I’m happy to say, I’ve finished my Ogryns!
Beautifully sculpted, they fit together like a dream and were a joy to paint.
I love the large areas of fluorescent orange I was able to do, and I’m particularly proud of the face on the one with his mask open.
All this means is that I actually have nearly enough force to play with them!
I’m thinking next on the force will be a lasrifle squad and a Dracosan Transport
Pictures!
Greetings Ladies and Gentlemen.
I return from the wilds.
By which I mean, I’ve spent three months moving into my new flat, enjoying christmas and then looking for the cable to plug my camera into my computer.
So I have a bunch of stuff to show off!
The New Flat
I have a new Games Room and hobby desk on which to play and work at home rather than relying on a 30 minute trek into town to do anything. It’s worked wonders on my hobby!
Once the table was set up, I immediately invited some friends to have a game with me, we wound up having a three-sided 3000 points apiece battle. Orks vs Chaos Marines vs 30k Mechanicum.
A grand success with chinese takeaway and beer! I was able to snap a fair few photos over that battle but very few were clear shots of the table without blur.. ah well.
Behold the battlefield!
Warlord Titan
I bought my Warlord Titan!
Previously I only had one gun and the head, the rest of the parts arrived shortly after christmas and I was delighted to be able to take some pictures…
“What have I gotten myself into?”
That’s a LOT of parts..
I’m going to get this thing framed…the reaver’s certificate too.
Since these pictures were taken, I’ve partially assembled the torso of the titan
To my minor annoyance, it turns out I hadn’t quite been thorough enough cleaning the parts, so I’ll be going back over these parts to make doubly sure.
That’s the trouble with such large components…
For the curious, the unpainted circle on the side of the chassis is where I had placed another model (with its round base) on the part during spraying.
That whole area is going to be under the shoulder anyway so I figured it didn’t much matter.
Amazingly, the carapace is actually large enough to drive a tank over…
In any case, now I’ve got my camera and photobooth set up again, I’ll be updating my blog a LOT more frequently. and with that, I’ll have a lot more impetus to work on the warlord. I’m thinking I’ll dedicate saturday entirely to it.
I won’t leave the house that day. Hoping to get a lot done!
Dark Mechanicum Acolytes
I had a LOT of fun with these, I’ve been slowly building a collection of Daemon Engines for most of the time I’ve had this blog, so long-time readers know exactly what I’m talking about…
I figured it was time I made some infantry to go with the monsters.
But not just any old cultists or marines would do, they’d have to be something dark, gribbly and John Blanchian.
So I turned to my bits box and some spare dark eldar parts…
I hope you’ll agree that the results speak for themselves!
I’m still painting the back three, but the two with their bases done are complete.
I’ve been working on tentative rules, but the basic idea is that these are a Retinue or can take the role of squad-leader for cultists and traitor-skitarii.
They’re highly upgradeable but basically not designed to stand alone. you -can- give them all plasma guns and field them as mobile special weapons teams, or attach them to the cultists as a major bonus to leadership and other bonuses depending on wargear.
Their secondary role is to be used alongside a Heretek Magos to beef out his power and provide a bodyguard.
To make them, I primarily used Dark Eldar Wracks and Skitarii Ruststalkers as parts-sources. some bits and bobs (mostly servo-skulls and the plasma gun) from other kits too.
Next up, the Magos. I’ve picked up the Everchosen Gaunt Summoner, I think I can get some interesting results by adding DEldar and Admech parts to him…
30k Mechanicum
Running alongside everything else, I went to the Horus Heresy Tournament in Nottingham a couple weeks ago. I had a fantastic time (even though I was the bottom of the league) and I’m definitely going again in june/july
However in preparation, I spent some time prepping my army, so now every single model is fully based and painted.
I built a Macrocarid Explorator using the Land Raider Proteus kit, since my existing Mechanicum Land Raider was no longer part of the army list. Happy to report that it was only destroyed once in the five games I played at the tournament.
I also built and painted a Knight Atrapos.
I’ll post pictures of both the Macrocarid and Atrapos in my next post (probably tomorrow evening)
General lessons learned in the tournament; Mechanicum are okay at melee, but benefit from using the right units for it.
I was fielding my Magos as a Malagra (melee assault specialist) with a unit of Ferrox type Thallaxii. The Rage special rule was meant to make them a lot more lethal, but in practice I never really got to take advantage of it properly.
I also learned that I really REALLY need more tech thralls and transports.
So at some stage I’ll be buying some Triaros transports.
