Knights of Old Caliban - 30k conversion from Age of Sigmar

Bonjourno,

So I was chatting on one of the 40k communities on google+ the other day and the subject of my 30k aspirations came up. I had considered Dark Angels as a possibility (along with virtually every other playable faction as they are all brutally fantastic) but because of the lack of legion specific rules this time I had put them to one side. 

However my recent foray into 40k as truly stoked by inner unforgiven and one night, whilst unable to sleep, I was poking around with my spare bits and the stormcast sprues I had picked up dirt cheap from the Age of Sigmar release set. The following is the result of a bit of kit-bashing and converting - pretty intense converting by my standards but nothing too big really. 

The reaper autocannon conversion with a wee bionic leg...

And the sergeant because he has the coolest pose I think...

I used a lot of Chaos Space Marine bits in the conversion as I like the overly baroque nature of their armour and I felt it fit the 30k aesthetic and Sigmarite aesthetic better as well. I am particularly pleased with the sergeants pose (the one without the top knot) and also the converted reaper autocannon from cotton bud tubes a flamer and some random chunk of dreadnought plastic. I am also surprisingly happy with the little bionic leg too. I like how it looks a bit weedy, in my head that highlights how bionic tech was a bit less developed... perhaps?

Anyway, I only gave him a bionic leg because I couldn't find his actual one...

Thoughts on these guys and if you would be happy to face them as 30k terminators would be much appreciated.

They still have plenty of clean up work to do and I will either have to purchase some brass dark angel decals from forge world or work some DA specific icons on them some other way, but they are pretty much done regarding the bulk. I also have a load of little waist items to add to modernise them up a bit and the like.

I have plans for another 5 man squad using up my final 5 liberators but these will have volkite pistols and power swords instead of lightning claws, but will still have the reaper autocannon. 

Peace out,

Rob

Death Company assemble, Terminators finished and Orks attack!

Hey readers,

I was planning on 2 extra blogposts this week but decided to smoosh them into 1 instead. Its been a nice and productive hobby week for me with a squad finished apart from minor basing additions and a lot of models built as well.

On The building front I have been working on my death company army as I have been accumulating cheap death company sprues people are selling from the shield of baal boxset. £14 for 5 brand new death company! Its brilliant! Anyway, these guys along with Astorath and Raphen's Death Company make up the bulk of my force with another dreadnought in a drop pod and a stormraven to add to it. The stormraven is bought and on its way to me so that just leaves the dreadnought and drop pod to finish the list.

Here are the damned and the thirsty (or damn thirsty) Death Company and Lemartes, the Guardian of the Lost:

And behind them you can see the then unfinished Terminator Squad. Those guys now look like this:

I am happy with how they turned out and think I've got this colour scheme for my Archangels down pretty well now. Still 21 infantry to paint for these guys but a third down. Still need do the bases properly on these guys but I will probably save a good chunk of models up and then do them all together.

And finally, I played a game last thursday with a great guy called Stuart. We were playing the first game of a narrative series so we just picked the Scouring and played it as a fast skirmish game between a templars scouting force investigating a crashed hulk on a planet of spires and deserts. It was a great game that I ended up winning 7-6 but at the end of turn three my army looked like this:

All bar my terminators and emperors champion died in that great Waaaaaaagh! But the Emperor's champion and 1 terminator grabbed an objective and my culexus assassin grabbed another objective and linebreaker to give me a win. They were my only three models left on the table to his 30 though.... 

Anyway thats all for now but I will be back on Sunday with Part 4 of my blood angels retrospective.

Till then, Peace Out

Rob

Blood Angels - Are we that bad? - Part Three Elites (and Hobby update)

Hello dear readers,

I have finished my house move and have a nice big new bedroom with plenty of space for my hobby work. We also have a shed that I'm hoping to use to build a foldable gaming table so I can better use out of my FAT mat without destroying the cervical and sacral sections of my spine. 

Today I'm going to go over the elite section of the Blood Angels Codex. This is a big section so I will just give a summary of verdicts at the end rather than for each choice. After that you can see a few pics of my new set up and sneak peaks of what's on my hobby table. I'm also going to be putting up my several parts of my collection on ebay today and tomorrow so please stay tuned for links to those auctions and maybe pester a friend or your wallet to bid or buy it now :)

On we go!

