The Greatest Crusade: Horus Heresy Event!

On Sunday I had the pleasure of attending a friendly Horus Heresy tournament: The Greatest Crusade at the Titans Wargaming Club in London! And friendly was the name of the game: games were shorted not due to scoring but due to narrative match ups and no one was bringing to much of a. Disgusting. List, not that you can bring such a thing in Horus Heresy...

As you might imagine, I took my Mechanicus, finally getting to use them in some full Horus Heresy game: now that I have I can tell you why Horus Heresy is that much more popular then 40k among much of the community these days. But I digress, my list:

My Mechanicus Force

HQ - Magos Dominus: For the HQ, I was more focussed on keeping him cheap. Having run more expensive Magi in the past, they never seem to beat Space Marines in combat and never pump out e eqivilent firepower of their Mechanicus counterparts. I simply mounted this guy on an Abeyant to give him some survivability, and gave him a few defensive upgrades.

Elite - Tech Priest Auxillia: With the free feel no pain upgrade, I kept this guy cheap and cheerful to: he was only there to provide extra an Cortex Controller to keep the Castellax under my command...

Troops - Adsecularis Covenant: cheap and cheerful, these guys helped fill my mandatory troops and provide some expendable bodies. The tech priest helped the, stay alive, but I don't think they killed anything all day...

Troops - Thallax Cohort: My other troops choice, and a fun little harassment unit. I still ink these guys are not worth the points, but they can perform their roll reasonably well.

Troops - Castellax: Here is the real bulk of my force: 4 separate Castellaxs. Two armed with enhanced targeting arrays, two with 2 Flamers replacing the rear bolters. These guys are tough to kill and can pour the firepower onto Legion Marines. With the Magos' Cybertheurgy buffs, they proved much, much better.

Fast Attack - Avenger Strike Fighter: With two Autocannons filling the other two hard points, tp the Avenger proved a good choice: able to mow down infantry, destroy tanks, hurt Knights and hunt flyers, it is an extremely versatile choice, and one I will be taking again.

Heavy Support - Krios Venator: This thing is nasty. On paper it looked like it would provide the ranged anti vehicle I was lacking: in game it proved much, much more. A 4 shot Lascannon with ordnance as it's main gun, it could kill any vehicle if it got the chance. And it did...

Lord of War - Mechanicum Queatoris Knight Errant: With my Thanatar unpainted, I decided to take his guy... And he proved so very, very useful...

Now with that done, onto the games....

Game 1 - Mechanicus vs. Emperor Children

Dawn of War - Onslaught

My Opponent's Army

My first game I was playing a new comer to Horus Heresy. With the event focused around encouraging more 30k at the club and in the area, painting and proxy rules for this one event were slightly relaxed. Taking the most advantage was my opponent this game, with various 40k marine models and two different color scheme altogether.

Deployment, as per the rules for the Onslaught mission, was strange but I managed to seize the initiative! Taking the first turn, all my firepower amounted to a single attack bike killed, and some hull points taken of a Sicarian. Still, it proved better then his first turn: he failed to do anything but take a wound off a Thallax. This continued for much of the early game, with his entire deployed force destroyed by turn 3: luckily for him, a Storm Eagle bearing 20 marines had arrive, and this squad included more then a few characters...

The Destruction by turn 2...

At the beginning of turn 4, I held both objectives and had destroyed half his force: but he managed to slowly claw it back, striking the mostly abandoned objective in my deployment, I had to rush my forces back. Unfortunately, they arrived piece meal, and the two Castellaxs, the Tech Thralls and the Thallax all got cut down, eventually, by the unit and the Praetor in it: fortunately they held out long enough for the Knight to arrive, at which point it was all over.

Sir Oberon comes to the rescue while a Castellax holds up the enemy

The Storm Eagle rushed to contest his own objective, and I failed to shoot it down repeatedly. In the end, I win because it went on to turn 7, and the knight was able to shake the tactical squad off my objective...

Game 2 - Mechanicus vs. Word Bearers
Hammer and Anvil - Shatter Strike

Unfortunately, I got few photos of this game. Still, it was a fun one: versus Word Bearers, which were using then new possessed Contemptor Dreadnought which he picked up at the Horus Heresy weekend.

