"Thudd"

Continuing with my Guard bits and pieces, I found a couple of more old Ebay acquisitions - Thudd guns! With their bonky template and quirky, pseudo-bofors look, Thudd guns were a fun and unpredictable support weapon for Imperial factions in the Rogue Trader game. I was able to get some crew figures for them too - you only need one per gun. Ideally, for the full RT effect, the crew would be servitors, but RT-era servitors are absurdly pricey on Ebay. The guardsmen will do the trick in the interim, until I paint up some servitors from the current GW figure lineup.

The models were a bit dinged (bent barrels, wheels not quite right on one etc.) but they would be a perfect add-on for my 40k PDF troops. In anticipation of tonight's Rogue Trader game, I finished painting them up last night.



Thudd guns are still around in 40K today - part of the Death Korps of Krieg arsenal -- note the price on that link does not include crew - ouch! Makes Ebay nostalgia acquisitions look down-right cheap.




The real challenge will be to see if I can get a template made in time for the game tonight. Cue the craft project...

Some more Valkyrie Spam finished

Last night I finished the third Valkyrie model for my blue-themed Imperial Guard forces. The storm trooper platoon will now be able to zip around the battlefield in style - or at least look great going down in flames.



I painted the Imperial Eagle motif straight on to this one, and I'm happy with how it turned out. Was much less hassle than fiddling with those complex decals. I weathered this one up with a sponge and used the pigment powder for exhaust. It doesn't look quite as worn as the other two vehicles, but still looks like it has been roughed up a fair bit.



Weapon-wise, the squadron has two ships equipped with multi-lasers and rocket pods, and a single ship with a lascannon and hellstrike missiles. I hope to use these to either carry around my Imperial Guard storm troopers, or just to fly a bit of air cover for for the guard armoured column. Similar to all of the other blue-painted vehicles I have, they can fit with either the regular guardsmen, Preatorians, or Roge-Trader-era PDF-style Guardsmen from my collection.

I hope for these to see their first action when we play a 40k Apocalypse game sometime this spring.



I am pleased to have now finished all of the Valkyries acquired from Maelstrom!

I've become quite used to assembling these models, but right to the end I have struggled with the canopies and the pilots. It seems no matter what I do to fiddle with the pilot models/cockpit, the canopies don't fit well. These blue ones are no exception, but thankfully it doesn't really show up from two feet away. I just don't know what I did wrong - I shaved down arms, lowered heads, removed skull-shoulder pads etc. and still struggled to fit the canopies over the pilot. In the end I think it comes down to the fact that I will never be a great model-builder. At any rate, it won't be a problem for a while, as I don't expect to build another Valkyrie anytime soon...other new and ongoing insane projects await!

Blue Valkyrie re-load

Last week I tried to use some really cool decals from Forge World on my Valkyrie, and kind of botched the job a bit. I wanted to try again, so I put together my last two Valkyries from the "Maelstrom pile", and this weekend finished painting the first new one.

When decal-time came, I thought a better way to avoid the headaches would be to attempt to paint the imperial eagle design right on myself. If it sucked, I could just paint over, so I went for it.



I used GW Shadow Grey first to set the outlines of the design. When that was dry, I did a layer of GW Kommando Khaki, and finally a layer of white paint for the "top".



The design did not turn out too badly - still far from perfect on the wings, but you get an idea of what it is supposed to be. The Imperial Eagle design is actually kind of tricky once you are painting it at that size, but it was close enough for me, and much less of a hassle than those intricate decals.



After painting the design I put on decals for the other markings (vehicle numbers, kill markings, pilot names etc), and weathered the sucker. Learning from a really helpful Flames of War You-Tube demo that Kevin H was kind enough to forward to me, I used a chunk of sponge to do a lot of weathering. I loved the effect - probably too much. Seems like any time I get the hang of something new, I overuse it, so this poor Valkyrie really looks like it has seen some tough service.



