The Just - Dr. Ruminahui's new Emperor's Children

[Slaanbull]

Awesome! Having more painted than unpainted is a celebration worthy of a new acquisition. 

I realized reading your post that I might have a personal dogma for always fitting the "butt" onto the base and overhanging in front. But 100% you should base for stability with such a large model. The basing, even if relatively thin, will also weigh it down enough for it to be a really hefty model in the end.

[Dr_Ruminahui]

Wow, lots of helpful suggesions.

 

@LSM - weirdly enough, I hadn't considered extensions off the top of the base, perhaps because I"m generally not a fan of basing overhanging the edge of the base.  That said, that would be an improvement here, so I'll give it some thought.  I can't really reposition the legs without disassembling them, so I don't think rocks would work, but some left over floor pieces or struts from my GW terrain would, though maybe only for one leg.

 

I had though about cutting 32mm bases and gluing them on as base extensions below the hind legs, but your solution is better, IMHO.

 

@Tallarn Commander - Thanks, and thanks for the encouragement.

 

@Slaanbull - I had thought fairly carefully about whether to have a butt or front overhang, and ultimately went with butt for three reasons, not all of which have panned out:

   1)  Valid - one of my hind legs is raised, giving me only 3 contact points if I go front overhang, but 4 if I butt.

   2)  Questionable - I though butt overhang would be easier from a gaming perspective, as melees are more likely to happen in the front, and it is a lot easier determining who can fight if you are mostly just worrying about base edges and not model protrusions.

  3)  Wrong - My model has a scourge (aka death whisk) option that sticks off the front, and I thought that, when on, that would help balance the model when used.  Turns out it really didn't, being too short and narrow to have that effect.

 

Stability as it tipping over really isn't an issue with any reasonable mounting, as the model is very wide (as can be seen) and isn't very tall compaired to its other dimensions.  Rather, my concerns are having enough mounting points that it stays glued to the base (as its leg ends are quite pointy), ease of use in gaming, and aesthetics.

 

Anyway, at the risk of making this post too long, here are my completed noise marines, that I talked about above.

 

Finally, given I was talking about how much I've painted for my army, I thought I would take an army shot of all my EC (and can be used as EC) models:

 

 

A)  The white stuff is obviously my unpainted models,

B)  The bright purple models on the front right are my newly painted EC models,

C)  The models behind them are the demons that have EC codex datasheets, and

D)  The large grouping in the upper left behind all the white is all my CSM stuff that I can field as EC.  Note, this category includes more than I would actually put in the army, as it has 4 squads of noise marines (on top of the 2 I've painted specifically for my EC that are in B) plus stuff I'm unlikely to field, such as 2 sorcerors, a helldrake and a land raider.  That said, many of these models are currently staples in my EC lists, such as the rhino, the 2 maulerfiends and soon, I expect, the defiler.

 

And here is another picture that, while blurrier, is more Gracious.

Edited May 16 by Dr_Ruminahui

[The Praetorian of Inwit]

An impressive collection. I especially like the Heldrake.

[Dr_Ruminahui]

Thanks, @The Praetorian of Inwit - if you want to see some closer pictures of it (albeit without the base done), click here.

[Dr_Ruminahui]

Okay, I've now based my defiler and am much happier with it.  Thank you everyone, particularly @LSM, for your suggestions.

 

 

Basically, I had enough room to put my one extra administratum ruin floor tile under the raised leg, then put some of the broken fronteris roof pieces on the other side to tie the other leg into the base, even if it isn't stepping on the elements.  This (IMHO) still gives it the image of walking, though now with one of the "level" legs rather than the raised one giving that impression.

 

Still need to add a bit more sand to build up on the edge of the stepped on floor tile, to help integrate it into the base, but that's all the work I'll do on that.  Other than that, I want to build it the other weapon options so its fully swappable (except the ectoplasma chest gun - no real way of doing that), so I'll need to make myself a twin excrutiator and magma options to replace the current pintle combi-bolter (which will go to a future vindicator or other tank), and then another set of reaper autocannon and twin lascannon options.  I'll share my work when I get those done.

[Tallarn Commander]

The rebased Defiler looks great. I'll rebase 1 of my Defilers this fall. 

[Dr_Ruminahui]

As per @Valkyrion's excellent idea I also picked the Glutos Orscallion kit to turn it into a defiler - here is the "hull" on a 160mm base next to my own defiler:

 

 

Not having a new defiler to compare it to, I suspect my Glutos-filer will be smaller than the new official model, but not hugely so.  I intend to fully build and magnetize the various options except for the scourge, which I haven't yet figured out how to do. 

[Valkyrion]

I serve to please.

