New Year's Game - Horus Heresy Siege of Terra!

We usually host a lunch and big game on New Year's Day each year. However, this year the schedules didn't quite work out for January 1, so we postponed the game until January 7.

Many of the Conscripts and their significant others were able to make it out for the lunch, a delicious roast pork loin with vegetables and salad prepared by the amazing Pam (in apron). After stuffing ourselves silly with food, we (eventually) retired downstairs to Conscript HQ where the terrain had been laid out for the game - a Horus Heresy extravaganza using the 40K 8th edition rules and the excellent codex material from the forums at http://heresy30k.invisionzone.com/login/

I further amortized the trench terrain by laying out an 8'x4' table for the Loyalists to defend. The board was 30K'd up a bit with slurm tanks, billboards, statuary, a comms mast, and some Gothic looking ruins, not to mention a bit of Conscript trademark scatter terrain...

Terra would be defended by Conscript Mike's excellent looking Imperial Fists...

...supported by Conscript Greg's superb Solar Auxilia.

"God Box 2.0" makes an appearance, along with the Solar Auxilia commander "Marshall Facecane".

Nasty Imperial Fists Terminator squad "supporting the front line" behind a slurm tanks :-)

First wave of Iron Warriors and World Eaters attackers roll on. The Traitor objectives were the tanks at centre left, the comms mast on the ridge, and the statue column at centre top.

There's not a ton that you might consider "broken" in 30K but if anything comes close, it's the Iron Warriors Siege Tyrants at top left...

Racks spit out two krak missiles (or 2d6 frag missiles!!) PER MODEL per shooting phase... that's a ton of hurt heading downrange.

Defending Terra all day really works up a thirst! Fortunately there are ample tanks around to feed the Slurm machine.

Iron Warriors reinforcements arrive, in the form of a large tactical squad and Leviathan Siege Dreadnought (ooooh yeah!)

Massive traitor firepower facing off against the newly arrived Imperial Fists Land Raider Armoured Proteus (top right).

Warriors hop out of their Rhinos ready to assault the trenches.

But then... oh crap... Imperial Knight arrives.

It's great fun to take off the top of the ridge and play in the tunnels underneath. Infil-traitors under the bunkers!

Loyalist Sicaran is taking fire as a Traitor Rhino moves to block off the tunnel entrance.

A good view of Mike's Contemptor and Land Raider.
 

Iron Warriors approaching the trenches. Solar Auxilia are tougher than they look, especially when overcharging their lasrifles.

Siege Tyrants look right at home, don't they?

Iron Warriors have taken the frontline trench!

Terminators scramble to interdict the Traitor Marines in the tunnels. Sadly they would fail their charge roll with a double 1 - not the only charge that was failed that afternoon either!

Sadly for the Traitors their assault just stalled as time was called. It has to be admitted that we seldom actually finish one of these huge game, but they sure are cool to look at! Lots of stuff blew up, and I think the game pointed out to both Mike and me what we need to do with our respective forces. Mike came out with a bit over 100 power levels and I think he realized that he needs more BIG GUNZ :-)

The Iron Warriors, on the other hand, can muster close to 200 power levels and lots of big guns, but I think I need to paint some more boots. Most of my points are tied up in the 10-man Siege Tyrant squad (44 power levels by itself!) and the Typhon represents 26 or 27 as well.

Anyway I think we all had a fun time having lunch with friends, and playing with some amazing toys on some beautiful terrain, and isn't that what this hobby is all about! So thanks to everybody for coming out, to Greg and Mike for bringing their toys, and to Conscript Frederick for taking some great pictures!

Byron's 4th, 5th and 6th Painting Challenge Submission - Greeks, Death Guard, and Mechanicum

I promised myself that this year I wouldn't fall behind in keeping up the cross posting to my home blog here for the painting challenge, but have once again fell behind anyway. So, time to catch up with everything...

The 4th entry I put in this year was more 30k Death Guard to expand my force so that I can contribute more to our groups rather large number of 30k battles that rage at least monthly.

