The Extinction of Thuros

   It's been a while since my last post and usually that just means I've been bad at getting my hobby progress documented, however, this time it's because my hobby achievements have been on the minimal side.
    I have some exciting news about my hobby that I will reveal at a later date, but suffice to say it has made me rethink my hobby priorities for the immediate future*, with the decisions playing out over the next couple of months. Saying all that, I have done some hobby related stuff in the last few days, so with no further ado . . .

*Yeah, I know I do this every few months but this one is big

   First up are the only models I have painted in the last month or so, a 5 man plasma support squad for my Sons of Horus. The honest truth is I don't really need this squad, but the look on my mate's face when I joked about building them was so good I had to follow through and as my other big squad is so heavily worked compared to everything else, it is nice to have a small squad I can fit into lists to give them a break.

   I tried to give the 5 guys as much character as you can get into a basic squad of legionaries; the sergeant has a bionic right hand and an older mark head crest and the squad is a complete mishmash of kit parts to make it feel like these guys have gone through hell. 



   Next is an event I recently attended, the Warhammer 30k Extinction of Thuros campaign day run by the guys from the Legion of Lies podcast.
   I signed up for the narrative event right back in February working on the theory that if I had a paid for ticket sitting on my shelf I would have some serious motivation to make sure my army got painted and that I was guaranteed at least 3 games of 30k over the course of 2018, and I am really glad I went, it was a proper blast.
   First things first, as it was a narrative event, the tickets were sold as either Loyalist or Traitor, no weird matchups here, so I duly bought myself a traitor ticket. Then as the games went on the guys would explain what the results so far meant in both the fluff and in game, in this case as the traitors lost the initial round of games it was deemed that they had claimed a foothold on the planet, but had failed to neutralise all of the planetary defences, cue orbital bombardment for the loyalists.
   Your warlord also needed a name and was given his own page in the gamer's packs to fill in as he could advance throughout the day*.

*Mine didn't so much advance as die**

**a lot

   So, my army: I didn't take a particularly hard list, and knowingly didn't, as I was very aware that I wasn't fully clued up on the rules and I didn't want to get something wrong and look like I might be cheating. I was also advised that 30k lists either need to have a lot of vehicles or none at all, as the sheer amount of anti-tank makes having a few pointless, so in my list I had a single rhino that either hid or drove full pelt fuelled by hope.

   The big thing I noticed on the day was how many imperial knights the loyalists had, compared to none on the traitor's side*** and as I managed to play two of them it was a real insight to how a beast like that can change the feel of a game and not in the overwhelmingly bad way I had expected. I am going to do a photo dump of my better photos from the day (I forgot to take as many as I had planned) but they really don't do justice to the sheer quality of painting that was evident at the event **** and it's really made me feel like I need to up my game in the future.

***Not sure why none of us took one but they were so prevalent on the other side

****There was a single badly painted army and that was my second opponent

  The other thing you will notice from the pictures is the fool hardy way I used my assault marines, as they were my most potent anti armour I tended to use them aggressively to neutralise threats early on - this worked better in some case than in others*****.

*****They did kill a knight

Not my photo but I can't remember who took it.

   With two massive losses and a minor loss it came as no surprise that I won the wooden spoon for the traitor's side - brilliantly named the Best Loyalist. The weird part, and it's something I commented on to the organisers, is that the two big losses were the games I enjoyed the most, the minor loss was merely a good game - probably because I killed a forgeworld knight in combat . . .

Hopefully normal service will resume soon

Thanks for reading