Stop. Hammer Time.

So the 40K universe has always been one of my favourites to play in. I love the slightly over the top, gothic "there is only WAR" vibe. I enjoy the aliens races that exist in the universe and the slightly dystopian bureaucracy that is the Imperium of Man.

Now, I wouldn't say that I have a predilection for armies where the fluff is mostly about fire and burning heretics but other people would absolutely say that. And I do play Menoth AND Teutonic Order, so no real surprises when I went straight down the Inquisition road and decided to play Deathwatch for 40K. I've blogged them before (although not as much as I thought, apparently) but I've done as much as I can do with that army - other than a Terminator Chaplain and Terminator Librarian, both of which are on the shopping list.

When I started thinking about expanding out of Deathwatch, it was only logical that I headed towards the other arms of the Inquisition (and that train of thought wasn't hurt by Pooch lending me one of the Eisenhorn novels...) and it made sense to add a small contingent of Guard, some Inquisitors and some Grey Knights. And here are those Grey Knights.

I went with Voldus and a bodyguard of Paladins after I picked up Gripping Beast's Teutonic Command pack for my IMPETVS army and it came with the Grand Master and his Standard Bearer. And that got me thinking. Grand Masters of Space Marine Chapters should probably go into battle with their own standards, Hearthguard and other such things. And so this little detachment of silly was born.

Stop. Hammer Time. 

Voldus' Champion

Voldus' Standard

Flag detail

Voldus' Bodyguard

MEDIC! 

Grey Knight Tech Support

This collection was created as a step towards the army I've always wanted to play in 40K - a big old Inquisitorial task-force with a mix of Guardsmen, Inquisition, Imperial Agents and Space Marine specialists (i.e. Eisenhorn + Deathwatch for Xenos or Coteaz + Grey Knights for Malleus and something something I don't know yet with Greyfax) but so far, this list is not to be. And now that self-contained Rogue Trader crews are apparently going to be a thing in both Kill Team and 40K, I'd like to include those as well because again, the idea of an Inquisitor requisitioning a Rogue Trader ship to go somewhere stupid to do something absurdly dangerous is rather appealing as a narrative. 

The oddness of the model choices here is about meeting the requirements of a complete Vanguard detachment because that's now the only way I can include Grey Knights in my mixed up force list in a Matched Play situation like a competition or a pickup club game (yes, I know, Narrative exists for fluff bunnies like me but that takes organising and it doesn't lend itself to more routine gaming.) And now, with the formalising of the Battle Brothers rule and the detachment limits in the Rule of Three, I can now only ever play part of the list since having all the little bits and bobs thrown together is simply against the rules.

I was going to publish a long and tiresome rant about this but honestly, once I got to the TL;DR and realised I get it and I have no other practical solutions, I guess I just have to live with it. So with that said, I can but hope that someday we get a proper Inquisition codex that allows for mixed detachments of specific Ordos and maybe, just maybe, I get to have my super fluffy, utterly terrible, list in real life.

What's next?
Good question. I feel I need to commit to something as I'm running low on half-finished projects that the blog is helping me get done. I'm going to say the next instalment will be a completed TY Marine platoon and hopefully some WIP pics of the LAV company although that depends on if Pelarel and his airbrush can spare some time to base coat them for me! :)

For the Emperor!

So, Pelarel picked up Wrath and Glory, the new 40k RPG, on RPG day so we're going to play through the canned adventure in a couple of weeks time. We had a look at the characters a month or so ago and I realised I had or could easily make five of the six characters. Wanting to play Inquisition in 40k tends to mean you do collect a fairly random collection of things...

With that in mind, here's the crew:

Sergeant Gael Harden of the Cadian Shock Troops.
I have a bunch of mostly assembled Cadians on my painting desk. Why this one? Sweet shades yo!  And it was a good chance to paint one up in a scheme that I thought I'd like (and I do) and now I'm quite looking forward to doing the other 34....

Battle Brother Trojon Kull of the White Scars
As I said a few weeks back when I put this dude together, I've wanted to do a Reiver for my Fortis Kill Team in 40k and he'll drop nicely into my DW Kill Team too. The skull helmets are an amazing little detail and I love how he towers over the Guardsman.

Commissar Victor(ia?) Linn of the Astra Militarum
Pooch really wanted to play the Commissar so picked up this sweet sweet model from the Start Collecting Astra Militarum box. I have one of these waiting to get done myself. The model isn't quite the one referenced by the game but who cares? It's too pretty not to use.

