Some Much Needed Heavy Support

I bought this awhile ago, but just recently worked up the motivation to put it together.  The recent articles about the upcoming 8th Edition of Warhammer 40k hav perked me up a little.  My one buddy Max has an Imperial Fists army and has been doing a ton of painting work lately.  I've decided that I need to do a little more work on my Iron Warriors to make sure I can play a decent sized painted list when the new edition comes out.

The Iron Warriors Get a New Leader

I'm really enjoying the Kill Teams campaign I've been playing in and how it's allowing me to slowly build up a fully painted Iron Warriors force.  I'm trying to keep everything with sort of a pre-Heresy vibe.  That makes things a little challenging when trying to add certain units.  I knew that I wanted to add a Psyker, but all of the Chaos models are covered in spikes.  I'm trying to avoid that.  All of the loyalist Librarians are covered in purity seals and skulls.  I'm trying to avoid that also.

Doesn't leave many options.  BUT...  I found something.

Sevrin Loth, Chief Librarian of the Red Scorpions is decked out in MkIV Power Armor, just like the majority of my painted Iron Warriors.  He also has separate shoulder pads which allows me to use basic, flat pads.  Lastly, there is surprisingly little loyalist crap.  There's only one purity seal that will need to be scraped off.

I went ahead and picked one up about a week ago and was surprised to find that it came in super quick.  I swapped out the Force Axe for a Force Stave.  I know that the Stave isn't the best option, but I think it makes the most sense for a Psyker/Librarian/Sorceror.  I also hate the book, so I swapped out for a normal backpack.

I think he's going to fit in just fine!  The goal is to get him primed up over the next couple of days and then painted up this weekend.

Heralds of Ruin - Weeks 4&5

I ended up playing both weeks 4 and 5 in my Kill Teams campaign over the weekend.  I had missed week 4 due to personal issues, so we just played a catch up game and then the current week's game.

As a refresher, my list is Iron Warriors and is made up of 2x Siege Terminators (1 is the leader), an Apothecary, a Plasma Gun Dude and 4x Bolter Dudes.

For the week 4 game, my opponent (Will) was playing Astra Militarum.  He had maybe three or four 5-man squads, each with a meltagun.  He also had several heavy weapon bases with either Lascannons or Missile Launchers.  Really, I had no chance from the start.  The heavy weapon bases were deployed to lock down all of the places I could potentially move up the board.  This made it very hard for me to attack.  When I was able to move forward and shoot, I'd kill 2-3 Lasgun Guardsmen, who were basically throw away models.  The heavy weapons and meltaguns destroyed my team.  I ended up losing a single Bolter Dude permanently.  It was a rough battle.

For the week 5 game, my opponent (Max) was playing Imperial Fists Space Marines.  I can't think of a more thematic battle.  He'd sprung for a Rhino and had a Heavy Bolter Centurion to go along with (I think) 6 or so Marines.  We were playing the mission where I was defender and he was attacker.  If I made it to the end of round 5 with at least half my models remaining, I win.  If he gets me to below half strength, he wins.  If he gets me to below half strength, but I also get him below half strength, it's a draw.  In practice, that means he only had to kill four of my models, while I had to kill five of his.

Given how small the sides were, it was mostly a game of exchanging fire and two assaults.  I ended up making a series of lucky saves, while my Terminators missiles and power fists denied him armor.  I ended up winning at the end of round 5 with four of my seven models alive and seven of his nine dead.  It was a fun game and he could easily have won had I failed one more armor save.

The tables we played on were gorgeous.

The Iron Warriors Pose for a Glamour Shot

I've been making pretty decent progress on my Iron Warriors.

I ended up picking up a copy of Traitor Legions and was surprised to find that the Iron Warriors have their own 'super detachment'.  I'm actually not TOO far away from being able to field the minimum sized configuration, so I'll probably make future painting decisions based on trying to flesh out the detachment.

The Iron Warriors Get Some Heavy Hitters

Once upon a time, many moons ago, I bought some Autocannon dudes from Anvil Industries.  The guy who runs the place makes some really nice models with almost no clean up required.  If you're interested, check it out.  He sells tons of specialty weapons for Marines, as well as the Black Ops bodies...

http://anvilindustry.co.uk/Exo-Lords/Black-Ops/Black-Ops-Suppression-Team-Autocannons

This is what they look like straight from Anvil Industries.

