Heresy Era Thousand Sons - Sorcerer Lord Sethep-Khet almost table ready!

One should always start off a project by doing one of the main HQ models, right? I couldn't help but continue on with Sethep-Khet over the last few evenings and he's almost table ready! Just needs a sealant pass but it's been rather chilly of late...

 

Picked out a ton of bling, and went with reasonably subdued reversed blue and white detailing on the robes - I think the model is busy enough without over-complicating the paint scheme. Rather pleased with how he's come along!

Next up, it's time to reinitialize the painting servitor, and get cracking on with the troops choices - not the most exciting part of the force, but it's good to get them out of the way early!

Adepticon 2017 - Pictures From An Exhibition, Part Two

Part two of the Adepticon coverage today, this time it's pictures of some games and some swag!

  

The games were all rather fun, so much so in fact that I didn't end up taking many pictures of them! The first day was the Heresy Friendly tournament, which was 2500 points a side - My opponents were unilaterally awesome, though the lists were rather fierce. First up was my Fists vs. a Salamanders force (as there was an odd number of Loyalists/Traitors) so we had a bit of a "training exercise". There was a massive scrum in the middle of the table with Vulkan and a mess of his bodyguards and Sigismund and his Templar Brethren and terminators. It was a bloodbath, but victory went to the Salamanders by the end.

The second game was against a beautifully dark and creepy Alpha Legion force that was full of infiltrators and jump troops, who threw down a ton of phosphex. Burn baby, burn! Another loss for the fists but they savaged the forces of Alpharius as well. In the end it was down to a single VP.

The last game of the friendly was against a cracking gentleman's Death Guard. Sigismund was particularly impressive this game, standing toe-to-toe with Mortarion for 5 full turns - in the end the game ground to a stalemate with a perfectly balanced draw. Not a loss, so I'll take it!

 

The next day saw the Fists take part in the Gomeiza Conflict, a vast narrative campaign that ran all weekend. I has mis-read the event description so while it also used the same 2500 point force, it turns out it was team games at 5000 points a side. My teammates and opponents were all fantastic, but the game size really made them a bit of a slog in my opinion. Each game took nearly 4 hours and in both games my force was wildly outclassed by superheavies and tidal waves of World Eaters (between the two games I literally faced off against 180 of Angron's kin, totally brutal). During the convention I'd mentioned to a couple folks that the Imperial Fists were for sale, and it turns out one of the folks I'd met was interested and bought them on the spot - Saved me the hassle of trying to get them home (and then sell them on ebay), and more or less ended up paying for the whole weekend. Huzzah!

The swag bag they handed out was amazing, with a vast amount of stuff including a huge box of Rune Wars (which was traded away as there was no good way for me to get it home). Very impressive!

Forge World was in attendance, but I managed to keep the purchases reasonably under control - A few of the event-only models, a couple things for the Thousand Sons, and a spare copy of the Rogue Trader reprint (to be given away soon, as the blog is rapidly approaching post #800)!

 

One of my opponents does custom painting/powder coating(?) as a job and had made up a bunch of really cool insulated mugs, and as I'd mentioned I was a Thousand Sons guy at heart he gave me one of them as a consolation prize for being tabled by his World Eaters. Awesome guy and a fun game, even though it was a massacre!

The folks that do Eagle Ordinary were in attendance in full cosplay mode, and were handing out some hysterical stuff they'd printed out including a coloring book and magazine.

Overall it was a fun weekend, though there were a few hiccups with the hotel that spoiled things ever so slightly (still trying to sort out some double-charging for rooms that is really leaving a bad taste in my mouth). I think I'd still attend Adepticon again next year, but I'm of the opinion that NOVA is a better-run event in a better locale overall, very much looking forward to that coming up later in the year!

Adepticon 2017 - Pictures From An Exhibition, Part One

Sorry for the radio silence there, but I've been on vacation in Chicago while attending Adepticon! Ah, a weekend among thousands of geeks - The fun! The Camraderie! The gamer funk...

As usual I took a ton of pictures, and as usual most of them didn't turn out particularly well but I thought I'd do a couple posts with the pics I did manage to salvage - Part one is a selection of lovely Heresy armies! There were another 10-15 that I either didn't get a change to photograph or took shoddy pics of, which is a shame - the level of artistry on display was truly fantastic overall!

  

Mechanicum, Raven Guard, Iron Warriors

  

More Mechanicum, Sons of Horus, Word Bearers

  

World Eaters, Salamanders, More Iron Warriors

  

Even More Mechanicum, Emperor's Children, Solar Auxila

 

Squats!

