Chaos Space Marine Raptor

I finished the first model from my Raptor squad this afternoon. 

  
Really like how this has turned out and now that it’s done I’ve started production-lining the next five 🙂

Chaos Space Marine Raptors – WIP 1, Or: My Weird Painting Habit

This evening I started painting my ten man Raptor squad, I unleashed my spraying stick and got the lads under and basecoated. 

 

Once the second coat of Macragge Blue had dried I selected one of the regular models that were armed with a bolt pistol and chainsword and got started. 

  

As you can see I’m making decent progress, but it’s also clear that I’m not attempting to production line these models. 

Why? Because whenever I start a new unit, even a type that I’ve painted before, I always paint one to completion before bulk painting  the rest. 

I’ve no idea why I do this, but it’s proving to be a hard habit to break!

On a wing and an unholy prayer

Ok, so I got a bit distracted but after undercoating my Dark Angel Command Squad I realised that I was getting really tired painting green and cream. 

Then I remembered that I have a game against Trenchmate Tim fast approaching. Hence, this:

  
I’ve had these boxes taking up space in my Cupboard of Shame for far too long. It’s time my Heralds of Desolation get some reinforcements!

Dark Angels Razorback

The first finished model of 2016!  This will ferry my Company Master and Command Squad into battle (once I finish painting the Command Squad, that is).

I used the Forge World Dark Angel Doors and Front Plate and would thoroughly recommend them, to all First Legion commanders.  My only issue was that the doors required a lot of careful filling before they would fit.  The end result was entirely worth it, I’m really pleased with this model.

 

 

 

 

 

As you can see, I even painted the interior.  I have always shied away from painting the insides of Rhinos and their cousins but I after painting the interior of my Chaos Land Raider I discovered it wasn’t that difficult and doesn’t really take that long.

Now, on to the Command Squad…

Tournament Report – 40K Borders Smackdown

On the first Saturday of December I awoke at an ungodly hour (well 08:00, screw you, don’t judge me!) to catch a train on the new Borders Rail Link to Galashiels to participate in a games day between the Borders Reivers and Edinburgh League of Gamers.

Completely uncivilised time for a gentleman to be awake…

Borders Reivers is a relatively new club and had recently moved to the Royal British Legion’s building in central Galashiels and they were anxious to christen their new venue with a proper old barney. ELG by contrast has been active since 2006 and despite yours truly being a denizen of Scotland’s capital for near-twenty years, I’d yet to darken their door. I was attending at the invitation of the borders lads, a couple of whom (Sam and Iain) I’ve known and gamed with for a number of years. I was therefore most looking forward to meeting new people and, hopefully, expand my circle of gaming buddies.

The format was very simple, each player brought 1,000 points and would be paired with a member of their team to face a similar opposing force. Standard FOC, FW, tactical objective were in effect and super heavies allowed. Also allies rules were in effect, which meant some very… unconventional partnerships. Especially for me.

Two games were to be played and the team with the most victory points after both rounds won.

Team captains would roll off to determine who would place one of their team first, captains would then take turns until all sixteen players were distributed between the four game boards. As ELG were a player short, I joined them against the feral horde from the countryside.

Now, for a bit of a confession. I had originally wanted to do a blow-by-blow account for all eight of the games but was too disorganised to get proper feedback from each table. This was compounded by the happy fact that there was a licensed bar on the premises so completely accurate accounting was never going to happen! Therefore I’m going to cover my two games as best as I can remember them.

My Army

When I first created this list on Battlescribe it came to 997 points, serves me right for not checking it against the Codex and Errata, or even ensuring that my data repository was up to date, I could have got a few more Cultists!

As I was out to have fun, and wouldn’t know a competitive list if it bit me on the arse, I decided to go with an experimental army. I wanted it to be able to support both a shooty or a stabby ally, so I loaded up Khârn and friends in a Dirge Caster equipped Land Raider which was to plough forward and deposit them where the fighting was thickest, hopefully to decapitate the enemy’s strongest unit and/or their Warlord. Supporting them would be my Baleflamer-equipped Heldrake.

My Sorcerer would be provided with a decent meat shield of Cultists and would stay back a bit and attempt to bring on daemonic reinforcements and generally try to cause a nuisance.

Finally, my Chaos Spawn would act in a harassment role, using their fantastic movement stats to go after targets of opportunity and generally just get in the way. I’d not used Spawn before and was particularly excited about getting a chance to deploy these chaps.

Well, this was going to be interesting. Having the Sons of Titan as my ‘ally’ certainly posed some deployment problems, not to mention that we wouldn’t be able to properly close support each other. Fortunately our opponents had the same problem.

Facing us was a veteran ‘Nid player and Ian, the brother-in-law of one of the organisers who’d only played once before and was using an army consisting of a Chaos Space Marine Nurgle Sorcerer and billions of Nurgle Plague Zombies. This was going to be fun.

