Belisarius Cawl - 75% Done!

Hey diddly ho,

More work on Belisarius Cawl!! Getting there... slowly getting there with this monstrosity of a model. By and large all the major components are done, the main stages left are to add colour where power is flowing through the model, this will mostly be in the shape of blue OSL to match the rest of the mechanicum, but I may throw an odd bit of green in there as well for a servo skulls eyes or such. 

Secondary to that is making and painting the base to completion! Then I can glue the whole thing together and be done with it. 

I've very much gone for a tired and knackered look to the whole model, nothing to clean about it, generally in keeping with the rest of my mechanicum and my painting style in general. This model has lent itself to that style well I think. I'm actually weirdly proud of the skulls colour on this model, just quite pleased with how the white turned out!

Looking forward to getting a splash of complimenting colour on it though, that should really make it "pop". 

Peace out,

Rob

Belisarius Cawl - Progress Cawling Along

Hey gang,

Belisarius Cawl is one of those models where you feel like you have spent ages adding neat little touches to it and yet you don't appear to have made any progress!! That said, the pictures below are very nearly complete. The book at his feet needs a few more highlights and the skin needs a few pallid touch ups. Mostly though I need to add some blue OSL to the many generator aspects on his carapace hide which will tie him into the scheme with the rest of my Mechanicum very nicely. 

Before I can do that though I need to bring all the other gubbins up to scratch and glue them on, otherwise I might have to find myself adding glow to a single piece at once or worse, find that I've added glow where there should be shadow!

Peace out,

Rob

Belisarius Cawl - WIP

Hey gang,

In between working on the First Legion I've been slowly adding layers to my final Mechanicum model (for now). I've got most of Cawl built now, though there are quite a few bits still on the sprue as they are pretty much single piece add on parts and I'd rather not lose them! The two main arm are built but still lying in grey plastic as I want to get the base model painted and ready to go so I can just paint all the smaller fiddly parts in one go. 

Not much of an update, but here you go!

The yellow is pretty much finished, I just need to add some extra shading and wash to some areas. The black armour is also close to completion, but needs a little bit of stippling with a silver to give it some wear and tear. Everything else is just in the under coat or base coat stages, so lots to do!

Peace out,

Rob

The Thanatar Siege Engine!!!

Hey everyone,

After my dire warnings of nothing but Thallax all week you will be pleased to know that today is the day of the Thanatar!! Yesterday I came home to my Thanatar from forgeworld and so I set to getting it cleaned up and built in double quick time as I may have a game with it on Friday!

I have to say I was pleasantly surprised with the bit I thought I'd struggle with which was the ammo feed for the left arm, but I found the pictures and diagrams for assembling the leg servos completely undecipherable! They have turned out fine but it took me the best part of 45 minutes just to configure those!!

I tried to pose her such that it looks like a big hulking stride forward with arm outstretched, I'm quite pleased with it really! The magnetisation at the waist allows me to pivot it a bit and also will make priming and painting a lot easier. The Helex plasma mortar is also magnetised at one point so it can pivot up and down an is easier to paint too, though I have yet to decide if the top part of the mortar should be left closed or be carefully cut to be glued as open. Its not yet glued in place, just snap fit as its very snug.

A really nice kit from FW, the only problem being they sent me a knight base instead of a Thanatar base! But they have already been contacted and said they will post the right base size out to me. So I now have a knight base that I may make a diorama on with some other odds and sods that I have coming in... You will have to wait and see!

Peace out,

Rob

Horus Heresy Review: Ordos Reductor War Covenant

Good evening,

After reviewing both the general Taghmata Omnissiah and the sub-faction of the Legio Cybernetica, I will now cover the other sub-faction available to 30k Mechanicum players: The Ordo Reductor. This Ordo represents the powerful yet disparate bands of the Mechanicum that fought in the darkest corners of the Emperor's and the Omnissiah's light, forging the Great Crusade onwards until the Age of Darkness fell. The Ordos Reductor took both sides in this fight and brought with it not only the esoteric engines of war that the Mechanicum are known for, but also great tanks of destruction drawn from the graveyards of battlefields littered with the dead of both the Legiones Astartes and the Solar Auxilia; great and vast artillery pieces that shake the earth. The metal men have little fear of death from above and walk through the ashen field of war with not a flicker of mercy.

