Sunday, 26 January 2025

The Return Visit

As you will no doubt be aware, a few weeks ago I painted up some key figures from the LA resistance in the 1980s cult classic V.

This combined with the fact that I've just watched a battle report on the Peachy Tips YouTube channel which pit the Visitors against a range of 80s action heroes (Rambo, TJ Hooker, etc.) has made me want to get nosy off the last few unpainted Visitors I currently have.

Here they are...

...well, almost. I still have another model to do who is a duplicate of one I already own, but I want to see if I can do a suitable head swap to keep some variety, but I need to see I have a female head that's the right scale, ideally with a cap or sunglasses.

We'll see.

As pointed out five years ago, when I painted the last lot, I've gone with orange rather than red for the uniforms.

When you trawl the internet for images, it seems that there has been some colour enhancement going on with images that has convinced many folk that the Visitors wore red. However, only their flags and iconography were red, the uniforms were dark orange.

In an attempt to achieve this effect and match a paint job firm half a decade ago, Ive actually been quite sloppy compared to a lot of my more recent work.

Simply basing in Ryza Rust...yes, I know it's a dry paint but mine dried up too much, so I added some water to it and now have an orange paint I can actually use...adding the black, flesh, gold and hair before an all over wash.

I did pick out the gold again as a highlight, but overall not my best work.


These troopers with the gold helmets first appear in the second miniseries, V: The Final Battle, and seem to be security guards rather than more active soldiers like the ones in black armour.

I get the feeling that the decision to introduce them might have been cost induced as adding gold trim some of the spare uniforms from the first series and making what look like much cheaper helmets would have strained the budget less for the larger battle scenes in the second miniseries.


I did have to do a little bit of repair work on this model as his baton was missing a section, so I needed to trim it off and add a small length of plastic rod. Not the hardest job, or done with great finesse, but good enough.

His pistol is also missing the bottom bar of the hand grip, but it's a small detail and not particularly of the profile of the model, so I'm going to see if it annoys me enough to try to fix it.


And there we have them. I think they fit in quite well with only a slight difference in the orange. In fact a more noticeable issue is the asphalt flock on the base. I've no idea whether I've used a different type or the colour has faded, but I might need to address that.

So I still have another model to do and then I need to get round to sorting out the shuttlecraft that I've lost the landing gear for. After that, I may finally pick up some Visitor keeps to complete my collection.

Acquired: -29
Painted: 29
Lead Mountain: 601

Sunday, 19 January 2025

Path of Damnation: Fallen Heroes

The latest additions to my unit of Chaos Marauders all have two things in common. 

Firstly, they're all barbarians, a category of character in the Warhammer world that was long ago subsumed into Norsca and the tribes of the Chaos Wastes.

Secondly, they were once heroes with names that were known far and wide.

Now, they walk the path of the damned.


Due to what happened later to the concept of barbarians in Warhammer, these four models from the mid-eighties fit well into a Chaos force.

Three of them were originally part of the Dungeonquest boardgame and its expansion, and until I started looking up their names today, I was convinced the other one was too.

Apparently not.


Ulv Grimhand is the original plastic barbarian character from the Dungeonquest boardgame. He's a chunky boy and not particularly well sculpted or proportioned, especially his mahoosive hands.

Fortunately, odd scales and proportions don't look out of place in a Chaos army, and so this hulking giant has clearly begun to mutate.

He's actually the first model I've converted in any way for this project, but not in any major way. The horns on his helmet were broken after thirty years of misuse and so it was a simple bit of surgery to add some new horns from a Chaos banner.


Siegfried Goldenhair (yes, his hair's actually black) comes from the Heroes for Dungeonquest, a box that contained 12 additional and I could swear he had a different name on the Citadel Combat Cards.

I'm a bit sad that I haven't taken a picture of the back as I've done a pretty good job of getting a dirty effect on the lower part of his cloak with Typhus Corrosion. However, I've always liked this model and he makes a more than suitable unit champion.


Helena the Swift, also from Heroes for Dungeonquest, is a strange on. All the images I can find online have this model having wings on her helmet rather than horns. I've no idea why this one is different but it does make her a better fit as a Chaos Marauder, albeit one with no trousers.

