måndag 1 januari 2018

Ave Dominus Nox- A nightlords Project part 7- reinforcements to cover my gaps so far



Ave dominus nox 



so the new year is here and with it all the greatness and promises of what is to come harkening at our doorstep, for my part, i've no real new years promise except maybe ,you know, trying NOT to start a new legion? but looking at my forgeworld order just placed this seems doomed to fail, the only question is if i should go loyalist or not..... there's just something compelling about playing the bad guys.

Regardless. For me the holidays have, so far, meant a lot of time in which i can corral my little terror marine around the house and keep my SO happy, and when they are happy, that gives me a lot of leeway for hobby time.

Having bloodied my legion for the first two times, i have come to the (dubious) decision that my HQ and his unit´, is not working optimally, he's been a bit overpriced, and the destroyers, while fluffy, are just..well.. overpriced. I can probably make them work, but as is my wont i have now created a second HQ choice, and i imagine my delegatus will fill my one consul choice for terror assault as a legion champion, for that purpose i am basecoating 10 raptors, which feels like a fluffy and thematically appropos choice, the raptors have the distinction of getting D3 extra attacks on the charge, and have a nice spread of power weapon options. so i will probably give them a bit of variation, with some chainglaives and axes overall.


Having given it some thought, and looking at the Unit delineation options ready, i've come to the conclusion that i will try to play a Tribune (special limited edition character that GW sold for a while)

The Tribune is a tartaros IC with iron halo, mastercrafted paragonblade, and the statline of a praetor, and digilasers for 180 Pts, letting you have "master of the legion" while not limiting you to the number of praetors per points setting. The model is pretty basic, and can be used for every legion, as for me, i cut down the gorget and the hood to fit in a skull mask (.sic, night lords) and tried to fi in as many clear legion markings without making it egregious looking, like the stickers on lightning mcqueen

the dangers of having too many decals 

While also doing the tribune, i finished up the Terminators squad i did way back in August as well, since the chainglaive on my sergeant broke of at both ends, i simply cut of the hands and put on a new. As all attempts to put it back failed horribly.




The terminatorsquad has four chainfists, a chainglaive, a autocannon and frag grenade launcher for the sergeant, somehow managing to overcost them to the destroyers with a wide margin. But i feel like they will be less prone to suddenly dying. And actually be able to manage with vehicles and a wider choice of enemies. They will also be another option to suddenly deploy, as the VIII'th legion is one of three legions with access to teleportation rites.

The terminators will probably be used to represent the VIII'th first company elite, the atramentar when angelus is published (go go book VIII hype!) and as such i chose to attach veteran honours, and mission honours rather than the red hand of terror troops

veteran honours on the chest 

with the exiting shells it seemed safer to have the honours on the greave


I imagine that they will be well suited for deepstriking in, and doing a decapitation attack against the opponents LoW or HQ section, working in close connection to my melta vets and leviathan. again, my heavy reliance on Deepstriking and sudden attacks will probably falter at some time, and i should look at converting up a damocles command rhino to ensure that i arrive more reliably. Particularly for my fliers and outflanking terror troops.


Talking of covering up holes in my force disposition, another weakness of mine  that i had in my ,mechanicum matchup was the inability to handle Monstrous creatures, and by extension, heavy infantry, my only recourse was utilizing the effect of fire from my volkite chargers, which was a dicy proposition. As such, i decided to paint up my birthday gifts (from me to me) and paint up my Night lords contemptors  these are beautifull casts and in my mind they skirt the "too much skulls and gore" wonderfully, you even have an option of not adding the skulls on the chest.

Having only done my contemptors statically posed before, i wanted to experiment more with these, and as noted in my previous post, i wanted them looking as if they were truly coming for you

the end result was satisfactory to me at least

we have come for you 
the one point of contetion to me is if i did the skin to bloody,as there is a fine line between gore, and simply fingerpainting

from the side 
for the contemptor i used a brighter gold for the chassis and i used bronse to highlight the rivets, as i believe it would stick out more on the joints. I also kept the decaling to a minimum, in accordance to the mcqueen effect above. Funnily enough, the thing i am most happy about is the skull itself, i think i hit a sweet spot with the paleness and shading, but after looking at the FW homepage i realized i should have probably left the sockets empty.

I did a second one as well.

This one is equipped with a chainfist as well as a graviton gun inbuilt into it, but i did do some gore effect here, as i believe it suited the pose better. I will probably add a mangled marine to the base, but for now i think it suffices nicely.

I also took the time to restore an old contemptor i was gifted years ago, this is one of the first "Chaos" units i ever got, and it needed some minimum alterations done, but i removed the fist and gave it a dual lascannon loadout, as i know from experience that when it comes to vehicle hunting, it is best to stick to dedicated AT, i've had my alpha legion contemptor mortis using kheres assault and trying to make ruin of tanks, and the S7 rending will rarely be great against vehicles. The weight of fire is ideal against medium to heavy infantry, and light vehicles, and they can manage flyers. But the BS5 and interceptor and skyfire will serve me will here is feel

target acquired



And a group-shot of all three together



So that is what is going as of right now, i am also working on some terrain and flier bases for my anviluses.

Now hopefully i will be able to scrounge up some matches in the days to come, but we will see simply.

Happy dominus nox!