Combat Patrol at AdeptiCon - Chaos Marines

I finally realized the other night that there's no way I'm going to have enough time before Adepticon to paint a new force for the Combat Patrol event (rules can be found here but all pretty standard I think). I'm fairly confident getting my Dark Elves ready by then will take as much time as I can make available. Therefore I'm reluctantly putting aside my idea of painting a new couple of Raptors Legion squads for Combat Patrol and instead have reviewed my other options.

While my Necrons would require absolutely no work in order to be ready, I'm not terribly interested in playing them. It's the same situation for my Tyranids although I might take another look at them at some point just to try out potential lists. Imperial Guard would be fun but require much too much painting for consideration. My very old Orks might work alright but I'd have a very limited selection from which to choose. This means the assignment for the Combat Patrol mission falls to my Chaos Space Marines, the Beasts of Annihilation. All I'd need to do is paint seahorse chapter badges for 15 or so marines and one or two big seahorses for the Rhinos, plus some touchups here and there, and they would be done.

I still haven't gone back to work on this army after finally deciding last summer on a design for their chapter symbol, a little yellow seahorse. It was now more than ten years ago when I first began working on these Chaos Marines and so perhaps it will be the event at Adepticon that at last motivates me to finish such few details that remain. Also due to his group's inability to get organized before the big Team Tournament had sold out, DrGabe of DrGabe's Miniatures will also be playing in the same Combat Patrol event with me. Just in case I find myself matched against my longtime nemesis, I would enjoy using my Chaos Marines against him just like old times.

Knowing now that it's going to be my Chaos Space Marines, I've been working on some potential army lists I could use. It's been a struggle trying to hammer out something I like, but given the nature of the event, I'm not terribly worried about the effectiveness of my "army." Perhaps I'm mistaken but I don't see how you can take too seriously 400 point games of Combat Patrol. Sure I want to do as well as I can but I'm just looking for some fun rolling dice while possibly dealing with an Adepti-style hangover from the night before. With that understanding of my goals and expectations, here is the first set of lists I'm considering:

Patrol A (pictured above) - 400 points

5 Chosen Chaos Space Marines: plasma guns x 2, Rhino

10 Chaos Space Marines: Aspiring Champion, Icon of Chaos Glory, meltagun, missile launcher, Rhino w/Havoc missile launcher

Patrol B - 400 points

5 Chosen Chaos Space Marines: Aspiring Champion w/power weapon, plasma guns x 2, Rhino

10 Chaos Space Marines: meltagun, missile launcher, Rhino w/Havoc missile launcher

Patrol C - 400 points

5 Chosen Chaos Space Marines: plasma guns x 2, Rhino

10 Chaos Space Marines: Aspiring Champion, meltagun, lascannon, Rhino w/Havoc missile launcher

Patrol D - 400 points

5 Possessed Chaos Space Marines: Rhino

10 Chaos Space Marines: Aspiring Champion, meltagun, missile launcher, Rhino w/Havoc missile launcher

Patrol E - 400 points

5 Possessed Chaos Space Marines

5 Chaos Space Marines: Icon of Chaos Glory, plasma gun, Rhino w/Havoc missile launcher

5 Chaos Space Marines: meltagun, Rhino

Patrol F - 400 points

10 Chaos Space Marines: Aspiring Champion w/power weapon, Icon of Chaos Glory, meltagun, missile launcher, Rhino w/Havoc missile launcher

5 Khorne Berzerkers: Rhino

That's what I've come up with so far that I like but I'm sure there's many other variations I could devise. I don't know if I care enough to put much more time into this and at least now I have a sense of what I'll use to begin painting seahorses. I haven't seen anything about the actual missions that we'll play during the games but again I'm not too concerned about that sort of thing for Combat Patrol. There's only so much you can do with 400 points of Chaos Space Marines so for me it's not worth worrying over, I expect to have a good time regardless of the composition of my patrol group. That being said, I am really interested in case anyone else has thoughts or suggestions although I am limited by what is already in my Chaos collection. For the moment I'm favoring either Patrol A or Patrol B.

There are 69 days to go until Adepticon and still much to be done before then. Fun, fun, fun... happy gaming and painting, everyone!

Nurgle Drives a Mini-Van

I’m home! What a day, what a day it was. Seventeen hours on the road have left me feeling rather weary and depleted so please forgive me if I seem a bit off. I slept about four hours last night after packing and loading everything up, then awoke with the family at 4am and was on the road driving fifteen minutes later. It rained the whole way and I didn’t once see the sun the entire day. I drove the first half of the way and, after napping through the state of Virginia, spent the rest of the time trying to keep my daughter entertained and happy. Our little one, 22 months old, did very well as always and is turning out to be an excellent traveler for which I am so grateful.

