Order of Battle

A little piece of nostalgia

 After a fairly long period without actually much 40K playing taking place, I'm back in the swing of things now.  Last week I had a game of Zone Mortalis/Kill Team with Dave, and I have two more games scheduled for the next month.

Alea Iacta Est

So, earlier in the week I made a mould of a Squat.  I've also made a second mould - of a Chaos Dwarf with Blunderbuss - but it's all academic until I actually pour resin in.  A hundred moulds will be useless if everyone turns out mangled rubbish with no detail and loads of air bubbles.  So it's time to mix up some resin and see what comes out!

Inside The Spaceship

God bless you, John Blanche, and your stupid heels.

I've always had a fondness for the Sisters of Battle - I was 13 when their 2nd Ed Codex gave them their first real army list, and inexplicably a young teenage George was rather drawn to the John Blanche cover pictured above.  I'm therefore always happy to play my chum Dave, whose efforts to befriend me online are part of why I got back into 40K at all, and who has a Sisters army.

Today we met for my first 40K of 2014 to play Kill-Team.  Not the fancy new Kill Team ebook, I must confess, but the older free PDF rules GW had on their site. We gave ourselves a slightly larger point allowance of 300 and then played two games back to back - each only took about an hour, and gave us plenty of time to chat about UK politics, Channel 4 television programs, who he and I would cast as a female Doctor Who, how Dave's wife and baby daughter are doing, and my recent attempts to make moulds.

For those of you wondering if I can finally score my first nerdy win of the year.... read on!

Breaking The Mould

 So, I posted a picture of a Lego box a few days ago - to be exact, a small open-topped head made of wee Lego blocks.  Whatever is this construct for, you may ask?  Why, it's a mould box - because my next hobby experiment is to try casting my own figures.

This is a bit of a moral grey area - strictly speaking casting any figures would be a copyright violation.  But when it's figures that are out of print and have been for years, which can only be bought on eBay for crazy money....  Well, who do I benefit by spending £15 on three Hobgoblin Sneaky Gits or one Squat Exo-Armour, especially when I need 20 of the former and 5 of the latter to actually field a unit?  I've picked up some odds and ends on eBay for my Chaos Space Marines and Squats when it's been at a non-silly price, but it's difficult to justify paying even more than Forge World prices for this kind of stuff. 
 
I had previously dabbled in InstantMould to make parts - duplicate a head here, a gun there - but it's got limitations which make it impractical for anything beyond a fairly small size.  If I want to dabble in copying whole figures, I gotta get some new gear.

Cry Havoc

My stable of figures for my Havocs

Chaos Space Marines Havocs are the heavy weapon squads of the army.  5-10 figures, of which 4 can be armed with one of a set of seven different weapons - three "special" weapons and four true "heavy" weapons.  They've got game utility because you can squeeze an awful lot of firepower into just a few guys - and it's the only non-flyer unit in the codex with any anti-flyer capability.

As with a few units in my army I've painted up way mroe figures than I can use in one squad so as to allow me to play various different units.  The above photo shows, from left to right - three Lascannons; an Autocannon; a Plasma Gun; two missile launchers; and two heavy bolters.

Three Lascannons and an Autocannon for an Anti-Armour squad.

This means I can mix and match the various heavy weapons as required - Lascannons for punching heavy armour, autocannons for light armour and heavy infantry, missile launchers for generalist work (including flyers) and heavy bolters for anti-infantry fire.  However, all those excess bolters can also turn the unit into.....

Missile launcher and Plasma Gun, for an old school tactical squad kind of unit

...a ten man normal Chaos Space Marine unit with one heavy and one special weapon, able to slot into a troops unit. 

Unfortunately, Troops is a problem for converting my army to Horus Heresy.  My Emperor's Children are heavy on sonic blaster-armed Noise Marines for Troops but that isn't allowed in a Horus Heresy army.  My basic troops can only come from one of three units - basic bolter marines, jump pack marines or bolter and riot shield marines.  In order to get a Horus Heresy game, I need to address this. 

To make matters worse, the Havocs can't be played in Horus Heresy as it stands either - that army doesn't take a mix-and-match approach to heavy weapon squads, instead all models in the unit must have the same heavy weapon.  You would need at least four of any heavy weapon, plus a sergeant, to make a legal unit.

This leads us onto my next painting project - kill two birds with one stone and make both troops and heavy support choices for my M31 Emperor's Children

Sprayed Alien Purple and with some Snakebite Leather already painted on.

Ten figures total: two bolters, three Heavy Bolters, two Missile Launchers, a Lascannon and an Autocannon.  This can be mixed into the existing models to create:

• A ten man regular Marine unit for Troops
• A five man Heavy Bolter unit
• A four man Lascannon unit (just add a Sergeant model from my chosen unit)
• A four man Missile Launcher unit (again, Chosen for Sergeant and it's done)

And even in regular 40K, the new heavy weapons will give me more possible load-outs for Havoc squads.

The Havocs are a mixture of figures I picked up on eBay.  The Rhino accompanying them is because, while I have four Rhinos, they're all painted differently - I'll want two matching purple ones for an Emperor's Children force.  

Once this is painted I can play a Horus Heresy game with a legal army and Fulgrim can have his game debut.

Fulgrim, Primarch of the Emperor's Children

A few coats of varnish on and at this point, Fulgrim is good enough for me to plank down on the table.

As ever, under different lighting he comes out different than he is when I'm actually holding him.

 Here's some final shots of Fulgrim on his own and his scenic base before I move onto the next project.

Stripping For The Internet

So, I make a lot of eBay purchases.  Since I got back into 40K I have bought a few pots of paint and a brush out of a GW store.... and literally nothing else.  Almost all my figures are second hand purchases or gifts, and that often means they've already been painted.  Sometimes this is a problem because it doesn't match my scheme; sometimes this is a problem because they're painted poorly; and even when the above two aren't true, I'd rather try and paint it myself since that's half the hobby right there.

Several models, most decidedly un-Emperors Children.

Take this bundle of figures, all from various eBay purchases sitting in my to-do box.  A squad of Chaos Space Marine Havocs, packing one of each of the four heavy weapons I can have but painted somewhat Word Bearers-y; a Forge World Emperor's Children Dreadnought, with twin-linked Lascannons and Missile Launcher; and a undercoated metal Chaos Lord from the Box of Delights.  All these items were picked up for a chunk under RRP but they're not necessarily much use to me in those paint schemes.

But have no fear!   There's plenty of guides online to stirpping paint, and with the aid of those guides I can turn these bad boys from bright red and pink into..... slightly less red and pink!