A tour of duty of the deathworld of Prism

 An Astartes chapter, now erased from history once called this deathworld home. They discovered an ancient, subterranean xenos portal of some sort and either tried to open or destroy it. Instead the portal fractured, tearing a hole in the fabric of reality that could not be closed. Despite their desperate attempts to contain the disaster, they were lost in the ensuing cataclysm. 

The Inquisition stepped in and ordered Exterminatus, but not even their cyclonic torpedoes could close the portal. Nor eliminate the wretched taint of the warp emanating from it. Prism was erased from all maps and star charts, yet it's screams in the ether mark it as a blazing beacon of terror to Psykers and Navigators alike. 

Periodically, the High Lords will dispatch an Astartes chapter to the world to cleanse it of whatever foul horrors have populated it via the warp breach, be they Xenos, Daemon or Heretic. Every arriving strike cruiser announces itself with an orbital bombardment, but it is just a formality. Only boots on the soiled ground, bolters, blades and holy flames can properly cleanse this blighted planet. For a little while, at least.

The last chapter to take up this grim duty was the 5th Battle Company of the Black Dragons, the proverbial foxes guarding the hen house. Only the Emperor knows what trophies those vile mutants  collected. Rather than purging this rock of the warp's taint the Dragons likely saw it as an opportunity for a recruitment drive. It is only the sad state of the Imperium of Man that such tainted Astartes are even tolerated. 

Now that the Dark Eagles' 5th Company has arrived, this shattered Prism shall be properly cleansed!

The State of my 40k (yes this is includes a rant).

o/

(kicks the dust off of this ol' blog to see if its still alive...)

So, the State of my 40k, my on-again off-again series where I usually just whine/rant about 40k. Rather than just focus on any one army this time I think I'll just do an overview of all of them. Big things are afoot, both around the world and even here locally. 

The Nova Open reveals have induced nerdgasms the world over in the 40k realm, a new psychic...something is coming for all factions! SoBs finally have a release date, PLASTIC aspect warriors after decades of begging!

Emprah be praised! What will we buy first???? 

Locally, there's a 40k escalation league at the FLGS, with prize support and best of all: the only models that get objective secured have to be painted to at least a table top standard! Hell, even Bob, a long-time 8th ed. hold out has a Knight nowadays, as apparently that's what's required to remain 'competitive' in 8th's kick their teeth in with pay-to-win models and make 'em cry meta.

Seriously, every pick-up game I saw in the last few weeks in which I was still a regular at the FLGS' game nights looked like games where any of my armies would be dead on arrival.

Even Neverness' infernal 20+ shots a turn flyer all but wrecked my army on turn one, killing a squad and a half in one volley, requiring my entire army to shoot at it the next turn in hopes of taking it out (which we all know is a really shitty way to try and enjoy a game). Oh, and before you get defensive and bring up the turn 2 'Vyper incident', I'm certain that that was a miracle of dice which will likely never be repeated.

Besides, its not your fault anyways, but rather GW's insistence on making I win button rules to sell over-priced models (Custodes army anyone?) taking just about all strategy out of the game because my new stuff is awesome and your old stuff isn't. Speaking of...don't tell the trolls that infest teh interwebz that you're tired of primaris updates/releases (lieutenants excluded, everyone's sick of those) because without constantly getting newer and better and better releases on a seemingly never-ending basis, that army is (quote) unplayable.

Clearly that wasn't a very good Martini.

...and thru all of that, even with my new projects and 40k purchases I'm just kinda meh. Hell, I'm not really even interested in playing 40k right now, with most all efforts going towards Battletech and a bit of Rogue Stars. Anyways, onto the state of my 40k...

Da Long Wayz Dezert Groop

Da Groop, assembled for their most recent battle.

The baby squiggoth is still on hold, and still awaiting greenstuff. Guess I ought to just order it online given that I almost never make it to the FLGS these days. Also, Krump and Pittance are getting demoted back to a mere nob (appropriately enough, even as puns) as I have a new Da Masta Cheef warboss mini which needs to come out of it's bath of simple green water to remove the resin-mold release agents. Someday I might even assemble my dakka jet as well.

Orks will always be one of my favs, and its doubtful I'll ever sell the army (again) due to too many sentimental models, and following my 7th ed rage-quit/ebay sale and the subsequent horror/anger of My Beloved Wolfy when finding out I'd sold the lion's share of them. As such they're currently holding steady at approximately 1000-1250ish points. 

