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So it's been a while since I've posted in this thread! I didn't really get burnt out on Valhallans so much as I just ran out of them and realized I didn't need to buy more Instead I've been painting Iron Warriors, which you can check out at my criminally low-traffic thread here.

So another forum has a monthly painting contest and the idea this month was to convert something extensively. After working with nothing but metal models for the entirety of the Valhallan stretch, I was chomping at the bit to do something cool! I have a few Dark Vengeance sets and decided that the cultist leader with the Commissar's coat would serve well in my army with a bit of work. So, with no short amount of bitz box raiding and green stuff gap filling, I've started my new counts-as Iron Hand Straken:

I'm still flip flopping over whether I want to paint him as a Commissar and have him be a Lord-Commissar sort of character (for fluff reasons) or if I want to paint him up like any other Valhallan officer. I'd happily take any input on this I can get!

Well, if you paint him like a Commissar, you can always use him as one instead of Straken in smaller point games?

^ Agreed. Though based on this thread, any way you paint it will look amazing. So go wild!

 ghosty wrote:
Well, if you paint him like a Commissar, you can always use him as one instead of Straken in smaller point games?

Yeah, but I already have three Commissars! As much as I love the black-coated badasses, I don't really need more. Would be cool to run him as a Lord Commissar with a powerfist also, but I don't know when I'll ever end up taking one of those. I'm thinking it may be a good way to portray Straken from both a fluff and aesthetic standpoint, but I just picture the IG commander from DoW2 and how dapper he looks in his coat.

I can't imagine anyone in your gaming group getting upset at using that figure as a Lord Commissar, or Straken.

Haven't been here in a while, your tanks are looking ace, really like the new Hellhounds.

Your Straken conversion is a real credit to you showing how well you can convert.

Thanks for keeping those of us who are lazy more inclined to keep painting.

Regards,
Howie.

Dat face mask.. He's heresey's reckoning.

I sat down this weekend and painted the counts-as Straken over the course of half a season of It's Always Sunny. I also figured out a name for him; Colonel Vadim. I decided to go for the typical officer paintscheme instead of the Commissar one that I was hemming and hawing over:

Wow man. I really like the look of this guy. Well done!

that dude looks sharp nice work

Great stuff, look forward to seeing him in action!

I love to see good officers gone bad rehabilitated. Awesome job. However, the Commissariat will be keeping an eye on him.

He is all kinds of awesome, nice stuff!

That looks great!

Colonel Vadim looks bad ass. Well done good sir.

Why thank you! Now if only I could get a game in with them today to celebrate the Christmas spirit

Well, if you were really to get into the spirit of things then some of those infantry need Santa hats

I really like this log, chief - you have done some really good work with the Valhallans! I don't think they get enough press - the human meatgrinder theme of Imperial Guard tends to lose it's appeal around here..

Incidentally, I have a metal sarge and a melta gun Valhallan if you want 'em

I was pondering using Wargames Factory shock troopers with forage cap heads from Westwind as a cheaper alternative to Valhallans actually... Hmm...

Keep up the good work, please! MOAR battle reports!!

So all has been quiet on the Valhallan front for a while, at least from a painting and modeling standpoint. There are always more Valhallans left to paint, even if I can (and do!) run an obscene number of the little dudes. However, the decidedly unkind things that happened to my Valhallans at a tournament in June have led me to add some form of anti-air to my army. Seeing how the Thunderbolt is more than I'd care to spend right now (and takes up one of my beloved Heavy Support slots), I've started working on an Aegis Defense Line:


Expect some whitewashing and Russian graffito by the time it's complete!

I actually finished this over a week ago, but I just got around to taking some pictures of it! It was featured in this battle report where I deployed it illegally, but it looked great on the table! Anyway, here's the finished pics:

Looking great! I love the Commissar!

