Hey folks, a quick update today. While I have an article ‘in the wings’ for you guys, I did a write up over at Badly Painted Minis if you guys are interested. Go have yourself a look, if you’d like!
And a preview of whats to come later…
In which I attach more chains to things!
In my last Templar post, I had begun the arduous task of painstakingly attaching chains to the wrists and weapons of the Indomitus box contents. While it was a slow start, it was addicting; the new models have many places where the chains like to fit and hang naturally.
I had a decision to make, in both a time, money, and logic sense. Where would I draw the line on what weapon would get chained or not? On my previous models, I had done ranged weapons as well as their various melee weapons, but such a thing seemed a bit much going forward. As well, as a gamer on a budget (that printer, and the money sunk into maintaining it and keeping it running, are initially quite high) I had little in the way of chain left. For visual consistency, I wanted the whole box to have chain cut from the same source, therefore I was a bit more miserly then I would be normally.
In the end, I decided to only do the melee weapons; this is a melee focused box, and I made a decision that if a Black Templar had to drop a weapon, it would be the ranged one. After all, while you can pistol whip someone quite hard when your a 9ft tall demigod, you can do so even better with a sword. And the sword features heavily in the lore of the Black Templars, and I imagine, viewed with some reverence.
Mind made up, I started with the Bladeguard Veterans.
Maybe it was the practice I had with the previous models, but the chains went on quite smoothly! A good tip here is to let it hang naturally once you have found a point to anchor the chain; gravity will help you make it look good. Using gel superglue, dabbed on very slowly, I then went along the chain-links, setting each link in turn. I took care to not let the glue ‘dribble’ into places that had details I wanted to retain. The chains are to improve the look, not obscure it!
I then did the Primaris Lieutenant (Castellan, if we are being Black Templars, here), shown above. His was an interesting case; his sword was sheathed! I contemplated breaking the rule, but figured it would be visually interesting having the chain loosely draped across the front of his body, as he shoots his Volkite (Think martian heat ray, for those of you not familiar with the weapon).
I thought it through from the models point of view; he holsters his weapon as the Tyranids close in, then draws his sword, carefully wrapping the chain around his wrist as he does so, a picture of calm on a chaotic battlefield. Finally, the relentless xenos crash into the shield wall, and he is prepared. His weapon is not leaving his hand, not until he draws his last breath…
Next up was the Primaris Captain (Marshall, if we are being Black Templars, and we are, at least here!), who luckily is wielding his sword normally. This was a fun little thing to do, little to no effort expended, even if it took a bit of time.
Having made decent progress, I then turned my attention to the Ancient. The Bladeguard Ancient has no weapon to speak of, besides the skeletal hand Games Workshop thought would count. What would I chain in this case? I had to think quite a while on this, and eventually decided to run the chain through the standard he bears. After all, he has something more important then a weapon that could fall; He bears a reliquary, and should it fall, the line of Marines very well could follow.
This was a harder task, and took some serious time to think of the logistics of how such a job would be accomplished. In the end, I let my gut and gravity decide.
Of course, I then turned my attention to the Assault Intercessors. Finally, Primaris melee troop choices! As a Black Templar player, my heart sung with joy when I saw these models, and was quite happy to bring them into my crusade properly.
Luckily, my task was mostly an easy one. The crosspiece on the chain-sword made my life incredibly easy, and I simply put on some music, and went about the task at hand. The only challenging model was the ‘not sergeant’ from the second, five man sprue. Since he was not a sergeant, I equipped him instead with a drawn pistol but holstered sword. I took the same approach as the Primaris Lieutenant, and had it drape naturally across the body to wear the sword sat on his hip.
Of course, this leaves the Eradicators and the Chaplain. The Eradicators, while a stupidly good unit, are going without chains; They are ranged warriors not out of choice, but out of a job that needs doing. Temporarily putting honour aside to focus on killing; the Black Templars don’t have to like it, but at the end of the day, we are here to kill Xenos, Heretics, and Mutants. A melee weapon is preferable…not needed.
On the other hand, the Chaplain is not done simply because he deserves more. With such a badass pose (finally, a Primaris Chaplain without a stupid, Dark Angels style, robe!), he deserves only the greatest of what I can do. With Grimaldus being added to my Crusade roster, the Indomitus Chaplain represents a ‘line’ Chaplain of the most zealous, loyal Chapter around. And that cannot be a rushed, or half done job. He must be an exemplar for all his Primaris brethren of what it means to one of Sigismund’s Crusaders.
And with that massive, evil tease, I shall leave you. Hopefully, I have something before long to show you. But for now, Ave Imperator, and Happy War-gaming, wherever in the world you might be!
So, after a week of frantic batch painting, I finally got a chance to run the Catachan 890th in a game of Kill-Team! They passed their first test with flying colors, sure, they didn’t win but they didn’t fail me completely either.
