Blood Pact Test Colours

I have painted a Blood Pact Mutie Trooper and an Armoured Car to test a colour layout.

I am somewhat colour blind so tend to have odd tastes in colours. Conversely, I am very sensitive to shading - I can see well in the dark.

I intend to focus on half tracks for my Blood Pact. Thhe armoured cars have the basic armour stats of a Chimera but can upgrade the multilaser to a lascannon for +10pts. The hull gun is a heavy stubber.

The hull and turret are from a 1:35 kit of a 1930s Russian armoured car and the tracks and gun are Airfix Robogear.

Imperial Armour V: The Siege of Vrak Part 1

Imperial Armour V: The Siege of Vrak Part 1

This is a 190 page expansion book for Warhammer 40K that retails for £38 from Forge World or Games Workshop (see my sidebar for Forge World website link). It has many colour plates inside and these are the first thing to catch the eye. The standard of the graphics, both colour and monochrome, is of a very high calibre. The binding on the book is adequate, which is not always true of the larger Forge World supplements.

The book fills a genuine void in the 40K universe, namely rules and ideas for trench warfare or, to put it another way, modern siege warfare. This includes rules for siege artillery pieces and scenarios for trench raiding and so on.

It also offers two more novelties. The first is a full army list for the Death Korp of Krieg and includes some novel vehicles such as the centaur, which is based on the mechanised carriers that European armies built in the 1940s. The second is a rebellious planetary militia army list that has been touched by chaos but is not yet a deranged mob. Forge World offer tie-in models for both armies.

The militia attracted me and I have built up a colourful army, which is my current favourite. In this army, squads have variable morale that you determine the first time their morale is tested (D6 + 4). This is OK for small games but it is immensely tedious trying to keep track of everybody’s morale in large scale scenarios.

There are various alternatives:
1. You test once for the whole army. This makes the battle unbalanced if you roll an unusually high or low result. It works for campaigns OK.
2. Use Imperial Guard equivalent morals. This works fine but takes away some of the flavour of the army.
3. Roll to determine moral before EVERY morale test. I like this one as it is great fun and it does replicate what happens in untried, semi-trained militias. Sometimes a squad fights impossible odds with suicidal bravery and sometimes the same squad is spooked by a stray round. One of the objectives of training professional soldiers is to achieve predictable reactions under pressure.

The only criticism I have is in the writing. Forge World and the English Language clearly have been introduced but the relationship is not yet intimate.

This is a great supplement and worth every penny. I highly recommend it.

Planetstrike

Geeky Louis is showing the Planetstrike 40K supplement on his blog:

http://geekylouis.blogspot.com/2009/04/planetstrike-et-vulcan.html

Apparently it's been announced in France first.

My Imperial Assault Lander is ready!

John

Clash at Formalhite

Ghastly Xenos desecrated His Imperial Majesty's city of Formalhite by their presence. The Imperial Guard despatched a substantial force to cleanse the Emperor's territory. Unfortunately, they had to destroy the city to save it - now where have I heard that before?

The cowardly Xenos fled the city during the initial bombardment but returned to meet the righteous anger of the Guard. The initial probing forces met on the Boulevard of Angels. The Guard lost a two Chimera APCs, a Salamander Scout, two Sentinel Scouts and a few Guardsmen. The traitors lost several jetbikes, walkers and infantry. Their demon-avatar blasphemy was also destroyed.

A tactical victory to the Guard Commanders, Sean and me. However the heretics, Stephen and Mike claim to be undefeated and promise retribution.

The Baneblade was the Hero of the Guard, surviving a storm of fire and hitting back. The jetbikes were the Eldar Heros, causing mahem and being very difficult to kill.

