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Love the moley thingy. Agree, no hope of paint staying on that thing.

Looking forward to repaint, not that I think they need it!

Actually Cam, that IS the re-paint!

Quick battle report between myself and Solar_lion. Lots of pics.

Prologue: A rag-tag group of 30k Emperor's Children & Dark Mechanicum allies were being transported in the light cruiser "Siren's Song" along with the rest of Fulgrim's fleet to Istvaan V when the fleet was hit by a massive warp storm. (see "Fulgrim" book) The ship was wrenched into the warp and spat out again 10,000 years later into Imperial space, essentially unaltered. Only a few of the EC on board had received Fabius Bile's mutation drug, thus most are still unaltered astartes. Isolated, 10,000 years out of place... with no allies and no primarch... they do what they must to survive. The Dark Mech elements have been folded into the EC's command structure and a Laer priest of Slaanesh serves as the contingent's Master of Possession. More raiders than a legion at the moment, they are reduced to scavenging and pillaging until they either reunite with their brothers or are destroyed in the process.

Today, they are scavenging on a bio-rich planet... far from Imperial eyes.


1500 points of my Emperor's Children (EC) using the new CSM dex and as many different units as I can.


1500 points of fluffy Tyranids, focusing on lots of stuff for me to practice learning my army on. Love this color scheme, beautifully painted by Solar_lion.


Deployment SL's custom table. Everything is resplendent in green and purple. I really hate corner deployment. Table edges are at the edges of the terrain so TINY table!


My corner... ready to scramble for objectives.


MI backed up by characters and a hellbrute on the right flank.


SL's army barely fits in his quarter.


View from my left flank. It's not any better from this direction!


The game as chosen by the old card set. I feel that "Blackout" isn't really a problem since the table is barely wider than 18" anyway.


Nids win the roll off and move out!



Lots of psychics & shooting later... my demon prince is at half wounds, down a psychic power & my warp talons are all but wiped out (1 guy with 1 wound remaining).

Shooting lanes kinda sucked , so I just push hard left. The bikes challenge the hormigaunts while the sicaran brings the hammer to the warriors on the hill, as well as firing the las cannons at the hive tyrant.


The demon prince and warp talon... both on half wounds... jump into the center to try and take out the winged tyrant. They do, but in her death throws she kills them both!


Cultists doing what they should be doing... standing pat on an objective.


The unit of noise marines goes-a-wandering looking for an objective to snag. Unfortunately there are none in this table quarter so they spend the entire game wandering around aimlessly... never firing a shot or swinging a weapon.


Bikes hit the gaunts and eventually clear them off the objective.


A small unit of legionaries smash into a small unit of termigants in the center of the battle grid... they hold their ground here against several units of gribbleys over the course of the game.


The surviving warriors ignore morale (like all Nids... neat trick) and plow into my bikes. They will kill two, wound the sergeant and take a wound of their own.


This is where things sit at the end of T1. SL had 1 point for holding more objectives and I have 1 point for killing more units.


SL's T2, the big bugs come out to play, but the gribbleys are thinning a bit.


I take damage across a variety of units... especially the sicaran (which goes down to only 4 wounds) and legionaries, however both are still functional.

The hellbrute, master of executions and dark apostle move up to support the center.


The surviving biker falls back... leaving the Nid warriors "naked and afraid".


Here's the situation in the center before the shooting and charging phases.


Shooting ensues, and on the left... the last warrior is finished off in CC by the leviathan, who then consolidates towards the far left objective being held by a unit of gribbleys.


I'd forgotten that I'd done a half-decent job painting the sicaran. Those were the days...


Concentrated fire takes the gunfex off the obelisk and the Nids world gets just a wee bit smaller.


Several, scary EC melee units hit the gribbly blobs in the center and clear them out (for the most part).


The clueless noise marines continue to wander around aimlessly.


End of T2 and the Nids decide to get outta Dodge while they still have significant assets in-tact. There's just not enough left to reliably deal with 3 vehicles (two of which are CC threats) two CC characters & two marine squads. Plus there would still be objectives to gain and hold as well.



My thanks to Solar_lion for feeding me his nids for an afternoon and keeping good humor throughout. At least I have some idea how to run this army now. His army and terrain are beautiful and were an absolute delight to play against/on!! Next time he'll load-up for me and I'm sure I'll get my butt kicked!