I was looking for a little more of a GW aesthetic, so I replaced the helmets with some Grey Knights heads, swapped out the shoulderpads and put some regular backpacks on.  I think the effect works.  You'll notice that in the picture below, I have Chaos Marines backpacks on.  I changed my mind and went with regular loyalist backpacks.

After a little painting, they're really fitting in with the rest of the army.  I only got two of them done, but a little free time and I'll be able to crank out the rest.  I think the smaller backpacks were a good idea.

In this shot, you can see the backs of the legs.  They have cabling running up the backs of the calves.  I like the idea for the heavy weapons.  I like to think that they're extra power assist systems to handle the recoil of an Autocannon.

Heralds of Ruin - Week 4, Fight!

Ugh...  for a second week in a row, I wasn't able to make it.  I do have firm plans to play both Week 4 and Week 5 next Saturday.  Hopefully, nothing pops up to throw that off.

The Iron Warriors Get a Ghetto Ride

I got bored and pulled a ghetto Rhino out of my pile of misfit toys.  I think this Rhino has maybe a half dozen layers of different paint on it.  I didn't feel like stripping it, so I just primed it silver using an Army Painter spray can and went from there.  Took maybe 30 minutes total to get to this stage.  What do you think?  I think it fits well enough.  Nothing fancy, but it'll look OK on the tabletop.

I do think the treads need to be darkened, though.  I'll try that next time I sit down to paint.

Siege Tyrant Showdown

Forgeworld recently previewed the official Iron Warriors Siege Tyrant models.  I kinda prefer mine, which are just plastic Cataphractii Terminators with Anvil Industries missile racks glued to the top.  I do kinda like the helmets on the official ones, but that's a pretty tiny detail.

Theirs...

Mine...

Thoughts?  I like that their should pads are a little bigger, but it's not that big of a difference.

Heralds of Ruin - Week 4... Don't Fight?

Sigh.

So, the store that we normally play at on Saturdays hosted both Flames of War and Magic the Gathering tournaments at the same time.  Given that it seemed very likely.that we wouldn't be able to get a table, we decided to postpone for a week.  That just gives me a little more time to get some more things painted.

Again, sigh.

What next for the Iron Warriors?

I'm really up in the air on what I want to add next to my Iron Warriors list.  I have a couple of options, all of which come from Forgeworld and will be 100% resin.  Fancy, but harder to work with.  Forgeworld's quality control is a little spotty.  They have amazing customer service, but their actual product has more issues that it really should.

Here are my ideas...

First up is a basic Techmarine in Mk3 Power Armor.  This seems like a no brainer.  The Iron Warriors should have Techmarines.  I'm not sold on the head, though.  I'd probably do a little conversion work to add a snazzy helmet.

The next option is a Legion Destroyer Squad.  There's something about dual pistol wielding Marines with jet packs that makes me happy.  The weird looking weapon is a missile launcher equipped with some sort of radioactive missiles.  I need to go back and look at the rules.  The Iron Warriors are siege experts, but presumably they have squads that can get up to the battlements quick and take out opposition forces.

Last up, and most likely to be chosen is a Rapier equipped with a Quad launcher.  I think this thing basically screams Iron Warriors.  It would also be nice to paint something other than Power Armor for this army.  Seems like these can be purchased from eBay for about $30 or so.

We'll see what happens.  This would be a lot easier if GW had a US distributor for their Forgeworld line.  Ordering directly from a manufacturer in another country can be sort of a pain in the rear.

Heralds of Ruin - Week 3, FIGHT!

Week 3 came and went in our kill teams campaign.  I lost, leaving me with a 1:3 record.  It was a close fought battle, though.  Had my opponent failed an injury roll at the end of the game, I could have won.  I'll run down the results towards the bottom.

This week, we played a mission called "Take and Hold".  It's a custom mission from the Heralds of Ruin rules.  The way the mission works is that we take turns placing five pieces of terrain that will represent five objective buildings.  After that, we load up the board with terrain, as per normal for a kill teams game.  Deployment zones were in opposite corners.

