Operation Thunderstorm

+ + + Transition to all Imperial forces fighting on Fratribusia + + +

Men and women of the Imperium of man.

This is the week you have all been waiting for.

No longer will the Imperium be on the back foot, for now we take the fight to the alien.

The Astra Militarum stand ready. 

The Adeptus Sororitas stand ready.

Solblades from the Dark Angels and Ossuary Brotherhood, sent personally by the Lord Regent Roboute Guilliman, stand ready.

Today we launch Operation Thunderstorm.

Let us destroy the aliens as they sought to destroy us.

Thought of the day: By might shall we been redeemed.

+ + + End of transition + + +

   With three games booked for the same week - a first for this year(?) - and with fresh reinforcements, it was time for the Imperium to launch Operation Thunderstorm, their big push into the jungle to deal with the Tyranid Menace.
   Operation Thunderstorm devised by Militant-General Von Collard, comprised multiple bait and ambush attacks designed to draw the strength of the Tyranids into the open to allow the newly arrived Adeptus Astartes solblades to cut the head off the beast. With the fall of Oghram in their minds, the loyal servants of the Emperor knew they could not fail on Fratribusia.

   The first set piece was launched by the Adeptus Sororitas of the Order of the Fallen Angels coupled with Dark Angel support which had the aim of killing the most prevalent Hive Tyrant and wiping out a particularly virulent swarm.

   With the swarm initially looking overwhelming, the Adeptus Sororitas held firm, weathering the storm before the Deathwing dropped and turned the tide. Cutting the Hive Tyrant down as it tried to make it's escape.

   The first major victory had been secured.

   The second attack was an unexpected one for both sides. A solblade from the Aurora Knights made planetfall in the middle of the jungle at one of the Tyranid breeding sites and fell on the remaining defenders.

   The Tyranids tried an ambush on the engaged space marines but the might of the Primaris showed through and the alien mind was thwarted.

   In a dark moment for the planet, in what was already a dark period of it's history, in the wake of planting mines on the breeding pods the Aurora Knights claimed victory and took 10% of the population of the nearby mining settlement of Dimbreech as is their tithing rights, vanishing into the dark of space with Fratribusia still on the brink.

   The last game was supposed to be the last Space Marine player with my guard to boost their points vs the other Tyranid player, however the marine player dropped out leaving my guard to face off with the Tyranids.

   When we picked missions the Imperial Guard got a secondary mission of deploying teleport homers to allow a fleet in space to set up an invasion, which felt quite fluffy.

   The last attack in the opening stages of Operation Thunderstorm was a mass mobilisation of the Astra Militarum across the remaining front to plant teleport beacons at crucial points in the defence of the planet, to allow the marines of the Ossuary Brotherhood to make planet fall and cut the head of the beast. Much as the brave men and women of the Imperial Guard stood against the foul alien and teleport homers were planted, no marines appeared, and vast numbers were cut down as they eventually broke.

While Operation Thunderstorm has turned the tide marginally in Imperial favour, key points have been over run and the planet is far from saved.

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Expanding Rainforests

   Much as I am still whacking posts up, I'm still just catching up on units I painted in my recent splurge of painting time. This post is another of these - doing another chunk of jungle scenery in the hope of getting some games of 10th edition 40k over the summer.

   On the last post of the jungle scenery where I did 5 bases of trees and undergrowth, I mentioned that I had gone the whole hog and prepped all the big bases I had so that I only needed to hot glue the plant life onto them once I bought more trees. I picked up 5 more plastic bonsai trees from China in two different designs and sprayed the leaves a darker green, repainted the trucks where I'd gotten paint on them and spend an hour or so with a hot glue gun to do another 7 bases.

   I've played a couple of games with the full 11 finished bases of trees and while it is a pretty good start I think I need another batch to really finish it off* and make a dense board like I used to gawp over in the 3rd edition Catachan codex. I've now run out of the big trees again, so I'm tempted to order one or two more, but I do have more palm trees to use to bulk out a few more smaller bases.