Spess Mahreenz

Its pretty obvious that GW doesn't give a fuck about any marine that isn't a Primaris marine, and personally I find that heartbreaking. 

To be honest, I'm thinking of liquidating my army again the 500ish points that are left of it (and what little I have left for 30k too). I'll just keep my Rainbow Warriors, Relictors, and Silver Drakes Kill Teams, and my ancient Predator will go into stasis in my dust-proof display box. Technically the Rainbows would still be field-able as a patrol consisting of a Lt., a minimum tac and scout squads and the pred., but I seriously doubt anyone would want to play a game so low in points. So just kill teams for them I guess.

The Eldar

Only three left to go...

The Corsair re-arm-ament is almost complete, though I did keep a squad of 10 Iyanden Guardians with lasguns as is. They are all painted decently, needing only minor touch ups, and match one another relatively well. In doing so they've spawned another project/idea that I'm looking into but I'll get to that below.

Having removed about 200ish points just in over-priced lasblasters alone, my Corsair/Exodite/Craftworld menagerie is holding steady as about the 1k mark. The Corsairs are in dire need of a cohesive paint scheme though!

Dark Mechanicus/Renegade IG.

No doubt you can see the need for my cultists to
eradicate this clearly deranged foe...

Nope, no further progress on the Venomcrawler from my last post. I did get a 3rd squad of cultists cheap though bringing that little band of misfits up to about 300 points. They just need some motivation by me which is sadly lacking these days. 

RETROHAMMER

Kinda sad to think that these convoluted rules were a simpler time...

Going back to those Iyanden guardians with lasguns. In looking at my whole Iyanden contingent, they're all 2nd ed models (like many Eldar armies due to 20 year old metal aspect warriors still being the standard), so I looked to our friends in France and sure enough, they had all of the 2nd ed rules, codexes, etc. available as PDFs and I downloaded all of it (well, only the codexes that are relevant to me), and assuming I can figure out the old rules again, maybe see if Neverness (or somebody) would be interested in playing some 2nd ed retrohammer at some point. 

2nd ed does have the issue of not including My Beloved Wolfy's Fem Fa'Tau as they weren't invented yet, but she currently has zero interest in playing 40k at this point, and thus her 2kish army of Tau remain in stasis. 

*****

Well I think this rant post has a high enough word count to make up for my recent lack of posts...lol. 

Another Fleeting Rainbow Warriors appearance...

o/

My right flank. All 3 of these marines (there's one far forward on the left, out of focus and in terrain) died quickly to enemy fire.

Welp, just in case anyone was wondering if any 'progress' has been made: Nope, I still kinda suck at playing Kill Team. 

A target rich environment!

The blob in the foreground is one of my scouts,
trying to decide on which target to miss...

My buddy Phil asked if I wanted to go in a 4-player free-for-all a week ago and I figured why not? Its been all battletech lately, so I was up for a little change. Skip forward to Saturday and my Rainbow Warriors...or...well, maybe just their accompanying dice were most displeased with having to earn their keep and as such put forth minimal effort. Thusly thwarting all plans of glory on the battlefield. 

Green Arrow and my scout sgt. preparing to do a sweep and clear of the ruins Noah was hunkered down in (as usual). 

When the game (officially) ended on turn 4, Bob and his Thousand Sons were in the lead, Phil and his vile Ulthwe xenos was 2nd, Noah and his Salamanders Pollywogs third and I claimed dead last. Yay. However it was early, and my Beloved Wolfy was in the midst of a board game, so we decided to play it out till the end of turn 6 just for shits and giggles. 

My team, having swept away the last of the Pollywogs, close in on a Guardian fusion Gunner (strange looking fusion gun isn't it?). However Green Arrow put his Deathwatch training to go use and dispatched the alien with 1 shot.  

Given that it no longer mattered, the Rainbows suddenly came alive, gaining 3 more KPs, along with the 'help' of Phil (he killed my scout sgt., so not that helpful...), we removed Noah from the table entirely by the end of turn 5, putting me in 3rd at the least by the game's unofficial end. Indeed, for turn 6, I took Noah's vacated seat as 3 of my 4 remaining KT members were in his deployment zone (the 4th, my up until that turn useless ML gunner was still back in my corner). 

Oh well, I had fun anyways, despite my abysmal die rolls. That said, the Rainbows haven't moved themselves up, or even into the painting queue with this performance!

Demotions all around!

o/

I was rummaging thru my spess mahreen collection a week or so back and was curious as to just how Rainbow Warriors I actually had. Not too many it turns out and even less for actual, usable squads. My Rainbows were suffering from a serious case of too many chiefs and not enough indians! Indeed, the sergeant-to-squad ratio was 3:1.  

