Imperial Navy Bomber Wing 1538

   Unlike my Fighter Wing from this post*, I've gone with a much more two tone, camouflaged scheme instead of a bold one colour, matching what real bombers would have. I've figured that in the novels fighters are smaller and tend to be showier, relying on speed in the air and being moved under cover on the ground to keep the aircraft safe. Bombers on the other hand are slower in the air, and more likely to be less under cover on the ground, so need a bit more protection, plus as they are from different Wings, they don't need to match**.

*which still needs expanding by a couple of planes really

**I plan to add a 3rd different Wing in the future too

   It's quite odd that I really like the beige scheme my fighter wing is currently in and I also have a model of a plane from it in 28mm sitting on a shelf behind me, but looking at these bombers, they really do just feel 'right'.

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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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Sons Of Horus Legion Imperialis

   Having been given the starter box for Legion Imperialis for Christmas (2023) and then having planned to get some test games in as early in the year as I could manage, here I am towards the end of 2024 without having played any games*.

*its been a bit of a year

   I had been planning something Horus Heresy in this scale for ages - I've had a mate print some epic scale marines in the past but could never do something I was happy with. After reading the novels and playing a lot of 30k, the scale of the 32mm game just never felt right. The heresy is about companies of marines, with big support vehicles bashing it out, while the average pick up game of 30k tends to be a Primarch or Preatorian with an elite bodyguard and a squad or two in support, I've seen 3000 point games (about as big as you can do on a 6/4 table) with less than 30 figures a side. LI means you can have 100+ figures a side and still be playing a small game**

**plus multiple titans without needing to re-mortgage

  I've been painting these on and off all year without getting very far, so with Christmas coming up fast, I thought I had better get moving. It turns out they are really hard to photograph, but the green is a touch brighter in real life and matches my 28mm Sons of Horus. I'm compromised on the colour scheme slightly - I am never going to manage a brass trim on the shoulder pads with my eyesight but the big block colours are in place and I think they look about right when viewed from my 3 foot standpoint. 

   I have based to match my Adeptas Titanicus stuff as they will be used in this game as well.

Command base and Terminators

9 bases of Tactical Marines - using a spare command to bulk up

The specialists - Plasma squad, Missile squad and Assault Marines

Contemptor Dreadnoughts

Squadrons of Predators and Sicarans

   What I have painted is just the Space Marine side of the starter box and by all accounts online I need at least double the amount of infantry just to keep stuff on the board in a regular game - although the advice seems to be 3 or 4 times this really. My aim at this point is just to have two matched sides to actually play a game before I start bulking up - far better to have an achievable aim to play than unachievable and never try.

While I was at it I did a test base of trees just to fill a board quickly. While the trees are probably out of scale - possibly better suited to a 15mm figure size - I don't hate the idea and I will mass produce a few more bases of these as well as really start the buildings.

This stuff does not photograph well. . .

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Aeronautica Imperialis

   Slightly behind the times with a game released in 2019, but here are the first few planes I've finished for the rules - a pair of Imperial Thunderbolts matching my 28mm one and a trio of Chaos Lightnings. 

   I bought the first starter box with Imperial Navy and Orks back in 2019, built everything, and got a game in with the Imperial planes vs my mates Imperials to test out the rules. Then it was about that time where both our jobs and lives started to get in the way and I don't think I've played him more than 2 or 3 times at anything since.

   With the next campaign being Chaos and Imperial it felt like the right time to revive the game to use as a bit of fluff in the background (Tyranids didn't get any models or rules before the game was dropped). I don't plan to play any big games with this, I just want dog fights and maybe small bomber missions, but these initial planes will allow us to get stuff on the board and relearn the rules.

   Looking at the points with the aim of keeping small games as balanced as possible, a tooled up lightning is the same points as a basic Thunderbolt, so the first game is likely to be test with a pair of each facing off.

   The Chaos Lightnings are painted in a scheme to match my red Chaos marines to tie the force in a bit, but I might vary future ones colours a bit. Scheme wise I kept them fairly plain - I quite like the idea that the chaos leaders don't value skill and would prefer to just mass produce planes.

   The Imperial Thunderbolts are painted to match my 28mm Thunderbolt from (Imperial Navy Fighter Wing 5517) as much as possible with changes where I just couldn't.

I've got a fair few more planes to paint yet.

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Clan Wolf

    This is another post about a unit/army that I both did not need and have no real use for, but I've been enjoying painting Battletech mechs and enjoying reading about the Clans, so when I was looking online for something simple to sate that urge, I saw the Clan Invasion starter box and thought it fulfilled the need.

   I've painted them as Clan Wolf, just because they are the main clan that have appeared in the novels I've been reading. Plus it was a very different colour scheme from the stuff I've been doing.

   I believe the mechs here are (from left to right);

Adder, Timber Wolf, Nova, Executioner, Mongrel and a pair of bases of Elementals.

   I have two more mechs in my painting queue that I had 3d printed, but they aren't crutial models that need to be done. I've written myself up a list of what my priorities now are, so lets see if I can focus on that.

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Baby Rhino - Legions Imperialis

   Before anyone says anything, yes this is a new project but it should be one hell of a project. I have been trying to start a Heresy project in Epic scale for a few years now* as I think it would justify the battles mentioned in the book far better but my attempts so far haven't been good enough to make it onto the blog as test pieces. So when I was told by a mate earlier this year that GW was about to announce their new version of Epic set in the Heresy** I went nuts and bought some bits early***.

