40k Campaign - The Thorn Sub-sector

We are starting a few Warhammer 40K campaigns in my local area and online very soon. One has actually kicked off on VASSAL already. I'll be playing in them all and as such I wanted to have a map that we could use to track where the action is taking place. Its always nice to have a setting for the battles we fight on the tabletop. The overall campaigns won't really be linked but they can at least all take place in the same area and from that we can start filling in some details on that area. This might mean it comes to life and gets us more enthusiastic about playing or well it can just be an interesting read for the players if they want to come back and check out what we did. Anyway this location will be the Thorn Sub-Sector. I placed this on the fringes of the Imperium where anything we do won't really be effected by anything else that happens in the fluff. As we will have a heavy Ultramarine participation it would be best close enough to Ultramar, at least the marines won't have to travel far to fight. I shall be playing an Inquisitorial force that mainly consists of a homebrew Space Marine Chapter: the Sanctifiers. At the start of the year I painted some Ultramarines but as a friend already has them I instead modified them to have white arms and shoulders. A sufficent change to make them distinct but identifiable. 

Legends of the Old West roster

When it came to playing Legends of the Old West I quickly realised that I had a problem. The models are great but slightly generic which makes telling them apart during the game a little difficult. I used to paint the names of each of the gang members on the base when I played Mordheim or Necromunda but as we want to have this campaign last a while longer than standard I felt having guys with permanent names wasn't an elegant solution. This way I can keep the models in the gang (Posse) and simply rename them if they die. So far we have had a high attrition rate so I am glad I've done this. 

Wasteland Bases

It's not the greatest of photographs but I think it gets the message across. I usually always do the same type of bases for my armies as it makes it easier to mix and match them as I want and it fits with my terrain collection. For the Ironjawz however I really wanted to do something different. I had tried a few ways that would combine what you see here with what I have done previously and well it just didn't work. I had been wanting to play with the new GW texture paints too so this served a double purpose. I could do some new basing techniques and try out the new paints at the same time. While this isn't finished its close to being done. The addition of the skull adds a lot of character and evokes the landscape in a way that the colours and texture just don't manage. I'll stick with this scheme for now and add a few more elements. Some dried grass tufts and low bushes would also be good. I just have to get some wire thats fine enough to make the style of thorny bushes I imagine growing in this wasteland.

WIP Ironjawz

I've finally made a start on my Orruk Brutes. These are interesting models. This one is at least thirteen pieces to put together but the result is great. The detail is sharp and crisp and the effect is very layered, something impossible only a few years ago with plastics. I am quite impressed. I can only wonder how good the bigger kits that have come out must be. As for painting I went with a slightly different and rather time consuming weathering technique. The large armour plates need a bit more work to look good and so I went with this style. Its come out okay so far but hopefully I can refine it a bit as I continue so that its quicker and maybe not so stark. I do the scratches with a dark red. I layer some orange over this. Its a little stark but its hard to get a colour that works over the yellow and the black segments.  I still have a lot to go with this model. The skin will be especially intersting to do as the few ways I've tried so far haen't come out as I'd like and I think I'll have to resort to the tried and tested pallid green skin. I've spent way too long on this model already which doesn't bode well for the rest of the army...

Pulling out my Chaos

As I said in my last post I've been getting some games of Age of Sigmar in recently.  As I don't really have a suitable army I've taken out my old Chaos stuff from when I started this blog up. We are only playing 1000 point games. The armies are small but well I only have 1000 points painted so that's fine with me. I didn't really study up all the possible synergies and basically just cobbled a list together. That combined with some poor dice really effected how I played. The list just didn't perform the way I had expected it to. Thankfully I'll have some Ironjawz to use soon so hopefully they can be a more competitive and fun army to use. I don't really want to expand my Slaves to Darkness beyond what I have painted despite having the models. Rebasing them all would be a chore as I put a fair bit of effort into basing them in the first place. I also have a few other projects such as my Stormcast that I think I would prefer to get finished and on the tabletop though they will take me a long while to really get done. I just don't have the time to paint them and that saps my enthusiasm. Maybe I can get back into the mood to do them after I have played some more. I also need to see what armies the other players go for as we only have a small group and there is no point in doubling up on armies at this point.

The scenarios from the Generals Handbook have proven to be good. They force a balanced enough army though I can see how shooting could come to be dominant in a meta. Terrain, as always, needs to be good quality and abundant. We played in the local GW store and I was a bit shocked at how bad the terrain was. The 40k stuff looked acceptable but the AOS stuff was really poor. I can understand that the terrain would take a bit of a bashing over time but this stuff was just bad. As they are actually trying to sell this stuff to customers one wuld think that they would make more of an effort in getting some good stuff onto the tables. The Realm of Battle boards were nice though the whole winter scheme was a little excessive. Again as these are going to be sold a little effort would have gone a long way.

Anyway the last game we didn't get finished but it ended at a 2:2 draw against the Wanderers. The Wood Elves in this new edition are really not what they used to be. They could stand up to a charge and realyly dish out some hurt. I was expecting that once I got up close to them I would sweep through their ranks but that was definitely not what happened. Luckily I managed to target my opponents characters preventing him from scoring the objectives and letting me claw back into the game. It really was funa nd quite tactically challenging. I've a lot to learn and I'm looking forward to it.