My kill team consisted of my two Siege Tyrant Terminators, 5x Bolter Dudes and one Plasma Dude.  My opponent had 2x Crisis Suits, one of which had the 2+ Sv, 5 T upgrade.  Both had high strength, low AP weapons.  He also had a Stealth Suit with a Melta weapon, something like 7 Fire Warriors and 6 Kroot.  He got to deploy and go first.  We both deployed in the single building in our deployment zones.

Ok...  now onto the game.  My phone was DEAD, so I wasn't able to take any pictures, but I'll try to give a good run down as I remember things.

TURN 1
His Stealth Suit and a Kroot infiltrated behind my lines, lining up a clear shot on my leader.  Fortunately, he missed.  His other Kroot and Crisis Suits ran/jumped forward, towards three of the open buildings...  but didn't quite get there.  All told, not an effective first turn.

I took the Sprint upgrade for my Marines, effectively giving them a 15" (6" move + 9" run) move as well as Hip Shooter, which allows them to Snap Shot after or before running.  I was able to run forward, claiming two of the contested buildings with two Marines each AND was able to Snap Shot a Kroot to death, giving me First Blood.  My Siege Tyrants were also able to fire two Krak missiles into a pair of ambitious Fire Warrior Breachers, resulting in a couple of Tau sized craters.

TURNS 2-3

This is where things started to go south for me.  On turn 2, that Stealth Suit made his shot and killed my Leader.  Strength 8 weaponry is the bane of multi wound Toughness 4 Terminators.  For the rest of turns 2 and 3, we each kept our initial building and traded shots over the two I claimed.  He got some Kroot inside both buildings, meaning that they were contested.  The central building went unclaimed.  The score was tied at 1 to 1 for most of the game.

TURNS 4-5
Realistically, I should have fled the battlefield at the end of turn 3, but that's not how the Iron Warriors operate.  With only 8 starting models, there was no real way I was going to be able to take and hold multiple objective from a highly mobile Tau army with Jet Pack guys and Infiltrators.  I could do one thing though...  take out as many of those Xenos bastards as possible!

One of his Crisis Suits was left out in the open for one round.  It was the only shot I was ever able to line up, but a stray Krak missile doubled out his toughness and killed him.  I also killed something like 4 Fire Warriors and all of the Kroot he brought to the table.  I ended up loosing my Leader, my Plasma guy and four of my Marines.

As my last shot of turn 5 was being rolled, he held two buildings, I held one and the other two were contested.  My remaining Siege Tyrant scored two directs hits on the two Fire Warriors holding one of his buildings and wounded both.  Unfortunately, the injury table was against me and one was merely knocked down.  Had I rolled a 5 or 6, the Fire Warrior would have been removed as a casualty and the game would have ended in a tie.  As it was, it ended with his 2 buildings to my 1.

THE RESULTS
He won, but by a narrow margin.  He took 2 Renown Points which will let him build out his base and field 300 points in the next game.  I took 1 Renown Point, which means I'm stuck at 250 for now.  On the permanent injury table rolls, I lost 2x basic Marines.  He lost 2x Fire Warriors and 4x Kroot.  That's 24 points of my models permanently gone versus 30 points of his.  A decent trade, I guess.  From a Requisition Points standpoint, I got 15 and he got 21.  That's not a big spread. In essence, he lost 6 more points of models, but also gained 6 more Requisition Points that can be used to repair models.  From that standpoint, it was a pretty even game.

I used 12 of my 15 points to recruit a new Bolter Marine.  That leaves my force at exactly 250 points.  I had 262 going into this game, but only fielded 217.  My Apothecary had been forced to sit out due to a temporary injury.

Next week is the Iron Warriors vs. the Imperial Guard.  Stay tuned!

Iron Warriors - Plasma Gun Dude

We're two weeks into our Heralds of Ruin campaign, and I have Requisition Points to spend!  I read through the rules a little more closely and realized that models can be "upgraded" by putting the points used for a previous upgrade towards a new one.

