No opinions on the projects, sadness. Well anyway, some WIP infantry happened!




Having played some Heresy 2.0 now, the need for basic tacticals seems timely again. I've had a bunch of cheap second hand mk III / IV marines laying around for a couple of years, now they'll get chopped up to shape (dear heavens if there wasn't a ton of mould lines on them to clean first...). The mk III seems a bit trickier to scale, but I found a good spot near the ankle and extended the thighs in the rubber tubing section so it should end up fine.

21 men waiting for their make-up sesh. I ended up sculpting some new heel armour on them as well to get it to curve right.



Reposing limbs on those ribbed legs required some violence.






"Bring your child to work", eh? The difference isn't generally this big, as the bionic leg and blutack push it up a bit, but still

Through the valley of death!

Had a nice four player bash of Titanicus for demonstration purposes. In the dead of night, amidst a fierce battle between Iron Warriors and Death Guard legions, the titans strode to duke it out properly. After the firestorms, mushroom clouds and orbital death-beams abated, the minty fresh God-Breakers were but a smouldering memory under the victorious tread of the Ashen Gods.

The most unlucky fellows on the field had to be the crew of the lone Stormhammer: imagine driving your slow juggernaut of a tank days on end to have a titan smash through the highway ramp right in front of your nose, have your treads fuse together with the asphalt as the Warlord next to you goes nuclear and end up buried under like three different titan-corpses

Loving the titan pics.

 Boringstuff wrote:
Loving the titan pics.

Thanks Boringstuff, I'll try to sneak in some more of those every now and then.

Meanwhile, I cracked open more stuff from the Age of Darkness box, this time starting with the giant pizza shovel axe man. Needless to say, that junk was right out. After a moment of deliberation, I instead made him a Moritat both for the fun factor of a loose cannon with bazillion shots and the idea of having such a bastard to lead my totally-coming-up-one-of-these-days Destroyers. Given their chunky size, didn't even have to do any real scaling work to have him be in line with the rest of the force.

Great kitbash and love the surgeries on the other marines, hack'n'slash is the motto of the day

And the poor tank crew, feeling safe in this thick armored vehicle and than have fate just laughing and throw all the stuff at it

Cheers Vi! It's a hard life out there in a tank when metal gods stomp all over the place

Paint comp next weekend, I'll try to finish the Moritat over the next couple of days.

Fun conversion for the Moritat, looking forward to paint - same goes for the biggerized dudes, curious to see paint pull the spacers together.

 Boss Salvage wrote:
Fun conversion for the Moritat, looking forward to paint - same goes for the biggerized dudes, curious to see paint pull the spacers together.

Look no further, Boss, for staff sergeant-moritat Sternberg is finished and very, very pissed. You get a rad grenade! You get a rad grenade! EVERYBODY GETS A RAD GRENADE!

 Sherrypie wrote:
You get a rad grenade! You get a rad grenade! EVERYBODY GETS A RAD GRENADE!

Lad looks great, pack integrated nicely across the 20? years of its existence.

 Boss Salvage wrote:


Lad looks great, pack integrated nicely across the 20? years of its existence.

Good question, I'm not actually sure when that double lightning claw Lord with a Jump Pack model came out. It's very likely on this millennium, but the exact year escapes me.

EDIT: the first catalogue with it is 2008, as far as I know

Haha, love the model and his "vibe". I was slightly worried that the jump pack would look too Night Lord-y, but your paint scheme ties it together nicely.

 Boringstuff wrote:
Haha, love the model and his "vibe". I was slightly worried that the jump pack would look too Night Lord-y, but your paint scheme ties it together nicely.

Cheers. It is a bit pointed, yeah, but reasonably clean of any obvious markers to particular legions. I'll probably go for something more along the lines of this old art for his squaddies down the line:

Cor aut mors! Favilla walks!

The Ashen Gods have two new engines to their ranks, as the 14th and 15th children charge forth from the painting station where they've languished for the last two years.

Flammae Aeternae, Eternal Flames, brings the heat with some casual OSL-tests. I debated adding a plume of cotton smoke to the burnt out bunker, but as of yet couldn't get it looking right.







Quies Interitus, Tranquility of Desolation, strides majestically to the ranks of other general purpose plasma + bolter 'Hounds. Never too many of those in a force.

The pose of the first warhound is niiiice. None of those awful static titans here!

 Boringstuff wrote:
The pose of the first warhound is niiiice. None of those awful static titans here!

With Twinfernoes, you're hitting that "Full Stride!" order quite often anyway, can't stand around posing when there's a lot of slamming to be done on the other side of the battlefield

Great looking pups, excellent aggro pose on the first one

 Boss Salvage wrote:
Great looking pups, excellent aggro pose on the first one

Cheers Boss. They ain't meant for peaceful parade posing

Technobarbarism of Old Earth, vol. III, painted!

The Veteran Guardsmen are a joy to play KT with, but man if it didn't feel like a slog to get them finished. I put some "good enough" tabletop slop on them on one June afternoon to have them ready for some demo games, but it took two months after that to return to them. The simple underlighting covered by translucent red was good for the first speed painting goal, but felt somewhat lacking when approached properly, sapping my motivation a bit. It happens, but at least two days of work later they are finally done and playable. Note to self, this was not a favored workflow of mine.

Anyway. The tax collecting bullies of a minor no-name warlord have come for your shoes, citizen! Cough up or prepare to get wrecked!

Extort softly and carry a big gun: plasma, flamer and grenade launcher.




Mortar spotter, melta and sniper.




The most trustworthy command group: a friendly doctor, an encouraging leader and his softspoken HR executive.




The special grunts: bossman's strong brother (known as "the Handle" for the bit he carries around, inexplicably proud of it) and the agitator, always ready to read their victims the reasons they are to be immediately de-shoefied.




The regular grunts. At the end of the day, fancy guns won't get you far without the riflemen kicking down the doors.

The annual AT mega-battle approaches, and as usual, I always have to make something new for it. So how about those Warmasters chilling in the grey mountains, then?

Excidium Ultimum (Ultimate Ruin), stride forth!





Trying out aluminum sheet banners for a change, we'll see how those fare.

Love the conversions, what a beast!

 Boss Salvage wrote:
Love the conversions, what a beast!

Ha, thanks Boss! Now it just needs a suitably impressive paintjob. So many sub-assemblies, grah...

Amazing paintjobs, but I can't imagine how do you plan to transport that last beauty XD

The aluminum banners look super cool! The details are all very impressive on that. I can't wait to see paint on it.

muette wrote:Amazing paintjobs, but I can't imagine how do you plan to transport that last beauty XD

Thank you, muette. See, the banner poles and a bunch of other body parts are all magnetized and easy to disassemble. It'll fit nice and tight in a box like all the others.

Gwyn chan 'r Gwyll wrote:The aluminum banners look super cool! The details are all very impressive on that. I can't wait to see paint on it.

Cheers Gwyn. Soon...

Too busy to get further on the modeling side for the moment, but at least the Warmaster is now primed.

Some Kill Team on the rad-wastes of Old Earth was had, though. The sorcerous Philosopher Kings gave them soldier boys a spanking.

Absolutely nailing the aesthetic, as always!

Now that is atmosphere you can cut with the knife! Pics look great and the game was hopefully fun too.

That is a great looking set up.

Cheers Vejut, Viterbi and bbb! Always fun to have a little KT bash

Ever so slowly getting some paint on this chunky boyo. No real weathering, freehands or battle damage yet, but getting the basic look down in the right direction.

Love the marines in there for scale!

 Gwyn chan 'r Gwyll wrote:
Love the marines in there for scale!

Thanks, got to show off them mighty thews in scale

Wip wip wipety wip, damn if this thing doesn't test one's motivation to finally cave in and consider getting an airbrush

Then again, where there's a wip, there's a way (left, right, left, right...).

Wait, you're doing is with a brush? Haha, oh dear. Nice progress anyway!

 Boringstuff wrote:
Wait, you're doing is with a brush? Haha, oh dear. Nice progress anyway!

Yeah, 100 % traditional sweatshop work here

Sensational work on the Titan! You’ve somehow made what looks like some mindless automaton with a gun for a head look really dynamic. Looking forward to seeing what you do with those classic banners now!

 gobert wrote:
Sensational work on the Titan! You’ve somehow made what looks like some mindless automaton with a gun for a head look really dynamic. Looking forward to seeing what you do with those classic banners now!

Cheers gobert, I did indeed try to convey something more impersonal with this walking idol of inevitable doom.

Banners are someting of an open question at the moment. I have a hunch of burning skulls, black sunbursts dawning on dead worlds and so on, but then again I've also recently run across this awesome technique where you use postal stamps of classic paintings as banner basis so who knows. Might go for freehand just for the kicks or edit something suitable baroque if I can come across any marks like that

Other than those and, decals and weathering, this beast is getting somewhere close to finished in the near future and I can take better pictures for y'all.

Huh, surprise tacticals got painted before finishing the Warmaster. They are easier to carry around for social events and casual painting, I guess




Cousin Stunty for scale, hoping he'd become a real boy one of these days too.

Motivating the Warmaster's painting, today I wrote the scenario for our annual Mega-Titanicus. This time it's going to be on two tables, with ~12 or more expected players and plenty of fender benders in the making.

On one table, we've got an all out assault from the traitors agains a fortified siege line. On the other table, we've got a nearby island full of airfields and logistics, pumping support to the fight as it suddenly comes under attack from the other traitor force that marched under the waves to take it down. Some fun little interactivity there, we'll see how the battle shakes out as supplies and bombs fly down from the second table onto the main fight.





Me and my camera will be happy campers, regardless

Stamps as banners sounds really cool, but so does sunbursts over skulls and dead planets! Good luck getting them all done for the mega battle, looks like it should be a cool event

Cool distraction with the death guard, their orange eyes work well.

Thanks gobert. Turns out I ended up with neither option, but such is life

But still, it is done!

COR AUT MORS!

Excidium Ultimum, the Ultimate Ruin, Warmaster of the Ashen Gods, marches to war engines and weapons blazing. Pretty happy with the freehanded checkers, lines and banners, hadn't done those for a long time.




She's escorted by the XIV legion, who are certainly not the bigger people in this relationship.



Some close-ups on the legs. I'm satisfied with those checkers and especially with the knee-joint NMM.




The Grav Imploder is running pretty hot.



Freehanding banners was something I haven't really done, though not that different from regular acrylic painting I did a lot of as a teenager. It was fun... and thus something I'll probably have to do more of in the future, oh dear.




Naturally there are people about on machines of this size. You can spot one in the armpit and another loading the mortars on the shoulders.