Unfortunately I cannot say her parents fared nearly as well. It was during the last half of the drive that my wife and I both began feeling ill. For sure it made it an even more interesting trip than usual with the onset of our symptoms, but it was worth it to press on so that we are at least home to recover. Sick or not, it’s good to be back. I suspect my brother-in-law may have passed on a mild flu to us as he has been suffering similarly for a few days now. (Cheers, Jeff, I hope you feel better soon!)

Normally I’d say these are less than ideal conditions for blogging. I saw something however on my phone just a short while ago as we neared Charleston that has compelled me to not let this opportunity pass. It’s b.smoove of A Gentleman's Ones birthday today!

Happy birthday, b.smoove! Hooray! I’ve gathered together a bunch of the Beasts of Annihilation to help me wish you a happy birthday and all the best in the year to come.

Leading the huzzahs is a miniature that’s very dear to me, a Chaos Lord of Nurgle (MoN, Personal Icon, Wings, Daemonic Weapon) who now commands this warband of vile renegades. He’s still a WIP but I just had to bring him out for the occasion. Pretty cool, right?

What’s so special about him is that he is in fact from the b.smoove collection, sent to me as a surprise gift following one of my contests in which the Gentleman was a runner-up prize winner. The contest was based around the idea of passing on old projects to new hands and so b.smoove returned the favor by sending me this awesome model to finish and add to my own army. Amazing!

I originally planned to show him off here once I had completed the little bit of work left to do but I can’t wait any longer. Life is what it is and I still haven’t gotten around to completing him yet. I just think it’s too cool of a model to go uncelebrated, and considering the special day, I thought it was time. Needless to say he takes pride of place in my army and will no doubt lead them to glory.

Thanks again, b., and happy birthday!!

My Return to Painting

I painted something! Yippee, it's a Chaos Spawn.

Well, it certainly has been a long time since I previously had anything newly painted to show here. Hopefully this will be the last warm-up miniature that I have to paint for a long time. This particular model has been waiting for something like five years for me to get to it, one of the last few unpainted minis for my Beasts of Annihilation chaos warband leftover from when I was last working on them. I came across him earlier this summer and decided I would save it a little longer until I was about to starting painting again in earnest and would be in need of something on which I could practice.

Since updating the Beasts of Annihilation is one of my current projects I thought working on the Spawn would be a good way of getting back into my painting groove. Having just finished I am very satisfied with the experience. It was fun to paint, I got to have freedom with the colors and techniques used, and I added a cheap throw-away unit to one of my armies. Cool. The best thing for me though is knowing that I have this mini out of the way and now feel comfortable setting into the models that I'm more excited about painting.

May my brushes henceforth stay rust free.

As for the actual painting, I wanted to keep this Spawn related to the Beasts but with a little extra touch of color as befitting its warped natured. The bulk of the creature's body was painted to resemble as closely as I could the army's unit of Plague Bearers. I don't think I was terribly successful in achieving the same effect but I'm happy with the results nonetheless. It was a joy painting the rest of the miniature as I worked with the vibrant colors and experimented with an approach to highlighting and color progression different from my usual habits. I love models like these as you can just be free and try out new things.

One new technique I tried out which can be seen in the picture above was using slightly off-shade variants of white and black to paint the model's eyes. This was described by Brent of Strictly Average not long ago and I tried my best to follow his instructions. I didn't get the shape quite right but otherwise I really like the way they turned out. I think the eyes look appropriately vacant considering this fellow's circumstances and I'm going to look for opportunities to paint more eyes in such a manner. In this case I used P3 paints, going with a 1:1 mix of Thamar Black and Coal Black followed by Underbelly Blue for the off-white center of the eyes. Even with a wobbly looking right eye I am overall very pleased with the results.

I'm considering applying some gloss to the eyes or mouth but otherwise I think he's done. It's truly such a relief to finally get some paint on a miniature and I feel much better already. Thanks, weird Spawn guy!

