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[Copied from my blogger blog]

I have agreed to take part in a Badab War era campaign based upon the Imperial Armour books 9 and 10. All players will play Space Marine chapters, except two wild card 'Renegade Imperial Guard' and Ork players, who will fight anyone and everyone, according to their whims. The only rule was that every army had to be led by a special character detailed in IA9 or IA10.

After a little searching through the history of the Badab war, and knowing I wanted to get in on the Seccesionist side (Soul Drinkers was a fun series of books that I really connected with better than I have with any other Vanilla marine series), I selected the Mantis Warriors. The simple colours appealed to my less than fantastic painting ability and I had my eye on playing Sartaq, chapter master at the beginning of the Badab War with his ability to infiltrate all units.

This plan almost came to a grinding halt when I found out that a) Sartaq was not a special character and that b) the only Mantis Warriors special character detailed in IA10 was their Chief Librarian, Ahazra Redth. I have never been a fan of playing Librarians, so I nearly switched to another faction, until a friend (who is collecting a Lamenters force for the same campaign) pointed out that this was as much about trying something different as it was about collecting a painting a force to play with. And hey, at least Ahazra still made everything infiltrate in the army! So I was sold, and the collecting and painting began in earnest.

The first major hurdle was money. I am getting married in July of this year, and we are still saving for the wedding, so I had to use as many models as possible from my current (quite extensive) marine collection. I rifled through my old 3rd Edition Space Wolves and pulled out all the models carrying Bolters and not adorned with too much in the way of wolfy iconography. I also grabbed all the marines I'd thrown aside or turned into random single squad painting projects and threw them in together. The sixty or so marines would be the start of my force.

I then preceded to beg my fiancee to firstly let me buy a few models (grudging agreement) and to have a bunch of her Space Marine models which she hadn't got around to doing anything with. This was agreed to rather more easily, as she is currently painting Malifaux miniatures and Space Hulk Terminators (she's an amazing painter, but much slower than I am).

So my box of potential models grew. Within I had about 50 standard marines, a few sergeants (various weaponry), a few special weapons (mostly flamers, bleh) and 10 heavy weapons, 2 dreadnoughts, a vindicator and 8 assault marines. All of this sat alongside a fairly impressive bits case (it's beyond a box now!)

Next post I will include some pictures of the marines painted to date and my Ahazra Redth conversion.

Great to see this project get off the ground Bishop Gore!

SUBSCRIBEDAMUNDO!!

[Copied from my blogger blog]

So I got some pictures taken with my phone, not particularly good, but as good as I can do for the time being.

I put all the guys together, some are painted and ready, others are part way there, and a few are still in their pre-Mantis Warrior guises (badly painted Space Wolves and White Panthers mostly).

First of all, introducing Ahazra Redth and his personal Sternguard entourage, Kopano Lesedi.




The sternguard are just normal plastic Space Marines, I am painting them with a base of Ork Hide, Overbrushing roughly with Snot green and then highlighting with Goblin green. The helms are Chaos black and an old citadel colour called 'Ash Waste Grey', which is quite similar to Rotting Flesh.

Ahazra himself started out as a pair of Space Wolf walking legs and a Space marine plastic body. I sculpted on (roughly, I'm not great with green stuff) a cloak, though it doesn't quite work, as he would not be able to walk very fast with the amount of material that is there. The head is from the old Khorne Berkerkers box (by old, I mean around the time the 3rd ed Chaos plastics first came out I think), I trimmed off the raised helm parts carefully, I really like the grill mouth on it, quite scary and ascetic looking. The sword is a Glaive Encarmine, I attached it to the wrist of an old SM biker arm I had lying around, while the Bolt Pistol is from a CSM. The hood and the gorget were made from green stuff, both of which I am rather proud of as they have come out well.

Secondly introducing the beginnings of Assault Squad Kefentse. This shows the painting scheme mentioned above a little better. The Jump packs have been highlighted with goblin green, but the bodies have only got so far as the snot green overbrush.


