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Looks like a great fun battle, there. Great to see all that armour on the field! The Vanquisher should make a fine addition to your Mailed Fist.

 shasolenzabi wrote:
Left rear of the turret has a very odd feature, a flap down hatch in the side and makes me think of French WW-II tanks

I think the hatch on the side may be for the loading of ammunition, it's a bit too small looking to have crew poke out.

 evildrcheese wrote:
Awesome pics from the bat rep. Looks like you had a blast.

EDC

Thanks and yes! I was glad my opponent felt the same way at least, otherwise I may have felt dirty afterwards.

 Azazelx wrote:
Looks like a great fun battle, there. Great to see all that armour on the field! The Vanquisher should make a fine addition to your Mailed Fist.

Cheers! It may be due to the Horus Heresy setting, but this is the first time I've found a Vanquisher to not only be of actual use, but actually performing well enough to not consider it a waste of points in the long run.

- - -

I'm still hard at work on my tanks for the most part, I've got another game lined up for next Sunday, 2500 pts of Horus Heresy, I'll be going up against Iron Warriors and allies, which sounds a bit worrisome, but I'll hopefully have one or two aces up my sleeve by then as well.

I've also picked up the digital rules for Stormcloud Attack while waiting on my order to arrive (the Eldritch and the Beast + Deff Skwadron graphic novel and the Flyers of the Dark Millennium splatbook) and the rules have sold me enough on the concept that last night I've decided to kitbash together a pair of pilots, who have no real ingame purpose whatsoever, but after seeing it done on the Webstore Blog I had to give it a go as well!



Lieutenant Daniel Swift and Major Olivia Marion, who will both be piloting a Lunar pattern Lightning Strike Fighter (they'll both be using a Nephilim jetfighter, both model and stat wise, because the Imperial Guard has no great flyers for this thing) for a hopefully upcoming aerial themed campaign over the skies of Medusa V. I guess this means I'll have to get another Nephilim one of these days..

Had me a game of 30k today, 2500 pts of pure mechanised Solar Auxilia versus Iron Warriors allied to the Mechanicum. I didn't take any pictures of the battle itself, as I was quite frazzled from a fething busy week at work. I did take one picture of my opponent's army before the game began:



The outcome of the battle was a tie, with three points for the both of us. We played a Horus Heresy mission (Tide of Carnage) which saw the board divided into three zones (your deployment zone, no-man's land and enemy deployment zone), with the holding of each zone conferring a certain amount of points. In the end, we both held our own deployment zones and contested the no-man's land, with large parts of our army outright destroyed or close to destruction by the time the final turn ticked over. We were both left with an equal amount of units standing, meaning neither of us could gain an extra point from the Last Man Standing special rule.

We've also agreed to do some Zone Mortalis some time in August, 750 pts, meaning I can field some infantry at long last!

But first.. need to finish those tanks!

No time for games or hobby-stuff recently, due to being swamped by work and my newfound Horus Heresy opponent being in Japan of all places. Oh well, finally found time today to pick up a brush again and get some work done..



Scary enough, almost all of that is done. Just need to put decals on the Stormsword and the two vanilla Russ tanks, plus paint up the Vanquisher turret, Stormlord and the bowser of the Infernus. There's also a Baneblade on the shelf, but I'll get to her when I feel like it.

Perhaps even scarier.. I don't see much need to add more to the collection as is. Just one more heavy-chassis Leman Russ tank to act as a proper hull for the Vanquisher, another Dracosan that will be pimped up as HQ transport, maybe one more Malcador with battle cannon & demolisher cannon combo, but other than that, quite chuffed with what I've got right now.

If only painting up infantry was as easy.. :gonk: Still got loads of those to do, not to mention twenty more on the way from Anvil Industry for a future Zone Mortalis list. :sweat:

Tank collection looks good BrookM

I may have a problem.

Well, trying to cure that by moving towards infantry now..

My order from Anvil Industry came in today and while I'm still strapped for spare time this week, I did manage to stick three together to see how they would turn out, this being my personal favourite of the bunch, with a head from Statuesque Miniatures and a book on her belt from the plastic Storm Troopers kit, making for an excellent count-as Veletarii or some generic pulp science fiction space cadet with an atomic raygun.



For 30k these will be bulking out my troops slots as regular Veletarii, allowing me to field their Forge World counterparts as the old guard of the fleet, acting as Household retinues for the HQ's.

So here's Prime Drusilla of the Saturnyne Amazons, continuing the theme of me being sad and lonely and in desperate need of good company.

Interesting! Infantry time it is then!

More like, they'll be going onto the pile with the rest of the things I still need to do one of these days.

I do like your simple grey tanks, and the red/blue banding is jolly nice.

I am also now a massive fan of the Statuesque Minis' heads, and that headswap you did with the plastic Commissar Lord actually makes me want to buy one - a sensible female Commissar to join my Commissariat ensemble!

