to charge the librarian past the drop pod - the gap was too small to move through without coming within 1" of the pod, so couldn't happen, that or the moirax trying to charge my captain past the other one - again, under 100mm room for him to get through. 

[Xenith]

I got another game in last night against a fellow BA player. Bit of an odd match as he's relatively new to the game and didnt have the new SM codex, so was using the old codex and rules, against my new codex and PDF - So there's a discrepancy on relics, traits and strats. I took a bit of a weird list I knocked up at home before knowing my opponent - testing out a few things like the chief libby dread, and the reiver Lt with aura boosters that I've been wanting to try. I can say that it turned out to be a hard counter to my opponent, who relied on high AP weapons and storm shields. Just...turning them off felt broken. When I arrived my opponent had made a 1200 pt army to my 1000, so I randomly threw in a tornado that I've never used in game, and the incursors to make up the points. The army was kind of designed for objectives, with the scouts there for a T2 repair teleport homer run.

His list

Captain - Hammer of Baal, jump pack, storm shield, death visions

Lib dread - WARLORD, wings of sanguinius, quickening, artisan of Baal (halberd).

5 Intercessors, bolt rifles, power sword

5 TH/SS Terminators

6 Death Company, 5x bp/cs, 1x TH

3 Inceptors

Land Raider

My list

Lib dread - Flamer, biomantic, fortress, null zone, chief librarian, +1 to cast trait

Reiver Lt - vox espiritum, fear trait WARLORD

5 Infiltrators, medic

5 incursors

Venerable Dreadnought - Twin Las

Death Co Dread - melta, storm bolter, talons

5 Scouts - power fist, blades.

Land Speeder Tornado - multimelta, assault cannon

Predator Destructor - Lascannons, HKM.

Mission: Ransack

Primary: Domination

My secondaries: Engage, while we stand, repair teleport homer.

Opponents' secondaries: Bring it down, first strike, Linebreaker

Opponent: Dread and smash deployed behind the ruin at the top, DC and Inceptors in reserve, land raider to the bottom with the terms.

Mine: I deployed with my fast units on the flan objectives, infiltrators etc castling in the middle.

Naturally, I lost the roll for first turn. I think I haven't gone first since 7th ed.

End of Opponent T1 move

opponent T1

Land raider moved forwards and put everything into the vendread, which miraculously survived on 2w due to some lucky ignore wounds rolling. The opposing libdread ran behind the ruin straight at my attack bike - made sure my opponent knew that it had a multimelta and he couldn't advance, wings, and charge, but was ok with the move. smash moved up. No combat

My turn 1

The predator moved forward past the front ruins to get LOS to the side of the raider, DCD moved into melta range, troops shuffled, incursors into the ruins to pot-shot the intercessors, infiltrators to increase the deep strike denial bubble. Librarian moved to make sure everything is in the 12" bubble of "NOPE!". I also make a douche move with my landspeeder and stick it 1.5" in front of the land raider. My atb multimeltad the lib dread in the face at short range for 10 wounds. A point blank multimelta, melta, storm bolter, 4 lascannons, predator autocannon and HKM do 10W to the land raider. I was not rolling well.

Opponent T2

Terminators dismount and move through the ruin toward my DCD. Captain wings of fires over to the venerable dread, Inceptors drop down near the ven dread, death co drop near the predator. Raider doesnt move.

Inceptors shoot the vendread and I think do one damage due to a 661 on the ignore wounds rolls. Raider puts everything into the speeder and kills it, exploding and doing a mortal to the raider and the terminators. My opponent's target priority was off here, and I double checked he was sure. The inceptors could have wiped my infiltrators off the objective and board if they shot them in tactical doctronem but he wanted rid of threats to the land raider. Smash capt charges the ven dread, termies charge the death co dread. Smash does 9 wounds to the vendread and kills it, upon which I counter attack for 2CP, the Death co dread gets 6A into the terminators, rerolling 1's from the claws. With storm shields switched off due to Null Zone, 4 wounds go through and 4 die, leaving the sergeant, who then dies to morale, thanks to the reiver Lt close by (he was only within 9" so gave -1Ld, if he was within 6" it would have been like -3 to the Ld and -1 to attrition rolls, which is crazy powerful). Death co use descent of angels and get into the predator, but largely bounce off.

My T2:

Attack bike skirts round building to claim that objective and table quarter for engage, scouts appear bottom right, claim objective, engage, and then repair the homer (hell of a lot for 70pts). Central mass reposition to murder smash. Death co dread gets within 6" of the raider, ready to kill, but also within 8" of the inceptors. NZ and Psyfort go off. DCD meltas the land raider, no explosion, infiltrators rapid fire smash, LibDread flames him and leaves him on 2W due to tactical doctrine. Giving smash an honourable fight only the libdread and Lt charge in, the DCD makes it into b2b with the inceptors, and kills 2. Libdreadnow with 5A on the fist gets 4 hits, wounds on 2's from the Lt and murders smash. DCD kills 2 inceptors. After that we had to pack up and go, but by this point my opponent had maybe 200pts left on the table and I had about 950.

End of opponent T2 move.

Endgame (2 battle rounds):

My Objectives:

Domination - 5

Engage - 5

while we stand - 10

repair teleport homer - 5

Total - 25 (would get another 23 next turn as holding 2/4/more objectives, in all quarters, scouts repairing homer).

Opponents' Objectives:

Domination - 5

Bring it down - 4

first strike - 0

Linebreaker - 4

Total - 13 (Would get another 5 next turn - 2 objectives in command phase).

Edited November 24, 2020 by Xenith