a blog about the good things in life. Art, Painting, 40k, 30k, horus heresy and wargaming in general. Welcome you beautiful you!
There we go. The killteam terrain is now finished or at least its good enough to put on the table :) .
This week I plan on getting my first game of killteam on the way and inte following week Titanicus should have arrived :D .
So, between wedding planning for my friend and every day life I managed to start painting the killteam terrain.
Aming to finish this quiet quickly.
So this is were I will pause the army. There is still a lot I would like to do but there is to many projects I want to start working on.
Everthing is painted to an ok standard and everything have been based.
I still want to add more hazard stripes, make all bases more coherent, add highlights and fix details. But the army is far enough to put on the table.
Time to move on to the next project for a while.
So next up on my painting table is an epic army!
Back when I first started playing 40k there was this other game that was realest. Epic 40k was the name and as a kid I dreamed of assembling my own epic army and play battles like in all the 40k artwork.
But back then as a young lad I could never find the money to start a second game system.
So some 20 years later I find my self in a position to actually start playing this small large scale war game.
A month or so ago one guy started to talk about epic in my local gaming group. He had some epic models and wanted to start playing. Some other guys joined in and now they have been playing a few times.
Added to this there have been talk about adding epic to the venue of some of the Horus Heresy events here in Sweden.
So with all that going on I could not resist any longer.
I went out hunting for my very own epic army.
And now it have arrived at my doorstep.
I will of course paint them up as iron Warriors (what else is there) but I will run them as normal space marines. And the fact that one of my friends will be making an imperial guard army with focus on tanks, I am certain well will see a Horus Heresy, Tallarn battle report :D .
Time to start painting!
This will be sooo epic ;) .
Finally done with these guys. I felt like I hit the wall there for a moment and it seemed like I would never finish them. But today is the day when they stand ready. I still need to add the chain axes but I feel I can have a small celebration before they are 100% done :) .
This time I tried “blood by the blood god” from GW to make the blood effect. Simply loading a toothbrush with some paint and “shower” the models in blood. Afterward going over the splatter with a brush and fixing blobs and so on. I quite like the finish. Easy to do and nice end result.
So last weekend I attend the new Swedish 30k event, AJAX.
I had a blast comanding my “iron cybernetics”.
I played 5 games in total. I won 1, lost 3 and tied 1.
Sadly the result don’t reflect all the battles.
Two games of the three that I lost was extremely close and was literally determined by the final dice roll. Some really epic moments took place and over all I am extremely pleased with how the army performed.
Some highlights was when my havocs striped 11 hull points from a glaive turn one and finish it turn two. Or when my leviathan singlehanded walked through half of an alpha legion army. Or why not when my castellax held the line when 20 assault marines and a veteran squad stormed my fortifications.
I am very tempted to make some small modifications to the list but keep the core and attend more events, using this theme.
I were so into the games that I over the course of the weekend almost didn’t take any pictures. But I got some highlights and permission from others to post some of there’s.
I meet so many nice people and saw so many great looking armies. I would like to thank the organizers and everyone I meet. I had a great time!
You can see even more pictures at our Facebook page and on our website.
https://m.facebook.com/groups/1679109199066880
Everything is ready for the “AJAX” event this weekend in Alvesta, Sweden. 3500p of “Iron Cybernetica”, lead by Kyr Vhalen. Small but elite force. Wish me luck. Iron within, iron without!
Here we have daddy’s new toy. Love the look of this tank. Can’t wait to put this beast on the gaming table.
The first 10 out of 20 is here by done :) . Nice and bloody as is expected.
However, I need to get some chain axes in order to fully complete them. Plan is to make an forge world order in the near future.
Quick and dirty update on my tactical squad. There is vaccination time for me, and that might sound like I would have a lot of spare time on my hands. Quite the opposite is true. But I do manage to get some hobby done between family time and house stuff.
So, I am continuing my little world eaters update. This time I have replaced the old plasma conversion with something that is a little more proper.