Elites

Command squad - 100 points basic - FNP - issue and accept challenges for company champion - These guys are very limited and in such a rich slot as the elites are in the Blood Angels Codex I see no room for you to take them over other choices.

Death Company - 2 attacks, S5 on charge, rage = 4 attacks on charge - 5 attacks with 2 x ccw, striking at I5 in strike force (and why wouldn't you), Astorath re-roll to hit and to wound on the charge - FNP - relentless for bolters and charging - fearless - hand flamers and inferno pistols = awesome. These guys really are fantastic, they will destroy pretty much anything in close combat and the jump packs will hopefully get them there somewhat intact. 

Squads of 10 are a must I think to mitigate the fire power that will definitely be directed at them. These are still the last word in face punching as they should be and the Vanilla's have nothing that can shake that position. A good mix of weapons and bolters on power fist guys to take advantage of relentless is always good. Add Lemartes or Astorath to taste. Or take 2 10 man squads like I am and put one character in each ;)

Lemartes Guardian of the Lost - badass chaplain with mastercrafted crozius - +1 s and A after lost a wound all the rules of death company aside from fearless but has zealot as well. This guys really adds a nice whallop to a squad of death company and to top it all of hey-zeus he has a great model. Really fantastic, always admired it and got mine in the post recently - I'm not a fan of finecast but this one had 0 flash on it essentially and the detail is awesome, look forward to showing you in fully painted up. Hopefully I will get him painted to an Asotrath level of detail for me.

Sanguinary guard - golden angels of sigmar---I mean death ;) 2+ save and Ld 10 with marine mulching weapons (encarmine sword....ap3 master crafted two handed and encarmine axe... +1 ap2 mastercrafted unwieldy 2 handed). These guys are fantastic, the models are really great, though I have ordered some flying sigmarites to convert into them so they are extra bad ass.. but they suffer from no Invulnerable save or even FNP, be careful with them, maybe throw in a couple of storm shield characters to tank wounds if you really want to take them, but more importantly pick your targets carefully. I recommend the sword and leave 2+ saves to someone like death compay who can drown them in a mixture of ap - and ap3 attacks as well as throwing ap2 attacks at I1.

Dreadnought basic - a dread is a dread is a dread - except the cc chapter dread has 2 attacks less.... bugger. Very little to say on these guys. If you are taking dreads then take either of the other 2 dread option we have available.

Death Company Dreadnought - has furious charge and rage which is fun and can get ap2 shred blood talons but only has 3 attacks and really should have 5 (though it gets 5 on the charge so its not too bad and possibly 6 with 2 CCW weapons..I think?)I doubt this will be faq'd though sadly still awesome though and ignores crew shaken and crew stunned results. The ignoring crew shaken and stunned results are the best thing about this beast

Furioso Dreadnought - suffers from the bizarrely low attacks but the best way to run this guy is in my opinion as a holy crap tonne of horde cleansing. Frag cannon and underslung flamer produce 3 template attacks a turn with 2 of them at s6! Oh and those ones are RENDING! Drop this guy in a pod next to any units in cover (T3 for maximum effect) and watch them burn.This beast also has AV13 on the fron for extra survivability. Very tasty profile

Terminator Squad - 200 points and still too expensive for what they do and the models don't even look bad ass like the assault marines do - sad to say I will never be taking these guys - they are marginally better in the vanilla codex due to price drop but still too easily wiped.

Terminator Assault Squad - a different story - the hammernator squad is the same price as the vanilla marines but the kit we have is simply awesome, really beautiful models indeed. The claw variant is over costed compared to vanilla but not by much and they are great at shredding units especially as ours are S5 on the charge and at I5 in the baal strike force formation so it really ups your chance of killing marine squads no problem. A top choice compared to vanilla because of these unique Blood Angel buffs.

Vanguard Veteran Squads - I love the whole concept of these guys and will have two in one of my angel armies eventually (still lying in bits :( ) but the vanilla codex got a MASSIVE reduction in their weapon upgrade costs. Sadly these guys took in the neck the same as the dreadnoughts.

