Finished Squad #2 and the problem of Squad #3.

Got squad #2 put together. Sadly, doing so used all the hammers I had save for 2. Also, I ran out of meltaguns when I finished squad #1. So... since all of Squad #2 has hammers except for the two flamers (which truthfully I will only rarely ever use), and the Sergeant who has a powerfist, I think I need to make two more marines for that squad, and I probably should get around to making an extra guy or two for squad #1. Also, the squad #3, which was supposed to be nearly identical to squad #2 will now not be identical, because I am out of hammers.

So, I think since I have a lot of regular swords from the Chaos Warriors box, I will use those. I also have a number of axes left over, and if needed, I can start popping those onto the guys for Squad 3, that way we have some type of variety. Squad 4 will probably end up with chain weapons. Squad 5 will be the Forgeworld non assault squad, armed with... I don't know yet, probably a mix of weapons. Squad 6 will be the Forgeworld assault guys, with magnetized backpacks so that they can pull duty as jumpers as needed. Axes, Hammers, Cloaks, Swords. That's pretty much the delineation for the squads planned.

Sadly, I also ran out of cloaks for squad #1 when I finished squad #1 so I can't put together two flamer guys that would be able to go with squad #1. Which isn't that big of a loss honestly, as I said, rarely ever do I use a flamer when a meltagun is an option. But, in going through my stuff that I have to put these guys together, another slight issue came to light. Sure I have torsos, not the ones that I want, and honestly not enough that will work for me, but I have some, I also have lots of backpacks and heads, which is awesome. What do I not have?

Lots of bolt pistols. Lots of arms that can be sliced and repositioned to hold some hand weapons, and most important of all, legs. In fact, I think I have somewhere around 4 legs left. Total. Which yes, that will give me a start on putting together the next squad, but uh... that sucks, because it means I probably won't get the guys all assembled for this squad before I go back to work on Tuesday. (I had 5 days off, tomorrow is day #4. Yes, it was glorious, and my god, did I ever need the break.)

So, on the to do list...
#1. Acquire meltaguns. 5 squads. 2 meltaguns per squad, that's 10 meltaguns needed. At the current rate on the interwebz, I am looking at something like... hell, I dunno, anywhere between 30 and 60 bucks before delivery.

 #2. Acquire legs, because honestly, while the one image I saw a while back of a marine made out of shoulder pads and nothing else was cool, I don't wanna go that route. Just to complete the next squad, I need at least 10 legs. That makes the 4 legs I have left become 2 for Squad 2's meltaguns, and 12 for Squad 3. Now, I could go out and buy just 10 tactical marine legs from the Battlewagon Bitz or somewhere like that, or I can get legs that look good. Besides, the 10 tactical legs are either $16 just for those, of $20 depending on the legs, and they are all bland and boring. I want spice, I want awesome, and those legs do not need to apply. Which probably puts me with either Chaos Marine legs, or Khornate Berzerker legs. Both of which need just a bit of work to make them nearly perfect. The Khornate ones need the Khorne symbol carved off, which isn't exactly hard, but the regular Chaos marine legs need to have those fucking chaos stars shaved away. Which is a pain in my nuts to do. So... fuck those legs, more than likely going to go with the Khornate legs. $8 for 6 legs, which makes it $16 for 12. Not quite a $1.20 per leg, but not a bad price at that. That is what I will most likely go with.

#3. Torso's. Yeah, the ones with the Imperial eagle and winged skull are great for space marines. This is preheresy, the Imperial Eagle was not allowed to be worn yet, that was for special units as a decoration. So, once again we have to back to getting different torso's. Now, what I have been doing so far is taking whatever torso I have and shaving off whatever logo existed there at first. The ones that worked best for me were the Assault Marine torso's, as those required a lot less work and looked better. But I ran out of those. I have lots of torso's with Blood Angels or Space Wolves regalia on them, but that's a lot of effort that I can better use elsewhere, and I could trade those bits or use them later. I've looked at a lot of torso's so far, both from GW and from the various other people online. Truthfully? The best looking torso for what I am working on is really the Berzerker body set. Sure all of them have the Khornate icon that's gotta go, but they all also have decent bits of fiddlery on them that look nice. 8 of those? $4. May as well grab two of them since I need enough for at least 1 squad.