The two completed tactical squads. In the front, Squad Uuka, lead by Veteran Sergeant Uuka. They are ten strong and field a Missile Launcher and Meltagun for tank and marine killing. The plastic marines of the squad are made up of 2nd Edition and current edition marines, with 1 old metal marine (the melta gunner).


Behind them we can see squad Lefu. These also sport a Missile Launcher and Meltagun, and are made up of the marines from the 2nd Ed boxed set. As I said, I am in major recycling mode!




In the corner there you can see the yet to be painted marines for my third, unnamed Tactical squad.


Finally introducing the first of the LandSpeeder Tornados (Multi-Melta, Heavy Flamer loadout) and the first of the two Dreadnoughts.


This has been a very picture heavy post, so I shall end it here and speak more about the background, the names and the future of this army in a soon to come blog post.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Gitsplitta wrote:Great to see this project get off the ground Bishop Gore!

SUBSCRIBEDAMUNDO!!

Cheers Gits, I live under no pretension that my painting is as good as yours, but I feel proud of the advances I've made in painting in the last 2 years (you should see some of my earlier work, utterly awful!), so I wanted to get it onto the internet.

In the next few days I will be putting together some backstory for Ahazra and the 5th Company in the Badab War (I haven't read any fluff, and dang it, this company is going to be my company!), along with some discussion of names and the make up of the 5th company and its mission.

Look forward to comments. My fiancee has taught me a lot about painting, I know that you guys can too

[copied from my Blogger blog]

I started my research into the Mantis Warriors on Codex: Lexicanum and did several searches online, first for 'Sartaq', which only returned links to the Sartaq of the Mantis Warriors, then for 'Khoisan Neotera', Chapter Master after Sartaq's death. Neotera returned nothing, but Khoisan returned a result of two South African tribes, the Khoi and the San.

This was before I had managed to find any information from Imperial Armour 10, so I had no knowledge of what the Mantis Warriors might look like, so I decided that they would be dark skinned tribal warriors, the planet Ootheca on which they were based sounded like it could be a great African death world, jungles and snakes and huge insects (the mantis being one which had grown larger than normal, possibly so it could eat snakes and medium sized mammals, humans even?).

A short while later Codex: Lexicanum was updated with details from IA10 (which have now sadly been rolled back, not sure why, possibly copyright issues) which stated that a) the Mantis Warriors were founded from the Marauders chapter, a founding chapter of the White Scars and b) Mantis Warriors had pale skin, dark hair and green eyes.

So my plan for an African tribe was foiled and I started to gather more Mongolian style names, but none of them sounded as good as the South African names I had found.

"Sod It", said I, "I want my chaps to have South African names. They sound strong and interesting, it gives them character, and if no warrior in my army is without helm, I can pretend in my mind that they are proud dark skinned warriors, and everyone else can assume they're the Mongolian pretty boys that the book describes."

I gathered names from baby names sites to begin with. Most baby name sites are lazy with uncommon names, but I found one site which had meanings beside each of the few names they had which were of South African provenance.

So I had a list of names and was ready to start planning my first 1000pt army...

Sartaq and Khoisan are inventions of the FW team. There have never been any named characters in historical MW fluff unless you go to the Goto stories (which I don't recommend).

What inspired the Japanese look the BoLS (at least I think it was BoLS) Badab fandex assigned MWs? I thought that was somehow fitting.

I agree. My old (Badab War era) Mantis Warriors as Romanized, but the post crusade, post loss-of-home world members are Japanese. Works very well with the whole mantis symbolism and mystique.

However BG... 5th Company is your baby... do with them what you will!

I'm sure I shall be spat upon by the geek community at large for saying this, but I've never really found Japanese culture inspiring.