Well collectively they surpass the 3-color minimum...

Thus it was time for some demotions: Bolters for everybody! 

Ironically though, I did make one new Sgt., whilst four others were reduced to the rank to mere grunts. The new one commandeered the Signum backpack of Chapter Master Profanitus to make a proper devastator Sergeant.

In the interim, Green Arrow has been promoted to Lt., and has taken command since Profanitus' armor lacks a power plant (but will eventually get one of those eagle headed packs) that, and a chapter master leading a 600 point patrol detachment is just plain dumb. 

I'm blaming the Chucking Monkeys blog for this...

...actually, I'm getting ahead of myself. So lemme back up a bit and explain. 

So, the Primaris marines...yeah those, more of a gorilla in the room than monkeys, but we'll get there. Their fluff is in general hideous, no need to revisit that. Personally i think that the Intercessors look alright though and I gotta cheap squad aways back to bolster my Rainbow Warriors. 

However aesthetically they don't fit. My rainbows are the last dregs of the chapter, adorned in a motley assortment of scavenged and standard issue armor, and all have at least one chapter specific, and time consuming to paint shoulder pauldron. Whereas the Primaris' armor all conforms and being easy-build models, they have generic pauldrons meaning I'd have to come up with something more even more difficult (like free-hand painting) for the chapter iconography. In a word: no.

Then there's the Salamanders. I did paint one Primaris marine for them but...originally being a 30k force, with a color scheme as laborious to paint as the Alpha Legionnaires they were supposed to replace...I think I'll just ebay the last of 'em and be done with that failed project.

Yeah I can't paint this good! This was lifted straight from the Chucking Monkeys blog, which is linked below...

Which brings us to Chucking Monkeys, and his beautifully painted Primaris 'scouts'. Actually all of it is beautiful, check out that Ancient! Anyways, the idea of Primaris scouts struck a chord...no doubt harkening back to my Aurora 10th Company debacle of an army. I like the idea of scouts...well, the old scouts, with the WS/BS of 3 (hitting on a 4+ for you 8th ed only noobs out there), and I thought: Why not take the ol' Primaris' down a peg and use 'em as poorly trained scouts? Might make 'em a bit more palatable too (kinda like Space Wolf Blood Claws, just without the pretending to be the ANGRY MAHREENZ!!! part)!

So that's what I set out to do. Great Idea MC, glad you thought of it! Given the 5-6 painted models that I average befor-squirrel!,  I decided to just do a Kill Team of them, and skip 40k proper in its entirety.  

First up I needed a chapter. I figured I'd just make 'em an Ultramarine Ultima Founding chapter, but none in the SM codex caught my interest. I dunno, with each just having a color scheme/name/icon, and fluff blurb, you can tell the GW game designer's hearts weren't really into the primaris marines. Then I pondered making up my own chapter from scratch, and was going to go that route till I found a good halfway point: The Silver Drakes (The warhammer wiki page seems to be far more detailed, until you realize that its just a repost of the generic Primaris fluff). 

The Silver Drakes are a canon chapter who's sole existence is a small blurb on pg. 39 of the Nid codex. They have no colors, chapter icon or anything else known about them. Talk about lazy...sure I'll just use that, write up a blurb of my own which (hopefully) justifies the 2nd rate stat line, come up with my own colors and to top it off, I can use the fallout hobbies decals I had made for my abortive Black Dragons army (which totaled just that one mini...).  

So here ya go, the Silver Drakes in Kill Team:

I won't make any changes to the point values
as those are already nonsensically allotted.

Well that was easy enough to do. Next up, and easy but good looking color scheme. My first test model was kinda meh and after it was finished, I gave it a good once over and summarily submerged it in some simple green. Here's my 2nd try:

In all honesty, the couple-three layers of white on the base felt like the hardest part. Also the aquila color denotes the company, the 7th in this case.

A detail view of his wrist comms.

Much better me thinks, and relatively quick and easy to paint as well! Speaking of the paint recipe (just so I don't forget) is: GW's leadbelcher for the silver, Coat D'arms' enchanted blue for the metallic blue, GW's mechanicus standard grey for the gun, Army Painter strong tone for the wash, GW's bleached bone drybrush as per the norm, and whatever shade of Vallejo's white that I have for the base (its the only white paint I have). The remaining colors for the other little details, bits, and bobs don't really matter for consistency.

I'm hoping that I can manage to paint up the squad before I inevitably get distracted yet again...