I used pigment powder around the exhaust, cannon barrel and engine intakes. Again, probably too much - but it's all fun. I'm not even sure a multi-laser would even scuff up the nearby paint, but for the sake of experimenting, I am going to say this one did.



I put a few kill markings on the side, including one in the shape of an Eldar Falcon. So you know this model will be the first one to get "doomed" when they face Dave V's warhost...



The last picture above shows the Valkyrie with the painted design (on the left) beside the Valkyrie with the decals (on the right). I have one more to add to the squadron, so I am hoping the eagle design will be a little easier to paint now that I have tried it once.

Decal fail

More fun with the Imperial Guard touch-ups/updates/etc. After touching up/weathering/adding to my entire collection blue-themed Imperial Guard vehicles, I didn't want to leave out the Valkyrie. Specifically, in addition to adding some weathering, etc I was tempted to apply one of the "eagle" decal sets that I had ordered from Forge World. The decals would replicate the effect seen on the painted example that is stamped on the back of the GW Valkyrie box, which looked really cool (but also like it was done by a pro).

I had used part of one set on the CO's Valkyrie in my Elysian collection, and complexity of the wing features prompted me to stop there. As it was, the Elysian skimmers had a lot of fun markings already, so enough was enough there. The decals looked tricky - they even had instructions on the back of the sheet about how they should be ideally cut up and placed to match the panels on the model as closely as possible. Here is a picture of the instructions for one of the wings:



Feeling chuffed about the progress on the blue guys, thinking about how it might look cool to have that crazy look on at least one model, and deluded that I could somehow match the outcome seen on the Valkyrie box, I figured "Why not try and see what happened?" Oops.

Here are before pictures for comparison:






Here are various after pictures, together with some editorial.







I started on the Valk's right wing first, carefully cut up the decal, and went to work. I SUCK. When the small decal pieces were cut up, they broke very easily, and so the thing became a patchwork. For the left wing, I just threw caution to the wind, thinking that moving the decal as one large piece would be more viable than several small pieces. I SUCK EVEN WORSE AT THAT. It was quite a hash.





All of the decal softener, water etc. was not helping. I still had trouble with silvering too, despite gloss coat etc (I must have messed up something). To make the most of it, I figured I would really, really weather it a lot, and touch up with some white and blue paint here and there. I hope, from a couple feet away, the model looks more like a battle-worn skimmer than something with a bad decal job.



One positive from this project was experimenting with the pigment powders. As Dallas had warned, it's very messy. I used a soot colour around the engines and exhaust. In the end the effect was only subtle (not even sure you can really notice it in the pics) but I really like it and I'm looking forward to practicing more with these powders.

In the end, not my greatest work, but not the end of the world either. And I still think I can figure this out. I have some un-built Valkyrie models left (God love Maelstrom games), and I have three storm trooper squads for just this lonely Valkyrie - can't have that, can we? I am determined to find a way to get this look right, so watch for more lunacy on the blog.

Come fly the unfriendly skies

The Conscripts are not shy of flyer models for 25-28mm scale - for moderns, we have a Hind helicopter and a Tornado fighter. For SpaceKrieg there is the devestating FuturKom flyer. For WW2, I think there is a Spitfire, Me-109, Yak and some French fighter too.

The flyers are not often seen at our 40k games, however. Dave V's awesome Eldar Nightwing fighter is really the only mainline 40k flyer to have seen action on our gaming tables. The 40k flyer models are tricky to build, hard to mount and expensive to get in the first place. There is already a lot of other stuff to pack into a 1000 point or 1500 point game, so we can generally get by without it.

But with our group, escalation is always a threat (which is great, because it makes us collect more stuff). With the recent appearance of the Da Red Barun, my 40k Rogue Trader Guard will now have to put up with what will surely be devestating, if potentially erratic, strafing runs. Who knows what Dallas will add next for his Tyranids or Nurgle renegades? The risk of fighter/bomber attack was getting too risky for my 40k Imperial Guard armoured column, so I reached into the old "what-was-I-thinking-when-I-ordered-this-crap-six-years-ago?" pile and threw together my Hydra AA tank.

