Mordian 7th - 5th Platoon Rough Riders complete!

Happy Thanksgiving to those readers in the States today - among other things, I'm quite thankful for having the day off! Not having to go in to work at 6 in the morning, and having no other pressing demands (hooray!), I was able to finish off the Rough Riders this morning!

The Mordian 7th originally included an entire platoon of Rough Riders, let by Captain Hilts. While on extended recon patrol on Flotis III, the vast majority of the units horses were stolen (and presumably eaten) during a daring raid by Ork Kommandos. Captain Hilts led his men in a attempt to rendezvous with the rest of the regiment, afoot through Ork-held territory. Over two thirds of the unit were slain en-route by harassing attacks by Evil Sunz Speedfreeks, and Captain Hilts himself was savagely wounded after being set afire by an Ork Skorcha. Vowing to kill the Orks responsible and 'give them a taste of their own medicine', Captain Hilts requisitioned a number of bikes and several flamers, declaring he would forgo the stealth and range provided by riding horseback to the savagery and fire that he and his unit had experienced at the hands of the Orks. Captain Hilts generally hides his burned face behind a combination hood and rebreather, giving him a rather unsettling appearance. His hatred for Orks knows no bounds, though it's whispered among other units in the 7th that Hilts is every bit the savage now as any Ork, and that the 'breathing canisters' he uses contain not only oxygen, but Frenzon or some other combat drug..

I was worried that as all the bikes are identical, the whole unit would end up looking a bit monotonous, so I really tried to ensure the torso and arms for each model was significantly different. Overall I think it gives the unit a sense of motion and vibrancy.

The unit was designed such that it could be used as two 5-man units. The first half includes the standard lance-armed models and a sergeant...

...while the other half includes all the specialty models. A pair of flamers gives the unit a bit more anti-horde, while the other two models simply count as lance-armed guardsmen (well, discarding the remains of a lance in the case of the fellow on the far right). The masked man in the middle of the picture represents Captain Hilts, with his various tanks of combat drugs and an Ork Choppa. On the tabletop I plan to use him as a counts-as Mogul Kamir.

Another unit complete, and the Mordian 7th Painting Chart is turning green! Not looking forward to tackling the 35 infantry models in the 1st platoon, though. Oof.

Mordian 7th - 5th Platoon Rough Riders in progress

With a bit of a holiday weekend ahead I'm planning on finishing off the unit of Rough Riders that I pulled out for the Cavember contest that Col. Gravis is holding. It's been crazy with work of late, so I've only managed to block in the basic colors thus far - but hey, a little progress is better than no progress at all!

Now that there's a bit of paint on, it's easier to point out what all is in the unit. For special weapons, I went with a pair of flamers, and added enough lance-armed models to drive home the idea that the unit is armed with Hunting Lances. The unit is led by a counts-as Mogul Kamir, but I have included a chainsword-armed model as well to act as a normal sergeant for smaller games. The unit also includes a standard, though much like the one in the veterans squad, it's just there for flavor and has no in-game effect. In the original Mordian 7th, there was an entire platoon of Rough Riders, including a mounted command squad, so in this incarnation I'm going with these are the last remnants of the platoon, and one of the men has managed to keep the standard aloft throughout their winnowing.

With a couple days off coming up, I'm quite confident that I'll be able to get them done in time for the deadline!

Cavember Painting Contest Expanded!

Col. Gravis is having a painting contest centering around Rough Riders based on a post from the excellent Col. Ackland regarding what he's calling Cavember - originally it was centered around Praetorian Rough Riders in particular, as Col. Gravis makes some spectacular kits for the army. I'm a huge fan of both the Praetorians and Rough Riders in general, so I have been excited to see the various renditions folks come up with. Recently however, he's opened the contest up to Rough Riders of any regiment which has given me some impetus to get a little more work done on my own Mordian 7th!

