Campaign Chetis 4

   With the planet being digested around them and no hope of delaying the hive fleet any longer, the Imperial forces on Fratribusia pull out while their route of escape is still open, evacuating as much of strategic importance as possible. Military equipment and relics are all taken from their places of storage, while civilians of fighting age and build are forcibly removed from their families and inducted into the Astra Militarum to continue the fight on other planets. Billions of people, thousands of tons of equipment and stragglers from the Imperial forces are left to their fate with the xenos.

   While the planet, it’s population and the regular tithe have all been lost to the Imperium of man, the hive fleet was held up for longer than expected, allowing more time for a build up of forces at the anchor world of Sanctum.

   Battle group Constintinia has been formed from the remnants of the Imperial forces and been ordered to the planet of Chetis 4.

 

   Chetis 4 is an arid world whose main off world tithe is focused on munitions, cotton fabrics and Imperial Guard regiments all of which are crucial to the on going war against the hive fleets of the Tyranids. In recent years, the planetary governor, a certain Cardinal-Astra Marcellus, has declared himself a facet of the God-Emperor of mankind himself, declaring war on the corruption of the Imperium as he sees it and stopping all tithe materials leaving while he builds his own crusading army.

   While the vast majority of solblade strike forces are being pulled back to the anchor worlds, now their delaying missions have been completed, to help strengthen the lines, those involved in the Fratribusia conflict have been grouped together and reinforced with an extra division of Astra Militarum as Battle Group Contintinia tasked with bringing Chetis 4 back into the Imperial fold.

   Upon reaching Chetis 4, Battle Group Contintinia has discovered that the problem is far more than a secessionist government and isn't confined to the single planet.

   The first wave of attacks were lead by the 1st Division Astra Militarum (Hervictus 14th, 17th, 31st and the Fratibusia Free Engineers), supported by the Ossuary Brotherhood chapter of Astartes, the Order of the Fallen Angels, Adepeta Soroitas and House Steinschild of the Imperial Knights.

The Imperial Knights were deployed outside of the main invasion area to neutralise a repair and reequipment site used by traitor Knights, with the aim of knocking a potent threat out of the war early on.

   The Ossuary Brotherhood was spread far thinner than planned when local, unsupported counter attacks from the forces of Chaos responded faster than anticipated but their heroic sacrifices meant the Imperial beach head has held, for the moment. Is a third of a company fallen in the opening gambit too high a price?

   Even with a full scale invasion of the planet going on, the warbands roving Chetis, supposedly under the command of Cardinal-Astra Marcellus, have been unable to co-ordinate a full scale response and have been recorded fighting amongst themselves on at least three separate occasions.

   Reported sightings of silver armoured Adeptus Astartes active on Chetis 4 are unsubstantiated and liable to lead to Inquisitional interest.

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Ork Aircraft

   I've had the starter set of Ork aircraft since the Aeronautica Imperialis starter set was released well before Covid but I had never painted them. I had built the 3 fighters and started to paint them, but as they were the first models I was using to test out Contrast paints on, they just hadn't worked - like any new tool, you need to learn how to use it, and these were not a success - so they have floated around my desk ever since.

   We have a bit of an idea to put Orks into the new campaign and getting 5 aircraft ready for a game isn't a big ask, so I decided to repaint the 3 I'd tried. All 3 have been resprayed or completely rebased back over before new colours have gone on.

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The Anti-Angels

   Carrying on with getting units finished ahead of the game included my unit of converted Warp Talons. These guys were built years ago when I was getting games in against a guy who always played Blood Angels, so they were designed to look like the opposites to his angelic Sanguinary Guard. However, we never actually played with this army and the unit sat unpainted for years.

   Part of the issue was that I wasn't sure how to paint the wings. I went with obviously deamonic, red wings for the flying Lord, but with the squad I wanted them to look like unnatural growths, so that units that were actually deamonic kept the weird colours.

  The photo below shows the unit in the game - I quite liked how the Warp Talons really looked different to the unit you can same from the same kit.

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Dealing With Tanks

   I have another game lined up at the new club I have joined and while the vibe is completely different to any other club I've been at as an adult, being fairly competitive, it's nice to have a regular thing set in the calendar.

   The wargamer I was set to play is a big tank fan, with his armies being very vehicle heavy. While I didn't want to tailor an army to play him, I did need to up my anti-tank game, hence the lascannon armed Havoc squad below.

   This was a squad I always meant to add to my chaos army but had never quite justified buying, so when they came up in the Combat Patrol magazine, I grabbed two copies. The first was built as per the old Combat Patrol, this is the second* which was very much designed for a single job.

*but the only one I have painted so far . . .

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Nevermore?

  With the coming release of the new edition of the Horus Heresy my old podcast WhatsApp group started getting used a fair bit more and we have all made noises about getting back into the game and potentially meeting up. I'd been toying with a Raven Guard army for the Heresy ever since reading Deliverance Lost and had actually painted and played with them a few times before as a 40k army before my gaming mate and myself got into the 1st edition in 2018(?) and I needed to be traitor so repainted the figures that I owned.

   With the new edition, I figured a small, self contained force might be nice. It will be based on the Raptors who are the marines fast grown using the equipment given to Corax by the Emperor who all wear Mark VI armour. I bought a box on a whim and decided to get painting.

I'm not 100% sure this project will go anyway as the price of the new starter box set and all the books are killing the group's enthusiasm fast, but we shall see. If nothing else it's been a fun little project.

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Scenery Project 1 - Sci-Fi Farmstead?

   I've fallen behind on a lot of things I planned to do this year with the idea of completing scenery projects just being one of many things on the list*. One thing I did want was to effectively make my desert scenery work for 3 different board styles; I wanted a more built up urban area, a more rural deserty area and a rural farmstead to be something in between.

*2025 has not gone to plan at all

   As we are still very much aiming for smaller games when we meet up, I thought it made sense to focus on getting that farmstead style building done. I decided to keep life simple and use the Renedra Mud Brick House and bolt on some sci-fi bits to prove my point - very much thinking of Tatooine as my muse. As I couldn't find the one I owned, I figured the best plan was to cut my losses, buy a new one and then have two of the same model I could substitute depending what I was playing.

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Red Butchers

   My World Eater project has stalled since the game at the Hutton Hearthguard, partly as I'd like to remove the daemon element I added to fill points and I can't decide what to do, and partly due to a plague of chickenpox affecting both boys while a bad cold took the adults out*.

*It was brutal

   While I am working out what my plan is, I decided to just paint the unit of Chaos Terminators that came in a recent Combat Patrol magazine up for this army, as it made more sense to give them a unit than my normal Chaos Marines**.

*I was hoping to buy more than one copy by I was told "a nice young man needed them for his online business"***

***so currently on eBay for 3x the price

  I've tried to make these guys match my regular berserkers and I suspect I should have broken up the red armour a touch more like I've done on my later World Eater models.

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