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.

Thanks for reading

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.

Thanks for reading

Bigger Bugs Pt 17

   Another post slightly out of place, I painted this guy at the same time as one of my recent horde batches. This is my 5th Carnifex, so not a huge amount to add that I've not said already, but this one is full on tin opener.

Thanks for reading

The Endless Swarm

   With the Imperium's resources stretched to it's limit another swarm has been allowed to build in the jungle which required extermination, this time the Order of the Fallen Angel was in a position to respond. With an entirely mobile force* the Adepta Sororitas raced to confront the threat before it had time to make it to the closest settlement, or worse, build further.

*he knows I hate trying to kill Rhinos

   The end result was a fairy close victory for the Imperium, with the highest casualty count of any battle in the campaign so far. It does now mean the defenders of Fratribusia are starting to pull a victory out of the bag, that is until I sent the next bit of fluff to the group chat . . .

The Solblades that arrived on Fratribusia have been holding the xenos menace at bay but they are slowly losing ground. Every casualty lost to the Imperium is irreplaceable and numbers will tell with time, but holding the line forever was not why the Lord Regent Robute Gulliman sent the Solblades out.
Fratribusia was never meant to be held. It was always a delaying point while the machine of the Imperium ground into place at strategically vital planets. 

Now is the time for the Imperial forces remaining on Fratribusia to change tactics. The imperium has to decide what is worth saving and what can actually be saved.

Bigger Bugs Pt 16

   While painting my recent batches of swarms I realised that if I wanted to play a big swarm list I would need a way of keeping the teeming mass going, so I picked the Tervigon off the shelf behind me and gave it a quick paint job.

   I hadn't realised that this thing was a HQ monster when I bought it, thinking it was just part of the swarm, but by running this I was able to free space for some more swarms, which never hurts. While it's the same kit as the Tyrannofex, I'm actually quite pleased by how different it looks, so many duel model kits just look like the same thing with different arms, but this one does look like a new monster.

Thanks for reading

The Swarm Pt 12

   Carrying on with the idea of getting swarms painted up, I've picked my other most useful swarm unit the last of my Hormagaunts. To be completely honest, this unit is so over due that it is ridiculous and the fact that I've not got more than 2 boxes this many games in seems a little daft too*.

*but I'm not sure I could face painting an extra 10-20 swarm models at this point

   I've got a game lined up where I want to run a full swarm army to use the Endless Swarm detachment as I love the idea of having more models at points in the game than I started the game with, for 2cp I can bring a whole 20 model unit back onto the board . . .

Thanks for reading