Fantastic rep mate. I love the aimless noise marines especially, very Spinal Tap

Thanks graven. It was an interesting first outing with the EC and I got to play a lot of different units, strategems, etc. I did figure out how to add a single spawn to the list as well so I've taken the "one of everything" one step farther! It was a very friendly match-up on the tyranids part. SL went out of his way to take lots of squishy bits that I could experiment on.

More models done! These were painted by the afore-mentioned Solar_lion and are the first of the Dark Mechanicum elements of my CSM army. There will be many more!

Venom Crawler:


Ursurax (Possessed):


Needless to say I absolutely LOVE the job SL did painting these guys. He nailed it!

Awesome batrep, interesting to see the capabilities of your army. Nice work SL on the DM stuff. That arachnid thing is one of my favourite at the mo.

Had a chance to play my new Emperor's Children army in a local tournament last weekend. 2000 pts, narrative, no named characters... some interesting scenario rules tossed in for giggles. Nearly everything I have painted is used for the list with the exception of a hand full of figures (couple of 30k dreads and my spawn (a-la "The Thing"). I may put the spawn back in for the next experiment.

Game 1 vs. Black Legion:

Everyone is so into symmetric terrain around here. I get it... but it's boring. Lot's of elements from my army were also in his, as well as some things I'm going to add later... so it was a good learning experience. We only got a turn-and-a-half in (we quickly "projected" my half of turn 2 so we could at least score points for two turns. Narrow victory for my opponent, though that's misleading as he would have easily tabled me T3.

My army laid out. Nice to see the Possessed and Venomcrawler that Solar_lion painted for me on the table.


My gargoyle Warp Talons backing up a unit of Noise Marines. I'm a bit unsure about the WTs... might be better off with a second squad of Possessed, thought the jump packs are handy for mobility.


Chaos Bikers are on the right flank. These are 30k bikes but I just run them as bikers with chainswords... so ignore the extra gear, that's a hold-over from HH.


Left flank is anchored by the Sicaran and Leviathan with a Warp Smith in support. Did some converting of an old Tech Marine which I enjoyed. Will share that later when the painting is done.


Lots of scary stuff in the BL lines. The Oblits would prove to be amazing.



Opening move, the Hell Drake sweeps around to harass my infantry squads. The repost would come from the Sicaran in my half (bottom) of the turn when it would send the winged demon to it's namesake with barrages of autocannon and lascannon fire.


My DP smashes into the Black Legion Venomcrawler. Damage was done on both sides, but the DP would be victorious.


My VC smashes into some Obliterators... and is obliterated.


End of T1.5 and the Black Legion is all over me. I would not have survived.



Game 2 vs. Thousand Sons:

Game 2 also faced an army with some of the same elements that I play (or want to play) though it is from a different dex (including a 10-man terminator brick). Again, nicely painted and a joy to play against. We got a *solid* 2 turns in. Apparently it wasn't just me... I heard people commenting all day about how few turns they got in. This was a fun, close game and ended in a draw! Kind of a strange board... giant LOS lines down the center but if you advanced along the building rows you had good cover. Very realistic actually.



Here's my center...


View from my right flank... I do have a tendency to put my "cavalry" on the right... just like a proper ancient/medieval general.


My Master of Executions spent most of the day hanging out in the back preventing deep striking troops from showing up somewhere I didn't want them. Not sure if that was the best use for him, but at least he served a purpose in every game.


Here are the oncoming TSons.


I have no idea what this thing was... but it was very appropriate feeling for a TSons army. Sorry for the blurry pic.


Pretty marines on a rock!


Unfortunately I didn't take a pic of the "big moment" of the game where my entire army attacked the 10-man unit of terminators in both shooting and assault... just barely finishing it off completely! The game ended then, but it would have been interesting to see how the TSons followed up when all of my best units were center-table and exposed. I think I had 5 units assaulting the termies, including the leviathan, demon prince, warp talons and the possessed.


Game 3 vs. Space Wolves:

Played my friend Tom... the TO & ringer on the bottom table as we'd lost a player by this point and I was low score. Not much in the way of photos I'm afraid, just a couple of deployment shots. I won by a relatively small margin after a whopping 3 turns! Wow... never thought I'd see that. I was definitely playing faster as the day went on & I got more and more comfortable with the army.

What I saw coming down the table at me...



These aren't fancy paint jobs... but Tom works hard on them, turns out a ton of figures in a very short period of time and on the table... they look great! Really enhances my experience to play fully painted armies (I'm usually playing against bare plastic in my local group.)

Thanks for looking!