This is not to say I cannot be prevailed upon to change my plans and make them more Japanese in look or feel, but so long as the feeling of the community and my gaming group is that of Gits (it being my baby) I shall continue along this path.

One reason for this is that I very quickly fell in love with my Sternguard squad name of Kopano Lesedi. Kopano means 'united' and Lesedi means 'light'. I love the way it rolls off the tongue, and though the phrase 'Light United' or 'United light' doesn't really work in English, I think the symbolism of the phrase works very well, it speaks of brotherhood above all in the Emperor's light.

I know they're seccessionists at this point in history, but they still love the Emperor above all others.

And their great battlecry shall be "Down with all this blasted bureaucracy!"

This sounds interesting.

Some good things!!!

It's nice to see something original... (Oh, Git, you were here all along? *grin*)

Nice work. I'm a big fan of the Badab War. One of these days when I get an army done, I'll start on Astral Claws.

Consider me subscribed.

Cheers for the comments so far guys, coming this week: a quick fire battle report from last night (I forgot to take any photos, but I'll give a quick blow by blow); green stuff on the dreadnought and a description of 5th Company and their role in the Badab War.

On a side note I finally got to see a copy of IA10 and flick (very quickly) through it. First impression - utterly gorgeous. Beautifully bound, amazing pictures inside... I teared up a little. But with regards to background of the Mantis Warriors, it doesn't look like there is much. A few pages of history, a lot of beautiful drawings. So I think 5th Company can remain mine for now.

Good work so far keep it comin!

Mantis Warriors
Ahazra Redth
5 Sternguard
10 Tac Marines (ML, MG, Power Wpn)
10 Tac Marines (ML, MG, Power Wpn)
5 Assault Marines
Vindicator
Dreadnought (HF)

Lamenters
Captain Psycho (Captain Tycho counts as)
10 Tac Marines (ML, Flamer)
10 Assault Marines (Flamer, MG)
Stormraven
Rhino
2 Landspeeder Typhoons (seperate units)

- Seize Ground
- Dawn of War

Set up: Lamenters hold everything in reserve. I set up 2 10-man Tac squads using infiltrate in cover in the centre of the board

Turn 1:
I go first and move all the rest of my army onto the board. Then the lamenters all come on.

We forget to use Night fighting rules, because Ahazra was off the table at the start of the turn I forget to use Mirage (I always forget to use his psychic powers), Typhoons use frag missiles to kill 4 of his sternguard retinue while the Stormraven destroys my dread with one of it's crazy missiles of doom.

Sinking feeling already.

Turn 2:
Vindicator gets in range of a combat squad of tactical marines and scores a hit, but due to some embarrassingly bad rolling only 1 dies. Everything else misses and cold fingers seize my spine as he start rolling ridiculously well...

His Stormraven crosses the field and effortlessly destroys my vindicator while his marines start hammering at my tac squads hunkered down in cover. Typhoons try to kill Ahazra, but he and his sternguard friend survive.

Turn 3:
Everything shoots at the Stormraven, but more bad rolling, the assault squad attempt to plant krak grenades, but none can roll that vital 6. I still stand at 1 marine killed. My friend Scott is watching and is laughing uproariously every time I roll the dice and they come up with strings of 1s and 2s. Yes, I have probably the worst luck with dice of anyone ever (some of you may equal my bad luck, none of you could beat it!). I shall never play gambling games involving a die roll.

His combat squad of assault marines charge Ahazra and his sternguard and start taking a kicking. 2 assault marines down to no deaths. Psycho charges the other squad of Tac marines, but doesn't do so well.

Turn 4:
My assault marines join the fray with Psycho and take down one marine, but Psycho starts carving up the rest of the tac squad. All die except one lonely meltagunner who flees, leaving the 2 assault marines to face him and his squad. A lucky shot from my Tac squad in the centre of the table takes down his Stormraven, followed by a loud cry of victory from me (I went down, but I took the flying LandRaider with me!). Ahazra continue killing assault marines while the last sternguard dies.