*Although I have now filled up the box assigned to jungle scenery

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Adding to the 4th company

   I'm having a bit of a catch up on projects - despite what the out put on this blog suggest - as I've been working on a bit of non-hobby stuff recently. Here I have been trying to get some more of the Space Marines from the Leviathan boxset finished and off my backlog.

   The first unit are the Infurnus marines which are quite a cool unit, especially when considered as part of a Tyranid killing Solspear and I'm already considering another unit in the future.

  I've not been clever with these and just painted them like the rest of my 4th company of Aurora Knights with the unit designation of heavy support. It's been quite good fun painting a big unit of gold marines again and it has got me thinking thoughts I can't afford.

   Lastly, on this post is the Ballista Dreadnought from the same box. I painted this the same as the Redemptor from a few weeks back (actually having the model in front of me so I could copy it), so not much else to say other than I did change the decals on both dreads with the 4 in a green circle like I said I would - I think it breaks the gold up really nicely. Its another model I'm tempted to get a second of and maybe have it borrowed from a support comany - but that's something for future me to think about.

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Doomsday

   I wanted to call this post by the title of the first Dr Who episode where I actually watched the Daleks but as the episode has the uninspired name of "Dalek", I picked another one instead.

   These figures are from Black Tree and were ordered when I started getting excited about Xenos Rampant - they then took nearly 3 months to arrive by which point I'd moved on*. As they were ordered before I really knew how big a force I would need I bought more than I now actually need.

*and despite promises that Black Tree have fixed their dispatch times, I'm about 3 months into waiting on another order

   I was going to paint these in more classic colours - as I think the figures design is based on the classic Daleks - but ultimately as a new Who fan - 9 onwards - it made much more sense to go for their newer brass colour.

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Bigger Bugs Pt 5

   Despite how many Tyranids I've painted in the last month or so, there are still things on my shopping list and more Warriors are going to stay on there despite me buying more. These things are just so useful that I want multiples upon multiples, especially as one of my rules for my army with be no Raveners*. With this in mind I bought a second box of them and got building, but while I was doing that I put the Leviathan Winged Prime on the build desk and used it as an opportunity to see how the two kits sized up.

   As I put some sword arms onto the prime to test an idea, I realised it just looked too cool not to keep, so my winged prime now has swords - which shows it is a command element bug in my head.

   This left me a set of swords short, so I decided to give this unit of warriors scythes instead of swords. For me warriors with scythes just look so much cooler than swords, but in the last edition (and Kill team) swords are just so much better than scythes you'd be daft not to have them, but in this edition warriors just have melee weapons - doesn't matter what they are. I appreciate this won't last and the codex in October (?) will put weapon rules back in, but until then rule of cool wins. Otherwise I went for the same guns, barring the big gun which I swapped for a barbed strangler which is a bit more troop focussed than the heavy venom cannon which didn't suit the squad.

*as my brothers Tyranid force will be built around a core of genestealers and reveners and I don't want to tread on his toes.

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The Swarm Pt 9

   As I have said so many times, I have stuff high on my list of hobby priorities that need to be painted and stored for games, but I don't see any issue with bulk troops jumping priorities - if anything, I encourage it.

   This is the first sprue's worth of Termagaunts from the Leviathan box mostly as I wanted to paint a big unit of gaunts and these guys were already built. 

   In my head there wasn't much difference between the old ones and these ones barring a slight size increase and a touch more detail. Until I put them in the box together and they are almost different bugs - nothing bad enough that I'll not mix them, they are living things afterall, but enough that you will be able to tell.

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Bigger Bugs Pt 4

   In a bit of a break/reward for knocking out so many gaunt sized monsters in a row*, it's now time to meet François the Carnifex. I bought this model second hand while in France from a little hobby shop to the north of the city, hence the name. Carnifexes are for me the Leman Russ or Sherman of the Tyranid force, although compared to more recent releases they are starting to look really small. My eventual aim is to have at least 4 or 5, but hopefully a few more as they can do a big variety of jobs.

*yeah, this post was another I forgot to schedule

   This one needed a bit of a remodel - with me having to break it's arms off and reset them - and while it has been built as Old One Eye, I plan to use it as a battle scarred regular Carnifex.

