Three thousand points of Alpha legion VS Solar Auxilia

A very efficient Hobby week this. 

First i finished up my Alpharius, and i was pretty happy with him. 

And then, last Thursday i got in a game against a new buddy  at SLG gaming in oldtown. 

We played three thousand points VS three thousand points of Solar Auxilia. The Guy i played is a super chill player with a -bee-oot-ifull army. He even won best painted at the Hagvarian betrayal event. 

I'm not going to do a detailed Battle report as it takes a lot of time. But i'll do a rough walk through. 

first off, as i can rarely cut loose and play at three 'K points, i decided to try something that i have longed to play for a long time. Namely the coils of the hydra Rite of war. With a rewards of treason unit and Alpharius to boot. The most alpha legion thing i could come up with. 

Now the basic details of the coils of the hydra is as follows 

Advantages: 

* You get to re roll seize the initiative, and add +1 to who goes first when you start for deployment. 

* the opponent gets -1 to reserve roles

* you can take one unit of ANY other legion exclusive units. 

restrictions. 

* you MUST have three compulsory troop choices. 

* all infantry must be A) deepstriking B) infiltrating C) in a vehicle. If they can do neither of these, then they are not allowed. 

*no allies 

Now the Advantages REALLY outweigh the restrictions. Particularly if you cater to your army having access to infiltrate as a mutable tactics. 

Now you will find better tactica and with a far greater width than i can provide here. But basically, with transports for all your infantry, you can now chose if you want Infiltrate for them anyway, as that allows for superior positioning, and outflanking them. Which works pretty well with Multimelta on rhinos. 

Furthermore, The advantages are FURTHER compounded by Alpharius himself. 

Did i hear needlessly complicated rules? 

As the Sire of the alpha legion he will let you 

* seize on a 4+ 

* add 1 D3 on outflanking moves

* give EVERY legiones astartes marine Preferred enemy 

* if you and the enemy has the same unit in reserves, and they succeed with a reserve roll. Roll a D6 on a 4+ you can bring in your unit instead. 

Now, just on the up and up, Preferred enemy for Alpharius and ALL your infantry and artillery platforms is invaluable, i suffer from no illusions in regards to the fact that i would have lost without it. rerolling 1's for Wound and hit is just great. No frills, just super utilitarian. 

Furthermore, this more or less neutralizes drawbacks for Plasma guns, as you get to re-roll all get hot rolls. And if you have BS5 you can just lean back and watch out for double 1's. You will learn to Hate 2's with BS4. But that is just nitpicking. 

So, the match itself. 

i chose to play a simple Coils of the hydra 

I had three tactical squads, with MM rhinos

Tactical support squad with Volkite calivers

A contemptor mortis with twin kheres

Two quad mortars 

two laser rapiers

Predator squadron with three tanks with autocannons

A whirlwind scorpius 

Iron havocs with autocannons 

predator with Conversion beamer 

and alpharius with command squad in a landraider phobos 

Saboteur

Master of signals 

My opponent had a GREAT list, where i do not know what most of it was named. 

But it had Two dracosans, a malcador, a Lord of war tank (Baneblade chassis) Three veletaris storm sections, retinue volkite chargers in Arvus lighters. And two Lightning primes with kraken penetrators and phosphex clusters. 

His reserves, apprehensive about the -1 to reserves 

his right flank

his left flank 

He had a very utilitarian deployment with his tanks tying up the lines, and his command squad in a bombed out building by the Lord of War. 

As he was defending a spaceport this made perfect sense. 

As we were starting i warned him that i was going to have a lot of questions along the line of "what is the front AV" what is the side AV and so forth. Mostly, IT DOES WHAT! 

i placed all my troops and the volkite calivers in reserves. 

So for my turn one i drove the Predator squadron forward, and lord alpharius rushed for the LoW, i shaved one or two HP of the Lord of war. meanwhile i let lose with my quadmortars, and laser rapiers. the Preferred enemy started to earn it's due immediately. 

The order given the Alpha legion overcharge their vehicles and advance into adverse fire  

The prize within reach, all opposing them is the zeal of the enemy. 

For his first turn he manages to stun my scorpius, neutralize the Pred squadron, and take a HP of the Land raider.


For turn two everything except for one tactical squad arrives. from reserves, one flank is tied down with a ten man group of tacticals. letting rip with their bolters to clear the side

On the other side, the manned one my Calivers, saboteur and Tactical squad swarm in.

Lord alpharius Charges towards the enemy.

I then shoot my quad mortars at the troops bubblewrapping the Lord of war.

My opponent says "too bad you don't have a nuncio vox in that squad". But wait, Alpharius does have one.Meaning that after rolling to wound he removes seventeen men. letting me have a clear charge at the lord of war.

Alpharius rushed towards the defence line that had been erected to defend their position. The solar auxilia that opposed them were the finest men that the imperium could train. Staunch, stalwart, and merciless in the execution in their duties, to stand their ground and level their lasrifles at a being such as he was no mean feat. But they were but men, and he was the hydra at the throat of this world, without breaking his stride he transmitted the information in his rangefinder to his entrenched mortar team. "break the rosary, close to the heart". The order given his men followed their duty, reluctance and doubt was the stuff of lesser legions to be a child of the XX'th was to master all forms of combat. And doubt had no place among them he mused as the heroic men in front of him paid him obeisance in death, as they had refused in life. 