*I was chatting to Mike Hobbs a lot about his project at one point as I was fascinated

**His club mate was one of the community play testers

***As you'll see in a future post

   I've been told I'm not allowed to buy anything at all wargames related until after Christmas, so while I am mostly keeping to that**** I have been doing stuff around the edges. In this case I got the free Legions Imperialis Rhino from the store to test how easy they were to paint and if I was happy with my scheme.

   I copied my 32mm Sons Of Horus scheme exactly to start with. I know my colour scheme for the legion is probably a tad too green as it should be a slightly more off green - tinged with a pale blue, but I thought for the sake of consistency it was worth trying to match.

****ish

   I thought about which legion to pick for the project for a long time - for ages I had this listed as an Ultramarine project, then it swapped to Thousand Sons as I have a mate who is thinking about doing his Wolves in the scale, but ultimately, I don't want to rely on needing an opponent who matches*****, so I went to my favourite legion the Sons of Horus, with my first legion of Ravenguard who will be a small 2rnd army in the fullness of time. If I pick up Solar Aux, they can be loyalist too.

*****I've been burnt that way before

Thanks for reading - hopefully more next year.

More Battletech?

  Carrying on with the theme from last post, I got the other 3 of my first side for Battletech painted up. I now have enough models painted for a small-medium sized game (if I understand the system right), so it is about time to see if I can organise a game. The weird thing about painting these is that I really enjoyed doing the first lot early this year, so I have no idea why I dropped the next batch after I started them.

The mechs in this post are; Battlemaster, Catapult and Locust.

I do have my eye on a lance of Clan mechs next - probably in a 3rd colour scheme, but we shall see how it goes and if I am still reading Battletech novels when I am next weak.

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Battletech?!

   The game of Battletech that I had half planned earlier this year hasn't materialised - I'm sure my end of year post will mention this year has been nuts - but I've been struggling a little bit with motivation recently and forcing myself to paint hordes of Tyranids hasn't been helping*, so I decided to change tact and just paint something easy from my backlog instead of staring blankly at my to do list.

*the next horde is half finished

   This is first batch was the 5 mechs from the other side. I have a rule that unless a game is silly expensive and I know I have opponents, I always do two sides, so for Battletech I have the yellow and blue mechs as one side and these as the other.

   I went for a red base just as it didn't share anything with the models I had already painted and had planned to do a green/teal accent somewhere** but ended up doing a white arm and with a matching kneepad to break the colour up. Again, I don't think these are official colours at all, so are possibly a smaller mercenary unit in the fluff.

**possible a stripe across the chest plates

   The mechs above are; Shadow Hawk, Wolverine, Commando, Thunderbolt and Awesome

I could do with getting a game planned now as the last 3 for the yellow/blue side are almost finished as well.

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Battletech?

   Ok, so this is one of those hard projects to justify again. My twitter feed since just before Christmas has been slowly filling with gamers who normally paint historical armies suddenly buying boxes and boxes of Battletech and I have no idea why. So when one recommended a novel trilogy set in the universe, saying it was one of their favourite reads of the year, I added it to my backlog and carried on with my life.

   I have now read that series, and while it isn't going to rank in my top series any time soon it was interesting enough to make me curious. I've got a demo lined up at club at some point in the near future just to see how the game plays but I picked the beginners starter box up on a trip into London so I could muck about with some figures. I've gone with a fictitious colour scheme as I just don't know the factions well enough yet to have picked one and reversed a scheme I found online - not knowing if that scheme was a real one or not. I also purposely didn't halve the colours and instead thirded (?) them just as it seemed more interesting.

Pretty sure its a Griffin on the left and Vindicator on the right.

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Titanicus - Starting Small

   Adeptus Titanicus was one of those games that loomed on the horizon and no amount of steel-y will or good intentions was ever going to stop it ending up in my collection, but I gave holding out a really good try.
   The main problems with my will power when it came to this game were three-fold:

1. I already have a 28mm Warhound* that I would love to see alongside the rest of it's maniple, without needing to remortgage.
2. It's a game set in the Horus Heresy
3. Big stampy robots**

*Called Tracy

**I know they aren't actually robots but the point stands

The 28mm version, Tracy, herself.

   I decided to stick to the Legio names and colours that my background fluff has always been about - a homebrew legio called Legio Hasta, from the forgeworld of Hervictus (same as my 40k Imperial Guard). Hasta means something like spear in Old Norse and it very much encapsulates my titan legio's principles of war, focus on lighter engines (although they will have the bigger stuff in the future) and hit hard and fast to break the line - more fluff in the future.

The start of my maniple.

Gloria and (mini) Tracy

Sharon

   Last Tuesday my mate and me decided to give the rules a try down at Wayland Games, we weren't doing anything clever, simply using the same base engines, some scenery and bashing our way through the rules. As far as games go, neither of us showered ourselves in anything like tactical brilliance, but it was interesting to see what titans could do and what would work in the future***.

***Plus what extra bits we didn't have enough of in the base set

 It was about this point it started to go wrong for my Reaver . . .

   The end result of the game is we are very aware of how useful warhounds are (they are unlikely to kill your bigger toys but do not underestimate what they can do as part of a maniple. Also, it has to be said, that Games Workshop have made a brilliant set of rules with this game, you really do feel like the titan's alarms are screaming as you redirect power and try to get shields or weapons back online.

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