Tag: Durham Raiders

A Bunch of Thank Yous

On 5th March 2017

I first off want to thank the people who made the weekend possible.

To Adam who wrote the fluff which directed the narrative, I know a lot of people loved his s croon about the various planets in the system.

Graham who used his programming skills to write the branching method which worked out how the story unfolded.

Phil who organised the logistics of how things would work during the event, and who sweated moving around tables for the doubles.

Andrew, David and the two James, who as the remaining members of the committee helped steer us in the right direction and in a way that would benefit the community and the club.

And of course my beautiful girls, Megan and Lindsay who alongside Megan’s mum Jane, cooked the meals that were e joyed over the weekend.

These people put up with my madness, panic and worry as I worked to coordinate people and make this event work, they kept me more or less sane and I am proud to call these people my friends.

But the people I want to thank the most are those of you that came, it’s was so inspiring to see people travel far and wide to come and play five games of The Horus Heresy here in our little corner of North East England.

I will speak a bit more about how the weekend went in a few days, along with some feedback we got, but for now I just wanted to say thank you.

First Game of Dropfleet

By michael

On 8th December 2016

In Blog

On Tuesday, Hawks lovely Talon, Ken travelled all the way up from Hartlepool to show me and Madison the ropes of Dropfleet Commander.

We played the starter scenario straight from the two player box set with those fleets, the UCM and the Scourge. My UCM fleet consisted of three battlegroups one with two Toulons and a Berlin, one with two New Orleans and a Moscow and the last one with just a Seattle. Madisons Scourge fleet also had thee battlegroups, one with two Harpys and an Ifrit, one with two Gargoyles and a Shenlong, and a final one with a Wyvern.

My strategy was to try and take out his cruisers with mine from a distance allowing my strike cruisers to take the ground clusters, well they say a battle plan rarely survives first contact with the enemy and in this case that was 100% accurate.

On the left hand side, I sent in my Berlin and two Toulons to try and stop his Shenlong and Gargoyles, but Madison ran his Shenlong under silent running the whole way, so by the time I had closed in on the centre of the board, I was just out of scan range, which allowed him to open fire on me and send my Berlin hurtling into oblivion, before picking off my Toulons as they pursued his escaping Gargoyles.

On the other side of the table I threw both my other two battlegroups to try and take the clusters on the far right, but Madison threw in both of his two remaining battlegroups. I easily picked off his Harpys, but the devastating close combat attacks of his Wyvern crippled both my Seattle and Moscow, before his Ifrit dealt the final blow to my Moscow which set off a series of explosions which took out my Seattle and his Wyvern.

My New Orleans were able to take the far right clusters and then turned to the centre cluster where Madison was also sending his ships after taking the far left clusters. The game ended with us destroying each other’s ground forces in the centre leaving us in control of one set of clusters each, so the game was decided on kill points, and sadly my ships went down easily and fast to his

The UCM were fun to play, but the key with them against the Scourge is to keep distance, the Scourge are fast and are very lethal up close, despite their lacking in long ranges attacks.

Overall I am really pleased with the game, and I am looking forward to getting some more in. It’s very much like submarine warfare in space with much of the tactics of the game dictated towards keeping your ships from developing spikes and marking them easier to kill.

Like Dropzone Commander it’s a game about combined arms and you can’t simply min/max your lists, they really do have to be balanced in order to win.

Here We Go

By michael

On 5th August 2016

In Blog

I got picked up at an godly hour this morning by Christian before picked up Graham and we headed off to Cardiff for Takaan-Reva – Drowned in Flame, The Imperial Truths summer Horus Heresy event.

Yesterday I managed to get all of the little bits and bobs I needed to do, done, the only thing I need now is some superglue for spot repairs, but I am sure I can pick that up from the venue, Firestorm Games, I still have a pot of Army Painter superglue unopened, but I have always found that particular brand prone to blocking and the lid tends to become hard to put on very quickly.

Anyway here is my army in all its glory

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A post shared by Michael Botterill (@biggeordiegeek)

Managed to get both of my full MKIII tactical squads shoulder pads sorted with Lahman Medium, leaving me with a few squads still left to sort out in my legion force overall. They do look a lot better now that’s been done mind.

