Hagvarian betrayal day two pt.1- Or how we managed to wrestle defeat from the jaws of victory

So the second day of the Hagvarian betrayal kicked off with us facing of against an empty table. I jokingly asked the TO if that meant we won by Walk-over (eagerly licking my lips looking for any actual win) whereupon he said that he had just talked to the guys we were facing and they were heading in.

So unbeknownst to me and my team-mate we were facing one half of the duo from the Horus heresy podcast- "don't loose your head"  really cool guys. Our opponents were running Iron hands and loyalist Death guard. And were running company of bitter iron and a standard list. Albeit with THREE leviathan dreadnoughts. Neither i nor my opponent had ever faced one, and now we were to throw down with three. I was actually kind of excited

The company of bitter iron is a pretty cool and narrative RoW which is to represent the tactiturn nature of the IRon hands after the bitter defeat at Istvaan V and the death of their Primarch. Whereupon they are driven to the very edge of desperation and more flock to join the "disgraced" part of their army known as the immortals. Basically the player can take immortals as troops (souped up Breachers with FnP and can't sweeping advance, but get to snapshoot you as you flee)

The iron hands player had around four Land raiders.

i've actually got a pretty good picture of both below

So many landraiders 

Apparently none of the leviathans had ever seen a turn three until our game

The DG player had the rest of his units (a unit of deathshroud and grave wardens) on foot, and he ran crysos morturg, a loyalist DG praetor from book 1 and gave three units infiltrate. Which syngergized well with his army.

Now, a NOTE of interest. Apparently, until our game that i will go into soon, all other players had identified the fukken threat of three leviathans and tried to kill them turn one. So usually the DG player got to hang back and watch his IH team mate try to save the game.

The special mission perquisites for this round was that we got kill points at the end of the game, but each turn we ended in our opponents deployment zone we got one point a turn PER scoring unit. Which was powerfull. Having read the rules repeatedly and hearing my opponents discuss outflanking landraiders (no gooby no) i asked if they had read the mission? they said yes, they had, but no outflanking landraiders. whew!

SO we roll off, and Alpha legion and Iron warriors get to set up second.

our opponents fortfiy each flank with land raiders, and prepare to have a strong breakthough with two land raiders in the middle. And place the Leviathans to the right, and a frigging malcador in the middle

Getting some rudimentary cover he places the leviathans behind a rock formation.

So this is the end deployment just before start. Hoping to seize the initiative i intend to Speed all predators their FULL speed ahead, and try to snatch as many early objectives as possible, and standing in ther deployment and making them destroy me.

I also hid all my tanks, but since they were fast and the enemy lacked templetes we were not ALL that afraid of being shot to bits completely.

One of the other players went to the bathroom and said, "cover for me" when he came back he saw this

how sweet it is 

He looked at the DG player and said "you had one fucking job mate"

Still, no harm no foul. then the shooting. ALL THE SHOOTING

FEUER FREI!

Somehow my Rapiers instantly killed a land raider turn one. Then my buddies tanks blew up another, and my last predator managed to rend a last one to death

with three sixes chasing three more sixes.

My predators RUSHED forward, and my buddies tactical seized another objective, so by the end of turn one we were in the lead for about 8-0 or something.

We shot all that we had at all those scary Land raiders, but the death guard were more or less left unmolested, laughing at mortar fire, tank fire and artillery fire.

So on their turn two they moved forward, the leviathans raked my predators, and a tactical squad bith it pretty early.

They then flipped their objective counter, and managed to destroy the fourth landraider.Ouch.

Now, at this point the Ih player apologized for his behaviour and said that he was sorry that he was so salty. I thought he took it on the chin with aplomb and said that nothing of the sort was necessary, and we joked that he was just roleplaying his row

Our turn two and both of my Veterans show up, The sniper with HB in the corner by his remaining terminators and immortals, and the Melta ones around the leviathans. I shoot out a group of terminators, blow up a rhino, manage to hurt a leviathan that gets destroyed later.

My praetor jumps out and assaults a tactical squad of DG

My scorpius shoots at some other tacticals to deny them scoring units.

My veterans enter his deployment zone and snipes out some terminators

But overall we feel pretty good about stuff.

Which changes. And this is a good lesson for me and everyone who underestimates Terminators.

Conventional wisdom states that Terminators that footslogg are a points sink that are more or less better left ignored. The problem was that by single mindedly trying to wipe out the Iron hands, we had the death guard stoically advancing into our gunzone. The VERY THING they are famous for. 

So in their turn two they advance into our end zone, ten strong deathshroud and cut down iron warriors like something wheatlike in front of something scythe like. There is an opportunity missed here by me, but fine. 

Eager to prove the mettle of my praetor Votan i slam into the densely packed lines of deathguard. I win the combat by around 12 wounds and his single hope is a double one. He breaks and flees.

Alongside my landraider the indomitable iron warriors march to victory.

The field of battle at the end of turn two

After another turn of insane shooting and levelling our artillery to shoot over the barrells a lá some napoleonic desperation technique we manage to destroy one leviathan, whittle down the deathshroud and the graveguard, and at the onset of their turn three they wipe out my friends mortars

the Iron warriors take a stand and form a fucking battle line (!) and show their disdain for the death guard by rapid firing bolters into them.

