Next army: Highlander Space Marines?

So, I'm thinking of taking a break from the Vostroyans to work on a Space Marine army.  Several possiblities spring to mind.  I have some Grey Knights from several years ago,  I also have a fair number of Space Wolves  -- a couple of squads of Grey Hunters, a squad of Blood Claws, some Terminators, Logan, and Njal.  Some of these are painted in the traditional Shadow Gray/Space Wolves Gray scheme... Meh...


A few years ago, my FLGS had a create your own chapter contest which required painting up a basic trooper in the chapter livery.  My chapter was "The Black Watch" and I did this guy:

Hmm... Scottish mythology does align nicely with the Space Wolves:  Werewolves (Wulfen) are after all a Scottish myth.  You know, I could easily see the guys in the top picture on this page using Space Wolves rules.  Plus doing the Tartan on the loincloths (can't see doing kilts on power armor, loincloths will have to do) and the hackle on top of the helmets will make the army stand out.

NOVA Open

Well the NOVA Open has come and gone, and I took a beating this year:  2-6 (OUCH!).   First, by and large, the tournament was pretty well run, and the swag and other amenities this year were pretty good.   And things kept running fairly well, in spite of a hurricane hitting the area.


Next I will say that all 6 of my opponents were decent enough folks to play against.  Six? Umm... yeah.  It seems that the bracketing system broke down on Sunday with folks dropping out (especially for those of us in the lowest bracket)  so I ended up playing 4 games against two players.  Yes, it was messed up, but, by this point, I didn't care.  

One thing that did irritate me, however, was the fact that I busted my ass Sunday morning to get in to the hotel (I live an hour away) by the posted start time only to find out it had been pushed back half an hour.  OK, an announcement had been made the night before, but I hadn't heard it.  I can understand adjustments, etc, but please don't just rely on one announcement.  Post the information around the hall (particularly next to the entrance/exit) and on the  web-site!  Really, it doesn't take that long, guys. (OK, rant mode off)

Here's my army:

CCS: Regimental Std (my nomination for single mini), Astropath,  2x Melta, Flamer, Chimera HHF
2x Storm Troopers x5, 2x Melta

4x Vets with 3x Melta, Chimera HHF
PCS, Al Rahem, 3x Melta, Chimera HHF
Infantry Squad, Melta, Chimera HHF

Infantry Squad, Melta, Chimera HHB

Devil Dog
Devil Dog
Leman Russ Exterminator, HB x3(Ragnarok Pattern, my nomination for best conversion)
Leman Russ Exterminator, HB x3

As for my games here's how they went:


Game 1 vs Deathwing:  Lost on Objectives.  Nice looking Deathwing army. Great Opponent. High point:  Storm Trooper squad getting charged by a Terminator, and killing him!

 Game 2 vs Blood Angels:  Lost on Table Quarters, Spearhead Deployment.   Not a horrible game, but, not a great one either.  Nice looking army (Templars recycled into blood Angels, I think)

Game 3 vs Blood Angels Razor-Spam.  Kill points, dawn of war -- lost this one, really could have won, if I'd used my head better when rolling in on turn 1. 


Game 4 vs CSM,  Tied on Kill Points, TQ, lost on Objectives, Spearhead Deployment.  Meh game, army was a bit of an eysore.

Game 5 vs Nids  -- NIDS! I hate NIDS!  Won! (finally).  Early on, I felt like I was playing a 5-year old.  My opponent was cursing her dice, threw them across the room, and generally made an spectacle of herself.  Later, she calmed down, and enjoyed the game (in spite of getting stomped)

Game 6 vs Space Marines (loss) -- My opponent was the brother of the Death Wing player,  another nice looking army.  The highlight point of this game (at least from my perspective) was his librarian using Gate of Infinity to materialize himself and a squad of terminators inside the engine compartment of the Ragnarok (Doh!).  He managed to laugh about it though!  I was winning this game early on, but failed to stop his dreadnaughts from hitting my lines and killing tanks.