Really looking forward to the weekend, now I am gonna kick back and enjoy a good book, Angels of Caliban by Gav Thorpe, which I have really been getting into.

Oh and I may have finished this off last night, take a look and tell me what you think!

Company of Legends – Horus Heresy Weekender Event Pack

Our Horus Heresy Weekender Day 2

By michael

On 15th March 2016

In Blog

I had to take a couple of days to recover before posting this, so sorry its a bit late, but I was absolutely shattered after the weekender.

I ended up going to bed relatively early on Saturday, but the rest of the guys for the most part carried on partying, the evidence of which Phil cleared up for us on Sunday morning because I ended up sleeping in. As a result I had to rush downstairs to put the sausages in the oven for the breakfast.

Aidan showed up after having to attend to his parents house being broken into, which was good news for me as it meant I got to play in the apocalypse game. So after breakfast myself and a few of the guys proceeded to rearrange the hall into two large tables for the games, one a 5 vs 5 and the other a 4 vs 4. Both games used the same scenario, the Loyalists were holding a building as a HQ on the planet and they had to keep the traitors from getting anyone into it.

My team decided to make our deployment zone an absolute fortress as we knew our opponents had in their army, Horus himself, and his ability to deep strike without scattering is pretty powerful. However we discovered as we started turn two that one of our team had interpreted our advertising the day as an apocalypse style game as bring as many points as you want rather than sticking to 3500 points as it was supposed to be, he actually had 5000 points on the board.

One of our team did have to leave to go home at lunch time, his army was a Raven Guard army that was bar an initial couple of squads of terminators was all deep striking, so he ended up not deploying anything else, and I decided to not deploy my Storm Eagles filled with Terminators and Invictarus Suzerains, or my Fire Raptor, to try and compensate for the initial disparity in the points. So that was a bit of a sour note for the day, and the player in question did annoy a few people, but I guess it means that I need to be far more explicit in my descriptions of games.

I did enjoy the large game and it did flow OK, but it wasn’t as good as the doubles games which seemed to work so much better, so next year I don’t think we are going to do them and stick to doubles as the largest games.

The narrative highlight to the day for me was Horus being killed by 10 Firedrakes, 15 Terminators and 6 Boarding Marines from the Salamanders and 10 Terminators from the Imperial Fists, it was quite an epic moment and was arguably the moment we won the game, that said it felt a little wrong considering the huge advantage our side started with.

Once the games were over with we did a little packing up and then had a small presentations ceremony. The final results were as follows:-

Winning Faction:- Loyalists – 507 Points
Losing Faction:- Traitors – 481 Points

Sportsmanship Award:- Jens Träff
Best Painted Army:- Steven Henry
Best Loyalist General:- Graham Campbell
Best Traitor General:- Steven Henry

So the Loyalists all received a winners medal, (no expense spared!) whilst the Traitors collected the coveted Wooden Spoon.

We also had a little raffle to raise some money for the British Heart Foundation, which managed to raise £50, so well done to everyone, and a special thanks to the chap who kindly donated the top two prizes an almost complete set of Citadel Air Paints and a paint rack, he asked to remain anonymous, but I want to give that chap a hand none the less.

The guys were absolutely amazing and unbeknownst to me they had a whip round and got some flowers for the girls, which left them both in absolute tears they were that touched by the gesture.

So with that the majority of guests disappeared and went home, whilst myself and a few of the other Raiders, packed up the hall, and well, it felt sad leaving Moor House again, its a place with a lot of happy memories for me, but we will be there again soon for Kings of the North!

But we had an amazing weekend, and the fact that people are asking to do it again next year shows me that it has been a real success.

Honestly I am still recovering a bit from it, and I am sort of hoping now that I have shown that its doable, that the club will take it on, and hopefully make next years event far better, already they are starting play testing of scenarios from Book 6 to try and find the perfect missions for it.

As for me and the girls, well we are having a short rest before I go do some demo work at the Newcastle Film and Comic Con, followed by hitting the ground with Kings of the North!