I've included a unit of Rough Riders in every incarnation of the glorious 7th that I've done all the way back to the RT era. I started off using the original Imperial Guard Rough Riders on horseback, though in recent years I've gone for a Mechanized Rough Rider on motorbikes instead. The unit above was from my 3rd-4th edition days, and were made from a combination of the old Dark Eldar jetbikes and various bits taken from the Imperial Guard Heavy Weapons sprues. The original how-to was on the GW site yoinks ago in the "Dok Butcha's Konvershun Klinic" articles they used to do. I posted a walk-through on their construction a while back here as well...

My previous version in 5th edition utilized the fantastic bikes available from Ramshackle Games and the unit I'm going to be painting up is built using much the same process as those shown above.

At the moment they're just assembled and primered, so they aren't all that photogenic thus far. With the contest just being opened up to a wider audience I've got my work cut out for me - only 12 days to go before the deadline, and with a full 10-strong unit I'd better get cracking!

Battle Report - Dark Eldar vs. Blood Angels

Haven't had a lot of hobby time of late, and as such I haven't had much in the way of interesting pictures to share. Time to remedy that with a whole MESS of pictures from a test game a friend of mine and I played in preparation for the Tempus Fugitives event coming up in March!

Skyhook Playtest Series, Game 1: Blood Angels vs. Dark Eldar - 1000 points, Annihilation

After collecting PalpaDave, he laid out his force:

The army stayed there for longer than I expected!

DEPLOYMENT

We went with the standard halved table setup and the Annihilation type, and rolled off. Dave won the roll and the Blood Angels chose to go second.

The Dark Eldar deployed the Venom and Jetbikes on the left flank:

While the Raider and Hellions took up station in the middle of the DE deployment zone:

The Blood Angels deployed... Nothing! As his entire force was capable of Deep Strike, that ended the segment.

TURN ONE

The Dark Eldar don't move.

The Blood Angels cannot yet arrive.

TURN TWO

The Dark Eldar don't move.

...A tumbleweed rolls by.

With a roar, the two Blood Angel assault squads arrive, and the Dark Eldar were so dismissive of the event at this point that I apparently failed to take a picture of it. The two squads arrive roughly a quarter of the way in from each short table edge, roughly at the centerline of the table.

The foolish Mon-keigh deployed outside their effective weapons range and turn two ends. Elapsed time from the end of deployment: about three minutes.

TURN THREE

The Dark Eldar pounce on the Assault squad on the left flank, while the Raider and Hellions also swing out to the left to assist. A volley of splinter weapons accounted for a fair number of assault marines, though not enough to break their resolve.

This left the second assault squad rather far out of position, though being jump infantry the dark kin knew they wouldn't be out of the action for long.

The Blood Angels responded by destroying the Venom with a volley of Melta fire. The Crimson King and his unit dismissively rode out the blast, and accepted the charge of the assault marines. A furious melee ensued, with the preternaturally fast Archon laying out a number of marines with his Agonizer. The Blood Angels retaliation slew the Trueborn, leaving only the Crimson King and his Haemunculus,

On the right flank, the second Assault squad bounded forward, and turn three drew to a close.

TURN FOUR

The Raider and Hellions move in to assist the Crimson King while the Reaver jetbikes arrow off to attack Captain Furioso, and with contemtuous ease, the Crimson King slaughters a further four marines, with their return attacks nullified by a combination of eldritch techno sorcery and frightful bio-engineering. The Blood Angels grimly fight on.

In the Blood Angels phase however, the tables suddenly turned! A lucky strike by Perada was not intercepted by the Crimson King's shadowfield, and he was skeyered by the Blood Angel's relic blade.

At the same time, it became apparent that the Reavers had sorely misjudged the effective threat range of Captain Furioso. Fully half the squad was snatched from the air and crushed into scrap by the Captain's power fists, and his ceramite battle plate and martial skill was proof against the vile Xenos' counterattack.

The second Assault squad continued its advance, and turn four came to an end.

