Saturday, October 29, 2011

Sven vs. the Inquisition

Last night I battled Da Masta Cheef and his Inquisitional forces on the broken world of...Endlessbattleastan (just made that up, I have no idea what we're calling his warzone). After our Dark Heresy session was cancelled we decided to add another chapter in the ongoing friction between Wolflord Sven Axegrinder and the radical elements of the Inquisition. Seriously, there is a history here, and before I proceed with the battle synopsis (and explain the pic of the green Bloodletter above -don't they look like they're playing craps? LOL) I shall share that history with you...

Sven has been my Wolf Lord since at least as far back as the day the 3rd edition SW Codex was released, but he may have been around as far back as the last days of 2nd edition. The model I use is an old RT Terminator Captain (they're be an article/showcase on him eventually, fear not!). He's tangled with Warfrog's 'nids on countless occasions and stymied Da Cheef's forces for years. One day back in '09, we were supposed to get together for a mega-battle. Da Cheef and I were sending these in-character transmissions to each other to hype ourselves up. We were supposed to be playing against Warfrog's Eldar (Xenos scum!!!) but I had a scheduling conflict arise and couldn't come. With feelings of abandonment, Cheef's IG were forced to take on the Eldar (Xenos scum!!) on they're own. This led to more in-character transmissions which led to declarations of suspicion that the IG force were in fact infested with the taint of Chaos, however the Inquisition instead tried to accuse the SW force of heresy and treason by stating that the IG force did not actually appear on any formal Munitorium inventory rolls, and that the whole thing was a concoction invented to avoid combating the Eldar (Xenos scum!!!), here is that Inquisitional communique and the SW responce:

FAO: Wolfpriest Jorvik
TRANSMITTED: CLASSIFIED
RECEIVED: Colcha
DATE:4916998.M41
TELEPATHIC DUCT: Astropath-terminus: CLASSIFIED
AUTHOR: Inquisitor Kemp, Ordo Hereticus
CLEARANCE LEVEL: Magenta
THOUGHT FOR THE DAY: It is not your right to question, only to obey.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
There is no Colonel by the name of 'Extra hands' Straken, nor a 728th Sabbat
Irregulars listed within the ranks of the Emperor's most glorious Imperial
Guard. Further inquiries as to the identies of those you have mentioned above
has garnered the attention of the Ordo Hereticus. As such I have taken command
of this investigation and am aboard my cruiser 'Interrogator' which is enroute
to rendevous with your strike cruiser for further investigation. You and your
crew will stand down and submit to MY authority upon my arrival, and will
cooperate fully with any 'cleansing' operations should they be necessary. The
thought of the Astartes being so easily misguided by, if not outright consorting
with the ruinous powers is one that shall be quashed with much haste & vigor!
The Emporer Protects.
Inquisitor Kemp
-Ordo Hereticus-
FROM JOEL
FAO: Inquisitor Kemp, Ordo Hereticus
TRANSMITTED: Colcha
RECEIVED: Scintilla
DATE:4918997.M41
TELEPATHIC DUCT: Astropath-terminus: Loki
AUTHOR: Wolfpriest Jorvik
THOUGHT FOR THE DAY: Men can be replaced, data is precious.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Lord kemp, we are not surprised to once again bear witness to your witless
observations and shortsighted determinations with regards to imminent threats to
the Imperium we hold dear. Of course "There is no Colonel by the name of 'Extra
hands' Straken, nor a 728th Sabbat Irregulars listed within the ranks of the
Emperor's most glorious Imperial Guard." It's what they have come to call
themselves! Do you honestly think to believe that a group of traitors would
resubmit to the Departmento Munitorium a name change after they turn traitor?
No, why, in their current guise they can continue to seek requisitions and
supplies thus not only draining the Imperial Guard of resources, but by also
acting in a manner counter-productive to the aims and wishes of the
Administratum. Besides the obvious act of subterfuge, if such a group were
bold/stupid enough to attempt such a request, it would take decades for the
change to actually occur! We both know that the Administratum is not known for
expediency. For example, we're still waiting to hear back on our Request of
Censure against you for that decision you made six years ago to pull back the
Imperial Guard that we were sent to support against a combined Tau and Necro
assault. You stated on the Voxcast that the regional Governor's botanical
gardens were to be protected at all costs, leaving us to pursue the routing Tau
(we're still happy to have crushed the Necrons in the campaign). When advised
against this decision, you had the Guard fire upon our force. If the Tau were
not a bigger threat at the time, your bones would be lining our wolf kennels.
Back on the point, `Extra Hands' Straken, and his 728th Sabbat Irregulars,
regardless of whether or not you can produce a record of their existence, will
be pacified. We welcome you to join us –from a distance- in monitoring their
destruction, but if you intend or dare to assume that the sons of Russ will heel
to a paper-pushing simpleton, you better not show up with a pack of women this
time.
Chewing up Treachery,
-Jorvik.
Needless to say we met in glorious battle! The Space Wolves were victorious, but only technically. Many a wolf-brother died to the undignified and dishonorable chemtanks of the irregulars, but most humbly Sven Axegrinder fell to lasguns! Revealed in this battle was the Renegade Inquisitor, 'The Khornedog' whose treachery set up this ambush against Sven and his battle brothers. So like a dog chasing a car, Sven has been seeking out these rogue elements ever since, determined to extract retribution!

