Assault squad 54- Alpha legion assault marines

Phew, so incoming posts.

This was a very productive week for me, between working almost 17 hours a day, and having the family visiting my inlaws it meant that as soon as i got home i cranked up ye ol' airbrush to get some good work in. First and foremost i've started on my new SECRET project (it's just nightlords) and i'd forgotten how fun it is to actually make real headway. I'm almost getting a real sense of progress when i can sit down and crank out a five hour Airbrush session. It means i need to cut down on my sleep to about three hours a night, which is sustainable for about a week, but then i need to hunker down and enter my odinsleep for about half a day. Mebbe twice over if time allows.

But enough about that. Thanks to the Age of darkness "two week challenge"   i actually managed to close down on some of my non airbrush related projects. This time it was for closing down on my Assault marines. Part of the new 54'th company, my recently formed veterans from the battles in the Cadoxd system. After realizing that their armored assault techniques where ineffective en-masse against the unified siege mastery of the Iron warriors, and coming up short against the lightning fast Maru skara of the emperors children, my Praetor council decided to form up two new formations of troops.

the 54'th a specialized assault formation that will descend on wings of fire and strike without mercy.

and the 69'th the Stoneburners. Compiled of the most merciless of my Armored elements, utilizing recently captured Phosphex and ammunition stores, they are rearming to bring even the indomitable IV'th to their knees.

What this means in real-world shit? I'm getting some assault marines, destroyers and heavy armor. TO scale up to apocalypse level events. It ties into the battles my guys are fighting. and it means that i know where to go next with my armies.

But right now, what i recently finished was my first assault squad for the 54'th leviathal.

I was pretty happy with my end.result and without descending into an endless circle of back-patting,  i think that these, alongside my avenger and terminators is the best work that I've done. And it's thankful to see that when placed close to the first models i did, a real sense of progress can be tracked

The entire squad, Pwoer weapons and sergeant at the fore

 I did a ten man squad to begin with. And in it i have a sergeant with Artificer armor, powerfist and a power dagger (+1 attack)as well as a handflamer for some overwatch and first turn clearing. The squad proper has two powerswords to clear out  3+ saves and then i figure i will get them all Melta bombs for some versatility.

The downside is that the points start scaling really quickly

These poses are probably my favorite

 I also tried my dab hand at doing a lot of spongechipping, but with a set of tweezers and a really small piece of packing foam. meaning that i got a lot of inconsistent random patches, i also went a bit heavier on the nuln oil than i usually do. Which i think gave a bit better contrast to the metallic blue.

Lägg till bildtext

I also took a lot more caution, and care in doing these guys. While they are "just" troops i wanted to give then a lot of attention and wanted them to catch some attention on the battlefield. and with that in mind i actually painted them in their separate parts. Which not only gave me better control over the details that i needed to do, but also lets me do irregular chipping as well as shading better.

Seeing as the fluff is that they are all veterans of their craft i took my time in giving them a lot of decals, and might even have gone a bit overboard, each guy has at least three of them, i chose to put a "large" insignia on the chest for the same reason as Batman has a large bat on his chest according to frank miller (draws fire there) but beyond that the whole model is basically just an excercise in using basic techniques properly.

Metalls are all leadcbelcher, nuln oil gloss and highlight mitril, the helmets are simply black with some eshin fine highlights. The decals are Microsol and microsot (HAIL MICROSOL!) with some light chipping on them. I think it all comes together pretty well.

And for contrast here is a latest done marine, with one of my earliest


some difference i believe

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?

Hagvarian betrayal day one

So, off to the races we go!

Me and my buddy arrived in his car (thanks again bud!) came in, and talked around a bit, people more or less knew each other and i think we were the only real green ones, but after an hour we didn't really notice. Everybody welcomed us.

Now we had all gotten the mission packs aforehand, so we knew what the first mission entailed.

It was basically "get into the enemies zone at the end of the game" and if you shot at anyone that was not your closest target you rolled for Ld to see if you got to shoot at them.

our first opposing team was (i'm sorry i suck at names , and i'll leave em' out in case someone doesn't want to be mentioned cause they lied to get out of work......) An ultramarine player with a spartan, dreadclaw, some venators, and a deepstriking Assault squad with a lot of trimmings. The Anvilus had Suszerains in them and the spartan had a deathstar, he also had some veterans i believe

somehow not our biggest problem.....

 his friend had..... A metric fuckton of artillery. Oh god. So much artillery.