I have a pile of figures to get done for the 30k version of the Death Guard this year, including several transports as my force so far has been almost exclusively foot based with little mobility.  However, before getting onto that, I needed to get some more infantry done (mainly due to the fact that I want to do all the vehicles at once and ran out of chipping solution so am waiting for it to arrive).

 

My 5th entry was a continuation of my Greek project, with another unit of Warlord (Immortal) Greeks, as well as a command stand of Spartans.

The command stand is made up of a pack of metal Spartans from Warlord and the quality is much better than the plastics.  Even though they still managed to get the arms wrong.  The arms are once again in a throwing motion, rather than an arm over spear for thrusting motion.  Oh well...  since I am painting a lot of the figures that have leather armour as if they had bronze armour, I probably shouldn't complain that much about things that most people wouldn't notice anyway.

I spent a lot more time on these, doing more blending and more highlights, which don't really show up in the pictures, but show up in person.  My thought being that the command stands will be looked at closer than the mass infantry units and should therefore get a bit more attention.

I then moved onto a second unit of Greeks, that are un-armoured.

Once again since they are meant for mass effect on the tabletop, they got a fairly basic treatment.  I blocked in colours, washed, then highlighted.  I then went over the shields and painted various colours and then applied decals.  After that is was a simple matter of basing them and they were done.  Not fancy but effective I think. 

So another 18 Greeks done, only about 200 left to go...

My sixth submission was more Castellax Class Battle-Automata and a transport for my 30k Death Guard. The Castellax were armed with multi-meltas, flamers, and close combat saw blades this time around.

The bases are hand made using liquitex, cork board, cut up sprue, guitar wire, and copper pipe bits.  I tried to give them an urban rubble look without going overboard as I find a lot of cast resin rubble bases have too much on them and you wonder how the hell the model is moving through it.

I also kept with the blue glow as a colour accent to keep in theme with the last batch, even though I tend to think of melta as a red/orange glow.  My thought being that it just would look like more of the same base red armour colour if I did that.

Next up is a Death Guard Anvillus pattern drop pod that I had started doing up for this weeks "flight" theme just in case I didn't get the piece that I really wanted to get done completed.  I did though, so here is the drop pod as a regular submission.

The drop pod was painted the same way I have been doing all of my Death Guard vehicles, making heavy use of Mig products.  I base coated it black, applied chipping solution, painted the off white colour with an airbrush and then once dry wet it with water and started chipping the paint off.  It gives a completely random and organic look to it, you just have to give up control though as you can go light or hard on the brushing to control it a bit, but sometimes it just comes off in big sections and sometimes it sticks and you can't get any chips, so you just go with it.  I then apply decals and clear coat it, then come back with Mig streaking products and oil brushers and make it a mess with multiple different browns, blacks, and rust colours.  Apply a bit of each, let set for a bit, then use thinner or white spirits to spread it around and cause the streaks, or to clean up areas that got to much.

There we go, a whole pile of stuff off my painting shelf, but I already have it filling up again as stuff comes in to replace it.
 

Fifth Challenge Submission - 28mm French for the Second Empire & Franco-Prussian War

French Imperial infantry ready to defend their country against Prussian invaders...while their senior commanders prepare to fail them utterly...

Well, no marks for originality with this fifth submission to the Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge - why it's yet more infantry for the Franco-Prussian War! My last submission was a pile of Prussians, and here now is the completed force of French infantry to take them on. These are 28mm castings from "Eagles of Empire".  There are 31 of them in the pictures, but as with my previous submission, there is a bit of propaganda at work in the photography - a number of figures in this group shot that were painted previously or prior to the Challenge. Only 12 of the castings counted for scoring purposes. I just liked the group photo, so piled the whole lot in together!

Bugler figure serving as an NCO on a square base

These are based for skirmish games, with NCOs on square bases and more senior officers on hex bases.  As with the Prussians, there is a senior command base that adds a standard bearer to a senior officer that will be used to represent a higher status officer on the table. I was not able to find a proper eagle to affix to the standard unfortunately, but I still like how the fellow turned out.