Ordo Reductor: Special Rules

Like the Legio Cybernetica, the Ordo Reductor has several special rules and requirements that help define the flavour of the force, these are listed below:

The Master of the Covenant: The compulsory HQ for an Ordo Reductor Force must be taken from any of a Magos Reductor, an Archmagos Reductor or Caleb Decima.

Walkers in Ruins: All units in an Ordo Reductor War covenant are immune to pinning from enemy attacks and ignore any penalties for moving/charging through cover if it is rubble, ruins, minefields and trenchworks. This includes difficult and dangerous terrain tests.

Engines of Destruction: Additional force organisation options are available in a Magos Reductor, Ordo Reductor Artillery Tank Battery, and Ordo Reductor Minotaur Battery.

Patterns of Force: Compulsory troop choices must be fulfilled by Thallax cohorts and an Ordo Reductor War Covenant can never have more than half of its units fulfilled by Battle Automat. I.e. in a 10 unit army, only 5 can be made up from Battle Automata. 

Walkers in Ruins in combination with the enhanced levels of Thallax you will necessarily have in an Ordo Reductor force (because of Patterns of Force), makes for some very potent and very mobile jet pack infantry that are not suffering though a lot of terrain you will find on a 30k or 40k battlefield. Engines of Destruction is a wonderful rule and I will go into why in more detail below when we look at those units.

Alternative Force Organisation Chart: The Matrix of Ruin

The Ordo Reductor comes with its very own unique force organisation chart. This has the following structure:

Required Slots: 1 HQ, 2 Troops, 2 Heavy Support

Optional Slots: 3 Troops, 2 Elites, 2 Fast Attack, 2 Heavy Support, 2 Lords of War

Restrictions: Allied detachments and fortifications are not allowed and all units must be taken from the Ordo Reductor War Covenant abiding all the additional restrictions (e.g. Thallax as compulsory troops) and must also all be taken from either a loyalist or traitor faction.

The Unfettered Wrath of the Machine: All tanks count as scoring in Age of Darkness Games when in the opponents deployment zone. All Tanks count as Objective Secured in Maelstrom of War games when in the opponents deployment zone.

This alternative force org further pushes the use of an aggressive playstyle that also makes use of the additional Ordo Reductor Specific Units as these are Tanks. This can make for a devastating army as you drive forward pounding the enemy and using pretty resilient tanks to score objectives with T5 W3 jet pack infantry bouncing around everywhere as your basic troops. As you will see from the unique Reductor options below this is fantastic.

Ordo Reductor: Unique Units

Arch/Magos Reductor

In the basic Taghmata you have the option of taking multiple types of Magos ranging from the lowest ranking of these higher castes of machanicum society to the ranks of Archmagos. The Archmagos and Magos Reductor is unique to the Ordo Reductor War Covenant.

Stats

                                    WS  BS  S  T  W  I  A  LD  Sv

Magos Reductor           4     5    4   4   2  4  2    9     3+

                                   WS  BS  S  T  W  I  A  LD  Sv
Archmagos Reductor   5     5    5  5   3   4  2   10   2+

Equipment

Power Axe, Lucifex, Machina protectiva. 

The Magos Reductor comes in at a little overpriced at 125 points with the Archmagos costing +35. I dislike that the profile specifies a power axe as I like to take a power sword and have AP2 attacks coming from some of the special wargear available (like a machinator array). These guys either have a 3+/4++ or a 2+/4++. The lucifex is a nice touch with the following profile:

Special Rules

Stubborn - does what it says on the tin, but help ensure he won't break with that LD10

Battlesmith - this allows you to work like an enginseer and restore hull points, repair weapons and repair immobilised results on a 5+ instead of shooting. 

Independent character - well what did you expect...

Master of Destruction - All the Arch/Magos attacks have the sunder special rule and additionally any rolls on the vehicle or building damage table have +1 in ADDITION to any bonuses granted by open topped or weapon AP.

OR the Arch/Magos can confer this special rule to any heavy or ordnance weapon within 6 inches including any vehicle they may be embarked upon.

Bodyguard - May take a single unit of Scyllax Guardians or Tech priest Auxilia (with the Reductor upgrade) as a bodyguard that counts as taking up the same HQ slot as the Arch/Magos.