It was, as always in this wonderful club I’m in, a much grander event then just a 1v1. No sir, I jumped into a 4 player match, with the mission being Recover Intelligence. With 5 objectives, the ones furthest from your deployment being worth 2, close ones worth 1, and the centre worth 3! The opponents had Orks (A really nice throwback list with the old 2nd edition starter models, and a bunch of Lootas.), a group of Deathwatch, and a mostly primaris Minotaurs Chapter astartes force. The orks started far from me, at the other end of the table, and I had Deathwatch on my left and Minotaurs on my right. It was going to get bloody, fast.
Surprisingly, despite some heavy 1st turn losses, the other players started to focus mainly on each other, and of the two Deathwatch Marines that came after me, one fell to a flamers overwatch, and the other, while not actually dying, started to chase a guardsmen to the edge of the board and kept him away from my objective. For morale reasons I wanted to keep my lads together, but the presence of both a frag cannon and a missile launcher in my opponents teams meant I had to scatter pretty quickly.
With the centre objective controlled by the Minotaurs, the Catachans fanned out, and I started to eek out wounds where I could. One deathwatch marine, as stated before, fell to overwatch, and luckily for me, it was the storm shield! I stripped a couple wounds off some Minotaurs with my Scions, but their Trans-human Physiology and 2 wounds made them a tough nut to crack.
I may not have killed much, but with the Space Wolf far from my one objective I stayed in third place till the end of the game. I had a chance at the centre, after a well placed grenade cleared out some grots, but my opponents rallied and killed my scions before I could make good on it. On the other side of the table, the Deathwatch was being swarmed by Ork Boyz, while the Minotaurs were splitting their shots between me and the Orks, and both of us were credible threats.
Insane Bravery kept me in the fight longer then I should have, but in the end it was too little too late. The Ork player made a come from behind push, and despite being broken took the objective in his last turn, taking 1st right from under the nose of the Minotaurs.
The final score ended with me in 3rd, the Deathwatch in 4th, then the Minotaurs in 2nd and Orks in 1st! A great game, flowed really well, and I have to say, the elegance of the rule-set really showed; never feeling too complicated or bogged down, but still feeling really tactical.
Despite this, I don’t feel like my list was terrible; Lasguns are a lot more effective when their not facing tanks or high toughness enemies as much, and flamers and grenade launchers are actually useful! I’m not a competitive guy, and my list was put together more for fluff then actual effectiveness, but I never felt drastically outmatched. I had almost as many bodies as the Ork player, and my guys could shoot better. Next time, I’m going to stick a little closer together and focus fire a bit more.
A great game, with a great bunch of guys. Kill-Team I think will be a staple of this blog going forward! But, while I’m making a lore post today as well, that’s it for gaming! So as always, Ave Imperator!
You folks got a sneak-peek (So far, folks = 0, so this is just me future proofing out of sheer optimism!) at my Catachan Kill-Team.
When I was deciding what to play for Kill-Team, there really was only one option for me; Good old Poor Bloody Infantry. But while my Vostroyans are beautiful models, they didn’t strike me as the kind of regiment that engaged in special operations regularly. Its not that they don’t, there is enough lore and fiction about them that says otherwise, but specifically MY Vostroyans are a siege regiment, set up to pound a position to mulch in a time-frame of months, if not years, and through sheer attrition. Ask them to take an entrenched position, and they’ll do it with bayonets fixed and a prayer on their lips. But for clandestine warfare, I felt like something else.
Enter the Catachans. Tough, individualistic and self-reliant. In open warfare, they’re just as good as normal line infantry. But in jungles, be it actual ones with trees and scorpions the size of houses, or urban ones with tight networks of sewers and alleyways, They’re better then most. Perfect for Kill-Team. I never wanted to do a whole army of them, but a squad or two? Kill-Team offered the ideal excuse, and I think that was Games Workshops intention, so me-0-them-1.
However, the Jungle Fighters kit is OLD, very old, around 1998 if I’m not mistaken. and good lord the paint scheme on the web-store isn’t doing them any favors, with its very 2nd-3rd edition style of extreme highlights. 
Luckily, the command kit is far newer, and looks amazing!
So I bought one of each, and set to work. The older kit was a dog, and immediately put me off the idea of ever doing a full army. The newer kit was much better, and went together like a charm. And between both, I had 12 kitted out Jungle Fighters! Fair tip to anyone with the same idea; use the best plastic glue you can get, and that isn’t the GW stuff. I swear by Tamiya Thin, and it has a brush applicator. Use that to smooth out the join between muscle, lasgun stocks, and torsos.
The old kit, given a bit of TLC, actually doesn’t look bad at all. Trooper Caulfield here is 100% old catachan kit, and looks the business! After a marathon assembly session with Rambo and Predator on in the background, I had them all ready for paint. 