She is the model I'm least happy with from the four. Mainly this is because of the skin on her legs being so mottled. However, I also think that cleaner legs would look weird given the basing I've done, so I'm just going always look at her from three feet away from now on.


Osamund Doomspinner is the model I'd misremembered as being from the Heroes for Dungeonquest box. In fact he was released as a simple Berzerker (spelled with a Z on the original flyer) in the C01 Fighters range, and later given his somewhat overblown moniker when they were re-advertised in the Citadel Journal.

His two hand weapons throw an extra bit of variation into the great weapon or shield (or both in Ulv's case) dynamic that the unit have going on.


In fact, I can actually call them a unit because 10 Chaos Marauders armed with great weapons and light armour (which is the current majority loadout), led by a unit champion are a legal unit in Warhammer: the Old World.

Not a very good unit, and only 97 points, but still, it's a very small milestone.

I am a little conscious that they all have viscera smeared across their weapons but not anywhere else. However, I'm not sure I want to splatter blood all over them yet. I might get to that in time, but I'll probably want to experiment first.

Having exhausted the humans I have available that aren't more suited the Chaos Warriors, do my next additions to this units are going to be either pre-big hat Chaos Dwarfs or Beastmen, both of which will bring more than a touch of mutation to proceedings.

Acquired: -29
Painted: 26
Lead Mountain: 604

Ambush at Larsa II

Sergeant Messaro grimaced. So far, his mission to the mining world of Larsa II has been a success, but now it was crunchy time.

The arrival of two dozen Blood Angels had lit a flame of rebellion amongst the Planetary Defence Forces stationed to protect the mineral wealth of the system. Unwilling to risk the ire of the forces that had taken the Pale Stars in the name of the Arch-Traitor, Messaro's assurance that more significant aid was inbound had turned all but the elite armoured brigade of the Silver Guard back to the service of the Emperor.

The embattled Planetary Governor had called for reinforcement and now Messaro's stalwart allies were confronted with the heavy armour of the Silver Guard, Astartes of the Alpha Legion and Titans from the Forge World of Mirdath.

Messaro smiled. The Blood Angels had learned quickly from their early tussels with the twentieth legion, and, as the enemy advanced, a trap was about to be sprung.

Our big Christmas game this year was planned to be an Apocalypse game using the 5th edition of the 40k rules, pitting my Blood Angels and Matt's Imperial Guard against Pete's Alpha Legion supported by Traitor Guard armour, under the command of Wes, and a Warhound Titan.

I'd already decided to weave this game into my Pale Stars campaign (this is an ad hoc narrative woven around games we play and requires zero book keeping) as most of the Marines on the table were wearing armour appropriate to Horus Heresy and having already mentioned the Blood Angels finding a stash of experimental armour on Crow's World, I could justify some Mark VII being present.

The only massive anachronism was the presence the Death Company, but the short story Lost Sons by James Swallow has a group of suicidal Blood Angels painting their armour black with red crosses well before the death of Sanguinius - so there's some sort of precedent.

Deployment


Due to the vagaries of how Apocalypse games handle deployment, we ended up with slightly uneven diagonal deployment zones.

The Loyalist bid the lowest amount of time for deployment, and so set up first and would have the first turn. This was massive as the wall of big guns facing us would make a massive dent in our army if they had been allowed to unleash a full volley.


We managed to get deployed in the 13 minutes we'd allowed ourselves, even though we had significantly larger numbers of infantry to deploy because Matt is a masochist.

One thing that significantly helped with this task was me keeping all but a few Combat Squads of Blood Angels off the board as we had a fiendish plan.

There was no real intent behind the rest of our deployment other than spreading out infantry to cover most places where the objectives might go and interspersing armour across the from line to bolster the defences.


Conversely, the Traitors seemed to have a much more ordered approach, with the Traitor Guard armour, led by a Baneblade, largely on one flank with the Alpha Legion, backed by a Warhound Titan, largely on the other.


They seemed to deploy a little way back from the centre line, potentially to give space for their heavy guns to unleash barrage templates with impunity.