And it begins!

Seizing the initiative, one of the ‘Nid Flyrants flew forward and ate my Spawn. Poor guys, I guess I’d try again in the second game. The other made a beeline for my Sorcerer but fortunately couldn’t quite reach.

Ian’s zombies shambled forward towards their objectives but otherwise didn’t really do much. Mind you, what could they do at this stage?

In response I moved up my Raider so I could bring it’s awesome fire power to bear on the swarm of lesser ‘Nids advancing on my flank.

Meanwhile, my allies unleashed a torrent of fire at the Flyrant zeroing in on my Sorcerer, wounding it and forcing it to land, taking off another wound in the process. Unfortunately it landed right in front of my Sorcerer’s squad!

My Sorcerer managed to miraculously survive the next turn, mainly thanks to the meat shield of cultist surrounding him however he lost the first of his two wounds attempting to summon some daemons. No problem, I thought, he’ll be fine. Then my bloody ally unleashed some psychic fire at the Flyrant and managed to incinerate my spellcaster and friends in the process!

At this point I only had the Khârnmobile and an off-table Heldrake remaining, nevertheless we were, somehow turning the tide.

Finally my Land Raider was able to unleash Khârn and friends into the zombie horde and they got to work. By the end of the game they had accounted for over seventy of the buggers and the chosen of Khorne was still standing.

While I was dealing death to the scions of the Plague God, my team mate was actually claiming objectives and, along with my Land Raider, keeping the remaining ‘Nids at bay.

The game ended, we were bloody, but victorious.

Half Time

With all the games finished, we repaired to a local hostelry for further liquid refreshment and food. The first round had taken a bit longer than had been anticipated, but everyone was determined to get a second game in before the last train back to civilisation.

ELG Captain Dale ponders his team’s strategy over some half-time refreshment.

This was going to be fun. The last time I faced Sam he was using his bloody Necrons and no matter what my Imperial Guard did, the damned things just wouldn’t stay down. He was also playing an army that I’m considering collecting and I was interested to see them in action.

Setting up the second game

Fortunately my ally was not as opposed to Chaos as my previous one so deployment was less of a headache. This was very useful as Chris had four drop pods and a Thunderfire Cannon which could make short work of us if we weren’t able to adequately support each other. However; Black Templars and Khornate Chaps? They’ll never get on…

Chris and Sam ‘discuss’ tactics

Our opponents took the first turn, thankfully the first two drop pods came down out of our deployment zone as we’d ensured that there was little to no opportunity to safely land. Another stoke of good luck happened when the Thurnderfire Cannon elected to target some Tau Crisis Suits and inflicted precisely zero damage on the fishmen, thus my Cultists were saved from yet another ignominious and messy early exit.

The closest drop pod to my forces contained the Templar’s Warlord and by good fortune, it was within charging range of my Land Raider. Khârn and his retinue were deposited close enough for a charge and he took the Templar Warlord’s head in a challenge while his fellow Berserkers, assisted by my Chaos Spawn, wiped out the rest of his brethren. Not bad for a first turn.

My Spawn continued towards the enemy table edge, intent on taking out the Thunrderfire Cannon and the Bloodletters before it, on the way they ate the squad of Blood Slaughterer Impalers who tried to intercept them. They made it all the way to our opponent’s DZ before being overwhelmed by Bloodthirsters.

Speaking of them, a couple of groups of those lesser daemons jumped Khârn and his buddies while they were cleaning Templar bits from their Chainaxes. The warp creatures didn’t last a turn, but annoying a couple of berserkers succumbed to wounds. It mattered not, as a drop pod containing a Black Templar Dreadnought landed behind them, attempting to cut them off from the Sorcerer and Cultists who were providing fire and psychic support.

The undead marine didn’t last long though, Khârn charged and eviscerated it with Gorechild before it could ignite its power fist.

On the other side of the battlefield, my Tau friends were making short work of yet more Bloodletters, Templars, a Khorne Daemon Prince and Juggernauts. Their combined fire power meant nothing came close enough to mount a serious challenge.

Blink and you’ll miss him! Khorne’s Warlord turned up and quickly evaporated in a torrent of pulse energy.

The only weapon that could seriously threaten them was a Vindicator which had finally lumbered into effective range, fortunately one of those newfangled Ghostkeels was on hand to sneak up behind and annihilate it.

With the Black Templars effectively destroyed by the third turn we thought we were cruising to an easy victory, however we hadn’t banked on the Blood Tithe. All of a sudden, brand new units of Bloodletters began deepstriking all across the battlefield. Fortunately this just provided more targets for the Tau and Khârn’s blades.

We managed to hold of the ensuing tides of daemons but at a cost; Khârn finally went down on the last turn, surrounded by the bodies of his men and countless daemonic husks.