#4. Shoulder pads. Damn this part sucks. Now, I've got the guys I already made, and I kinda wish I had held off on making them because of two reasons. #1, Maxmini is in two months time, making Preheresy power armor shoulder pads. #2, I found a site online that will do up custom pads with whatever design I want on them for about $1.25 per shoulder pad after a $25 set up fee. Now, that's still almost a hundred bucks for 60 total shoulder pads if I go with the custom ones. Or about $70 if I go with Maxmini if I like their pads depending on their price. Also, I'm going to have to pop off 20 shoulder pads (or 40) on the two completed squads. Personally, I'm thinking I'll hold off on the shoulder pads for now until I see what Maxmini has to offer. They haven't failed me yet, so I think I can wait just a bit.

#5. Weapons/bolt pistols/meltaguns. Now, hand weapons, I can get piecemeal from friends who are doing stuff with chaos warriors. Bolt pistols however... those I need to get. Nope, not going for the Berzerkers on this as their pistols are fucking ugly and huge when compared to the rest. 5 Chaos Bolt pistols are $3.5, and Assault marine pistols are $4.50 for 5. I'll probably go with a mix, which comes out to $8 for 10 total. Meltaguns however... well I talked about them earlier, $5-9 per meltagun is the average.

So, let's see here... Ignoring the shoulder pads for right now... $46 to put together squad #3. Considering that a base tactical squad from GW costs $37.50 right now, or a squad of 5 assault marines for $33.00 that price isn't to bad. Less than $10 more than a vanilla tactical squad, and that's counting two meltaguns. The only thing it doesn't count is shoulder pads, which I will deal with later.

That said... I guess I better find about $50 for this squad.

Guess I won't be getting them done tomorrow.

So, started work on Squad #2.

Right, so tonight I got cracking on putting together the first half of Squad #2. Remember, this squad is one of the two line squads, so there will be very little differentiation between these two squads. So far, these Gothic Backpacks from MaxMini are a little bit larger than I had expected. In fact, they are significantly larger than I had expected. So much larger in fact, that they would easily fit on the back of a Scibor hero fig and not look out of place. I know, I thought about it rather hard.

That said, I'm going to make a comment about Maxmini here. I ordered 4 sets of backpacks. At 6 backpacks per set, that's a total of 24 backpacks. I did not receive 24 backpacks. I received 40. Yes, 40. No, I was not charged extra, no I did not receive anything via e-mail saying that they goofed or anything like that. Just 40 backpacks. Now, I also ordered 20 total heads of the style I am putting on the power armor. I had 3 heads left over from the last order. And on this order, I received a total of 20 heads. I've got 6 of the heads I used for the Termies still left, which is enough to make bring their total up.

But regular power armor heads? After putting these 5 together tonight, I have 18 left. At two squads of 10 per, that leaves me 3 heads over. Now, I am utterly certain that I made a mistake with one of the last batch of marines which left me with 2 power fists guys wearing cloaks. What I will probably do is pop the cloak off him and stick one of the other backpacks on him, which technically starts off Squad #3.

But that's not what I wanted to mention. What I wanted to make mention of is the 40 backpacks I got sent. Now, there is a chance that they goofed and thought that I was supposed to get 10 per, rather than 6, which is just fine with me. However, the first order I did with them was for 30 total heads, and 30 total shoulder pads. In that order, I managed to discover a thunder hammer and storm shield that I am utterly certain I did not order. So, twice now I have made orders with them, and twice they have tossed extra stuff my way. If this is intentional on their part, this makes me a very very happy man. If this is accidental then hmm... well, their mistake is my gain.