Our Horus Heresy Weekender Day 1

By michael

On 12th March 2016

In Blog

The view of my first game, gulp!

Well we have been having an amazing weekend so far, I have played two very brutal and entertaining games. We had a bit of a delayed start because the guy with the mission packs arrived 25 minutes after the games were meant to start!

In game one I took on Harry’s Questoris Knights list, which consisted of two Cerastus Knight-Lancers, a Crusader, a Cerastus Knight-Atrapos, a Paladin and an Errant, oh and a Warhound Titan!

My game went ok, decided to put the Leviathan Seige Dreadnought in my list instead of a Deredeo, and that was a wise decision, after my Fellblade softener them up a little, the Leviathan was able to rip apart both Lancers. And that was about all I could do, after that it was simply a case of how long I could stay alive, the Fellblade and Leviathan both got taken out as soon as Harry realised what a threat they were, and my fliers failed to do anything but take a single hull point off the Atrapos.

My Poor Invictarus Suzerain

The game ended with a single Invictarus Suzerain being attacked by both the Atrapos and the Errant, he didn’t survive long at all.

My second game, which I don’t have photos of, because my phone was charging, but I played against Aidan’s Sons of Horus, and it was utterly brutal, I could have won in turn two because Aidan’s army was a drop pod army and, he landed 3 pods in his turn 1 after I moved my squads into optimal positions for claiming the objectives.

His plasma Reaver squads managed to kill half of themselves and then I finished off everything bar a Contemptor Dreadnought which was left with two hull points With Remus Ventanus and my Damocles Command Rhino, he had to roll 5+ to bring in his reserves, but alas he successfully brought in more Reavers a Fire Raptor and a Xiphon.

Christian Always Was a Poser!

My plan was to fly my two large tactical squads in Storm Eagles onto the objectives, however for one squad, the Fire Raptor caused thier Storm Eagle to crash and burn leaving only five men alive, the other squad ended up being charged by Horus and a unit of Justarian Terminators (using thier updated rules despite the new Red Book not having hit the shelves yet, but we can forgive him that), and ended up dying in huge numbers and being caught up in a sweeping advance by Horus.

At the end of the game, I had gotten First Blood and Linebreaker, and Aidan had one objective claimed by his Justarians, making me think I had managed to just get a draw, with the vast majority of most of the units in the game utterly destroyed, then Aidan pointed out that Maloghurst the Twisted made Reavers Troops rather than Elites, meaning, he actually had two objectives, turning my 2 all draw into a 4-2 loss.

Sadly after that game Aidan had to zoom off as someone had put his parents window out so he had to go to theirs and deal with that.

As a result I had to rearrange the doubles games and drop out myself, which was okay as I got to collect up all the dishes and cups and help the girls in the kitchen.

The games however looked amazing, and you can see some photos from the doubles games below in an Instagram post.

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A post shared by Michael Botterill (@biggeordiegeek)

A Very Drunk Dark Artisan

Last night was very messey, the guys played a few quite roucious games of Cards Against Humanity, I played Star Munchkin, and Harry Scarr (The Dark Artisan) got very very drunk as its his 30th birthday this week, but I suppose that is what people can do here, just chill out, knock away a few drinks and relax with some great gaming.

But the real heroes of this weekend have been the ladies in my life, Lindsay, Megan and Megan’s mum Jane. They have slaved away tirelessly in the kitchen to prepare our food, we had a delicious lunch of Hot Dogs and tonight they made us mince and dumplings which was absolutely delicious.

The Weekends Miracle Workers

I cannot express how grateful I am to them for helping us out, I must admit doing the food has been a constant worry, and the stress of making sure there was enough. The girls have done nothing but offer support and have really been the people to make this weekend happen, so girls, I thank you.

Tomorrow is the Apocalypse game, so let’s see how that goes.

All Arrived

By michael

On 11th March 2016

In Blog

Everyone has arrived for the Weekender, including a guy who has flown all the way over from Sweden to play with us, and already some awesome games are going on. Me and Adam have made some simple Jungle terrain pieces, with him supplying the polystyrene bases and me supplying the aquarium plants.

