Attack of the Red Marines

This past Friday I arranged a 40k game with Jim, an old friend I haven't seen in ages (or so it seems). Jim hasn't played recently and doesn't have the current rules or Blood Angels codex, which is fine considering GWs recent turbocharged release schedule, I am behind as well. Pressed for time, we decided to only play 500pts on a 4'x5' board. I had some 500pt lists pre-made, I can't recall for sure why, I think I was going to attempt to teach someone how to play? -not sure. Anyway, this is the what we went with and mustered.

Zitgut just had to go, there was no stopping it. The fungus gruel his master, Runtherd Slapgit, fed them all earlier was just not agreeing with him, so there he was perched over the camp drops on a mushling. Besides, his master wasn't having any of his runts making a mess on the battlefield, unless of course it was the proper kind using his slugga or knife. Suddenly, he could hear the noise and fury of all the orks mustering toward the trukks, a bullhorn bellowed forth orders from Ror-Ruk the Warboss, “Da red gits are attacking, let's go make 'em redder!!!” This was followed by the bellowing cheers of all the orks shouting forth their excited glee and the revving of engines. “Oy you, get off that dump and git o'va 'ere, it's time to go bash some 'eds!” Shouted Slapgit at Zitgut. “Com'n boss!” said Zitgit who suddenly hurried to finish his task and retrieved his gear while his fellow runts moved into the nearby ruins to take their positions...

The pic about shows my force which is: 1 Ork Warboss, 1 Painboy, 2 units of ork boys with sluggas/choppas with a powerklaw nob and a trukk with Rokkit launcher, 10 grots with a Runtherd and 1 artillery gun (kustom mega blasta) with an ammo grot.

The marines consisted of 1 Mastery Lvl 1 Librarian in Terminator armor, 2 tac squads of 10 with missile launcher and flamer and a Whirlwind.

Looking at what the marines had, especially after Jim rolled Inferno as his psychic power, I just foresaw that soulblaze was going to wreck my army. And if he got close enough to use that primaris power with the template, I was going to be in trouble.

The scenario was Purge the Alien (appropriate). Jim won the roll off to set up first.

Red Marine deployment

Ork deployment

Jim split his marines into combat squads and spread his troops along his line, taking advantage of the available high ground.

I put both trukks, loaded with boyz and the warboss / painboy respectively on the flanks, put the grots in the middle as bait, and put the artillery down where I thought it might have the best target opportunities.



I was unable to steal the initiative, and the Red Marines unleashed hell.

""In coming!"

WHOOOSH!!!

Lots of dead grots!

He heard a terrible noise, and felt the ground shake. He saw the fiery plumes of smoke rising up from the ruins nearby. Zitgut knew he had to get back with his runts, or get left behind. He knew he was already in for it when Slapgit saw him next. However when he rounded the corner, he was awestruck by the carnage before him. His fellow runts were ground zero of those explosions he saw and most of them were now burning in promethium, or dismembered from the explosion. Screaming, moaning, dying; It was grisly. Before he could take it all in, a hand grabbed him, it was his master Slapgit,. “Git o'va 'ere, we're about ta make a go at it! Those red gitz are gonna learn what our choppa boyz can do, an we're gonna be right dare wid 'em! Let's go!”   As Zitgut and the other two surviving runts, Dagbit and Dripgor set off following their master, Zitgut noted his master, who seemed somewhat unmoved by this horrible scene, like he was used to it, or worse, like he was enjoying it.  Like he was in his element.

The Librarian moved his squad in closer to get within range of the Warboss' Trukk. The Librarian attempted to incinerate the trukk with his inferno power but he failed to roll high enough to match or exceed the AV of the trukk. After a few shots were fired from the marines, the trukk roared towards the Librarian's squad...

...and unleashed the warboss and his crew of Goffs!

After losing one Goff to an overwatch hit, the orks swarmed the marines, killing all but one. The duel between the Librarian and the Warboss ended with the Warboss crushing the life out of him with his powerklaw. The Ork mob cheered on Warboss Ror-Ruk as he held aloft his new trophy, a Librarian force axe!

The fall of the Librarian and his unit. 

On the other side of the table. the other trukk mob, led by the painboy, killed another combat squad that had moved into the ruins. The Dok's Feel No Pain blessing kept me from losing any boyz in this entanglement.

