14th Grand Company

Another step to finishing the Golden Throne challenge, my Chaos Sorcerer is not finished. I’m not completely happy with how he turned out but for now he is done, perhaps I’ll come back to him and touch him up.

Tzeentch has always been my favorite of the Chaos powers so naturally I did this sorcerer in the colors of the master of change.  The challenge is to have him still fit in with the rest of my army. I’m not sure how well this comes off in the end though.

As with Fabius, I took step-by-step pictures:

Stage1: White robe: Graveyard Earth -> Codex Grey -> Skull White

I wasn’t sure what colors I was going to paint where so I “blocked” out the main colors to get an idea of how it would fit together.

Stage 2: Mordian Blue, Shinning Gold, Mithril Silver, Hormaguant Purple

Stage 3: Mordian Blue -> Ice Blue -> Space Wolves Grey, armour washed with purple

Stage 4: Metallic washes: Devlan Mud then black

Stage 5: Purple: Hormagaunt Purple -> Liche Purple -> Ice Blue, Red: Mechrite Red -> Blood Red -> Blazing Orange -> Golden Yellow

Stage 6: Bone: Khemri Brown -> Bleached Bone -> Skull White

Final Stage: Base: Graveyard Earth -> Bleached Bone

Next up is 3 squads of bikers for my fast attack. I’m hoping to do this much quicker than the models to date, the Golden Throne Challenge is half over and I have 2/3s of the models left to paint.

Another classic model that I’ve had since third edition, Fabius Bile used to be a potentially amazing (or horrible) character – all his stats were D6 modified!

One of my goals for this Golden Throne challenge (other than actually paint all the force org slots) is to try some different painting techniques.  For my terminators and obliterators I focused on the faces and tusks. For Fabius I wanted to try white power armor and even more practice on his face and fleshy robe. I know he is painted with a dark purple armor in the codex but I figured that since Fabius used to be the chaplain of the Emperor’s Children the traditional white armor would be fitting as well. Other than the armor and darker robe I tried to follow how the original GW Fabius looks.

For both my own records and since I have been asked before how I paint different aspects of my army I also kept notes and took stage-by-stage pictures of Fabius.

Stage 1: white power armor: Graveyard earth -> Codex Gray -> skull white

I added a 'handle' by glueing the model to a large washer and taping a magnet to an old paint bolttle

Stage 2: Skin Cloak: Dark Flesh -> Vomit Brown -> Bleached Bone, Lev. Purple Wash. Face: Vomit Brown -> Bleached Bone, Ogren Fleash and Lev. Purple washes

Stage 3: Leather: Vermin Brown -> Snakebite Leather -> Bleached Bone

Stage 4: Metals: Mithril Silver and Shining Gold. Both washed with Develan Mud then Badab Black

Stage 5: Hair: Tausept Ochre -> Bleached Bone -> Skull White, Red Vials: Scab Red -> Blood Red -> Blazing Orange -> Sunburst Yellow, Green Vials: Orkshade Green -> Goblin Green -> Scorpion Green -> Sunburst Yellow

Stage 5 From the Back

Final Stage: Blood: Dark Flesh -> Red Gore, Base: Graveyard Earth -> Bleached Bone

Next up is a Sorcerer to finish my HQ slots and I hope to be able to post a similar step-by-step for him.  Let me know what you guys think of how I did the steps and photos.

I finished my Obliterators as well, which fills my heavy support slots for the Golden Throne painting challenge. Some of you old time players may recognize these classic sculpts by Dave Andrews, for those who didn’t play 3rd edition CSM behold the glory of old school Chaos:

That’s right, these guys are so awesome they have guns out of their eyes, mouth and chest! They are smaller than the current models (they used to be on the smaller bases) but how could I pass up repainting these guys and putting them on the battlefield?

One thing I did do with both of these and my terminators I just finished is a slightly different base colors. I had been doing grays for gravel for city besieging but it seemed to make the whole model more dull and blur with the silver. Instead I tried a more organic look with browner gravel and grass.

I used graveyard earth for the base and highlighted with bleached bone added to it.  The grass is a mixture of GW’s scorched grass and used tea (I cut open the pouches and let them dry out).  It may not be as fluffy as the city rubble look but I think it helps the overall presentation of the model. What do you guys think?