Struggling on...

o/

Yes I survived the weekend, but only just. I still ache all over and feel drained (both mentally and physically). Working in that ungodly heat just sucks the life right out of ya! Especially for one such as I, who is no longer acclimatized to the heat. 

But no one really cares about that right? Right.

The weekend before I left for my brief stay in hell, I bought a partial box of tac marines from Micheal (of the amazingly painted Dark Angels fame). Combining them with spares I already had, and a few bitz ordered via ebay to fill in the missing pieces, I ended up with what is essentially a 10 man dev squad for a mere $23. Nice.

Time was short but I was able to assemble a few before leaving:

Pay no attention to the Halfling & Minion loitering in the background...

The two on the left will go to my 30k Blackshields. Still not entirely sold on using the scout arms and heavy bolter on a regular marine, but it fits well with their pariah wargear theme. The other three, along with a previously assembled ML gunner will form the base of Rainbow Warriors dev squad. They'll only have 3 missile launchers, but like the Blackshields, my Rainbows also suffer from having drastically limited resources.

Hopefully I'll have the rest assembled before this week's end. 

My 2nd 8th ed 40k game

o/

As I mentioned in my prior post, I gave 8th ed another try this past Saturday. With four players, of which three of us (myself included) only had a cursory knowledge of the new rules, and one actual 8th ed veteran player, we opted for a 2 v. 2 team game. With 750ish points per side our opponents were the Tyranids and the Death Korps of Krieg-turned-Genestealer Cult (poor Courtland, his DKK usually gets lumped in with Chaos, but never loyalist marines it seems).

Against this veritable tide of little gribblies and Guardsmen were the Glorious Dark Angels featured in my previous post, and my Rainbow Warriors which, true to form, was the only not-fully painted army on the table. Yay.

We opted for kill points, and no command points to keep things simple, though even then it was a seemingly endless marathon game that we called at the bottom of turn 4 (11:30 pm). We all had fun and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves! In the end the Nids won out with 3 Kps plus first blood, whereas we only earned 3 KPs  despite having so, sooooo many models to grind thru.... 

What follows is my usual photo dump, captioned with random highlights. My thanks to Neverness who volunteered to be combat camerman for a goodly portion of the game.

Can ya guess what deployment we used? 

Turn 1 and the Dark Talon swoops in and starts strafing the hordes!

Massed autocannon fire along with my Primaris marines,
all shooting at and failing to kill the Flyrant...

Said Flyrant mocking us with its majesty!

Unfortunately the Dark Talon only has so many guns....

The Gribbly tide lurches forward...

With the demise of my Rhino (1st blood), my Captain and accompanying Combat Squad steel themselves for their approaching demise...

Accursed Zoe's, they can take an inordinate amount of punishment and yet they just keep on floating forward.

Instead of receiving one, the Rainbow warriors charge themselves and my Captain slaughters the cavalry! The few survivors would soon thereafter rout giving us one of our few kill points of the game. 

The thin primered line follows up into more gribblies and guardsmen.

I hate it when a beastie like that pops up out of the ground! Unfortunately, my Predator's autocannon did little more to draw its attention than anything else...

The Flyrant & Dark Talon 'dogfight' for several rounds, badly damaging each though both remained airborne thru to the end.

Unlike my dreadfully performing Aurora Chapter scouts, the Rainbow Warrior scouts proved to be shockingly resilient (though per standard procedure they were wiped out). Here is my remaining Sgt., tying up some DKK for a turn or three.

Ugh, more Gribblies! So many gribblies...

The Primaris marines were slogging thru the other end of the hoard.

The dogfight continues overhead to little effect.

My other combat squad gets stuck in as well. It must be said that the DKK's ability to fire their lasguns as pistols in HTH has frightening potential!!

With his accompanying combat squad dead, my captain continues to hack away with his Prismatic Blade (Teeth of Terra), remaining unwounded by game's end. 

Behold: Rainbow Warriors Chapter Master Profanitus!

Former captain of the 9th Reserve Company 

(and last senior officer standing)

Speaker of the most colorful of language...

...and bearer of the Prismatic Blade,

the last surviving relic weapon of the chapter.

I can assure you that rainbow colored chainsaw teeth will be happening!

The Prismatic Blade will represent the Teeth of Terra relic weapon. 'What's that you say? You can't have a duplicate of a named relic weapon?' Yeah, whatever, there's already two of them, but I've ranted on that subject already (last 3 paragraphs). Besides, don't bad(ass) things come in '3's?