His second combat squad of Assault marines charge my tac marines that killed the stormraven. Psycho kills the remaining assault squad members while the typhoons use frag missiles to aid the assault squad. Ahazra kills the final assault marine.

At this point I have one tac marine with a meltagun near one objective and Ahazra across the board and out of range to help. If we had played Turn 5 it would have been a wipeout, so he gracefully accepts my surrender.

What did I learn? Well I already knew Mech would not sit well in my force, but had no idea how much it would jar. However this scenario messes up my entire strategy, which revolves around using an all infantry force, letting him set up and then setting up my whole army 12-18" from him and then just opening fire.

I know I will struggle terribly against foes who reserve a lot of their force and will be relying on the versatility of the tac marines and on Ahazra actually getting stuck in with smite and 5 sternguard pumping out plasma rounds, while protecting himself from long range shooting with mirage (he can cast 2 psychic powers per turn).

All in all I shall be glad that the Lamenters are on my side in the Badab war!

[Next Battle report I post up will definitely come with pictures, especially if I play against Steve's Lamenters again. They are amazing.]

Nice to see the legacy of failure set by my Mantis Warriors is carrying on to your force. At lest we're consistent.

Seriously... drop the dread and get all of your troops in some kind of transport. Rhino or pods... machs nix. Naked infantry (even marines) given the current meta-game is tough.

Nice report.

You seemed really unlucky indeed...

I have the same problem with my Red Corsairs

I only have a 40% rating

Gitsplitta wrote:Nice to see the legacy of failure set by my Mantis Warriors is carrying on to your force. At lest we're consistent.

Seriously... drop the dread and get all of your troops in some kind of transport. Rhino or pods... machs nix. Naked infantry (even marines) given the current meta-game is tough.

Only problem with getting transports is that any unit that takes a transport vehicle can't infiltrate. Which makes them just another vanilla SM army without any flavour of their own. I love transports and I think they're more than worth their points on the table, but I really want to make this army something special. I will likely lose a lot, but the times I do win will be glorious indeed. Besides, I'm playing a seccessionist chapter in a campaign, the good guys need some edge

I expect to face a lot of melta-heavy lists (all but 2 of the 22 armies involved are Space Marines), if I take zero vehicles then that's a lot of melta weaponry that is only killing one bod per turn, rather than earning their keep and popping vehicles... It's probably not workable, but I shall have fun trying to refine it as a ridiculous tactic. I'll take a dunce's cap with me on odd weeknights

Couple of images of my workspace ATM.




Sternguard are getting better, though the Ash Waste Grey is making their helms look very shiny (it's not just the photo) and I have received my bitzbox order of Death Company jetpacks and legs which will round off the 10 man assault squad (5 from the box set; 3 metal jump packs on metal marines; sergeant and combat squad leader looking fancy)

And Finally, some green stuff on my Dreadnought's shoulder.


Not massively happy with how this came out, but also not too bothered. I can use a knife to smooth any roughnesses off before painting and trim up the mandibles a little more.

Keeping an eye on BitzBox for Fantasy Chaos Warrior legs after seeing Archmagos_Amadeus' Word Bearers. Will use them in the future to remake my sternguard. I hope he will consider it an homage rather than simply a blatent stealing of a great idea

Stealing great ideas is fair game. Good green stuff work, you're a braver man than I.

Didn't know about the infiltrate thing. But if you're going to infiltrate those troops, you need to do something with them that benefits from the infiltrating rules, otherwise not putting them in transports is a big negative as they die so much faster.

Gitsplitta wrote:Stealing great ideas is fair game. Good green stuff work, you're a braver man than I.

Didn't know about the infiltrate thing. But if you're going to infiltrate those troops, you need to do something with them that benefits from the infiltrating rules, otherwise not putting them in transports is a big negative as they die so much faster.