And tonight, it happened, sort of... it would appear the Inquisition really doesn't like when you attack one of theirs even if they are bit 'radical'. The Inquisition, led by this guy, Matt Fucking Ward, caught up to Sven's battlebarge Ragnar's Breath, and taking a prisoner (some Lonewolf who's name I can't recall) they proceeded to publicly torture and humiliate him in order to entice Sven into their trap. Of course it worked brilliantly.


The Inquisition list (I think this is it, Cheef correct me if I'm wrong) can be reviewed here: http://dlwdg.blogspot.com/2011/10/my-gk-failing-circus.html

The force I brought to the table was:

# of models in unit Unit Type Unit name Points Notes
1 HQ Wolf Lord Sven 175 IC,
Terminator w/SB, Power Fist, Wolftooth Necklace, Wolftail Talisman, Saga of Beastslayer
1 HQ Rune Priest master of Runes 195 IC
Psi: Jaws of WW, StormCaller, Runic Weap, Term/SB, Chooser of Slain, WTN, WTT, 
10 TROOPS Grey Hunters 255 AV for rhino
Powerfist, Meltagun, plasma gun. Rhino with additional storm bolter, extra armor, Hunter killer
9 TROOPS Grey Hunters AV for rhino
Powerfist, Meltagun,.Wolfstandard, Rhino with additional storm bolter, extra armor, Hunter killer 250
1 FA Landspeeder Tornado 70
Heavy flamer, multi-melta
1 HEAVY Vindicator 130
Demolisher Cannon, Storm Bolter, Searchlight, Smoke Lr, Extra Armor
6 HEAVY Long Fang Pack 185
SL: PF. MB. LC, MLx2, MMx2, 
ELITES Wolf Guard Pack* 55 Drop Pod
(see below for individual breakdown)
1 ELITE WG Thorgar 43
Terminator w/Sb, Powerfist
1 ELITE WG Svengi 43
Terminator w/Sb, Powerfist
1 ELITE WG Tor 63
Terminator w/assault cannon, Powerfist
1 ELITE WG Ygarl 38  GH2
Power armor, bol pistol, frag/kraf grenades, wolf claw, melta bombs
TOTAL
33 1502


 It was a Capture and Control /Dawn of War scenario. The Lone Wolf being one object and the other a herectical piece of archeotech that had to be controled.  It was sort of a rough start, with my notorious dice undermining me in random ways. Without going all full blown battle-report, I will sum up the highlights:
  •  Sven lands in a drop pod with 3 Wolfguard and engages the enemy! Despite the hail of bullets and deathwind missiles, the enemy loses only 2 models! Eventually, Sven cuts these foes down, but not before losing the Drop Pod's DW missile to the autocannons of the inquisition Dreadnought.
  • The Longfangs are undermined by the rules of Dawn of War, and before they can even get into a good position have lost members of their unit. To make matters worse, when they finally get into a good position, the dice gods deny them their glory! They are eventually cut down by the concentrated fired of the Inquisition tanks.
This next batch of highlight all happened in the last turn of the game.
  • My old school Landspeeder Tornado ("The Flying Chair-lift of Death") hounded a chimera for the entire game. Neither vehicle could get the upperhand until, on like turn 4, I blew up the Chimera with the Tornado's multimelta. After surviving a stormbolter attack, the heavy flamer toasted the unit, but still, seemingly fearless and ever defiant, the storm-bolter weilding guardsman stood readying for the next round...
  • The pic at the top of this post shows my Wolf Guard and a squad of Grey Hunters eliminating the last of the Daeomonhosts (Cheef hates the official models, and, when I think about it, these -alternately colored Bloodletters- are probably a better idea anyway) to take the objective and free the Lone Wolf. (Who is within 3 inches on the otherside of the wall).
  • Matt Fucking Ward shows up and dives out of his Landraider Cruesader like some dreamy fan-boy action star and utterly destroys my Runepriest (through a window! LOL!)
  • Seeing the GK embodiment of everything wrong with the Grey Knights Codex standing before me (and hearing Cheef tell me everything that he can do and for how little points!) I knew that my guys, who had just bailed out of their Rhino to take possession of the STC tech objective, would not last long against that combat monster! Not to mention that the Rhino bearing Inquisitor Corteaz was bearing down on them super fast as well! So I whipped the Vindicator around, and stood there wondering what to shoot. MFW's Cruesader, even if I penetrated it I probably would do something lame like shoot off a gun or something, or worse scatter on to my tightly packed Grey Hunters in the crater...
The Grey Hunters opened on MFW, but only score a single wound. Then the Vindicator targeted him and scored a direct hit, send Matt Fucking Ward back to oblivion.