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A post shared by Michael Botterill (@biggeordiegeek)

Lindsay and Megan have been so helpful, I cannot thank them enough for cooking us an amazing dinner of bacon, spinach and tomato pasta.

The tables are for the most part set up and all we are waiting on now is Aidan with the mission packs. We currently have three games of Heresy going on, a game of Deathwatch Overkill and X-Wing.

I think tomorrow is going to be a really good day.

Gearing Up For The Weekend

By michael

On 11th March 2016

In Blog

I write this as I am lying in bed shattered and a bit nervous about the forthcoming weekend.

It’s our Horus Heresy weekender and if all goes well the past five months of planning and work will result in an awesome weekend.

I started the week off with a trip to Costco to grab the pop and sweets I am going to be selling (trying to raise a little bit more cash so the event is not a financial loss for me), and we got a lot of stuff, ending up spending £90 on 168 cans of Pepsi Max, 12 cans of Monster, 40 packs of crisps, 32 Twix and 48 Mars Bars.

With that done I set my mind to finishing off the last bit of terrain I had to paint, this time it was some stuff from Secret Weapons Minitures, three Imperial Generators and a Control Panel. The terrain is lovely and detailed but sadly Royal Mail got me on the customs and took £13 as thier ransom to let me have them.

They weren’t as big as I expected, for some reason I thought they would be twice the size, but they are lovely none the less, and I am very happy that Secret Weapon Minitures helped us out with this little bit of scenery sponsorship.

I managed to get them painted up today, not my best ever paint job and I think a better painter would have got much better results from them, my biggest mistake was using too much Gulliman Blue on the plasma parts as I was in too much of a rush to finish them off.

I also received some aquarium plants that I had ordered quite some time ago not realising they were coming from China, anyway they were supposed to be 5 packs of 10, but what I actually had delivered were 5 individual plants, an eBay case was opened as soon as they arrived as I feel pretty ripped off and think a substation so refund is justified.

But the five plants I have will need to be put to use as Adam (writer of the event pack) has his heart set on a jungle table, luckily we have son coloured aquarium plants that were meant to go alongside these ones. Plan is that they will go on a green mat alongside my LotR terrain, which is painted up in a sandstone effect to try and stimulate a long abandoned settlement that the jungle has reclaimed.

Sadly we had one player drop out of the event this week, so I had to quickly press gang my friend Harry to play with his Knigjts, some borrow off a friend and a Warhound Titan to give him a nasty Questoris Knight army!

The weekend will be his first ever games of the Horus Heresy and I am playing him first, so should be interesting to see how it goes, I mean he has played his Knights in local 40k tournaments as an army and not performed fantastically so will be interesting to see how they play in 30k.

A Week With Scenery and Looking Forward to the Weekender

By michael

On 6th March 2016

In Blog

In preparation for our Heresy Weekender, now less than a week away, I have been working on some scenery.
Our good friend at Amera Plastic Mouldings, a rather excellent North East company, gifted us some scenery. We got a Z250 Battlefield Crater Set, a Z230 Redoubt and a Z211 Bombed-Out Building.
So I took a day to get these painted up, they do require cutting off the plastic sheet but that’s nothing major, and once off they took primer nicely and were very quick to get painted up. I mostly used washes and dry bushing, keeping the scheme very simple overall.

I also got painted up a set of Promethium Relay Pipes, again keeping it rather simple, I painted it with Warplock Bronze, Balthasar Gold & Leadbelcher, then washing it with Agrax Earthshade then dry brushing it all with Necron Compound, which I found gives them a nice weathered look.

Other Models I Got Painted

I did manage to get a few more models painted up this week starting with some Corpuscarii Electro-Priests, meaning that for my escalation league March list I need to now paint up 10 Skitarii Rangers, so that’s something for me to start on this week.

The other model I managed to get round to finishing was my Spartan Assault Tank, now I didn’t have the best cast for this and as I bought it online from a third party, I was unable to go to Forgeworld and ask for replacements, but using lots of forum posts I was able to figure out how to best build it. I will say however that putting the tracks on was a right faff on and I am glad that Forgeworld now send it out with them already attached, so when I go to them to purchase another vehicle in this class I can avoid that palaver.

