Heresy Era Thousand Sons - Complete!

Following the Las Vegas Open, I took some time to lay out all the Thousand Sons and get one final family photo before they go up on the auction block to help fund the next project!

Starting off we have the whole group laid out for the big picture! Was pretty fun to see 'em all laid out at the same time. I have a tendency to pack the units away in battlefoam trays as soon as they're done, so I rarely get a sense of what they all look like at once.

Characters aplenty! From left to right, Siege Breaker Megiddo, Apothecary Thothmes, Malagor Auramagma, the Primarch Magnus the Red, Assault Captain Besenmut, Khalophis and Ankhu Anen. For when you absolutely, positively need to roll ALL the psychic dice you can get your hands on!

In the Elites slots we have Terminator Squad Phosis...

...And Veteran Squad Khalmekt.

Fulfilling the Troops slots are the obligatory 20-man tactical squad Hesyr. Poor sergeant Hesyr is suffering a bit of the flesh change!

Assault squad Mekata is generally joined by Captain Besenmut, and their mobility has helped shore up weak spots in the Thousand Sons line on several occasions.

Breacher siege squad Pasht never actually saw combat, but I did like how they turned out.

Tactical support squad Jafari and their plasma guns. Invariably they were more of a danger to themselves than others!

In the Fast Attack slots, Javelin Speeder Squadron Qaa always performed admirably, harrying the flanks of their opponents and putting lascannon fire on the exposed sides and rear of many an enemy tank.

Seeker squad Tolbek and their combi plasmas made for a surprisingly effective hunter/killer team, and killed a number of the enemy leadership.

Heavy support squad Khalid's missile launchers suffered somewhat in the shift to 7th edition, but it's hard to argue with 10 krak missiles (or frag when they went up against horde armies)!

Whirlwind Scorpius Haathor's Breath has an excellent kill tally of enemy marines, while the Predator Executioner Detachment Ju Amun consistently punched well over their weight class. I will absolutely be including a pair of plasmacutioners in the next legion force, of that there is no doubt!

...And finally the big bruiser of the army, the Spartan Assault Tank. Can't go wrong with one of these beasts!


I had an absolute blast building and painting this army, but the Heresy bug hasn't left me yet! While I still have a significant Mechanicum army in the wings, the thought of painting more red doesn't much appeal at the moment so I'm thinking it may be time to revisit the Alpha Legion idea I was kicking around a while back. Been re-listening to Legion again of late, and scribbling down ideas and combing the web for appropriate bits and kits to work up some Geno Five-Two to go along with 'em!

Ever onward to the next project!

Pictures from the Las Vegas Open Heresy tournament!

Made it back from the LVO and one again realized that I really ought to take a monopod with me - I just don't have steady hands and a vast majority of the pics I'd snapped were blurry messes. There were a few worth salvaging though!

The Heresy event was a blast, ended up getting a chance to meet a number of the Heresy 30k forumites that I've gotten to know online over the last few years, as well as a few fellow bloggers. Good times! In between the first and second game, they had people lay out their armies, a selection of which may be found below:

Imperial Fists/Knights

Sons of Horus

Dark Mechanicus

Imperial Fists/Knights

Another Thousand Sons player!

Mechanicum

Night Lords

Word Bearers/Daemons

Knights

My first game was up against one of the Imperial Fists/Knights groups and due to a hysterical bout of poor saving throws and multiple deep strike mishaps, I was essentially tabled by turn two.

Second game was up against a lovely Raven Guard army (sadly the army shot I took was a blurred mess). Massive back and forth, he'd held a lot of his army in reserve and I had deployed almost everything so I'd mauled him pretty bad in the first half, but a pair of Venators and a Fire Raptor got their revenge in the back half of the game.

The center of the table ended up being a swirling melee that lasted for four turns, with units from his side and mine crashing in to reinforce the combat - my assault squad got bogged down in a twenty-man tac squad, who where then backed up by a second twenty man squad.

The Praetor just wouldn't die, buying the terminators enough time to then back him up. Very bloody!

Had an absolute blast, and will definitely be attending again next year!

Heresy Era Mechanicum - Vorax Maniple Painted

Well unfortunately Real Life(tm) has been taking up far more of my time than I like, but I did manage to get a little hobby time in over the last few days and knocked out the Vorax maniple I'd ordered ages ago!

I absolutely love the update to the old Crusader pattern robot design FW has done, though the kits proved to be a major pain in the tuchus to assemble - tons of hot water bending for the various cables and ammo feeds, and even with what I thought was gentle manipulation, I still managed to snap one of them (and fixing that was a joy let me tell you).

Same basic paint scheme as the rest of the force - blue power weapons/cables, roman numerals on the right and a little cog-tooth decoration on the left, glossy black eyes and we're good to go! From what I'm reading they're apparently a little underwhelming on the tabletop, but it's Rule of Cool all the way for me so they'll definitely show up in my lists in the future!