Since legio Favilla is my pretentious art project, I also tested using a 0.1 mm pen to put some latin phrases in as appropriate (works, but reaaally didn't like ti stay put when the varnish was applied. Whoops).
- On her front armour the scrolls read "Solvet saeclum in favilla / Heaven and Earth in ashes ending", part of Dies Irae that inspired the legio's name in the first place.
- The skull pile banner reads "Mors certa / Death is inevitable".
- The bleeding heart has the battle cry "Cor aut mors / Heart or death", an ultimatum to submit and obey or die. Your money or your life, but cooler.
- The burning planet with a sword in it reads "Mors tua, vita mea / Your death, my life" in reference to the legio's purpose as an ultima ratio formation that is only sent to the fray when diplomacy breaks down so badly that the opposing side needs to be erased from the galactic memory in its entirety. By the death of their enemies, Mankind asserts its perceived manifest destiny to rule the stars.

Awesome.

It is gorgeously painted, based and posed, but the missing head subtracts a bit for me. But I'm not into Titanicus lore

That is a glorious titan. The only critique I have is the bottle cap really jumps out at me and throws me out of the mini. Maybe it's because I work in a factory with bottle caps everywhere, so perhaps it's subjective.

I went back and skimmed the thread, but I didn't notice a reason why it lacks a head. Is that something in the Titanicus lore that I'm missing?

Besides all that... wow, that is a beautiful mini.

Great job!

Amazing result, just so many great details packed into this monster - the checks, that sexy knee joint, all the glow effects, the banners, the crew

I'm a fan of the searchlight head, ironically I think it adds an air of (dark machine) sentience to the titan that a more standard head wouldn't necessarily.

Boringstuff wrote:Awesome.

Illumini wrote:It is gorgeously painted, based and posed, but the missing head subtracts a bit for me. But I'm not into Titanicus lore

bbb wrote:That is a glorious titan. The only critique I have is the bottle cap really jumps out at me and throws me out of the mini. Maybe it's because I work in a factory with bottle caps everywhere, so perhaps it's subjective.

I went back and skimmed the thread, but I didn't notice a reason why it lacks a head. Is that something in the Titanicus lore that I'm missing?

Besides all that... wow, that is a beautiful mini.

Great job!

Boss Salvage wrote:Amazing result, just so many great details packed into this monster - the checks, that sexy knee joint, all the glow effects, the banners, the crew

I'm a fan of the searchlight head, ironically I think it adds an air of (dark machine) sentience to the titan that a more standard head wouldn't necessarily.

Cheers y'all! Glad you like the chunky bugger that I'll get to use maybe once per year

Regarding the head (damn if this wouldn't be funnier in Finnish, where "main issue" translates literally to "head thing"), do note that the titan isn't headless, but it lacks a human face. The searchlight head is still the size of a tank. The facelessness is partially due to my incessant need to tweak the models so they're unique items, which also includes occasional techno-weirdness, but partially it is also thematic. The Ultimate Ruin isn't exactly a subtle name and being the biggest bird in this rooster for now, is to be seen by our enemies more as a faceless, impersonal force of nature than an individual machine. If you're staring at this monster, you're staring at the glare of the uncaring cosmos for the brief remaining spark of your pitiful existence before it all dissolves in ashes forevermore.

Mega-Titanicus, ahoy!

As previously mentioned, this time the annual big god-machine brawl at the club would happen on two tables (scenarios shown in this thread above): one main assault on an Imperial fortress supported by a nearby island's airfields. In total, we had 14 players each commanding their own maniples, 8 on the walls and 6 on the island. 67 titans and three plucky knights participated in the mayhem, some of them also cycling in again as reserves. I tried to remember taking pictures every now and then, but playing and being the main rules guy to ask certainly make that task harder when intensity racks up and people are trying to wrap things up by the end. Thus, pictures are mostly from the first half of the game.

Twilight at the Gates of Unity.

"The traitors are closing in by the hour, the fools. Our hearts and walls shall hold fast against their rage, imposing as that might still seem. Let them come! Let them smash themselves against our lines, let them bleed themselves dry if they so eagerly wish to die this day!"





Three maniples of legio Favilla's engines, bolstered by one of legio Defensor, stood ready to break the traitors' storm. Lighter Warhounds and Reavers ranged on the flanks while the super-heavy Extermigus force was warming up its engines at the main gates.







Arraying against them, god-engines of legios Fureans, Damicum and Krytos were stomping forwards through the desert heat. As rockets and aerial bombs started to fall like raindrops from the darkening skies, the battle was joined.





In scant moments, the first defensive line before the city was overwhelmed and despite their hard resistance, the armoured elements of the XIV Astartes legion were taking a pounding. Not willing to concede more ground, the defenders sallied forth to keep the attackers at bay further down the field.



On the attackers' right flank, the ever-destructive Krytos took to razing the local infrastructure. With one accurate shot of its quake cannon, a Warbringer of the God Breakers blew up years worth of aerospace logistics efforts.



Meanwhile, on a nearby island the XIV's artillery and airfields were busy providing support to the distant fight. Little did they know that there were hidden forces encroaching on their position by the sea-floor, as two maniples of legio Magna and one utterly corrupted group of legio Omina's monstrous creations soon broke above the waves. However, the attackers would soon find themselves surprised as well but the amount of defending titans on the supposedly lightly manned island. With a pull of the trigger, the air soon filled with projectiles and a bitter firefight erupted.





Some headway is made onto the beach under heavy fire, hijacking the goods being delivered to the traitors' cause. On the western end, the Astorum bring the pain as Magna's lead units bite and hold onto their targets. In the middle, Xestobiax' line holds the traitors' advances. In the east, Omina's daemonic Warhounds spit otherworldly fire and slag Solaria's leading Reaver while pouncing to take one of the airfields under their control.




At the gates, Damicum's Regia maniple advances under their shared shields, with the Warlords protecting their Warhound batteries hiding nearby behind their wide frames. While such a concentration of voids is impressive, it is not so impressive as to withstand a sustained broadside of Favilla's Extermigus and in short order their shields are violently popped one after the other. Damicum leaders order a full spectrum screen to be fired before them, giving them a second to breathe as the Ashen Gods are left scrambling for visibility. With two claw-equipped Warlords and one Warmaster eyeing each other at danger close distances, there is a careful and calm dance of death taking place in the middle of the exploding warzone.



Next to this, on the Tiger Eyes' flank the loyalists are taking a bit of a beating. Though the Ashen Gods' Hounds get some deadly support from the Extermigus at the walls, they are still out of their weight class fighting a delaying action against corrupted Warlords leading a Mandatum pack at their heels. First engine kills are sounded on both sides as Warhounds start popping under the deadly hail.




Legio Defensor takes initiative and courageously surges forth to hold the second defense line against the Krytos Extermigus. With the screen blocking visibility to the Damicum line, Favilla's heavy engines lend their aid to the Defensor's cause. Shields are shredded across the battle line and fires are starting to flare up over the engines, yet casualties are thus far fairly light.



Barely out of the gates, the Defensor Reaver has taken massive fire from the God Breakers. Finally, guns glowing hot from uninterrupted return fire, its legs buckle under the machine's weight and it slumps down, silenced but grabbing the doorframe to the last. None shall pass!



As the Nova Guard seems to be falling on hard times, Favilla positions to push forwards to relieve the pressure. With their Warmaster, Excidium Ultimum, at the second line, it isn't falling to the traitors' clutches anytime soon.




The struggle for the beachhead continues, but it is becoming apparent to the traitors this isle has been more strongly defended than they were led to believe. Never ones to give up, though, they press what momentum they have to hold onto their gains. Surely they were going to get reinforcements soon, right?



At the main gates, Krytos' Warlord Braccus Rex is under heavy bombardment. As it pushes more power to what remains of its soon dying void shields, its belligerent machine spirits lurches forwards with unexpected speed, bringing the beast close enough to pummel the Defensor Hounds with its fist. Turbolasers raking its armour, the Warlord grabs a hold of its assailant and rips the Hound's head clean off as sparks and burning fluids splash on the glassed sands.




At the defenders' left flank, there is aggressive manoeuvre warfare going on with Reavers and Warhounds jockeying for position. Pushing through the Krytos fire with melee engines is costly, but ultimately manageable. The flanking Hounds, however, are a deadly threat.



Legio Omina's Warlord, Lux Aeternis, had proven to be a particular headache for the Solaria defending the now lost airfield on the island's east end. Corrupted beyond measure, it was nearly undying even under constant barrages, yet it would not be enough. The Hounds around it would be torn down and, thus left alone, it too would succumb in time under the harrying trio of Solaria's bloodthirsty dogs.



Similarly, on other fronts it would prove to be too much for the attackers. Toppling on top of their objectives, broken but unbowed, many of the Magna's engines would meet their doom before accepting the reality of their failure. Many names would be added to the list of the lost - Baleful Edict, Ironbound Empress, Scourge of the Faithless... all lost in the cause of the Lupercal, now lying as scrap on the beaches or driven to the sea by the vengeful loyalists.




While the situation at the island was noted on the fortress as some air strikes and bombs also started landing on top of the defenders, there was no time to lose focus. Damicum's charges against Excidium Ultimum left much to be desired, ending either short or as mere scratches. The middle of the board soon descended into total mayhem: the Iconoclast sawed one Warlord in half, engines toppled on top of each other, nuclear reactors began blowing up sky high in succession as the Reaver Damnatio Memoriae began backing away from it all guns blazing. Other maniples of Favilla and Fureans poured their regards into the mix as well, plasma and volcano shots blooming their midst. Soon, the Damicum Regia would be no more and their straggling reinforcement Warhounds entering the battle would not fare much better.

(That's all the pictures I ended up taking, having to then keep up the game's pace.)

Over the second half of the battle, casualties kept racking up but the dogged defenders held their ground. With occasional reserve Warhounds making their way to the fight, the Nova Guard managed to keep their gate unconquered (though the walls were reduced to rubble and the important buildings behind them once more razed by the God Breakers) while the Iconoclast Excidium Ultimum, full of secondary systems and redundant bits as ablative armour, kept frustrating the attackers by refusing to die. The hulking engine hadn't had shields for the last three or so rounds, but kept blasting away at anyone foolish enough to come close until the very end of the fight when it was at last brought down by the Fureans Warlord who cut its legs with a macro-gatling salvo. With such setbacks and the failed capture of the support island laid against them, the traitors were ultimately repulsed and thrown from the walls. 75 % of the important infrastructure lay in ruins, walls had huge torn down sections in need of urgent repairs and the whole sub-city near the entrance was irradiated enough to make it unlivable for the next century, but hey, that's what victory smells like here.

Loyalist victory!

On the whole, the event ran pretty smoothly at roughly an hour per round pace with the two tables mostly in sync (the smaller island being a bit ahead, unsurprisingly). Scoring was given for destroyed engines and held ground, ending up as a 760-550 victory for the defenders. From a scenario writer's perspective, this is fine as the three defence lines were all worth 50 points every turn and basically one or two stronger turns for the attackers could have flipped the game considering in this particular instance the attackers had a bit of a harder time than they ought to because of the situation at the island.