Pater Nemoris - Preacher of the Ecclesiastes
This was one of those 'I love this model, I'm buying it, I'll work out what to do with it later' type things. But the autogun and the giant book on a stick. Such an Imperial emblem.

Battle Sister Henna Orten of the Adepta Sororitas
This is one from Scotty's collection and it's definitely typical of GW miniatures of that generation. They really have some lovely character and touches - pulling the pin on the grenade with her teeth? Epic.

Lady Yrmilla Aleretta of the Inquisition
I picked this Crusader up off TradeMe missing it's left hand and shield. A bit of green stuff to repair the cloak hem and sleeve and a new hand and boom! Again, not a reflection of the Acolyte in the RPG but it has all the iconography and is slightly scary in a 'You! Is that Heresy I see?' kind of way.


And the obligatory 'before we go off on a quest' group shot:

Go Team What Could Possibly Go Wrong? 

I have a couple of other little projects for my 40K army that are *nearly* done so will be here soon but not yet and I have just finished the assembly on my 45 point Team Yankee army for a local club event at the end of the year.

Next time:
Some Grey Knights, a tiny detachment of VERY elite troopers led by the Grand Master, Voldus himself, that will come to play with my Guardsman and a certain Inquisitor from the Ordo Hereticus *cough* Greyfax *cough*

Dracula's America

Before I get into the piccies and broadly what happened, can I just say that the game is delightfully fun. The mechanics are solid, setting the turn order using playing cards adds a nice touch of random (and the chance to occasionally trump the turn and get to go first) and losing models is actually surprisingly difficult (right Tank? Right?) which keeps all the players in the game.

Claremont

McBeth, Tank Engine and I set out this weekend to teach me how to play DracAm in Tank's lovely little Old West town of Claremont.

Tank's Plains Indians, my Crossroads Cultists and McBeth's Damned Confederates were all trying to sneak our loot off one of the other player's deployment. We deployed, rolled up our ulterior motives and set to work.

Cultists!	Indians!

Town was unprepared for the drama that was to descend upon it, with the local barkeep having met the Stage and a well-to-do lady visiting Claremont.

Impending drama

The Confederates came from the North West, the Indians from the South West and the Cultists from the East. The Confederate ghostly gunslinger made his way into Main Street and scared off the Chinese prospector!

The Confederates arrive

The Crossroads Cult began by summoning Greeblies to attack the town. The small 'Hellhound' was summoned almost every turn and the big scary Behemoth discovered the slow walk across town was going to take him a while!

Greebly!

The Indians played the board edges and while one of their Skinwalking Wolves was shot down by a Confederate Zombie (I refer you to last weeks comment about McBeth and rolling 6s) the rest snuck up on the Cult.

Indians sneaking up to Main Street

The small 'Hellhound' ran into Main Street and took the first of the Cults two hostages, who was promptly shot down by the Conferedate ghostly gunman. The hostage, not the Greebly. The Greebly took another hostage and attempted to close with the Indians leaning to this scene:

Post-Greebly Hostage Taking

Turns out a Greebly with a hostage is no match for an Indian with a rifle. This was rather the story of the game, as both mine and Tank's shenanigan creatures were repeatedly gunned down by basic six-guns. At least I could keep summoning mine although it did impact on my team performance since it chewed up three actions a turn to get both the Greebly's back in play and it meant my Summoners barely left their deployment zone!

Angry Greebly is Angry

Some intense gunfighting between the Cult's Bandito allies and the Indians led to one very angry Indian shooting like a boss and gunning down a small Greebly basically every turn.

The Anti-Greebly Indian

Much despair was had as we hadn't managed to throw down identical cards to get a supernatural event! When we finally did, it turned out Rogan's Bar was haunted and a man who summons demons for a living ran off while his demonic ally stood there and cowboyed up!

A Spirit scares off the Chief Cultist but not his Harbinger Friend

McBeth took the game in the end, 10 VPs to Tanks 2 and my 1, which was a good win for him - he made the most of his advantages while Tank and I spent a lot of time figuring out what ours didn't do well. The after game is a hoot - not as dependent on your in game performance as after games in classic Necromunda or Frostgrave. McBeth has taken a big lead in cash, and will probably maintain his numerical superiority (zombies aside) but Tank and I have both picked up some slightly better dudes and a bit more of a clue about how our crews are supposed to work so that should balance out.

More DracAm is definitely on the cards. It's a nice shift from regular cowboys and the supernatural offers a really nice little tweak on the well known cowboy tropes.