Although death from above was a concern for Matt's lightly armoured cannon fodder, it did mean that he would have to worry about Alpha Legion ploughing into his lines for at least a turn.

Objectives were then placed. The Imperial Guard revealed the General Staff strategem, bolstering their morale, whilst the Alpha Legion announced that they would Hold At All Costs, both sides declaring their intent to actually play the mission. and battle was ready to commence.

Loyalist Turn 1


The rush to deploy without knowing where the enemy would be meant that some of Matt's tanks had to do a bit of shuffling to get line of sight, reducing their initial firepower.

However, the line lit up and the Traitors started taking casualties.


This fusillade was joined by the rumble of tracks and clanking stomps of mechanical feets as the Blood Angels arrived from a totally unexpected direction.

Painting up the Librarian Furioso Dreadnought had allowed me to field an Ancients Assault Force formation, granting me a bonus Flank March strategem. Combined with the Careful Planning strategem that I had chosen, meaning half my reserves could arrive on turn one, I was able to bring my shorter range and less powerful guns into the rear of the enemy lines.


This meant that even units that believed they were hidden, perhaps sitting on objectives, were vulnerable to the sudden arrival of red armoured warriors as a Land Raider Spartan, three Dreadnought and a Baal Predator arrived in their rear and opened up.


Accompanying them were several Combat Squads of Me armies packing a Meltagun each and a squad of Terminators were disgorged from the Spartan into the enemy lines.

The initial assault combined with the Guard bombardment was surprising if not devastating, taking out a couple of Leman Russ tanks, immobilising a few more and murdering a smattering of infantry.


It was the assault phase where the real damage was done, as the Terminators and one of the Dreadnought killed a squad of Marines each, whilst a sergeant with a power fist ended a Leman Russ.

The biggest infliction of pain was done by the Librarian Dreadnought, which cut open the Baneblade, taking it out of the fight before it had fired a shot with it's many, many guns.

New model syndrome had struck hard, and I suspected that the Librarian Dreadnought was now not long for this world.

Traitor Turn 1


Bloodied but unbroken, the Traitors prepared to fight back.

The Alpha Legion pushed forward whilst the Guard armour turned to face the Blood Angels and, to put it bluntly, deleted them.


This happened so quickly, thanks in part to the Precision Strike strategem, that I didn't actually manage to get any pictures as the Spartan, two Dreadnought, two Combat Squads and a Techmarine were all demolished in short order.

Explosions abounded and all that was left were smoking craters.


Meanwhile the Titan unveiled an unfeasibly large blast template and a gun Matt dubbed the 'tank deleter' making us very conscious that the game wasn't over as the Imperial Guard lines were thinned.

Loyalist Turn 2


The second turn saw more reinforcements arrive as the Imperial Guard lines were bolstered with units we'd not been able to deploy initially.


Simultaneously the second wave of Blood Angels arrived in the rear of the Alpha Legion, Multi-Meltas ripping through the back of the enemy Spartan, disgorging some Berserkers who were summarily pounced upon and despatched by Assault Marines.


The Death Company arrived in force and carved up a squad of Legionaries that had been stealthily encroaching on the Loyalist lines.

This second wave of Blood Angels had collapsed the Alpha Legion flank and threatened to plough into the rest of their infantry.


Led by an Inquisitor, the Imperial Guard pushed forward, engaging in the actual mission of securing and denying objectives.

The tanks opened up, this time with their full firepower and hit the exposed rears of the Traitor tanks that had turned to deal with the Blood Angels.


Assassin's were also unleashed across the line to varied effect. The Vindicare missed, the Callidus slaughtered a squad of Legionaries that had been sat on an objective and the Eversor failed to neurally shred a damaged Dreadnought.

Traitor Turn 2


Having had both flanks collapse, the Traitors were grateful to finally receive reinforcement in the ominous shape of a Storm Eagle gunship bristling with firepower and carrying a full complement of Terminators.

With the Warhound largely unscathed, there was still plenty of firepower available to turn the tide and a barrage was unleashed from the Titan that removed an entire platoon of Imperial Guard reinforcements.


The Storm Eagle disgorged its cargo and proceeded to light up and Blood Angels in range, effectively nullifying the second wave save for a Tactical Squad in a Rhino tucked behind a building.