 

While I didn't get any good pics of it in progress, there was a HUUUUGE apocalypse game being played during the weekend, recreating the Battle of Helsreach. I don't normally go in for playing in massive games like that, but it was one heck of a spectacle when it was in full swing!

Next up will be a few pics from the games my Imperial Fists took part in, as well as a look at some goodies picked up at the con!

Heresy Era Thousand Sons - Iskandar Khayon, take two!

Quick hit this morning - I was re-listening to Talon of Horus in audiobook form while painting yesterday (pics of that progress shortly!), and thought it would be fun to take a quick break from painting and build a new version of Iskandar Khayon!

Taking a modeling cue from the previous version, I started with the new plastic Ahriman model as a basis, swapped out the staff for Kayon's force axe Saern, and carved out the space for an alternate head and backpack. His daemon-wolf Gyre got a slight size reduction, and this time around I'll be painting her black-furred - I'd missed the reference to her color on the first read-through, doh!

It could be fun to put together a diorama of the Rubric being incanted with Khayon and Ahriman confronting each other, after all I do have an Ahriman and an apparently unhealthy fixation on building sorcerers! Could be also be fun to do a command squad that includes Mekhari and Djedhor, the two Rubricae that accompany Khayon in the book. Djedhor is mentioned as being a standard bearer at one point, and perhaps I can find a reasonable counts-as use for Gyre in there somewhere as well...

Heresy Era Thousand Sons - The Dust Storm Approaches...

As this is my fourth go-around with the Thousand Sons, I wanted to take some time to come up with some further background fluff and theme for the army. I have always envisioned the forces as having a shared continuity, the first iteration way back in the Tempus Fugitives days was a Great Crusade force (pre-heresy, as it were), while the second and third were set just prior to, and just after the Razing of Prospero, with a few homebrew characters making an appearance in every force (The doughty Sergeant Hesyre being the obvious example). This time around I'm envisioning a late-heresy force, in the time immediately prior to the Rubric of Ahriman where the legion is beginning to unravel both figuratively and literally. Enter the Khamasiin, Warhost of the Sorcerer Lord Sethep-Khet!

Sethep-Khet is a new character in the annals of my force, being one of the devotees of the Pyrae cult and sub-altern to Khalophis during the destruction of Prospero. During the destruction of the cult temple, Sethep-Khet's legs were crushed by falling masonry and though dragged to safety by his brethren he refused to retire from the battlefield. Using telekinesis (though a Pyrae, most practitioners were capable of lesser feats from other disciplines) he held himself aloft through the remains of that dark day, making a fighting retreat to the center of the city where he and the other remnants of the legion were translocated to Sortiarius, the Planet of the Sorcerers. He refused bionic replacement limbs and instead relies on his powers to hover in stately grace - In the heat of battle however he bounds across the battlefield in a manner disquietingly similar to that of the flamer daemons that caper in the realm of the Great Eye. From the bridge of the battle barque Re-Setyu, Sethep-Khet now leads a warhost known as The Khamasiin, (being a Prosperine dialectic derivation of Khamsin, a dust/sand storm in the Gyptic and Nordafrik areas of Old Terra), Thousand Sons who have pledged their loyalty to the Warmaster. Just roughing in colors on him so far, to get a feel for the balance of white, gold and crimson. Gotta throw in a touch of blue here and there as well, it being Tzeentch's color after all!

The Khamasiin are a departure in style from the previous forces, as I wanted to really try something different - The last few armies have been very tank-heavy, so the obvious flipside of the coin is an Orbital Assault force! Ties in nicely with the whole duststorm motif to have them falling from the skies and soaring in on flyers and skimmers. Got the majority of the infantry basecoated, though there's still another 20-strong assault marine squad in the wings (pun!) that are awaiting a few more bits to arrive before they begin the build process. Itching to get cracking on these guys, but will finish off the Mechanicus elements on the painting deck first. Gives me impetus to get 'em done!

I'm going to focus the painting efforts on a 2500 point force to begin with, being the theoretical force I'll be taking to NOVA later in the year. Did a cut-down paining chart to help me visualize where things stand, what I still need to buy/build and keep me from haring off on other non-essential models for the force, as fun as they may be to paint!

That said, the intention is to have an army capable of other configurations beyond the Orbital Assault (which is a bit restrictive overall). Still keeping with the lighter elements, so no Land Raiders or Spartans this time - just a a few predator variants, and who am I kidding the army is going to have a Glaive or a Mastodon at some point, it's a foregone conclusion. Hah!

Heresy Era Mechanicum - Robots rolling through the manufactorum...

Real Life(tm) has been kicking my butt recently, but there was time to put brush to model here and there as a way to unwind, so I fired up the painting servitor and got cracking!