While the battle at the gates felt pretty equally matched, I regret not having the time to look at the forces arrayed on the island table more carefully before things swept onwards. Such is life sometimes, when you're busy setting up the stuff, preparing to play yourself and answering everyone's questions. While careful balancing isn't exactly the main concern for big multiplayer games that are swingy to begin with, it turns out that the attackers on the island were about 1500 points short and as any military can tell you, attacking against superior numbers usually isn't the best of times. This meant that while the island situation was meant to begin with a loyalist edge and turn into a traitor asset as they take ground and get more reinforcements than the defenders, in this particular game it didn't go that way. The traitors got in, but were outgunned and subsequently rolled very badly for their reinforcements, turning the situation into a bit of a massacre. From what the players told me, it was still a fun massacre, but something that was still mechanically somewhat doomed from the early game onwards. Amusingly enough, the people at the table realised this like two turns in instead of checking after the initial player allotment, but I do still take some of the blame for that for it would have been easy to throw a couple of dozen extra knights I had with me at the traitors' disposal as well if I'd realised what was going on. But eh, at the end of the day it's a mega-battle full of moving parts anyway.

Personally, boy the Warmaster is a beast! Excidium Ultimum got a nice outing for its first game, crumped the Damicum Warlords, survived two armies worth of violence until the very last round and looked wicked striding on the field. Sure it's too costly and slow and stupid to use very often, but I like it in these over the top contexts. Next year, though, I need to make a fourth Warlord so I can finally run a full Extermigus without any Reaver-swap shenanigans...

Now THAT is a clash of titans!

SamusDrake wrote:
Now THAT is a clash of titans!

Indeed

It's really nice how well AT lends itself to bigger matches too with minimal tweaking, allowing for senseless numbers of machinery to hit the field while still keeping the game interesting.

Hell of a battle. Lovely photos as well

Wow! The terrain and minis are of an incredible quality. And you really match it with the great pictures and photoshopped backgrounds. These photos belong in the AT rulebook to inspire hobbyist.

I wouldn't know where to start, but AT deserves its own fanzine like the most excellent Warp Rift.

Awesome work

Spectacular!

Helluva battle! And so many great minis. Got me once again checking out AT

What a Titanic duel!

Fantastic shots, and thanks for sharing

Thanks y'all, glad to share the goodness

And yeah Boss, you totally should. AT is great both from the gameplay perspective as well as for the honking models crying out for lavish hobby attention. Best of both worlds in the GW arsenal

Last hours of 2022 draw near and while my hope for this year to be better than the last bastard didn't exactly pan out as intended all over the world, at least 2023 has plenty of room to improve on it

Hobbywise, this year had plenty of gaming and other events to attend again which took its toll on actually completing any projects but hey ho. I paint my stuff for playing, mostly, so I guess that's a positive problem alongside real life things like finally getting accepted on a PhD program So what've we got?

Hobby log 2022:

Built but unpainted:

- 12 redneck tech-cannibals (KT)
- 7 Talons of the Emperor (KT)
- 16 XIV tacticals (30k/40k)

Finished stuff:

- 8 quantum evangelists of the Dancing Circuit (KT)
- 3 Mechanicum Triarii (Epic)
- Scorpius (30k/40k)
- 14 bully-guards of a no-name small fry (KT)
- 2 tables worth of Kill Team terrain
- 5 XIV tacticals (30k/40k)
- XIV Moritat (30k)
- 2 Warhound titans (AT)
- Warmaster titan (AT)



So a bit under 40 models and two small tables' worth of terrain, granted some of those things were larger projects like the Warmaster but still. However, multiple cons, megabattles, demo games, friendly campaigns, kickstarting other people into project mode in AT and KT and so on were all great fun. May the fun continue soon, I have plenty of ideas bubbling in the cauldron when I get the responsible adult stuff in order.

Here's to 2023!

For a change of pace, using my DG as traitor forces for the forum narrative over at the Specialist Games subforum.

Epic: Armageddon, Siegeline scenario, a bit over 4000 points, Imperial Guard (Death Korps of Krieg) vs. Legiones Astartes (Death Guard).

Click them pictures bigger for details

****

Hive Ludeon, last surviving Imperial stronghold on Kennet Majoris. Last refuge of civilian life not carelessly bombed into oblivion by the reckless battlefleet above this wrecked, ruined land. Last hideout of cowards.

Gazing on its smoking spires made lord Styrix laugh, or at least gurgle in a manner interpretable as amusement. His men had encircled and besieged the massive mountain of buildings for months now, watching it die a slow death as their necrotic gifts worked their way into the life-sus systems of the city. But now, as their own fleet burned and fell into the planet's atmosphere as smoke-trailing showers of flame like beautiful, unnatural rain, they would need to capture it by force and dig deep under its void shields to fight on. They had hastily erected new earthworks and tainted the ground further back with deadly chemicals, expecting the Imperial dogs' imminent attempts at lifting the siege at the moment they'd gain orbital superiority. And lo, he did not have to wait long before the tell-tale palls of dust rose from the blasted horizon, signalling the arrival of the massed transports of the Imperial Guard closing on them.

The fools were attempting to force a hole in their siege ring. "Let them try", Styrix mused and voxed an order to all available response elements in the neighbouring sections of the line. His infantry would buy them enough time. Stepping out of his command bunker, he observed as the dour marines of his warband settled in their positions heedless of the slaves digging them further. No shouted orders or fussing was needed, every man of the XIV already set on their tasks. "The Unbroken Blades endure. Come, lapdogs of the Corpse-God, break yourselves against the Grandfather's bountiful splendour."

****

The field is set. A road once led from the wilder lands into the city's outskirts, now blown up and fortified by the Death Guard instead.




Lord Styrix's command post is swarming with activity as men and trench guns take positions.




By the mined road, more men and maddened dreadnoughts shuffle to take on the forthcoming assault.





Led by the rolling column of Gorgons and the stomping Reaver titan, the Death Korps advance towards the contact line.



Gorgons, heedless of the puny trees in their way, smash through the forest to avoid missile fire from the defenders.



Heavy Macharius-tanks take the hillside and let rip against the trench walls, but come under counterfire from the mortars and retreat back on the road.



The titan barrels forth, lasers and rockets smashing into the first dreadnought talon. Deadly turbolasers punch through their ceramite like wet tissue.




On the flank, the deathriders and grenadiers struggle to march and instead diddle under indecisive leadership as the Russes speed through the burning wreckage of the first Macharius.



While the Krieg artillery was settling their Bombards in position just outside counterbattery range, the Death Guard spotted a fatal opening: while the airspace was certainly contested by plentiful fighter cover, there wasn't much of air deterrence near the ground except for one flak battery. As the callsigns of two screaming Thunderhawks appeared on Styrix' command display, a quick command to the mortars saw the Krieg flak suppressed to hell and back before the first Hawk plunged to the ground hotly tailed by two Lightnings. Despite small fires and scratches here and there, the Thunderhawk made it to its target intact and spewed forth terminators who made short work of the Bombards (just! The terminators rolled the absolute worst and barely won the fight through inspiring leadership and numbers ).



As the Krieg line advanced, the Reaver swatting aside the other dreadnought group as well, their rear got increasingly strung out and more openings appeared another Hawk to slam down through the patrolling Lightnings.



At the trenches, the reserves started arriving as zipping Sicarians sped up the road and brrrted a storm of bolts against the grenadiers who had snuck against the buildings before Styrix's fresh men charged in and mopped them up.



As the grenadiers were slaughtered, behind them the Russes opened on the plague lord's retinue and the deathriders charged. Though their explosive lances tore marines apart in the blood-soaked craters, on their own their numbers could not press through the pale and deathly line of power armoured monsters. Broken, the bloodied remains of the deathrides fell back.



At the center line, the ground shook and bunkers flowed as liquid lava when an orbital bombardment struck down from the crying skies. The targeting was not exactly spot on, only vaporising the last of the dreadnoughts completely and causing significant casualties in the surrounding infantry and mortar formations but it did signal the charge for the nearby guardsmen. One of their Gorgons had just moments before been immobilised by a lucky mortar round in the engine compartment, but still the Kriegsmen poured out of their rides and surged into the trench. After a desperate exchange of shots and blows, the surviving scraps of the Death Guard infantry retreated towards the second prepared line in disarray while the heavily depleted guardsmen couldn't enjoy their prize for a long, being themselves driven back in confusion by a furious direct-fire barrage from what remained of the battered mortars nearby.



As the Hawks and Lightnings duelled above and more Death Guard tanks started pouring in by the road, it began to dawn on the Imperial commander that they could not attain a sustainable foothold in time with this force. Seeing the situation for what it was, the assault was called off and withdrew with what assets they could to try again another day. However, with most of the orbital transports destroyed, who knew what they could even get to reconstitute...

*****

Death Guard victory!

Playing the long table was a pretty brutal experiment with the Siegeline scenario that requires the attacker to constantly attain more of their objectives lest they lose the momentum. The road and mostly mechanised forces could help, but the Imperial commander realised a moment too late how aggressively they should have been pushing from the start. Didn't help that one of their flanks basically went "plbbbt" on the first round instead of marching forwards

Some hobbying as well, preparing proper heavy weapon support squads for the legion and turning some hand-me-down DZC vehicles into Mechanicum Ordinatii Minorii.

Continuing the narrative from this thread: https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/0/808578.page.

Death Guard forces stranded on Kennet Majoris have beaten back the initial assault of the Imperial ground attack, but must push deep into the hive city in order to escape the possibility of orbital annihilation should the Imperial forces get desperate. In the dark of the night, the XIV form an armoured column and begin their push into the suburbs. Unbeknownst to them, another column is heading towards their general direction as well...

Epic: Armageddon, 4000 points per side, Ill Met by Moonlight -scenario. Airpower and long range shooting is very limited in the early turns before daybreak, after which the fight turns into an attritional land grab.
Click the pics bigger for details

*******

Lord Styrix rested, the gentle rocking of his command Spartan soothing his slumber. Something gurgled among his men as metal screeched and ground into a halt, lurching them forwards in their harnesses. Snapping back into consciousness, his twisted vision came to a flashing warning hailing from the point tank: contact with vanguard elements of the defenders, undoubtedly. Cracking their unnaturally bloated knuckles, men of the XIV started slamming bolter magazines in place and gathering their grenades as they stood up near the assault ramps. Styrix elbowed his way to the command hatch and took a whiff of the cool night air while marking a rapid deployment spread for his subordinates should resistance prove to be more than a couple of residents with explosives. As the comms flared with contact markers in the column's front, that didn't take too long to ascertain.

"Disperse and deploy the tubes. Pound the field behind so hard nothing comes out of it for years. Infantry advances. Glory to the Grandfather, brothers."
His orders given, Styrix had made his intent clear for all. His focus was now on taking the crossroads and tallying the dead for the rows in Nurgle's Garden. The hatch on the Spartan slammed shut as the column revved up and tore the road under it.

*******



The sleepy outskirts of Luedon, still mostly untouched by the ravages of war.



A singular Fellblade leads the arriving Death Guard Column.



On the other side of the crossroads, hive defenders' patrol sentinels hide behind the woods clearing the area for incoming forces.




Similarly taken aback by the enemy contact, an Imperial column starts spreading as they arrive on the site. Special forces in their Valkyries escort the first Warhound titan on the flank while the battallion HQ drives straight into the urban zone in the middle to make sure everything is as it should be.