The Archmagos also gains Relentless and must also be your warlord if taken and also gains access to a Djinn-Skein for +25 points. This is a must buy if you are going full on Tank Reductor.

Upgrades

I won't list all the upgrades here as they are many and varied and they are shared by all of the HQ choices more or less, so I will cover them in depth when I review all the generic HQ choices for the Taghmata. However I will cover a few upgrade options below as they are excellent with any mechanicum HQ.

Abeyant - an abeyant can take many forms and serves an essential survival purpose for the Archmagos. This could be as a life support system, or a massive mechanical body impervious to small arms fire, or even a delicate floating platform with a shield around it. 

An abeyant grants +1 wound, it will not die, move through cover, very bulky, and hardened armour (important for zone mortalis games mostly). Wow, a 4 wound, 2+/4++ IWND T5 HQ with move though cover.... Awesome.

Cyber-familiar - wait did I say a 2+/4++ above??? Well strike me down and call me a liar... if you take a cyber familiar it improves your invulnerable by +1 (to a maximum of a 3++). SO now you have a 2+/3++ T5 HQ with IWND!

This gem also allows you to re-roll any characteristic tests that are not LD or Dangerous terrain. So strength and toughness tests really, but mainly this is for getting you that all important 3++.

Machinator array - Wait wait wait, did I say T5?? Well forget that! With a machinator array you get +1 toughness! As well as having an in built flamer and inferno (melta) pistol! You can fire both of these in the shooting phase OR you can fire on of them and another ranged weapon you have. 

Additionally the array also grants an extra TWO attacks in close combat with a +1 strength, shred, armourbane, unwieldy profile. Remember these are two attack IN ADDITION to your normal ones. Double additionally, the array grants +2 to any battlesmith rolls you make, therefore restoring hull points on a 3+!!

Cyber-Occularis - Basically servo skulls with the profile below that allow barrage units to draw line of sight from them if the warlord has  Djinn Skein and with the Barrage options available to the Ordo Reductor these are a very strong must include for absolute synergy.

                                    WS  BS  S  T  W  I  A  LD  Sv

Cyber Occularis           2     3    2   3   1   4  1    9     3+

Jet pack infantry with stealth, fearless and a twin linked las pistol. These buggers also have Warning Relay - granting interceptor to units within 3 inches and also Augur Sweep which reduces enemy cover saves by -1 if they are within 12 inches of the Occularis.

Ordo Reductor Artillery Tank Battery

85 point takes with a 12:10:10 3HP BS4 profile taken in squads of 1-3. These come standard with a whirlwind launcher that you will want to swap out for the following upgrades:

Demolisher Cannon - S10, AP2, Ordnance 1, Large Blast, 24 inch range

Quad Lascannon - S9, AP2, Heavy 2, Twin-linked 48 inch range

Dual Melta Cannon - S8, AP1, Heavy 1, Blast, Melta, Twin linked, 24 inch range

Earthshaker Cannon - S9, AP3, Ordnance 1, Barrage, Large Blast, 36-120 inch range

Medusa Cannon  - S10, AP2, Ordnance 1, Barrage, Large Blast, 36 inch range

Medusa Cannon (Phosphex) - S5, AP2, As above except Poisoned 3+, Crawling Fire and Lingering Death

Mars-Colossus Bombard - S7, AP3, Ordnance 1, Barrage, Massive Blast (7inch), Concussive, Pinning, 12-72 inch range.

The whirlwind can also take Hyperios missile upgrades but as they have skyfire and would therefore be rubbish at round targets and the play style Ordo Reductor pushes is moving on an offensive I would leave these off. and Always pick one of upgrades above.

The two stand out choices in the list above are the Medusa Cannon (both options) and the Mars-Colossus Bombard. Both have good range when you consider you are an army moving forward and both will benefit from line of sight from a Cyber Occularis as they are barrage. The Medusa cannon can destroy tanks with its S10 AP2 (especially if granted  Master of Destruction) and Phosphex will ruin any infantry mans day pretty hard.

The Mars Colossus is death to marines and is absolutely brutal.