As an example, a Legion Tactical Support Marine is 15 points.  He comes with a Flamer as his default weapon.  For +5 points, I can upgrade him to have a Volkite Caliver.  For +15 points, I can upgrade him to have a Meltagun, instead.  Now, let's say I gave him that Volkite Caliver in Week 1, but then decided to upgrade him to have a Meltagun in Week 2.  I'll get a 5 point credit for the Volkite weapon that I can apply to the cost of the Meltagun, meaning I only have to spend an extra 10 points.  Now, let's say that I want to drop him back down to a Volkite Caliver in Week 3.  I'll get a 15 point credit for the Meltagun, but I won't get anything back when I spend the 5 points on the Caliver.

What does this all mean?  Well, it means I realized that if I have a Meltagun (which one of my dudes has), I can swap it out for the same points cost Plasma Gun in between weeks based on the army I'm facing.  SO....  I needed to paint a Plasma Gun Dude.

Here he is.  I'm particularly happy with the freehand hazard stripes and the face.  I was debating trying to do some object sourced lighting based on the plasma coil, but I don't want to screw up the model.

The collection of painted Iron Warriors is coming along, slowly, but surely.  Here's a group shot...

Iron Warriors Squad Markings

I decided that my Iron Warriors needed a little something something.  I previously decided that I didn't want them to have a massive iron skull on their shoulder pad.  I really like the relatively clean lines of heresy era armour.  I don't want to bling them out with all the crap that makes 40k era armour so busy looking.

I decided that I'd add a small Roman numeral to designate squad and then a series of stacked horizontal lines to designate individual models.  The stacked lines are meant to look like miniature hazard stripes.  I like the idea of the Iron Warriors differentiating each other by who has the longest hazard stripes!

These first guys are all from Squad I.  I would designate them I-1, I-2, I-3, I-4 and I-5 on my Kill Teams Force List.

Here we have III-3, I-4 and II-3.  I added some extra detail work to the Apothecary at the same time.  I gave him blue lenses and painted in the yellow light on his backpack.  I'm debating doing a blueish heated metal effect on the meltagun.  I haven't decided yet.  It's a nice effect, but it's something I can do later when I paint the other three meltagun dudes.  I want the heated metal effect to be consistent between models in the same squad.

Last up is a quick glamour shot of the Siege Tyrants.  The guy with the bronze colored helmet is the Master.  The other dude is just a dude.

I'm thoroughly enjoying having a fully painted kill team.  It makes a huge difference when playing a game.

Heralds of Ruin Kill Team Fully Painted

I sat down for a couple of hours and knocked out the last couple of models for my 250 point kill team.  I think the Apothecary needs a little more detail work, but I can knock that out later.  I really just needed to get everything to the 90%+ stage for table play.

I definitely need to do squad markings on the shoulder pads.

Kill Teams "Mega Battle"

My Kill Teams group got together and did something a little different.  We played a game with three of our teams, the Imperial Fists, the Iron Warriors and a group of Imperial Guard, versus 600 points of Tau Empire.  The Tau Empire consisted entirely of a Commander, three Crisis Suits and a Riptide.  It was a fun battle.  The Tau side ultimately won, but was only had the Riptide with a handful of wounds remaining.  Everything else died.

The gaming board was pretty nice.  We played at Showcase Comics in Swarthmore, PA.  They have an amazing assortment of terrain that can be used for a variety of games.

We went with a sort of "gutted out NYC" vibe, complete with Central Park!

This Imperial Fists Centurion was one of the stars of the game.  His Heavy Bolter fire took out one of the Crisis Suits and damaged several others, including the Commander.  The Iron Warriors Siege Tyrant Master was one of the other stars.  Never underestimate Marines with massive weapon systems.

The lowly Guardsmen did a great job of slowly moving across the board and drawing fire.  Unfortunately, I don't think their Lasguns did much in the way of damage.

This is where we learned not to bunch up when a Riptide with a S8 AP2 Large Blast weapon is standing close by.  The casualties were epic.

After that blast, we learned to spread out a little more.  One of these Marines actually survived to charge the Riptide.  He tied it up in combat for a round, effectively taking away the Riptide's shooting phase.  I think he deserves an award for that.

That's all I have  I don't know how it happened, but I didn't get a single solid shot of the Tau enemies.  I'll try to do a better job in the future!

