Shades of Tranquil – Daan of War

2019: The year of the pile!

Happy 2019! I’ve mentioned this in the previous post, but I’ve been trying to not buy as much warhammer the last few months and it seems to be working. Abaddon is the last model that I finished recently and that marks the absolute end of the chaos miniatures I have in my posession.

Now that that’s finished I’ve even started digging in to “The Pile”!

Trust me, this was a lot worse a couple of months ago.

To the trained eye, the pile is actually pretty well organised:

So far I’m planning to go about this project in the following order:

Terrain (Blue pile). Terrain needs to go first. Thanks to all the work I’ve done these last few years I now have a large 40k and a large Heresy army that I can perfectly use for games in their current rulesets. The only reason I never play a game at home is because I lack proper terrain. If I finish this I can not only start playing some awesome games in my own house, but I’ll be able to take better pictures with nicer backgrounds as well.
Raven Guard and Sisters of Silence (Purple pile). These are models I’ve bought a long time ago and I’ve had the idea of a RG army with a small allied SoS force for a long time now. If I get the terrain done, finishing off my Ravens and painting up some Sisters will be a great reward for me.
Skaven (Orange pile). When my Raven Guard are completely done it will be good to switch gears and start painting up my Skaven again. It’s a lot of work and a lot of it is grinding, but grinding out simple color schemes will likely be a refreshing change after working on the RG and the sisters. I need to paint 80 clanrats, a start collecting pestilens box and a random assortment of old models that either need some TLC or a more permanent storage solution.
Eldar (Red pile). I can not paint so many armies in 1 year. My solution for the Eldar is to hand them over to Scar’s Mini ature Madness. With all the money I’m not spending on warhammer this year I feel like I can afford to fix 1 problem the expensive way. I’m also really hyped for it. Owning a pro-painted 40k army that complements my chaos and has a totally different playstyle is something I’m really looking forward to.
Word Bearers and Militia (Purple again). Even the best plans do not survive contact with the enemy. Even if I somehow manage to get all of the above done before 2019 is done I will finally start working on my remaining Heresy stuff. It’s the project I’m saving for last because I want it to be a passion project. This is going to be the ultimate reward for finishing the other stuff. I will finally get to feel what it’s like to work on a single project without having something else in the back of my head that will need to get done after that. Also, so far, Heresy seems to work the best for me in terms of excitement and motivation. It’s something about the lore aspect and the long term aspect FW seems to have going with it that just really scratches my hobby itch. Hopefully I can start on these this year and actually start buying stuff again in 2020.

September + October Hell Part 2

Right after the Gurash Wars, I threw myself into my entry for the 2018 edition of Armies on Parade. The idea behind the project was to build a display for my homebrew Renegade Chaos Warband: The Shades of Tranquil.

If you go far back enough on this blog you’ll see that this army was started way back in 2010 and 8 years later it’s only gotten bigger and better. It’s been through 3 edition changes and I can honestly say that I’m still proud of how I’ve painted and built the whole thing. That’s basically why I wanted to take Armies on Parade this year and really celebrate how amazing and cool this force is.

In the end I got the Best Theme award which was nice and I was just really happy to have respectfully finished this project and army.

The next weekend though, I had to reshift my focus completely again as we were going to the Scale Model Challenge again. Before I went there I apparently didn’t have enough hobby on my plate since I spent the friday evening playing an awesome Heresy game against Koen for the campaign (which is still going strong):

I enjoyed being able to use my Knight for the first time in a heresy game but I unfortunately can’t stand up to rapier batteries and I lost the Knight without it getting into combat at all. The battle was fun though and it was cool to make an appearance in my own campaign for a change.

Next day was time for the SMC!

So, there you have it. In between all the happenings of the past months I also spent time helping Stephan build and paint this awesome table. Stephan, Dirk and me added our armies on top of it as well as some terrain pieces and to be honest I was really proud again of our achievement.

Pictured above are me, Stephan and Dirk from left to right. Below is the only mini that I painted especially for the display. I really felt that I needed a cool centerpiece in between Stephan’s stardrake and Dirk’s flying cow. I’m glad I painted it in the end, but I won’t deny that it took a lot more work than I anticipated. Probably because it’s really a mini that you really want to do your best on and can’t leave hanging with a simply ‘ok’ paintjob.