These tanks also have the option of taking Siege Plating with grants AV13 on the front. Whilst nice I feel this is points not worth taking as you cannot take armoured ceramite and are AV10 at the side and rear anyway so your survivability will not increase significantly for points spent. You can however take a Blessed Autosimulcra which grants a restored hull point a turn on a roll of a 6.

Ordo Reductor Artillery Tank Battery

These are absolute monsters compared to the tanks above and are priced appropriately rocking at 205 base. But they are deserving of it!

BS4 13:12:13 for AV and 5 HP (5!!!) These suckers come with a Flare Shield for their arse (-1S to attacks and -2 for blast/template attacks hitting that facing), Extra armour, and a Blessed Autosimulcra as well. Additionally these guys CAN take armoured ceramite as well as an Auxiliary drive if needed (though you should be keeping a battle smith with machinator array near these guys for 3+ repairs). Other than those upgrades you can take a few pintle mounted weapons I won't bother with as they are not all that important and I don't recommend pimping these guys out due to their already high cost.

There main and only available main weapon (compared to the all you can eat buffet of death above) is the Dual Earthshaker Cannon.

Dual Earthshaker Cannon - S9, AP3, Ordnance 1, Barrage, Twin-Linked, Massive Blast (7") Range of 24-120 inches.

This gun can only fire barrage but it is twin-linked AND you must pair it with cyber occularis for line of sight shenanigans. These are horrible and will wreck face, again if you add Master of Demolitions to them then they can blow vehicles on a 6.

Additionally the strange AV configuration has been addressed and so no striking AV13 in close combat, the weakest side AV of 12 will be hit in close combat instead.


Overall

Death Comes in many forms. With the Ordo Reductor it usually rains down from the sky as great behemoths of metal crush the ground in front of you. The Ordo Reductor gives a wonderfully flavoured army choice to anyone collecting 30k Mechanicum and making the compulsory requirements to field their unique units are not difficult meaning you will not have to re-design your collection to have these as alternative options in your overall army collection.

I personally would love to have a unit or two of medusa cannon tanks in my back line pushing forwards and as soon as I can afford them I will!


I hope this has been useful as always :)

Peace out,

Rob

Thallax - More progress

Good Afternoon mi amigos,

I'm afraid its going to be a starter of Thallax, followed by Thallax with a side order of Thallax for this week, though if you're lucky you will be getting a desert of Castellax with a coulis of Death Company towards the end. Plus there will be a sprinkle of the Ordo Reductor getting reviewed as well.

Last post you saw these chaps in this state of undress:

And since then, all the metals have been washed and highlighted as well as the black visor being covered in blood for the blood god. I'm not terribly good at using that as a blood effect but it gives a lovely creepy finish to these visors. To my mind it is almost membrane like and help enforce the idea that there is living squishy tissue inside of these metallic bodies. I've begun adding a very slight touch of verdigris to the bronzed/copper metallics which you might be able to pick up on the front left Thallax in the back shot, but I will be keeping it very low key. 

I've also undercoated the arms, guns and cables though the white can did die on me in a big fat wet fart of splatter annoyingly. But as a lot of the arms/guns will be painted metallic that shouldn't be an issue. 

So tonight I should begin work on the arms and I think I will also begin to build the bases! Though I need to pick up a new can of black undercoat for that and my money is tight right now, mostly because I keep buying things.... Also, depending on the post man we may be seeing a new addition to the battle Automata family this week...

Peace out,

Rob

30k Thallax Update and General Blog Thoughts

Good afternoon fine cats,

Today I have a quick update on painting progress with my Thallax which has been a bit slower than I hoped, mostly because I got up at 1pm today.. the shame the shame... the wonderfully comfortable bed... And I also have a few thoughts on my blog at the current time. Firstly some blog stuff. 

Blog Housekeeping

Mostly today I wanted to acknowledge that particularly in the realm of comments I have been very tardy in terms of replying to everyone, this is simply due to work commitments really draining me as of the present and a few minor health issued which are refusing to remain dead and buried. This coupled with trying to make swift progress on painting for tournaments and the like has been quite the limiter on mental fortitude regarding sitting down to write replies. 