Khârn’s last stand

As the dust settled it was clear that Euan and I had achieved a great victory, yet I couldn’t shake the feeling that Khorne was the true winner of this conflict…

Conclusion

As more drinks were consumed and the remaining second round games came to an end it was clear that Edinburgh were the runaway victors. We all repaired to the downstairs bar to toast our respective opponents before we braved to torrential rain in order to catch the final train to Edinburgh.

Gallery

Before I wrote this article, I put a request out to those who took part for any photos from the day they’d like to share. Thus far only one chap’s got back to me, but if anyone else would like their stuff featured in this (or other articles), please email me at ramblingsfromthetrenches@virginmedia.com.

My while army, note the daemons I never got to use. Stupid Sorcerer…

 

More discussions between the master tacticians

 

Setting up the hall

 

 

Credit: Gregg Allan

 

Credit: Gregg Allan

 

Credit: Gregg Allan

Credit: Gregg Allan

 

Credit: Gregg Allan

 

Credit: Gregg Allan

 

Credit: Gregg Allan

 

Credit: Gregg Allan

Join In!

If you would like to attend either clubs, the easiest way to do so if get in touch with them via their Facebook Pages, click on the pictures below:

New Year, New Creative Intentions, and New Publication

What’s that?  Could we have a new soon-to-be-everyone’s-favourite sci-fi author guesting on this little blog?  Well, possibly; Trenchmate Tim has published his first short story and I’ve turned the blog over to him to tell us a bit more about it.

Shameless self-promotion time…

Regular visitors to these hallowed pages may have noticed that I’m a reasonably frequent Trenchmates contributor, talking mostly about my Marines and also waxing lyrical about Wild West Exodus. I’m intending to have a more hobby-productive year so hopefully there’ll be some more articles from me (on Project Deathwing and Kitbash Korner to name a couple or major undertakings for 2016).

When I’m not shackled to a cogitator station at work or turning out Trenchmate articles, I also write fiction – mostly the sort of fiction I like to read, so pretty gritty hardboiled science fiction, history and alternate history, and a touch of Fantasy. Oddly enough, most of the wargames and RPGs I enjoy fall into these categories.

I’ve just released my first (self-)published work on Amazon Kindle, Sam Cane: Hard Setdown. It’s a gritty, grimy science fiction novella, a survival mystery with a twist of horror. Sam Cane, reformed con-artist and ex-soldier, is fleeing her past and an enemy so dangerous, the only place she can hide is the other fringes of human settlement. Arriving at a small colony on an arid world to take up a posting as a security officer, she finds herself in a situation that’s no less dangerous. She’s forced to rely on her diverse and unique skillset to survive and work out what’s going on. Sam’s adventures by no means end here and I intend to keep publishing short works telling her story and exploring her world. If that tickles your fancy, you can find it here.

What has this to do with the hobby, I hear you think? In some ways, very little (did you notice the bit about shameless self-promotion above?). I’d love to write for GW or other hobby companies, even just doing fluff pieces for rulebooks (and will be applying to GW), but Sam is my own work and not connected with any existing universe.

What I do think is that wargaming and roleplaying help make me a better writer (and vice versa). There are a number of obvious similarities – running RPGs and writing both involve careful world building, characterisation, and attention to detail. The same applies to wargaming if you’re any kind of fluff player (which I am) – I create backgrounds for all my armies (and named characters and notable squads) and work out how those in any given game system tie together with each other and my opponent’s forces. I like a battle that has a narrative background and enjoy games linked as a story campaign. I think there’s also something in the hobby side as well, the careful attention to detail needed when building and painting a model and the thought that can go into telling a particular figure’s background in how it’s equipped, posed and painted. And I think, above all else, being immersed in something creative that almost entirely under your control helps sharpen the mind and hone the imagination – which is why I have no truck with people who say wargaming is just playing with kids’ toys.

I also can’t pretend that my years in the Grimdark haven’t coloured my writing at least a little bit – but it would be an odd writer or hobbyist who isn’t influenced by others.

So my plan this year is more reading across all my interests (want to get caught up with the HH series for one), more hobby time (including more Trenchmate articles) and more writing.

And if you do take a look at Hard Setdown, I hope you enjoy it and I’d welcome any comments on it.

Thanks for this, Tim.  I’ve just downloaded this for my PC/iPhone and I hope to consume it tomorrow.  Dear readers (all two of you), please, please, please download this, you won’t be disappointed. 

In Remembrance – The Shell Case

This is the hardest post I’ve yet had to write, The Shell Case is no more.

On Thursday, Phil brought down the curtain on his seminal hobby site.  I still can’t quite believe it.

My poxy little site, and so many others, owe their existence to the example that The Shell Case provided.  We could never compete, nor did I try, for Phil had bottled raw hobby magic and it was always a pleasure to read his work.

I hope that when the time is right, Phil can return to the hobby he so obviously loves.

The #Warmonger community feels a bit less bright this new year.