Now below here are a lot of pictures, but since it’s such a big board I’m going to not care about making this a long post and just show everything.

With that out of the way I’ll leave this with only a few more cool images from our neighbouring club at the SMC who brought along an INSANE mordheim table:

The table was so awesome I can’t even explain it properly with just these images. Basically EVERYTHING on the table can be taken apart in floors which means that your mini’s can literally enter and walk around each house in that city. You can even remove entire houses to see what’s underneath. You can even use some of the fucking SEWERS! The witch hunter warband pictured above is my own and I’m really glad I brought them along just so I could have a chance to play on such an amazing table.

Needless to say though, after so much hobby I forced myself to take a break for a while so expect the next post to contain a lot less material, but hopefully a bit more short and sweet stuff. I’m using my break from events and stuff now to get some bits done that I wouldn’t normally have time for and Horned Rat knows I have enough of that stuff lying around, so I won’t be parched for material on this blog just yet.

So until next time and…

Death to the False Emperor!
Glory to the Horned Rat!
Victory or Death!

House Pyke

My summer hobby break has continued somewhat during the last month. Despite very little activity on my personal projects however, I do finally have some cool things to post about.

First up: I finally finished my Imperial Knight!

It took me a long time to finally fix all the transfers, but I’m really happy with it now. The pike designs were custom transfers that I ordered quite a while ago at Fallout Hobbies and it’s nice to see they turned out well. I also tried to include some water effect on the base for the first time.

Another thing that I’ve started up last month is a brand new Horus Heresy campaign called ‘The Knights of Dies Veneris’.

It’s supposed to become a year long campaign where I get to write a lot of stories about everyone’s battles while at the same time things stay pretty casual and people can drop in and out, only having to play 1 game a month. I’ve wanted to do something like this for a long time, so I’m glad I finally had the time to set things in motion. I had a lot of fun writing the stories for the campaign, so if you like to read it might be worth checking out the blog posts on the club website.

As for my own games, I did manage to play a few here and there. Here are some cool pics from a 40k game against Koen’s Knight list and some images from a really cool heresy game against Peter’s Iron Warriors:

This sunday I’ll be participating in another Bloodstorm Age of Sigmar event. I’ve entered a list with several new models I still need to paint for my Skaven army, but with the 120 clanrats out of the way I feel confident I’ll be able to get it done. Next week I’ll probably post some pics from that event and discuss some of the upcoming stuff in October.

Achaia +II+

‘Rejoice, my children. For today we battle beneath the Changer’s Eye! Let your ambitions shine proudly under his eternal gaze! Behold the fate of those who in their arrogance fight against His great scheme. Though they claim themselves master over the etherium, today we will prove they are naught but dust in their shells. Go forth, my Shades, and conquer!‘

Hathos shuddered as he unleashed the spell. Since the Shadowcursed had sent the rest of the warband against the Thousans Sons, Hathos had spent the entire battle casting his magic. Spell after spell he spent augmenting his fellow renegades as well as hurling black, shadowy bolts of death at the enemy. Even between incantations Hathos was forced to chant countercurses and negate the worst of what the Thousand Sons were throwing back at them. Briefly using the short moment after the completion of his spell to savour the cracking noise of several rubricae breaking open in the distance, Hathos drew a large breath of misty webway air into his superhuman lungs.

He was suprised, really. The ease by which the spells came and by which the energies were summoned was astounding in itself. Given that they were battling so many other warp users and in the company of two daemon princes, Hathos would’ve expected to feel some sort of resistance. As a true devotee, Hathos reasoned that it must surely be the sign of his God’s presence that the influence of the warp came so strongly in this alien dimension.

Torn from his musings by a bolter shell encased in warpflames detonating beside his location, the sorcerer decided to keep moving and start working on his next enchantment.

‘Neratafata gormanoramos!‘ he exclaimed, grasping the final energies of his prescience inducing incantation into his power-armoured fist. Just before he could unleash his latest sorcery however, Hathos was temporarily blinded and rocked backwards by a terrible flare. Regaining his composure, the renegade slowly waited for his sight to recalibrate itself. Seeing the battlefield before him once more, Hathos was reminded on how bad things were going. It seemed to be going well when the Shadowcursed took down the enemy general, but once the two giant statues started firing in earnest, everything quickly went sour for the renegades.