And I may have sourced an eagle to add later on...stay tuned!

NCO directs the deadly fire of his unit's Chassepot rifles

While the sculpting style of these castings is definitely a little different, something I have remarked on in previous posts, I do give full marks for the sculptor capturing the feel of the period.  Where the Prussian sculpts feature many figures charging forward, the French are in a variety of firing poses, working the deadly effect of their Chassepot rifles, holding some manner of hopeless position. I think the sculptor clearly had a good sense for the dynamics of the war.

Great selection of firing and loading sculpts

A lot of detail on the kit...different pans, canteens, tent-poles and other supplies for the march

And as before, I just LOVE the uniforms of the Imperial French infantry. Those kepis, baggy red pants and epaulettes are just SO cool. Can't wait to get these fellows on the table!

Senior command stand with a flag - from the 70th Regiment

The flag on the command base is also from "Eagles of Empire" - they offer flags for two of the French infantry regiments in the War.  This is fine for skirmish purposes, but for my larger plans involving games of "Black Powder", the lack of available flags from providers of nice flags like Flag Dude, GMB or Maverick Models is frustrating - Warflags has some for free, but you have to print those yourself, and the quality is just not the same...plus I don't have a colour printer so I have to bother Byron to do it for me...

An eagle would be nice for the top of the standard...oh well...

The battle honours of the 70th Regiment

Anyway, this submission will provide another 60 points toward my target of 1000 points, and represent the conclusion of my initial mad rush of this edition of the Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge. I wanted to get enough 28mm figures painted to do a decent-sized skirmish game of some sort for the Franco-Prussian War, and between these chaps and the Prussian regulars and Jagers, I think we will be able to have a game very soon! Time to take a little bit of a break from this period and switch gears to another subject...see you soon!

Plenty of Fist!

There's no end to the jokes with this army, none of which are safe for all audiences.

Here are 2 tanks I finally completed for the I.F Legion. I decided against the all yellow color scheme for the bulk of my vehicles. Yellow is tricky to paint with the method I'm comfortable with, so I've primarily gone with a black color scheme with yellow detailing. I'm also reluctant to paint a school bus! The fluff supports the color scheme, as some of the elite Fist companies are the precursor to the Black Templars (yellow instead of white) and primarily use black. These will be in action of Sunday for our first Battle of Terra game. Dallas has been painting up a few eyebrow raising units for his Iron Warriors (Apothecary squad?) that I don't really have an answer for at this time. Since these are freshly painted, Dallas's 10 man missile terminator squad will likely make short work of these. I need to get that 10 man Lascannon squad ready!

Fourth Painting Challenge Submission - 28mm Prussian Infantry for the Franco-Prussian War

Prussians charge to battle for their King!

My fourth submission to the Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge continued my early established theme - more 28mm infantry for the Franco-Prussian War. Hopefully you are not bored yet!  In these photos you see the bulk of my Prussian infantry that I will be using for skirmish gaming in the setting - they are all 28mm castings from "Eagles of Empire".  There are 29 figures in total here, but some have already been submitted (see if you can spot "Mr. Glowing" among the mass) and others were painted before the Challenge started - so only 14 of these will counted for scoring purposes in the Challenge.

Nice, aggressive posture on many of the castings

These castings show that distinctive sculpting style of the Eagles of Empire figures - the castings are tall (essentially 30mm) and thin, with more sort-of "true scale" Dreyse rifles and spikes on the helmets.  This already caused one casting to lose his pickelhaube during shipping, but as I am keen to have as many Prussians jump in on the table as possible, I painted him up anyway, figuring some manner of franc-tireur shot the spike off his helmet in a skirmish behind the lines...

The Prussians sporting their distinctive pickelhaubes and rolled coats

This is meant to represent four full squads of seven troops each, as well as a couple of senior officers - the equivalent of two boxes of figures from Eagles of Empire - but I'm two figures short to represent the full group of four squads. This is because the Prussian boxes come with two different types of musician, and I had no use for the drummers...so I'll need to scare up two extra figures to balance this all out.  When combined with the Jagers it is still a substantial force for a skirmish, ready to enforce the will of the King and bring the pesky French to heel on the battlefield!

