Chaos Bikers (part one)

Recently I have been playing a lot of Chaos and one of the units I wish to utilize more are my Chaos Bikers. The unit that I have, for the most part, are 2nd hand. Actually, 3rd hand and probably even 4th. They had quite a few owners before they ended up being mine, and as a result, they are in a rough state. One previous owner had intended them to be aligned with Nurgle, and even went so far as to add specialized metal Nurgle shoulder pads to them. I have done nothing more with them over the years other than play with them, with the lone exception of a single biker that I have painted in Slaanesh colors. And he's not even finished! (Well, was finished-off in the pic below, but in a different kind of way).

Mine are the ones on the right. 

Now that I have been getting in some games with my Khorne themed army, I have been looking at this unit, and trying to figure out what to do with them. It just so happened that I also have an unopened Chaos Bikers boxed set as well. I like the Black Legion, and I really enjoyed their Codex and thought about painting up some generic Chaos Space Marines and Terminators to go along with this army. It occurred to me as well that the Black Legion option would make sense with the the bikers as well. I can paint the squad black, but with the 3 extra bikes I can paint up each of them as the Aspiring Champions of Death Guard, Khorne and Emperor's Children respectively. The Aspiring Champion with them will represent whatever Mark of Chaos that I choose for that given unit. 

For example, If I give the Chaos Bikers the Mark of Khorne, this will be the Aspiring Champion to lead them: 

Using bits from Khrone Juggernauts.

I really think these bike look cooler without the farings on them. They look like they would go faster to me. And since this bike is going to be red, it should look like it's going really fast when i am through with it!

Another WHFB Khorne warrior head. These look great on marines!

Fitting the rider onto the bike. 

I am stumped on what to do with his left arm. Holding a weapon of some sort? Probably, but which one? Ah, options...

A battle Khorne cannot lose

Hello again, This past Friday night, my World Eaters led by Kharn, faced off against Bryan's Khorne Daemonkin. It was, I'm shameless to say, a bloody good time! And either way, Khorne was going to win!

This was also the first time that I played a 7th edition game using the Tactical Objectives Cards. I was reluctant to use them after hearing others bitch about them after the release of 7th Edition last summer, however I have always wanted to try them out. Bryan was keen to use them, and he's the perfect player to try them with, so I agreed.

We set up down the length of the table, we each had about 1850 in points. After selecting my Chaos Gifts we were ready to get on with the bloodletting.
.

Daemonkin set up.

Kharn and Friends set up.

 The first round was little more than a surge action for us both, as we traded ammo with one another and each of us picked up a few easy VPs from the Objective Cards.

Turn One. Surge forward...

 Turn two is when it all hits the fan. One of Bryan's Maulerfiends moves in closer to get ready to attack the Land Raider containing Kharn, a Chaos Lord in Terminator Armor, and a unit of Chaos Space Marines.

Meanwhile his Juggernaut riding Warlord along with his Khorne bikers, rounds the corner to prepare to engage my bikers...

His other Maulerfiend attacks my Khorne Berserkers. Amazingly my Berserkers survive this assault and even manage to knock a HP off of it.

The Khorne Daemonkin Warlord utterly defeats my bikers, who run, and are run down in a very brutal way. Khorne is seriously pleased.

"Purple? Oh hell no, you gotta go!"

The Landraider is smashed open like a watermelon, revealing Kharn and his retinue.

On the next turn I redirect the Death Guard, primarily to take advantage of an Objective Card, but also to see if my melta gun could hurt the Maulerfiend, It didn't.

Looking at the state of things: the Bloodbrute was dead already, the bikers were crushed, my Vindicator was missing a Hull Point or two, and my Berserkers seemed helplessly locked in combat with another Maulerfiend. it did not look well for Kharn and Friends, and even Warfrog, who was watching this match keenly, thought I was pretty much toast.