Here are a few pictures, mixed with some editorial:



I have ranted before about Forge World "quality". This conversion kit - acquired at the same time as the alternate Basilisk gun shield - arrived in terrible condition. The cannons were warped, and I didn't think hot water was going to do the job. I also could not find a key part - the deck piece that would hold the turret! It had arrived with the kit, but somehow got lost when we moved to the new house four years ago. And so this went un-built. I figured I might just use the turret for an emplacement or something one day.



About a month ago, the missing piece suddenly turned up during a round of bits rummaging. I was back in business! I just had to figure out the barrels...

Hot water was not doing the trick with the warped cannon barrels, so I had to step it up to the ole' hair dryer. Lucky for me Linda doesn't even flinch when I ask "Where is your hair dryer?" while holding a model kit. I managed to mostly straighten out the damn guns, and I was set.

Or not. Even after all that the frustration was only just starting. Lucky for me I found some curses that seemed to help the superglue hold even stronger. The pieces barely fit the Chimera model kit. There is a narrow but long gap on the decking that I managed to mostly cover only with the help of the track guards, but you can still see part of it...hopefully the dark colours will mostly mask it.

The frustration extended to the painting phase. With the Forge World resin models, I use two coats as a base - Tremclad primer, and then Krylon flat black. I'm not sure what went wrong, but on the resin deck piece, the primer stuck fine, but the Krylon sort of krinkled, like a lizard's skin. I mitigated this with "strategic" dryburshing, and most of this happened on the deck piece, which is covered by the big quad gun turret, so fortunately it is not much of an issue.




The new tank received the blue coat, decals and weathering/rusting last night. Now my Imperial Guardsmen can get a bit of cover from air attack. Also, like all AA tanks, the Hydra looks to be great fun against ground targets too. As a newly painted miniature, it will be doomed in its first game, but after that I hope it will claim many enemy flyers - not mention chewing up a few Tyranids on the ground!

With this, my Imperial Guard revamp is pretty close to done. I think I will update the decals on my "blue" Valkyrie, and may edit a few other things on some models before putting these guys down for now, but it's been fun to revamp some old stuff and finish some way, way overdue pending projects.

Improved community outreach for 40k Guard

While I went through the project to upgrade/re-decal/weather my 40k Imperial Guard tanks, I found a little gem in the pending pile - a Basilisk, complete with the an alternate gun shield from Forgeworld (Vannheim pattern or something). I think I first got that thing like six years ago...another example of my lack of focus.

Anyway, the thing had been assembled, and was primed. At one point, it was going to join the Gün Schwarm lineup, but they have plenty of tanks and heavy guns for now. So last night it joined the Imperial Guard armoured column instead! Here are some pictures:






The artillery crew are old figures that I had painted about two years ago...their colours don't match the rest of the collection (maybe I was thinking artillery crews would have a different colour uniform? who knows?) but I'm glad they have a gun to work now.

I like this version of the Basilisk as it brings to mind the various improvised tank destroyers seen in WW2. To keep the flavour, I put the gun at near-zero elevation - I imagine the Guardsmen bringing this sucker forward to direct-fire right at enemy forces in buildings/bunkers/community centres etc.

As far as I know, rules-wise this thing simply counts as a Basilisk - I don't think there were special rules for this variant of the gun shield. But it's good that the Guardsmen will have some artillery fire to back them up.

One new vehicle left on this project - stay tuned for updates...

Minor tweak to retro Guardsmen

A couple of updates from the ongoing 40k Imperial Guard cleanup/improvmeent - a minor one first. My "retro" force of Rogue Trader guys were painted about five years ago. I modified old Lascannons to be absurdly large so they would fit in with other "current" heavy weapons, but they were still based individually.