This was the first time i had faced Solar auxilia, and i think i asked the poor guy, like eight times "what's that" "it has how many Hull points" it's cannon does WHAT!"

He was really accommodating. He had one LoW HUEG tank, some dracosan transports. one malcador infernus and some others. Here's a picture

Now,each table was beautifully placed, and each table for all games had six objective markers, each one was one of the following

A) score 1-2 VP immediately
B) blank (get an extra maelstrom card)
C) biohazard, take a S6 Ap2 no cover allowed hit. if you AV you take an instand Haywire hit.

we also had two tactical cards and two maelstrom cards per team.

The tactical cards varied between "return a squad of your choice to the game" "disable an artillery piece" "instantly seize the initiative" and so forth. Really fun, nothing gamebreaking.

The maelstrom were, i believe, some handpicked from the standard 40k ones. which worked well.

As an aside i should probably mention, the first game was the harshest for us. The players themselves were stupendous sports, good fellows and explained what was happening. But we got creamed. To the extent where the TO came over, looked at the set-up and said.

"well, look at it like this, everything after this game will be slightly better"

he was not wrong


So we set up. Each player deploys in a small triangle in their corner. to fit everything in my buddy CRAMPS his guys up. Ass to crotch of iron warriors.

And i do the same, while placing some stuff into ongoing reserves.

So we start off, i move some tanks. Manage to immobilize my sicaran on a small tank trap...yup. i shave a hullpoint of a venator and whiff against the other as the SA player has a shroud bombardment

He moves forward. And we score a point for taking objective 3. We flip it. Toxic release.

Fuck.

My friend loses seventeen marines from two squads of thirty,  one tank and loses two more hull points.

i score another objective and we are up 3 pts.

yay

 Our opponents let loose. And destroy a tank and cripple another of my tanks.

The astra militarum have a tactical card that lets them outflank a vehicle squadron, they deploy three arty tanks against my poor team mate.

Meanwhile the Dreadclaw lands and instantly kills my Scorpius

We shoot a bit and my friends bears the worst of it.

haHA! i have you now my pretty 

turn two, i come on with all my veterans and try to let loose with meltaguns, snipers vets and prepare to charge him ,knowing it will be a vain hope, but might distract him

i accomplish little, but one of my tanks drives straight for the SA players LoW tank.

Oh shiet, they have us now! 

Their turn two, and the UM player counter infiltrates, which was pretty hilarious imagining my smug AL marines, being outmaneuvered by the UM impeccable planning.

I am more or less slaughtered to a man.

My sicaran is killed. And at the end of the turn i play our tactical card, letting me bring it back with one HP. Whereupon i try to brave the SAME rock,. AND DIE AGAIN

My predator manages to tank shock his puny techpriest, thusly earning himself some of my favor.

My team mate more or less engages his SA vanguard troops by himself. Slaughtering two groups of elites, his dracosan and some of the artillery tanks.


GG, well played. We lose by about fifteen points.

But we had a lot of fukken fun, and the other players never got smug or rubbed our faces in it.



The second game was against another Solar auxilia player, and a Raven guards players. This was a really awesome painted SA army ( although to be honest all armies were REALLY cool at this tournament, all closers) with a lot of customization and awesome paint for everything from the simplest footslogger to his two arvus. He wound up winning best painted which was well deserving. The other player had a badass ravenguard army with a lot of fast, mobile infantry with almost none tanks. Really awesome.

WE deploy trying to use the frikking awesome Forgeworld table. My buddy takes up firing lines and even though there is a lot of cover we try to give my assault tanks some space for movement.

In this game we designated four pieces of terrain, and at the end of the game they were worth 3 pts each.

The sound of cycling guns is the only sound heard from the iron warriors. 

The phosphex being loaded, preparing it's deadly cargo for a sweet caress. 

The alpha legion takes position in a bombed out church, it's fading vestiges providing little faith and no salvation. 