My feeling is that the Ferrox was largely wasted, so I’ve purchased some Scyllax guardian automata to fill the role. uncertain how they’ll mesh with my army since I normally field my Magos with a jetpack. perhaps they’ll play nice with her if I remove the jetpack and replace it with something else…
Solar Auxilia
I actually got a game against the solar auxilia while I was at the tournament, my first proper encounter with them. My previous meetings were when they were attached as allies to a Sons of Horus army so I never really got a sense for what they were good at.
As I’m sure my dear readers are aware, I’m aiming to build a Solar Auxilia army and currently have a command squad/legate-commander, Storm Section and an Arvus Lighter built for them.
After the tournament was over, I bought Book 4 and a pack of Ogryn Charonites to really kick off my army.
I adore the charonite models. They go together with a nice snug fit on all parts and no messing around with bending anything, even those pipes are the right shape to fit as long as you use the correct numbered parts!
They’re also big, a Lot bigger than you might think.
Guard players may be mislead about their size by comparing them to 40k era ogryns.
These are not your regular ogryn in a space suit, they’ve been gene-bulked and given augmetic surgeries. they’re a LOT scarier. They are to 40k ogryns what 40k ogryns are to guardsmen.
I mean wow, they make regular ogryns look puny!
This Ogryn isn’t finished yet, still quite a bit to do on him, but you get the idea of how I’m painting them. The vibrant orange is very striking, I’m having a great time with this army so far!
Hoping when I get to the infantry tercios I won’t get so bogged down I lose the sense of fun with them.
Imperial Assassins
Some may recall my previous posts in which I showed off my Culexus and Callidus assassins?
Well, the new models showed up and I decided I liked the look of the eversor and vindicaire more than my own rough attempts. So I went ahead and bought them.
Nothing much to say, I’ve painted them with the same style as my previous models and I’m very pleased with the results.
Special mention goes to the vindicaire’s glowing eyes and blended camoleoline suit.
Anyway, that’s all for now. It’s been a busy couple months!
Somewhere in there I fitted moving house and christmas…
There are a few pictures here and there of my custom character model for my Mechanicum Magos
She’s gone through a few iterations. the broad strokes are all based on her character story.
![games_workshop_warhammer_40k_adeptus_mechanicus-780x270[1]](https://thiscaveblog.files.wordpress.com/2015/05/games_workshop_warhammer_40k_adeptus_mechanicus-780x2701.jpg)
Magos Yaena is an Adeptus Mechanicus diplomat, of sorts. Her role is to interact with the more snobby high society types, the sort who would find the pungent incence, greasy robes and stink of burnt flesh that the average tech priest inflicts on those around them to be horrifying and revolting and refuse to allow them an audience.
To that end, her cybernetics are concealed, and of the highest quality available, artfully made and decorated.
Her robes of office are crafted to fit in (at least a little) with the gowns and function-robes of imperial courts.
She is expected to be the face of the Mechanicum to these people.
So, her model depicts skirts and corsets. Her combat cybernetics resemble medieval armour plates rather than the power-armor of most tech priests.
Her face is concealed behind a protective mask to prevent scars from debris and to protect against gases and toxins in the air. as part of her duties, she doesn’t wear (or have an implanted version for) the respirator that is common to most in her order.
In her story, the forces of Chaos have come to her world, compelling her to take up arms and fight. In the midst of battle, she confronts a chaos sorcerer of Tzeentch who she manages to best in single combat.
As a parting Gift/Curse the sorcerer imbues her with a measure of his power.
Quickly realising the nature of this power and the inevitable consequences of it, she takes ship and flees the planet. Her substantial personal army travels with her.
The battles I play with my Mechanicum army chronicle her unwilling descent into becoming a member of the Dark Mechanicum (or an agent of the Inquisition, depending on the path I feel like telling the story of at any given time)
This story lets me craft dark mechanicum monstrosities as can be seen elsewhere on this blog as well as having a nominally loyalist army when I choose.
In my 30k era battles the Tahgmata Yaena fights for both factions roughly equally though I lean towards loyalist wherever possible.
Her chosen armament in story is between two and four custom crafted plasma pistols, on tabletop I typically choose to have her carry a plasma fusil or two. either way she’s a close-ranged and extremely shooty character with little melee capability.
I have written full rules to represent her story capabilities, however it’s a bit out of date.
The broad strokes are that in her Loyalist pre-renegade status she’s more focused on boosting the coordination and accuracy of her forces.
Post-Renegade, she gains a form of unstable psychic powers (easier to cancel out than normal) and her rules are much more focused on her personal capabilities.