But I never give up a game! No matter how bad things seem to be going! Fight to the last man, dammit! So, in a surge of aggression, Kharn slays the Maulerfiend, the Chaos Terminator Lord slays the Possessed, and the Khorne Berserkers slay the other Maulerfiend!. My Plague Marines (they're friends of Kharn too, no really!) were tying up the Daemonkin Warlord and Brian's Berserker unit.

Seeking more blood, Kharn would rush the Plague Marine's aid in the next round (see, told ya they were friends!) where the tide would turn. The Daemonkin Berserkers were defeated. However, and quite amusingly, Kharn and the Daemonkin Warlord would kill each other in a challenge! Probably didn't help much that Kharn plasmacided a wound off of himself earlier on, but hey, such is life in 40K.

"Blood for the Blood--OMG, you worship Khorne too? How totally cool!"

 Now the Daemonkin were starting to feel the pain of attrition, as their numbers began to dramatically become reduced. My berserkers attacked the bunker wiping out the Chaos Marines that were holding it, however they lost their Aspiring Champion in the process. (Sometimes, you just challenge the wrong cat).

They proceeded to attacked the Forgefiend that had been trying to blast apart my Vindicator for the whole game. The Daemonkin Hellbrute would join in, and for the final few Assault phases of the game, all three units would take turns playing paddycake with one another.

My surviving Plague Marines would finish off the last of the Daemonkin Chaos Cultists, which helped greatly as they were holding an objective that earned me some additional VPs

The end.

 The game ended with Bryan managing to get a lone Rhino over into my Deployment Zone, and with only the Forgefiend and Hellbrute locked in combat, this was all he had left. We tallied the VPs, and I managed to earn 9vps to his 7vps. all-in-all, am impressive game, and good game, as one could not tell which way it was going to go halfway into it.

I really like the Tactical Objective cards, I think they made the game quite a bit more fun and added more to the game than I otherwise would have thought. I was afraid they might be silly and distracting and I was pleased to be proven wrong on that account.

Playing Bryan has really inspired me to do more work on my Chaos units. Especially the Warlord on the Juggernaut. That guy was a bad-ass! And also to work more on my bikes. As you can see, they look rough, and with such a large profile they really look tacky in their current condition.

Thanks again Bryan!

Kharn and friends vs. Grey Knights

This Friday before last, I got to play again with the Khorne boys, but at a higher point level. We agreed to play 1750, however I accidentally left my bikers home and he was able to drop a unit with the same point cost, so we played at approximately 1580 points.I was playing my Khorne force led by Kharn the Betrayer, and using the Chaos Codex. Scott H. was fielding his Grey Knights. This is the first time Scott and I have had a chance to play each other in well over 10 years!

My deployment

The only non-khornate force in this list are a squad of Plague Marines. Despite the red wrapper, they would be hitching a ride in the Land Raider. This mission has objectives, each one is in our respective deployment zone.  His whole army is using a formation that allows him to Deep Strike everyone, therefore he has no set-up.  So we begin, with first two of Scott's forces beaming in...

"We have arrived!"

An impressive display of firepower was launched against the Berserker unit that contained Kharn, as Scott was doing what he could to decapitate my army in the first round. However, he only managed to mow down half the unit.

Just imagine the corpse pile in the middle. 

On my turn I maneuvered the Land Raider closer to the Terminators so as to take advantage of the Dirge Caster's ability to shut down my enemy's Overwatch. This worked a lot better than the shooting, which for the most part was ineffective, although I did whittle away one or two before I had the Berserkers and the Hellbrute charge in. However, I botched the Berserkers charge roll, leaving the Hellbrute on it's own. It did manage to kill a few Grey Knight Terminators on this round before falling to the Grey Knights.

The Bloodbrute charges in

On the 2nd round, a very note worthy even happened on Scott's turn as his Interceptors attacked my Chaos Space Marine unit with the Mark of Khorne. A lot of them were chewed up by the CSM's shooting in the previous turn and by their Overwatch fire when they initiated their assault, However my Champion had to challenge his Sgt, and well, it didn't go well for the champ!

"Seriously, there can be only one."

The CSMs broke from this and were swept away by the halberd wielding fiend!