No fear here

But the fact of the matter is that they are scoring two points per turn (deathshroud and graveguard have indomitable advance) and they have gorgons in a corner that are moving into our zone. So the points are evening out. Then, screaming into battlespace their kraken penetrator zooms in, fires missiles and wipes out another tank. 

On our turn three My avenger joins the fray

In the pipe, five-by-five, target aquired

Knowing full well it will be shot down by the ace fighter that is an avenger i shoot at the death shroud, managing a paltry six wounds, and kill two of the two wound terminators


We also manage to blow up their malcador, so i get the genius idea of charging his grave guard. And promptly lose thee men to charging into a biohazard wall of flame, only to emerge into a battle i lose.


We play two more turns and it comes down to the wire.

We tally up the points and it turns out that since my veteran broke, we lose by one points.

Had they not fled we would have won by one points.

So SHIT-HOT intense game, and great fun 

The predator recovery project

Greeeetings non-existent readership!

In this post i figured i'd catalogue my efforts in recovering one of the very first vehicles i did.

This lil' beauty was one of my vehicles that suffered pretty noticeably from when i had an air leak on the compressor connecting hose, resulting in me needing to thin the color down quite a bit (mistake number one) and then using too high a pressure to compensate for the lack of an even flow (not the song, but misstake number two)

the result from this is a pretty regular occurence and is easy to identify, if you have a very runny color that pools in places and runs of other surfaces, you have simply thinned the paint too much and had too high a pressure, the problem was, for me, further amalgamated as my dark colors in the metallic scheme pooled rather extensive, leaving a mottled color, that i thought looked a bit reptilian in nature. Sleep addled as i was i let it dry and headed to bed, only when i woke up did i recognize my mistake.

However,  having as of late, gained some rudimentary skill with my airbrush i figured i'd try my dab hand at recovering the vehicles, and in so doing, getting a uniform scheme for all future vehicles.

Now most of what i am doing here is exactly what i did with my Sicarian tank. But in a couple of more turns, to properly use all the colors.

This is what i started with

As i mentioned you can see that the green and blue layers have pooled and gives a mottled effect, now had i gone for an overtly reptilian or draconian theme, like the 40k work that does, it might have looked good. But as it stands it just looks blotchy and haphazardly done, if not lazy.

Now, as with the sicarian i gave it a nice thin layer of the vallejo acrylic

As close as love comes in a bottle

 The first layer, great as it is for coverup (thusly eliminating entirely the need of doing black basecoats) will leave some colored spaces, if you want a good impression of what the light hitting it will be like, you can leave these areas untouched, and then have the lighter color (silver for metallics, for me at least) Now, after my two layers of acryllic metal, i move on to Vallejos "silver" not covering the entire tank, but rather where the light will hit it, like the front arc of the tank, the areas at the top front, and the edges to the side. Imagine sun filtering through a broken, twisted hab-block, and how the light would fall on your tank.

 it should leave you with something like this. , not a great picture, but the difference will be more tangible later, particularly in regards to the blocky turret for the Mars Autocannon (left) as opposed to the cupola shape of the plasma executioner, giving both different light 

while the quality isn't great, it gives a decent impression 

 Now, for me, this is pretty much what i was going for, lighter "patches" here and there that really looks great when you see it on the table.This is after only two light layers of Calth blue. A simplified FW recipe is

* Metals as before
* 1 layer calth blue
* 1 layer mortarion green
* 1 layer calth blue again

it gives a good AL scheme, with none of the tamiya hassle (if you consider it thus, that is)

 Kindly notice that this is a NEW tank, the "restored one" is below, with all the gubbinz i'm going to gush about

Forgeworld gushing in, 3,2,1.....

 i think that my love for Fw gubbbins is clearly documented at an earlier juncture. But the thing is, if you buy some plates for your legion, and a pintle mounted weaponry set (two of each netting you six weapons) and a tank commander set (you get three alternatives) you can EASILY make your transports, Deimos or Mars patterned, look unique. Which i know is something that a lot of people working on a budget for is worried about. Above is (in no particular order) a tank commander, two pintle sets, and two deimos turrets, that, in my opinion, works GREAT for the mars pattern. or the Deimos pattern brand of turret..... moving on!

Now we only have details left

* Stripes around the vents (see above) either black or white is good, i use white for command tank designations.
* all rivets in leadbelcher, all "steps" in leadbelcer, the chimney stacks in leadbelcer and drybrushed with a good copper, and whatever hatches you fancy
* i did the back vent (on the top) with copper, nuln oil, and an easy highlight of lighter metal (what-chu fancy) to get some variation.
* lenses. i did them in red, for matching the rest of my army, and did the whole "half moon with white dot" that you can find GOOD painters to describe better


Let dry

And move on decalling. Now, if you don't use microsol or similar, you can always use 'ardcoat under neath the decal, and the use another coat ON the decal to keep it down. It's passable.

This is my tank commander. the XX on the cupola is due to it being the ONLY iconography missing on the rest :)

Front pic, i'm pretty satisfied with the angle of his arm, he's scouting for targets

And here's a picture of the new one i did, the entire squadron will have the stylized" 3 on the right side, and an Omega on the left side, I magnetized the sponsoons, and with a wide variety of turrets each tank can be what i want it to be, the hydra way.


Final pic of everyone together

And there you are, two out of three done, and one extra turret for my last one, i think the command tank will be deimos patterned. Since i managed to get my mitts on one.

Thanks (if you did) for the read

keep stronk!

#powerfullsweden