Either way, Maxmini has earned my repeat business for as many bits as I ever need. Now, if only they did regular power armor shoulder pads, those I would love to order from them. Off to bed with me, and then to work tomorrow before I come home and start putting more marines together tomorrow night.

Thank you Maxmini, ya'll made my day even better.

Yay!

My Maxmini order is sitting at the post office waiting on me to swing by and pick it up tomorrow on my way to work!

YAY!

General theme for the army

So, since I've been working on the Iron Warriors, I've had a small bit of an idea. Not much of one, I admit, but at least a bit of an idea. No, not for how to play them, I've been playing 40k for so long that I'm pretty sure I know how to play power armor, especially Blood Angel power armor which is what I'm using the Iron Warriors for (Until the rumored Legion codex at least).

But, that said, I've had this concept in the back of my head for a while. Now, the Iron Warriors were never the feral world style guys, they were the seige engineers, the builders. Methodical, grim, and utterly unforgiving. But, even in a culture where those aspects are most embraced there is always room for betterment, individuality, and intrigue.

Now, seige warfare is cool. Guys who enhance their bodies with metal, and power armor, also... cool. Their vast grasp of technology, once again, awesome. But we have to remember, they were spread out, stationed in small numbers on freshly conquered worlds to keep them in line. In keeping with that, each squad is going to be visibly different from the next while keeping some of the same theme. The first squad of Iron Warriors that I got put together all wear the same cloak. They all have the same head from Max Mini, and have a mix of weapons (close combat wise that is, 2 Meltaguns and 8 Bolt Pistols ain't exactly a variety.) 1 has a power fist, 4 have chain swords, and 5 have axes taken from the chaos warriors box for Fantasy.

Now, I've got, I think, 20 or more heads coming from Maxmini which is the same head that every single one of the Iron Warriors is going to get except for the Termies and characters who are all getting the heads that I put on them already.

The next squad, well, one group of guys with cloaks covering their backpacks is enough. These aren't space wolves after all. The next batch will all have the awesome backpacks from maxmini. I've got 24 of those coming with this order along with the 20 additional heads. While I can't really do much with the bodies right now, I do know that both of the next two squads will have those backpacks.

Now, there's a very interesting set of shoulder pads at http://www.shop.microartstudio.com/shoulder-pads-tr-set-10-p-432.html. I'll attach a picture of the shoulder pads at the bottom. Now, if those shoulder pads fit regular power armor, I'm going to order right at 40 of them so I can outfit the next two squads in similar style to one another. I figure those two squads will represent "line" squads that were not deployed to hold down some backwater system, and didn't get a chance to add personal embellishments to their armor. I do believe however that I'm going to do a mix of weapons for those guys as well. However instead of the axes, these guys will have the hammers from the warriors of Chaos, because a hammer makes a better ideal for a tool than does say a mace, at least, in my mind, and these are after all, siege troops.

So, that'll be one squad of guys with cloaks, two squads of guys with little to no variation between them, and to that we'll add the Forgeworld assault squad I got, which will almost certainly need to be magnetized so I can swap backpacks or Jump Packs as needed. So, that's 40 guys, that even unpainted will give off the same theme of the army. Old, resolute, and Iron.

But, that's just 40 guys. Frequently I toss down 50-60 marines with power armor. If I do that... I'm gonna need more bodies. Now, I could just do up each of the squads into packs of 20. 20 guys from the line squads, 20 guys with cloaks, and 20 guys from Forge World. But honestly... I don't really want to do that. I need to find a new way to do another 20 Iron Warriors that look unique, yet similar in theme to the army as a whole. Of course, I could just roll with another pack of guys from Forge World.

I guess that other than the line squad, I better get to putting the Forge World stuff together.

Here's the picture of the shoulder pads I'm talking about.

Iron Within, Iron Without.

heh painting...