Top hole stuff, keep going, I want to see more Knight Titan goodness!

 BrookM wrote:

 shasolenzabi wrote:
Left rear of the turret has a very odd feature, a flap down hatch in the side and makes me think of French WW-II tanks

I think the hatch on the side may be for the loading of ammunition, it's a bit too small looking to have crew poke out.

Those little hatches are known as "pistol ports". Most allied and axis tanks had them in WWII.

 oldravenman3025 wrote:

 BrookM wrote:

 shasolenzabi wrote:
Left rear of the turret has a very odd feature, a flap down hatch in the side and makes me think of French WW-II tanks

I think the hatch on the side may be for the loading of ammunition, it's a bit too small looking to have crew poke out.

Those little hatches are known as "pistol ports". Most allied and axis tanks had them in WWII.

Well, actually, that hatch in the Char B1 bis is actually an entry/exit hatch, much the same as the cupola on the top. Pistol ports were much smaller and rapidly fell out of use post 1940. [/nerd]

And the French turrets used them as seen as seat rests!


But the work in this thread is sitting as clean and fine good work, Brook even managed to utilize the Raging Heroes minis to good effect!

That force looked good taking down the Tau!

I haven't forgotten about my thread, it's just that these last two months I've been really, really busy with work and wind up all burned out when I get home again.

Hopefully some serious productivity will pick up again in three weeks when I'll finally have a vacation of my own.

 Gen.Steiner wrote:

 oldravenman3025 wrote:

 BrookM wrote:

 shasolenzabi wrote:
Left rear of the turret has a very odd feature, a flap down hatch in the side and makes me think of French WW-II tanks

I think the hatch on the side may be for the loading of ammunition, it's a bit too small looking to have crew poke out.

Those little hatches are known as "pistol ports". Most allied and axis tanks had them in WWII.

Well, actually, that hatch in the Char B1 bis is actually an entry/exit hatch, much the same as the cupola on the top. Pistol ports were much smaller and rapidly fell out of use post 1940. [/nerd]

Yeah, looking closer I can see the crewman sitting on the hatch. Thanks for the clarification. I'm not up to snuff when it comes to French tanks of that era.


And you are indeed correct that pistol ports started going "out of fashion" after 1940 (they were considered by some to be a ballistic hazard). But they remained popular among crews in some military forces in the war, so they remained common on many variants of tanks until war's end.


When U.S. Army Ordnance commissioned new turrets (D50878 75mm turrets) for the M4 without the pistol ports, crews and officers complained. They ended up going back to the pistol port with the D50878 turrets, along with a loader's hatch, in late 1943.


The Germans also had pistol ports on the Tiger. At least, the early production turrets did. So did the Panzer IVs up until the Ausf. J.

Pistol ports - for when you're being attacked by suicide infantry! Or you can just take the easy route and have a nearby tank machine-gun them off. I always liked that the Hetzer had a remote controlled MG42 for urban close defence.

Anyway, MOAR PAINT from BrookM, even if it causes him a prolonged nervous breakdown

Many thanks for not quoting that image again. I've got nothing against the discussion itself, but please-please-please, don't requote that image all the time, lest the mobile users start whining.

I picked up the Kill Team boxed set today and built its contents, I'll spare all the pictures of unpainted plastics, but it was most pleasant to be building something again and well, generally do something with the hobby again aside from offending a lot of people with innocent remarks.

I've also decided on my vacation project good and proper now.

Seeing as everybody and their mum at the store has snatched up Deathwatch, plus having watched a fair few how to paint video's on YouTube, I'm going to go with Tempestus Scions for my own Kill Team, having ordered a getting started boxed set so I've got all the models I'll need for the project (and then some).

So, in three weeks time I'll be starting work on that, going for the perhaps a bit boring, but still excellent looking stock colour scheme, though this is mainly so I can focus on actually trying to get better at painting without having to worry about experimenting with what colours go best together!

I've worked out a pair of lists for future games, one including a Taurox Prime, just in case I roll attacker on Infiltrate the Camp mission.

41st Omega Banshees - 200 pts

Tempestus Scions (5) - Bolt pistol, power weapon, hotshot volley gun and plasma gun

Taurox Prime - Taurox gatling cannon and twin-linked autocannons

Just in case a Taurox is frowned upon, we can always go full commando instead...!

41st Omega Banshees - 200 pts

Tempestus Scions (5) - Bolt pistol, power weapon, hotshot volley gun and plasma gun

Tempestus Scions (5) - Bolt pistol, hotshot volley gun and melta gun

Mission specialists
1. Hotshot volley gunner - Relentless
2. Plasma gunner - Ignore Cover
3. Random scrub - Preferred Enemy

Fear not, I will not be abandoning my Horus Heresy projects any time soon, I just feel I need to do something else in the meantime.