I don't for a second think any of you wonderful people who do take the time to comment are fussed by my rate of reply, but I do like to give everyone proper time and thought as some of your comments are very important beyond encouraging me with factual inaccuracies in my review posts being pointed out as well as great hints and tips around model painting, tactics and army composition for example, factoring directly into my hobby. Therefore this is just by way of an apology!

I also wanted to point out that some time in the past week I surpassed 1000 comments as well as 1'000'000 Google+ views and thank you all for that as well! 

Other than that I think I my life and therefore blog time should settle down significantly in the first half of April after I have moved house and completed a couple of very time intensive experiments, so I am greatly looking forward to having more structured posts as well as posting at regular times again!

Thallax Progress

In more blog focussed and less serious news I have made movement on my Thallax! Below is how you last saw them:

And here we have them after the metallics have been added, the black under layer for the red face plate, as well as screaming skull highlights on the yellow and using it as the base layer on the skull of the chest piece. I lightened the yellow a little too much and so added some seraphim sepia to blend it back to a level I'm happy with, though I have a few "tide marks" I need to correct:

Nuln oil wash is now needed on all metallics and then highlights plus colouring of the cables that will be red with black. Then the face plate and black cables will have blood for the blood god added to them and these guys are done!

Tonight I should have time to blue tack up all the arms and guns for undercoating and washing and hopefully get over half way done with them tomorrow. I also have plans to start basecoating the final 6 Death Company and start yellow highlighting the three Castellax.

Peace out,

Rob

Horus Heresy Review - Thallax

Good Afternoon,

Following on from my update on Thallax painting progress, today I am going to review them as a unit that fulfils an excellent troop slot in any 30k Mechanicum army. These are some absolutely fantastic troops that have toughness, mobility and a good swiss army knife of options to tailor them for specific goals. 

Stats

Thallax are mini monstrous creatures with an excellent strength and toughness coupled with 3 whole wounds! As a basic troop! They are pricey at 40 points each with only a 4+ save, but they also have a 6+ FNP to mitigate that somewhat as well as their base toughness making them harder to wound and multiple wounds requiring some seriously dedicated fire power to take them out. Bear in mind they will also only be insta-killed by S10 weaponry or instant death/remove from play special rules. 

WS  BS  S  T  W  I  A  LD  Sv

  3     4    5  5   3   2  2   8     4+

Thallax also come with the stubborn special rule, so with a marine competent level of leadership 8 they will not often be breaking. As jet pack infantry they are also bulky, which has little pertinence unless you are considering taking them in a Triaros armoured conveyor, however I will cover this build in a separate post for the Triaros.

Finally its worth noting that with some of the special rules and equipment upgrades available to this unit, they can be pretty decent in close combat with 2 attacks base. A base squad of 3 will put out 9 strength 5 hits on the charge which is nothing to sniff at in a pinch, even before you upgrade them. If you just add additional bodies, of which 6 can be taken, then they will do a fair number!

Equipment

Baseline equipment for the Thallax are the Lightning Gun and Djinn-sight. Djinn-sight represents their enhanced sensory system which is boosted through their augmetic helm. This beautiful piece of equipment causes -2 (2!!!!) to your opponents cover save when you shoot at them. This is absolutely fantastic and is key to how you utilise the Thallax. In terms of their basic guns, they have the following profile

Lighting Gun - S7, AP5, Heavy 1, Shred, Rending, 18" range.

At strength 7 you will be wounding most things on a 2 with a re-roll. Albeit this is a low rate of fire, but on a 6 you will ignore any armour. These guns don't excel at a great deal to be honest and so you will invariably want to give them some upgrades. Available to the Thallax are melta bombs (whole squad), a Photon Thruster, Phased plasma-fusil, multi-melta, multi-laser and an Irad-cleanser (1 per 3). The multi-melta and multi-laser are as standard but the other profiles are as follows:

Phased Plasma-fusil - S6, AP3, Salvo 2/3, 24" range.

Photon Thruster - S6, AP2, Heavy 2, Lance, Blind, Gets hot, 48" range. 

Irad-cleanser - S2, AP5, Assault 1, fleshbane, Rad Phage, Template.