Had an enjoyable game with Solar_lion this week. Definitely more competitive than last time. He brought out his old, first-born Lamenters who were pretending to be some other loyalist chapter that no one gives a darn about (but their rules are better). Man I love his Lamenters.

So, quite a few pics and a little report to go with them. We were using the old cards. 3 objectives set up in no-man's land (triangular deployment). One (determined randomly) would be worth and extra point if held.



My forces arrayed for battle...



Lamenters bring it!


Some awesome vehicles await their commander's wishes.





Turn 1:

I move out, especially on the right flank. The boosted Sicaran totally wiffs, but I do manage to take out a dev squad of lascannons by shooting the rest of my army at it. SL moves up to meet me as the battle line becomes very defined.


On my right, multiple elements close in on my DP and take him out.


Also on my right... the Sternguard loaded with meltas drop pod down and take out my Sicaran. So my 2 best units are gone in T1.


I'm up in points 3:1.

Turn 2:

I think this is the pic from T2. I continue to push forward and manage to take out both flyers with a combination of shooting and flying assault. My right flank is slowly failing but the left is doing well. The bikes tag a couple of razorbacks and my possessed make contact with a tactical squad near the center of the board. SL's repost clears out my Venomcrawler, objective sitting cultists and the hellbrute.




There used to be a razorback where the melee is taking place. It got taken out by shooting, leaving the marines inside to face the possessed.


The sternguard continue to maraud around my right flank.


A tac squad from one of the razorbacks goes-a-hunting for an objective to secure.


I think the score is something like 4:2, still my favor.


Turn 3:

On my right, the warpsmith and badly wounded leviathan move up to deal with the bikes and sternguard with help from distant heavy weapon fire from 2 squads of noise marines.


On my left, the body of my remaining infantry units keep pushing into the Lamenter lines. The surviving biker champion falls back onto an objective.


The surviving possessed move up to deal with the Sicaran, which has had way too much impact on the battle already.


The Master of Executions eyeballs the razorback for destruction.


Charges made!


Leviathan and warpsmith do their bit for god and chaos. Even injured they're more than a match for the bikers.



It's a bad day to be a space marine...



... and... we ran out of time. The store closes ridiculously early. Still... a much better game than the last time. SL did a LOT of damage to me coming in (nearly 2 full shooting phases) but I just had too many nasty assault units still kicking when I finally hit in T3. Not bad for a bunch of firstborn. Next game he'll bring out his A-list Necrons and see if he can't turn the tide.

Thanks for reading!

Always love you your batreps (and this one is particularly bat-y)

Thanks graven!

Great to see the taxi cabs out àgain. Great batrep, as always. Thanks for sharing, look forward to the next.

Love to see two beautifully painted armies face up against each other!

Thanks guys! Unfortunately the next trip up will be gameless. But maybe I'll get something else in over the next few weeks. Going to be building for certain!

Played (sort of) in another local tournament. Played the first game vs. my buddy Tyler, then he had to go and I didn't want to push someone else into the bye slot (there was no extra bye player available). Between Ty and I... I think we had over 200 infantry on the table. I had 74 and he had wayyyy more than that. (I'd killed about 60-70 infantry in the first two turns and he had plenty left.) I only took a few pics though as we barely got through T2.

Awesome!! I've always loved seeing infantry heavy games, even if they do tend to take longer visually they are always so impressive!

Amazingly.. I painted a bit tonight!

The original tech marine was painted by weety. I modified him a bit by adding a couple of snakey-cable clamps (CLAMPS!!), the plasma pistol arm and the axe (stolen from a spare tech priest dominus kit). Did my best to match weet's style but I did add a bit of color to make it a little more table worthy (weety's color variations are so subtle it's hard to see them at arm's length). I think he makes a passible un-corrupted Warpsmith. He's certainly been valuable in games supporting the Sicaran and the Leviathan.



Next up... Belakor!

Shocking great to see you back at the brush buddy.

Finally... a substantial update. Been working on this bloodthirster for over 6 years now. Guess I needed to finish him off before I started the next huge demon (Be'lakor). This model really intimidated me for a long time as nothing I tried with either the skin or wings looked right. Finally I settled on a couple of techniques I don't use often & am pleased with the results. There's a lot left undone, but that seems to be the way of things now-a-days with me. Hope you like him!

That's a whole lot of leathery goodness (well, you know what I mean). Flames and general fieriness of skin is awesome. LOVING the pumpkins too

These battle shots are great! Awesome just caught up with your blog

@graven: The skin held me up for a looong time as I just didn't like anything I'd tried. In the end though... stippling a kind of burning skin was the most satisfying answer.