For their part the Terminators dismantled the Blood Angels Assault Squad, their Captain and Sanguinary Priest in short order.

Loyalist & Traitor Turn 3

With the Traitor Guard all but gone, the Blood Angels flank forces in disarray and the Alpha Legion assault blunted, turns were speeding up. However, we were running out of time and so we decided that this would be the last round of the game.


The Death Company had no option but to charge the closest enemy, which were the Alpha Legion Terminators. Although this was a suicide mission, I tried to aid them by pointing every gun I could attack the enemy elites, whistling them down.

Although the Death Company gave a good account of themselves, they were ultimately defeated across two turns of fighting, but they did tie up and neutralise the Terminators.


The last of the Loyalist reserves arrived in the form of a squad of Rough Riders who launch an ultimately unsuccessful charge against the damaged Dreadnought that had already swatted an assassin.

A Valkyrie gunship also arrived and along with the humble and forgotten Baal Predator took the Warhound perilously close to destruction by sneakily firing from inside its void shields and repeatedly rolling sixes on the super heavy damage table.


Knowing that they couldn't now win the battle, the Traitors set about reducing the deficit by moving to contest objectives.

A small squad of Imperial Guard heavy weapons were literally kicked down the stairs of the Planetary Governor's palace, whilst the Storm Eagle turned it's guns on the Tactical Marines in the back field.

In an act of pure spite, the Warhound turned it's turbo-plasma-destructor-doom-cannon on the little Baal Predator that could and reduced it to slag.

Despite the counter assault, the Loyalist lines were still largely intact and the weary Dreadnoughts were now facing it alone and the Titan had lost a weapon and its void shields and had a only single structure point remaining.

The Alpha Legion reserves had been spent and while the Storm Eagle could still cause plenty of damage, it couldn't win an objective based battle by itself and would have to finish off the Blood Angels in the back field before it tried to tackle anything else.

The Imperial Guard still held two objectives and had some capability to try to capture more. Larsa II had been recaptured for the Emperor.

***

I've never played a game of Apocalypse before and I have to admit that it was more fun than I've ever thought it looked in articles. The objective based mission prevent it from being just a tedious shooting match and the strategems add an element of surprise.

The combination of Careful Planning and Flank March was vicious and although I ended up losing most of my army I was able to get my short range Meltas into play and significantly reduced the amount of firepower that was turned in the objective holding and battle winning Guard Squads.

I don't think I'll ever be able to pull the same trick again as Pete, Wes and Matt now know all about the Ambush strategem which is a hard counter to the Flank March.

This was Wes' first ever game of 40k and I think it was a bit of a baptism of fire as we weren't holding back. I'm not sure whether it has peaked his interest or put him off.

Pete and Matt both got to put there big models on the table. I feel a little guilty about immediately removing the Baneblade, but it was funny. I barely mentioned Matt's Malcador which provided sterling service in the the centre of the Imperial line and was still fully functional at the end of the game.

For me it was nice to get almost my entire Blood Angels army on the table and of all the versions of 40k I've played I feel 5th edition is the one that does them most justice in terms of the army playing how the army is written. However, this might be because my Horus Heresy army lacks fast moving Assault Marines.

I'm not sure if and when we'll play another Apocalypse game. I suspect Matt and Pete, who've both bought all the books, will get a few smaller games in, but at the moment I'd be limited to 3000 points.

I'm quite enjoying using a campaign as a framing device as it is something that will develop organically with any games that use the participants of this theatre of war bring woven in.

Friday, 17 January 2025

Shhhhh!

Today's blog post is actually something I painted before new year and have been keeping quiet about.

It's a Librarian Furioso Dreadnought for my Blood Angels army. Specifically it's for the big 5th edition Apocalypse game of 40k we had planned but had to cancel a couple of weeks ago.

It's been rearranged for today.

Once we'd arranged the big game, Matt and Pete started feverishly painting and printing larger and larger units of tanks in an arms race that the Cold War would be proud of.

As I'm splitting my attention across several hundred different projects I wasn't keen to focus all my time and resources onto one game, but I did want to use the opportunity to add to my army and contribute to the rampant escalation.