The phased plasma-fusil is essentially 24" assault 3 due to jet pack infantry being relentless and so is an excellent troop killer with that AP3 and relatively high rate of fire. Its range is short but better than your standard guns which plus your mobility shouldn't be an issue. The Photon thruster has excellent range and a brilliant AP2 but you can ignore lance as you shouldn't be shooting at anything above AV12 and gets hot makes it a no-no for me. You can bleed wounds on a heavy 2 with only a 4+ save. Unlike battle-automata such as the Castellax with a Darkfire cannon you can't regain wounds. 

The irad cleanser is beautiful, yes it has a low AP5 but fleshbane you will wound on 2+ and rad phage will PERMANENTLY lower S and T by -1 for the rest of the game!

The multi laser adds a nice rate of fire to the squad but the multi melta should be skipped as melta bombs are better, with 3 attacks and circumventing armoured ceramite. You also have the option to take heavy chainblades for each thallax to increase their attacks to S7 and AP4. 

Thallax also have the option of an augment upgrade which gives them additional rules to help specialise their role, these range from 10-25 points:

Icarian: If stationary the Thallax gain skyfire and move to heavy support instead of troops. This doesn't sound amazing to begin with on basic troops, but even with the lightning guns you have to remember that you are putting -2 to there cover save so jinking on a 5+ at best! that will be 3 to glance the weakest vehicles and so they make a great little anti-air threat in a list low on flyers.

Ferrox: Grants rage and rending to close combat attacks. This gives them 4 S5 rending attacks on the charge. Though they now can't upgrade their lightning guns.

Destructor: Grants Tank Hunter special rule, brilliant when you give them melta bombs to ensure a big bang.

Empyrite: Gains a teleportation deep strike, which plays a role in Zone Mortalis but can be ignored here really. 

Overview - Thallax have a whole host of options and permutations open to them that allow you to really customise them as a unit. This is great but also can lead to the trap of investing to many points on a unit that only has a 4+ save.

Utilising

Personally I like to keep these squads small with 3-5 members and relatively low on upgrades. Melta bombs and Ferrox put a 3 man squad at 175 points. But they can literally threaten everything now, even charging a blob will put out 12 attacks, they can take pot shots at high toughness units and can melta bomb any vehicle into non-existence. If you have the points however, 6 man squad with plasma-fusils is a nice build. The 4 Thallax with lightning guns can still rend and take out 2+ saves and you have 6 S6 Ap3 shots pumping out of this unit. Icarian as an upgrade really does add some much needed skyfire ability to this list and any of the high rate of fire guns like the phased plasma-fusil/multilaser will help saturate flyers with their reduced jink saves. Though icarian plus melta bombs does allow you to tickle flyers as well as take out tanks. 

Overview - Much more so than Castellax, Thallax are a pick and mix unit and I couldn't possibly cover the whole scope of builds possible with them, but I would always suggest that you keep them focused on one priority with contingency for another, melta bombs are I think the best contingency as they will always present a threat to tanks on such a mobile unit, beyond that you can choose as you like. 

Peace out,

Rob

Thallax - Progress on batch painting!

Afternoon True-believers!

So last night I had some spare time to make headway on batch painting my 30k mechanicus force in an attempt to have them ready in 1 month! That might sound like a stretch painting an army in 1 month but bear in mind there are less than 20 models in it... Plus I can skip out the weathering of all the models until afterwards if need be! I plan on painting them all up to the same standard as this chap:

Before I move on to adding any damage/weathering effects to them with sponge and brown! So I have 9 Thallax and 3 more Castellax built and i decided to crack on with the Thallax first. Last you saw these guys they were in this state:

And after last nights efforts I have no got them all up to the point of being washed and the first two layers of yellow highlights applied:

Its not immediately obvious because of the flash in the "before" photo but these guys are A LOT lighter now. They still however need a final highlight of screaming skull before I paint the mettalic areas with either leadbelcher or warp..something bronze. Those areas will then get a wash of nuln oil and a highlight, then the red glossy parts need a coat of Abaddon black before the blood for the blood god technical paint is applied to them.

After all that I will decide how I want to mark them ala hazard stripes or weather I will just paint a single shoulder pad black to differentiate them from the Castellax. Any thoughts on this will be much appreciated! Finally I need to repeat that with the arms which are sat still in resin at the moment!

Thats all for todays quick update!