TURN FIVE

The Haemonculus' lashed out with his Huskblade and the true nature of the Dark Eldar's reality-bending technology became apparent:

...And from another angle.

Unfortunately the sole hit was taken by the remaining assault marine, leaving Perada unharmed. The Haemonculus was wounded in the melee, but wasn't out of the fight yet!

The Reavers proved completly ineffectual and were destroyed with contemptuous ease by Captain Furioso.

The Hellions and Kabalite warriors aboard the Raider unleased a flurry of shots from their splinter Weaponry, but only managed a bare handful of casualties. The Hellions arrogantly assaulted the second squad, but while they were able to account for a number of the marines they were badly mauled by the marines' retaliation. The sole survivor peeled off, easily outrunning the sweeping advance.

In the Blood Angels phase, the duel continued between Perada and the Haemonculus, with neither side able to gain the upper hand. Captain Furioso was moving in to support however...

The second Assault squad shot the Raider out of the sky, the Dark Eldar dismounting and landing lightly on their feet. With that, turn five drew to a close.

We rolled to see if there would be further turns, but the dice said there was not, and the game ended. We tallied up the Victory Points and the Blood Angels won, 32 to 13.

The battle was really quick and quite a lot of fun. Both armies were designed to avoid the Unstable Footing rules, so at any given time, the Dark Eldar were only rolling two or three dice for the archon and haemonculus at the beginning of a couple turns. The Kabalite Warriors would have had to roll had there been a turn six. Overall, a very enjoyable experience - a nice quick 1000 point game was just the thing to take the edge off a challenging stretch at work!

Heresy Era Thousand Sons - Motor Pool Painting In Progress

As I'd just painted a mess of guard infantry I thought it was time to work on some vehicles. There are a number of Thousand Sons transports and whatnot that have been languishing in various states of disarray, so I settled in to get all of them brought up to the same level of painting.

First up is the group shot. Quite a few vehicles being batch painted at once, but the heavy lifting (the reds) is done, so now it's just a matter of doing all the detail work. Still need to add the Bone and White, but after that they'll be nearly complete!

A pair of Dreadclaw-styled drop pods for the infantry, based on the excellent tutorial by Old School Terminator over at Dark Future Games. The build on these is super simple, and ends up being a rather passable adaptation of the FW variant. ...And half the cost!

I also built two more Rhino chassis using the excellent add-on kit from Machinator over at Blood and Skulls Industry. Unlike the previous Rhino, I wanted to allow for some armament swaps, so I left the top hatches separate, and added some magnetized havok missile launchers (allowed in the TF Age of the Emperor codex I'm using).

 

I wanted to add a Whirlwind to the force (as the upcoming event is set early in the heresy and will pit the still-all-loyalist Marines against a myriad of foes), and went with an old-school approach based on an old White Dwarf set of instructions to build a Whirlwind Launcher out of some plasticard and a pair of 40mm bases. Some decorations and a missile launch in progress, and it turned out pretty decent!

 

The second Rhino will likely serve as a transport, but I included another ringed top hatch for use in the future (or as a turret ring for the previously built Predator, for those times I don't wish to include side sponsons).

All in all, a fair bit of forward progress. Once these are done, all that remains are a further 20 infantry, a pair of Contemptor Dreadnoughts and Magnus the Red himself!

Heresy Era Thousand Sons - The March To Godhammer

The fine folks over at the Tempus Fugitives have released the initial mission pack for the campaign weekend in March - "Hammer of the Gods". Set on the recently-rediscovered Machine World of Godhammer, several factions will battle for supremacy over the planet. The weekend will consist of a number of battles both on the surface, and on/around the series of space elevators known as Skyhooks, with the results of the battles affecting the outcome of subsequent battles (and as I understand it, subsequent campaign weekends set on the same planet).

That said, I pulled all the Thousand Sons out to see exactly where things stand, and decide what I wanted to take for the campaign weekend. I was pleased to note that I'm well past the half-way point on getting the army painted!