Sternguard Veteran Squads - are as good as they ever were with their fantastic utility. I will also have 2 squads of these drop podding in with my archangels because of their effectiveness. Price point wise they are little changed if at all as I recall but even if they are more expensive compared to vanilla they are still well worth taking

Verdicts

Overall the winners in this section are, as they should be, the Blood angels unique choices. Death company squads and dreadnoughts are top of the class, with flame spewing Furioso dreadnoughts a close second I think. Assault terminators come next, they are really and truly better than marine equivalents when you take the claw variant as they are +1 strength on the charge and can get +1 initiative also. Throwing a sanguinary guard or chaplain in there will boost them even further. I love the sanguinary guard but they are expensive for what they do, you will have to design around these 

guys to get them to really fulfill there potential but they can do it if you want it.

Losers are dreadnought base attacks and vanguard veterans costing significantly more than the vanilla counterpart due to weapon upgrade costs. This can be mitigated somewhat if you take a particular formation but I'll get into that in my final post.

Hobby

So here we have a few pictures of my new hobby set up, I have enough space to have a to do pile:

And a working pile and also have a two lamp set up for better light. The window also provides better light in this room so its very nice all round. 

You can see how much I have to do and also how many brushed I have accumulated!! 

This sits at the foot of my bed and will now be reserved for finished models only so I can get a nice sense of how far I am coming along. 

I'm hoping to get a decent amount of hobby progress this week as my girlfriend is away so hopefully there will be a couple of posts from me this week in addition to my sunday post which will be going through the heavy and fast attack choices for the blood angels codex.

Here is a sneak peak of my WIP Dante conversion:

And finally, I always wonder what bloggers look like so I though you guys could have a picture of me to put a face to a name :) (I don't smile for photos but I am much friendlier looking in real life I promise!)

Peace out till next time

Rob

Culexus Assassin, narrative games and Terminators!

Hi readers,

Taking a break from my review of the badass Blood Angels to bring you some assassin-y goodness.

Culexus

I pre-ordered the assassin game Execution Force and have played precisely... 0 games with it... Ahem. But last night I sat down and managed to build and paint the Culexus to a standard I am happy with in a couple of hours. Its a brilliant model but due to the skin tight nature of its clothing it has a lot less fiddly detail than a terminator sergeant for example.

I wanted to paint it in slightly comic book style colours so I went for a dark blue highlighted body suit with red to set it off. I went for an antique-y look with the bizarre headset thing and then further practiced my OSL skills with the opening of the gun. I'm pretty happy with the OSL effect and how the model looks overall, I even think I managed to get a decent rust effect on the base!

The model has been based to match my templars as the Culexus is going to be their anti-pysker ace in the hole. The templars are set up to be very fluffy with big crusade squads and lots of hand to hand goodness and the Culexus felt like a natural and competitive match for their hatred of Pyskers.

Anyway here are some pictures, sadly the flash has washed out the metal bits, they have a lot more depth in person but its a grey day and flash was the only way to get usable piccies!

As a side note, how cool does his shadow look!?

Narrative Games

In other news I will be  playing the first of a set of linked narrative games tonight. Tonights game will be the Scouring versus Orks. The lead in fluff for this game is a small Ork hulk crashing on to a planet that the Templars are currently investigating. We haven't met before so as well as the game I think we will work out the rest of the narrative but this should be a fun 5-6 games that incentivise me to finish my templars off as I now have all the models I need!

This will mean a slight break from painting Blood Angels but I will be getting back to them as I want to take them to Blog Wars 10, either as the archangels or as a whole army of Death Company. I have enough Death Company to make a 1250 point force right now I just need 5 more Death Company, a Stormraven and another Death Company dreadnought with a drop pod. 

But I hope to get you some OK battle reports up in the future. If I am on my A game tonight I may remember to take pictures! But I'm pretty bad for that so a short synopsis might be the only thing you get from this first game.

And Finally

Just a quick picture of my nearly finished lightning claw terminator sergeant. I was really pleased with this squad as they were made from the bog standard termies that come with Death Storm with just the claws and spare gubbins added to them from the Blood Angel Specific terminators set and they look great! Again I'm pleased with the hair on this one. He just needs basing but the rest of the squad need all the highlighting and layering doing, I just fancied finishing one of them off. Sometimes squad painting get so dull!!

I'm moving house this weekend and internet isn't going to be up till the 8th of July so this will likely be my last post till then, unless I get spare time at work to write the next part of my reviews.

Peace out all

Rob