I quite like the once NCO, on the right, beautiful animation in the pose

Rear view, showing the kit the Prussian infantry hauled with them

The NCOs are on square bases, the senior officers are on hex-shaped bases, and there is one very-senior officer (would be something like a status level three or four leader for Lardy-style-games) based together with a standard bearer on a hex base.  I have tried to use different colours of flowers to help with unit identification, but as I have worked through this I have seen I need to be careful a bit as the overall effect can be a bit too bright.  France is a beautiful, beautiful place (and the "Imperial phase" of the War of 1870 did take place in the summer) but it is not Lothlorien and too many bright flowering bushes has a bit of a detrimental effect to the overall game.  I may go back later and scale it back a bit more still.

An assortment of close-ups - the arm of the officer was a challenge, as the part was mis-cast - his shoulder must have been wounded at Sadowa or something...

The Prussian flag is from GMB.  Finding flags for this period is a challenge - GMB is the only source I have found for Prussians, and nobody is making any for the French as far as I can tell, with a small exception that you will see in my next submission!

Senior command base - flag from GMB

Ready to conquer in the name of the King!

These guys got me another 71 points toward my goal...up next - vive la France!!

Third Painting Challenge Submission - 28mm Prussian Jagers for the Franco-Prussian War

28mm Prussian Jagers for the Franco-Prussian War from Helion

Happy new year everyone! Well, no big surprise for my third submission to Curt's Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge - more 28mm Franco-Prussian War stuff! This time it is two squads (I think?) of Prussian Jagers for the Franco-Prussian War.  These are 28mm castings purchased via Eagles of Empire, but the castings are actually from the Helion range, and are being sold by Eagles of Empire through some manner of partnership arrangement with the good people of North Star Miniatures. This was clever and useful for gamers, as it adds some "one-stop" shopping!

One squad of Jagers - I used tufts of blue flowers to help with quick ID on the table

Where the Eagles of Empire castings have certain unique characteristics - thin bodies, skinny weapons and necks, and are rather tall - these Helion castings are much more classic and robust "heroic" 28mm wargaming miniatures.  They were a real treat to paint, and unlike some of my Eagles of Empire figures, these rifles will not snap off at some point.

Senior officer on a hex-shaped base - this is a system used by Curt to help with quick table identification, one I have copied repeatedly...

There is one senior officer (on a hex-shaped base) and two squads of seven figures, each led by an NCO on a square-shaped base.

The Jagers add a splash of colour and dash to the otherwise dour appearance of the Imperial Prussian Army in the 1870 period.  They are also devoid of the goofy pointy-helmets, clad in shakos that are more reminiscent (to me) of the earlier Napoleonic era.  Generally speaking, each Prussian corps had one battalion of Jagers attached to perform the various and sundry "light" infantry tasks that somehow rendered them to be considered as "elite".  While Jagers were a smaller proportion of the overall infantry contingent of the Prussian army in 1870-71, for skirmish purposes I'm pretty sure they would be a common sight, so I wanted to include some in my Prussian forces for skirmish games in that setting.

The "red-flowered" squad

I was confused by the different colour references I found for these troops - whether the buttons and cipher etc were gold or brass, whether the facings were red or white, and what shade the green was supposed to be...I think it varied depending on whether they were in a "guard" unit or not.  I wanted my lads to be a regular joes, and so hopefully found colours that matched the regular battalions.

A view showing the mess kit, and of course, the ubiquitous long coats tied around the bodies of the troops...

As for the shade of green, well, sometimes you have to go with what paints you happen to have on hand...so to the surprise of nobody, this shade of green rather closely matches that seen on the armour plates of my 16th Legion forces for 30k sci-fi gaming *cough*.  Just a coincidence, I'm sure...

