Heresy Era World Eaters - Adepticon Force 90% done!

Now that the bases have arrived I'm in the home stretch with the World Eaters force for Adepticon - All that remains is a trio of Contemptors of which I'm awaiting delivery! Had some time yesterday to break out the photo tent, brace yourselves for a tidal wave of pics!

Kharn and Khargos Bloodspitter

Command Squad

Skane's Destroyer Squad

Tactical Squad

Assault Squad #1

Assault Squad #2

Dreeadclaw Drop Pods

Heavy Support Squad

Rhino

Sicaran Arcus

Proteus  Land Raid

The all-important painting chart!

Starting to get a  little anxious about the contemptors arriving (they're from a garage casster in the UK, so it's understood that they're being done in his spare time), so I'm scheming on someme alternate plans just in case they don't arrive in time for the con. Fingers crossed!

Heresy Era World Eaters - Tanks in progress and command squad built!

Cracking on with the World Eaters over the last few days, and got some decent progress on 'em! Part of the plan was to build a command squad to accompany Kharn in one of the two Dreadclaws, which was rather fun:

Tried to include a mix of weapons and poses, hard to go wrong with a couple dudes with power fists and plasma pistols though. Thought one of 'em ought to have a pair of lightning claws, and it was pretty much a given that I needed to include one guy with an eviscerator! Pretty happy with the contained aggression the standard bearer ended up with as well. They should be a hoot to paint!

On the other side of the coin I did run into a slight issue when painting the tanks. As I'd feared, the recipe that works pretty well on infantry doesn't translate perfectly to the large flat panels of the tanks, and the wash step got pretty streaky. For the most part I'm hoping to play it off as weathering, and once I got some of the detailing and spot colors on they're starting to look reasonable. There's still a fair bit of mud and grime that I'm going to be adding, which should help as well.

I always loved the old Proteus Land Raider, and even through it's not an assault vehicle it still finds its way into many of my armies. It just suits the heresy-era aesthetic so well! For the purposes of the force for adepticon it will likely not even carry any troops and just act as a battle tank, though depending on the mission the five-man missile launcher heavy support squad might catch a ride in it as needed.

Trying out a new Sicaran variant with this army and included an Arcus. Not sure how it'll perform on the tabletop but on paper it seems pretty fierce. It can carry numerous missile types making it capable of dealing with a number of different threats ranging from infantry to aircraft and pretty much everything in between. It's not cheap to buy all the various payloads but I'm thinking it'll likely be worth it!

...Or it'll be blown to scrap in turn one every game. One of the two. Heh.

Heresy Era Imperial Army - Geno Five-Two Command and Recon squad painting (almost) complete!

Had a relatively quiet Friday evening and Saturday morning, and managed to crank out a fair chunk of 'the fun stuff' from the Geno Five-Two! Naturally, the penultimate step in virtually all of my painting projects involves taking a picture of 'em and then realizing all the little things here and there that I've missed when reviewing the pics for publication. Doh! Nevertheless, here's some pics of the recent batch of not-quite-finished minis to (very nearly) roll off the painting line:

Leading things off is Hetman Peto Soneka (generously donated to the cause by the always-awesome Dai of The Lost and the Damned and the Stunted) and his command squad with a Voxcaster and (what will eventually be) the Company standard. The other three members of the squad are armed with Heavy Stubbers, which I've always liked as a support weapon.

 

Next up is the recon squad, all armed with sniper rifles. Tried to come up with a camo pattern that matched the bases for the cameoline cloaks, and decided to go with yellow interior lining to tie them in with the rest of the force. They performed admirably on the table recently, as well - very nearly taking down a Bloodthirster all by themselves!

Lastly are the Gene-whips, Franco Boone and his prods Roke and Pharon - with the leadership of the auxilia lists being on the low side, the addition of the proto-commissars is a welcome addition!

I missed the weather window on these and woke up to snowfall this morning, so there's still plenty of time to go in and fix up all the little misses and errors. After that's done, it may be time for a brief Inq28 break, as a fun little package arrived on my doorstep earlier in the week...