Well I was happy to continue plodding along my with my Traitor Guard army (I have a handful of guys to add and half a dozen tanks to paint) but when I happened to stop by my local GW I was told about the Golden Throne painting challenge. Basically you get 6 weeks to fully paint a full force org chart. Although I do have plenty of guard to paint the was no way I could fill up a force org without buying a great deal of new guys. Instead I pulled out my old, metal Iron Warriors (the ones I painted many years back). I had already dunked a handful of them and after adding in the ones I was planning on adding to the green tank I am short only one bike of a full chart! It wouldn’t be a very competitive list (not sure the survivability of 3 man terminators and 5 man troop squads), but it fits the bill.

The first selection filled, my Elites with three 3 man squads.

Squad 1 is armed with three combi-weapons for maximum flexibility. These are all the old metal terminators but still look very nice next to the new plastic ones. I think the longest part to paint were all the skulls and tusks, but I think they ended up looking ok.

Squad 2 has the first Reaper Autocannon (which is actually the plastic one) and another combi-weapon and two chain fists for ripping tanks open.

And squad three is a copy of squad two (but with the metal Reaper).  The ‘power fist’ on the right is one of the dreadnought close combat weapons I had added to the original guy and kept it on as a token of my previous work.

This project also completes the Final ToEMPs. Fallen73rd has decided that the time for ending the project is over and I fully understand, I know I have been neglectful to the group with updates and support so I makes sense to end it and start anew.

ToEMP points:

• 1 pnt per foot troop: 9 pnts
• 1 pnt for details: 9 pnts
• Total for challenge 11: 18 points

Thanks again to Fallen73rd for starting the ToEMP and getting us all motivated to get things done. I would highly recommend keeping an eye out for his second ToEMP challenge and join in!

Next up are some old school obliterators that fill the heavy support slots followed by my HQ choices, it should be a action packed couple of weeks if I want to get everything done by March 16th!

Perhaps the title is a bit misleading, are any of our little plastic armies ever really finished? Perhaps not, but I completed the 2,000 point army I brought to the Seattle GT  including a display board for it.

Two models that were last to be finished also completed (though very late) ToEMP #10: officer of the fleet and the company command’s chimera.

The officer of the fleet is a real help against reserved based armies such as drop pod marines. During the tournament he wasn’t a game changer as none of my opponents relied on reserves, but then again maybe they just changed their tactics in response to him?

The Chimera was used to protect my command squad with the invaluable Commander Creed. This tank was destroyed in nearly every game in the tournament but Creed was lost in only 2 of them, so I think all in all it was well worth its cost.

As for my results? I achieved my goal for my first ever GT: win 2 games. In fact I even tied a third while grabbing the secondary objective. The two I lost were both hard losses. The first was against Nidzilla and only a sole sentinel remained at turn 6. The second was the last game against a fully mechanized guard army which would have been a great deal closer if luck had been better with me.  In the end I placed 47th out of 80 some great 40k players (and cheating one who won but was later disqualified!). After spending the last few weeks getting over the hard losses and the less than I hoped painting score, I’ve started to reorganize my army composition and think hard about how I want to play this army. I may move to a more mechanized army with squads of veterans rather than the platoons, but I still want to stick to the theme I’ve started so may look at replacing the tanks altogether and build a completely foot based army. We shall see what the future holds…

After reading through December’s White Dwarf article about GW’s year in review I was inspired to look back on what I had accomplished this year.

I have just finished another tank to my growing horde of traitor guard. This one is the dreaded Leman Russ Demolisher with sponsoon plasma cannons. Indeed it is a pricy tank, but when it lets loose, it is sure worth it. Thanks to the Lumbering Behemoth rule it can move 6″ and still fire off the demolisher and a plasma cannon, ensuring the destruction of any squad unlucky enough to get in its way.

The demolisher cannon is a kit bash using the Banehammer cannon that I didn’t use for my Baneblade. I had 4 Leman Russ kits, a built Leman Russ and an old built Leman Russ demolisher so I decided to build my own demolisher cannons to create two full squads of tanks, one of the traditional LR and another of demolishers (the other 4 tanks are built and painting has started so watch for them!)

Every weapon on the tank is AP2, ensuring that anything that the tank hits will not get a armor save.

I tried something different with the back by adding two extra barrels and placing a smoke stack on either side.

I also wanted to pull in a theme I’ve used on my troops by adding gas cans and ready-to-light torches to the storage bin.