So far I’ve made four versions of her model, The first is based on a Sisters of Battle Hospitalier. with a few bits and bobs (notably a plasma pistol) and some green-stuff.
This fairly adequately represents her non-combat pre-renegade status. it’s a butt-ugly sculpting of green-stuff, not that my later work is substantially better! I’m practicing, but ah well.
The second is based around a Dark Eldar Lhamaean character with a lot of conversion.
I use Dark eldar parts for a lot of my conversions. lots of poses and lots of nice clean lined parts.
I like the idea that this is Yaena in her battlefield pre-renegade role. This is also my tabletop model at the moment, though that’s set to change when Mk4 is finished and painted.
Third is an effort to use the New Neferata model as a basis. I got a pretty satisfactory build out of it, but I haven’t been able to decide what she should be sitting on. the Magos Prime rules say she can have an Abeyant to ride on, but that seems too small for her. I’d like maybe to build some sort of Admech Skimmer.
This build represents her as the mistress of her forces either before or after her turning renegade.
Build 4 represents her post-renegade status, she’s carrying a corposant stave, two plasma pistols (or a single plasma fusil if I want to follow the actual ruleset) and a rad grenade.
Her backpack (and Mk3’s backpack) are intended to be teleport/jet packs.
Her custom ruleset mimics the Magos in the Horus Heresy books whose rule allow him to negate victory points for killing him, he is considered to have teleported to his ship in orbit at the last moment.
I’m rather pleased with the result of this sculpt, I’m using parts from a second Neferata kit (traded from a friend) and the lower half of Isabella Von Carstein. Plus parts from a Dark Eldar Scourge kit, some 40k Cult Mechanicus/Skitarii kits and the backpack of a Grey Knights Interceptor. (interestingly, also a teleport pack, so that fits in)
On her base is her Cyber Familiar. made using a few clipped parts from the guns and backpack, as well as a couple Ruststalker hands.
I’m quite happy with how gribbly it turned out!
As to her green-stuff, I’ll be smoothing it out a bit and generally improving the sculpt later. but these are the WIP pictures.
Finally, I’ve also bought a Solar Auxilia Command squad. Just finished assembling them this evening and looking forward to painting them. Lovely models with an amazing level of detail.
Interesting tidbit. the Lord Marshal’s cloak is actually provided in two parts. but because of the clever way it’s designed it doesn’t require any green-stuff to blend it together and hide seamlines.
The collar of the cloak is part of the body and overhangs the area where the top of the cloak meets the model, so that seam is hidden, and the center-line seam down the middle of the cloak is a) very closely fitted and b) made into a feature with a lot of detail mouldings there.
I was delighted by this little bit of clever design work, whoever sculpted these guys knew what he or she was doing!
Maybe I’ll get a chance to find out, I’m going down to Nottingham on Wednesday for my Birthday! Planning to bring back a few new projects..maybe even the rest of the Warlord Titan!
I spent the past two evenings (really only four hours at most) painting the Myrmidon Destructors!
Rather pleased with the result, my Secutors wear red robes with white cogs. I decided that to distinguish the Destructors I’d invert the colours, perhaps these ones are from a different world, Metallica maybe.
I got halfway through painting a hem of red cogs before realising how much I hate doing cogs on Myrmidon robes. they’re all folds and really annoying to get looking good. So I elected to mix things up, every myrmidon now has different styles for the cogs and iconography on their robes.
Gives them some definite character to match their different armor.
Behold!
Ah Forgeworld.
I love your stuff, but you’ve really REALLY gotta get a handle on the idea of Weapon Options.
Give me the ability to buy weapons seperately or give them all to me at once. The Myrmidons are the biggest pain in the ass, the secutors come with six guns, three pairs of them. comprising three of the five or six options that kind of unit can take.
Why would you leave out the Rad cleansers? you know we’ll want a fleshbane flamer over the Maxima Bolters.
And why the heck would you be so sadistic as to give enough options for every model to have different guns? nobody does that.
Units always have the same weapon on every model by preference, with the odd special weapon thrown in for good measure.
There is no circumstance I’d want to field a unit of myrmidons with two volkite chargers, two maxim bolters and two plasma fusils.
And the same problem goes for the Myrmidon Destructors. 3 out of 5 of the available weapon options and every gun provided is different…
Oh, and you left out probably the best single weapon they could take.
Graviton Imploders. The only grav weapon in the mechanicum that actually behaves like its 40k contemporaries.