Imperial Guard - Platoon Command Squad and Rapier painted

Looking at the painting chart, I realized that there were only two units left in the non-Apocalypse/non-Terrain section - the platoon command squad and the rapier laser destroyer. Simple enough to choose what to paint next!

 

I'm a huge fan of the rapier, and have owned a good half dozen of the old ones over the years. I was definitely excited to see Forge World sculpt an updated one! It's quite a bit larger than the old metal one, so it ended up on a 60mm base. I went back and repainted the body in black to match the current vehicle livery, and painted the two crewmen at the same time as I did the command squad, simples!

The command squad was a lot of fun to paint, with each model being very different from the next. I ended up cheating somewhat by repurposing the old company command banner bearer (as I've replaced him with something more fitting) so really there were only four models to paint. At this point, I have just a hair over 5000 points painted up and I think it's time for another group photograph!

In other news, this is post #399. Gonna have to come up with something fun for post #400 - I think it's high time for another giveaway!

Road to Adepticon - Army Pics and List v3

It's been crazy at work of late so not a whole lot of hobby time - a little bit of fooling around with army lists, but only one model actually got painted:

Eye of Error over at Eye of Error made a couple banners for me, so I scaled one down to use as the Regimental banner. Fairly simple bit of work, I clipped the plastic banner and pole off and inserted a bit of brass rod cut to fit, and used one of the banner toppers that comes with the command squad sprues to cap it off. I'm rather pleased with how the banner itself turned out as well - definitely more suited to the army than the rather cadian-esque one that comes with the plastic kit.

I've done a bit of messing about with the army list I'm intending to take to Adepticon and ended up with a compromise between building the most efficient group of killers I could, and my desire to include a number of units that fit the fluff of the Mordian 7th Regiment. The 7th are known for their heavy use of abhumans, and while I haven't found a really good fit for my Beastmen (in friendly games I use them as Penitents that always use the Knife Fighters option but lose their lasguns), I did want to include Thargadd's Thumpers (ogryns) and Dunno's Deadeyes (ratling snipers). I also drew out the shape for the carrying tray just to see if I could actually FIT all the models, which just barely worked. That's a whole lotta infantry!

As far as it goes, there's not a lot that still needs to be painted for this version of the list - A Vendetta, the proxy Hydra and the Aegis Defense Line, all of which have at least a little paint on 'em so far. Hopefully with the upcoming holiday weekend I can actually get 'em finished off!

Imperial Guard - A whole mess of infantry painted!

With Adepticon bearing down on us, I really needed to get in gear and paint up the multiple squads of infantry that have been neglected for so long. Thirty of 'em were going to be needed for my planned 1850 list so there was no getting around the fact that I was in for some assembly line painting. Not my favorite way to paint, but it's efficient for those times when you just have a horde of troops to do.

On the up side, I'd already painted up the heavy weapons teams so there ended up being 24 of 'em on deck. I didn't document this stage too much, just snapped a quick picture about halfway through. The scheme is fairly quick and painless, so it only took about 5-6 hours to get them up to tabletop standard.

...Almost to the finish line! I still need to paint on the unit insignia and "winged 7" on the shoulder pads, but I wanted to get a first pass of sealant on them before I did so. I find that helps when it comes time to draw on tiny numbers and symbols - the sealant smooths out the surface somewhat so the paint flows really nicely onto the shoulder pads.

  

Couple closeups of the various squads - I don't tend to go overboard on detail for the troops - especially true in the case of the guard, as these guys get pulled off the table in double handfuls due to casualties anyway! The grenade launcher/missile launcher combo gives the squads the ability to deal with both hordes and light vehicles/elite infantry, alternately there's 3 lascannons that I can swap in for those times I know I'll be facing heavier mechanized opponents.