This also complete the 8th challenge of The Tale of Even More Painters:

• Vehicle: 10 points
• Symbol: 1 point
• Meeting deadline: 2 points
• Total for Challenge 8: 13 points

And here is a sneak peak of whats coming next:

Just got back from the Tanksgiving event at the local GW store, and wow there were a lot of tanks there. One gent alone brought 200+ IG, Eldar and Tau tanks, walkers and a few Avatars. Although our store didn’t have the most in the region (two others had 1,000+!) we tallied up 800 tanks, walkers, large targets, monsters and supper heavies.

Now for some picts!

First up the growing tank arsenal of the 14th Grand Company:

Tanks of the 14th Grand Company

And Group Shot #1

And shot #2

And more tanks!

Sorry a few are a bit blurry, the camera was having some issues, but I think it gets the point across: a table full of tanks is crazy, but 4 tables full of tanks is crazier!

Also if you take a look at my tanks you get a peak of what is on my painting bench and been keeping me busy: 5 more Russes and a Chimera to bulk up my traitors!

So I’ve been thinking about attending the NW GT in January hosted by Conquest. It is 2k, 5 game tourny which will be an intense weekend both because the games are larger than I normally play as well as way more games than I normally play in a weekend.

I have until mid December to decide if I want to go or not so in the mean time I am going to prepare for it by making a 2k list and playing as many games as I can with it. So here it goes:

HQ: Company Command Squad @ 290 pts (Medi-pack; Regimental Standard; Vox Caster; Plasmagun x1)

• Lord Castellan Creed
• Officer of the Fleet
• Chimera (Heavy Bolter;  Multi-Laser)

Troops:  Infantry Platoon @ 207 pts

• Platoon Command Squad ( Krak Grenades; Vox Caster; Grenade Launcher x2)
  • Platoon Commander (Melta Bombs; Bolt Pistol; Power Weapon)
• Infantry Squad ( Power Weapon; Vox Caster; Flamer)
• Infantry Squad (Power Weapon; Vox Caster; Flamer)

Troops: Infantry Platoon @ 567 pts

• Platoon Command Squad ( Krak Grenades; Vox Caster; Grenade Launcher x2)
  • Platoon Commander (Melta Bombs; Bolt Pistol; Power Weapon)
• Infantry Squad (Power Weapon;  Vox Caster; Flamer)
• Infantry Squad (Power Weapon; Vox Caster; Flamer)
• Heavy Weapons Squad (Lascannon x3)
• Heavy Weapons Squad (Lascannon x3)
• Heavy Weapons Squad (Missile Launcher x3)
• Heavy Weapons Squad (Mortar x3)

Fast Attack: 2 Armoured Sentinel @ 150 pts (Plasma Cannon)

Fast Attack: 2 Bane Wolves @ 290 pts (Chem Cannon; Multi-Melta)

Fast Attack: 2 Scout Sentinels @ 90 pts (Missile Launcher)

Heavy Support: Leman Russ Battle Tank @ 185 pts ( Lascannon; Heavy Bolter Sponsons x2)

Heavy Support: Leman Russ Demolisher @ 220 pts (Lascannon; Plasma Cannon Sponsons x2)

This may not be the most competitive list, in fact I’m sure it is not, but it should be fun and uses everything I’ve built so far. The only things I need to add are: the Demolisher, Chimera and officer of the fleet. I also have to paint the mortar squad.

Let me know your thoughts (good or bad). I have 2 months to tweak the list and build any other units I need.

This is a combinational post. First of it is to display my second entry for ToEMPs but also for FTW’s request for our “Must Have Unit.” I’ve only played a few games for my traitor guard, but in all the games my Bane Wolves have made a huge difference by either killing 15 marines in one turn or taking a lot of shots while my lowly platoons take the objectives. These tanks aren’t real tough but they are fast and they are very deadly, which causes many people to fear them to the point of ignoring anything else.

Even though there are the disadvantages of running these tanks in a squadron, it does give them more survivability – I really just need one shot from the chem cannon to make that marine player cry Also my fast attack slots are all filled with my scout and armored sentinels (which are other favorite units!).

Bane Wolf 1:

And its pack mate, Bane Wolf 2:

For the ToEMP this unit gives me an additional:

• Vehicles x2: 20 pnts
• Vehicle details x2: 10 pnts
• Challenge 7b total: 30 pnts
• Challenge 7 total: 37

Whats next? Well in part it depends on what the next challenge is for ToEMP but I have 4 Leman Russes in the mail to add to the one I have finished and the Demolisher I need to strip and repaint, this will give me a full squad of Leman Russes and a full squad of Demolishes! I would like to get these all done for Tanks-giving but we’ll see how that goes!