[Dr_Ruminahui]

Its Call to Arms time again, and this year I have vowed about 1/2 my remaining EC stuff:

- 2 squads of 5x Infractors.

- 1 squad of Noise Marines.

- 1 Lord Kakaphonist.

Plus some assorted other chaos marine stuff (vindicator, lord, abomination thing).

 

And since I'm doing new EC squads, that means new cape colours.  I've had to speedrun this because of CtA, so no advice seeking, but I still thought you might be interested in my selection process.

 

So, my first squad of infractors had blue capes, so my next two will have similarly "cool" coloured capes.  My plan was to do the next squad green, washed in my florescent air brush paint (same as I did with blue squad, just green, not blue). 

 

 

Here's the first 4, with the GW greens I had.  Don't really like any of them.

 

 

So I picked up some more greens from my local art store, including another florescent green in case my old one was part of my issue finding a satisfactory colour.

 

 

And here are the capes with the new greens - the winner is the one in the middle, called Pistachio Mint (which sounds more like ice cream than a colour, but I can't complain.  These are all done with the new florescent green wash, except the 2nd from the left, who is with my previous florescent colour - I'll be using the new one, as I prefer it.

 

Anyway, hopefully I'll get these done over the next week or so.

 

 

[Dr_Ruminahui]

Finished painting them, and am pretty happy - the capes are a bit brighter in person, though the green definitely does look better on the tassels than the larger surfaces.

 

 

Particularly happy with the champion's face,  That said, I tried putting a slaanesh symbol tatoo on his head, but it just looked better without it.

 

Getting my first game in with them tomorrow - running a 1000 point list against my friend's orks in a "teach ourselves the 11th ed rules" match.

[Rowland]

Blimey, I’ve never really seen these chaos models before.  The bulging bits remind me of Akira, really horrible, which is the point I guess.

[Dr_Ruminahui]

Thanks, @Rowland - most of my models are kitbashed in some way, so will look a bit different from the stock models.  For example, the guys with capes are (largely) the official GW models with (largely) Old World warrior capes.

 

As for the Akira-esque one, yeah, that's my defiler.  This was long before the current model, when the official model was this guy, which in addition to being kind of derpy was basically unavailable.  So I decided to kitbash my own using a leman russ and a large tyranid (you can follow the build process here) - I wanted it to look like a tank that had been possessed by a demon, rather than a purpose built vehicle.  The bulgey bit was actually driven/inspired by the tyranid kit I used (its the gestation sack from the Tervigon half of the kit).  Amyway, check out the various links in my signature if you want to check out my other conversions and work.

[Dr_Ruminahui]

I had my first game of 40K last weekend against my friends orks - 1000 points, with both of us running Purge the Foe.  The Purge v Purge matchup was intentional - I wanted us to have one of the more straight forward missions with the same objectives on both sides, to let us focus on learning the new rules.

 

Given the matched dispositions, both played Meatgrinder - so, a kill + kill more, hold + hold enemy's home scoring.  We used the official recommended GW terrain layout "B" for that mission.  Which brings me to my current pet gripe with GW - I printed out their terrain templates and glued them to cardboard... only to find that they were way too small and I had to make my own out of paper, working out their measurement by counting squares on the layout map.  Here's a visual of the actual template sizes with the ones from the GW PDF.

 

 

My list was Court of the Phoenician with the following:

10x Infractors with Lord Exultant (spear and whip)

5x Infractors with Lord Exultant (spear and whip + enhancement that forces battleshock on 1 unit at start of fight phase)

6x Noise marines with Lord Kakaphonist

6x Noise marines

Maulerfiend

 

My friend was the Battlewagon detachment with the new 1 DP More Dakka

20x boyz with warboss in battlewagon

20x boyz with warboss in battlewagon

6x breaka boyz in truck

Wartrack

 

I had uploaded a bunch of photos of the battle, but B+C's current server problems seems to have lost or deleted them, so I'll post them and details of the battle once I get a chance to reupload them.

 

[Rowland]

9 hours ago, Dr_Ruminahui said:

Thanks, @Rowland - most of my models are kitbashed in some way, so will look a bit different from the stock models.  For example, the guys with capes are (largely) the official GW models with (largely) Old World warrior capes.

 

As for the Akira-esque one, yeah, that's my defiler.  This was long before the current model, when the official model was this guy, which in addition to being kind of derpy was basically unavailable.  So I decided to kitbash my own using a leman russ and a large tyranid (you can follow the build process here) - I wanted it to look like a tank that had been possessed by a demon, rather than a purpose built vehicle.  The bulgey bit was actually driven/inspired by the tyranid kit I used (its the gestation sack from the Tervigon half of the kit).  Amyway, check out the various links in my signature if you want to check out my other conversions and work.