While I was about it, I brought the old unit of ratlings up to speed, touching up their fatigues, re-painting the weapon housings, and re-basing them. Luckily my old urban rubble theme is essentially the same physical form as my current method - just a re-paint from grey to brown, and the addition of some static grass is all that is required.

 

I'm in the queue to have the extraordinarily talented Ron over at FTW build me a new commander model for the army, but needed something for a stand in in the short term. Recently I've been using the rules for Ursakar Creed for my army commander Evin Eldro, which meant that the old model I was using wasn't armed appropriately and the real Creed model, while cool, just doesn't fit my vision. Twin hot-shot laspistols and a power sword? Turns out I have a model armed that way... Kal Jerico! A quick repaint of the coat and base and job's a good 'un. I'm hoping to have Ron do a similar model that includes a carapace breastplate and an officer's head - while the base Kal Jerico model is really dynamic, it needs some work to really make it blend in with a guard army. For now though, this'll do!

It felt really good to be able to swap the last of the big Troop units over to green on the painting chart. I also took a little time in Excel and got it to reference the point values of the army list and was surprised to find out exactly how many points of guard there actually are lurking in the Closet of Doom. I really can't think of much that I want to add to the army at this point - possibly another couple Leman Russ variants, maybe a Stormblade for grins, but unless GW comes out with a storm trooper kit that I can't live without, I can't think of any further infantry that I really need. Could it be that the project is finally reaching conclusion?

...Nah, probably not. Hah!

Mordian 7th Regiment - Company Command Squad Painted. Also, RT-era Space Ninjas!

After painting a couple dozen Praetorians for the Ad-Mech army, I needed a break from the unrelenting red-and-white. That being the case I pulled down the partially-painted command squad for the Mordian 7th reboot and polished them off.

Not a lot remained to be done on the unit - just the final detailing, unit markings and the banner bearer's banner. Unfortunately my fine-point sharpies all appear to be dried up so I haven't been able to fill in the scrollwork on the banner as yet, but for all intents and purposes the unit is table ready!

While I was rooting around in the Closet of Doom I came across a box of old, ooooold models - one of which was this RT-era assassin. I think he'll be an admirable counts-as Sly Marbo for the 7th, as he has a ripper-pistol-looking gun, a poisoned sword on his back, and a meltabomb to represent his demo charge. A similar paint scheme in dark grey, red and gold and he ties in well with the rest of the army!

Mordian 7th Regiment, the rebirth!

I know this may come as a shock, but I actually did some work on my guard! I'll pause briefly while you recover from this stunning development.

To recap my history with the Mordian 7th Regiment - Ever since the Rogue Trader era, I've been enamored with the Imperial Guard, and my very first guard army was an attempt to recreate the army listed in the 40k Compendium. Since then the mighty 7th has held a special place in my heart, though I've never quite managed to complete the list in its entirety. The last version came very, very close however, though it was beleaguered by small hobby missteps that eventually culminated in my selling off the majority of it - It got to the point where I felt it would be more fun to rebuild than to repaint!

Chief among these is the fact that I didn't give them the correct paint scheme. Early on in the painting process I was (still) working on the Adeptus Mechanicus, and I cunningly decided that I could use the guard as Skitarii if I went with red and grey. According to the Compendium however the Mordian 7th's livery consisted of black fatigues trimmed in red to represent their hive ganger origins and their company motto "In the dark, blood will flow").

So I assembled a new Commander Evin Eldro and his command squad and set about trying out the 'correct' paint scheme. So far I'm pleased with how they're coming along. The dark blue/black fatigues with the red piping is reminiscent of the dress blues worn by the majority of the Mordian Iron Guard, and gives the impression of what they would look like if they donned standard guard flak armor. The breastplates on the Commander and the Standard Bearer are from the Empire Greatswords kit, and were chosen in an attempt to mimic the Rogue Trader-era guard command miniatures. I think I'm going to paint the medic's flak armor white to help distinguish him as the medic a bit better than he is now.

The tanks will be painted in a black and red scheme as well, as shown by the Bane Wold I'd painted a while back, and I think I'm going to keep the tank crews in red.. All in all I'm actually looking forward to dive back in to the guard!