Kharn's unit of Berkers where all but swept away by this point by the firepower unleashed against them by remainder of Scott's army who all arrived on Turn two.  On my Turn two, I sent Kharn over to eliminate the Interceptor Sgt, as he just had to go!

Kharn and the Berserker shoot the Interceptor Sgt. 

I had the Landraider tangling with the Terminators on my right flank, while the Vindicator was lobbing shots at the send group, which was starting to whittle them down with AP2 death.

Scott sent the sole survivor of the unit that killed the Hellbrute over to take the objective away from the other CSM unit, and after some amazingly bad rolling for me (see below) the Terminator was able to kill enough of my guys to force them to route off of the objective!

I switched to my big dice for this game. It mattered not! LOL

This left Kharn to run over on the next round to finally get a go at some hand-to-hand blood letting, only to have the (now rallied) CSMs shoot the guy to death!

"Seriously?!" He said, outraged. 

In the previous turn my Landraider had been lucky to survive an assault from the Grey Knight Terminators, and I had tried to tank-shock them and to capitalize on the Destroyer Blades rigged up to the front of this thing. They failed their route test, but were able to rally (you know, 'cause they Know No Fear), and charge the Land Raider again and blowing it up on the last turn of the game, liberating the Plague Marines within.

Last shot of the game

The game pretty much ended there, with Scott getting 1VP for First Blood, and my CSMs being the only ones to be holding an Objective, earning 3 VP, which managed to pull off a win for the forces of Chaos! Oddly enough, Kharn, close-combat nightmare incarnate, never managed to make it into an assault the whole game! Also, another fun aspect of this game: the entire battle took place on just half of the board!

Throughout the game, I kept making most of my "Deny the Witch" rolls! This was definitely a factor in stymieing the Grey Knights plans!

So far, I like how this force is starting to work in the game. I used it again the following Friday, and it was a radically different game. Stay tuned for that report soon.

Kharn!!! (Feeling Khorney Part 4)

Kharn's blister card. 

Last Spring/summer. during my "feeling khorney" phase, I started working on the poster boy of all things Khornate in the Warhammer 40,000 universe: Mr. Kharn the Betrayer himself! I had the model for awhile now. He was acquired back when GW US Mail Order used to run these amazing blister pack blowout deals where you would get a box of randomly assorted blister packs that they were deleting to make rooms for new versions. (Ah, those were the days!) This particular blister pack was intended for sale in another country (which I thought was kind of cool) and he stayed in his card and plastic home all mint condition and snug for many years. That is until the early days of last summer when I saw fit to finally throw some paint on him.

He was not alone however, and as part of my "feeling Khorney series" I also opened up a blister pack that contained a Khorne Berserker standard bearer. He is going to join up a unit of Khorne Berserkers that I also started to work on around the beginning of last summer. It's the "newer" set with the zany dance poses and bigger blood-bunny ears. Here he is below, having his arm pinned.

Pinning on an arm. 

The next thing I did was glue some grit onto their bases and prep them for priming.

Bases prepped. 

Again, I used Tester's Red Brown enamel paint for that. Then the standard bearer and Kharn were base coated, and that's as far as I got at that point...

Standard Bearer base coated.

Kharn is seen below, and he is quite probably the last miniature I worked on before moving out the place I was living at and, well, basically restarting my life.

Kharnes base coat.

Now here we are in April 2015 and I have a hankering to get this chainaxe wielding loony painted and onto a gaming table!

Blood Red! Who can paint Khorne without it?

Mid coated added. 

Here he is mostly done. I decided I wanted to make the chains that are wrapped around his arm appear to be old and weathered. Usually when I see this model painted the chains look so shiny and new that he looks like he just ripped off a DIY store!

Mostly done.

Kharn's axe, Gorechild, deserved special attention. I painted it using my typical blend of metallic bronze/copper tones, but after applying a highlight of a color called Red Copper, I gave the axe head a thick wash of Red ink. I think this came out looking quite cool (so far) and I will probably leave it at this stage because I think I will liberally splatter Blood for the Blood God all over it anyway.

