Red Scorpions

As I posted a while back I'm going to build a new marine army & decided it would be the Red Scorpions.
So why the Scorpions ? a couple of things really, I didn't want to do one of the normal choices but at the same time I didn't want to do my own chapter either as I've already done both of those things.

If you look closely you notices their is only 9 of the squad as I forgot one.

Ok I know there are many other off shoots but from the very first time I read IA 4 the Anphelion Project I liked the Scorpions for even thought there a codex space marines chapter there's a certain mystery about them & their different enough to make them interesting.

This model was lying around a long time so it nice to see some paint on him.

While supplements are going to be cool & hopefully let players build fully armies I've more then enough information on the Scorpions to make them nice & fluffy plus I won't have wait for a supplement to be released or hand over 40 euro for a supplement so its win win.

On IC & squad lesders I'll be using FW pads like the one in this picture.

History
No records remain of the chapters founding or from which Primogenetor chapter their genseed was taken.
At the end of M.39 the Red Scorpions undertook the Orden crusade with the whole chapter going deep into the Orden Rift & out of contact for 300 years with what ever happened inside the rift unknown out side the chapter.

Like his brother above this lad was a long time in the bits box.

The plan is to use the old traits system for creating the way they'll play, now the traits they us are only minor ones, one advantage trait: purity above all which means that any tactical or veteran squid may upgrade its Sergeant to an Apothecary for 25pts.

Drawback trait is have pride in your colours which means that no units can use infiltrators or scouts special rules & in addition scout squads & scout bike squads become an 0-1 choice.
I might even go for a built in warlord trait but more on that in another post as the army leader is at the mount been brought to life.

I found this old style heavy bolter in the bits box  & love it.

Anyway that's kind of the plan for the army & with a new marine dex on the way it should feel nice & fresh, what I got painted up so far is a libby & a tactical squad & their rhino, what I'm looking for from this lot is a decent table top quality paint job that won't take for ever to do.

 Which will mean drilling out the weapons a little bit of detail work on the likes of the eyes & squad markings, as this is a fluffy army the squads will always be used as they are so making them doesn't become a problem.

The banner is just pined on so  that I can remove it as seen in the picture below.

There was only ever going to be one winner when it came to picking which company it would be & that is the 6th which was the company used for the Anphelion investigation force a long with some of the first company.

Something I'm doing with this army which is a first for me is varnishing it, which unfortunately darken down the slate gray colour a bit but this will hopefully be a small price to pay if it helps to stop the models getting chipped.

I also have the flamer pinned on so that it can be changed 

The bases are the easies anyone could ever wish to do as they are just bits of res slate I picked up on one of my walks up in the Wicklow mountains & I think is a nice contras against the marine , as I said I going for a quick decant table top quilty on this army.

 Oddly enough the libby is only the second one I've ever painted the other one was a long time ago when I was thinking of doing a Soul Drinkers army, but even more odd is the fact the Apothecary is the first one of them I've ever painted.

I haven't got another weapon ready yet but you get the idea.

So there we have it the start of the Red Scorpions, how big this army will become I've no idea but I've a feeling it could get quite big, will it become a whole company ? we'll have to wait & see.

I've still to do the gunner for the rhino.

So thanks for dropping in & if you enjoyed it (or not ) please call back again I leave you with some more pictures below.

Alarm call, theres how many stealers.

Once again I entered the dark confines of a spacehulk, with the broodlord my son Paddy plotting my downfall.
I'd been on a bit of a roll against Paddy lately but this mission was going to push me hard, it named alarm call & with a starting force of a libranian & a single terminator with lighting claws.

 I'd to try to revive at lest 3 out of 5 terminators that where placed in different rooms around the spacehulk & then get to hell out of doage, which meant getting the librarian & 2 other terminators off the board at a certain point.

The 5 downed terminators One sergeant, one with a flamer & 3 others as I said are placed in different rooms 3 by the marine player & 2 by the stealer player so this is where the marine player has to make a choice as he is either going to place the sergeant or the flamer more or less losing the one the stealer player places.

Both have their advantages that I won't go into here but I went with placing the sergeant in the room closes to where the librarian with the terminator would enter the board meaning I would have to make do without the flamer who was placed nearer to a stealer entry point.