The Shadowcursed’s energy seemed to have disapeared from the field and now even Hubrecht Payll and his terminator guard were nowhere to be seen. It all seemed due to this new daemonic entity that wielded some sort of baleful lightsource.

‘A burning sword?’ Kretchar, one of the traitor astartes firing his bolter by Hathor’s side, openly asked. ‘Never seen one do that before’.

‘Count yourself lucky. I’ve heard of only one sword lately that shines so.’ Hathor spoke ominously from behind the firing line. ‘Thankfully for us, it is impossible that that particular sword resides in the hands of such a creature. You’re all under the effect of a blinding charm.’ Hathor lied. ‘Shake it off and focus fire!’

Gasping and panting, Hathos leapt ungraciously behind the cover of a building wall. Whichever ancient civilisation built these ruins had his thanks. Each and every renegade of the Shades of Tranquil was either destroyed, incapacitated or fleeing. Even though he was likely the last remaining warrior on the field, Hathos was not about to give up yet. All the spells, twists and turns that occured during this battle seemed to have pleased his patron deity and Hathos himself had never felt more chosen than when he personally banished the hooded daemon.

Visible as a bright blue nebula that pierced the alien mists, the energy of Tzeentch was permeating this battlefield, just waiting to be reaped. Hathos could not resist at least an attempt to harness that power for himself. He began to envision the ritual he would need to perform and the circles and diagrams he would need to prepare.

A large crack sounded above him as a piece of rockrete fell down loudly beside the sorcerer.

Yes. A grand ritual. That would be the first thing he’d do if only the statues’ guns would stop firing.

Achaia +I+

Hubrecht Payll climbed an ancient, spiral staircase with growing frustration. The staircase was enormous and wide enough for several people to ascend side by side. A small blessing, Hubrecht pondered as he carefully placed a massive boot of warp-wrought terminator armour to the side of a cracked stair tile.

Gishen Zheen stared intently at the green orb at the center of his force staff as he started his chant. ‘Malamennagorastica. Hovija. Khza..‘
‘..Eugh..’
Broken from his focus, Gishen’s stare switched instantly from The Craven’s Eye to the source of the interruption.
‘..Breugh..’ grunted one of the chained sacrifices drunkenly in a sort-of half-vomit motion.
‘I thought I ordered you to keep them silent, Hathos!’ Gishen screeched at his twin brother.
‘You don’t order me anything, Gishen.’ Hathos replied from across the bloody runic circle.
‘We don’t have time for this!’ Gishen snapped back through clenched teeth. ‘The ritual is taking too long already and the ninth dawn is almost upon us!’
‘Fine.’ Hathos replied coldly as he raised his index finger in front of his horned helmet.
‘Hmph!’ was the last sound that came from the sacrifice as her mouth dissapeared from her face.
Then, as if there had been no interruption at all, Gishen continued with his ritual chant. ‘h’tel arif negassamar.‘ Gishen and Hathor raised their right hand in front of them and spread their fingers in unison as they both continued the chant. ‘Umbranor. Umbranororara. Darayavahus. Vyle.‘

Even though eight of the nine suns of Ochar VI were in the sky and the runic circle was lit by severeal aetherflame torches, the spire chamber was in complete darkness.
‘Your devotion has not gone unnoticed my children.‘
Gishen and Hathor could not see what was happening inside the circle, but it was not hard to imagine from the sounds. The snapping of bones, the wet slaps of flesh, blood and the crackle of dark energies, stitching together.
‘These sacrifices are pleasing to me. You have chosen well. I will be able to maintain this vessel nicely.‘
The sorcerers felt a vast form emerging. The aetherflames became visible again, but their light did not penetrate the almost tangible cloud of shadows within the circle.
‘You have been chosen by the Eternal Changer.‘ the daemon spoke from the darkness.
‘I am not worthy of his blessings, oh great one.’ Gishen said as the pent up stress from the ritual left him and he fell to his knees in supplication.
‘You are correct, Sorcerer.‘ the daemon said dryly as the darkness receded and his massive winged form became visible at last. ‘I was referring to your superior.‘
‘Our next destination, Shadowcursed. That was the deal.’ Hubrecht Payll growled in irritation from beside the staircase door.
‘Impatience is not a virtue for the Fatesworn, captain.‘ the daemon said mockingly.
‘Your price has been paid, however. The path shall be revealed to you as promised.‘

Before either Hubrecht, Gishen or Hathos could say anything else the spire chamber began to shake terribly. The ancient bricks that made up the chamber’s roofing started crumbling on the armour and helmets of the assembled renegades. The Shadowcursed spread his wings and closed them again in rapid succession until a hole emerged from which a piercing light shone and the ninth dawn was revealed. The light of all of Ochar’s nine suns shone as a blazing spear through the chamber and burned into an irridescent portal on an opposing marble wall section. The portal grew rapidly across the wall until it started burning away the floor and roof sections. ‘Get us out!’ Hubrecht yelled at his sorcerers. ‘Get us to the ship! We’re done here!’