Sadly, I can’t see the pictures on your build process (wrong region?) but that model and your idea is amazing!  I had no idea it wasn’t a thing.  I was referencing @kabaakabas chaos dreadnaught too, I haven’t seen any of the chaos miniatures but having read Oaths of damnation and the description of a demon possessed person all that “extra” flesh is indeed a thing and it makes perfect sense.  Great work.

 

 

How long did your 1000 point 11th ed game take?

Edited July 8 by Rowland

[Dr_Ruminahui]

@Rowland - I'm guessing that you are in the UK, then - I used to use Imgur to host my photos until the UKers got cut off, and have migrated all my non CSM stuff over to B+C's storage, due to the work it will be.  Anyway, I'll see about migrating at least the photos in my WIP thread - when I do, I'll let you know and you can take a look.

 

Yeah, fleshy chaos vehicles are something they introduced in 6th edition, with the first model being the chaos dreadnought (now called a Helbrute) in the 6th ed. box set.  There was then (these might be out of order) the modular helbrute kit, the forge and mauler fiends (which share a kit) and the heldrake.  Later, in 8th edition (I think) came the venomcrawler and lord discordant.  And, of course, the new defiler (in late 10th).  Note, these aren't my photos, as while I have most of these models, as I discussed, most of them are still on Imgur - and unfortunately, the GW paint schemes don't really highlight the organic parts of the models.

 

Regardless, "fleshy" vehicles are now a thing, which, for a time, divided the chaos community - there are those who don't want their chaos force to be demonic or mutated, but instead prefer the version of more limited chaos worship shown in the early night lords background.  While I understand their desire, I (for the most part) quite like them - to me makes a lot of sense for the demonically possessed vehicles have visible signs of being such, and making them partly organic is a pretty good method of doing that.  Doesn't make much sense of the helbrute, who in their background and rules aren't demonically possessed (for example, they don't have an invulnerable save like the demon vehicles) so I would prefer if they made their background and rules match the model, or made a different, non-fleshy model.

 

As for my game, all told, I think it took about 5.5 hours, including lunch and going over all the new rules beforehand.  In 10th, it took us 6 or 7 hours (including lunch) for a 2000 point game - as you might tell, we aren't very efficient players.

[LSM]

10 hours ago, Dr_Ruminahui said:

Doesn't make much sense of the helbrute, who in their background and rules aren't demonically possessed (for example, they don't have an invulnerable save like the demon vehicles) so I would prefer if they made their background and rules match the model, or made a different, non-fleshy model.

 

Yeah; I think this was just a victim of laziness. A good half of the 6th edition Codex entry for the Helbrute is a copy/paste of the 4th edition lore for Chaos Dreadnoughts, and doesn't really feel like it makes sense for the new model.

 

Like (4th): "Between battles, the sarcophagus containing the trapped body of the Dreadnought pilot is disconnected and dragged clear of its armoured shell. Even so, the Dreadnought itself is kept chained like a beast when it is not actually fighting, for fear that some residual spark of the pilot's soul may send it into a berserk rampage of death and mutilation."

 

Vs (6th): "Between battles, the sarcophagus containing the pilot is disconnected and dragged clear of its armoured shell to lie inert and seething in the darkness. The Helbrute is chained like a beast when it is not actually fighting, for fear that some residue of the pilot's soul may send it into a berserk rampage."

 

Helbrutes don't really look like their pilot should be able to be popped out and put in storage. 

[Dr_Ruminahui]

@Rowland, I've moved all my photos over from Ingur to B+C, so you should now be able to peruse my posts to your heart's content - here is the link my defiler build.  As for the "fleshy" models I listed above, here are pictures of the one's I painted which should hopefully delineate the organic and metal components better than the GW model: the dark vengeance helbrute (one on the right is a conversion), the multi-part helbrute (with a weapon conversions), the forge fiend, the mauler fiend, the heldrake, the venomcrawler (left one is converted) and the lord discordant.  And a group photo.

 

Anyway, I promised a bit more about my first 11th ed game.  It was 1000 points each side against orks, with both of us on Purge the Foe to keep it simpler.   You can see the lists here.

 

 

He went first.  Here's a picture in his charge phase (almost - he forgot to move his red battlewagon, so that got moved when he realized he missed it).  The truck (an old gorkamorka one what is upbuilt slightly with tracks in the back a bit more armour) has his breakaboyz in it.  Obejctives are the terrain with the "pucks" on them, though you can't see the pucks on the one with all the ork boyz on it, or his home (which is to the right of the red battlewagon).

 

 

This picture shows a bunch of my own errors:

 

1.  I completely forgot my infractors (the guys at the top left of the photo and the guys with the green cape symbols in the middle left) have scout.  Not sure where I would have moved them, but its something I should remember.