So off I went on my mission with all going to plan & 3 terminators getting revived while roping in Paddy with a red herring for good measure, although I did make a bit of a mistake which was to cost me a terminator.
But still I had 4 & was heading for the exit.

Whit the stealers pouring in to the hulk from all directing I was in danger of getting swamped, but these terminators are bad ass boys & can look after themselves I hope.
The great thing about spacehulk is that you know that sooner or later it's going to turn into a bloodbath.

 & turn into a bloodbath it did wit the marines selling their lives dearly while all the time getting nearer to the exit, till it got to a point where I was down to just two marines, which meant I'd have to go back for one of the other two that I hadn't revived.

This was now going to have to turn into a cleanse mission if I was to have any hope of getting out a live, as their was more steater on the board then I think I'd ever seen before playing spacehulk as Paddy sensing my end was near had decided to turn over all his blips.

For the next couple of turns Paddy could only watch in horror as the death toll of stealers went up & up, until a path was starting to clear for me to go back, it was at this point Paddy was to say to me, this is ridicules the amount of stealers you've killed the 2 marines should be dead by now.

This lead to me making the mistake that was to cost me the game as I look at him & smiled the Emperor protects, you see the thing is I use my Wordbearers when I play spacehulk.
The chaos gods where to make me pay for those remarks straight away as my next overwatch shot was to roll snake eyes jamming my gun & leaving me to watch in horror as a stealer closed in on the librarian & riping him in half bring the game to an end.

My thanks & well done to Paddy for what was an epic game of spacehulk & thanks to you for dropping in hope you enjoyed the post & will call back again soon.

Ligths, camera, bolt action

At heart I'm a 40k modeller & I don't do any modelling that is not going to be used in the 40K universe but that doesn't stop me from trying other games from time to time.

So last week a good friend of mine was home for a few days from Germany, now usually when Darra comes home we'd have a game of FOW but he'd done a post on his blog the other day on different WWII games ( Dispatches from the Front ) a couple of which I'd played before but one which I hadn't & which I'd enjoyed reading about on his blog was bolt action.

I'd left a comment saying I'd like to give it a try so Darra sent me a mail saying he'd becoming over & would I like to try a game, so he sent me over a mission briefing & a list of the models we need & we arranged to meet up in gamers world for the game.

 So what about the game well between the two armies there was about 100 guys & a tank so a nice size for a skirmish game.
Now one of the things that a lot of players seem to forget is that just because you have models of a certain game it doesn't mean you can't you them in other games.

I've used my GW models in other game like enduring freedom & tomorrows world & that is what we used for this game as well, think about it if you have the models all you need do is buy the rulebook & you've a bran new game to enjoy for cheap.this goes for a lot of scales.

So the mission was we were fighting over a town trying to capture different buildings, now one of the really cool things about this game imo is how the turns play out, it not a case of you go I go, no how it works is for every unit you've got you get a dice as does your opponent, needless to say the two sets of dice have to be different colour.

You then put all the dice in a tin or a bag & draw one out the owning player can then activate one of his units, you then draw another one & so on until all the dice & all the units have been activated which is then the end of the turn.

While the game itself seems as if it would be easy enough to pick up I would imaging it would be challenging to become good at as every time a unit gets hit it gets a marker which means it has to take a leadership test to do anything with each token adding -1 to your leadership.

This can be render your army useless very quickly as I found out to my cost & is another thing I liked about the game as it means you really have to think about what your doing, so all in all I'd give bolt action the thumbs up & while I won't be going out & buying the models I can see myself picking up the rulebook at some stage.

Oh another thing about this game is how much of a big thing one of the players is & that really is as it should be as this is after all a WWII game & tanks where very powerful in those days & not to easy to get rid of.

There's an old saying that pennies make pounds, in this game all they do is make your units useless, buy that the price you pay for bad play.

So my thanks to Darra for the game as always mate it was enjoyable if not the kind of history lesson I was looking for lol.
So go grab yourself a piece of the action bolt action that is & thanks for dropping in & do call back again soon.

INQ28 Tanta

As the rouge trader Maxamillia neared the beastman settlement she could see one of the beastmen coming in her direction, the arco-flagellant subject 48 payed no attention to the beastman & just walked along at the rouge traders side.

With the way events had taken a turn the Duchess like to keep the fearsome flagellant ( that she had won in a game of chance awhile back) close to hand, as she rounded the corner of one of the buildings she could see Ugo-cal standing on a cat walk out side of a raised building with what looked like from this distance a servo skull floating beside him, this must be where the meeting was to take place.