The Thallax got painted up to the "Off the factory floor" stage prior to waterslides and weathering, thinking some hieroglyphics on the offhand shoulder would be a good way to go! Went with the brush-on gloss on the faceplates to give them a nice shine, though the lighting is a little poor to get the full effect in these in-progress shots.

Quite enjoyed painting the Thallax, so the Vorax were the next on deck - keep that momentum going! Just the antiqued gold/brass and laid in the basecoat for the red so far, but already liking how they're shaping up!

Since three models don't really make for much of a batch, the Thanatar got the same treatment. He's a beast - definitely glad I left him separated at the waist to facilitate painting! Got a whole mess of Thousand Sons basecoated in red, so expect a tidal wave of the Sons of Magnus in short order - Really excited to get stuck in with 'em, something a little different in store for the army this time around...

Heresy Era Mechanicum - The Flesh Is Weak!

The fallible flesh components of the painting servitor succumbed to the touch of Nurgle so I did a half day today - Between sneezing fits managed to get several nearly-built models constructed and even start laying in a little paint on a few models!

First up is the heavy hitter of the Cybernetica force, the Thanatar. Armed with a fearsome Hellex Plasma Wave mortar and Mauler Bolt Cannons, it's just a beast! I expect it to take a ton of fire, so it gets the Paragon of Metal special rule, granting it some much needed extra survivability!

Next were some of the most challenging models in the Mechanicum line to build in my opinion, but also the one whose look I enjoy most of all - The Vorax! A worthy re-imagining of the old Crusader robot, I love the insectile look and think they'll tie in nicely with the scarab motif of the Thousand Sons they'll be fighting alongside!

Finally, a bit of paint! As a departure from the normal gunmetal skeletal structure, the various bots of the Zhao Arkkad Cybernetica will be getting an antiqued gold/bronze color, which when tied together with the red armor plates and black weapon housings should give them a nice complimentary color scheme to the Thousand Sons as well. Just laying in the basecoats for the reds to get a feel for what panels I want to do, and of course at some point they're all going to get a hit of my usual blue as a spot color - should really make 'em pop!

Heresy Era Thousand Sons - Just the base-ics...

Quick hit this week, major system upgrades at work over the weekend ate up a bunch of my time, but I did manage to do a little more build time for the Cybernetica (though nothing complete to snap a picture of), and did lay in the initial colors on the bases for a few of the upcoming skimmers to get a feel for the look:

Nothing too fancy, wanted something relatively neutral and medium-dark so the sandstone rubble would pop, and hopefully set off the crimson and gold of the models nicely. I'm thinking some tufts of dried grass may work well to give them just a little more visual interest - I think I'd better off avoiding my usual green mix though, want to keep an arid feel going for them. The bases are from Elrik's Hobbies - Link to the Egyptian Ruins bases!

In other exciting news, I got a little box of joy from Chessex from whom I'd ordered a mess of custom dice - Five different sets of 20, each bearing the crest of one the five cults of the Thousand Sons on the 6 face of the die. As I don't REALLY need 100 dice, I'm planning on bundling them up and handing them out to any fellow Thousand Sons players I come across at NOVA later on this year!

Heresy Era Mechanicum - Zhao Arkkad Legio Cybernetica begins!

Wait! Put down the pitchforks and torches, it's technically part of the Thousand Sons project, I swear!

One of the things that I rather liked in the book A Thousand Sons were the Legio Cybernetica robots embedded with psycho-reactive crystal matrices, allowing Khalophis to direct them on the battlefield. Turns out the folks at FW liked that idea as well and worked that aspect into the rules, and showed off some rather cool Castellax variants at the recent Heresy Weekender. They are going to be a must-buy as soon as they're released!

Of course, that just means I am going to have to do an entire army of allied Mechanicum, right? There is a method to the madness - At NOVA 2017 there's a 1500 point-per-person team event, and a friend of mine who is attending and I are doing a bit of a collaboration. He'll been helping me out with the airbrushing of the metallics, and I'll be doing all the traditional brushwork and modelling. On the up side, with the recent sale of the previous incarnation of the Thousand Sons I was able to add in pretty much all of the models for the force in the recent order - all that remains are the yet-to-be-released Castellax, which I sincerely hope will be made available in time for the event...

I did spend a little time assembling the two Thallax cohorts, I really dig these models and was looking forward to building 'em. Next up on deck is the Belisarius Cawl model, who I think will make for an excellent Archmagos Dominus. He's about half built at this point, but is all in sections to facilitate painting - managed to restrain myself from building it all only to find it becomes nigh-impossible to paint fully assembled!

When all is said and done the whole force will be 15 models, which should hopefully make it reasonably easy to build, paint and (above all) transport to the event!