In the darkness, Death Guard Basilisk batteries trundle in position while their tanks and APCs sneak forwards in preparation for deadly ambushes.




Battle is joined by the speeding Sicarians, aided by the mighty Fellblade, which turn the midfield into a slaughterhouse. The Imperial commander is killed in the opening salvo and his men driven back.



As the Sicarians chase the fleeing guardsmen, they are confronted and eventually destroyed in turn by a sturdy company of Leman Russes while the lonely Shadowsword tries to duel with the Fellblade in vain, getting damaged in return and spending the fight hull down putting out fires and leaks. Behind them the rather congested deployment area of the planetary forces is chewed up and thrown skyhigh by the Basilisks as they let rip. Chimeras, Sentinels and dying men are thrown about like children's toys.



While the Russes deal with the marine armour, the mauled HQ company finds its heart again and takes the fight to the Fellblade, which has moments before been all but cracked open by a Warhound titan's plasma barrage. The warmachine is blown up, but so is the assault quickly driven back by the withering fire from lord Styrix' formation as they advance in countermanoeuvre.



On the left flank, brave Sentinel pilots rush in to tie down the marines but in the foggy twilight find themselves completely overmatched and killed without much ado, yet in their wake marches the second Warhound whose guns take their toll on the traitors' ranks.



Heedless of the Hydras and Thundebolts closing the sky, Thunderhawks once more streak in with their deadly Terminator cargoes. Both Warhounds are torn down, halted and ground down by death from above as their crew are pasted by murderous veterans of the long war in their cramped cockpits.



Stunned by the instantaneous demise of the God-Engines, the leaderless Guard line charges with bloody vengeance and guns down one of the Terminator detachments with their ride. Taking advantage of their counterpunch once more concentrating their forces on the open, burning fields, lord Styrix laughs wryly as his Basilisks keep reaping a murderous harvest in the heaving mass of broken men and twisted steel.



While their AA works overtime to keep the Thunderbolts away from the artillerists, the Death Guard command surges forth to take the field. Before reaching the Russes, they are stopped by what remains of the shaken and shelled storm troopers and their Valkyries. Valiant as their effort is, the airborne pay with their lives as the Spartans roll over them in short order.



While the fight for the main urban area in the center is more even, that too falls to the marines as their heavy support and Demolishers mercilessly pound the guardsmen back onto the artillery-torn roads.

By the time that a blood-red dawn has broken, the crossroads are littered with burning wreckage and dead men. Realising their inability to force the fight under constant artillery fire and lack of command, the remaining guard forces flee the field in what order they can maintain while the taunting form of lord Styrix rises against the bright sky in triumph.

"Fly, you fools! Know there will be no escape for you! Death to the lapdogs of the false Emperor!" he bellows as the Death Guard consolidate their gains.

********

Death Guard victory!

The scenario setup was really fun, requiring formations to set up from the road march with movement penalties depending on their place in the queue as well as all shooting over 15 cm being a pain in the arse for the first two rounds. This was a bit of a problem for the Guard player, as they had an absolute bucketload of units to deploy but opted to go for a bit conservative strategy which resulted in devastating artillery barrages later on by the Basilisks. In men of the match, the Fellblade overdid itself and drove the IG HQ from the front in the very beginning, killing their foolishly brash supreme commander as he was inspecting the situation at the front. This is why you let your NCO's do the first line recon

I swear I'll occasionally make Death Guard models that aren't terminators (he says while also buying more Deathshrouds and Grave Warden bits, but they were so cheap...)!

This time, it's time to crack open some of those newfangled mk VI boxes and see if we could make some proper DG Destroyers out of them.
Some caveats though:
- no beakies, they don't fit my image of the legion.
- dual bolt pistols? Bah, we've got to pump those up into war crime territory as we're already spewing rad grenades and phosphex everywhere. Grenade launcher pistols it is.
- most jump packs are just not meaty enough. This image is quintessential to my image of DG assault troops:

- the mk VI legs are better proportioned than their predecessors but the marines are still oddly abdomen-less. They still need scaling, but only two cuts instead of three like the previous marks

With those lines set, here are the first five test models sans rest of the chest harness cabling, that comes after the first greenstuff has cured.

Looks great! I've been eying those jump packs for a while now, seems like they would fit really well with MKIII armour.

The extra height really does wonders for the, should look great all painted up!

Thanks Commander Cain, they probably would. Who knows, I might make some of those down the line as well. This stuff tends to meander all over the place

Talking about being all over the place, one rather angry fellow jumped the queue...



I put some quick paint on another failed librarius aspirant from way back, the poor sods deserve to get their glorious amok run one of these days before the agony of their failure takes them into the darkness.

Love it! Excellent conversion sir

 tauist wrote:
Love it! Excellent conversion sir

Cheers mate, the poor possessed souls have been a fun bunch to work on. Lets me paint some tortured flesh and skin without breaking my "all helmets" rule for the force

Putting some base colours on the remaining six possessed, before progress inevitably stalls in the detailing phase :p

Great work on the possessed, really evocative of the theme!

 gobert wrote:
Great work on the possessed, really evocative of the theme!

Cheers gobert! Have some more, then

With the remaining six aspirants finished, the possessed posse is now up to ten men strong and ready for their first (err, last...?) suicide mission. Click the pictures to see details.

Kicked some iron IV butt today. The Falchion almost got scrapped in a massive return volley from the Siege Tyrants, but managed to hold on until the end as the rest of the line crashed against them and drowned that blasted Team Rocket in flames and gas grenades.

Great painting as always!

Sweet work finishing up the possessed! Just spotted the guy where you turned his lower legs around… freaky!

The battle pics look great too, did the possessed die a deserving death or just suffer the fresh coat of paint being wiped off the table before seeing any real action? Didn’t spot them in the pics, so either they didn’t last long or didn’t start the game

Cheers Boringstuff and gobert!

Actually, the possessed weren't taking part in that battle at all

But today they did take to the field! 2500 p DG vs Mechanicum, tried out two squads of five with bound daemon brute rules as a mobile melee element running in front of the terminator wall. They did pretty well, reaving through multiple squads of midsized robots and hanging on there causing havoc until the very end of the game where they finally died to darkfire lances. By this time I had thoroughly won on objectives already.

Here's some pictures of the midfield brawl as Scoria and two Domitars attempt to take on the whole world at once (and fail, less than surprisingly)

Eyy, painting!

Finished some 50 heavy support mates for the Epic army. Finally, some firepower
















...take a plasma gun, they said. A safe and sound weapon, they said...

Impressive work on the little 'uns, love the plasma oopsies

Thanks Boss, had to use that print failure somehow

wow, you managed glow effects at 10mm? scale

 Illumini wrote:
wow, you managed glow effects at 10mm? scale

6 mm, with marine models being a couple mm taller, but yeah

Ponderings for the future, new crews for the madness of Kill Team M29.

Most of my technobarbarian ideas use teams that have lots of finicky rules, which is pretty awesome in general but also a bit of an obstacle considering how much I do demo games in conventions and events. So something simple and straightforward would also be nice before throwing the clockwork hell of Warp Covens on new players. Thus, while reading more Unification era materials, my inspiration sparked with the Revenant Legion. The IX legion would eventually wound up as the lovely space vampire artists they are, fine-dining with the best of them and chilling in their golden hot tubs, but in their inception the Immortal Ninth were little more than angel-faced cannibal psychopaths stalking the ra-wastes of Old Earth with no plans beyond brutalising everything that dared to resist. With Intercessor team's rules it's easy to represent these 'roided out loonies out on the cull. Even better, with all the varied bands of desperate hopefuls hanging around their parties, there would be no shortage of ragged aspirants dreaming of becoming angels themselves as well. These flagellant charnel cultists would then be a perfect counts-as for a Novitiae team. Miracles and mutilation, babyyy. Perhaps even further, into campaigns like the ravaging of Kiy-Buran or the moons of Neptune, with a scout team of sorts representing their uncanny ability to always reinforce on the move even when cut off from supplies and proper reserves...

Watch this space, though now I need to source some bare Pre-Raphaelite heads...

Conan, what is best in life?

Playing wargames with painted miniatures on a fully furnished table!

Those pics are brilliant mate, thank you for sharing.

Incredible paintwork as always on the tiny fellas. New KT sounds great too. Technobarbarian is one of my favourite words...

 tzurk wrote:
Conan, what is best in life?

Playing wargames with painted miniatures on a fully furnished table!

Those pics are brilliant mate, thank you for sharing.

Incredible paintwork as always on the tiny fellas. New KT sounds great too. Technobarbarian is one of my favourite words...

To paint your armies, see them deployed before you and hear the lamentations of your opponents with weird dice-related superstitions

Cheers tzurk. Technobarbarism is life, technobarbarism is love.

Played some nice E:A with NetEA lists today, a brutal showing of combined arms as my artillery and air heavy Crusade marines tore through the Orkoid menace. As the green tide rushed on, artillery prepared the targets with casualties and confusion, lighter infantry took supporting positions and a crushing air assault of terminators struck home like a rain of meteors. Prep, support, smash, repeat. Hopping on board the Hawks and crashing down again later, this methodical eradication of the greenskins concluded in a triumphant victory for the XIV.

Testing things for the Revenants, changing the plate on a handful of Primaris bodies I had lying about to older marks. Meaningful work, quaranteed

Some progress on the Revenant Legion, though much work remains.

The Revenants are chugging along nicely, currently trying to learn how to sculpt hair.

Meanwhile, some Epic once more.

4k NetEA Krieg vs. Marines, the banks of Forte-Kaysino stood firm in the Guard's hands. One of those tragicomic games where my marines just couldn't roll right to save their lives with Thunderhawks dropping down from the sky in flaming ruin with all hands lost, terminators melting under lasguns and the enemy Reaver on its last DC just not dying

That epic army is lovely, great seeing it on the table too. Making me seriously envious actually....

Nice start on the Revenant marines, really interested to see where they end up. Always a lot of fun seeing people doing unification-era stuff, reminds me of old pre-heresy blogs from the days before forgeworld's Heresy game was made.

shmvo wrote:
That epic army is lovely, great seeing it on the table too. Making me seriously envious actually....

Nice start on the Revenant marines, really interested to see where they end up. Always a lot of fun seeing people doing unification-era stuff, reminds me of old pre-heresy blogs from the days before forgeworld's Heresy game was made.

Thanks shmvo. No need to envy when you could just join us, making an army at this scale isn't a big project...

On the Revenant side, ask and you shall receive! With bead rivets and curly hair, the crew is pretty much ready for painting.

With a possible teaser of a new edition of Epic out in the aether, what better time to be painting some small killer robots and tech-priests
20 mm bases for reference.

These are great! I love how strangely cute the little battle automata are.