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The Swarm Pt 8

   Until Leviathan hit, I had a plan for what each of these swarm posts would be, but now I'm chopping and changing what I am painting, it's gotten a bit out of hand. This post, however, is about my first* unit of Neurogaunts.

   Neurogaunts are a new unit added in this edition, they seem to do two functions; 1. Extend synapse range and keep other bugs under the players control. 2. Very cheap gun fodder. It is point two that excites me.

*yes, first. It turns out enough copies of Leviathan was sold, that picking up extra sprues is a really cheap affair

   Like the Barbgaunts, I had to be a touch creative with my colour scheme as I didn't want to start adding in a blurring colour between my carapace and flesh like GW has done, so there a few bits on the models that look like either hard flesh, or soft carapace that I just picked to be one or the other, so they match the rest of my army much better. From the fluff, I think the things on their backs are separate organisms, so I went with the red I've been using for those so far, swapping slightly for the leader as it looked odd fully in red.

I think they have come out OK and the painting hasn't made me regret a second unit.

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A Big Push - ACW Edition

   I mentioned in a post at the start of March that I was organising a big club game for the summer to try and get the whole club in one place playing one big game - hopefully with every player suppling a unit or two but not leaving out those unable to - well that game has now been and gone and I was much further behind than I had planned.

   I wasn't too stressed going in whether both sides were perfectly even, but I wanted to at least have enough troops to bulk out one side if it turned out to be seriously uneven. With that in mind I set off trying to build and paint the last few bits I had for this project, although I ultimately had to make choices as the deadline hit quicker than expected.

I got one more regular unit of Confederate infantry done. I went for a fully grey uniform on these guy only varying a couple of trousers and the blankets over the bodies just to get them across my desk as quickly as possible.

Then I put a couple of days into painting two units of Confederate cavalry. These were nowhere near as quick but were one of the big gaps in my Confederate army, so they needed to be done. I left the horse holders and dismounts for another day but I'm pleased these got finished as they were used.

On the day I had 6 and a bit players turn up with half of them supplying troops of their own - although as the photo shows Wayland Games didn't give me any mats so we had to scrounge two green mats from elsewhere in the hall and hope it wasn't too obvious. I think on hindsight I gave the Union a slight troop advantage but the game was so very close until the last turn that I don't think it mattered.

The game ended with the Confederates holding one farm house, the Union held the crossroads and the last farm house was contested until the Confederate advance crumbled, leaving a Union victory.

It was really good playing with guys I just don't play with enough, seeing a big game on the table and we also had a first time wargamer roll some dice, which is always a bonus.

I think the plan is to do a WW2 version of this game next year!

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Leviathan!

   Again, I've got stuff I should be doing both in my limited hobby time and in my real life, but with Leviathan dropping at the weekend I knew all bets were off.

   We had a test game of 10th edition 40k on release day* - this time in my back garden, which meant we had to call the game when it started to get too dark to read the rulebook properly - but I have to say, I really like this edition. My mojo to paint up 40k is not going to go away anytime soon.

* Not done that since 4th edition!

   With the game under my belt I decided to get some bits of the boxset built and painted just so it was moving, with that I picked a reasonable sized unit for each side and got building. I picked the Barbgaunts for the Tyranids and the Sternguard Veterans for the Space Marines - although I added the shield lieutenant from the last starter box as it was sitting on my painting shelf waiting to go.

The Barbgaunts (and to an extent the Neurogaunts) are a far busier Tyranid beastie than the older ranges, so there are points on the figure that it's much harder to see where the edge between carapace and body begins/ends, so I've used a far bit of staring at pictures online and making arbitrary choices on my own as well. I've gone nuts on the red as the spot colour as well.

The Sternguard are a unit I am ridiculously proud of, these guys looked terrible until about the decal phase at which point everything kind of clicked. If it wasn't for the moulded on shoulder pads I would be going nuts and buying another sprue of these.

The Lieutenant is one of those legacy models that it's a tad embarassing its taken this long to paint, but I was blue-tacking the Sternguard to my spraying board and noticed this model on my shelf wearing a very similar outfit, so he got added to the unit to be painted at the same time. I'm pleased with the tilt shield on both this guy and the sgt of the other squad.

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