Annoyingly the round bit of the hinge on one side of the assault ramp broke in transit, so I had to glue the doors shut, but I am glad I got the Ultramarines Land Raider Doors, they really do add something to the model. I still have to decide on what transfers if any I am going to put on the model, but at some point I will be adding the obligatory Heavy Support symbols.

Audio Book

This week I have been listening to Thousand Sons by Graham McNeil, which is frankly an amazing book, although it does fail to explain a few little things, in particular what the Tutelaries are, my own theory is that they are minor daemons of Tzeentch, the perfect sleeper agents ready to help drive the Sons of Magnus into the arms of Tzeentch. The Thousand Sons come across as very arrogant in the book and their downfall feels almost inevitable though out the entire book.

The only real criticism I would have of the book is that you don’t really get to see much of the non-psychic Thousand Sons, the ordinary bolster wielding line troops, and that would have been nice to see. My main Space Marine army are Blood Ravens so I do have a soft spot for crusade and heresy era Thousand Sons fluff.

Am about halfway through it at this point, not sure if I will finish it before the weekender, but who knows.

Gaming

I got in agave this week against Christians Mechanicum army, we took the game quite slowly as we were double checking rules to make sure we are 100% ready for the weekender. It was a very enjoyable game however and I surprised myself by having a humble Assault Squad Sgt with a Power Fist take down a Cerastus Knight-Atrapos, after a good number of its hull points had already been whittled down by the Fellblade of course.

From that game I learnt a lot of things, my Invictarus Suzerains need a transport to get them into combat, I need to remember my FNP rolls and to take advantage of the Interlocking Tactics.

As the game ended at turn 3, as I said we were taking it slow, the game was beginning to turn in Christians favour. He was using the Onslaught detachment so he had two Lords of War, in this case a Knight Errant, which managed to finish off my Fellblade which had been ravaged by the Conversion Beamers of his Myrmidon Destructor. Both warlords were dead, and I still had a full tactical squad in a Storm Eagle, but the high wounds of his units was really pushing my ability to deal with them, so although I had a great start to the game, I think it was going to end up as a loss for me.

My wife picked up a new card game on Saturday in Travelling Man, my FLGS, called Elevensies, now she is a bit of a tea drinking geek and she basically picked up the box, said “ooh its about tea”, and promptly bought it.

So today we gave it a go, and you know what its quite a good game, the idea being to prepare the best morning tea, you get 11 cards, each with either 1 spoon or 2 spoons, the aim is to have the morning tea with the most spoons. You get bonuses for placing down the 1 spoon cards, and you give bonuses to your opponents with 2 spoon cards, its a very tactical game, and for a completely random purchase its a pretty decent addition to my games collection.

Heresy Weekender

So next weekend is our Horus Heresy Weekender, myself and 17 other guys are taking over Moor House Adventure Centre and having ourselves a little narrative campaign, don’t worry there will be lots of photos and updates for it, and it’s also being covered by The Dark Artisan.

I did the first game draw earlier and if you are interested, here are the pairings.

Table 1. Jens Träff – World Eaters vs Arran Morgan – Salamanders
Table 2. Gareth Wilson – Night Lords vs Oliver Anderson – White Scars
Table 3. Philip Sanderson – Solar Auxilia & World Eaters vs Richard Slee – Ultramarines & Imperial Fists
Table 4. Graham Mills – Iron Warriors vs Martin Swaffield – Raven Guard
Table 5. Aidan Connor – Sons of Horus & Mechanicum vs Chris Mills – Imperial Fists
Table 6. Christian Preston – Mechanicum vs Adam Sellars – Raven Guard
Table 7. Mark Pears – World Eaters vs Graham Campbell – Salamanders
Table 8. Connor Mark Pears – Mechanicum vs Michael Botterill – Ultramarines
Table 9. Steven Henry – Sons of Horus vs Harry Scarr – Mechanicum

Don’t worry I fully intend to keep people up to date with how the weekender goes with plenty of updates both here and on Facebook.

So until then have fun guys.

Couple of Games and Some Painting

By michael

On 29th February 2016

In Blog

This week I have been mostly painting Ultramarines!