I settled on adding a Librarian Dreadnought for a few reasons:

  1. My experience of 5th edition suggests Dreadnoughts are effective;
  2. The Librarian Dreadnought is a unit unique to the Blood Angels and so helps to theme my army;
  3. With the right powers the Librarian Dreadnought is a mobile and deadly threat to enemy armour;
  4. Some specific tactical options would be opened up by the addition of this unit which might mean we can get the jump on our opponents.
All this led me to jump onto ebay to pick up a built and basecoated model that only needed a little tlc to draft it into my force.


I won't bore you with the same old painting approaches, but I am quite pleased with the outcome of this model as I've achieved a very clean and striking look.

And so my army of somewhere in the region of 3300 points of Blood Angels is ready to join Matt's 4400 points of Imperial Guard to confront Pete's (who will be accompanied by Wes) Alpha Legion and Traitor Guard armoured column.


I've used almost my entire collection of Blood Angels for both 40k and Heresy.

As we are going to be facing off against the Alpha Legion, I've decided the write up will be placed into my Pale Stars narrative campaign, and I'll just ignore some of the armour marks on display.

Unfortunately, the Librarian Dreadnought does not count towards my painting tally as it was technically completed last year. I'm hoping that the delay to the game might spare it the indignity of new model syndrome.

Saturday, 11 January 2025

Path of Damnation: Thug Life

I've sold my soul to the ruinous powers and am embarking on a quest that will see me achieve apotheosis or consigned to oblivion.

As with so many who.have tried this treacherous path, my journey begins with the humble Chaos Thugs (Marauders), mere pawns of the dark gods seeking their favour through slaughter.

My personal path of damnation will see me building a Chaos army for Warhammer: The Old World using only what I already own. I've no idea whether this will create an effective force, but that's not really the point.

My main aims are threefold:

  1. Use the Chaos miniatures I own in a creative way;
  2. Try to be a bit more creative with my painting and modelling;
  3. Aim to emulate some of the style of the Realms of Chaos: the Lost and the Damned book, which I feel typifies how I see Chaos in Warhammer.

As such, I've decided to use the excellent cover art, painted by Les Edwards, from the Realms of Chaos: the Lost and the Damned book as my main source of inspiration. I've always believed this piece captures the corruption of Chaos and has a colour palette that would be fun to try to match.

This decision also influences which of the great powers I shall be swearing fealty to, at least in the short term. Grandfather Nurgle, the Fly Lord of Pestilence. 

This means there will be lots of greens and browns in the army, and a few splashes of red here and there. It also means I can potentially make heavy use of some technical paints: Nurgle's Rot (obvs), Typhus Corrosion and Blood for the Blood God.


Five of the Chaos Thugs I painted are from the CH6 range released in 1987 and I remember them appearing in the early issues of White Dwarf I bought. Above we have 'Brain Slammer' and the oddly named 'Punter Dunter'.

I had a bit of a battle with the skin of the Thugs. Initially I used a variation of my zombie recipe, but it turned out too green for what I wanted, more like the head on Punter Dunter's belt (I might save that for some more corrupted champions). So I opted to add a thin coat of Kislev Flesh coloured with a coat of Skeleton Horde contrast paint. This has given them an unhealthy yellowish tinge which I like.


'Pin Head's and 'Stabstab' are both a little smaller than the others, which is useful as I'm planning to bring some Chaos Dwarfs into the unit and these two will bridge the gap between the Dwarfs and the larger models.

They also typify some of the quirkiness of the sculpts with 'Pin Head' having shades of Ram Man from He-Man and 'Stabstab' holding improvised weapon (two daggers strapped to a stick) like a bass guitar. For some reason, he reminds me of Dave Hill from Slade.


'Siclesword' (that is the correct spelling) is the only one of the bunch armed with a shield. I'm not going to be uniform about weapons, but instead will equip the unit with whatever loadout is in the majority. At the moment it looks like thiswill be great weapons, which probably means the Thugs will be killed before they get to attack. If it looks like they will be in the minority, I may add shields to some of the others.