As the fragmentary grenades rained down in front of him he sprinted ahead of his command squad, the shrapnel incapable of penetrating the thick plates of his artificer wrought armor. He ducked in low and let the malice of the makers of his weapon drink deeply from the behemoth in front of him. To call it a tank was to reduce it's purity, it was a beast, meant for but one thing. To bring ruin. He drove his spear deep, The armored plating made a mockery by the disintegrating strength of his weapon. He spun and rent a deep gash, before the crew within could react to his presence. The ponderous main armament was of little consequence at this range, after the fourth strike the crew within reacted. Coming to the top hatch two crewmen gripped the multilaser and raked at him. Alpharious feinted a dodge, but in truth he knew he only had to allow his chosen cataphractii plated banner men strike. A moment later he heard the tell-tale whine of a power plant collapsing.

Assessing the situation he glimpsed the commander of the Auxilia standing his ground, leveling his archaic handgun at Alpharious. Not lacking in courage, never acknowledging that their humanity was a condemnation of their fate. 

The lumbering behemoth of a tank exploded with the power of an armory exploding. And that is when he noticed it, only his gen-hanced primarch senses allowed him to hear the approach of Jet's as they came in for a bombing run, the fliers might have arrived in shadow of death brought high, but they dropped bombs to rid themselves of the menace that had arrived hidden among them. The Explosions around them did little to worry him, the shrapnel bounced harmlessly of him. And that when he heard the sharp crack of air suddenly consumed. The world exploded around him as green flames spread out in a sea of life's end. Not even the cataphractii plate of his bannermen could withstand the sudden conflagration. And their forcefields shorted one after the other. 

But Alpharius Armor was forged to withstand all treachery, as the rockcrete bubbled around them he rushed towards the ruins between him and the commander of the enemy. his cloak adapting to his surroundings allowing him to melt into the surroundings, rushing through the ruins his helmets auspex switched and allowed him to see through the building as if it was day. Pushing his superhuman physique to it's very limits he levelled his spear in front of him and threw himself through the wall, and into the commanders bodyguards. The first one died from the force of impact. 

The lord commander put out it his arm and levelled the sword towards alpharius in a gesture as old as time and as unambiguous in intent. Alpharius crouched low and went in with a swing towards the mans gene spliced face, The commander smiling contemptously as some sort of protective field sparked to life, Alpharious spun to the left and went for a descending strike. The man brought his blade into a deflective stance. 

Alpharius saw it as though it was taking place in a reduction chamber, the golden splendor of the blade the dying sun filling the steel-grey eyes of the lord commander with hope fading into urgent surprise as the spear shattered his last faith in his blade and made a mockery of what the man knew of warfare and trust in himself. 

And that was it, Alpharius wiped the LoW then charged the Command squad in the following turn. His lightnings arrived and dropped bombs and ended my predator squadron, the other one took out my contemptor, and his arvus arrived with perfect precision. 

In my turn two i tried to bring down the arvuses before they could release 12 angry volkite elites, i failed miserably. 

playing the starship troopers theme no less 

he actually magnetized the hatches so that he could release Auxilia. 

 The Last tactical squadron arrived, also on the right flank. And managed to shoot a multimelta and take another hullpoint.

for my opponents third turn his aircraft dominated the skies, taking potshots and making slag out of all vehicles that remained. His dracosan released their flamer sections and more or less lit that entire part of the board on fire. 

And the dracosan and malcador shot large blast battle cannons at me .removing elite legionairres in droves. 

on turn four i ran into the house with my volkite, the last tactical squadron disembarked. and let lose with twenty bolter shots, removing the remaining troops covering his malcador.

Then it happened. My last rhino shot it\s multi melta within melta range. Did a penetrating result of six. Took two hullpoints, and blew it up!

The ensuing explosion scattered on his other tank, and D strength made it explode as well O_O

The game was more or less over at this juncture. 

After tallying up the massacre, the points score was 3-2 to me 

Neither of us dominated any zones. i had a warlord kill, LoW kill and i had the most remaining units. But he got points for killing more than i did damn AL drawback. 

really great game and it felt good getting a solid game in. 

I\ve also started my new legion project

but more on that later. 

Creating your own Alpharius (sire of the alpha legion)

 Greetings

so one of the major watershed moments for any alpha legion player in the 31'st millenium is when you get to the point of wanting an Alpharius model. This is right up there with chosing your legion, and figuring out how you want to do your metallic scheme. Now for most Alpha legion players it tends to go like this (i assume)

I) Shit, what legion do i get into
II) f'ck how do i paint my alpha legion 
III) g'dammit, why hasn't forgeworld released my g'damn primarch, i'll go to their homepage and glare contemptuously at their other sculpts....Shit, i'll get model X and probably do a new legion project. 