Allow me to paint my dear readers a picture.
Picture a gun, it’s big, it’s chunky and very very sciency.
Now imagine that it wounds its target using the target’s armour save.
Now notice that its AP value is 2. meaning its target doesn’t get that armour save afterwards.
Notice that it’s a Heavy weapon…on a relentless Myrmidon, so it might as well be assault.
Except it’s a Salvo weapon, Salvo 4. You can safely ignore the first value because relentless means it just fires at the best profile.
And since we’re mechanicum..The Myrmidon carrying it is BS5 and it hits on 2s.
the Myrmidon prefers to fight…everything. so if you miss, or you fail to wound (at least against terminator equivelants) you simply reroll 1s.
Now pan your minds eye back and witness that there are three of them…
It should look something like this.
Yep, I bought some Myrmidon Destructors and decided that they needed to have Graviton Imploders rather than the rather boring loadouts they came with. So I pulled some spare parts off my Kataphron Destroyers. I figure the clampy claws from the Breachers will work nicely as alternatives to the industrial clamps the Myrmidons came with, rather dull parts those.
Exception to the Irradiation Engine, but I want two of those for my upcoming Macrocarid Explorator (read: Land Raider Proteus with radioactive-deathrays)
My Friday Horus Heresy battles are gonna get a bit tougher for my terminator-bringing opponents!
A bit of a short update while I have some spare time:
I bought the new Tahgmata Army List book and the Macrotek/Servo-Automata bundle when it was released.
I’m loving not having to carry a 8lb book to every game I play! having a self-contained Codex style book for my 30k Mechanicum is fantastic.
A few of the new things in the book particularly interest me.
The Ordinatus Minoris Macro-Engine
It’s like two or three Krios tanks got together and tried to lug around a warlord titan’s armaments…
Except for the fact that there are -two- versions.
One can carry a Bellicosa Volcano cannon (normally mounted on the Warlord)
The other is a Sonic cannon of such prodigous size and power that Noise Marines whimper and cry and go home. Eldar fall silent in awe, and even Goff Rockas stand slack-jawed in shock.
Draw a 7″ wide line across the table from the gun, 72″ long, or to the table-edge. whichever happens first.
Now kill roughly 5/6ths of the models under it.
Do it again, every turn. until all the enemies are dead.
I sorta want one, and I sorta don’t.
Macrocarid Explorator
In previous Mechanicum lists, they could take the Build-Your-Own Land-Raider kit.
Apparently that wasn’t good enough. Now they can take the Macrocarid.
It’s basically a land raider in all but name, but lacks the front assault ramp and can take a few weapon systems the land-raider couldn’t…
For example, sponson mounted Irradiation Engines.
Because torrents of cancer is funny 😛
I’m thinking this is my excuse to buy and convert a Land Raider Proteus.
The question remains of where to get the Irradiation Engines from, the only kit that actually has them is the Myrmidon Destructor kit. which has one in each group of three dudes.
What I’m thinking is that I can pull the irad engines off two of those kits and replace all the weapons in two squads with the Graviton Cannon, a solid and potent weapon I’d quite like to field in any case.
I can convert the graviton cannons using grav-gun bits from my bits box (I have a lot spare)
And that will leave me with at least two spare volkite culverins and two conversion beamers.
Always useful for other conversions…
But in any case. on to the matter at hand:
I made a thing.
It took me about two hours.
After my last post, some may be curious how my last project went…
Well, I’m pleased to show off the completed Warp-Strider Daemon Engine.
On tabletop it’s either a Hellbrute (twin linked lascannon + Heavy Flamer) or my own ruleset.
WS3, BS3, S6, F12, S12, R11, I3, A2, HP3
Unit-Type: Walker
Unit Composition: 1 – 3 Warpstriders
Weapons: Twin linked Lascannon, Two Heavy Flamers
Special Rules: Daemon, DaemonForge, Move Through Cover, It Will Not Die, Warpstrider, Soul Fire
Warpstrider – Arcane coils translate the clanking monstrosities through the warp in a flare of actinic light, etching the retinas of all who behold their movements
During the shooting phase, the Warpstrider may opt instead to Run up to 18″.
Any intervening units between its start and end positions must take a Blind Test
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Reaver Laser Blaster
My experiences with my Reaver Titan so far have been…great fun, but I’ve been pretty unreliable on actual combat-effectiveness.
My Reaver has been destroyed in every battle and its most effective weapon was the one I originally tacked on as an afterthought, namely the Apocalypse Missile Launcher.