To be honest, there was nothing wrong with the old conversion. But still it bothered me that I had converted the plasma executioners from 40k plasma blasters instead of making the gun from actuall plasma executioners.
A shout out to my friend Björn that provided the guns.
A very small update. Well, small for the blog but not for the army.
Once again the butchers nails is singing and reinforcements is added to my eaters of worlds. Beside adding some chain axes and replacing some 3ed party jump packs. I am also adding 20 more tacticals to the force.
On top of this I have got my hands on something special. But I think that deserves its own update once it is finished.
I really like where this army is headed. 60 infantrymen charging forward, supported by some big and heavy guns at the back. It might not be the most effective way to, foot slog most of the army up the battle field. But it will look epic :D .
so I am tinkering with a little of everything at the moment.
I think it is time to do the last dash to the finish line.
For almost a year I have been going through my 4th legion and updating both color scheme and basing.
I only have a couple of units left now, I can see the light in the end of the tunnel, time to complete what I started.
Once every unit have been updated I will add new pictures of the whole grand army.
Really looking forward to check this one on my to-do list :) .
There is a funny thing about my word bearers. I keep on adding units to the army, making plans and write lists, but I never seem to get around to play them.
I can get so excited about playing them but at the last minute I change my mind, army and setup. It starts to get a little weird :) .
Anyway, here is yet another unit for my bearers of the word. Need to book a game with them and stick to it :) .
One more word bearers update. I got bitten by the Lorgar bug ;) .
For anyone new to my blog the two different color schemes in my latest blog posts might look strange. In this case we have the darkest and the brightest examples of my army...the same army.
There is a reason for this and it is deliberate. When I was about to start this army I did what most do, I scavenged the internet for inspiration. And in my quest I found a forgotten treasure. Forgotten by me that is. The picture of John Blanche’s word bearers from the 2th edition chaos codex. I remember how I used to look at that picture for hours.
I never intended to copy his style but instead be inspired to do something similar but with my own twist. The army I am currently building is the result of this.
Every unit is painted up slightly different from one unit to the next.
It is a lot of fun and in my humble opinion, it looks cool and different on the table top :) .
Finally I have something to post here. It might be easy to assume that my hobby progress have been standing still since last update date. But that is not the case. However, doing things like adding a chain axe here, and doing some highlights there, don’t make for such good blog content.
I have also been trying out some lists and been playing some games.
World eaters vs night lords. World eaters vs iron hands. And of course my brethren of steel list vs iron hands. Three very fun games.
So fun in fact that I don’t know what army I will take for AJAX. If you haven’t heard about it, go check it out:
I am leaning forward world eaters or word bearers at the moment. My idea is to try a new word bearers list next week and after that try to decide what list and army to take.
this lead me to this update. A tactical support squad with melta guns. Ironically this unit will not feature in the list for next week. But I wanted to add something for the army so why not some cool dudes with volcanoes on a stick :) .
Yes, I am slowly starting to understand that I have an obsession. No matter what legion I build I am unable to leave my robots on the sideline.
I more or less, always bring one or more units of castellax. I just can’t help myself I love these murder robots to much to not include them . So, even if world eaters might be more about axe to face, I gave my legion a pinch of high tech robo-love.
Just a small update this week. Been hit by the “man flue” (hope I survive this).
There is still some time before Ajax but I want to get ready in time.
plan is to bring an variation of the Bretheren of Steel list. It is easy to bring, easy to set up and fun to play.
For that list I will be rocking a defense line. Not much to look at, at the moment but here goes :) .
Between work and family life there have not been much time for hobby this week. But I managed to do something hobby related.
In July my Horus Heresy club will be hosting it’s own event.
If you have the possibility I would strongly suggest you to sign up.
The artwork and logo is made by yours truly.
Hope to see you there!