With his army held in reserves mostly, I had only that Dread and a duel Assault Cannon one. The possessed dreadnought showed it's worth, it's special rules forcing my Thallax and the Adscularis Covenant to fall back on the first turn. They eventually rallied however, and soon a Dreadclaw had arrived. With little else to shoot, it was killed by one quick blast from the Knight's Thermal Cannon, disgorging it's occupants, Kor Phearon and all, right into my right flank. One hail of fire later, and the squad is reduced to just Kor Phearon and the nuncio vox. Unfortunately, the nuncio vox called down the Gal Vorbek. Kor Phearon joined them, cast endurance, and the grind began. Getting a round of shooting before charging them, it took 4 turns with all 4 Castellax, and for the last two the Knight (which was freshly back from stomping on the Dreadnoughts) to kill them all. Having lost all but one of the Castellax in the fight,

Meanwhile, a veteran squad outflanked in a rhino onto my flank, firing missile launchers out of the back hatch at my Magos, killing him. In return, a hail of firepower from me wiped them off the board.

With everything of the enemy but the lone nuncio vox, the game ended. The nuncio vox which was in my deployment zone: I had lost the game because of this one guy! Curses!

The accursed Nuncio Vox, saved from a gory end by the end of the game

Game 3 - Mechanicus and Salamanders vs. Night Lords and Death Guard
Dawn of War - Crusade

The final game of the day: a doubles game! This would be no easy task however: the Night Lords were led by Curze, and the Death Guard had friends: not one, but two Knights!

Conspiring with my ally, we made out plan. With two objectives close to each other on one flank, we focused our forces, as did our enemy (They did put a battle cannon armed Knight on the other flank, although he was alone over there). Fortunately, between my Knight, my allies Spartan and bad luck for our enemy, the Knight Errant attacking us (A seneschal with extra WS, BS and a 3+ invuln) was killed turn 3. With a huge Night Lords assault squad on the run, it came down to Curze and his raptors to survive and win the day. Then the showdown happened...

Vulkan Lives! The epic showdown...

Unfortunately for Curze and his raptors, the Firedrakes, my Castellax and Vulkan proved way to much for them. All the Night Lords were swept aside in one round of combat, Curze himself left broken and dead.

From there, the game was as good as won: Victory for the loyalists!

Conclusions
I loved the event, and loved seeing a variety of well painted armies! It was only a shame I didn't get more games, and am fervently looking forward to similar events in the future. Chris organised it extremely well, the spirit of fun over competitiveness in the entire day.

Will here: Armies, Paints, Lists, and (tabletop) Gamer Girlfriends

Howdy, weary traveller! Come, seat yourselves within the Karlack 22nd's barracks, and watch for the inevitable knife at your throat. My name's Will, and I'm one of the bloggers here. I was going to include a goofy picture of meself, but I decided it was probably better to spare your eyeballs from my shockingly bad hair and stunning good looks (not the most admirable combination) and I'll start on the first few things to discuss.

First thing I'll mention, is a bit about me and my gaming habits. Because, I'll be honest, they're bad ones. I picked up 40k at the end of 5th ed, much like fellow blogger Alex, after I managed to actually find myself a gaming group who I could do RPGs with; the Warhammer came as an 'Oh, that looks kinda fun. I'll pick something up, and see where it takes me.' (Bad gaming habit #1.)

So, there I was, with a brand new and sparkly Tau army, paintbrushes, paints, and a ton of enthusiasm. Which isn't a bad way forwards. I amassed about 1500 points of Tau in the end, some painted to a moderate (for a newbie) fashion in a striking pale blue and red colour scheme. I was proud of them, even though I lost. Constantly.

Though, time turned my fantasies of a fluffy, entertaining army on it's head. I had gotten used to a less-than-viable army that was fun to play in a fluffy fashion, and was pretty unique. I was the only Tau player in my club, and in my area - which, while a little lonely, was nice. The new codex heading out was like a godsend - it was an edition out of date, and was in dire need of an update. GW just made it too good.

Suddenly, practically everyone I knew who was in the least bit competitive (sadly the case for both my half of the people I knew at both the club and the local GW) had Tau - big, stompy riptides that tore everything against them to small puddles of plasma. My cornerstones - the Kroot and Vespid - had been largely ignored, though - Vespid were no cheaper, and Kroot took a massive -1S hit, and suddenly could equip everything with sniper rifles, making them less the moderately okay melee unit into huge sniper blobs, which didn't fit. Kroot had snipers, yes. But not squads of 30 of them!