Seahorses of Annihilation

I'm taking a break tonight from assembling terrain, the pictures of which that I've taken have been mostly either boring or unusable due to near constant toddler-attacks. I've included a few WIP photos at the end of this post just for the sake of completeness after my last posting, but I've got something else on my mind right now that I'd like to address first with this update. This evening I decided it was time to get back to my old Chaos Marines. After a decade of waiting for me to settle on something, they finally belong to a named warband, the Beasts of Annihilation. Having chosen this group based solely on their color scheme more or less matching the one already painted onto my army, this step forward has brought with it a new dilemma in that there is no established chapter badge or symbol for this warband. After taking so long to get to this point, I am eager to hurdle this stumbling block so that I can at last finish this army.

At first the name itself seemed somewhat silly to me, but over the ensuing weeks its appeal has grown on me, especially after an exchange about it with Sons of Taurus. The result of this shift in attitude is that I no longer know if I should go with my original joke idea. I therefore painted my candidate design onto a spare icon bearer, last touched by brush more than six years ago, as a test run. You can see the result below. Well, what do you think... have I taken it too far?

Other than the snout being a bit long, this is essentially what I envision as the Beasts of Annihilation's calling card to the 40k universe. I may try to add some orange shading on the belly but I don't know if it would be worth the effort. I haven't come up with any alternatives so if I don't go with the seahorse it's back to the drawing board. I enjoyed painting it and it passed the main test of not being particularly difficult or time consuming so for the time being I am satisfied with it. Also I would probably have fun doing larger versions of the seahorse on tanks and banners. I just have this nagging feeling that it could possibly be too inappropriate. Then again, I'm also working on a Simpsons army so I've probably already crossed that threshold of concern. Perhaps it was a millennium of taunts and jokes about the chapter seahorse that eventually drove the Beasts of Annihilation to embrace Chaos, due to bitterness and a mad desire to prove their mettle.

My inspiration for this comes from the real-world iconography of the 2nd Battalion, 4th Marines (2/4) with whom one of my best friends served for a number of years. Hence there is actual military precedence for this. I'm fairly sure I've also seen the seahorse used in heraldic devices, but that could have been mere fanciful depictions or even just a figment of my imagination. Nonetheless, seen below is the insignia of the aforementioned USMC battalion.

I'd love to hear any thoughts on whether I should go forward with the seahorse or if I instead need to rein in the stupid and find something more suitable for a bunch of daemon-loving meanies. What do you think?

Below are the photos showing some of my recent work on 7G. The first one is of the space-filler piece, previously consisting only of the pipe sections glued down onto the base, that I have now turned into an impromptu gun nest...

Next is a detail from one piece of a marine who has crashed through this building's ceiling, squishing some unfortunate fellow beneath him. Look for the hand poking out from under one of the tiles to see evidence of this pitiable ending....

Seen below is a damaged building that has become a fuel depot to serve whatever vehicles or generators located in Sector 7G...

Lastly, a WIP of my next double sized building that I'm still putting together. (I ran out of pieces.) You can see I have used one of those shoddy, flimsy GW "moonscape" craters to reinforce the bond between the sections of the base. It worked out really well out in this case so I'm now planning more of these using the rest of my packet of craters.

It's still slow going, but I feel like I'm getting the hobby winds behind my sail.

Chaos Marines Shaping Up

It's been a rather slow week for hobby activities, only getting time to assemble three sets of Citadel Woods. Terrain's important but still kind of blah and cleaning the mold lines has been frustratingly slow. I was able however to spend time with my recently unburied Chaos Marine codex to see how I might adapt my old collection for the current edition. Other than juggling some squad members around and consolidating one unit of Marines, there really wasn't all that much changing that needed to be done. I had thought that if anything the points value of the collection would decrease but in fact it seems to have gone up a bit, and that's after dropping a couple of weapon options and plenty of the old wargear gadgets. If I also included some newly found Khorne Berzerkers (pictured above) and their even older Rhino transport, in addition to changing my former custom Chaos Lord into a simple counts-as Abaddon, I discovered that the army can push well above the 2000 point mark rather easily. It may not be optimized for the current edition but it's at least useable with what I have at hand. And learning that I can play them at those bigger sized games came as a very unexpected but welcome surprise. Cool.

So it looks like I'll be able to turn this collection into a decent sized army without a whole lot of effort. Perfect! I've at last figured out what I'm going to paint as the chapter badge and I'm optimistic that it won't be too hard to pull off. I have decided to go with the Beasts of Annihilation despite my reservations about the name and noticed today in the chaos book that the info I sited from Lexicanum actually comes from this edition of the codex. There's even another two miniatures shown but neither of them give a glimpse of the official badge if there is one. No matter, I'm ready to move on without GW's sanction and go with my own design. It pokes some fun at the chapter's name which is why I'm now kind of glad they're going to be the Beasts. I'll show what I'm up to once I have an example painted.