 

2.  I got greedy and put my infiltrating tormentors too far forward (they are the squad that got charged the top centre).  I was hoping to sticky it, but got charged instead.  It survived on 2 models and fell back, but then lshared the terrain with a battlewagon (then died) and never stickied anything.  On the plus side, it did bait one of his big boyz squads into a countercharge, so it might not have been as big of a mistake as it felt during the game.  Still, another thing to keep in mind in the future.

 

Here's a better picture of the scrum.

 

 

Here's a picture of my next shooting phase, where I learned another important lesson - not to stand too close to transports I'm shooting.

 

 

Basically, in order to get LOS into the truck, I moved my noise marines into the small ruin - but that meant, when I destroyed the truck, they disembarked within 2" of my unit and into combat.  Good thing EC have universal fall back and shoot (with conditions), as I used that a lot - you can see the tormentors having fallen back above them in the photo, and my 10 man infractors above them.  I also destroyed his wartrack (in the center right of the photo - an old metal gorkamorka model) in shooting.

 

Here's picture after the end of combat (with the now moved battle wagon).

 

 

The way I charged the infractors, about 1/2 of them had to attack the breaka boyz.  Unfortunately, put all my attacks from my Lord Exultant into them, which wiped them, and left those tormentors unable to attack - should have put him into the boyz instead, as the breakaboyz aren't really that much killy in melee than the boyz and are a fair bit harder to kill.  One thing nice is that extra attacks no longer have the limitation of not getting more attacks, so the whip benefitted fully from the LE's once per game combat buff.  My remaining tormentors try to precision out the warboss in the boyz mob, but leave it on 1 wound - that said, I forgot their rerolls to wound and probably would have killed it if I had remembered.

 

And here is a picture of the rest of the board at that point.

 

 

And after his charge phase:

 

 

Fortunately, in charging his other boyz mob into my mauler, he got greedy and also engaged my green infractors, and failed to fully kill either.  And at the bottom, you can see his cheeky charge with the battlewagon, which involved a rotate onto the objective meaning my tormentors wouldn't be able to hold it on my turn.

 

Eventually, I manage to wipe both boyz squads and charge my mauler into the blue battlewagon, but only strip about 1/2 its wounds before dieing.  Here's a picture from the end of the game:

 

 

Basically, he managed to get the blue battlewagon onto my objective, and his red battlewagon into my deployment to score 15 secondary points and some primary.  I tried to grab his home with a run from my remaining green infractors, but needed a 5 on the roll to make it, which I fail even with my reroll.

 

Final score was 69 (if you include the 10 for painted - we usually don't) to 77 for an ork victory.

 

The kill more primary for Meatgrinder (the double purge the foe mission) is a bit weird and worked against us both a bit - I got 3 kills in round 1, and scored it with 1 kill in round.  My friend didn't kill any units except turn 3, where he killed 4, so that's the only round he got it.  My loss was largely based on not scoring secondaries - I was 35 to 34 on primary, but 24 to 33 on secondaries.  Some of that comes down to poor draws, but I feel I also didn't do a very good job on planning ahead and both allowed myself to get distracted and not put my models in the places I needed to be to score in the future.  So, I definitely feel like I could have scored better with better planning.

 

Fun game against a great opponent.  As for my general take-aways from the game:

 

1.  As always, I need to do a better job remembering my rules.

 

2.  I need to be more thoughtful about where I deploy and move my models and what I want to do with them in the turns ahead.

 

3.  EC really does struggle against vehicles, particularly anything above T10.  Blastmasters and 1 maulerfiend simply don't cut it against 2 battlewagons.

 

In terms of 11th edition, generally:

 

1.  GW terrain setups really do limit line a site and mean that you really need to get close to draw LOS on things.  While in part this is because we are both armies that want to be close to each other, but maximum range was really only relevant turn 1 when his guns on his battlewagon were out of rapid fire, and later in the game when he was shooting at farther units and he had the same issue.  So, I feel like the EC's limited range on shooting isn't as big of a limitation, though our general lack of high S remains so.

 

2. 2" engagement range for melee makes a big difference and it and the changes to pile in and consolidate make melee extremely contagious - basically, everything nearby seemed to get sucked it.  Never have I made as much use of fall back and shoot as I did in this game.  This effect is aggravated by the terrain, which, as noted, really brings models closer if they want to shoot.

 

3.  Between those changes and the way missions and secondaries, the game felt very different.  Probably in a good way, though I haven't made up my mind yet - I quite liked 10th when played with GW terrain layouts (it was kind of miserable before we did that, especially against shooty armies).  I'll need some more games, particularly at higher point levels.