And so, my Tau army, and my shiny new limited edition codex collected dust for a bit. I flitted between armies, barely scraping 500 points before I changed my mind, decided I didn't like them (Bad gaming habit #2) and scrapped them. I think I tried Dark Eldar, Tyranids, even dabbling in Fantasy, before - almost 2 years later - I think I've finally settled on two armies that I can kind of split my attention between. Chaos Space Marines (Word Bearers), and Imperial Guard (Yes, another one. This is something of a Karlack thing - though I do Vostroyans, and Jay does Steel Legion (And Alex does Cadians. - Jay)). That is, I literally started those armies no more than 3 months ago. As such, this blog will be documenting the rise of those armies from the very beginning. I've also turned my sights towards my love of historical warfare, so expect to possibly see the start of a US Bolt Action army here in the future. Money permitting, of course.

So. Onward to my next point - models!

I'm quite proud of my painting style, and like to create a unique army in any way I can. I've stuck very religiously to the style given in How to Paint Citadel Minatures, which I picked up when struggling with painting Dark Eldar models. You know the one:

I was astounded by how much the basic techniques picked up my painting style, and so, I've stuck by it. However, that does mean that my Vostroyans have upwards of 40 paints per model - a number which seems to astound my fellow bloggers (also very slow - Bad gaming habit #3). So, I'll be updating a paint count with each of the models I paint here - starting with my little band of cultists, which are sat on my desk with half of their base layers done as I type this. 4 paints thus far.

Anyway. Sadly, there's not much to say in terms of painting models right now, since with my Tau having been shelved and my other two armies being new. I will leave an image of my Vostroyans here though, but watch this space; I'll be posting up more on my cultists soon, promise!

<Vostroyan group shot goes here>

Next point - lists!

Jay's already mentioned a 3000 point Apocalypse list; I'm writing one too, since we're planning some games for when Alex gets his arse back here in April. I've been working on a complete roster for a 'finished' army of Word Bearers - though, that said, it's a list that's almost touching on 5000 points now, so that's a little useless. Instead, I'm thinking of using it as an excuse to push me to paint models - though, given my usually slow fashion (#3 again) it may just be a case of base and wash those I use for now.

You may have gathered by now that I'm a fan of fluffy armies - that's largely why Word Bearers appeals to me. I've often thought about doing a chaos army because they are vastly different and yet so similar to the common Space Marine armies that littered our tabletops back at my old GW - mainly, I guess, because of the evil streak that permeates them. Same reason I enjoy Black Crusade over Dark Heresy. I guess I'm a closet villain.

At present, I've been listing what might be useful at that level, rather than what might constitute a list. After all, I've never played a game of more than 1250 points - especially not with my CSM, since I only own around 700 - but I do have an idea of things that would be handy. Long ranged firepower, certainly - so Defilers; Air support - so Heldrakes; Anti-Air weapons, so Havocs and Heldrakes; so on. I'm also sorely tempted by the idea of a Lord of War thrown in, simply because Apocalypse Only models make Apocalypse fun, right? The Fellblade has my attention - that 100" range on the Accelerator Cannon is really quite nice, though I'll admit I'm not in the least bit keen on the model - at least, the Forgeworld one. Anyone pointing out decent stock Fellblade conversions can have brownie points.

Choices aside; I've been fiddling over my choices for this. At present, it looks like I'm going to need to paint around 250 points a week - as well as accrue the money to fund this excursion - in order to meet that quota. But hey, a deadline gives a sense of urgency, so there may be hope yet. I'll also be keeping this updated, so let's see where we get.

Finally, I'll mention my girlfriend, Cally, who will also feature in a few of these, at least until she decides to write herself. She's got a good number of armies (Dark Eldar, Tyranids, Necrons and High Elves) and is a pretty sodding good painter, so anything  to show off will probably be crammed in these posts, alongside yet more captivating dialogue by yours truly.

But I've made this long enough, so I shall leave you to your surfing of the interwebs. Fly now, chaps; and don't let the trojans bite. 'Til next time!

EDIT: This was written back in January, and I shelved it with the intention of getting a decent light setup for photographing some models. In the meanwhile, I've had quite a few issues with RL such as leaving university, so the photos never happened: if I get the opportunity to take them, I'll add them here. In the meanwhile, I told myself and the rest of the guys on this blog I'd join them, so I really feel I ought to get writing.

Will