And this would have been it, at least for a while. But, having followed the Campaign rules to put them together, I hadn’t thought of doing a matched play version of the list, leaving me almost 30 points short. While having less points gives you more command points to use in the actual game, I figured having more bodies would help more in the long run, especially since you get command points anyway every turn! But, while I had a few catachan bodies left, the poses they offered looked really meh. So, I figured the Catachan boys were on a rescue mission, and had picked up a couple of Scion lads!
Now this kit is really divisive. Half the people I talk to love the kit, me included. It has that distinctly gothic insanity of the Imperium nailed to a T, and bringing back the beret heads from the ancient plastic stormtroopers kit from 2nd was a stellar move by GW’s sculptor.
However, the other half of people I talk to LOATHE the kit, for much the same reasons why I like it; that Gothic insanity. To be fair, the two kits that were phased out in favour of scions were beloved by many, especially the cadian styled Kasrkin. These were more traditionally sci-fi and military in comparison.
I can’t say that the latter group is entirely wrong, the Kasrkin were gorgeous models. But they suffered badly from being so distinctly Cadian in appearance. They didn’t have their own identity, and while they fit in really well with the Cadian Shock Troops, they never really worked for anything else unless you were willing to convert them, and since they were metal that wasn’t the easiest thing to do. The 3rd Edition sculpts are more generic, and were the ones I preferred back when I was first getting into the hobby. But they suffered from wonky scaling issues and again, being metal meant if you wanted weapon options that weren’t a distinct model, out came the Dremel and clippers.
So, rambling on aside, the Scion kit is very characterful, and full of great bits for every Guard player, and being the sucker I am I’ve now amassed far more scions then I’d ever actually use. Using two of them for Kill-Team actually meant them seeing the table, and 2 almost exactly put me at 100ish points (I’m actually 98 points, but I don’t feel the need to spend that extra two).
I’ve yet to actually play a game with them, but I’m looking forward to it! Lots of bodies, and plenty of special weapons without going into the plasma-spam cheese of the month. I’ll be sure to take pictures!
Its not all Kill-Team though. About 2-3 weeks before starting this blog I began cracking away at my Vostroyans, and starting with the command squad, I have the Vox, Banner, and Company Commander done. You saw the company commander yesterday, but heres the other two! 
The banner needs freehand writing work, but the models are beautiful and really take well to paint and washes, so they’re not as intimidating as they first appear. I just have the grenade launcher, which to be honest is of dubious value and may be replaced by a sniper, and the medic with his lovely massive syringe. I look forward to sharing them!
As always, Ave Imperator!
So I started this blog, if one could call it starting, sometime in 2013. I made one post, then, doubting myself, never continued it. I’ve since then both matured as a gamer and as a person, and feel like giving it another go.
My wargaming inspirations are many, but probably easily in the top 3 is the work of KrautScientist, and his blog, Khornes Eternal Hunt. His emphasis on fluff and context for his miniatures has always fascinated me, and has laid much of the groundwork for my own humble contribution to the 41st Millennium, the planet of Whitefall, and the 1st Whitefall Light Infantry. This blog will focus on 40k proper, Kill-Team, and my occasional dalliance in historical wargaming. I hope that this blog will motivate me to keep painting, and maybe meet some lovely internet denizens along the way.
Of course, this blog will also be full of semi-competent painting, horrible tabletop tactics( my basic strategy consists of fixing bayonets and charging literally everything, and this goes pretty poorly most of the time!). So, now that you know what your getting into, into my first real content!
Yes, thats my attempt at a Vostroyan Company Commander. The Whitefall lads…haven’t aged well and I’m planning on redoing them or cleaning them up before posting them. But the 78th Vostroyan Siege Regiment is my current project. I’m fairly happy with him, even if I’m terrified of edge highlighting! I’ve since touched up his bionic leg. You’ll see him again when I post the full command squad.
Of course, I’m playing as well. This is far from the 78th’s first outing, but it was the first on camera! This was at a private club I belong to, a great bunch of folks who have definitely made me want to play more! The 78th took to the field with my friends Tank Company, against a seasoned Imperial Guard player fresh from Gen-con. It was a slaughter, but I had a blast nonetheless.
With the release of Kill-Team, I came to the conclusion that while finely dressed boys in crimson make a stirring sight, they are a bit too flashy for sneaky-beaky work. Enter the 890th Catachan “Rats” Jungle Fighters!
They’re a mix of the brilliant command squad box, and the….less then brilliant Jungle Fighters box. But, they don’t look “thin your paints” terrible, and will do the job of blowing up generators and stuff all while being extremely 80’s about it.
Anyways, thats it for now! feel free to comment on how awful my painting is, or just even to say hi! This time, I feel like I’m going to continue! Till next time, Ave Imperator!
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