This is the current work-in-progress state of this model, and the Standard Bearer hasn't had anything done to him at all. Hopefully the next "Khorney" update, Kharn will be done and I will have made progress on the Standard Bearer.

Blood on the snow

How's that for a title? On April 3rd I played a game with Scott and Skylar, where Skylar and I, being aware of the Emperor's bogus claims of divinity,  teamed up to take on Scott's loathsome Imperial Guard Scions. My Worldeaters would take to the field in what I considered to be something of test run for me, as the last time they saw action they were a support element for a Daemon host. Today, I was daemon-free, but instead allied with Skylar's Traitor Guard. Skylar and I had 1,000 points each to Scott's 2,000 points. 

Due to really not wanting to write another massive battle report, I focused my photos on my own forces. 

My deployment was fairly straight forward. I had a line of Chaos Space Marines along the Aegis Defense line to provide cover, while the smaller unit (on the other side of the Vindicator in the pic below) would jump onto the first objective. The Land Raider (Blood dumpster!) would rumble up ahead and take the Khorne Bereserkers to the closest meat for them to carve. While the Vindicator would try to kill as much stuff as possible. 

Deployment

 I got something (a Warlord Trait I think?) that allowed me to infiltrate a unit of Troops, so I moved the smaller unit that had been joined by the Terminator Lord, to the ruined Land Raider.

Being sneaky

 Below was Scott;s deployment zone, looking down the line from the board edge nearest my side of the board.

Turn One, and I rushed forward as I planned. My shooting was fairly modest, taking some hull points away from a few vehicles, whereas Skylar laid waste to a good chunk of Scott's tanks. Latter in the game we would figure out that we were using Skylar's Master of Ordanance incorrectly making his barrage attack way more effective than it should have been (oops!). But at least that asshole Col Pask was dead (I swear, that guy is ALWAYS on the table when I face guard!).

Then end of Chaos Turn one, my side of the field.

Somehow I managed to overlook and underestimate the firepower of the scions and their damned hot-shot lasers. My warlord was killed along with his 5 man unit when a squad of Scions jumped out of one of those Taurox APCs and blasted them to hell. This also earned Scott a Warlord VP.

The white space between the wrecked LR and the IG is where my Warlord died . 

Also on Scott's turn he had an amusing die roll that resulted in his dice stacking! We had quite a good laugh at that, as it's a pretty uncommon sight in our club.

Stacked on the die roll!

After this I knew I had to get the Khorne Berserkers on to the table as soon as possible or else this just wasn't going to end well at all. Most of Scott's attention thus far was on making Sklyar's 2 Basilisks disappear (which he did!).

The Blood Dumpster kept whittling away at the sentinels, and Bersekers deployed from it. Of course the Berserkers surrounded the Imperial Guardsmen, and amazingly when my 3 plasma pistol wielding Berserkers fired I roll two 1's and a 2! LOL

Attempted plasmacide take one. 

Luckily they made their saves! LOL! The Worldeaters on the bunker roof however had a normal Plasma gun in the squad, and he was successful committing plasmacide, leaving only and angry vapor behind...

Anyway, the Berserkers made incredibly short work of those guardsmen and followed up on the scions, wiping most of the them out as well, but from shooting.

"BLOOD!!!"

On the round following that, they double-charged those funny looking Taurox things (I do like them better in person, even though those little tracks still confound me).

And yes, they wrecked them!

While Skylar was all but tabled, and the hour was getting late, we pressed on for a final round. The sole surviving Scion made his way back to the objective to contest it, however he got greedy and attempted to get a side armor shot on my weakened vindicator, only to roll snake-eyes on his Get's Hot check!

"Ouch!"

Yeah, this post was almost called "Plasmacide!" LOL

It was a good game, which we wobbled back and forth on in the end between figuring out who really won this blood bath. I'm sure it was Scott though. Skyler had a unit holding an objective that broke at the very end of the match, and that pretty much decided it.

Oh, and for the record this game was played without the use of cardboard. :)