Thanks FoxHybrid. Yeah, it's a well-known phenomenon that human brains see anything "too small" as cute, even if they are tanks or other machines of death and destruction

Yep, the killer robots do look kinda cute. Great level of detail on such tiny minis, especially the tiny tech priests. The revenants are developing very nicely too, what are your plans for colour scheme?

 gobert wrote:
Yep, the killer robots do look kinda cute. Great level of detail on such tiny minis, especially the tiny tech priests. The revenants are developing very nicely too, what are your plans for colour scheme?

Cheers, it's always a good way to spend inordinate amounts of time fretting over

There's not too much material to go on with the Revenants, really. This is the only canonical picture I've come across:



Very utilitarian storm gray, spattered with gore and what's described as "charnel imagery". Where later Blood Angels come to be known for their sublime artistry and decor, the Revenant Legion was pretty much the opposite. Stuff comes out of the factory, gets slapped with a few tactical rattle-can markings and the rest is basically madman's scribbles between operations when individual lunatics might decide to liven up their gear a bit.

I've primed them brown and zenithaled some light grey on top, gonna test out a rougher transition between the lit up parts and deep shadows this time. The faces and blonde curls they're sporting must jump out amidst the lighter but blood-strewn plates, radiating warmth like the sun breaking stormy clouds. We'll see if that succeeds.

On our Kill Team front, we had a nice evening with a casual three-way match between my wasteland guard, sadist elves and alien chickens.






After a catastrophic start for the guard against the elven meatgrinder, I managed to halt the chickens on one flank and convince them to take up arms against the elven onslaught in time to stabilise the situation and begin a counteroffensive, which saw the thin line of men ultimately triumph and throw back the xenos pirates. Tea and irradiated medals for the humble rifleman with 1 wound left standing on an objective surrounded by broken Kroot bodies

Beautiful in-game shots. Go the lone guardsman!

How briliant to have a game with mates with well painted minis on well painted terrain. Life is good, Sherrypie. Thanks for sharing!

PS - colour scheme on those Kroot is gorgeous, well done to your friend.

Cheers tzurk, visual flair is indeed the life in this hobby. Speaking of which, more battles from the club

The Iron Hands attempt a surprise strike on the Death Guard, who are priming a nuclear silo to blow up the whole continent. Though the Tenth bravely trudge through the roiling hellscape of phosphex and chemical clouds, their push is ultimately thrown back by an unyielding wall of terminators. The XIV hold their post doggedly, raise their middle-fingers to the sky and disappear in the mushroom cloud alongside the Iron Hands' hopes of a larger campaign effort.

Wow! Those club shots are amazing! Is the background picture post processing or do you have a giant backdrop sheet?

The Revenants sound awesome, proper grimdark . Can’t wait to see their blood splattered and graffitied primer!

 gobert wrote:
Wow! Those club shots are amazing! Is the background picture post processing or do you have a giant backdrop sheet?

The Revenants sound awesome, proper grimdark . Can’t wait to see their blood splattered and graffitied primer!

Thanks gobert. Background's added in post, when I remove all the butts and backbags you'd usually have cluttering gaming pictures. Also removed a bunch of layabout dice and stuff. It's a bit of extra work, but gives the end result just that nice little extra touch of atmosphere.

The Revenants are starting to get a few licks of paint on them:



The scheme as it stands is a bit on the Space Wolf side, but we'll see how that develops as details get added.

Nice, adds some cool flavour to the pics. The revenants are looking nice and grimy!

-- || --

We do not build
We do not liberate
We are but ghosts
Memories of the Old Night

-- || --

Kill Team M29, Revenant Legion done! Let loose the angelic cannibals of the IX!



The commander requires your attention, don't lose your head!







Fire support requires occasional aiming.




Phosphex and assorted grenade-shaped treats for everyone!




Some proper dakka is needed even in the rad-wastes.




Sons of the Angel, knowingly or not, murderers one and all.





With bolt and blade, no mutant shall threaten the nascent Imperium ever again.

What an amazing squad, so many sweet details going on with each model, so many throwbacks to the high chaos (lower case) of RT times. The extreme contrast between the angelic heads and blood-soaked, filthy bodies is of course a delight. They're a bit over-weathered for my personal tastes but I can appreciate the effect and down-in-the-muck ethos.

Also props on one of the most effective dynamic decapitations I've seen

 Boss Salvage wrote:
What an amazing squad, so many sweet details going on with each model, so many throwbacks to the high chaos (lower case) of RT times. The extreme contrast between the angelic heads and blood-soaked, filthy bodies is of course a delight. They're a bit over-weathered for my personal tastes but I can appreciate the effect and down-in-the-muck ethos.

Also props on one of the most effective dynamic decapitations I've seen

Ta, the best part of these small projects is to play up those unique and individualistic details on each model

The weathering is a bit overt, yeah, but in its context it's still somewhat subdued compared to the absolutely bonkers gore-showers that many of their engagements seem to be described as in the background materials. Like, strategically the Revenant Legion was just sent somewhere for X years in hopes that they keep the local muties and raiders at bay while tactically they often went with the tunnel-rat style of diving into a hole, butchering everything and appearing days later soaked head to toe in blood from the other end of the tunnels. These fellas would probably sport a mean corpse-paint if their pretty features weren't a thing already

They turned out amazing! The excessive blood soakings are really well done, the chainsaws certainly seem to have been put to good use

 gobert wrote:
They turned out amazing! The excessive blood soakings are really well done, the chainsaws certainly seem to have been put to good use

Cheers gobert, they sure have been whirring happily on the wastes.



We started testing out the KT SpecOps campaign rules, combined with the area control shenanigans from Ashes of Faith. One week and a bunch of games later, the desert-trapped shrine city of Everflame has seen its fair share of bloodshed as a local freedom fighter movement (Genecults) rises to defend the forgotten catacombs from roving technonomads (AdMech Hunter Clade) and cannibal angels stalk the streets in murderous raids (Intercessors).




A frantic threeway clash to cap it off.

While over all the locals managed to retain control of most territory along with hearts and minds, the Revenants took home every match proper and drunk enough kerosine in the final match to outscore their opponents combined with no permanent losses incurred during the battles. The first upgrade for my guys was naturally a med bay asset, for the IX rides immortal Good thing too, I'm always left with just 1-2 guys standing in a pile of broken enemies at the end of each game. Poor technonomads had a rougher time at it, constantly recycling damaged warriors into new warframes. Good fun, would chainsaw again.

Awesome mood shots! The desert sands in the background of the last shot is super cool! Glad you all had fun!

Thanks gobert, fun's the name of the game 'ere

On the gaming front, my pal's recently minted Blood Angels stumbled into the wrong neighbourhood in today's ZoMo and got whacked hard by the inexorable XIV.





On the slow-going painting desk, a couple of brutish Kill Team M29 Thunder Legionaries have began their long march towards an actual paintjob.

Wow, thunder legionnaires looking super cool, loving the mix of sophisticated weapons and armour and bare feet exposed skin, really captures the vibe of ancient warrior become scavenging nomad.
Subscribed

Awesome take on T. Warriors, brutal af

Rad game shots as ever too.

Cheers Barry and Boss, hoping to get them finished sometime during the next month with some new friends tagging along

Sweet thunder warriors, seem quite techno-barbarian to me. Great looking battle pics too

Great work on the Revenant Legion!
Also really liked the game pictures, thanks for sharing them!

 Sherrypie wrote:
Thanks gobert, fun's the name of the game 'ere

On the gaming front, my pal's recently minted Blood Angels stumbled into the wrong neighbourhood in today's ZoMo and got whacked hard by the inexorable XIV.

Spoiler:

Spoiler:

On the slow-going painting desk, a couple of brutish Kill Team M29 Thunder Legionaries have began their long march towards an actual paintjob.

These Thunder Legionaries are glorious!

gobert wrote:Sweet thunder warriors, seem quite techno-barbarian to me. Great looking battle pics too

Ezki wrote:Great work on the Revenant Legion!
Also really liked the game pictures, thanks for sharing them!

tauist wrote:
These Thunder Legionaries are glorious!

Cheers y'all, you savages

More gaming happened in Epic scale, as we're all waiting for the Legiones Imperialis to slowly dripfeed into our systems there's always good ol' Epic: Armageddon to smash. Or in this case, orks faces to bash with both hands as the capitol city of Miami V needed defending, twice in a row!

First battle saw the orks thoroughly scrunched against the hot'n'hateful steel of Mechanicum.






The second battle saw an almost unstoppable triple-mob charge pour through one flank of robots, but the day was still carried by remorseless robots marching to the ork home base through a burning channel ripped in the earth by a nova cannon shot from the backfield Ordinatus.









It was also finally a good excuse to take a family portrait of the Mechanicum painted thus far

Awesome mini-minis. Epic always looked like a cracking game, something about the towers they used in WD somehow grounded the scale really well. Seeing your pics reminds me so much of those

 gobert wrote:
Awesome mini-minis. Epic always looked like a cracking game, something about the towers they used in WD somehow grounded the scale really well. Seeing your pics reminds me so much of those

Thanks gobert, the retro WD aesthetic certainly has been burned into my brains as an easily influenced youngster. Reading is dangerous like that

...so how about some more? A 2v2 Epic: Armageddon match was had yesterday, as Death Guard legion and their Mech + Guard opponents drew a bloody stalemate. Some 12k points of mostly my stuff on the board, except for the Krieg and their Thunderbolts belonging to my pal.

Man, I'm sooo jealous looking at that table!! Lot of effor to reach that quality, good job!

Great table and very impressive game of epic!

Totally stunning table of minis!

Great terrain well laid out. It looks like a proper installation and a real objective to fight over.

muette wrote:Man, I'm sooo jealous looking at that table!! Lot of effor to reach that quality, good job!

The Red Hobbit wrote:Great table and very impressive game of epic!

gobert wrote:Totally stunning table of minis!

Warboss_Waaazag wrote:Great terrain well laid out. It looks like a proper installation and a real objective to fight over.

Thank you all, good table setups are love and life for my hobbying

My hobby time has recently been taken up by ambitious gamesmastering duties and research, half-painted models languishing forgotten on the painting table, but at least there's been some tabletop time in there. More gaming pictures it is, then! This time it's been a solid weekend filled with a couple of big Titanicus clashes full of nuclear fire and fender benders with our loyalist line taking the cake against a traitorous mutant horde.










Exidium Ultimum got to take a walk in the second game, crushing three Warlords after the scenario forced us into a very aggressive spearhead deployment

Had a bit of fun with a two-table megabattle of 30k, with traitors summoning the daemon lord Gra-Bul'Ah (Hung-Ov'Ah for you puntastic anglophones out there) who eventually got banished back into the Empyrean through sheer embarrassment. Fittingly, the player in control of the mighty daemon marshall after it arrived had been similarly hammered a few hours beforehand. Initially my plan was to throw my Death Guard dreadnought-only vanguard into the Blood Angels to die off in the opening moves of the game so I could then concentrate on taking pictures, but as it turned out, my commanding ancient brother was the only remaining traitor model on the ritual table at the end of it all

On the second table, Mechanicum forces struggled over the control of a possessed Warhound titan while astartes forces savaged the Chaos obelisks around the place.