Peace out,

Rob

Legio Cybernetica Cohort - Update

Hi Everyone,

As I mentioned in my post yesterday you will be seeing a lot of these guys in the coming weeks as I try and get them finished pretty quick. So here is just a few update shots of the majority of the army built and primed for their first coat of wash which will build up to be the base yellow.

The Castellax on the left and right have had their Mauler pattern bolt cannons converted to be dark fire cannons using the claws from a dreadnought. This was inspired by the design of the Helix Plasma Mortar that the Thanatar comes with as standard. What you can't see in this shot is the guitar wire that I have run from the gun to the back as power cables instead of the big bolt ammo feed that comes with the bolt cannon.

The enginseer at the front I found on my desk whilst I was trying to create some type of order (a post on that big pile of fuck-uppery later this week) and I have no idea when or how I acquired him. But as I have no plans to use the Magos that came with the mechanicum bundle I bought (really don't dig the aesthetic) I knocked this guy up to be one in the meantime whilst my alternative counts as model arrives. I'm pretty pleased with how he turned out for a few minutes work. 

Aside from these guys (and the 3 Thallax you saw already yellowed up yesterday) I need to convert two Thanatars from some models that arrived the other day. These won't be done in time for my game with these guys on friday so I'll have to proxy them, but I will have some posts up about that build soon!

Peace out,

Rob

Building the Mechanicum, Hobby updates + Arbitrary Milestone 200 posts!

Hey fine folk,

Arbitrary Milestone - 200 posts

First up today we have another arbitrary milestone following hot on the heels of 50'000 views! Today is my 200th post of my blog, which seems a little bit barmy given that I only posted 15 times in my first 3 months and the blog is only 1 year old on the 4th of April!! But as I said in my last post, I've enjoyed every second of it and you readers keep my putting out content as you are (for some reason) apparently interested in this corner of my life. 

In terms of the 1 year anniversary of my blog, I will be running a giveway with a 1st, 2nd and 3rd place where 1st place can choose from three prizes, then 2nd place and 3rd place gets what's left! More details of that to come on the 4th of March as entries will run for a month :)

Hobby Update

So as well as generally building and painting units as you see them I am always working towards other things. The weekend coming, that is to say the 28th of February, I will be attending a 1 day tournament run by Bristol Vanguard called Vae Victus. This is a fun custom 750 points tournament that has some strict limitations. 

These include, no multi wound characters (a couple of exceptions), no 2+ saves, no duplicating units in the fast attack choices and limits on overall AV values on vehicles. Taking a HQ isn't compulsory either!!

I'm going to be taking my Dark Angels to this tournament with the following list:

Troops

Scout Squad with Sniper Rifles

2 x 5 man Tactical Squad with Plasma Cannon

1 x 5 man Tactical Squad with Plasma gun

Fast Attack

10 man squad of assault marines with 2 x flamers and a power maul on the sergeant

Ravenwing bike squad with 5 x bikers 1 x sergeant and 1 x attack bike. 2 x melta guns, 1 x multi melta and a power axe. 

These guys have mostly been pulled from my collection so the prevalence of AP1 and AP2 stuff is obviously not tailored to this tournament though any vehicles I come across should go pop pretty easily! The troops will remain stationary as far as possible with the plasma gun squad being the mobile unit of choice. Whereas the assault squad and ravenwing will zip around to claim objectives and take on key targets. I predict the ravenwing, with their higher toughness and re-rollable jink will be absolute buggers for some people to deal with. 

With this in mind I still have the sergeant and Attack bike to paint (though being fully painted isn't a requirement at the event) so below is me at the washing stage of the sergeant before I start to highlight the "black" with dark reaper:

So hopefully this guys and the attack bike marines should be done by the end of the week!

Building the Mechanicum

This weekend has been very productive regarding my foray into 30k with lots of building and some painting being done on my Legio Cybernetica Cohort. I haven't put the army list up yet, but here are a few pictures of what I am building and a collation of my "finished" castellax that was shown off in my Castellax review post:

And here is the nearly finished castellax, he needs identifying markings on the right shoulder an obviously the base needs doing, but other than that I am actually happy with him:

Expect to see a lot more of the mechanicum over the next month as I am hoping to get them built and ready for a tournament in early April and would like some practise games with them!

Anyway thats all from me today!

Peace out,

Rob