TOEMP #3 - The Mordian 7th Regimental Command, part 3

Success (sort of)! I managed to polish off the command squad last night for the Tale of Even More Painters 3rd challenge. The qualifier is in reference to the Commissar Lord who I managed to drop onto a tile floor on the way out to seal the figs. Going to have to do some serious rework on that one. Curses!

Part of the contest was to come up with a background and history for your own special character, and as such I fleshed out some information regarding the Mordian 7th Regiment and Commander Evin Eldro:

++THE MORDIAN 7TH REGIMENT++

The Mordian 7th Regiment can trace its history back to the days of the expansionist era as one of the original ten Guard regiments raised from the hive world of Mordia. During a recent refounding the regiment's D Company was formed from the "Night Rippers" hive gang, which had led a rebellion against Mordia's planetary governor, Commander Varren. The rebellion was put down, and its leader, Mahagon Jhume, executed. His followers were considered a potentially valuable fighting force and rather than being executed, they were inducted into the Imperial Guard. The "Night Rippers" continue to use their gang symbols and use Jhume's image on their banners. In 984.M41 the regiment was assigned to pacify the newly rediscovered human world of Flotis III. However due to an Adeptus Munitorum scribe's error on their regimental manifest, the unit was mistakenly recorded as the "Mordion 7th", and as such found themselves cut off from support and resupply from Mordia for nearly five years. Eventually the error was corrected, though in subsequent years the Mordian High Command has attempted to distance themselves from the 7th Regiment, claiming "they've spent so much time on the front lines they no longer represent the Mordian ideal", and it has been quietly speculated that Eldro's association with the Night Rippers hive gang has compromised the principles that the majority of the Mordian Iron Guard hold dear. Indeed the Mordian 7th is unusual in the fact that they do not fight in the dress uniforms and tidy ranks the Mordian Iron Guard are known for. Regimental Commander Evin Eldro dismisses these claims and points to the phenomenal successes the regiment has accomplished over the years as proof that his men are as capable as any other regiment hailing from the Mordian Hive World.

++COMMANDER EVIN ELDRO++

Following his successful persecution of the Orks infesting Flotis III, Commander Evin Eldro of D Company was elevated to the rank of Regimental Commander of the Mordian 7th. The time spent fighting the Orks honed Commander Eldro and his men into fierce fighting form, and it was due to Eldro's tactical acumen that the 7th Regiment (and notably the men of D Company) were able to not only stem the green tide, but eventually repel the Ork invaders from the planet Flotis III. Eldro was able to exhort the men of D Company to perform acts of insane bravery in the face of the alien menace, and their actions saved thousands of Imperial citizens from a fate as slaves to the cruel Ork taskmasters. On more than one occasion, surprised orks were massacred by waves of enraged, bayonet-armed guardsmen charging into battle.

Commander Eldro is unusual in his open-mindedness towards abhumans, something that has caused friction between the Mordian 7th and other Imperial forces. During the action on Flotis III, D Company included squads of Ratlings and Ogryns which are still seen on many battlefields, but also included a small force of Beastmen - an abhuman strain that is regarded with extreme suspicion by most. No one is quite sure of the history behind their association, but packmasters Org and Raakt are fiercely loyal to Commander Eldro, and their abilities in close quarter fighting were instrumental in repelling several Ork incursions on Flotis III.

A Company Commander may be replaced by Commander Evin Eldro for an additional 100 points.