On the ritual table, my dreads took the fight to the Blood Angels while skies rained fire. Ultimately, two chaplains of the Angels united to crack some heads and caused Gra-Bul'Ah to pop back into non-existence not by dying, but rather through combat resolution loss as too many World Eaters died in the same combat for the might daemon to keep up with

On the second picture on the Mechanicum table, do some of those Kataphrons not have the torso? If so, I'd love to know how that was accomplished because those look gorgeous. Also, your Death Guard look amazing as always, especially the dreads and the weathering on them. It makes me want to buy another dread, even though I haven't finished building and painting my first

 FoxHybrid wrote:
On the second picture on the Mechanicum table, do some of those Kataphrons not have the torso? If so, I'd love to know how that was accomplished because those look gorgeous. Also, your Death Guard look amazing as always, especially the dreads and the weathering on them. It makes me want to buy another dread, even though I haven't finished building and painting my first

Ha, cheers. There's always space for more dreads in the grim darkness of the far future

Yeah, it looks like those servitors are indeed mainly gunmounts without the torso. A tank hatch and a shoulder-mounted weapon, probably of Castellax or Myrmidon provenance, I'd wager?

Beautiful terrain and painted armies there Sherrypie.

Exalted.

Cheers,

CB

Gorgeous gorgeous pictures, sir.

Amazing Battle pics sherrypie! Beautiful minis on beautiful boards

Cheers Captain, Ragsta and gobert. Good company putting the effort in always elevates any mini-war and its reporting

Been a bit busy with research, hopefully I'll still find some time to paint this year. A bunch of tiny AdMech are staring at me accusingly from the painting queue...

Tiny AdMech reinforcements inbound!

Anti-air! Expensive, short-ranged and useless!




More Thanatars! Big robos for days!




Ordinatus Minorii! Rescue conversions from DZC stuff thrown in the club's bin!

Those game shots are nothing short of amazing. Such wonderful toys.

Nice Ad Mech, love the big robots

youwashock wrote:Those game shots are nothing short of amazing. Such wonderful toys.

gobert wrote:Nice Ad Mech, love the big robots

Thanks youwashock and gobert

More gaming every once in a while!

My Ashen Gods kicked some God-Breaker butt yesterday, ~2600 points per side rushing to burn each other's backline objectives while wandering dust clouds blew up in the outskirts. The Iconoclast got checked by a Clawlord, lost all of its shields, was killed by another Warlord immediately afterwards and crippled one of my own Reavers on the way down, but the enemy had by this point already been aggressively outmaneuvered and cornered in their own deployment zone, soon to be torn apart by my demi-Ferroxes ripping into their flanks as they burned all of the objectives without losing any of our own.

2023 hobby tally: less than 50 bases



With all the rest of the year being pretty hectic with other things, I didn't get particularly many new things further but had plenty of fun gaming and photography with the older things already at hand. Also organised the biggest Kriegspielmageddon bohnanza yet, which is only snowballing bigger with our RPG offshoot.

Finished projects:

- 12 stands of XIV legion heavy support (Epic)
- 7 Possessed XIV librarius aspirants (30k)
- 5 Castellax (Epic)
- 5 Techpriests (Epic)
- 6 Revenant Legionaires (KT)
- 4 Tarantula AA batteries (Epic)
- 4 Thanatars (Epic)
- 3 Ordinatus Minorii (Epic)

Dabbled with but unfinished:

- 5 Destroyers (30k)
- 7 Talons of the Emperor (KT)

Non-modelling stuff:

- Learning to use and upgrading photography equipment further

Next year: learning to focus stack properly with my fancy new camera and painting a new Auxilia army for Legions Imperialis that can also double as a Guard army for Epic: Armageddon.

Love the AT pics, titans running amuck in the suburbs is always cool! The end of year collage is super cool

 gobert wrote:
Love the AT pics, titans running amuck in the suburbs is always cool! The end of year collage is super cool

Thank you gobert, you're in for a treat then

Happy new year, everybody. I've been super busy with no time for proper hobbying (except for buying new stuff, I think my pile of unassembled Legions Solar Aux is mysteriously growing every week...), but I did once again organise more Titanicus goodness at the club. This year started with a bang, as our annual-ish AT mega-battle expanded into a two-day narrative event. I wrote custom missions so that we could first play three rounds of 1v1 games on Saturday where the winning side could dictate environmental conditions for the following round as well as earn some neat bonii for Sunday's all-in brawl.

-- War for the Angel's Grave 3.-4.2.2024 --

An ancient repository of knowledge, a forbidden and sealed esoteric weapon best forgotten or a relic of the broken dream now irrepairably lost? No-one knew precisely what the arcology known as the Angel's Grave held within its confines, but when Warmaster Horus decreed it to be taken, neither did his lackeys question the wisdom of such orders. Under the capricious auspices of the dark gods, god-machines marched into their dropships and hurtled through the blazing voids of the war-stricken galaxy with murder in their hearts...

The traitors slam down on the unsuspecting planet in the dark of night and spread out. From the barely habited outskirts, legios Krytos, Omina and Mortis plunge deep into the planet's infrastructure as the surprised loyalists scramble to face the threat. Legios Solaria, Astorum and Magna jump to hold the line and manage to stem the initial tide despite Krytos wreaking havoc on their communication towers. As the loyalist line refuses to crumble, their reserves in space enter the system and carve a bloody swathe through the traitors' fleet. As burning ships, scrap and satellites fall down on the planet in a rain of fire, the loyalist legios sally forth in a counter-attack to drive the traitors back. This seems to work, securing the defenders a decisive advantage in planetside artillery assets, until for the sudden and totally unforeseen betrayal by the Screaming Skulls! Who'd have thought those guys weren't on our side, absolutely shameful. With this stab in the back, both sides are forced to accept that this conflict will go on for a while and stock up on supplies from the available storages and techno-magi. With reserves from legio Favilla stepping onto the field to plug the hole left by Magna's treachery, the loyalists once more secure the continuing support of the Mechanicum and converge on the final showdown.




Four traitor commanders square against three loyalists with some 30 titans and 20 knights stalking the field. Ultramarines and Death Guard models are there to represent area control over various important objectives on the table as well as the critical supply depots no side can wage war without.










Astorum's supreme loyalist command leaves the supply depot lightly guarded, focusing their knightly allies on the right flank.



Traitors, acutely aware of their tenuous grasp on the planet, guard theirs keenly with the newly arrived Tiger Eyes' deployment.




As the fight begins, deafening roar of war-horns fills the centre as Favilla pushes forwards. Fallen knights are vaporised before their volcano cannons, swatted aside like gnats as more worthy foes approach from Krytos' lines.





On all flanks, forces advance into the fire.




In the middle, Excidium Ultimum and Deus Victrix hear the siren song of the Thunderdome. Two god-machines enter, who will leave?





Fighting intensifies on the flanks, as Mortis reaches one of the habitats in force and knights swarm towards Omina's positions.



Sensing an opportunity, one of Omina's Warhounds sneaks to threaten the loyalist supplies as Krytos' devastating volleys savage the Astorum Warmaster guarding them.




Despite losing its fist to Deus Victrix' fire, Excidium Ultimum saws the upstart God-Breaker in half and casts its broken form down in ruin, almost decapitating Ibn Faruq below with its mass. Glory is fleeting, however, as unabated firepower from most of the Tiger Eyes' battleline causes the injured Warmaster to crash down from its throne all the same.




On the left flank, Solaria's brazen charge cuts deep into the lighter Mortis engines as a column of Ultramarines follows in their wake to wipe out the Death Guard attempting to seize the habitat. Yet with their supplies under threat, it is all nearly futile.




Fighting to salvage the situation, Delictor Profectuum ploughs through Krytos' fire and the wrecked corpses of their comrades towards the supply depot with all systems burning. Perhaps they could have made it, if not for the relentless shelling of Quake munitions raining on them, causing the ground under their buckling legs to undulate like tortured jelly with each booming shot. Valiantly, if desperately, later reserve Cerastoi rush to try and relieve the Ultramarines at any price.



The traitors are similarly pressed, now, with Mortis crumbling before Solaria's advance. Favilla's heavy guns blow out one of Fureans' Warlords nearby and seal the deal as the remaining traitorous knights are slaughtered to the last.



Triumphantly, Krytos' sole remaining Warlord Braccus Rex sidesteps the futile knight charge and guns down the immobilised Delictor Profectuum, trumpeting its ownership of the loyalists' supply depot.

With fires burning all over the broken and mangled countryside, it is eventually clear to the loyalist side that their tactical situation is untenable. While the traitors are trapped and caught stranded in the bigger picture, unable to hold the planet and will soon all be hunted down, on this day they have by the barest of margins bought enough time for their techno-magi to complete their dark purpose at the Angel's Grave itself. For the Warmaster, they cry in the all-consuming ritual flames!

-------

A very slight Traitor victory after six rounds, 225 to 168 points (with one good turn able to swing 50+ points)! Loyalists killed more and took ground more aggressively, but with their supply lines left basically undefended by the supreme command's strategic blunder, they were unable to capitalise on this advantage, scoring no control points for the whole game after the first round. Not that the traitors had much more luck on that front, with loyalists having more men and machines on most strategic zones after the first third of the game, but that early lead let them coast pretty far. That element certainly brought a good dynamic to the match, with everyone involved until the end and multiple possible game-changing maneuvers hanging at singular dice rolls. If Delictor Profectuum hadn't been slowed down by Quake shell and immobilised ½" too far from the supplies, for example, it could have gone very much the other way. Still loving all of that.

Thanks for reading and happy wargaming!

I love using the Epic scale miniatures to show objective control, it makes the board so narratively interesting!

Cheers Gwyn, that it does

Finally got some paints back on the table this year

Heel, cur.

An (imperial?) noble of Old Earth for my Unification Wars project. Trying to convert some regular humans from various things in the bitz box, in this case a hideously soft-detailed Reaper witch. A one-day job to test how to sculpt and paint candles.








Gamewise she might end up leading a counts-as Starstriders team down the line when her court retinue gets in line.

God that's gorgeous work!

 Gwyn chan 'r Gwyll wrote:
God that's gorgeous work!

Ha, cheers Gwyn

3000 points of Legions Imperialis.

My Death Guard gave the Iron Warriors a thorough trouncing, trampling them into the dust of the city crumbling around them. As is a time-honoured tradition in Epic, things are getting wild when the skies start raining Thunderhawks full of terminators

Amazing stuff Sherrypie! The BatRep stuff is super cool, and it looks like everyone had loads of fun too. The noble lady turned out fantastically well too, no way are those the first candles you’d built and painted!

 gobert wrote:
Amazing stuff Sherrypie! The BatRep stuff is super cool, and it looks like everyone had loads of fun too. The noble lady turned out fantastically well too, no way are those the first candles you’d built and painted!

Cheers gobert, yes they were

I've tried painting fire a handful of times before, with mixed success, but not candles in particular. Getting anywhere close to the translucency one would see in a real candle is bloody hard, so I've got to make more candles in the future to try and sort that out through exercise. I also nabbed some antique Roman bodies from a flea market last week, which could work as suitably distinctive cores for building her a retinue in the near future.