I wanted to share this but didn't think it really warranted a new thread, so I plugged it in here. I went to a tourney today where I won best painted and got rolled in 2/3 of my games, then won in the last game after some mutually assured destruction. Most of my games looked like this:

GAME 1: I played against Daemons. Lots of Khorne Daemons. Bloodthirster, Khornedogs, Bloodcrushers, whole shebang. I had my little Valhallan castle and tried to just hold the line, but at the end of turn 1 there were 20 hounds and a Bloodthirster right in my face. I got beaten incredibly handily, but I killed the Bloodthirster in hand to hand combat and my commander lived so it was a moral victory.

GAME 2: This is the second tournament in a row where I've played Hammer and Anvil on a snow table against Ultramarines where I thought I had it but got trounced. I'm seriously being that specific because it's exactly what happened two times in a row. He had a kind of wimpy list involving a Land Raider with only a chaplain in it, Terminators and Sternguard on foot, combat squads in Rhinos, and not a single flyer. Every blast template (literally every one except mortars) scattered horribly and I couldn't hit a damn thing. The only thing I could rely on were lasguns, and even then, he wasn't exactly in the business of failing saves. It took two turns to kill one Rhino. I killed it by glancing it to death. The deployment and terrain were clearly in my favor, the mission wasn't too hard and my tactics were straightforward, but my dice failed me utterly. However, it looked sweet:




GAME 3: This one ruled. I played another Daemons player who also had some Chaos Marines and Kharn in a Land Raider with some Berserker buddies. He drove the Land Raider and Bloodthirster right down my throat, ran his Soulgrinder and Khornedogs right at me, and I just had to deal with everything at once. The Soulgrinder charged a blob, I tried to fall back with Our Weapons are Useless, then the thing overran my 30 men. That sucked. Kharne and his Berserker buddies had their ride blown up, hid behind it, then charged out at my other blob. Dangerous terrain and overwatch beat the squad up badly, then once they charged in I was able to bayonet Kharn and his buddies to death. The Bloodthirster blew up my tanks and wiped out that weakened, remaining blob, after getting shot up bad. My Company Commander almost killed the Bloodthirster with his laspistol, but it passed its armor save before getting lascannoned off the board. The game ended with his 4 Bloodletters in hand to hand with my command squad, my remaining Basilisk in the backfield, and my Leman Russ on his side of the table after blowing up and running down his cultists. Any game that ends with 8 models and two tanks left is a good one in my opinion. Here's pictures from that one:






Then we all went to IHOP and I had chocolate chip pancakes and bacon and eggs and it tasted sweeter than any victory.
So yeah, between my three games today and my game yesterday, I've killed three Bloodthirsters in 24 hours. Daemons, man.

Cool tale! Who said blobs were a thing of the past? Blobs look 100% better on the table that all those AirCav wannabes Vendetta lists

M.

 Miguelsan wrote:
Cool tale! Who said blobs were a thing of the past? Blobs look 100% better on the table that all those AirCav wannabes Vendetta lists

M.

That's the most important thing to me! Even if I'm getting rolled, I look good doing it!

Next tournament I go I'm playing a pure infantry IG army, if a Helldrake arrives I'm toast but the look of my opponent when I place hundreds of guards on the table will be priceless.

M.

100 points for a quadgun with an Aegis! It's cheap, helps your army out, and will provide some handy anti-air. Even then, a Heldrake's biggest advantage is the AP3, which is pretty much wasted on Guard!

I'm in the middle of scratchbuilding mine but in the spirit of we don't care about loses, once more unto the breach! I'll skip the quad gun for now

Instead of messing your plog with my images you can see it here.
http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/303691.page#6127296

M.

Still looking top notch in action and looking great next to some much younger kits. After all that Bloodthirster/Daemon slaying your army will need a nickname.

Nice summary of the events, seemed like good fun. Going back to read some of the previous mentioned battle reports!

What's next in the plan for your Valhallans? Storm Troopers using Vostroyans perhaps?

Looking forward to the next update regardless.

I painted this old Imperial Assassin as a Soviet ninja, counts-as Sly Marbo. He came out alright, especially for something done in one sitting:

Soviet assasin? makes me think of the GI joe white Ninja

Yeah, he looks an awful lot like Stormshadow, doesn't he? I was gonna do him up in winter camo, but I ended up overcompensating with the Ulthuan Grey and just let it roll