Heresy Era World Eaters - Army planning

With the Thousand Sons out of the way and soon to be going up on the auction block, I've turned my attentions to my next Heresy era project - Legio XII, the World Eaters!

After the last three armies being variations on Crimson and Gold, I thought I'd treat myself to something different. The white and blue of the World Eaters seemed like an interesting challenge - white being a color I've never been entirely comfortable painting. I'm planning on attempting some new techniques with alternate primer colors, zenithal highlighting and battle damage/weathering. Should be fun!

My goal is to keep it of a reasonable size. The event next May for which this army is intended is currently set at 2000 points, so I am restricting myself to 2500 (to allow for some swapping out of units as the scenarios dictate). The army is designed around an "everybody in a transport" mindset, with 20 Assault marines in a Storm Hawk, 2 10-man Tac squads in Land Raider Phobos, and Angron and a squad of Berzerkers in "Ares' Fury", a fast, open-topped Rhino from the expansion pack (that should be fun to model).

I'm gathering bits for the army currently and one of the main conversions I'm planning is that of Angron, the Primarch of the legion. I'd picked up one of the Kabuki models Berzerk Knights, but after seeing what one of my fellow Tempus Fugitives is doing for his version, I decided to try something similar. Basing the inspiration on the above picture, I scoured the internets for an appropriate base model, and settled on something from Heresy Miniatures:

 

Big Boris should be more than suitable for the upper torso and arms. For the legs I'm going to use some bits from Lord Zhufor, though at this point I'm merely guessing that the two models will be remotely scaled appropriately. Always the dodgy bit when trying to meld parts from different manufacturers!

The two Mk.1 Land Raiders I'd picked up off of eBay will be going into the Simple Green this weekend for an extended soak. Pics to follow!

Heresy Era Thousand Sons - Last Rhino done, army complete!!

Aaaaaaand it's all done! The very last model to be completed, a final transport Rhino, was already about 80% finished when I sat down to paint. Always a good place to start!

Basically all I needed to do was polish off the whites and get the detailing done. This particular tank also comes with a turret variant that isn't technically allowed in the Heresy era, but I built for those times I'd be using it as a razorback with a GW codex. Nothing wrong with having options!

Together with its brother rhino, they provide a fair bit of customization, able to act as transports or fire support. The Havoc Launchers are magnetized to the hulls for those times when every last point counts...

That said, the big news of course is that the army is now completely finished! I was able to get it all laid out on the table and snapped a couple pics of the whole thing. The army weighs in at a touch over 4,000 points depending on wargear (and, indeed, codexes). The intention was to build a heavy armored spearhead which I feel the army definitely captures. It was a shame that for the campaign I attended in England, what was really needed was nimble assault forces. Nevertheless, the army was a blast to field! ...And was then blasted off the field. Heh.

 

A couple closer shots of the infantry and armored sections. The three possessed models on 40mm bases on the far bottom left are objective markers for the army, I felt that fighting to reclaim/kill their flesh-changed brethren was appropriate!

As to what's next up on the project list, well I can say I'm mighty tired of painting crimson, white and gold. So for now that rules out the Adeptus Mechanicus. We're making plans for next year's event (May 2013) and I've settled on the World Eaters as my next project. Blue! I'll get to paint blue! Painting the white armor will be a challenge, and there's going to be a lot of it. I've been devouring Ron's articles about painting white, and am actually quite looking forward to trying out his method on a test model or two soon.

Heresy Era Thousand Sons - Jump Veterans Complete!

In the home stretch now! The penultimate unit for the Thousand Sons is now complete - Veteran Squad Besenmut. I had fun building Sergeant Besenmut, figured it was appropriate thematically to have him in combat with a Space Wolf.

The models were built from a mix of parts - Khorne Berzerkers, old school metal jump packs from way back in the day, and some resin-cast bits I picked up on eBay. All that remains is a single Rhino and all 4,000+ points will be complete!

Pictures from an exhibition - Tempus Fugitives Age of the Emperor 2012

Finally have all the pictures sorted out from our trip, and thought I'd share some of my experiences at the Age of the Emperor - Hammer of the Gods put on by the Tempus Fugitives at the beginning of March (and the impetus behind our recent trip across the pond).