The first 60 or so tanks of Selen II's 4th Home Army are getting their gear in order to head towards the painting dock... radio aerials get attached after basecoats.



Yes, I will be converting pretty much every one of the upcoming hundreds of vehicles to be at least somewhat unique. Business as usual

I second gobert, great battle report!
Really liked the pictures. The atmosphere was just right!

 Ezki wrote:
I second gobert, great battle report!
Really liked the pictures. The atmosphere was just right!

Cheers, reports are half the fun of big fender-benders like that

Speedpainted a handful of Mechanicum yesterday for today's Epic games.

Some NetEA at the club, my AdMech mauled the greenskins twice over with some dubstep goodness while the Eldar and Tyranids had a go at the demo table.

Excellent stuff hereespcially that massive game.

4k of EpicAU's Heresy legion lists, Epic: Armageddon. The Death Guard gives the Iron Fourth a solid whooping, though Perturabo's disciples give a grand exit by driving down the XIV command elements with their final titan-assisted charge.



More pics:

1.5k of Legions. The Word Bearers attempt a sneaky beach landing on Death Guard's islands, but have to slink back into the red tides after getting a thoroughly bloodied nose on the now wreckage-filled and burning sands.



Click for pics in spoiler!

Stunning pics as ever sherrypie! That beach landing board looks amazing

 gobert wrote:
Stunning pics as ever sherrypie! That beach landing board looks amazing

Thanks gobert, always a pleasure

Also, tonks! Getting somewhere with the first 30+ ol' smokers of the Selenite 4th Home Army. Commissar tanks' flagpoles get some attachments post-painting.

5.5k of EpicAU, IW vs. Mech, 10'x4' table. The IV legion pushed aggressively forwards into the robotic boogaloo, perhaps too deep and too greedily even, as their frontline was raked by endless rain of plasma mortars and their Mortis Warhounds blown apart by the massed Ordinatii beams. After four rounds of white-bled attrition, both sides were in broken tatters but the Mechanicum had held firmer. They had won the skies and retained their biggest guns, leaving the Iron Warriors little choice but to eventually concede the field.



Click for more pics in the spoiler!



Also painted a happy little Minotaur battery for the game.

Those action shots are gorgeous mate. Great to see the effort paying off!

I knew these guys were small but seeing the detail you put into them next to those little costume glass gems really put the scale into perspective. Super impressive, thanks for sharing!

 tzurk wrote:
Those action shots are gorgeous mate. Great to see the effort paying off!

I knew these guys were small but seeing the detail you put into them next to those little costume glass gems really put the scale into perspective. Super impressive, thanks for sharing!

Pictured for your viewing plasure

And yeah, small stuff is small. You can hold a company of soldiers on your palm and peer into their eyes that aren't much larger than a needle tip. It's very fun to paint at the scale, even I might occasionally actually finish some models

I just multiplied my yearly total of painted minis

WIP, all painted to tabletop condition within three days. I wanted to have a LI / EA compatible force for demonstration games at Ropecon last weekend (ended up running some 20 hours of demos, great time). Very tight schedule, had to cut corners a lot. No flags, decals, proper damage, good NMM and so forth yet and the field guns are missing their whole crews. Still pretty happy with the general outlook.



Click spoilers for more!

What a marvelous army shot! "In mass lies perfection" indeed (in deed)- great work!

Three days?? Well done, S-pie Those blast markers are ace as well.

Thanks Meer_Cat and Boss, sometimes quantity truly is a quality of its own

Excellent work especially in such a short time

Dear lord that's a magnificent looking army regardless of time frame. Respecting the hustle hard over here, mate

Thanks Cap and tzurk, now I just need another deadline or something to actually finish them too

Meanwhile, gaming! Of slapstick kind, where everyone sucks!

Epic: Armageddon, 3k. The Machine Church met the Tzeentchian hordes of the Lost and the Damned in a battle of thoroughly fumbled command networks and misfortunes, as both sides bled and stumbled forwards hopelessly. Even kicking airman Jones into the empty fuel tank instead failed to get the birds flying. No breakthrough was achieved nor any formations properly destroyed, though the price in blood and oil rose high for everyone on the burning sands. Neither side achieved any real objectives nor was there any meaningful difference between the casualty tiebreakers, ending in a true, futile draw.



Click the spoiler for more pics!

Superb action shots as ever sherrypie. Amazing work getting the whole army finished in 3 days is mighty impressive.

 gobert wrote:
Superb action shots as ever sherrypie. Amazing work getting the whole army finished in 3 days is mighty impressive.

Thanks gobert, though it's still quite far from finished it's at least tabletop ready

On the finished side, the smaller artillery pieces got done.



The bases are a bit rough, as these were originally sprayed with wrong colours, but they're now close enough for fieldwork.

Evidently it is the month for artillery! Thanks for confirming for me that LI is my next project of choice to finish. Your Epic-scale things are inspiring.

 blockade23 wrote:
Evidently it is the month for artillery! Thanks for confirming for me that LI is my next project of choice to finish. Your Epic-scale things are inspiring.

Guns of August, a coincidence? One wonders

And thanks!

Gorgeous work as always mate. Really love the atmospheric shots with the boards as well, the terrain and the blast effects are great.

Thank you Tzurk, doing my best for the vibes

From small to smaller, painted some torpedoes for BFG in a couple of hours for yesterday's game, where my Imperials ripped some Chaos nasties a few extra vents.

Those are wicked cool! Very well painted and look like fun to play!

Extra vents indeed.

Props for the 8 bit stars on the bases!

Cool little torpedoes, love the effects you’ve added to the bases.

Thanks Cat, Cap and Gob

I'd have raised some of them higher on wires and made 3D backblasts, but only had a couple of hours to whip these up so maybe later.

3k NetEA. Dark Angels made an attempt at a lightning strike against the Machine Church, but the unyielding purity of steel prevailed and the astartes were scattered onto the streets, slick and glistening with the all-soaking rain of oil.



Click spoilers for more pictures!

It looks so professional. The photographs, the montage, the scenery, paintjobs, all is at an amazing level.

 muette wrote:
It looks so professional. The photographs, the montage, the scenery, paintjobs, all is at an amazing level.

Glad you like 'em, all of it is purely self-taught hobbyist stuff though. My daily grind with physics education doesn't even synergise with this stuff in any particular way, just striving to become better at it over time

I like the dense urban layout. Fantastic stuff.

Awesome battle pics! Love the lighting almost as much as the minis!

How do you get so much detail on the epic sized bases? Are you a glue them all together then weather type person? I find that with their little clip bases they don't really give me much space to play around with detailing on their flat bases (Other than blood effects)

I want to try some with my last group of Auxilia, but the scale is so small I don't want to crowd out the minis.

Warboss_Waaazag wrote:I like the dense urban layout. Fantastic stuff.

gobert wrote:Awesome battle pics! Love the lighting almost as much as the minis!

Cheers fellas

blockade23 wrote:How do you get so much detail on the epic sized bases? Are you a glue them all together then weather type person? I find that with their little clip bases they don't really give me much space to play around with detailing on their flat bases (Other than blood effects)

I want to try some with my last group of Auxilia, but the scale is so small I don't want to crowd out the minis.

I remove most feet blobs and disks under my Epic models. Can't really recommend this for anyone who values their time

But generally, I make my bases first and paint the models separately, then add the now clipless models on top with superglue, let them dry and hide any unsightly bits with paint and powders next day. Or in an hour or so to then wonder why my brush has suddenly been destroyed by superglue The bases themselves are easy to make: I glue down or sculpt one interesting feature, like sand bags or a larger piece of funky scifi plastic, then dab some PVA around it and sprinkle on some "battlespice" and fine sand. In my case the spice is whatever is floating in my cleaning box that day. I keep a small 1-2 dl box at my workdesk where I can collect all mold line shavings, leftover cuts from conversions too small to be properly stored, 3d print support bits, dry splotches of glue and so on.

So in essence this


turns to this


The crowding issue is real. I don't like overtly crowded bases on human-like models (tyranids and such would be fine as teeming swarms), so there is some art to choosing how many figurines work with each particular base. I've settled on 3-4 infantrymen on most of my things, with five old marines being fine on the bigger 40 x 20 mm rectangles and on few Auxilia bases where there is a tight firing line in action.

My Aux-based Guard needed some Chimera equivalents and my lazy arse couldn't bother to print any right now. Instead I spent a few days prototyping the BattlePotato, a shortened and wingless Arvus with moldcast Rapier tracks and a laser turret.

A bit of BFG after 15 years, trying to reverse-engineer my old scheme
Some casual speedpainting while I was helping at our roleplaying club's freshmen event.

The latest additions to Autumn Twilight's battlefleet Rhapsody of Fire: two Dauntless light cruisers Deadly Omen and Raging Starfire, escorted by Silent Dream, a squadron of Cobra torpedo boats and In Tenebris, a Falchion gunboat.



More in the spoiler!

Very nice, a good subtle differentiation between the ships with the light colours, etc

Lovely looking ships. The bases are stellar.

Cap'n Facebeard wrote:Very nice, a good subtle differentiation between the ships with the light colours, etc

youwashock wrote:Lovely looking ships. The bases are stellar.

Or even interstellar...

Cheers Cap and youws. Making such groups is always a bit of an exercise in creating variation without adding more colours. And now there are like 30 more in the queue, oy vey...

I love how you did the naming on each of these. BFG minis are always tempting. Family shot soon?

 blockade23 wrote:
I love how you did the naming on each of these. BFG minis are always tempting. Family shot soon?

Not sure whether you mean the scribe-work or appreciating Italian pantyhose metal, but thanks. Both is good, as a famously wise pair of explorers once mused
I might arrange a nostalgic family pic of the whole lot at some point, the fleets did after all exemplify the heights of my teenaged skills back then with all their little turrets and their highlights.

Meanwhile!
5k of Epic: Armageddon, Ill Met by Moonlight.
Patrols met under the onslaught of the tyranid invasion and quickly escalated as marching columns started pouring into the city. The situation quickly dipped to Mechanicus' favor, as they got their big guns onto the field and incessantly pummeled the xenos as they tried to escape the traffic jam at their deployment area.




More pics in the spoiler!

Stunning as always. Those epic tyranids are very nice

 Cap'n Facebeard wrote:
Stunning as always. Those epic tyranids are very nice

Cheers Cap'n, glad you like 'em.

Meanwhile in a void far far away, another batch of BFG. All painted in a day without too pronounced detailing. Vis Divina and two escort squadrons, Tears of Pain and Winter's Rain.



More in the spoiler!

All the work is first-rate, but those bases, wow!

Absolutely crushing these BFG fleets, nailed that Blanchean pallet. Stunning stands for sure.

Meer_Cat wrote:All the work is first-rate, but those bases, wow!

Boss Salvage wrote:Absolutely crushing these BFG fleets, nailed that Blanchean pallet. Stunning stands for sure.