Eventually, the rules 40k changed to mandate that heavy weapons for the guard are all two-man teams. I hate that rule, but whatever - it is what it is, and I am thinking that it was time the Rogue Trader guys were "legalized", so I popped guys off their old bases and re-based them as two-man teams.





Now they will be ready to rumble "legally" - perhaps during an approaching Apocalypse game?

Upgraded 40k Chimeras

I am continuing with a minor project to update my Imperial guard vehicles with new decals and more weathering. For my Chimeras, that venerable Imperial Guard IFV, there was an extra step beyond painting - new turrets. Many years ago I saw a conversion on the GW website that showed turrets from the Space Marine Predator kit on a Chimera. I really liked that look. It made the vehicle look a little more like a "modern" (a realtive term in the 40k setting), like a sci-fi Bradley IFV or something. At the time, you also had the option of giving the Chimera an autocannon in the turret, so that killed two birds with one stone, because the standard Predator turret contained an autocannon. I butchered a Predator kit post-haste and soon had a Chimera with the new turret.

But then I delayed, moved on to other projects etc. and time passed. I had the one APC with the new turret, and others had the old turrets, as well as other issues similar to old Leman Russ tanks (decals with silvering etc.). The mish-mash didn't make a difference on the table, but it did annoy me slightly.

This picture below gives a sense of the "before" state. Like the old blue tanks, not bad - but could be better:



It was like a hobby version of a real defence appropriation project - government promises upgrades to the vehicles of the armed forces, but only does one for the press conference and then forgets about it. I decided that enough was enough, and that the Chimeras would get the new turrets while I was working them over.

In the process I simplified the vehicle add-ons too. The previous Chimeras all had hunter-killer missiles, searchlights, stubbers and other stuff. I kept with the heavy stubbers (love the look of those things, and they are good in the game too) but none of the other fluff was added. When you have a lot of vehicles in the detachment, these little add-ons eat up points better invested elsewhere.

Now only the original "upgraded" tank has a hunter-killer etc. That particular vehicle will serve as the IFV to carry the command platoon, and the extra fluff will help it to stand out as a "command" version.

Here are a couple of "after" pictures showing the new tanks, with new tactical numbers and weathering.





The Chimera in front to the right was the first one to receive the new turret years ago. The others are new ones.

I don't think the Chimeras can have autocannons anymore(although who knows how long until an "Imperial Armour" book brings that option back) but I don't think there are set rules as to what a multi-laser "looks" like. I am glad the Chimeras now pretty much match each other, and match the other updated vehicles.

I still have some Imperial Guard vehicle work left to do. I may add another couple of still-unbuilt tanks to the lineup, and I still have a spare Chimera turret, so one more Chimera would not hurt. I have some other sprues lying around that could create some fun heavy artillery conversions. Plus, Dallas has that Ork flyer, and we can't have our armoured column without some mobile air-defence, can we....

Upgrading the old tanks

I have been an avid Imperial Guard collector for many years, and over time have put together several vehicles to accompany the Guardsmen in their various futile enterprises on the gaming table. The vehicles are dark blue, so as to match any of the particular iterations of Imperial Guardsmen of my collection. I built or acquired most of the vehicles between six and eight years ago, before I knew how to deal with "silvering" of decals, or did much to "weather" the look. They looked OK, but were not that great.

Inspired the excellent weathering Dallas has done on his vehicles of late, I have decided to give the Imperial Guard vehicle fleet a painting and decal upgrade of sorts over the past few weeks.

Here are two "before" pictures - one of a Leman Russ Vanquisher, and the other of a bog standard Leman Russ (acquired assembled and unpainted from Galaxy Comic's trading shelf for like five bucks! Those were the days...)





Both vehicles show my fondness for too many decals, my excessive use of the rather limited decals you get with 40k Guard kits (heavy on skulls etc), lack of understanding of the "silvering" affect, no rust splotches, not much weathering etc. Plus the regular Leman Russ still has small flicks of insulation from the roof incident.