	WS	BS	S	T	W	I	A	Ld	Sv
Commander Evin Eldro	4	4	3	3	3	3	3	10	4+

++EQUIPMENT++
Carapace Armor
Refractor Field
Plasma Pistol
Frag Grenades
Close Combat Weapon

++SPECIAL RULES++
Supreme Commander: Eldro can issue up to four orders each turn. He has a command radius of 24". Eldro can use the Bring It Down!, Fire on my Target! and Get Back in the Fight! orders described on page 30, as well as the First Rank, FIRE! Second Rank, FIRE!, Incoming! and Move! Move! Move! orders described on page 36. In addition, Eldro can use the following unique order:

For Mahagon Jhume!: Through a combination of inspiring diatribe and threatening bellows, Eldro exhorts his soldiers forward to glory! If the order is successfully issued, the ordered unit is inspired and immediately charges into the fray with little thought for its own safety. Until the end of the turn, the ordered unit gains the Fearless and Furious Charge special rules - place a counter or other suitable marker next to the unit to show this.

Beastmen Attack Squads: Commander Eldro is unusually tolerant of Abhumans and any army he leads may be accompanied by 0-2 Beastman Attack Squads. They are chosen following the rules and points values for Penal Legion squads, however their Desperadoes specialist skill is always assumed to be Knife Fighters, and they must discard their lasrifles, preferring the exclusive use of their swords and axes. Although Beastman Attack Squads are considered a Troops Choice for purposes of holding objectives and deployment, they do not count as mandatory choices for Force Organization chart selection.

Regimental Command: Commander Evin Eldro is always accompanied by his regimental command staff. If Commander Eldro is included in the army, he MUST be accompanied by a full complement of Advisors, including a Master of Ordinance, an Officer of the Fleet, an Astropath, and two Bodyguards.

I based the rules for Commander Eldro on Creed, removing the Tactical Genius rule and replacing it with the Beastman Attack Squads rule, and adding the caveat that he must be accompanied by a full set of Advisors. In addition I removed his twin-linked hotshot laspistols and gave him a Plasma Pistol and Close Combat Weapon (the swagger stick) instead.

I realized after I'd built them that technically bodyguards are supposed to be armed with Laspistols and Close Combat Weapons, but as in most of the army entries there is no points cost difference between a Lasgun and the LP/CCW, my opponents rarely kick up much of a fuss. I enjoyed building the 'casualty' model, it's somewhat hard to tell, but he's dropping a live grenade, I shaved the pin and added it to the base, which makes the other bodyguard's wide-eyed look a bit more understandable, as he's no doubt expected to throw himself on said grenade...

Another fun unit to paint - this time around all the figs were mini-characters in their own right, I tried to build as much personality into the command squads as I can, and that makes them much more entertaining than the blocks of regular infantry so common to the Guard.

TOEMP #3 - The Mordian 7th Regimental Command, part 2

Not a whole lot of hobby time this weekend I'm sorry to say, though I did manage to finish the eyes and skin, and lay down the undercoats for the main color scheme for the various models in the Regimental Command squad. Some of the faces turned out rather amusing (and I hope to get good close-up shots of the individuals as I finish them off), I slipped a bit while painting the Master of the Ordnance, and he ended up being severely cross-eyed. It being the guy who calls down the always-inaccurate artillery however, I decided to keep him that way. Similarly, the bodyguard not currently in the "getting shot" position ended up with a wild eyed, shell-shocked look.

As the regimental command squad is composed primarily of veteran guardsmen, I'm going with the reverse color scheme (grey fatigues, red armor) as I did for the Hardened Veterans. A couple notable exceptions - the medic wears white fatigues, and the astropath wears the standard green of the Adeptus Astra Telepathica. The Officer of the fleet is in the standard blue tunic and white trousers and shirt, and the commissar is in basic black.

I'm hoping to get this squad polished off over the next few days, which will hopefully then give me time to finish off the Valkyrie I have half painted so far:

All of the Imperial Navy craft in the army will be painted in the brown/grey livery similar to the Thunderbolt I've painted in the past, I think that will give the aerial corps a sense of continuity.

I did paint the interior of the Valkyrie before I assembled and painted it, though the Vendetta I have planned will likely be sealed shut - I really did not enjoy builting the Valkyrie and I have to say I'm not looking forward to building another one. At least I figured out all the WRONG ways to put the kit together when I built this one, so perhaps the second go-round won't be quite so frustrating...