I would like to try to add a little more content to my blog. And with more i guess I mean different, the flow I have here now feels like a good tempo for me to maintain. But it would be fun to add more things then just painting progress.
To start it all of I would like to share an army concept I have been tinkering with for some time now.
Background:
The first legion I started with when I took my first baby steps in horus heresy was Iron Warriors. Over the years I have branched out in all sorts of directions, and have a good few legions under my belt. But iron warriors have always been closest to my heart and I consider it to be my primary legion.
I love everything about the 4th legion but it was something that did catch my eyes early on and that trump most things with other legions. A small seed was planted and over time have slowly grown to a solid idea and a practical concept.
With Iron warriors there are two sides it seems. The most obvious is the trench warfare side. Attrition tactics with tons of infantry and huge guns supporting the slow and bloody assault. Cold and calculating bombardment close to the advancing front. Crush your enemy with any means and to any price possible.
But there is another side as well. This side is not fleshed out in the same way. You can find hints and mentions in codexes, HH black books and Black library books. But no full story’s or solid information. This side is the close ties iron warriors have with mechanicum.
Lore:
Throughout the Horus heresy story line, the Iron Warriors links to mechanicum are only mentioned, hinted at or suggested. How I first came to ask the question why Iron Warriors and mechanicum, was when I looked at the allied matrix in one of the 30k army lists. Iron Warriors and mechanicum is battle brothers and makes perfect match if combined. Now in 40K the links is not as hidden as in 30K. Iron Warriors are for the most part responsible for the daemon engines of the chaos faction. Story goes that Iron Warrior warsmiths built in daemons in huge machines and robot chassis so they could harness the destructive power and get something that they could control, rater then having the unbound power of the chaos gods create havoc on the field of battle. With this in mind it is clear that the warsmiths of the 4th are very skilled in all things considering engineering.
This is also confirmed thanks to the story line of Perturabo. Perturabos skills in tactics and warfare are only matched when it comes to engineering. And as the primarch for the Iron warriors he has passed this down to his sons.
Mentions about some of the warsmiths being in some cases even more knowledgeable about mechanicum machineries then the most skillful Magos Dominus also fuels the fire.
There are of Corse written indications of this as well. One of the best I have found is in HH book 3.
With this little text we get both some background and a name “The Brethren of steel”. The multitude of interpretation you can make out of this text is fascinating. And it shakes up more questions than it answers. I consider this little text box to be excellent in all its simplicity. Pure gold to be honest.
There are also loads of other mentions and hints here and there about the mechanicum ties, but the text box above is all I needed to take this concept to the next level. For me, it meant that I now had a theme and a name, and that is plenty.
Army:
When book6 came out we got a lot of new cool things to play with. For me two things stood out as the most exciting. One rite of war and one consul.
The rite of war “Brethren of iron” seemed like it could be another hint or bread crumb left to put together with the rest of my “research”. But other than the name, there don’t seem to be any real connection to the “breather of steel”. However, it provides rules to put together a themed list based around the story’s and hints about the brethren of steel.
The Praevian consul also made it easier for anyone that wanted to add some mechanicum flavor to their legion. Even an Iron warrior special character called Nârik Dreygur was introduced. As he is a Praevian and the only Praevian special character so far, gave me even more reason to continue and make an army list based around “The brethren of steel”.
But the final nail in this coffin came when the iron circle was introduced. Once Iron warriors got their own murder robots there was no stopping this concept from happening.
Making a list however was not as easy as I first thought. There are some criteria I wanted to follow in making this list.
1. Use the rite of war brethren of iron.
2. Have a fluffy list. This means that is not just enough to have a bunch of mechenaicum units in an iron warrior army list. The army needed to feel and operate like an iron warrior army. Gun heavy, gun line, with a lot of legion specific units.