Turn 2, and Red Marines found themselves very much on the defensive! In the pic below, you can see in the middle ground a squad of marines emerging from the nearby ruins, the whirlwind behind them, and behind that another squad perched in the distant ruins. All three of these units unleashed hell on my Warboss and his unit. The goff boyz died all around Ror Ruk but he stood in the smoke and flames, defiantly pressing on towards them.

Desperate, the nearby marines fired and charged Ror Ruk...

,,,and although they managed to inflict 2 wounds on him, he killed the squad, except for one marine.

The surviving Marine disengaged (apparently knowing just enough fear to know when to back the hell off)...

...only to be chased down on the 2nd Ork turn by Ror Ruk!  During the shooting phase the warboss tried to shoot him in the back but the stout Astartes armor withstood the crude ork munitions, and the marine turned to face his foe...

Meanwhile my artillery gun fired another shot at the whirlwind. In the first turn I hit with it but failed to roll a high enough penetration to effect it. and on turn two I scattered so badly that I hit the trukk that I had just moved to a new position after it picked up the 2nd goff mob.

Scatter time!

Thankfully the trukk was only shaken.

They trudged on, the battlefield seemed to be on either side of them. They could see the energy beams of the Kustom Mega Blasta artillery piece lancing towards an unseen target, hear the cheers of the ork boys all around and hear the reports echoing from the Astartes bolters. Yet they themselves didn't seem to be in the fight. Runtherd Slapgit seemed annoyed by this fact. “C'mon you runtz, weez gots ta git in da thick of it!” he slapped his whip in the air to resonate his urgency and the three grots stepped up their pace.

Hand to hand time, and as you might have predicted the warboss ripped the lone marine apart.

Still, kudos to a very heroic last stand!

Marine turn 3, and the whirlwind again sought to immolate the Warboss Ror-Ruk...

We pictured him walking coolly with the wall of fire behind him..

...but the multi-launcher's shot scattered, detonating the ground behind him in a way that only Hollywood action heroes would ever experience.

Meanwhile the Red Marines in the ruins used a krak grenade and lots of bolter shots to finally wreck the trukk. The boyz disembarked, passing their pin test. On my turn, they fired upon the Red Marines and charged them. These three marines would tie up this ork unit for quite a few close combat phases.

Turn four, with my Warboss getting closer (and failing his charge distance roll last round) the Whirlwind crew decided that sticking around and waiting for the Warboss to engage them with that power klaw was akin to madness, so they surged toward the Ork lines, looking for easier targets. And they found the grot unit, or what was left of it. and blasted it. One grot survived toheonslaught, but was easily routed.

Sole survivor!

Suddenly, around the bend,the object of the grot's previous immolation came into view. It was the Red Marine's Whirlwind, and it's multilauncher was aimed right at them! With a fury, it fired, and as it did so the Slaver that raised Zitgut from just a wee runtling, the Runtherd Slapgit, raised his arms and bellowed in arrogant defiance. Slapgit, Dagbit and Dripgor disappeared in a thunderous wall of fire, the noise alone knocked Zitgut off his feet, and landed on his back as bits of his former companions , and owner, peppered the around around him along with the bits of rock and debris that was the ground they had been standing on. Quickly scampering back to his feet, he snatched up his gun and ran as fast as he could back toward the camp!

Finally, turn 5 arrived, the whirlwind moved up again, missing it's intended target (I honestly don't recall what it shot at).

The orks fighting with the unit in the ruins finally prevailed, killing all but one marine who retreated back toward's his line.

Here's another view of that same scene, with the orks chasing after the last marine.

The game ended, with the orks claiming the Linebreaker Secondary Objective!

"That's right, you bet'ta run ya red git!" 

For only a 500pt game, Jim and I had a lot of fun, even with the heckling from the brutes playing Bolt Action on next table, and we really got a lot out of it. In the end the orks were victorious: 8vps to 3vps. It was one of those rare games where I managed to catch all of the Secondary Objectives. Still, had Jim been able to make a proper Blood Angel list, even at 500pts, I am quite certain that the outcome would have been messier. Also, the orks killing the Librarian on the bottom of Turn one robbed the Red Marines of a weapon that they could've used to cleanse the orks from the board (with fire!). My MVP was definitely the Warboss, while my most frustratingly useless unit, for the 2nd game in a row, was the artillery.