I painted the decals over, marked up the tanks with Dallas' rust splotch technique, and then applied liberal layers of dry-brushed yellows and browns to the tracks and hulls to make the vehicles look like they had actually been somewhere and seen some action.

For replacement decals, I used the handy WW2 German tactical numeral sheets available from "Company B" (highly recommended) and some spare decals from Battlefront's Afrika Korps decal set (much harder to work with, for some reason, but at least readily available). I much prefer the look of these tactical numbers to the italics and skulls of before. Plus I was able to eliminate the silvering on the second pass.

Here are the after photos:





Who knew the "Iron Duke" name was so popular that it would be on multiple GW decal sheets? I figured the Vanquisher was a unique enough tank that it still rated it's own nickname.

All of my Imperial Guard tanks are getting this treatment. The Chimeras are getting new, SM Predator-style turrets to boot - I'll do a separate post on that later.

Planetstrike - Planetfall!

Mission: Planetfall

Factions: Imperial Space Marines vs. Imperial Guard

Regulus VII lies in a system near the border of Imperial space. What passes for planetary government is being swayed by Xenos lies to rebel against the Empire. Can the Adeptus Astartes seize a foothold on the planet before Tau and Eldar reinforcements arrive?

Last Thursday we played our first Warhammer 40K Planetstrike game. This rules supplement allows playing of objective-based attacker-defender scenarios, instead of the usual "balanced" armies one might see in, say, tournament play. A good review is located here:
http://www.belloflostsouls.net/2009/07/40k-review-planetstrike.html

Mike Fraser led the attacking forces, supplementing his own new Space Marine models with some Salamander and Ultramarine troops from my shelves.

Space Marines
Captain w/ combi-melta
10-man Assault Squad w/ 2 Flamers and Sgt. w/ Lightning Claws
10-man Tactical Squad w/ Missile Launcher and Flamer, Sgt. w/ Power Weapon
10-man Tactical Squad w/ Lascannon and Meltagun, Sgt. w/ Power Weapon
10-man Tactical Squad w/ Missile Launcher and Flamer
5-man Scout Squad w/ Heavy Bolter, Sgt. w/ Melta Bombs

John and I fielded old-school Imperial Guard using 5th edition rules.

Imperial Guard
Company Command Squad w/ Medic, Missile Launcher Team and Officer of the Fleet
Adeptus Mechanicus Enginseer
Infantry Platoon:
- Platoon Command Squad w/ Sniper Rifle and Lascannon Team
- Infantry Squad w/ Grenade Launcher and Lascannon Team
- Infantry Squad w/ Lascannon Team
Veteran Squad, w/ Heavy Flamer and Demolitions, mounted in a Chimera APC
3-man Ratling Sniper Squad
3 Sentinel Walkers, each fielded as a one-vehicle squadron
Leman Russ Battle Tank
Leman Russ Demolisher Assault Tank

Both sides also received Strategems: battlefield spiffs, further off-table support, and other kinds of nastiness. However, the spiffs accomplished nothing for either side all game, so I shall ignore them in this report.

The Guard represented the Planetary Defense Forces. They set up the leg infantry in and around three key objectives: a bunker, a power plant, and a water treatment plant. The three walkers were placed so as to disrupt deep-striking Marines. The two tanks, the mechanized infantry and the Enginseer were held in reserve.

Mike rolled for the Attacker's pre-game orbital bombardment, rolling the max. Nine (!) Strength 9, large blast markers rained down, hammering the Guard. Despite hard cover, a third of the infantry were killed outright before the Space Marines dropped.

In this scenario the Attacker starts the game entirely in reserve. All the Space Marine infantry could choose to Deep Strike. Those units already having the Deep Strike ability (i.e., the Assault Marines) could actually charge into close combat the same turn they dropped - sweet!

Mike combat squadded the Space Marines, making 9 5-man squads that could both cover a lot of terrain and provide mutual support. The Assault Marines and the Flamer squads would drop, supported by heavy weapons and the Scouts on the ground. The Attacker started from reserve. The Imperial Guard's Officer of the Fleet called in aerospace fighters to disrupt the drop, preventing some of the Marine troops from coming down, but the Marines still managed to land the Captain and several combat squads. The following is a general view of the board looking northwest, after the Marines dropped and started shooting.