The Primaris marines have landed!

Yay?

Leading from the front
is only for the obsolete
space marines!

As I've stated previously, I like the basic Primaris marine minis and I'm making another (perhaps futile?) attempt to try and like 8th ed. Thus I picked up a Lieutenant along with a cheap squad of seven Intercessors to integrate into what is/was my Rainbow Warriors Kill Team.

Lieutenant Budderbarz will temporarily serve as the army commander and is armed with a master-crafted Stalker pattern bolt rifle. Being armed with a 'heavy' weapon, he'll be a more sensible Space Marine commander who hangs back and directs traffic whilst supporting his troops with covering fire rather than just charging headlong into every fray.

Options? We don't need no stinkin' options!

The squad is just a bunch of no-frills grunts (not that their codex entry really allows for any). These additions along with my Predator, and a sqaud of tac marines borrowed from my unpainted 30k stocks will flesh out my Rainbow Warriors to the 1k mark, which is a decent enough starter force. However, aside from a captain that's already on order, I have no plans for this army's expansion beyond these minis (and its probable 30k will steal it's minis back assuming I ever get everything painted!). 

ONE. TANK. ONLY.

Seriously what the hell? 

I opted to try Neverness' approach and took these finished
photos outside in natural light.

Oh, I know I said. I'll put aquilas on 3 sides, and then paint the feathers in a rainbow of colors! Sure. Sounds great. Unlike the marine's pauldrons there's no edges to help hold the bristles in

line, instead all that's needed is a steady hand. I can do that

right? 

The blue circle with the number 3 on the turret marks this out as having originally been the 3rd predator assigned to the Rainbow Warriors' 9th Company. 

Well yes...apparently. 

Note the two service studs on the severed head. Clearly this was a marine, though from what chapter or renegade warband is unknown.

But it was a fucking nightmare to actually do! And of course after accomplishing that feat from hell, there comes the fact that this is the last surviving tank from a dying chapter. One whose last few marines have more important shit to do (like surviving) to not bother with cleaning the grime and filth off of the hull. As such, said filth obscures about half of the detail on those rainbow-painted-aquilas (which in hindsight might not be such a bad thing given my sloppiness).

So...once again, this tank is painted and ready to die do battle on the table top.

Anyways, the damned thing is done barring the clear coat (which I'm out of currently). I like it. Its filthy yes, but that's my usual preference for tanks anyways. So I guess for the Rainbow Warriors its onto either some more tactical marines, or else Primaris Lt. Budderbarz.

WIP: Rainbow Warriors Predator - Decals

o/

- Bourrasque -
To quote Stephen Colbert: 'Its French Bitch!' (and translates to Squall)
Fitting I think given that their iconography involves rainbows and lightning bolts.

Notta whole lot of progress since my last post. Mom and Dad were both in town, which is an exceptional rarity. That said neither got within a half mile of each other (though not much more than that...lol).

Anyways, with the 'fam' in town, hobby time was at a minimum. I managed at least to add the lightning to the front plate and doors, followed by GW's 'ard coat. Once dry, I added the decals. Normally the application of decals is a profanity laden affair, but in this case I managed to apply all 10 without any issue what-so-ever. A feat never to be repeated I'm sure!

Next up, I need to paint the aquila feathers in a rainbow of colors I guess. Yeah, that ought to be 'fun'.

The umpteenth predator repaint....

o/

Previously its been painted who knows how many times (at least 4 or 5 I'm thinking, one atop the other with no stripping in between). Then I sunk it in the simple green for a year and a half, scraping the resulting muck off only to start and stop painting once again, mid-project. Then I shelved it for another 6 months or so. However, now my ancient predator (my first ever GW purchase) is getting repainted yet again! 

Yeah....no.

When we last saw this venerable old wreck, it was bearing a partial Alpha Legion scheme for 30k. But...I didn't much like how it was turning out (seems what works on infantry doesn't necessarily translate to vehicles) and then I sold that army rendering the paint moot. I pondered selling it, but instead opted to repaint it (per tradition), this time in the colors of my Rainbow Warriors.

Better...

Currently its kinda plain and I think I'll keep it that way, opting instead for the usual grime and filth to be added after decals. As for those, I'm thinking of lightning streaks behind white aquilas (will have to root thru the decal collection to see what I have), maybe with rainbow painted feathers. 

In the harsh glare of this is iphone pic, you can see that the edges have been cleaned up and its pretty much ready for iconography and dirtying up.

Will see, but its proceeding nicely so far...