Iron Warriors Painting

After having played the first week of our Heralds of Ruin campaign, I found some motivation and did a little painting.  I had already painted one of the Siege Tyrant Terminators, but needed two for my 250 point kill team.  I evidently didn't write down my paint scheme, which is unusual for me, so I had to sort of guess on the leather strips.  I think it's a pretty good match.  I painted the one guy's head bronze just to be able to differentiate which is the Team Leader.  The only real difference between them from a game standpoint is that the one guy has an extra wound and an extra point of leadership.

I also knocked out the Heavy Bolter upgrade that I get to use in each game due to my base upgrade.

I still need to paint a Meltagun Dude as well as an Apothecary, and then my 250 point Kill Team will be fully painted.  The Meltagun Dude will be painted exactly the same as all the Bolter Dudes.  The Apothecary will probably just get a white helmet and maybe some white elements on the back pack and Narthecium.

More to come!

Heralds of Ruin - Week 1

Six of us started up a Heralds of Ruin Kill Teams campaign over the weekend.  Here's the link if you aren't familiar with Heralds of Ruin...

http://heralds-of-ruin.blogspot.com/p/kill-team-rules.html

I decided to play using a Legiones Astartes list focused on pre-heresy Iron Warriors.  The full list is as follows...

• Pre-Heresy Iron Warriors
• Dark Eldar 
• Imperial Fists
• Tau Empire
• Imperial Guard
• ??? - I didn't see the last game and can't remember what was played.

My first week's game was against the Dark Eldar Kill Team.  For the first game, we're only allowed to bring 200 points.  I'm terrible with their unit names, but the army consisted of a Succubus as Team Leader, 5x Wyches and 4x of the winged dudes.  Two of the winged dudes had some sort of high powered, 18" range melta/lance gun.  As you can see, there was plenty of line of sight blocking terrain.  This helped me out.

I decided to start the game out by hiding in little out of sight pockets in the gutted out buildings.  This hiding served me well.

If the Wyches wanted to engage, they would have to run at me, out in the open.  I took a few pot shots, but the Iron Warriors are better at tearing down walls, not shooting devious, fast moving Eldar.  They made a mistake and got too close...

...which let my Tyrant Siege Master assault.  The three Wyches were part of the combat, but ran away when they lost...  right into the open where Bolter fire finished them off.  Feels no Pain doesn't do much when your head is being crushed by a Power Fist.  Also, fancy 2+ cover saves don't help when your foe can literally reach out and punch you.

The only real snag I ran into is that one lone Marine outflanked onto the "wrong" side of the table.  He walked on and thought to himself...  "does that guy have bat wings?  shit."  Did not end well.

Overall, it was a great game.  I think we both had fun despite my more or less overwhelming victory.  My opponent chose to willingly rout after losing the Succubus.  The only model I lost was my Apothecary, who ended up making a full recovery.  Two of my opponent's models suffered permanent injuries that will carry onto the rest of the campaign, but they weren't relevant.  One was -1S to a model with a 2+ Poisoned weapon.  I don't remember the other.

I got 2 Renown Points for winning.  I also got a ton of Requisition Points.  Requisition Points are what allow you to improve your secret base and to requisition new gear and troops.

I got...

• "Took Part" - 10 points for playing
• "Winner" - 5 points for winning
• "Assassin" - 3 points for taking out the opposing Team Leader
• "First Blood" - 2 points for taking out the first model
• "Considerate Commander" - 2 points for having 3/4 of my force still alive
• "Mission Bonuses" - an extra 2 points for taking out the opposing Team Leader AND an extra 1 point for taking out one of the specials

That's a total of 25 Requisition Points.  I decided to spend points on the following...

• 5 points to upgrade my base from a Base Camp to a Forward Base.  This allows me to bring 250 points to games from now on.
• 5 points to upgrade my base to include a Defensive Turret.  This allows me to place a Gun Emplacement with a Twin-Linked Heavy Bolter that auto-fires at BS2 in my deployment zone at the start of every future game.  Seemed like a good deal for 5 points.
• 10 points to grant my 4x Legion Tactical Marine group the +1 Ballistic Skill Battle Honour.  That's a lot of points, but BS5 Bolters are actually pretty good in this gaming format.

More to come!  I have some painting to do.  I want to have my Kill Team fully painted by the time Saturday rolls around.