Those Magnificent Orks

Those Magnificent Orks In Dair Flying Machines.
Day Go Up, Tiddly, Up, Up.
Day Go Down, Tiddly, Down, Down.
Day Enchant All Da Speed Freaks An Steal All Da Scenes
Wiv Dair Up, Tiddly, Up, Up
And Dair Down, Tiddly, Down, Down.
Up! Down! Flying Aroun’.
Looping Da Loop An Go Straffin’ Da Groun’.
Day're All, Frightfully Keen
Those Magnificent Men In Dair Flying Machines.
Day Can Fly Upside Down Wiv Dair Feet In Da Air.
Day Don't Think Of No Danger. Day Really Don't Care.
Da WarBoss Would Think He Had Made A Mistake.
To See Flyboy Orks And Da Chances Day Take.
Those Magnificent Orks Wiv Da Blood On The Wings.
Day Go Up, Tiddly, Up, Up.
Day Go Down, Tiddly, Down, Down.
Day Enchant All Da Boyz Wiv Der Bombin’ Routines
Wiv Dair Up, Tiddly, Up, Up
An’ Dair Down, Tiddly, Down, Down.
Up! Down! Flying Aroun’.
Looping Da Loop An’ Go Straffin’ Da Ground.
Day're All, Frightfully Mean.
Those Magnificent Orks, Those Magnificent Orks, Those Magnificent Orks In Dair Sho-oty Ma-chines!

My thanks to Sean who made these models from 1:72 Zeros back in the Gorkamorka days and then passed them on to me.

Da Black Baron

The Orky Air Force continues to expand.

Here is the personal plane of dah Black Baron himself. He wanted a bronze ram on the front, which gave the mek some issues. The first flight ended after ten metres wiv a large hole in da runway. The solution was to put da worky bits in the tail to balance it out. Da mek struggle wiv da fuel tank but made a special seat tank for da Black Baron to sit on.

In da MkII vershun, the air intakes were underneath the bow but they kept getting body parts in da turbines so da mek had da genius idea of putttin' 'em behind the pilot. Provided da Baron rams his hat on tight da jobs a gud'un.

Da fighta ain't so fast but it can turn on a grot's buttocks. Note the vectored thrusters under the tail (courtesy of Old Crow - see sidebar).

I used a SMER 1:48 scale Fokker DVII as the basis of the model, lowering the top wing. This is a robust child's model that is great for kitbashing. Allsortsemporium sells it for under a fiver (see sidebar).

The turbines are off a drop pod and the rockets are Robogear. Everything else is off GW Ork sprues, bikes, wartrucks, etc.

I took the plane into action this afternoon with my track-boyz. Da Baron shot up some guardsmen and slammed two rokkits into a Basilisk. Unfortunately, they failed to go off. Da Baron then ran into the massed fire of twelve pintle mounted storm bolters. Only one burst hit but it took out the fighta's single engine. Da plane would still dive OK but had da trouble pulling up.

I won't reveal who won. After all, the honour is in the taking part, not winning.

Old Crow Vultures

Old Crow are a small resin model company that I got involved with over the Hammers Slammers Project.

They make a great range of 28ml vehicles. Compared to Forge world, they are simpler, chunkier, much cheaper, and much better finished. Jez machines each part of the resin kit to fit and he uses a non-warp resin. That does mean less detail but the models are great for wargaming as they are tough. A word of warning, machined resin fixes in about one tenth of a second with superglue and the bond is stronger than the resin.

These models are Raven Gunships, which I use as Vultures. The kits cost £20 each.

I have fitted out two. One is a tank buster with a GW Heavy bolter in the chin turret and twin lascannon on the fusalage hardpoints. I hung six GW Imperial Guard hunter Killer missiles under the wings. The tiny missiles on the wingtips (GW Guard rockets) are representative of decoys.

The second gunship has the same gun choices but carries two hellstrike missiles as flak suppressors. The missiles on the wingtips are GX old-style hunter killers from my bit-box. I use them in games when we have air-to-air combat. They count as hunter-killer missiles with an AA mount. They can only be fired at aircraft.

The rules are getting a bit mixed up about what counts as an AA mount on an aircraft. There are three conditions. All three must be met to claim an AA mount.
1. The aircraft must be an air superiority fighter, i.e. small, light, fast and manoeuvrable. That rules out Vultures, which are ground attack aircraft. Ork Fightas and IN Lightnings are fighters.
2. The weapon must be in a fixed, forward-firing mount only.
3. The weapon must be rapid fire, e.g. autocannon or shurikin cannon etc. That rules out lascannon, which are one shot ground attack weapons.

Specialised air-to-air missiles are an exception. They can be fitted to anything. RN sub-hunting Nimrods used to carry sidewinders in case they met a Russian Bear. However, an aircraft that does not meet the fighter criteria, such as a Vulture, fires at BS-1 against true fighters as the latter are more manoeuvrable.


My mate, Sean, kindly made the stands for me.

You can find a link to Old Crow on my sidebar.

I have used these vultures in combat against the Tau. They attracted massive amounts of fire and did not last long.