Our opponents had first turn and made the most of it, the raven guard had used the terrain masterfully and as the sons of corvax ran from house to house they closed with the resolute men of the IV'th legion.

As you can see he deployed mor deyhthan and veterans in rhinos and made a beeline for my friends quad mortars. A bold strategy, but, a wise one?

Probably. He disabled them by turn two but was punished by a fussilade of phosphex and his HQ was driven into a empty house.

Meanwhile the Brave men of the Solar stand a lonely vigil of a stratetgically important building. Defended by their malcador 

So turn one, they focus on removing my scorpius, my team mates quad mortars and basically anything that can dig them out of their fortified positions.

We weather the first turn pretty well, the exception being a tactical squad that was slaughtered to a man by the mor deythan (once per game they can get shred and rending on their shots) since they were protecting the quads.

the grav cannons immobilized my scorpius and took some hull points.

The RG player said he went for Grav quads as he didn't want to default to Quad mortars. Good man. Wish i was one ;)

Meanwhile, in our turn, we tried to bombard the living hell out of them and thin them out a bit as we had to dig them out. For the first time i realized that 60" of four shots per quad is good. Like, REALLY good. we grab a point or two, and the game is tight. My Landraider storms forward trying to close with his command team, mostly since his banner and commander makes all the auxilia fearless.

My rapiers proved themselves by shaking a malcador defender.

bit of a pickle to be fair 

On their turn two everything goes topsy turvy

no less than four flyers arrive. Two Primaris lightnings, one for each player, and two arvus lighters, shockfull of elite solar auxilia storm sections cycling up their volkite and ready to grip order from the chaos of battle.

And the solar proved that not only marines descend on the wings of angels. 

So this is what the field of battle looked like at the onset of turn two, the solar auxilia depending on the kindness of ravens to weather the storm, and taunting us to assault them.

The alpha legion's hubris would not disappoint them in that regard.

Arvus being precariously placed.

The aux player had a keen understanding of tactics, so as to isolate my terminators he deployed twin strike teams to deny us a clear approach.

The lightnings then made short of the land raider, as well as one of our other tanks. While the remaining flyers and tanks fired vicious S10 weapons into my terminators. leaving but two standing by their praetor.
while the raven guard, on the backfoot after being phosphexed generously into a building ,and eating scorpius fire to make him blend into the shadows. Charged the remainder of the quads.

The noose tightens

In our turn two I managed to take down one lightning with a Predator. Which was pure luck, but i'd take what i could get by now.

the pred in question.

my praeotr charged the raven guards grav guns, and cleared them out, he then consolidated into the command squad building of the aux.

Praetor Votan "steal-breaker" charges the fixed guns

Meanwhile both of my veteran squads arrived in the enemies backfield, braving lasfire to give accurate mortar fire and clear out a tactically vital building. And another of my preds makes a arvus locked into a straight path denying his troops to bail out and shoot at me.

The worm turns yet again. some solar aux strorm troopers bails out and makes short work of the remaining lagging spearhead. While my brave, brave! predator took another VP form an objective, he was slaughtered in turn three. 

In the corner The Solar aux and the raven guard cordinated their assault and started hailing shots at my veterans and rhinos

 His remaining veterans did an about turn out of their phosphex filled hidey-hole and made for my veterans, two troops with implacable advance taking terrain was enough to make them decide to focus on me. Which was a welcome break for my team mate.

In the meanwhile his malcador and dracosan had free fields in going into our deployment and mopping up

All the houses with the stupendously beautifull azure dices are tactically important. and grant 3 VP at the end of the game.

In turn three my Avenger comes in, shoots EVERYTHING (gary oldman style) at the raven guard veterans and does nothing. I am reduced to a paltry two rhinos, and my rapiers and quad mortars, the rapiers prove themselves once again and take out another malcador (!) while my avenger tries to crash into my opponent in one last, hatefilled moment of spite.

My praetor duels his commander, whiffs 4 out of 7 attacks, decapitates him with a last one, and only his standard bearer remains. And makes it into combat for another turn. A fukken hero that one.

Last turn my team mates domitar iron circle get overwatched to death by volkite and his praetor ignobly killed by a paltry techpriest.


we lose by ten points but, by the uncaring laughter of the dark gods it was epic.