There are fifteen 28mm figures here, which added a 75-point shot in the arm towards my goal of 1000 points of painting.  Stay tuned for more Prussians!

Byron's 2nd and 3rd submissions to the Painting Challenge

Over the past couple of days I submitted two entries to the painting challenge.

The first was one of the projects that I have most been looking forward too this year, the creation of a Mechanicum army for Warhammer 30k.   I have looked at the Mechanicum force for years and loved the overall look of the robot portion of the army, but just hated other portions of it.  Enter the Legio Cybernetica list this past year, which is a Taghmata variant that focuses on robots!  Hurray!  I can make a list with just robots, sign me up!

I love the bonkers look of these walking death machines, and love the fluff even more.  You basically have the masters of technology sitting on Mars thinking that people are idiots and machines are great, so lets turn people into machines.  Sounds great to me, since as a techie I trust machines far more than I trust people!

This is the first batch of two Castellax Class Battle-Automata that I finished and they are wielding the evil looking Dark Fire Cannon.  I honestly have no idea WTF they do in the game, I just got them because I liked the look of them!  Once the force is done and they have to go on the table, I will have to look them up.

Overall I am just aiming for effect on these and not going to spent a ton of time on them.  I am aiming for game pieces not show pieces so a lot of the details are not getting painted, I am using a lot of shortcuts and quick steps on them, nothing special close up, but hopefully good looking on the game table.

I wanted the entire force to look the same, especially with the reds which I find very hard to get looking right, so I have airbrushed all of the models I have all at once, and will be working on the details of small batches of them over the course of the challenge.  

I airbrushed all the reds, then touched up the black areas, then painted the silver.

At this point I was almost done, but something just didn't look right.  There was too much silver and red and no contrast colours.  While I had not planned on any other colours, I felt it needed something so went back and added some quick energy blooms on the weapons in a blue to white fade to try and show high energy expenditure. Not sure if blue / white was the right colour choice or not, but it certainly stands out, which is what I was looking for.

Last up was the bases.  I had initially planned a red martian soil base, but thought it would just blend the model to the base rather than making it stand out.  I changed it last minute to a simple black / grey rubble base using cork, bits of sprue, guitar string, plasticard, and liquitex.


Next up was another brand new force...
Last year I decided that I wanted to do something for this challenge that would allow me to get a bunch of figures done fairly quickly and bring a new era to our wargame group.  The era I chose was one that has interested me for a long while, Ancient Greece.

To start the force I chose to pick up a few boxes of the Warlord Spartans and Greeks, as they are readily available and fairly inexpensive.  I have always liked Warlord plastics so had high expectations...

Well, those expectations meant nothing, as Warlord has 3 different boxes of ancient Greeks, all advertised as different things, yet all of them have the same contents other than a few small character sprues and decals.  Worse, the poses are not varied at all, and have no thrusting arms only throwing arms or at rest arms. The sprues used by Warlord are old Immortal figures sprues and are not even really 28mm they are more like 25mm figures.  I have since ordered a few boxes of Victrix Greeks as they have proper thrusting arms and more varied poses, and will mix them into other units and try to keep the same height by leaving the Warlord figures on their bases and removing the Victrix from theirs.  I would strong recommend against anyone getting any of the Warlord Greeks.

I plan on using the Hail Caesar rule set, and while it recommends 40mm x 40mm bases for 4 figures, I decided on using 40mm x 60mm to allow for some extra ground work in front of the figures for both looks and protection of the spears.

Since I plan of painting at least 10 units of these over time, I wanted to keep the paint jobs very simple and quick so that I can get them done in a reasonable time.  Therefore these were painted by simply blocking in the colours, washing and then highlighting.  Super simple and basic table top level, as I don't know that you actually see much more than the shield from the front or some bronze and cloth from the back.  I will however spend more time on the command stands for the game as you will be able to see the figures there.

This first unit is 16 Spartans, of which probably 1/4 - 1/2 of my final force will be made up of.  I also plan on making heavy use of units from Athens and Thebes.