Horus Heresy Battle Report and New Game Mat!

Some of the Conscripts gathered last Thursday evening for our first in-person game in some time. For a variety of reasons we decided on a Horus Heresy game - mainly because both Conscript Greg and I (especially Greg) have painted a lot of new models that hadn't yet seen tabletop action. In addition, I wanted to try out a new game mat I bought some time ago but hadn't a chance to get out for a game. So I sent out the invitation along with a request to refrain from attending if you were feeling unwell, and to wear a mask if you were coming out. And to bring your own snacks of course :-)

How good does that mat look with the ruined buildings, eh? I'm really quite pleased with this product. It comes from the good people at urbanmatz.com in the Czech Republic, and it is fantastic, a nice neoprene mouse-pad type material that rolls up fairly easily as well. It came with its own storage bag too, for a quite reasonable cost of 57.77 euros. Unfortunately the only shipping method is FedEx, and that's where the pain comes in... but let's not talk about that. They also sell some really cool pre-painted resin buildings that Conscript Dave and I have added to our terrain collections.

A few little funky touches spread around the table. The Slurm machine is a must for the thirsty Legion Space Marine.

Of course any Heresy game has to incorporate the "God Box 2.0". What a great little piece of scatter terrain.

I'm not going to go through the battle in detail... honestly, the point of the game was less to play out a battle and more just to get together and put some figures out on a good-looking wargame table.

The battle itself pitted my own IV Legion Iron Warriors against Conscript Greg's superb VI Legion Space Wolves reinforced by some X Legion Iron Hands Space Marines.

 

One of the big draws of the game was to get Greg's and my new Storm Eagle aircraft out onto the table. They are certainly monsters in game terms!

Loyalist dreadnoughts take out an Iron Warriors dread.

Greg's new Space Wolves Vindicator also made its first appearance. Unfortunately the Iron Warriors Havoc team posted in an upper-storey window (five Marines each with a lascannon) were able to knock it out.

Speaking of the Havoc squad, here they are...

The IV Legion Medusa siege gun never quite lives up to the hype in my mind... high strength and a good gun, but I always forget that the range is only 36".

 

The Iron Hands Medusan Immortals cower take cover behind the promethium pipeline, guarding the (new) GF9 Power Generators.

A closer look at the Immortals.

IV Legion command squad advances. Apothecary is visible at left... to me the Apothecary in 30K is much like Brad Marchand. If he's on your team you love him, but if he's on the other team you hate him with the white hot intensity of a thousand suns.

Iron Warriors approach an Imperial statue, as yet untoppled by peaceful protestors or otherwise.

 

Space Wolves Terminators teleported in to ruin the Iron Warriors' day.

Iron Warriors Siege Tyrant Terminators sought to return the favour, but their missile racks didn't quite do the massive damage they have done in past games.

 

Legion Medusa blown up by Space Wolves Storm Eagle.

Like I said, in the end it wasn't necessarily about playing a game, so we won't go into how badly the Iron Warriors got hosed. But it was great to get a few of the guys together, push around some figures, and oooh and ahhh about the great models and terrain. Unfortunately we seem to be on another upswing in the pandemic so I don't anticipate any in-person get-togethers again anytime soon, but we'll keep collecting, painting, and waiting for the vaccine...

In the meantime stay safe and healthy everyone!

Imperial Bastion

 I've wanted the bastion for a while now, but I have trouble justifying terrain purchases. However, I came across a new kit on eBay that seemed to be going for a good price, so I snapped it up. Rather than have the kit sit unbuilt for six months, I instead painted it up over the weekend. I stuck with my trusty Russian Olive paint scheme to get it done quickly. I’m pretty happy with the results.

Some Terrain

 I’ve been doing some hobby room reorganizing and it forced me to blow the dust off of some buildings I’ve had lying around for far too long. I decided to just paint the bloody things! These were made by Byron and are excellent kits. Dallas already has a post on the blog where he painted some similar buildings. I also painted some resin buildings from the now out of business Critical Mass Games. They are actually 15mm, but I think they work well enough as generic fuel/horribly toxic chemical storage tanks.

Star Wars Terrain!

A bit of a hodge podge update for today with some newly-acquired terrain for our Star Wars gaming.

First off there's an Action Fleet landspeeder. Available cheaply on eBay, this is a great little model, well-detailed and nicely weathered right out of the box. It's a great piece to give some lived-in flavour to any Star Wars Tatooine-themed table. In fact I'd get another to repaint in a different colourway. The Luke Skywalker figure is from the Wizards of the Coast "Star Wars Miniature Battles" range, from which most of my collection is drawn. The models are prepainted to varying degrees of quality... in fact when I got this one out for the photoshoot I was disappointed by how bad it looked, so I decided to repaint it quickly... a half-hour's work and he's looking much more presentable.
   