Las Vegas Open, and musings on the future

The Las Vegas Open is coming up in 10 days and I just packed up the army for the trip - Here's hoping they survive the passage through the warp. Always a little dicey. For posterity's sake I snapped a quick pic of 'em all laid out:

Not a particularly hardcore army, it's got the standard 20-man tac squad of which any self-respecting heresy army ought to have at least one, and a spectacularly overcosted assault squad for the second troops choice. The cheap-as-chips terminator squad has died to a man foot-slogging in my last few games, but I'm hoping the new Spartan will help get them where they're most useful. The pair of Plasmacutioners have punched far above their weight class in the past, and the Scorpius is just hell on power-armoured troops. A trio of Javelins add some more much-needed anti-tank firepower, and generally harass backfield troops and emplacements. That said, I fully expect to go 0-and-3, laughing all the way! Win or lose, it's all part of TzeentchThe Primordial Creator's grand plan. Hah!

Since FW has yet to publish rules for the Thousand Sons, for the purposes of the LVO they'll be using the Word Bearers legion rules (as suggested on the LVO rules page), which enables any character to take the Burning Lore upgrade granting them psychic master level 1 which I feel is fluffy for the KSons, and the rules for Lorgar Transfigured makes for a passable Magus analog if you squint a bit. I'd kicked around the idea of including some summoned daemons and/or a unit of Flesh Changed (using the Gal Vorbak) rules, but wanted to keep it simple - just using the basic Word Bearers legion rules and restrictions.

While I was putting the LVO painting chart together, I realized that at this point I've painted every single Thousand Sons model I had planned for (and a few more besides). It actually came as a bit of a shock as I went through the units and turned 'em green! This bring me around to the earlier comment about FW not doing rules for them - one of the tidbits of news that came out of the recent Heresy Weekender was that the Prospero book has been delayed again, and isn't likely to be released until 2016. That being the case, I think when I get back from the LVO it's time to put this iteration of the army up on the auction block and use the funds to build an army that is currently being supported and I've been pondering what that's going to be. Let's be perfectly honest though, I think we all know that when FW does finally get around to doing the sons of Magnus, I'm going to be diving right back into my favorite legion! While the 4,000 points of marines will be going on the block, I'm planning to hold on to the Spireguard, they'll be going into deep storage in the Closet of Doom and deployed again with the 3rd iteration of the army...

So what to do for the next project? I was absolutely blown away by some of the new sculpts and concepts they've shown for the Mechanicum (Ordinatus? Oh my yes.), so they're most likely to be the next focus of my attention. I do still have the Geno Five-Two with Alpha Legion allies idea bubbling around in my head as well. The current SA rules don't really lend themselves well to the Geno, though I am interested to see what the upcoming Word Bearers/Ultramarines book has in regards to militia units (as it's rumored to contain). I've also been listening to The First Heretic recently, so the idea of doing a Word Bearers army has some appeal as well... So many choices!

Masque of the Dance Without End - Troupe painted!

Managed to get in a fair bit of brush time this weekend, and tore into the new Harlequin troupe boxes that I'd ordered up from my FLGS. I've been feeling pretty burned out on the samey-same paint scheme I've been working with on the Thousand Sons of late, lets just say I don't feel so monochromatic now!

I really wanted to go with a riot of colors on 'em, so I picked out six (red, yellow, green, blue, purple and white) and just started painting areas at random, one color at a time. Surprisingly time consuming compared to the usual batch painting method, as I found I was continually having to backtrack and touch up colors here and there.

One all the main colors were on, certain models got lozenges and polka dots to clown 'em up a bit more. I think I may need to add polka dots to a few more models just to jazz 'em up a touch more, but that's for another day - I was starting to get chromatic whiplash working on them! Hah!

Definitely a fun little project!

Masque of the Dance Without End - Or, don't you have too many projects already?

The upcoming release of the new Harlequins has me rather excited - they look like they'll be a blast to paint! Got a couple Troupe boxes on order along with the new Solitaire and have been poring through the old compendium for inspiration. That led me to an old pic, suitably demotivatored:

...It's not crazy to consider spending $130 on a Proteus Land Raider for a joke paint scheme, right? Hah!

In other news, I've finished off all of the Thousand Sons I'm planning on taking to the Las Vegas Open coming up in a few weeks, and following the work on the Shadowsword recently I was a little burned out on painting crimson and gold. As a quick palate cleanser (or should I say palette cleanser, har!), I'm taking a run at a few Malifaux minis I'd picked up at Feast of Blades last year. ...Heresy for sure!

Still a ways to go with 'em of course, but I'm pretty happy with them so far!