Next time: 
My chunk of the crew for our 40K Wrath and Glory canned adventure and a few other 40K goodies I've finished recently. There might even be a small TY preview if you're lucky and I'm organised.

Nananananananana.....

BATMAN!!

One of half a dozen possible Batmans (Batmen?) from the BMG.

Unusually for the denizens of this blog, someone (Pooch) talked me into playing Knight Models Batman. Pooch collected a Joker crew and so, while in a city with a decent game store or two a couple of years back, I picked up a few bits. We played some games and my small Brave and thre Bold crew went down in a screaming heap. I needed more options.

ARROW'D! 

Tank Engine, and a profoundly cheap sale at an online store, got me the bits I needed and one I particularly wanted. More cops, more SWAT and Hawk Girl, the sassiest of superheroes, especially when it comes to mocking the hell out of Bats.

Bad Cop, Good Cop

GCPD Detective and Lt Brandon

GCPD Beat Cops

How do I like BMG? Very much. I mostly prefer the heroes in the MCU, but there are a few gems in the DCU. Hawk Girl, Green Arrow, Huntress and others who aren’t quite so painfully moralistic or serious in their portrayals. So playing a Batman crew was actually an option. The fact that I can chop and change my Boss and Sidekick mix from a choice of Batman, Green Arrow and Jim Gordon (and Arsenal as well) and then fill out the crew with the GCPD is really sweet. If I focus on the GCPD, I can look to Huntress, Hawkgirl or either of the Arrows to fill out the force with the superhero goodness it needs to be sweet.

Two of the Three Birds of Prey

The game involves allocating your actions and prepping your turn before following it through which makes for a really interesting tactical challenge - making the most of your resources is a known challenge.

It has some neat little features, very fitting with the Batman vibe - the game is always played at night, so guns don’t dominate (and a good thing too as they fricking hurt), the heroes are generally trying NOT to kill people and the winning of the game is about achieving objectives - like turning on the Batsignal or solving Riddler puzzles - alongside taking out the foes who are preventing this.

What don’t I like? Only the layout of the rulebooks, their lack of an index and the occasional obvious gap in the rules (can you move out of combat?) However, you can download them for free so that definitely helps.

Overall, it’s a sweet game and, now that the SWAT cops are painted, it is all on.

Next time:
Pictures and a recap of my first game of Dracula's America with McBeth and Tank. It was great  fun, with some interesting strategic depth and, without giving too much away, let's just say McBeth will do well while we're mostly rolling D6s.

A few construction projects

Honestly, I'm trying to get back into the habit of this. I've not been spending a lot of time with the brushes in the last little while and have been looking for a bit of inspiration. I'm hoping getting back to blogging about the things I'm working on will be it.

So a couple of the magpies got into their heads that given we have been known to play Dead Mans Hand and In Her Majesty's Name, we should probably look at Dracula's America as well. After a read of the rules, it looks very cool, so I set about pondering what I could do with my existing collection of Mexican banditos and peons. I had a couple of monks floating around that looked like they'd make good cultists (a robe is a robe right?) with a bit of a repaint, but to play Crossroads Cult, I needed a Harbinger - a demon who takes human-ish form to 'help' the Cult summon demons. Cue some spare Ungor horns and a giant rat tail provided by Pooch:

NO! You must summon harder! 

My other little project is a GW easy-build Primaris Reiver. I've been meaning to get one for ages and a recent game of Kill Team with Scotty and Pooch convinced me he'd be a good add. It's simple enough to DW-ify - I filed down the right pauldron, till I could slot a normal marine shoulder pad over it and for the left arm, I was looking to replace the shoulder with a normal marine shoulder when I realised that a Reiver combat knife is about the same length as a normal marine's power sword. So I just added a power sword.

Hippity hoppity, where's my property?

He's going to do triple duty - he'll go in the Fortis Kill Team in my 40k Deathwatch army and likely make the field as part of a Deathwatch Kill Team in Kill Team (how many times can I say Kill Team in a sentence?). He will also appear in our groups upcoming canned 40k 'Wrath and Glory' RPG. My little Inquisition collection is producing four of the six PCs. Which reminds me, I better paint a guardsman!

Now, in a feature I'm shamelessly borrowing from Tim over at Tim's Miniature Wargaming Blog (along with his impressive capacity for posting!), I'm going to try putting in a next time thing to make me actually post something.

Next time: 
Some piccies of my recently completed Batman Brave and the Bold crew, complete with Batman, Commissioner Gordon, Green Arrow and a few other comic book faves. And a lot of policemen. A lot.