Still startled and spent from days of intense concentration, Gishen and Hathos were too tired to disobey. Using the last bit of magical energy they had left, they teleported themselves and Hubrecht onto Key to Eternity, the renegade strike cruiser suspended above the shattered world.
‘Align us to the spire coördinates.’ Hubrecht commanded as he entered the Key’s bridge. ‘A portal is going to appear. The way to Achaia is finally open.’

2018 So far

Finally, we’re catching up here on the new blog!

In this post I’ll spend some time discussing the stuff I’ve been up to in 2018. It’s actually been quite a busy year so far. In fact, it’s been so busy I’m attempting to take things a little easier this summer and not be swamped with events and painting deadlines every week or so.

Speaking of events: my 2018 started off in preparation for the Horus Heresy Bloodstorm tournament. This event was convieniently held at my local game store and with only 2 unpainted Raven Guard models left, I tried to bring both of them to the tournament. In the end I was only succesful in finishing my Land Raider Proteus in time (pictured below). Corax took longer than I expected and I wanted to do the primarch of my legion justice and decided against rushing him for the sake of an event.

The bloodstorm events, by the way, are worth mentioning in this blog for the amazing tables and scenery alone. Every table was provided with a gaming mat from gamemat.eu and tournament scenery from Wargames Tournaments painted by Peter from Scar’s Miniature Madness. Everything looked amazing and to me, that almost automatically makes for some awesome games. As for the actual games: I played three that day.

First one against Night Lords was a great game against a cool dude. I had a lot of trouble in that game due to bad dice rolling (failing a lot of reserve rolls and night fighting rolls) as well as my inexperience with Night Lords as a legion.

Second game was against a cool looking mechanicum force, but the fact that it had a Porphyrion made it an incredible struggle for me to fight against. The only defense I had against super heavies were my 5 man melta squads in drop pods, but my opponent had castled his Knight up to such a degree that there was simply no way to get close enough. In the end I whiffed the only melta salvo that I was able to get off and was forced to watch the rest of my army get relentlessly bombarded with templates until it was gone. At least this was a short game.

The third game was against mechanicum (Again!), but this time the player had a much nicer list and I had seen the guy before at the Armies on Parade competition. This was probably the most fun as I actually had somewhat of a chance at winning for a while. In the final turns I was in a pretty good position to grab some vital objectives. However, as fate would have it, I whiffed some crucial run and save rolls, leaving me on the short end of a close victory point tally.

The next few weeks were spent painting Corax and thereby finally finishing the last of my Raven Guard models. I am super proud on how he turned out and can honestly say that it’s the best model I’ve ever painted. Also, with Corax done, I felt like a huge weight was lifted from my shoulders as I did not have a single unfinished Raven Guard model on my shelf since at least 2 years. On to new projects!

The next few months saw me playing some more AoS with my fledgling Skaven force as more people in the store got interested in the game and I let myself get caught up in the Malign Portents hype by building and painting a Darkoath Warqueen:

I really love this model and it was a lot of fun to not paint a space marine for once. She did very well on her first outing as well. Putting down an opposing Skaven Warlord right before staring down a Stormfiend and keeping it occupied for a good while.

The next thing on the agenda was the “Impact” miniature wargaming event which was also held in my home city.

Above you can see our display stand as it we set it up for the convention and below is a piece of background that I wrote the night before, along with some detail shots of the table itself. I’m really happy that I was able to rely on Peter being there with his Iron Warriors as well as Joyce and Dirk for being able to lend their armies to the cause. Compared to the Scale Model Challenge there were a bunch of people who couldn’t make it this time, but I’m glad we were still able to put on a good showing.