 

I didn't end up getting too many good pictures of the actual games, as most of them were under a strict time limit and I didn't want to disrupt the flow. However, on some of the doubles games I had time to snap a couple pics. The three above are from a game with my Thousand Sons and Dave's Blood Angels vs. a combined force from the Adeptus Mechanicus. The forces of the Emperor were annihilated by the scions of the Omnissiah, but the game was a lot of fun!

  

A second doubles game pitted my Thousand Sons and Smudger's Imperial Fists against Craftworld and Dark Eldar. Unfortunately my heavy anti-armor tank battalion had little to contribute and the Imperial Fists were forced to carry out the majority of the slaughter of the foul Xenos.

  

We felt we were doing well, until we realized just how much remained in reserve, and a huge host of Dark Eldar crashed into the left flank. A truly bloodly battle resulted, with most of both sides being annihilated. Unfortunately, the Eldar were able to carry out their enigmatic goals and won the game.

  

Maelstrom Games , in addition to being a great store with an absolutely amazing gaming area, also has a small pub that served up some excellent food and delicious adult beverages. Now that's civilization! All of the Tempus Fugitives were incredibly nice, staggeringly funny and rather patient for having what were likely boorish Americans in their midst. Hah!

  

On the second day there was a point where the armies tapped for the Best Army competition were laid out for voting. I was honored with a spot in the finals, but the competition was on a level above what I'm capable of. The Space Wolves were simply amazing, The fellow playing them was a fantastic guy, we bantered back and forth all weekend regarding the rivalry between the Wolves and the Sons.

  

Some more shots of the Space Wolves, every model was just a work of art!

  

The Eldar Corsair army was simply gorgeous as well, though I never faced off against them over the course of the weekend. Must... Not... Do another Eldar army... Argh.

Unfortunately I didn't get any good close-ups of the Dark Eldar army, it was absolutely stunning - and terrifying on the table as I can personally attest. In one of the 1-on-1 1000 point games I was tabled by them in turn 3. It's a pleasure to be beaten though, when the armies look this nice!

  

Smudger's Imperial Fists were brilliant! Yellow is such a difficult color to do properly, and he just NAILED it. Nearly every model had hand-painted battle damage and all the little customizations were amazing.

  

Some more shots - I played several games alongside and against the Fists, you couldn't ask for a nicer guy. One of the 1000 point games we played against each other was hysterical - due to the adverse terrain effects, one of my units was slammed against a building on to separate turns, essentially slaying them. The Imperial Fist player claimed the building in the name of the Imperial Fists, and threatened to use it against me in future games! Heh.

  

Couple more - The red helmets really make the veterans pop on the tabletop, and they were terrifying in the game to boot! I loved the 2nd/3rd ed. Land Speeder, and his Achilles was a thing of beauty!

The campaign weekend was an absolute blast, and I had a chance to discuss the possibility of bringing some Heresy-Era gaming stateside in a semi-official capacity. More on that in the near future!

Back in the line of fire

Greetings and salutations, everyone! The dust has finally settled from the trip across the pond, there were mountains of work to plow through upon my return and I finally have a chance to post.

First off, the trip was spectacular! We had a blast, and probably inadvertently offended everyone we met (though I was on my best behaviour). There are definitely things I'd do differently schedule-and-venue wise, but all in all it was tremendous fun. As I get them sorted out, I'll put up some pictures of the trip, and the excellent campaign weekend run by the Tempus Fugitives. Let's just say my record for the trip was 0-7 (laughing all the way). To illustrate, here's a shot in mid loss taken at Warhammer World against the hilarious and incredibly friendly Jono and his terrifying World Eaters.

Now that I'm back, I have done a bit of hobby time in over the last couple weeks, in particular I've been working up something BIG!

 

While I was over there, I picked up a Warhound with some custom sculpting work. Cleaned it up a bit, and added a bit of extra detail here and there and it was ready for primer. The titan will be part of my upcoming Ad-Mech army, with the option of using it with my guard, so I decided to go with the loyalist Legio Metallica. The red and gold scheme will tie in nicely with the Ad-Mech, and it'll be a nice contrast to the dark blue of the Mordian 7th.

 

Got most of the base colors blocked in, though there's still quite a bit left to go. I'm planning on adding several banners to it once it's complete using the BoLS templates, but I need to work out the right scale to print them out. So far, so good, however!