Mandragola’s Legio Astorum (and Mortis and stuff)

[Mendi Warrior]

Cool stuff!

The Ryza pattern ruins look good with AT, could be a nice combination with civitas imperialis components (hidding the obvious out of AT scale details of course)

[Macrossmartin]

Lovely stuff, and that last set of photos of the big battle gives a hint of how epic AT18 can be. 

 

How did the all-gatling Warlord make out?

[Mandragola]

Thanks. The all-gatling warlord was ok, but to be honest it’s not an ideal load-out. S7 isn’t really enough to hit battle titans in the front before they are a bit damaged. It’s pretty bad news for warhounds, but not too scary. It’s an excellent finisher though, because you can expect a couple of targeted shots to land and you ought to do something.

 

In future I’ll run gatling and sunfury arms for my mid-range fighty warlords. Sunfurys are the guns that I’ve got most engine kills with so far. Gatlings can either be used to remove a titan’s last shields to open it up for the sunfury, or to finish off wherever the sunfury hit if the shields were already down.

 

On the other hand I think that bellicosas are my least favourite warlord arm. In the big game an enemy warlord blew up simply from shooting at me. My bellicosa/sunfury warlord gets a lot of engine kills but they have all been from its plasma arm. Meanwhile it runs quite hot because of the bellicose, which really doesn’t do all that much.

 

It’s hard to argue for any carapace weapon apart from missiles. I think maybe they should be more expensive. The gatling guns do get more shots and the ordnance rule makes them pretty effective, but not all that much better than missiles really. My quake/bellicosa warlord even finished off an enemy warlord with long-ranged targeted shots from its missiles at one point.

 

Any weapon that can get a plus to hit makes for an awesome finisher, because you get 50% more hits to targeted locations. That’s certainly one of the good things about gatlings on a warlord’s arms, but not the carapace – because you can’t actually shoot most targets within close range.

 

I did enjoy running the Myrmidon maniple. Warlords are just such beasts if you can manage their dreadful clumsiness. I quite enjoy the challenge of fighting with fewer activations, fewer turns and very restricted fire arcs – but tons of durability and outrageous firepower.

[Achinadav]

Very interesting analysis of the different warlord weapons. Looks like you’ve had some fun games.

[Mandragola]

I’ve painted a my first knight, a member of House Mamor… House Marma… Mamaragon. This was a fun test mini inspired by watching the batrep last night (which didn’t go too well for the knights!). I’ve got 10 more knights but would need tons more of them to make an actual household force – not to mention lots of time. So this is absolutely not a commitment to produce a knight army for AT.

 

Anyway, what do you think of this little guy? And woah, sorry for the extreme close ups!

 

 

[url=https://flic.kr/p/TCpU59]

 

[url=https://flic.kr/p/2eyW8Xj]

 

[DuskRaider]

Aww yis, I love that camo!

[Mandragola]

Thanks. I found it fairly easy to do, and doesn't cover much of the model. The thing I'm less happy with is that there ought to be two distinct colours of blue (one dark and one very bright) and I'm not sure I've really captured that.

[Rabenga]

Mud looks great

[Mendi Warrior]

Lovely! 

[Chaeron]

Really like it - the 'weathering' with the mud on the legs looks great, and still love the tree too!

[Macrossmartin]

Not easy to get sharp-edged camo to work on such a small model, especially when its essentially shades of the same colour. But I think you've got the balance right, and the result is very effective. 

[Mandragola]

Glad you guys like the camo. I'm thinking of using it for my Crimson Fist infiltrators and Eliminators, which is a mad idea. Luckily I only need to do 8 of them.

 

I've been invited to do a video batrep with the guys who do the 30k channel. Means I need to have a fully done army by the 26th. The Crimson Fists will have to wait their turn.

[Fajita Fan]

I've been away for a few months and just checked in on your Warp Runners, they look fantastic. 

[Mandragola]

Thanks Fajita Fan. Glad you like them.

 

I've been experimenting with something other than flames for once: checks. This is the first time I've tried this. It isn't too hard on the panels that are simple shapes but the leg armour is harder. You kind of need the vertical lines to radiate out, rather than being all parallel. Took a couple of tries to get that right.

 

It looks pretty messy for now because I've just sketched out the shapes. Hopefully it'll get tidier when I go back and do it properly. I'm not sure if I should use a pencil to mark out the squares in future - we'll see how much effort it is to get rid of those lines.

 

[Chaeron]

That sort of 'checkered' pattern looks excellent - I've got a stencil to potentially airbrush any of mine, or transfers seem like a good way to avoid having to do such detailed work - kudos for what you've done to make it look so good!

[Mandragola]

I think transfers and stencils could work, but I think you can probably get a better result by painting them on. It’s just much harder!