Impact itself was a really cool convention and although it was relatively small compared to the SMC, it seems to be growing each year and where the SMC was more of a miniature painting convention, this one was more focussed on the gaming aspect. For next year it’s likely we won’t be taking a display to Impact and try to arrange a more interactive presence instead.

After Impact I kept busy preparing for 2 other insanely cool events. Both planned together in the same weekend; I was fully aware that it was going to be incredibly exhausting, but probably worth it.

The first event was a second Bloodstorm tournament. 40k this time and I took a revamped Chaos list as a last ditch attempt to get the army working.

1st game was against Blood Angels. A fun game against a fairly balanced BA list. I made a bunch of mistakes that cost me a lot, but that’s down to my inexperience with the game. I felt like I could’ve won if I did some other things differently. The Knight pulled off some amazing stunts that game.

The second game was against another Chaos army that looked very nice and different at the start, but turned out to be a bit gamey in the end. His list was set up to (ab)use as much of the shooting of his Rubric Marines and Obliterators as possible, which resulted in some unfluffy choices IMO, but fair ‘nuff. At least when the good old 40k tournament mentality reared it’s ugly head that day it could’ve been a lot worse.

The final game was against the Imperial Fists of Rob (who I see regularly at the GameForce). Despite seeing eachother almost every friday we’ve never played a game of 40k. This was the most fun game of the day and also the closest. Rob’s army is by nature a bit of a gunline, but I had fun butting my head against it and despite Rob focussing all his shooting on my Knight in the first turn, the rest of my army made good progress and thanks to some lucky maelstrom objective cards and my army’s good maneuverability Rob was only able to outscore me by a single victory point.

I was also really happy to take home the award for Most Sporting Player. Really happy with it and also that, despite losing all my games (again), I came close on a couple of occasions and the addition of a Knight as well as having some retooled units really amped up the power level of my army. Against casual opponents I might even be able to win some games (if I practice the rules a bit more).

The next day and the final event of 2018 so far was the second Gurash Wars event.

It was fun to meet the guys from Groningen again. I absolutely love the fact that they’re so dedicated to organising true narrative Heresy events. The best thing about the Horus Heresy is the fact that you get to imagine your army in these massive war scenarios and that is exactly what I was getting with the Gurash Wars.

First game was against Sons of Horus. It was a short game due to the scenario being a bit stacked against me. I was allowed to bring fortifications but they didn’t help against the free bombardment that the traitors were given before the game began. I felt relieved that I was able to cause some damage regardless and though I lost the game resoundly, I didn’t leave my opponent unbloodied.

The second game was against an amazing massed assault of World Eaters. It was really fluffy to play against a massed line of berzerkers doing nothing but running and assaulting and screaming like madmen. I’m glad I took the time to be a bit more careful with my model placement this battle. This paid off pretty nicely as I managed to force at least one unit of World Eaters to retreat in the face of rapid firing Ravens. I forget if I lost this game or if it was a draw on scenario points, but I definately felt wiped.

The last game was against Thousand Sons. There were a lot of Sehkmet Terminators deepstriking on the table, so I was prepared for the worst, but due to some succesful maneuvering and a lucky fight between my Contemptor and a Thousand Sons Praetor I was actually able to pull out a win on the objective! It was also good to see the loyalists win a Gurash Wars event for once and I was also very surprised and grateful to win the Best Painted Model award for my Raven Guard Praetor.

So, that’s all for 2018 so far. Next post will contain more of the stuff I’m working on currently and I’ll hopefully be able to stop writing these massive summarised posts and actually go into some detail again.

If you’ve been reading all of this rambling so far: Impressive! Kudos to you! These last 3 posts are no doubt the longest I’ve posted so far. Until next time!

Victory or Death!

2017 In Review Part 2

Welcome back to DaanofWar’s 2017 hobby highlights!

Part 1 left us just before the big wedding. The wedding was great. We had to take an enormous ammount of pictures, sit in chairs, sign papers, eat loads of stuff and party our asses off. Here’s a picture of me and my wife making an attempt at posing for a photo:

So, with all that nonsense out of the way I finally had some time to paint my warhams again:

As can be seen in the images above, I put my Raven Guard on hold for a while and continued the work to rebase my entire Chaos Space Marine army. The new edition of Warhammer 40k was just released and we were going to kick off a campaign at the GameForce, so I really wanted to give my ‘good-old’ chaos marines a bit of love and attention. I had good hopes that they might be viable again with the new rules and I was pretty hyped to see if my old army could come back with a vengeance.