 Now, Alpharius has had rules as far back as book III extermination, released around three years ago. And it is a running joke that A) Alpharius is EVERY model released and B) he is the last primarch and will be released last. As is proper, scum. (probably hail guilliman or sumthing). Now, as far as i know, Alpharius is the only "old" primarch (excluding book 6 &7 which are fairly new) that does not have a model. We know that Dorn is being worked on due to the sculpt preview done last open day. But for alpharius we have yet to see anything conclusive. There have been "discussions" and "rumours" that he will be released last, and there are open day confirmations that he will be done last. But that is about as much as we know.

Now, there are a couple of options for direct purhcases. The first one you will see whenever a thread pops up is the "hydra knight" from kabuki miniatures. Now with this model you'll have a properly sized and easily reconizable Primarch proxy from day one. Which is nab if you feel your proxy and building skills are a bit on the lax side. You have all the "snake" iconography and if you feel that it's a bit too much ,you can trim it down easily enough. you do however need to do something about the "sword" as Alpharius has a Spear, but that is easily enough done.

The next prime contender in my mind is from Scibor minitatures

This one is a good fit in my opinion, it's called a "spartan veteran"

He already has a freaky looking spear weapon, he has recognizable "sculpted" armor and a cool looking pose. The shield, while not belonging to alpharius, has a "alpha" mark on it, so it can easily be removed and salvaged for future needs. The helmet slipping off is, in my mind, a good way of showing alpharius dramatically unveiling himself

now, if you're good with a knife, and have the stomach for it. The idea will inevitably arise that you can do your own model.

So the question is, what base do we use for the body?

The first easy option is to use the stormcast eternal, they are slightly bigger than marines, they have readily modified "base" structures in regards to torso and legs, and can be easily altered to make it look like power armor

The second one that is "easy" is to use one of the recently released primaris models,

I've used an enlarged image, to get a good point of reference. You will, as opposed to the stormcast, need to remove stuff rather than add here. The Aquila, the excessive skulls, oath of moments and so forth. To fit into a 30k environment you just need to trim it a bit.

The last one is also fairly easy to modify, The praetor "limited" edition model released in 2016. You already have a spear analogue and if you use an alpha legion upgrade sprue head and add a tabard (either from spellcrow or Druchii raiders) you can get far with some easy transfer work in my opinion.

Other models of honorary mentions is, ironically, the model everyone thought WAS alpharius when the picture dropped. I am of course, talking about Armilius dynat. You get a good base model, you can adapt it readily, and it has a cloak, and nuncio vox needed. The arm has a hammer as opposed to a spear, but that arm is readily removed

Now, for me, i chose to use the old chapter master model for the minotaurs.

Asterion moloc 

the model has a gnarly looking spear, and a really dynamic pose, now, he has a shield that you can also use for other shit in the future as well.

All you need to do thereafter is to remove the sculpted minotaur marks on the left leg, the right arm, the spear and the left shoulder.

You are then left with a pretty utilitarian model

i then added a terminator GK hand, and took a plasma blaster from the BoP kit. And started painting. The one thing to keep in mind is of course to keep in theme with the rest of your army, but "upscale" it, this is the leader of your legion, and even Alpharius is said to have armor that "left no doubt as to whom had come to claim them" So i hit him with some black primer, and then some vallejo acryllics.


I then shot the cloak with some silver in a 45 degree angle in the raised areas( it billows so it's easy to see where it should be) and used mortarion green to get the impression of a scale cloak. Now, i kind of kick myself that i have NOT ordered the "scale" stencils from fallout hobby because then i could have just done silver on the stencil, and THEN clear green, which i think could have been a cool effect.


I then hit the spear with some silver from half up, and then did a mix of mortarion green, medium and some highlight of tamiya green.

And of course i did the "standard" way of doing alpharius himself . reasulting in this

After that it was mostly about raising up the details on this beautifull sculpt (beautifull lines of filigree on legs and arms) and using silver to pic out details, and shading my red to give the "slits" in the helmet a dark slightly subdued menacing glow.

Now, as there are bascially nothing to identify him as alpharius i decided to do a lot of decal work.

resulting in this

i used a larger transfer on the cloak. 

 Now for the cloak i used a big transfer, and microsol and microset made it SUPER easy to set. As for which decal to use, i was initially tempted to use the "chained A" which is awesome, but i wanted to avoid the whole "A FOR ALPHARIUS BY YOUR TREACHER COMBINED CAPTAIN SNAKEEEEE" since it would be a bit too.....cartoonish. So i went with an easily recognizable hydra

three decals on the front

 We have a smaller alpha with an omega on the cloak pin, a hydra in the greave, and an unbroken chain on the back greave. thank god for the variation of the decal sheet.

DRAMATIC REVEAL

And there we are. Im fairly happy with this, even though it took some time to get finished.

The one thing i sort of miss is an inbuilt "vox" system as the armor is said to have an advanced com. ssytem integrated, but i sort of assume that the artificer wrought technical miracle can integrate that INTO the suit itself.

So that is my alpharius, anyone else want to show theirs?