Stormtroopers are the quintessential kill-team, in my view. Well, other than Schaeffer's Last Chancers, that is. Can't wait to see what you do with the new plastics!

Ha, nothing too involved or severe I think. Though I've got a pile of Statuesque Miniatures beret heads lying around that I plan to use for these.

Eeexcellent. Eeexcellent! *evil laugh*

Hope you get over the burnout soon, Brook - I know all about it. I'm looking forward to seeing what you do with the Stormtrooper Kill-team. I can only assume that it'll be...

Cheers, I doubt it will be eye-popping or original, but with help from the ever patient Duncan I'm hoping to improve my skills, even if it's just a little bit.

In the meantime I'll hopefully be able to teach my brother the basics of 40k, as he's shown interest in Kill Team, having claimed the Tau from the boxed set, thus keeping myself occupied with the hobby for a little bit until my vacation.

Ha! Foolish blueskin! The Tau will crumble before the might of the Imperial Guard's Stormtrooper Regiments!

Some of the Panthers had pistol ports as well, there is a youtube video on panzers with training footage from the German army from the era.

Tau Breachers it would appear, have guns that become more powerful the closer you get to them. Seeing as my thing is to get in close and feth them up, I may need to revise this strategy, as those things are powerful enough to blow straight through power armour.

Seeing as I had all those heads on hand, I decided to, perhaps a bit prematurely as it's still three weeks until this all starts, start assigning heads and names to the ghouls.



1. Tempestor Rayet (bestest leader ever)
2. Scion Katya (hotshot volleygun)
3. Scion Anna (plasma gun)
4. Scion Natalya (preferred enemy specialist)
5. Scion Narkiss (scrub)
6. Tempestor Dasha (elite scrub)
7. Scion Polya (scrub with hotshot volleygun)
8. Scion Irina (scrub with meltagun)
9. Scion Elena (scrub)
10. Scion Vika (scrub)

All that remains is to give the Taurox Prime a name.

Good names as well good assignments! Definitely want to soften up the Tau Breachers with some long ranged dakka/templates like a GL firing the frag or krak rounds. But Plasma/Melta and volleyguns will do nicely.

Taurox name - Hellbitch, Warhound, Widowermaker, Glory of the Imperium?

Love the heads, by the way. What set are they?

EDIT: Found 'em. Jolly good prices too actually. £9 for all 20? Not bad at all!

Andrew is my go-to source for nicely done alternate heads for ghouls of various sorts, though in my case mainly Solar Auxilia and the Militarum Tempestus, though maybe the odd female space marine whenever the Deathwatch fad dies down over at the store.

He's slowly been expanding his range, soon adding in heads with cybernetics.



Not quite my cuppa, but still nice for those in need. Maybe something to look at once we settle on a good cyberpunk setting and ruleset that isn't Shadowrun.

His pulp range is damned good as well, his little Miss Lilly Poots in particular is the most adorable objective marker one could ever have:

You're missing a Tatiana and a Yulia/Yuliana.

The Taurox (or one of your vehicles) should be Aleksandra (Алекса́ндра) or Aleksandrina (Александрина)
>
Feminine form of Russian Aleksandr, meaning "defender of mankind."
>
Russian form of Greek Alexandros, meaning "defender of men."
>
Greek name composed of the elements alexein "to defend" and andros "man," hence "defender of mankind."


You also need to do a tribute here with one of your Leman Russ tanks:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mariya_Oktyabrskaya

I'll make Tatiana and Yulia the crew of the Taurox.

Though I guess this means I can't skip on the interior then..

After reading up on some tactics I've decided to also add in a pair of Sentinels for a potential third list.

Tempestus Scions (5) - Bolt pistol, power weapon, hotshot volleygun & plasma gun

Armoured Sentinels (2) - Autocannon & missile launcher

I've decided to go with Sentinels partially because of how potentially good they can be in the setting, plus there's this old fluff where storm troopers used to receive direct fire support from Nightstalker pattern Sentinels, with muffled engines and whatnot so they could be all sneaky behind enemy lines. I think this is from the Third War for Armageddon fluff IIRC.

While we're at it, here's the updated crew roster then, including vehicle crews as well:

1. Tempestor Rayet (bestest leader ever)
2. Scion Katya (hotshot volleygun)
3. Scion Anna (plasma gun)
4. Scion Natalya (preferred enemy specialist)
5. Scion Narkiss (scrub)
6. Tempestor Dasha (elite scrub)
7. Scion Polya (scrub with hotshot volleygun)
8. Scion Irina (scrub with meltagun)
9. Scion Elena (scrub)
10. Scion Vika (scrub)
11. Scion Mariya (Taurox driver)
12. Scion Yulia (Taurox gunner)
13. Scion Aleksandra (Sentinel pilot)
14. Scion Tatiana (Sentinel pilot)

Okay, enough faffing about with this "forging a narrative" stuff, back to work.