Having rebased most of my marines: This is a shot of my first 500pts battle against Naut’s Grey Knights. Not only did I instantly learn that Grey Knights are pretty good in the new edition, but units of 20 marines die waaay too easily to morale checks. Never again.

During the rest of the campaign I started noticing the pattern that I was not only losing a lot of the games, but that I was also losing them fast. Most of my games were over by turn 3. Also, the hope I had for my chaos army catching a break rules-wise this edition were shattered when it turned out that not only was the core of my army (my 40+ chaos marines with bolters) not very points efficient, but they also lost the option to take an extra close combat weapon. This made my entire army a lot less viable as I found myself stuck with a lot of units that did not excel in any of the 3 main phases of the game.

With each new game I played each month I realised more and more that I needed to do a lot more than rebasing to salvage my chaos army in 8th edition. All of this got me a bit down about the new edition, so I wasn’t that sad when ForgeWorld announced that the Horus Heresy would be staying with 7th edition and I could happily continue working at my Raven Guard again.

Above is the first model that I did when I started working on my RG again. Pretty happy with it and a nice change of pace from the drop pods and the storm eagle that I still had to finish.

Another reason for needing to hurry with my Raven Guard was the upcoming Scale Model Challenge. As you may remember from last year, the Scale Model Challenge is a fairly large miniature painting convention that’s right next door for me and since we had such a blast visiting last year I managed to get us a spot for the club for 2017. The idea we had to wow the crowds was to try and display the sheer ammount of Heresy we have going on at our local club by building a giant Isstvan V display board.

Here’s some work in progress pics of how we built the board:

Thanks to a lot of help from friends we managed to finish the table just in time for the SMC and with all of our armies on top it turned out to be a roaring succes:

Also, to finish my big 3000 point Raven Guard project in style, I took the second half of the army (the part that I painted this year) to Armies on Parade at the Warhammer store in Eindhoven:

I was super proud to have finally finished everything after almost 2 years of working on it and my efforts were rewarded by a nice gold pin for Best Army Theme.

The final thing that I went to in 2017 was the first Gurash Wars event in November. First time I went to a narrative e Horus Heresy event and it was a blast. It was a long way to travel, but it was worth it to take part in the ongoing story and see a lot of cool new Heresy armies. Here are a few impressions of the event:

So that was pretty much it for me in 2017. A lot more has happened so far in 2018 though, so I’ll save all of that for the next post.

Victory or Death!

2017

Time for another update!

Luckily this time a lack of posts is not an indication of a lack of hobby activity! Sadly not much progress on Raven Guard painting. I took a bit of a break from that after Armies on Parade and even though the new year has me pumped on starting on the second half of the army, I don’t have much new models to show right now.

There was a november heresy battle that I forgot to take pictures of and I finished the Kill Team that I was working on in the last post:

Tried to paint them up as space sharks, but don’t have the icons. I’m pretty happy with the result either way.The holiday months were very busy did accomplish a bit of stuff by assembling all of my Raven Guard infantry, playing a lot of mordheim and painting up some giant rats and a warlock engineer that I don’t have a pictures of. Pictures of black primed models aren’t all that exciting either, so I’m going to save showing you the assembled army after I paint it.

2017 is going to be a Raven Guard year though, so I started it off properly by playing my december/january heresy battle against Peter Zuidgeest and his Iron Warriors. I spent all my time the week before assembling my Storm Eagle and forgot to study up on my battle plan. Another loss, but how can you be sad when you’ve got an awesome model like this one standing on your desk:

This is a shot from halfway in the battle when the storm eagle and the drop pods arrived.Then, the day after the battle I attended a cool Kill Team tournament at the local Warhammer store (Warhammer Eindhoven). We went there specifically to play against some new opponents and it worked out pretty well. Getting to battle a couple of new guys with exceptionally painted teams.

I used the opportunity to re-base a squad of chaos marines. Really happy with my choice to go with a stirland mud base

Here’s my tooled-up champion facing off a biker nob that he killed.

Here he is again killing a thousand son sorcerer (although he got shot down shortly after).

I won 3 battles and lost 1 so I ended up with silver. Michiel won gold with his orks to nobody’s surprise and the Thousand Sons guy won bronze.