Thanks fellas. No model is complete without a proper base, after all

As always the battle pics are stunning! The BFG ships are looking great too and those name scrolls are brilliant

 gobert wrote:
As always the battle pics are stunning! The BFG ships are looking great too and those name scrolls are brilliant

Thank you, gobert. More bat rep pics for you, then!

Tragedy in three acts: 3k NetEA Imperial Fists vs. the Machine Church, Reinforce the Right (GT scenario with three waves of troops and randomised deployment areas). The central firebase of the cog-boys proved too tough to crack for the astartes who arrived far from their main objectives and though the battle hung in balance until the very end, eventually the grand magos led their taxi-deprived and thus slowly stretching column of servitors and priests deep into the enemy rear.



Do note the Fists' Devastators' laudable camouflage exercise "Operation Atlas".

More pictures in the spoiler!

Just brilliant. Makes me want to run out and buy too many tiny tanks.

Love the Atlas Devastators

Man, 30k Mechanicus tanks in Epic are just so good.

Thank you Cap'n, gobert and Gwyn. Tiny tanks are indeed best in life.

Then again, you could have even more iron on the frontiers... in SPACE!

Finally got around to taking a proper picture of the fleet. Autumn Twilight's battlegroup Rhapsody of Fire in its eternal glory.

This year's new additions at the front (bases with red clouds), everything else painted somewhere around 2009 as a teenager with paints now long gone from the shelves. There's about as much stuff still waiting for their turn in the painting queue.



Click for full size!

What a lovely fleet!

That fleet looks glorious. If the scheme is that fast, I want to burn all of my paintbrushes in rage ha ha

Cheers Waazag and Ragsta

 Ragsta wrote:

That fleet looks glorious. If the scheme is that fast, I want to burn all of my paintbrushes in rage ha ha

I mean, the scheme is pretty fast in principle and only uses like a dozen paint bottles. The exact hues don't matter. Dark brown, lighter brown, bone, red, orange, yellow, white, black, two washes.

- basecoat black (spray)
- brush some dark brown sloppily over most things (big brush)
- overbrush lighter brown (big brush)
- add some bone and yellow to the light brown for detail work (medium brush)
- highlight a bit until a bit too bright for your liking (med-to-fine brush)
- detail in orange for the lights (fine brush)
- drown it all in umber and black washes (big brush)
- touch up the detailing a bit again. NMM shines, bright lights with yellow and white etc. (fine brush)

Most of my time is just spent waiting for the washes to dry or fiddling with the basing

Talk about fast, though: challenged myself to try some speedpainting. Needed to make a handful of table decorations for a wedding party, so here's a bunch of random minis from ye olde boxes on wires ready to be stuck into little flower pot dioramas for children to gawk at (possible casualties expected, so no valuable minis have been harmed in the making of this gag).

The whole lot took about 15 hours or so. Now if only I could muster similar speed for projects I actually care about



Click the pic to see them details (such as they are )!

A small 2k game of EpicAU, Night Lords vs Mechanicum. The astartes attempted a speedy overrun of the harbour, but bounced hard from the wall of robots and got blasted with rocket artillery until they slunk back into the burning waves.



More in the spoilers!

Great battle pics, everytime I see that board I’m in awe! The bfg fleet are mighty impressive as well, seems the scheme looks more challenging than its description. Really cool idea for the table ornaments for the wedding, hopefully the kids enjoyed them (and probably quite a few big kids I expect!).

 gobert wrote:
Great battle pics, everytime I see that board I’m in awe! The bfg fleet are mighty impressive as well, seems the scheme looks more challenging than its description. Really cool idea for the table ornaments for the wedding, hopefully the kids enjoyed them (and probably quite a few big kids I expect!).

Cheers gobert, at least they were all accounted for at the end of the festivities so nobody attempted to eat any

With the new year fast upon us and the holidays spent mainly coughing my lungs out, it's a good time to see what, if anything, was achieved last year.



Finished models 2024

28 mm:

- Imperial lady
- 20 table ornaments

Epic scale:

- 5 tech-thrall bases
- 6 Krios tanks
- 3 Minotaurs
- 2 Baneblades
- 12 Leman Russes
- 6 Basilisks
- 8 field guns
- 24 guardsmen bases
- 50 blast markers

BFG:

- 10 torpedo markers
- 3 planets
- 2 Dauntless light cruisers
- 1 Falchion
- 3 Cobras
- 9 Swords
- 1 Murder cruiser

So that's some 160+ things finished, of which maybe a 100 or so count as actual models if we're feeling generous. While it's certainly better than the previous year, a big chunk of those happened in few dedicated bursts of speed-painting, such as the three-day Guard marathon before Ropecon or the BFG waves at the end of the year. I also bought way, way more stuff than I finished, with heaps of LI and KT plastic piling up to smother me in my sleep. In 2025, I'd like to see a bit more steady pace at the painting station, like putting something out every month at least. On the other hand, I did also put out quite nice battle rep pics and learn my way around the new camera, so there's been constant hobbying throughout the year which will continue as well.

So what's on the platter this year?

A lot of small scale things at least! Guard, Mechanicum, some biomechanical titans perhaps, more BFG ships and terrain and so on. I'm drowning in tiny tonks
I've still got a handful of kill teams in the queue and some on the drawing board, as well as more suitable terrain for that package. Still haven't read the third edition rules, though
Maybe some 28 mm 30k? The destroyer squad made earlier is kind of crying for its turn on the painting table...

Nice work, Sherrypie! Excellent painting, all round. I admire those that can consistently paint the smaller scale stuff, and do it so well.

 youwashock wrote:
Nice work, Sherrypie! Excellent painting, all round. I admire those that can consistently paint the smaller scale stuff, and do it so well.

Thanks youws! I want to get a good chunk of tiny stuff done early this year, so I get to drive around with a silly number of tiddly tanks

Nice work, Sherrypie Good luck with accomplishing your goals this year. I'm personally looking forward to more BFG. The 28mm 30k would be cool for me too.

 Syro_ wrote:
Nice work, Sherrypie Good luck with accomplishing your goals this year. I'm personally looking forward to more BFG. The 28mm 30k would be cool for me too.

Thanks Syro, I'll see what I can do

At least get a game in between early year academy deadlines, it seems.

4,5k of NetEA, Ill Met by Moonlight. The Machine Church gave the eldritch machinefolk a good ol' kicking and repo'd all of their toasters.



Couple more in the spoilers.

Looks like a cool battle. Lore wise, it certainly makes sense for Necrons and Mechanicus to be fighting.

 Syro_ wrote:
Looks like a cool battle. Lore wise, it certainly makes sense for Necrons and Mechanicus to be fighting.

Heh, so it does. For the time being, the geriatric robots aren't having it too hot.

Meanwhile, Gothic today to start the year! Finished off Warrior of Ice, Thunder's Mighty Roar and Lamento Eroico as well as some volcanic globes.




More in the spoilers!

Really beautiful board set ups and those planets look great.

It's all looking so spectacular. Reminds me to get working on my own table set up for LI

Thanks Tommygun and blockade!

Nice minis deserve nice tables. Gaming company rarely complains about it, either

Cool round up sherrypie, some great looking minis in there. Love the BFG bases on the latest batch, really cool

Love the planets and moons! Makes me really want to do some BFG.

Gorgeous stuff, Pie! BFG rules!!

Cheers Gob, Gwyn and Rags (which totally doesn't sound like a bandit gang from Judge Dredd)!

Apparently I forgot to put up some pics from a fun little four-player participation game I ran at our RPG club for a handful of newbies. Chaos fleet attempts a planetary invasion, but manages to crush the Imperial defence before any boots hit the ground as the defending admiral decides to save their crippled and burning ships and leaves the fearful world to its fate.

Some funkier EA this time, 2v2 custom scenario on a 12'x4' table with umpired NPC forces running in the middle. Fortified forge-fane in the middle, four outer storages outside the walls, two armies closing in in waves to rob and ransack what they can. In the end, no clear victor can be declared, though amidst the burning wreckage and torn down walls, it is clearly not the local administration... poor arch-magos Fönstern-x64 will be left with a long bill to pay after the invaders have taken their fill from their warehouses and disappeared.

Each player had 3000 points split into four waves of reserves, some of which had a long way to walk in order to get into the thick of it. All players had for whatever reason taken plenty of AA guns but nobody had any planes, or much of any other fast units either... oh dear. Plenty of headbutting into solid walls, robot sentries and other defenses in the initial half while the second stretch turned bloody as the overwhelmed locals finally saw their walls breached by force and got squished between the two advancing fronts as they started to properly meet in the middle right before the end of the day.



Click the spoiler for more!

Cool urban layout for that battle. Too bad nobody brought stuff fast enough to get to grips right away. Ah well, players, amiright?

 Warboss_Waaazag wrote:
Cool urban layout for that battle. Too bad nobody brought stuff fast enough to get to grips right away. Ah well, players, amiright?

On the other hand, everybody decided to start doing warcrimes and antagonised the locals immediately as soon as they got over their first-round fears of sudden diplomatic contact. While it took the two sides a while to get clashing and for their forces to trickle onto the table, there were firefights and explosions on all sides from very early on

Fresh from the void-docks today, painted over two days: cruisers Abyss of Pain, Echoes of Tragedy & Unholy Warcry, light cruisers Crystal Moonlight & Flash of the Blade as well as the escort squadron In Tenebris sail out.

They look great I like the names, too.

 Syro_ wrote:
They look great I like the names, too.

Cheers Syro, only the cheesiest Italo-fantasy on these docks

Incredibly inspiring blog! As someone about to embark on my own conversion-heavy Death Guard army, this has been incredible to see. Lovely conversions and astounding paintwork. Thanks for all your hard effort!

 Tek wrote:
Incredibly inspiring blog! As someone about to embark on my own conversion-heavy Death Guard army, this has been incredible to see. Lovely conversions and astounding paintwork. Thanks for all your hard effort!

Thanks, Tek! Hope you'll stick around, there'll always be more to show. What direction will yours go in?

While I am currently on a bit of a BFG spree, this does remind me that I should probably finish a couple of DG models (like the Destroyers...) one of these days as well to justify the title of the thread

 Sherrypie wrote:

 Tek wrote:
Incredibly inspiring blog! As someone about to embark on my own conversion-heavy Death Guard army, this has been incredible to see. Lovely conversions and astounding paintwork. Thanks for all your hard effort!

Thanks, Tek! Hope you'll stick around, there'll always be more to show. What direction will yours go in?

While I am currently on a bit of a BFG spree, this does remind me that I should probably finish a couple of DG models (like the Destroyers...) one of these days as well to justify the title of the thread

I have no direction except gross, tentacly little stinkers. Pure fun, pure creativity. Just aiming to enjoy the process and see what comes out of it!

1200 points Fleet Engagement, the Imperial wedge smashed into a Chaos pirates' encircling trap but eventually battered their way through with the Dauntless squadrons relentlessly staying in the maneuver game until the very end.

Click 'em bigger!

Finished a couple more tiny tanks for Selen II home army.