With our Horus Heresy Weekender now under two weeks away I stepped up my painting work for it. So I got on with and finished a Storm Eagle which completed my 3500pts for the weekend.

My list is now currently as follows using The Logos Lectora as a Rite of War

Captain Remus Ventanus
Master of Signals with Damocles Command Rhino

Troops

Legion Assault Squad with 9 Marines, Sgt in Artificer Armour with Plasma Psitol and Power Fist
Legion Tactical Squad with 18 Marines equiped with an additional Combat Blade, Vexilla and Nuncio-Vox, Sgt in Artificer Armour with Plasma Pistol
Legion Tactical Squad with 18 Marines equiped with an additional Combat Blade, Vexilla and Nuncio-Vox, Sgt in Artificer Armour with Power Fist

Elites

Apothecarion Detachment – 2 Apothecaries both with Artificer Armour
Invictarius Suzerain Squad
Legion Rapier Weapons Battery x 2 both with Quad Mortars

Fast Attack

Legion Storm Eagle Assault Gunship with Armoured Ceramite and two Twin-Linked Lascannons
Legion Storm Eagle Assault Gunship with Armoured Ceramite and two Twin-Linked Lascannons

Heavy Support

Deredeo Pattern Dreadnought with Armoured Ceramite and Aiolos Missile Launcher
Legion Fire Raptor Gunship with Armoured Ceramite and Reaper Autocannon Battery
Legion Sicaran Battle Tank with Armoured Ceramite and Lascannon Sponsons

Lord of War

Legion Fellblade with Space Marine Crew, Pintle Mounted Twin-Linked Bolter, and Armoured Ceramite

So lots of ways to mess around with the reserve rolls, but probably not a hugely competitive list, but its not about being competitive, the weekender is about fun, and some interesting narrative games, anyway we play as a team and we win or lose as a team!

I managed to get Leviathan Pattern Dreadnought painted up as well, a really nice model to paint, my ability simply doesn’t do it justice I am afraid.

I also got a the Corpuscarii Electro-Priests for my AdMech Escalation League army painted to the point of being about 95% finished and should get those finished at some point this week.

Games

I got two games in this week, the first was a 3500pt test game for the Heresy Weekender against Grahams Iron Warriors, a game I lost quite badly, Graham loves his tanks, and the Typhon is a very nasty tank to play against, and it did a lot of damage to me early in the game, and his Comms Relay negated the impact of my negative effects on his reserve rolls. Oh and there were lots of fliers on the board, 2 Storm Ealges and a Fire Raptor each, so there was some cool aerial combat going on.

But the game served its purpose, despite the pasting I took losing including losing my Assault Squad and Sicaran in the first turn, and stupidly sending my Suzerain up against a Leman Russ. I learnt some stuff, he learnt some stuff, when he played a game on Sunday, I saw he had taken the additional combat weapon that my marines always do and had dropped the Typhon for a Fellblade. All in all a very fun game.

Then yesterday I played in a 3 way apocalypse game with James and Arran, 4500 points each , which was a very fun silly game in which me and Arran used our Horus Heresy armies to take on James Chaos warband, we managed to play that game and near wipe out all 13500pts in 3 1/2 hours which was pretty good, a very very enjoyable game in which despite throwing absolutely everything at him, I failed to kill Vulcan, he really is a perpetual.

Its always fun to play a huge games now and then, its hard to get around to doing, but it makes me want to play another one sooner rather than later.

Audio Book

I personally find it really difficult to watch something when painting so I prefer to listen to a good audio book instead, and last week I got through Fallen Angels, the second of the Horus Heresy Dark Angels book, a huge improvement on the first book Descent of Angels. Anyway this book got me well on my way this week and was quite pleasant to listen to, though I do hope they return to finish off the story of Caliban because its been a number of years now and that part of the story feels a little neglected.

Anyway that is me for the week, hope you are all doing well and who knows what this week will bring eh.

Building up the AdMech and a Battle Report

By michael

On 19th February 2016

In Blog

OK so here is my first hobby post in a long time, but here goes!