  • Sven Axegrinder and the final Wolfguard shoot their remaining shots at the Dreadnought that had been hasseling them the whole game, but they just can't take it out.
So, with a roll of the die, the game ended! And lucky it did too. I honestly did not know if my Grey Hunters at the crater could hold that objective. Yeah, MFW was dead, but Corteaz was about to hop out and bring some pain. Not to mention that pain-in-the-ass Landraider Cruesader was more than ready to cut them down as well. The dreadnought above was ignoring Sven and the WG, and had been picking off my GH at the Lonewolf objective for a few rounds now, and could, if so much as one more casualty had occurred, have forced a LD test that probably (as fickle as my dice roll) forced me to route off the objective or worse, actually kill them!

All in all, a fun game, although at the halfway point we were both annoyed by our dice not wanting to cooperate with us. But, I stuck to the mission objectives and managed to pull off a win.

...I'm afraid Sven might have truly caught the eve of the Inquisition now! ...

Sunday, October 23, 2011

The Doctor's Dark Angels Pt 1

I stopped by the Doctor's house again to spend an evening with his lovely family and some friends. During the visit he showed me some of this work in progress on his Dark Angels army. In the process he pulled out some models I painted for him back around 1999. An RT era Space Marine Commander, SM Librarian, and Dark Angel Captain.
I'm impressed with how well these still hold up (I believe I said "Why the heck did I not choose to play Dark Angels?!") This old SM Commander is interesting. I really seemed have no issue at all with slapping iconography and decals all over the Doctor's models, yet I seem to think I tend to be some what conservative about that with my Space Wolves...


I have always loved this classic model and always wanted to paint him. Still, to this day, I feel this is GW's best Librarian model. There is just no way he would look right in a Space Wolf army though, and I recall begging to paint this for the Doctor.
Looking at it years later, we're both still pleased with it. In particular I like how 'brown' I made the pages of his book appear, to give the impression that his book was really old and well referenced. Odd choice of color on the force sword, I wish I could recall how I did it...


I was really thrilled with seeing this model again, I really think he holds up well for me! That power sword in particular I just had to get a pic of for my own reference.


He ordered a bunch of those caped back-packs for his HQ choices back then. I really miss the days of the Bitz program...actually this model might have came with it, but the Librarian did not.

 I really impress myself with just how much of the metallic green I used on this guy! It really compliments the over all color scheme quite well.


....and here's a teaser that I will discuss at length in part 2!  I hope you enjoyed!

Sunday, October 16, 2011

Warfrog's Red Terror

My old pal Warfrog recently posted pics of a model I painted for him a few years back.His pics are vastly superior to the ones I'm posting here and I encourage you to check them out! For some odd reason I can't post the reply to his page, so I'm posting it here with a link to his page:
http://warfrog.blogspot.com/2011/10/red-terror.html#comment-form



'Thanks! And thanks for the pics! These look better than the ones I took.

This was a difficult model to paint, at least in the way that I was visualizing it. I wanted the red to blend from dark to bright, with the tail being black and getting more intense as the color proceeded up the torso. Sounds easy enough, but it took me a long to to get it to a point where I was satisfied with it. I wanted the weird "ribby-gutty" bitz to look as meaty as possible. I used a very old discontinued Citadel color, 'titillating pink' which I dulled up to a white, and then red-washed with ink until I was satisfied that it looked nasty enough. I also did the same thing with the mouth, but I did more layers to try to get a brighter, more snake-like feel. Oddly, by the time I completed this model the Red Terror was out of the Codex. Still, we have fond mirthful memories of the RT eating a Great Unclean One! (in the 1st 3rd ed Chaos Codex, the GUO was way underpowered!).' -Neverness