It was at this point that the sounds of shots rang out from somewhere over to her left & looking over she saw to man unknown to her making for where Ugo was with one of them unloading at Ugo from a heavy-stubber.

The rouge trader whispered some word into the ear of the arco-flagellant bring it from some kind of dead sleep into a killing machine & sent it off to engage the two man, while she continued

Next there was the sound of an explosion over to the north of the settlement, one of the Inquisitors that have been on her trail lately must have gotten word of the meeting & come to deal out the Emperor's justice as they like to call killing things.

All around her she could see beastmen been cut down while from up on the catwalk Ugo returned fire on the guy with the heavy stubber before beaning knocked off his feet, sending the beastman with her off to aid Ugo the Duchess decided it might be better to get out of sight behind the cover of some near by oil drums.

She always knowing it was a bad idea to get in voled with Inquisitor Price but the money on offer was just to good & after all had a high lifestyle to maintain, but still money was no good to you if you where not around to enjoy it.

Gunfire was coming from all over the settlement now as the Inquisition forces continued to make short work of the beastmen & make there way towards the building where Ugo was, Peaking around the side of one of the barrels she could see subject 48 closing in on the guy with the heavy stubber.

Unbeknown to the rouge trader a fight was now braking out between the men at the base of a ladder at the back of the building where Ugo was while Ugo himself was trying to get back onto his feet, from a little implanted camera in the arco-flagellants head the Duchess could watch on a little screen from the safety for her cover as the arco-flagellant came upon the man with the heavy stubber from behind raining down blows on him from his electro- flails, the Duchess shut off the screen at this point as the sight of blood always upset her stomach.

Inquisitor Stefen Hindelmann, along with one of his henchmen Captain Josiah Stein had finally cut down the last of the beastmen that had charged them & now had a clear path to the main building where they had earlier seen the leader of the beastmen Ugo-cal but who was now out of sight of them, they would have to try to get up on to the cat walk.

As they neared the base of the ladder leading up to the platform they where set upon by a huge cyber- mastiff that dived strength for them nearly knocking the Inquisitor from his feet such was it strength.
Meanwhile Olan Daberk & Lokko Light who work for Inquisitor Verrick trisk (who was recovering from injuries he received at the hands of one of the rouge traders henchmen) where fighting with some unknown person at the other end of the building unaware of the fact the the arco-flagellant was closing in on them.

One of the henchmen who was a very acrobatic leaped from the combat high onto the ladder 7 started to climb up just as the arco-flagellant smashed into the fight his electro-flails lashing out that the others in the .combat

With the beast down Inquisitor  Hindelmann sent  Captain Stein up the ladder while he finished it off with his daemon weapon, on reaching the catwalk Stein was attacked by Ugo-cal who bleeding from wounds from the shots that had hit him from the heavy stubber had gotten back to his feet.

Subject 48 made short work of the two man at the in combat & was looking around for a new target when he received the signal to stand down from the Duchess who had made her way over to the building where the Inquisitor & his henchman where now both engaged in combat with Ugo & seemed to be getting the better of him, the one thing the rouge trader couldn't afford to let happen was for Ugo to be taken captive.

So rounding the dead mastiff with subject 48 now back at her side she waited at the base of the ladder to see what the out come might be.

From high up on the roof  Lokko Light could only watch helplessly as his friend & the other unknown man was bet to a pulp by the arco-flagellant who had now gone off somewhere leaving the way clear for Light to go down to aid his companion.

On the catwalk above just as the Inquisitor & the Captain had gotten the better of Ugo & where about to tie him up to take him with them for questioning he noticed a big group of beastmen heading there way, they would have to make a hasty retreat out of here leaving Ugo behind.

Light was relived to find that though badly hurt his friend was with his help able to walk which was just as well with what seemed to be a big group  of beastmen heading their way.

Taking one last look back behind him Inquisitor Hindlemann noticed a figure step out from the building onto the cat walk & head over to Ugo-cal, while the rouge trader slipped away unnoticed by anyone with subject 48 at her side.

Below some more pictures from the game which are a bit all over the place this post so sorry about that as I had to do this one a bit differently, so thanks for dropping in & do call back again sometime soon.