So there you have it! Next post will definately contain some new Raven Guard since I’m working on a new tactical squad right now. There’ll also be some pics from the Kill Team campaign we’re going to be doing during the coming months

Victory or Death!

Warmachine, Chaos Space Marines + The 24 Hour Painting Challenge

Now for a real blog post!

During the last couple of weeks I’ve been busy getting back into the hobby. What mostly got me started again was Rob, reminding me that I signed up for his warmachine tournament. Luckilly, I finally had some free time on my hands, so I ordered some last-minute mini’s and paint-rushed them just in time for the weekend. I managed to take some pics of the first and last battles:

First battle was against a hard Menoth army led by the Harbinger. We were both rusty with the rules and struggling with our plays a couple of times, but luckily I managed to pull through with a last minute assassination.

Second battle was against Niek, who I play regularly and I lost to his Khador as always, but the third battle was against Sjoerd. I haven’t played against Sjoerd in a long time and was surprised by his new Retribution army. Not knowing any of the rules for Retribution models saw me make a few bad decisions and my inability to damage his Hyperion did the rest. I held out for quite a while, but eventually lost on scenario.

Here’s a sample of one of the models I painted for the tournament. Quite happy with the result, even though I had to rush them a bit.

The rest of the tournament was great and I actually won Best Painted on account of having the nicest painted army out of the two people who actually painted their entire army. I always seem to forget that Warmachine players don’t usually take painted armies to local tournaments. Which is rather odd, seeing as they have less models to paint than your average warhammer/40k player. Maybe it’s just something local.

Anyhow, after the warmachine tournament I decided to put some much needed attention into my Chaos Space Marines. I tried out a couple of list ideas and last week I played an actual game again with Koen, Dirk and Michiel. The game was great fun, and me and Michiel’s orks won in the end. The win was more due to Michiel’s orks than my own marines unfortunately. It seems the new edition really has my army stumped and I’ll probably need to come up with some better lists sometime soon.

Decided to take a photo from something more than just mini’s this time. I came to regret my decision almost immediately afterwards.

I was on a roll that weekend and proceeded to participate in UnderEmpire.net’s 24 Hour Painting Challenge. I only did 18 hours in the end, but that was more than enough to finish my remaining chaos marine infantry, an Aiana model for someone in my D&D group, a dark apostle and 2 raptors. Now I finally finished most of my basic infantry for the chaos marines. Next up are some random characters, 2 warmachine models and a bunch of cultists.

The combined result of my 24 Hour Challenge run.

So, I’ll leave it at that for now and hopefully next post I’ll have some newly painted stuff to show!

Death to the False Emperor!

I played Chaos Space Marines… before they were popular!

Long time no blog, folks. I would apologize for the lack of updates, but that would mean I’d have to repeat myself for about the hundreth time. So, I’ve decided not to. Instead of apologizing, I’m going to give a bit of an update about what happened during the past couple months.

In case any of you were wondering what happened to the campaign that I was blogging about: it ended a while ago. I didn’t really play any more battles in it either since the campaign took a bit of a break after the guy who ran it handed it over to someone else. It was during that break in the campaign that me and my girlfriend decided we wanted to start renting an appartment. This effectively took me out of the hobby for a couple of months and I completely missed the end of the campaign.

Not to worry though! A new campaign will be starting up this friday. I already had some great idea’s for a new armylist. The armylist needs a lot of things that were not a part of my previous list. The whole rhino setup I used to have is simply not effective in the new edition. Also, with the new Chaos book there are better uses for my points. For now I’ve decided on a strategy that uses big 20 man chaos space marine units with plasma that are led by fearless HQ’s. I’m also going to use two small units of melta-raptors and 20 cultists, divided into 2 units of 10 or 4 units of 5 (haven’t quite decided yet). Don’t know what else I’m going to use to flesh out the list yet, but this is going to be the basic framework. The following pictures show some of my attempts to modify some of my old marines to fit into the new list.

Go, Bitz Box Go!

That’ll be all for now, folks! I’ve spent to much time on this blog already and not enough time working on the army. I’ve also made a renewed effort to practice the guitar more often and I’ve been hooked on Pokémon White 2 as if my life depended on it.

If only Warhammer was more like Pokémon… (I would be able to fix my army on the way to work)

Death to the False Emperor!