@Stevefamine: Thanks Steve! I'll try and keep up the battle reports as well as having much more regular painting updates.

I think you should be very pleased with it. Very tough model as there are very large regions with only the muscle definition to break the areas up so can be hard to get something that works.

Thanks Archer! I appreciate the support and generous comments!


So... Demons. This codex will revitalize the old Halloween army that my wife challenged me to build years ago. After getting home from work today I did a roll call of sorts to see what kind of units I have. Not sure how many of these are still viable... will have to check the codex for that. I know the furies are gone, so my bat swarms will get sold off.

I have...

Bloodthirster (demon)
Great Unclean One (Cthulhu)
The Changeling (Death/Reaper)
Karnak (werewolf)
Daemon Prince (demon)
Fluxmaster (witch on broomstick)
Skull Master (The Headless Horseman)

3x 10 plague bearers (zombies and mummies)
8 pink horrors (scarecrows), I had 10 but apparently 2 have gone walk-about... which makes me sad.
6 flamers of tzeench (ghosts)
10 nurglings (goblins)
15 flesh hounds (wolves/mutated wolves)
3 screamers (giant bats)

Things to be done...
Somewhere I have 10 of the old, metal bloodletters because the damn plastic ones kept breaking on me.
Be'lakor (just got)
2 Feculent Gnarlmaws (haunted trees... these are incoming)
Somewhere I have one of the giant Khornate axe-wielding humanoid behemoth things. (giant)

I think the witch was originally a herald of slaanesh, but it seems sill to add a 4th god for only one minor figure. So now she's tzeench.

Not sure if it made the cut, but didn't you have a Helldrake proxy?

Great to see you painting properly, so beautiful. That Demon is stunning.

Even if you didn’t have a helldrake proxy you should add one….;-)

Camkierhi wrote:Not sure if it made the cut, but didn't you have a Helldrake proxy?

Great to see you painting properly, so beautiful. That Demon is stunning.

I do indeed have a lovely, custom made helldrake proxy! Made by... oh I can't remember... some guy.

Archer wrote:Even if you didn’t have a helldrake proxy you should add one….;-)

I'll get one of those too... part of my trade with Solar_lion will be taking one of those off of his hands.

I'll be working on the Laer next (for my CSM) and Be'lakor (for CD). Not to mention some frantic re-basing and sprucing-up of some of the old demon counts-as Halloween figures. Over the next few weeks, SL should be finishing up a second venom crawler, a maulerfield and a disco lord. They should boost my CSM roster considerably.

Have a thousand-point tourney coming up. Going to go back to the AdMech for it I think. Tried my CSM at 1k and the pickings are just too slim at this point to put together something viable. The AdMech list should be fun though. It's a bit different than what I usually run. Several of us have volunteered to run Highlander-style lists (no unit duplication, save that we can run two units of identical troops if we want, which is often necessary depending on the codex). Should make the day more fun for us. The try-hards will be there of course with their unpainted internet lists as always... but in a day of gaming we should all get at least one or two games in with like-minded opponents.

Good luck in the tourney. Sure you will at least have fun.

Well, I practiced with it yesterday and got my butt handed to me. My friend Tyler brought a 10-man terminator block to a 1000 point game! I didn't think he had anything that "meta" in him. Game was over by T2. I still think I had a good AdMech army, but it can't deal with 10 terminators that can buff their own saving throw to a +3 (giving them an effective 2+ vs anything -3 or less).

So now I've re-built the Halloween army for the occasion. It'll solve some problems... create others. Hopefully I'll get a practice in before I have to use it.

It is very fluffy from a Halloween aspect... a demon, the headless horseman, 5 ghosts, 9 wolves, 10 zombies and three groups (bases) of goblins.

That's a sweet massive big nasty red demon my man!! he looks fantastic! I await the battle report to see how he fares

Thank you Nerdy!!


Newest project! This haunted tree with stand-in as a Feculent Gnarlmaw in my Chaos Demon Halloween army. Tree is commercially produced for little Halloween Town displays & flashes many colors. I gave it a quick re-paint, added extra pumpkins, skulls and foliage to beef it up a bit. Can access switch and battery from below (just cut a hole in the base). Very fun project!



I'm a little uncertain about the skulls in the eyes as they do block a bit of the light... I can easily remove them and place them on another part of the base. Any opinions are welcome.