I figured having my whole army 12-18 inches away from the enemy having either won first turn or had 2 attempts to steal initiative would be the strongest benefit

50% chance of winning first turn, 1/6 chance of losing first turn.

50% chance of losing first turn, 1/3 chance of winning first turn.

Now that I think about it, it's not much better than 50% either way... a slight advantage. Yeah... might need to think about my tactics, they might be unworkable. I should possibly think of the infiltrate rule as a chance to set up units well onto the board, but not have it be the thing I am depending upon.

My fiancee is going to be really annoyed if I now tell her I need to buy 3 rhinos >.>

As for the green stuff, I figure if I can make a cloak out of it I can make designs. It is a pain to work with, but I have found it is supremely useful for attaching rocks to bases and feet to rocks. It bonds far better than any other glue I have found.

Loving your bold gs work; great blog, consider me sub'd. For cloaks, maybe try a plasticard or grey stuff frame. Also, using clay shapera and/or Vaseline will help with smoothness and flow of fabric.

Keeping an eye on BitzBox for Fantasy Chaos Warrior legs after seeing Archmagos_Amadeus' Word Bearers. Will use them in the future to remake my sternguard. I hope he will consider it an homage rather than simply a blatent stealing of a great idea

Haha, well considering I...*ahem* "borrowed" the concept from Doghouse, I say Homage away! Thanks for the good word though. If I have any spare legs I might be able to send them out to you.

Try www.letthedicedecide.co.uk, just checked and they have half a dozen in stock.

inmygravenimage wrote:Try www.letthedicedecide.co.uk, just checked and they have half a dozen in stock.

Cheers, didn't know about this site.

No probs. modelbits.co.uk and bitsandkits.co.uk also good (last one my bitz site o' choice. Keep meaning to do an article review of uk bitz sites, but where's the time?

inmygravenimage wrote:No probs. modelbits.co.uk and bitsandkits.co.uk also good (last one my bitz site o' choice. Keep meaning to do an article review of uk bitz sites, but where's the time?

Could you also do a review of the US bitz sites? They're way more interesting for us due to the €/£ awful change rate, in comparison to the €/$ one...
Still, thanks for that link, I think I'll be ordering a few things tomorrow...

Tend not to use the US sites. But, hey, given an excuse...

Some more pictures today.

The Sternguard are now done. I tried a different way of doing the Mantis Chapter symbol, not sure if I like it more or less than the previous. When I first started working from the Codex Lexicanum info I thought the symbol was a fly, the black being the body and feelers and the red being the wings, it was only when I saw the new IA10 images that I realised it was supposed to be a mantis face! So I tried to do a more mantis face, but didn't quite get it. Practice makes perfect though!









My Assault marines are one step closer to being done. I received the bits from Bitzbox and made up my Sgt and Combat squad leader and then did the overbrushing and highlighting last night. The bubonic brown needs another coat before they are totally ready for chapter insignia, and there are a few little details I need to pick out, but the end is in sight!









Haven't had any more games since the last battle report, but might get one in on Tuesday if I'm lucky. Hope to bring the next tale of crushing defeat to you with pictures

Having spoken with Gits about my potential problems on the field of battle playing as an infiltrating force I have decided to get a couple of Rhinos, just in case. Working out what I have to drop to afford them is going to be difficult, but we shall see.

Looks good. Always nice to see more Badab stuff. Also nice to see a variation on the Gitsplitta theme.

Fifty wrote:Looks good. Always nice to see more Badab stuff. Also nice to see a variation on the Gitsplitta theme.

Cheers Fifty

I think Gitsplitta is a much better painter than I am, but he paints his marines much brighter, mine are grittier and the sloppy highlighting I do makes them look interesting - I hope (it's not sloppy on purpose, I just can't hold my hands steady enough to not slip).

By the way, I tried to get a new Genestealer/Mafia game going in the games section, but didn't get any takers, has the fad died out, or are we just waiting for the summer months to roll around?