 

This is because you can adapt the shape of the grid to suit the piece you’re painting on. You can make the size of the squares fit to the size of the armour plate, without half squares at the edges.

 

I don’t think I could ever get a result I was happy with on a piece like the warlord’s leg plate using a stencil. You want the lines on the grid to spread out towards the bottom of the plate, so you have the same number of columns all the way down. And this means also spacing out the horizontal lines a bit more at the bottom, so that you still have squares and not rectangles.

 

Alternatively of course, you could just avoid putting checks on these parts of the model. I’ve seen some titans with the check transfers from the godbreakers transfer sheet and they look pretty good.

 

Hoping to get a bunch of work done this weekend. I need a 2k army for a batrep I'm doing later in the month, and I want them to look their best.

Edited May 16, 2019 by Mandragola

[Mandragola]

Today I had the pleasure of recording a video batrep on the 30k channel. We played a pretty large game at 2500 points a side, with my Legio Astorum facing off against James, running the channel's own Legio Mortis. We had a lot of titans engaged in an incredibly fierce battle.

 

I'm not going to give a batrep for now. Apparently it'll be a few weeks before the video is edited and online. You'll have to wait till then to see how things went!

 

I'll take some photos of the titans I took tomorrow, if I have time. I've done quite a bit of work since the last update so I was able to field seven engines, all looking reasonably good I think.

 

Love this game. Thanks to David and James for staging the thing.

[General Zodd]

Today I had the pleasure of recording a video batrep on the 30k channel. We played a pretty large game at 2500 points a side, with my Legio Astorum facing off against James, running the channel's own Legio Mortis. We had a lot of titans engaged in an incredibly fierce battle.

 

I'm not going to give a batrep for now. Apparently it'll be a few weeks before the video is edited and online. You'll have to wait till then to see how things went!

 

I'll take some photos of the titans I took tomorrow, if I have time. I've done quite a bit of work since the last update so I was able to field seven engines, all looking reasonably good I think.

 

Love this game. Thanks to David and James for staging the thing.

Would you mind sticking up a link to the video once it’s up? It’s been a while since I watched a decent batrep!

[Mandragola]

I'll certainly share the link. Hope you enjoy it. I'm really not looking forward to listening to the sound of my voice.

[Mandragola]

Here are my pics from the 30k Channel game.

I took the retrieval mission, while my opponent James (controlling Mortis and a few knights) had Glory and Honour (though the traitorous scum know nothing about either!). This meant he was trying to kill my warlord with the Gatling guns on the roof, which isn’t my Seniores as it happens.

I took this Myrmidon Maniple. Seniores is in the checked Warlord. He’s an Ironclad Tyrant:



And this Ferox Light Maniple. Seniores is in the Reaver. He’s a Hero of the Crusade (Astorum Specific):



James also had a Myrmidon Maniple, though only with two warlords and a reaver, plus a Janissary maniple of reaver and two warhounds. He also had two banners of two lancers and a couple of the Mortis upgrades (warlord wasn’t going to get hot and his melee reaver had the remains of the fallen on it. I took the “Justice for the Fallen” stratagem from Molech and vowed to enact vengeance.

My deployment was like this. The downed titan crew was roughly in the centre, just out of shot, so I had a focus on getting there to retrieve it.



Here’s a shot towards the end of the first movement phase. You’ll have to watch the video to see what happened next. I can say that there weren’t so many titans on the board when we finished!



I had to do a ton of work to get the models to this standard, and only had about 3 hours sleep before the game. I’m used to turning up at 40k tournaments like that though, and the channel-owner David kept the caffeine coming throughout the day.

I didn’t bother with basing because they tend to cover bases in the stuff they’re using for the board for these batreps.

I also didn’t seal on the transfers because I’m not sure I’m happy with them. In particular, the sheet for one of the warlords disintegrated the moment I started using them! I will have a go doing the Astorum lines and circles instead.

Much fun was had. Hopefully I’ll get to do this again.

Edited May 28, 2019 by Mandragola

[Fajita Fan]

I have never imagined playing in a sandbox!

[Dark Bjoern]

I also didn’t seal on the transfers because I’m not sure I’m happy with them. In particular, the sheet for one of the warlords disintegrated the moment I started using them! I will have a go doing the Astorum lines and circles instead.

 

And how will you do them? I want to do the same. But all my attempts ended in failure.

[Mandragola]

It’s quite odd to play in a sandbox. They do snow too, using salt!

 

Painting the lines is going to be tough. I’ve seen it done well though and now that’s the goal. The guy explained that you need to do one of the concentric circles using some kind of template to be properly round. After that it’s reasonably easy (he says!) to do more.

 

We’ll see I guess.

[Rabenga]

Wow! You legio looks beautiful! Well done sir!

[General Zodd]

Beautiful Legio, really eye catching contrasts, and a good size force of painted engines as well!