 

The first mission outlined in the campaign pack is the "Skyhook" mission, in which small forces (1000pts) vie for control of the space elevators, which will allow for easier deployment of the ground assault force missions subsequently. There are some restrictions to the army choices however:

• Only units entering play via Deep Strike may be held in reserve. 
• The following units may be used in a Skyhook battle without any additional rules – Jetbikes; Jump Infantry; Jet Infantry; Beasts; Skimmers 
• The following units may be used in a Skyhook battle but suffer from the ‘unstable footing’ special rule – Infantry; Heavy Infantry; Bike Infantry; Cavalry; Monstrous Creatures; Walkers.
• Your Skyhook army may NOT include flyers, units with Structure points, Gargantuan Creatures or any Apocalypse Formations. Vehicles detailed only in Forge World's Imperial Armour publications may be used. If a vehicle is described in more than one publication the most recent version must be used.
• UNSTABLE FOOTING: Models affected by this rule must take a Dangerous Terrain test at the start of each turn. Wounds suffered cause Instant Death. This represents the rapidly moving and unstable platform on which they are fighting slipping from beneath them and pitching them headlong over the edge.

Unfortunately, my Thousand Sons are more of a heavy assault force, with most units either not allowed for use in the Skyhook game (Tanks primarily), or subject to the Unstable Footing rule. That said, my initial run at a thousand point list that was as little affected by Unstable Footing ended up pretty thin:

I'm not 100% sold on this list - while it utilized the Assault Vets and Jetbikes, it does feel a bit too "all the eggs in one basket" for my tastes, so I may cut down on the Vets a bit and add in some regular Tactical marines to give the list some flexibility (at the risk of more models plummeting to their doom each round).

The second mission type is "Invasion Team Battles" wherein two players join forces, each bringing 2000 points following the standard FOC, though one player on the team may include a single Superheavy. As I have a Falchion (legion Shadowsword) in the works, I'm hoping I can find a suitable partner for this portion of the event, though I'll be making a second list sans Superheavy. In the meantime, the list looks like this:

Alternately, instead of playing a doubles game, one of the options is to take a single 4000 point army including a single superheavy, so I took a pencil to it and came up with a first cut at the Big List:

Pretty much uses up every model that I've build for the Thousand Sons so far, with the exception of Magnus the Red, and a pair of Contemptor Dreadnoughts. I'm waiting to find out what the FOC restrictions are for the 4000 point option however. If it's designed such that I need to essentially build two separate 2000 point armies I won't be able to do it as I don't have the mandatory 4 Troops choices. I could get around it by building another ten Tactical marines and running them as four separate ten man squads, but I'm hoping to avoid buying and building any more models for the army. On the other hand, it may behoove me to just focus on doing the 2000 point game - that way there's less that I need to finish painting, as well as fewer models to have to package and send across the ocean risking damage or loss...

Given the above 4000 point list as the options from which I may pick and choose for the Skyhook or Invasion Team missions, I'd be happy to receive any suggestions about alternate army selections for those missions!

Mordian 7th Regiment - Veterans painted, advisors rebased

It's been crazy busy at work of late, but I did manage to find a little time to polish off the Veteran squads.

2nd Platoon, 1st Squad - The heavy infantry killers, armed with a trio of plasma guns, a plasma pistol and poweraxe-toting sergeant, and the 2nd platoon standard. It has no in-game effect, just a decorative addition.

2nd Platoon, 2nd Squad - The Anti-tank squad, armed with three melta gunss, a sergeant with a power fist and the squad demolitions upgrade.

While I was about it, I started rebasing the older models that are being folded into the new army. In this case the advisers - I decided the regimental command staff seconded to D company would wear red armor to help them stand out a bit. There's a fair number of models from the older version of the army that will be getting rebased. Luckily it's a simple matter of repainting them from grey to earth tones and adding a bit of static grass. Easy peasy!