3. It had to makes sense to take this rite of war. If you would take an iron warrior army and not including any rites of war. I would be able to get 4 mechanicum units in the list. If I took 2 Praevians I had 2 units of castellax or vorax. With a cortex controller given by the Praevians I could take yet one more castellax unit in heavy support. And including a unit of iron circle I would end up with 4 mechanicum units. This meant that if “Brethren of iron” rite of war would make any sense I needed to take at least 5 units of mechanicum stuff. And to make it even more worthwhile I needed to fill up the heavy support slots with actual heavy support units, like big guns.
4. The list needs to be 3000p
5. Every unit needs to have a purpose. I refuse to include units only because it is the required taxes that needed to be paid.
6. I will not compromise on toys. Castellax should always have their targeting arrays. And other units need to get whatever gear they can buy to make them more effective in there. particular battle role.
So, this was not “easy peasy lemon squeezy”. Mechanicum units cost a lot of points. The fact that I also need 3 HQs and 2 compulsory troop choices made things even harder to shoe horn in to a list.
I gave up many many times to try to make this work, but I did not give up. And finally, I found just the right combination of units to form my “Brethren of Steel” list.
Army list:
So, let’s go through this first iteration of my “Brethren of steel” concept.
In this list we have (just to name a few facts),
- 7 units with BS 5 (hitting on 2+).
- 7 units gives -1 to cover saves.
- 5 units have tank hunter.
- 5 legion specific units.
- 1 unit with anti-flyer capability’s.
- 10 monsterus creatures.
- 2 scoring units.
- 5 units that gives out pinning tests.
- 2 units that gives out blind tests.
This list has some impressive fire power and accurate fire power. It has a very small size but it feels very much like a list that can control the opponent. With a lot of pinning and high strength weapons it can block some armies from getting to close and for close combat armies this army seems to one big road block.
First game:
I had the pleasure to try this army out against a friend some time ago. There were some things that I was concerned with however. It is one thing to write something up on paper and another to actually play it. I was afraid that this list would be a little to brutal or even broken. All that fire power could maybe be too much. I want to keep my games friendly. “I don’t want to be that guy”. I very much try to live by the rule “don’t be a dick”.
But my theory was this, I only have 2 scoring units and my army is very small. Once my units start to fall the fire power falls with it. 3 units of havocs with 5 dudes in each is not much. To kill 15 space marines is not an impossible job and if they fall a lot of my fire power will be gone.
My friend had a look at the list long before our game and had no problem with it so I did run with it.
The game was brutal. Iron warriors vs night lords. My army dominated the battle field the first turns. Whatever my units pointed at ended up dead. Every assault my friend throwed at me came to a complete halt once the units hit my mechanicum wall. But it was not long before my army started to lose units and as I had predicted my dominance went with it. I ended up winning the game in the end, but that was far from certain. His assaults slowly eat through my units and having fewer and fewer units on the board I had harder and harder to control the battle field. 1 sneaky rhino with a unit of tactical marines scored me the final points I needed to win the game. We both had few units left standing, but I think I had a little more punch left then my friend in the end.
I was happy that the game became as close as it did. That means that it is something I would feel conferrable to take to future events and game days.
Conclusion:
I must say that this is one of the most fun list I have played since…well, since ever. Small and compact, easy to transport and to set up.
Abel to deal with most things. So many fun rules and surprisingly flexible in some situations.
Based around lore and fluff I love, combining two elements of the horus heresy I enjoy the most, iron warriors and mechanicum.
What I would like to do now is to expand this concept with more and different lists. I would also like to replace some of the units in this list. Maybe get some Forge world rhinos in the future.
I feel like there are some flexibility in the army construction. I can swap heavy support choices and maybe change troop choices. Other ideas like replacing all castellax units with vorax units also comes to mind. That would-be kind of cool. Imagine a close combat list with vorax battle automatas as the foundation and then build the list to support them.
Many ideas, many options, a lot of fun.
I can strongly recommend everyone reading this to take a similar "trip". Digg and find a concept that feels un-explored and go from there.
Hope I have inspired to future lists and army concepts.
Happy warfare amd take care!