Surprisingly, we tied on kill points (the primary objective) but I lost on the secondary objective.  I crushed on VP's however.

Game 7 vs Nids, yep, here's where the bracketing broke down -- ended up facing her again.  Most irritating loss of the weekend as I lost it by failing to move a DevilDog over to contest an objective.

Game 8 vs Space Marines, and another repeat, this time a win!  This time I focused my efforts on killing the dreads early.  At one point, his ironclad was reduced to trying to kick things.  I won on all counts.

Lessons learned:  My list was really sub-optimal, really could have used the indirect fire of a Manticore with the NOVA terrain, Exterminators worked well at cracking transports.  Stormtroopers ability to re-roll deepstrikes ROCKS, but I need to do a better job of picking targets for them.  Al Rahem's outflanking was useful, and he only came in on the wrong side of the board once.  The Devil Dogs really under-performed, so I'll probably swap them out for the Vendettas.  Also I need a smaller, lighter, display board!  Sunday I left it in the car since I had already been appearance judged.  

Storm Troopers Painted

My two small units of Stormies, painted.

Squad 1:  Brown fur trim on the hats:

Squad 2: Grey fur trim:

These guys were a fair bit of work, but ultimately worth it to get Storm Troopers that fit in with the Vostroyans.

Storm Troopers Ready for Paint

A quick update on my two squads of Storm Troopers; the building and conversion work is done.  I included the prototype with the remainder of his squad.  One thing about Stormies; unlike most other IG units, the Sergeant has the exact same equipment as the Squad, so I used the posing as the means of distinguishing the Sarge from his squad.   In this squad, he's waving his squad forward, while in the other squad the sergeant is pointing at their (destination/target/whatever)

I realized rather belatedly that I missed an opportunity for distinguishing one squad from the other -- the ear flaps on the hats; up versus down.  I'll just have to do it with the color of the fur trim on the hats instead, like I did with the Vostroyans.

Bjorn? Is that you?

Is it just me or would this new Contemptor pattern dreadnought just make a great Bjorn?  Fluff-wise Bjorn is the oldest of dreads in existence so this guy would just make all kinds of sense.  So I'm really tempted to buy one of these to wolf up into a Bjorn.

Armies on Parade 2011

So I entered my Vostroyans into my (sorta) local GW's Armies on Parade contest.  Did I win?  Umm.. No.  Did I expect to?  Not really, but I wanted to enter because I had said that I would.  We ended up having a good turn out; 8 entries.  Full disclosure; I started on my display board the night before.

Here's my humble entry:  Vostroyan CO, with CCS, Firstborn squad (Veterans), Al Rahem (err Alexi Romanov) and platoon, Marbov,  two chimeras and my Katyusha Manticore

Here's the First place winner, Sam's awesomely converted Ork army:

Second Place went to Val's Son's of Medusa, on an awesome diorama:

Val's army includes some great free-hand work:

Third went to a nicely painted WHFB Chaos army (Sorry, I didn't catch the owner's name)

In all we had 6 40k entries, a WHFB entry, and a LOTR entry.  Nice full spread.  In addition to the ticket, the winner got his choice of recent Black Box models -- he chose the Dread Knight which he plans to Orkify -- replacing the Termie with a Nob.  After the top 3 got their picks, the rest of us got a crack at what was left -- I ended up getting a unit of High Elf Dragon Princes which my son plans to convert for use as Blood Knights.

Ecclesiarch -- Super Heavy Exorcist, Part II

Wow, it's been over a year... Here's an update on the Ecclesiarch.  When I last posted, I had the basic superstructure of this beast built and needed to add details.  First up was some over-the-top bling for the sides.  I took some inspiration for the side plates from the Fortress of Arrogance field of skulls combined with the Sister's Fleur-de-Lis icon.  For the skulls, I made a casting from the Cities of Death Imperial Basilica.  I combined the skulls with the Fluer-de-lis from the Immolator kit.  To tie it in with the Baneblade chassis, I framed the icons with 0.10" C-channel and added rivets with 1 mm plastic rod.