(Remember to click on the photos for larger images.)



The Captain and his bodyguards tried to drop north of the power plant, but deviated off the board. Rolling on the Deep Strike Mishap Table, the Imperial Guard players were allowed to re-position them, choosing the south board edge.



Fire from one Assault Squad reduced the Guard protecting the water treatment plant to a lone Grenade Launcher dude. As he shouted into his comm-link for reinforcements, the second Assault Squad gunned him down...



The Guard rolled well for reserves, getting both the tanks and the mechanized Veterans. Rolling randomly, the tanks came on in an ersatz platoon from the eastern board edge, but failed to land any shots on the Marines:



In the middle of the board, the Guard were able to tie up one combat squad of Assault Marines with a Sentinel walker. The Veterans disembarked from their APC, hoping to do better than their armoured corps bretheren.



The Veterans proved their skill by cleaning out the other Assault combat squad with laser fire and flame.



Later, a Marine Flamer combat squad dropped near the power plant. Not wanting to be subjected to that flamer, the Guard Platoon Command Squad bravely charged out of the woods, only to be cut down by the Emperor's finest.



As the game progressed, the rest of the Marines showed up. Concentrated Guard fire killed off the Captain's bodyguards. A Sentinel walker tried to come to grips with him, but the Captain used his combi-weapon to reduce the walker to a pile of melted slag.



Another Marine flamer squad landed and took over the water treatment plant. The mechanized Guard Veterans mounted up and drove over to meet them. These Veterans later disembarked and shot up those Marines, too, leaving three left alive. Those Marines subsequently embroiled the Veterans in a long melee. To the southwest, the walker can be seen fighting on, successfully resisting the Assault Marines.



The Demolisher finally killed a few Ultramarines with its big cannon. In the photo below, to the southwest the last remaining Sentinel has just assaulted a Marine Lascannon squad in the sandbag bunker, tying them up for the rest of the game. The last two Marines of a flamer squad can be seen in the distance readying themselves to assault the power plant.



The two Marines broke the infantry squad holding the power plant. To the southeast, the Marine Scouts assaulted the Demolisher with krak grenades, wrecking the turreted cannon. The Captain assaulted the Ratling snipers, who managed to resist his charge.

Though taking terrible losses, the Veterans stayed stuck in with the Marines in the water treatment plant. The Enginseer, who had recently arrived, ran to support the beleaguered Veterans.



As the game wound down due to the late hour, the Imperial Guard and the Space Marines each held one objective in the clear. The water treatment plant was contested, counting as another Marine-held objective, due to the rules of the scenario.

The broken Guardsmen from the power plant were still within command radius of the Company Commander. Trying to order the broken troops to rally, needing a 9 the officer rolled an "11" on 2D6 - true to form, he had been unsuccessful in giving orders for the entire game. Fortunately for him, the planet was rebelling from the Imperium, otherwise some Commissar no doubt would come by and shoot him in the head.

In a "Hail Mary" ploy, the Demolisher tank moved into the river and fired its hull mounted Heavy Bolter at the Marines in the power plant; they both rolled a "1" for their armour saves, killing them and thus giving up the power plant.



With one objective held by each side, the tie would be resolved by Kill Points. The Space Marines eked out the win, 4 KPs to 3 KPs. Missing that rally roll really hurt the Guard.

The MVP award surely goes to the Sentinel driver who tied up Assault Marines for the bulk of the battle; those jump troops might have helped consolidate either of the centrally located objectives.

ETA: The "Hard Corps" award goes to the Space Marine Captain, who survived a direct hit from a Battle Cannon round and went on to personally take out of action two Guard units.

The next scenario in the saga of Regulus VII will involve the Space Marines trying to consolidate their dearly-won foothold...