He woke up, confused. There was a bright light shining in his eye. “Wa? Where am I?” Zitgut muttered, Below the light was the smiling maw of the Painboy, Stiches Da Bastard. He knew something bad had to have happened to him. He moved his head slightly around, and realized he was wired into a metal cylinder of some sorts. He could feel his appendages, or see them. “Shhh, quiet now, we're almost done wid your upgrade, and we don't need ta be answer'n yur predicktable quest'chuns at dis time.” said the Painboy, nonchalantly. But Zitgut knew what was happening, he had heard of this fate but never dreamed it would be his. He never dreamed he'd become a Killa Kan! Zitgut let out a chuckle, and grinned widely.

More Black Legion

Some time last year I painted my first pair of Black Legion troopers as a test of sorts. I was pleased with the results. Over the holidays I started to work on expanding those first two models into a full unit. Like I said the first time around, they paint up fairly easy and quickly, however time has been less sparing than usual as of late, even with getting snowed in (during some of January and lots of February), and some of my free time has been devoted to reading the rules to my new game, Beyond Gates of Antares.

The models in the squad are a mix of the basic '90s Chaos intro sets  and Space Marine intro sets (talked about in the first link above) and three of the current Chaos Marine intro set models.

Five of these guys have the red shoulder pads indicating their affiliation to the Hounds of Abbadon subsect of Black Legionaries who worship Khorne. The other five are pretty much just basic Black Legion guys. I figure I can run them as two squads of 5 or a squad of 10, which gives me some flexibility with my list building.

In this next pic you can see, from right to left, the stages I went through painting their horns:

For the 'bone' areas, most prominently the helm horns, I use a dark brown for a base-coat, followed by a lighter tan color which I then layer on top of with Bleached Bone before finishing it with Skull White.

With the whole unit mostly done, I decided to add the decals. I have found I prefer to do them before the final highlights just in case there are any touch-ups I may need to do.

The 5 standard Black Legion marines.

While decaling the Hounds of Abbadon I discovered that an old transfer sheet that I acquired 2nd hand (thanks Mike) was just too brittle. Each time I attempted to slide the transfer off of the sheet, it simply disintegrated. Bummer. So I ran out of yellow chaos stars and opted to go with black ones instead. Oddly, I think I like that look better...

The 5 Hounds of Abbadon.

Although time consuming the Micro-set I am using made using these transfers a far less frustrating process than it typically tends to be.

The cables that hang, dangle and drape all over the Chaos Space Marine backpacks were something I paid no mind too until the actual moment came for me to paint them. I decided to go with a yellow/black cable on most of them, as I thought this had a neat technical look. I then used red for the bulk of the remainder then decided to go with colors like red and blue for the rest.

Cables cables everywhere!

It was while painting the blue ones that a thought came to me of the movie/TV cliche of bomb defusing: "Cut the blue one!" Which led my thoughts even further to the scene from an early episode of Archer where this exchange occurred: "One's blue with a white stripe, and the other one's white with a blue stripe." -yeah, I just had to paint some wires like that! LOL

"Cut the teenie bit bluer one."

So these guys are mostly done, I should, hopefully, have an update really soon when they are completed.

Waaagh all night waaagh all day

Warboss Ror-Ruk, taken by Da Masta Cheef.

Finally, after far too many cancellations, the nefarious Masta Cheef and I had our Ork vs. Ork battle that we haven't had in far too long. We both took a copious amount of photos and he already did a blog entry about this as well (in fact he took that great photo above of my warlord in the trukk). We have had a lot of Ork vs Ork games over the years but this one was very different as I would be fielding a list using the current 7th ed Codex and he would be using the 4th ed Codex.In order to make this encounter work, we both agreed to leave the weirdboyz at home.

Ror-ruk's Ravagers assembled to waaagh. Note the corp. Sponsorship. 

Da Eleet Grot Mountin Duvishun 

Cheef won the roll-off to see who places first. I gulped audibly when I saw how many vehicles he had compared to my one trukk!

Da Eleet Grot Mountin Duvishun take the field and the fort

I pack my troops into the terrain as well as I could, with biggest mob in the middle and pointing straight at the ork fort. The lootas I placed up high in the ruins so as to maximize their potential and cover. The artilery were placed in the back on a ridge.

Turn one and the sneaky git steals the initiative! He surges forward, blasting as he goes. All of my dice rolling were shockingly bad, seriously, I rolled no die higher than a '3' costing  quite a few of my boys their lives or a wound.

My picture of Cheef taking a picture of his army sallying forth from the fort

End of Cheef's 1st turn.