Next up is a moisture vaporator from a set of terrain produced by ebay seller endertoys under their "Galactic Legion" brand. They're 3D prints which do show some layer lines, but nothing too obtrusive... and the price is certainly right. For $15USD you get four vaporators, four wall pieces, and four communications consoles, with free shipping in the USA. Definitely worth a punt at the price.

Here's one of the endertoys wall pieces. You get four - two of each design. They scale well to 28mm models. The 3D prints come unpainted.

The consoles aren't super-Tatooiney but I'm informed by Conscript Dave V. that they serve a particular role in Star Wars Legion, so fans of that game will be pleased to see them in the set.
 

Here's the complete endertoys set all painted up. As I say, pretty good for $15 shipped.

Here's a Desert Tower model from Urbanmatz out of the Czech Republic. It's a solid resin piece and comes prepainted. I can't say enough about these buildings, they look just super and will really spiff up any Tatooine table. You get two in the set for less than 25 euros ex-VAT.

Again, I have to thank Conscript Dave V. for the referral to Urbanmatz. They have a good selection of SF and fantasy terrain including pieces themed for medieval, Gothic, industrial, and desert tables. All pre-painted and really good stuff. As you might surmise from the name of the firm, they also sell terrain mats - I picked up one of those as well that I couldn't resist.

The only drawback with ordering from the company is the shipping cost... they use FedEx for overseas shipping and it costs a packet! It doesn't seem to get any cheaper with quantity either, hovering around 40-45% of the cost of goods. At least the order came quickly - ordered on Tuesday and I think it arrived on Friday.

That's it for today - I hope we can get these pieces out on a tabletop soon. Until then, stay healthy everybody!

Manufactorum Imperialis Terrain Set for Adeptus Titanicus

Isolation painting continues… this time it's clearing some terrain off the painting table, as I've finished assembling and painting Games Workshop's new Manufactorum Imperialis set for Adeptus Titanicus. For sixty of our Canadian dollars you get around 30 (!) pieces of terrain to use in your Adeptus Titanicus games. A pretty decent value, in my opinion... especially when contrasted with GW's latest antics... a Terminator Librarian and Sister of Battle two-model "package deal" for $90... come on!

Anyway, back to the topic at hand. I've set out my finished MI set on one of the terrain boards we used for the big New Year's Day game, with some Titans for scale. The card terrain sheets are made by TTCombat for Dropzone Commander and work great for AT also. They're 12" by 12" and four fit nicely on my 2' by 2' MDF boards.

Above, we see a Reaver Titan pictured with some random MI bits. There are several slick little pieces to the MI kit, including several structures with attached pipework, shown at middle above. You also get two cool liquid storage tanks shown at right.
 

There's a bit more scatter terrain included also - four scale versions of the Munitorum Containers already available in 40K-scale. These are remarkable, including even interior detail! A couple of ammo containers and 12 or 15 barrels round out the scatter stuff. I based these on low-profile round bases from Warlord Games.

The towers and gantry cranes are probably the coolest stuff you get in the box. There's a longer crane with jaws that can hold a Munitorum Container, and a shorter one with a giant hook - although the kit contains parts for another pair of jaws if you're inclined that way. Just a slight beef though - the attachment of the crane to the top of the tower is just a friction fit, and I wasn't happy with that so substituted magnets, with mixed success.

The pipework provided looks super-cool. Painting technique for the models was straightforward - primed black, then most pieces were sprayed with a grey primer paint. I found that Drakenhof Nightshade wash worked quite well to shade the light grey primer and provide a spot of colour, so that's what I used on most of the pieces.

I did some light weathering/rusting on the pieces once the basecoats and washes were done. Rust was applied with a small sponge and Doombull Brown. Rusty streaks were added with a mix of Doombull and Reikland Fleshshade wash, as I found that Reikland by itself wasn't strong enough to give the desired effect.

Verdict - an excellent set of small terrain for AT and a decent value to boot. You get enough parts to make LOT of small terrain pieces, and depending on your other ventures in 6-10mm SF gaming, they can have some general flexibility too. We play the old Aeronautica Imperialis game and Epic from time to time, and these pieces will fit in well there as well. So good on you GW, I guess doing this set entitles you to flog a few $45 28mm single models after all :-)

Stay healthy everyone!