You so funny Duncan. You thought you could get some painting done. You so funny. Maybe tomorrow. Probably not however, stupid buying a house stuff keeps getting in the way. That said, I did get a chance to test out the Iron Warriors today. Had a pretty good game against one of the guys over at the Battleforge. Went over there, played an 1850 game with his Orks. He went first, and my god, his shooting, oooh the horror, the horror.

Never let it be said that Orks can't do damage when they shoot. By the end of turn 2 he had killed every single one of my 5 Rhino transports. Through their smoke cover saves no less. His lootas killed Rhinos, his Looted wagon killed them, his buggies kill them, and his big shootas killed them. His grot kannons killed them even better than the rest of his stuff did.

Then, when their juicy juicy occupants were out of their transports, he started killing the marines. By the time I was finally in charge range, my 5 assault squads had been reduced to 2 and a half assault squads. And then I ended up rolling short to assault him in the cover, so instead he assaulted me, and blew me from 2 and a half squads to 1 squad.

But, after doing so, he left himself open to my hammer counter charge. Sure I only had 1 squad of 8 Assault marines left, but I still had 8 assault termies, my librarian, and a sanguinary priest. Oh yes, the result of his charges left a solo priest hanging out in combat tying up his burna's and his mega nobs and two 20 man squads of boys were right within charge range.

So I multicharged like a madman. Drew both 20 man blocks, the 5 burnas, and his 10 nobs all into combat with my furious charging termies and 8 assault marines. Sum result from the combat? 11 dead boys from 1 squad, 9 from another squad, 3 dead nobs, 1 wound on the warboss, and 1 wound on each of the other nobs. In return I lost... the priest who had been in combat the round before, one lightning claw termie, and a single guy regular marine. Result? 32-3. Time for the boys and nobz to take ass loads of fearless saves.

Which left him with 1 nob from a boys squad, surrounded by termies and assault marines. After they killed that nob, they proceeded to walk across and kill off the buggies, both squads of lootas, and his looted wagon. Sum result at the end of the game left me with 1 lightning claw termie, 3 thunder hammer termies, my termie priest, my librarian, and 3 marines.

But he had nothing at all. Which suited me just fine. The new Iron Warriors looked pretty good on the table, and beside the termie squad they really made a different look for the table that I liked. People were actually complimenting me on the look of the work I did on them. Hope they keep up the nice comments when I actually get around to putting paint to mini.

Iron Within, Iron Without.

Yep... still not had a chance to paint.

Been kinda busy. No painting done, I had to scrabble like mad to get the assault squad just built, and that took way longer than it should have.

Pictures of the full squad tomorrow, maybe a chance to get one painted, maybe not. We'll see how it goes.

Finished the first power armor squad.

Those guys I made with cloaks?

Yeah, just finished putting the last one together tonight. I figure I'll get a group shot of them tomorrow, and see how the paint scheme looks on them and go from there. Until tomorrow then.

Finished (mostly) the test bed termie.

Yes, it needs to have some of the lines cleaned up, yes, it needs to be washed. Yes the lightning claws need to have their edges finished with the power edge. Other than that, this is the idea for what I'm going with.

Frankly, other than the little quibbles I have with the test bed guy, I'm happy. I do think that the knee pads need more work, and that work will almost certainly be either the Iron Warrior skull transfer from the Bell of Lost Souls pre heresy sheet.

Built part of the first assault squad today

Got some of the first assault squad built today. Individual and group shots follow. All of them got Max Mini steam knight heads, chaos marauder champion cloaks, and various torso's, legs, shoulder pads, and weapons. One got a meltagun, two got Khornate chain swords, one got an assault squad chain sword, and one got a space wolf chain sword. No jump packs, I figure I have enough of those right now and what I actually need are guys without jump packs anyhow. I've got enough spare jump packs that no matter what I can find ways to put them on guys. Also, I have somewhere around 24 guys with jump packs that are just primed and not in anyone's colors. They all have regular marine heads on them, but I figure I'll burn that bridge when I come to it. May try getting the first test termie painted tonight, we'll see how it goes and if goes decently, I'll post it up in a separate post.