 The end of my first turn changed the picture rather dramatically. Having switched out dice, suddenly my old crappy GW dice wanted to roll hot. I managed to cripple most of Cheef's vehicles and the Shokk Attack Gun dramatically annihilated the Grot Spee. Cheef was really upset over this, he totally hates it when this dies, but hey, after it put a wound on my Big Mek it had to go!

End of my Neverness Turn One

On turn 2, my Trukk carrying my Warlord and my unpainted Burna Boys was immobilized with it's weapon destroyed. So it sat there smoking for the rest of the game with one hull point left,

Eleet Grots bring the fight!!!

Charging Burna Boyz is never a good idea however...

(I ignored the grots)

Never-the-less, a fight was still to happen and Ror-Ruk found himself in a challenge with this scary looking character. Ror-Ruk snipped his appendages off with 'is powerklaw, however the burna boys themselves were all cut down by grots and goons.

Challenge!

 That melee carried over into my my turn 2, Ror Ruk found himself in another challenge this time with Schultz!

Cheef thought he was kunning by sending his wartraks around the flank to assassinate my Big Mek, but a well placed Shokk Attack template but an explosive end to that insurrection.

(Add wartrack bits to this crater).

Eventually my Shoota Boyz (who really were shooting the hell out this place) rush in and assist their Warboss.

They bring the ruckus.

...and, with victory on their side, turn their attention to another fight.

That "other fight" was an 11 ork squad of mine that attacked a Big Mek on a warbike, and they had been locked in combat for a few turns. However before my boyz could get there they were jumped by Cheef's Tankbustas, who were riding around on the top of his Battlewaggon, Da Matilda, for the whole game. It was stuck on some ruins, tearing up my Lootas, while my Shokk Attack Gun and artillery failed to do a thing to it.

The Tankbustas get stuck in, and die. 

At the start of the next turn my idiots fighting the Mek on the Bike, fail combat and break away, somehow not getting run down, while the warbike backs up, and sets up for another charge!

"Right, lets do dis again, all good and propa!"

The game ended at this point, and the following pic is the last one I took, of my Warboss taking selfies outside of his new claimed fort.

"Try to get me good side, the one wid da scarrs!"

 It was a fun game, and a good victory for Ror-Ruk's Reavers.

But more importantly, it was a better insight into this current Ork Codex than my previous go with them. The changes that were made to army from the previous codex seems so stupid!

• I can't believe how the Burnas were nerfed. They still work great as flamers and for Overwatch, but losing the power weapon option felt like a totally unnecessary change. 
• The Artillery pieces look better on paper, but they are very fickle and complicated unit to master in game. My artillery were virtually useless for the whole game. 
• Morale. Why this system? It is just goofy! However, I didn't feel like this was a game changer to me, and despite the additional losses, it did keep me in the fight as opposed to making me my unit run and get run down. But I do like the old 3rd-4th edition rules better. 

I did however like that the Shokk Attack Gun has the potential to produce a Vortex, but it will be a cold day in hell before I ever roll double-6s on that chart! (And I agree with Cheef, I really should paint this model finally, he really earned it this game!).

So, new Codex won vs. the old one. However, our armies were composed quite differently from each other, the diversity of which has been one of my favorite things about ork armies in general. But that diversity makes the outcome of a match like this difficult to blame or credit a Codex or edition on.

Clowning Around (part 2)

From my original bag of Harlequins I ended up thinking I had far more than I would ever need. So confident was I in this thought that I even gifted some away so that more Harlequins might hit the local battlefields (which they did, against me!). In recent times we are seeing GW actively bringing into production models that have only existed for decades as concepts and images in the WH40K's background, and one such boon from this is Codex: Harlequins. Reading through this book has been fun and inspiring and I think they would be a lot more fun to play with than their "win button" Kraftworld Kin.

As I touched on in the previous post it has inspired me to paint up some Harlies using The Reaper's Mirth Masque color scheme. Unlike last time, here's a bit of a step-by-step on the 2nd model:

Base colors applied. 

The black area painted up with a deep blue to a light grey highlight.

Black areas ink washed with Black Ink. Reds highlighted as well. 

Almost done!

The final pic shows the model almost done. With the white areas now white, the gold applied over the Tin Bitz, and the harlequin icons hand painted on. The hair is currently white and I am debating whether to give her a traditional rainbow color job on her amazing hairdo (I am a child of the '80s for sure).

Also, here is the the first of my five Deathjestors to get some paint.

More updates on this army will occasionally be posted as I really am just clowning around with them at this point.