Siclesword's hair and armour typifies what seems to be a design aesthetic for Chaos models of this era. All the models in this range have mismatched boots and incomplete armour similar in style to gladiators.

I like this lack of uniformity as that was lost in that later plastic Chaos ranges and really turned me off collecting a force.

The final model in the group is Ironhand the Mighty from the simply titled Heroes for Dungeonquest expansion Dungeonquest board game released in 1987. I have several others from this set which will be finding their way into my army.

He actually is a gladiator and so fits right in with the other Thugs. I think he was meant to be some sort of half-ogre because the dimensions of his head are even more out of proportion than othe miniatures of this time.

To my mind, he's already begun to receive rewards from Nurgle, his blessing marked out by the massive boil on his buttock.

And so my journey down the dark path has begun. 

I feel that I've done a decent job of capturing the aesthetic of the Les Edwards art work, but I'm not totally pleased with the skin and so will try to work on this as I progress. I'm pleased with the basing scheme as it's effective and easy to do.

This chaotic assault on Lead Mountain is part of a two-pronged attack which has seen me selling on a few more miniatures. This time it was some Empire Halflings who's gate was sealed last year when I conscripted my Advanced Heroquest Men-at-Arms into my Bretonnian army rather than start the Imperial force I've always threatened to begin.

Acquired: -29
Painted: 22
Lead Mountain: 608

Sunday, 5 January 2025

Howdah You Do?

Obviously, having painted a Mumakil with a massive howdah, I needed to paint up some guys to ride in it.

Enter the Haradrim.


The War Mumak of Harad kit comes with a sprue of Haradrim warriors to act as the crew, as well as an officer figure. Additionally I had a single Haradrim warrior knocking about my bits box (I was sure I had a few more) and one extra special addition to the force.

I was pleased to discover that I could fit all 15 of them in the Howdah, meaning that I don't have to find extra storage space for them and they can live in my display cabinet.


Mind you, they are not exactly models that I am massively proud of. The sculpts (and their moulds) are showing their age.

There was quite a lot of clean up to do on the mould lines and some of the archers have smudged blobs for hams where they are reaching back to their quivers.

Therefore I decided to not get too worried about the paint job and just aim for table ready - like I've done for the other old plastic sculpts in my Rohan and Mordor forces.


I used a red base coat and added the flesh tone, wood, leather and gold before giving the whole model a wash in Agrax Earthshade.

After this I used contrast black to add variation. I actually used images from the films and cosplayers to guide what to paint black on individual models, ensuring that I avoided being too uniform.

I didn't bother with adding any purple (which some paint guide go mad for) as from my research there's only a handful of warriors in the ambush scene from The Two Towers with any purple on them.


The captain model is a bit of an odd duck as he has a bird helm which I can find no reference for in the films. It's one of those designs which would feel more at home in Age of Sigmar and is indicative of what happens when the Games Workshop design team start inventing things - it all gets a bit over the top.

It also seems an odd choice to include in the kit when the Mahud, who are featured relatively heavily in The Return of the King is right there.


Mind you, Games Workshop did turn him into an individual model you can buy (currently at the bargain price of £16.50), so the omission is easily explained.

But why a bird helmet?


Anyway, whilst we're on the subject of models that don't fit in, I've also done this guy. He's the Saracen character from Talisman and was one of my favourite characters to play in the game because his artwork looked cool.

It being the eighties and me being very young meant that I didn't really think about his handy ability to sell people into slavery, something that was changed in the only later iteration of the game he appeared in.


Anyway, with the addition of an old plastic shield which handily features a snake (the emblem of Harad) I've added him to this force as another captain because he's a close enough fit I can't imagine what else I'd do with the model.

There is a bit of a scale issue, but I could argue that he's from Near Harad and the plastic warriors are from Far Harad...sorry.


I'm really pleased to have got this whole kit done so quickly and it's made for a strong start to the year, which has been added to as I've begun another round of selling off some old models.

This time it's some second edition Bloodbowl miniatures that I've decided I'll never get round to. I have kept a couple of teams in case the urge to play Bloodbowl ever returns, but I already have four other painted teams so I should be fine.

Acquired: -18
Painted: 16
Lead Mountain: 625