For the time being however, tomorrow will be a slow workload, I'm headed to the bank to do up paperwork for buying a house, so bloggery and working on mini's may be a bit lax for a while.

Pictures follow.

40k Rules Lawyering.

So, while sitting here, I figured I would make a mention of a tactic I have read a bit about in one or two places online, and give a comment on it.

So, let's say that you are playing a Blood Angel army, and in that army you have a 10 man assault squad inside of a Rhino. That Rhino tank shocks forward 18 inches into a squad of melta vet guardsmen and is death or gloried. Which penetrates, and explodes the vehicle. Note that the explosion result is the only one that matters in this case, and is the one we are using.

According to the rules, almost verbatim here, the survivors inside of the vehicle are "PLACED" on the table, nowhere does it say deployed. Units deployed from a Rhino that were say... wrecked, would be unable to assault. However, nowhere in the explosion results does it say deployed, instead it says placed, which is a different word that indicates the marines inside did not deploy, and thus are able to assault if they are not pinned or broken.

Personally, I think that the specific wording of the situation means that yes, they are allowed to assault while if they had used the word deployed, they would be unable to do so. Anyone care to toss in their 2 cents?

Three day weekend...

At work for the past year my fixed days off have been Friday and Saturday. These days have been wonderful for me, I have had time to game, to hang out with friends, and a single (typically) calm day at work on Sunday.

Now my days off are changing as of Sunday. They are going to Saturday/Sunday, and I am happy to have full weekends off from now on. That said, because of when my days off change, I get a three day weekend without having to take an extra day off and use vacation time, while still getting paid as normal! WOO!!!

I think I'll spend some of that time putting together some more of the Iron Warriors and trying a test paint or two on some of the termies to see how they work out. Wish me luck.

Ard Boys idea.

So, perhaps I won't be rolling with my IG for the finals of Ard Boys. Perhaps I'll roll with my Blood Angels instead. Here's the general idea for now.

2 Termie Librarians, both with Fear the Darkness, Unleash Rage, Storm Shields.
1 Squad of Assault Termies. 5 with Thunderhammer and Storm Shield, 5 with Lightning Claws.
1 Squad of Assault Termies, 4 Thunderhammer and Storm Shield, 4 Lightning Claws.
3 Sanguinary Priests. 2 with Termie armor, 1 with power armor, BP, CCW.
1 Squad of 9 Assault Marines. Sarge with Fist, 1 Marine with Meltagun. Rhino.
4 Squads of 10 Assault Marines. Each squad's Sarge has a Fist, each squad has 2 Meltaguns, and a Rhino.

2497 points. Tested it out today against my buddy James's Spacewolf monstrosity. I lost 2 Rhino, 1 Assault Squad, 1 Termie Priest, and half of my 8 man Termie Squad. In exchange, I cracked 3 of his Rhino's, both his land speeders, 1 squad of long fangs, and 3 squads of Gray Hunters. I won by 1 kill point on turn 5. If we had another turn, my remaining 4 termies and librarian, along with my second termie assault squad, it's priest, and librarian would have had a nice charge against two full squads of gray hunters, a squad of termie Wolf Guard with Ragnar, and would have been backed up by two unhurt squads of Assault Marines. Yes, I am utterly certain that would have been enough to clear off the 26 marines in front of me. Everyone with furious charge, and all the termies with preferred enemy? Feel no pain? Striking first with loads of power weapons? Yes please.

So, yeah... maybe the Blood Angels.

Finished the Termies

Well, ok, I haven't QUITE finished them yet. I mean, they aren't painted yet, but they are assembled. At least... the first squad is, as are the trio of Sanguinary priests. Don't have the librarians done yet, but hopefully soon they will be done also.

Pictures of the termies, and of the two fist sergeants should be attached. Also, here's the Scibor scifi knight that I may turn into my preheresy warsmith.