With the new additional rules in HH5: Tempest, the Reaver is now effectively immune to melee, so now my only real concern is being outgunned by another titan, or being cherrytapped by lascannons or meltaguns.
So, durability is not a problem, my weapons however are wildly sub-par
Here’s a Weapon Breakdown:
Power Fist – So far, it hasn’t killed anything with this weapon, I’m definitely still hoping to get some use out of it, it’s visually the coolest weapon the reaver carries and it’d be a pity to replace it.
Apocalypse Missile Launcher – So far my most effective choice, a barrage of AP3 large blasts across an enemy gunline is very reliable for killing pretty much any non-terminator enemies.
Melta Cannon – I think my target-priority skills need work, I keep targeting things that the melta cannon isn’t built for, like superheavy tanks. Maybe it’d be more effective against regular armor like Leman Russes.
Laser Blaster – I’ve finally finished assembling mine, but my experiences with a double-barrelled turbolaser have been pretty intimidating, I figure an extra shot of the same profile can’t go amiss!
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After the realisation that I now have five daemon engines of various kinds and no actual army to put them in, I’ve bought some chaos raptors/warp talons to convert into Dark Mechanicum themed infantry
I’m especially pleased with the one on the left, I put a spare set of toes from a warp-talon under a shoulder-plate, the result reminds me of a leech.
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Arvus Lighter
I don’t actually have any photos of this in progress, but I’ll post up some photos of the whole thing next post.
Some may be aware that I’ve long owned the seperate titan princeps and moderatii box, as well as the Titan Tech Priest. they’re technically intended for the Reaver, but since moderatii are identical in both..I figured I’d paint them appropriately for the Warlord.
The Warlord’s head comes with an extra Princeps-Alpha for tabletop use, so I figured I’d make a Thing out of painting the entire crew.
Behold!
For the Princeps, I’ve added a Cognis-Signum badge to his base, GW went through a bout of providing them for free in every mail order when the Admech and skitarii came out, so I naturally have quite a few!
I’m still waiting on word about my new flat, so I’m unwilling to buy the rest of the titan until that’s all sorted in (hopefully) a few weeks. Plenty of time to handle my other projects!
To-Wit, my entire WIP-box, containing as it does four entire squads of various types of Admech and half a squad of Solar Auxilia…
For those not aware, as soon as I saw the release announcement of the Warlord Titan some months ago I made the declaration on the spot, I must have it. Did some figuring, worked out that I could afford it and had the space/tools/willpower to complete it.
Some complication is to be had by the fact that I will be moving house over the next month or so, so rather than have the box sitting under my desk taunting me for the whole move, I decided to invest in just the Head of the titan to start. It should take me a week or so to get it done, from there I should be well settled into the routine of moving house.
I’ll order the rest of the titan when I have a workspace to build it again 🙂
My package arrived in the mail this morning!
I was kind of lucky to live in a house-share because I was fast asleep at the ridiculous hour of the morning they delivered it..
But in any case, I woke up, discovered the package waiting for me, unboxed, cleansed the parts and anointed them with the holy Abaddon Black Spray Paint…
Then I went out to Games Workshop and set to work.
While everyone else celebrated the official release of Age of Sigmar, I painted and painted and painted..
So far, so good!
The plan broadly is that the head will be orange and white as shown, and most of the armour plates will be blue.
At least a couple plates will be done in red and dedicated to the Mechanicum with cogs and cognis-mechanicum logos.
Armaments’wise I plan to have a volcano cannon, two apocalypse missile launchers and a Saturnine Lascutter to start, I may invest in other weapons depending on performance in battles.
For now though, just the head. On with the new adventures!
Today was a good day, I spent the morning cleaning resin and spraypainting stuff.
Then I went out to Games Workshop and assembled a bunch of things.
Then I spent a couple hours painting…this guy…
Total painting time: about two hours. I’m pretty happy!
The idea was to switch out for a colour palette I don’t normally use, namely flourescent orange and greys, I wound up using my usual metals and washes over most of it anyway but the orange and the moon-rock dusty basing worked out really nicely!
The photos don’t really do it justice I feel.
I also gave him pupils in his eyes..not that you can see them. Originally they were hilariously wide-eyed and staring off towards the left, like he’d just seen some Shenanigans and was determined to kill it with the pistol. I actually broke down laughing at it after realising how silly it looked, then went and narrowed his eyes with more rakarth to reduce the “kill you with my mind” stare a bit.
I think the result looks good when it’s not in a uber-high resolution photo 😛
This Cave 