At my local gaming club, the Durham Raiders, we are running a little escalation league for Warhammer 40,000, you start at 500pts, then 850pts, followed by 1250pts, and finally 1850pts. we are doing this in order to encourage people who got a new army for Christmas, or might have a long term project that has sat on the shelf for a while unstarted.

I fall into the later category, when the Skitarii and later the Cult Mechanicus armies hit the shelves, I ended up buying a load of units for each, I had always wanted an Adeptus Mechanicus army, but like many things it got put on the shelf, though they did get further than most of my stalled projects in that they got built and primed, well all bar the Kastelan Robots which are still sealed in the box on my shelf.

And so they sat unloved in a box with just a few units getting painted, specifically the Kataphron Destroyers which ended up being used as allies to my Space Wolves in a cheesetastic list so that I got some Grav weapons in my list, and being the cheapskate I am, I just used the Magos Dominus with Rad-Cleanser from Forgeworld, from my on-again, off-again Mechanicum army for The Horus Heresy, rather than go out and buy the admittedly quite nice Tech-Priest Dominus in plastic.

So for the first month, I present my army!

So we have here a Tech-Priest Dominus, and two units of three Kataphron Destroyers, one with Heavy Grav-Cannons and Cognis Flamers and one with Plasma Culverins and Phosphor Blasters, and these all together come in at 470pts.

Played three games with them, one against Tyranids in which I was quite quickly beaten mostly by a flying Hive Tyrant and a Carnifex all on their own which was fairly brutal. My second game was against Dark Eldar, in which I pretty much dominated the game, despite losing the three Grav Kataphron Destroyers in turn two, I ended up tearing apart my opponents Archon, Kalibite Warriors, Raider and Venom in the following two turns.

My last game was one where they really shone, I fought against Space Marines, for which the army contained a Chapter Master, Sternguard Squad, Drop Pod, and two squads of Scouts, one with Sniper Rifles, again I lost two Kataphron Destroyers quite quickly, this time the Plasma ones, but after that my Grav Destroyers just rolled around the board sweeping up the rest of his army. I really felt bad about it, but there came a moment when he had an objective, I had none and we had to roll to continue the game, had it ended there I would have lost, but thankfully for my, the game continued which allowed me to clear the objective of that last troublesome Scout squad and claim victory for myself by tabling him.

So the games went well, and I still get the feeling that Cult Mechanicus is very much a glass hammer of an army, when it hits well, it hurts my opponents badly, but when it takes a lot of fire, it can struggle to stay in the game.

Moving Forwards to 850pts

For the next stage I am adding a unit each of Fulgurite Electro-Priests and Corpuscarii Electro-Priests as well as add a detachment of Skitarii with a unit of Vanguard and a unit of Rangers.

So onward with the painting and this week I started with getting the Fulgurite Electro-Priests painted up whilst I watched The Man in the High Castle on Amazon Prime.

I am not going to even pretend to be a great painter, or even a good painter, but I am rather pleased with these. And if you look in the background you can see the next unit, some Vanguard in various stages of completion. I had already completed 5 of the Vanguard in June last year and figured it would be easy enough to work on these and bring them up to full strength, so that is what I did, and I am pleased to say that I finished them tonight.

This unit of Vanguard have been equipped with an Enhanced Data Tether, Plasma Caliver and Arc Rifle, whilst the Vanguard Alpha has an Arc Maul and a Phosphor Blast Pistol. I know its not an optimal set-up, but I liked the way the bits looked on the models and for me that is quite important.

So that’s where I am at the moment, sitting on the painting tray right now I have an Ultramarines Storm Eagle, something I want to finish off for the Horus Heresy Weekender I am putting on in 3 weeks time, for which there are still two tickets available if anyone fancies coming along to it, you can find info on the event Facebook page here, or on the Folkvangr Events website here.

Oh and my Ultramarines were featured on a battle report by the Dark Artisan yesterday, which you can view below.

I picked the scenario for this one, purposefully giving myself a huge disadvantage, but it fitted the fluff of our game, and that’s something which I love, I don’t play Horus Heresy to win, I play it for fluffy narrative games, and this was a particularly good one.

Until Next Time