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. 

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.

The Hagvarian betrayal- intro and ruminations

So the time had come to head off to my first tournament, it was a Friendly team- tournament hosted by the Great hosts of the Verangian heresy.

Now i've never been to a heresy tournament, nor a mini's tournament at all, but the fact that it was narrative driven and the fact there was a clear focus on good spirit and a welcoming Engaging from both the TO and the participants itself made me feel like it would be a cool crew to sacrifice a weekend going to. Now for sacrifice i mean the fact that i was heading into unchartered waters here, i'm as eager to roll the bones as anyone else, but heading away from my family and mates and actually leaving the basement crypt i dwell in to be social means that i like to know who i play against. So this is a bit of a plunge.

and over all one i was glad that i did.

Now the rules of the tourney was loosely as follows

- One LoW allowed, but no ranged D strength weaponry
- One allied detachment that i believe was allowed to be 250 of your 2500 pts allowance
- two members to each team, 2500 for each person
- No primarchs chosen or leviathan force org.

I played with a mate from SLG warhammer in oldtown, Jimmy who ran his hammer of olympia armor ( a lot of Artillery and a lot of footsloggers)

While i ran my Alpha legion armored breakthrough

2500 points, no games won :D

Basically

Troops:
Predator with HB sponsoons and one on top
Predator with HB sponsoons and one on top
Predator with HB sponsoons

HQ:
praetor with digital lasers, paragon blade, power dagger and cataphractii armour and volkite charger
four bodyguards in cataphractii plate, bannerman, one combi-melta and two chainfists one Power fist.

Heavy support:
Predator executioner with PotMS and lascannon sponsoons
Sicaran with lascannons
scorpius

Elites:
Tenman vet with two HB, all meltabombs, nuncio vox, sergeant with Powersword and artificer armor. With a rhino that had a MM. Marksmen veteran tactic

Tenman vet with two meltaguns, all  nuncio vox, sergeant with powerfist, power dagger and artificer armor. With a rhino that had a MM. Marksmen veteran tactic

Two quad mortars with shatter shell

Two rapier lasers

Lord of War:
Suborbital strike wing consisting of
One avenger striker fighter with lascannons, and autocannons, with Tankhunter and a 4++ against missiles.


The idea was simple. i was the armored spear against the bulwark of my allied friend. All my fast tanks would go and cap points, advance ruthlessly, and take ground while shooting a lot of shots against infantry, while my veterans outflanked and gave my artillery good lines of sight. The praetor went straight up the middle with my tankhunters. While also tying up any potential deathstars.



Now, in short, here are some quick lessons.

• Play the mission, read the mission pack. READ IT. 

in our first ,mission we had to deploy in small triangles in the corners, but the TO was keen on pointing out that our "table edge" was the long edges. Which meant jack-all to me. But in reality it meant that ALL reserves, ongoing, could walk into your opponents backfield. Which if i had remembered it would have saved a lot of suffering. 

• Tanks are great. Dying aint-

Yeah, so fast predators, looked GREAT on paper. The problem is that Av 13 front and 11 back is not hard to kill. As a matter of fact i died to sniper bolt fire more than once. And losing scoring troops HURT in an objectives game. More so when you only have three. But again, i had my two veterans.....who also died. Still supporting my armour with infantry worked a lot better than it would have without it. 

• One flyer with AV 12 front, two HP and av10 back is basically giving away points.

Yeah. That's pretty much it. The avenger looked great since it could hunt tanks and ALSO mow down power armor with the AP3 gatling gun. But it died instantaneously in ALL Games. giving away betweem two to four points. (don't ever forget price of failure) 

beyond that, did i have fun?

Fuck yeah

I've travelled a lot, i've hung around roleplayers, PROSEC people, bartenders, competitive sportsmen, photographers and a lot of weird subcultures with a lot of peculiar rules. And most are welcome, but usually you get a sort of informal. but not really. Pissing contest. "oh, you've only done X for how many years? and you do your Y how? well at least you're trying kiddo" None of that here.

Everybody was real sporting, from the guys losing horrendously to the guys winning tremendously. I had a really good time and everyone was super accomodating. 

So i'll move on with my games.

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