Now here's where my plans are changing. I noticed after putting together these tentative army lists that if I just added a couple more tank transports then I could potentially field a 2500 point army. What? Seriously, where did this army come from? It helps that one of those tanks would be a Land Raider but that's still pretty exciting news for me. I've already got a couple of Rhinos sitting around for other projects that could easily provide one of the needed rides, and that was all it took to persuade me into expanding the army. I placed the order this afternoon for a new Land Raider. If I look hard enough I might even be able to find some Forge World chaos land raider pieces that I have hidden somewhere to go with it. Obviously that would be sweet. I'll have to look into that.

I've got some touch-up work to do on the army in addition to painting the necessary chapter badges to make them look presentable. I'm going to tone down some of the brighter greens and reds and at last tidy up the last few dudes. Once I get the Rhino and Land Raider finished I will have a completely painted 2500 point force, and one that is legit and useable with the current set of rules. How's that for an army I had essentially given up on years ago? I dig it. I'm looking forward to getting all this taken care of and trying it out on the table this summer. Should be fun, I think. In case anyone is interested, below is the army list I've drawn up staying within the constraints of my existing collection, but with the addition of those previously noted tanks.

HQ

counts-as Abaddon (275)

Elites

8 Possessed Chaos Marines (208)

Chaos Dreadnought: twin-linked autocannon and heavy flamer (115)

Chaos Dreadnought: plasma cannon (105)

Troops

10 Chaos Marines: Icon of Chaos Glory, meltagun, flamer, aspiring champion w/ powerfist, Rhino w/ extra armour (265)

10 Chaos Marines: Icon of Chaos Glory, plasma gun, missile launcher, aspiring chammpion w/ power weapon, Rhino w/ havoc launcher (265)

10 Chaos Marines: Icon of Chaos Glory, plasma gun, lascannon, aspiring champion, Rhino (245)

8 Khorne Berzerkers: personal icon, plasma pistol, Skull Champion, Rhino (238)

8 Summoned Lesser Daemons (104)

5 Summoned Lesser Daemons (65)

5 Summoned Lesser Daemons (65)

5 Summoned Lesser Daemons (65)

Fast Attack

Chaos Spawn (40)

Heavy Support

3 Obliterators (225)

Chaos Land Raider (220)

Total Points: 2500

I've also got a few other partially painted HQ options for this army that I never finished, so if I get around to it I could potentially have even more flexibility with this army. Why again did I stop playing this army? I foresee good times ahead.

Let the galaxy burn and such. Rah, rah, rah.

Opera, Chaos, etc.

I hope everyone's had a great Memorial Day and made it through the holiday safely enough. My wife and I became ill Sunday night and so spent most of the day feeling sick and pukey. Fortunately we've recovered quickly as we have tickets for the opera today. Yeah... for real. It's a performance of Flora which was the first opera staged in the colonies back in the year 1736. That original performance was in the very same Dock Street Theater in which it will be presented this afternoon in downtown Charleston. This is the first show for the theater after undergoing a three year, $18 million renovation and is supposed to be the highlight of this years Spoleto Festival. I've never been to an opera before but I'm optimistic that I will at least not have to change any diapers for a few hours.

Jumping forward to the 41st millennium, I've been thinking more about my old Chaos Marines and have decided to not redo any of the painting on the army, thus eliminating my ideas of turning them into either Word Bearers or Red Corsairs. As b.smoove pointed out with regards to repainting the armor's piping, it's quite likely that I would become bogged down in that type of detailed work. I like the simpler approach of only having to paint a chapter icon onto each guy and then being done. So the search for the right Renegade Chapter has begun.

When I was originally collecting this army I had planned on making them a DIY chapter called the Crimson Ghosts, and upon returning to them I first thought about going through with that theme. After some time spent practicing the design I realized that painting all those little skull faces like the one below would again be more of an undertaking than I am willing to accept. Plus ten years after initially starting this army I find myself listening to The Misfits with much less frequency than I used to, nor have I ever really fancied having Chaos Lord G. Danzig as my army's general. So, moving on then....

Unsure of where else to turn and bereft of ideas, I began searching through lists of named marine chapters at Lexicanum and came across these guys, the Beasts of Annihilation. There's not a whole lot in the summary about them but it says that their colors are "Blood red with Gold trim" and that their specialty is "Daemonic Possession." Okay, that looks promising. The name strikes me as rather dumb in that special, fourteen-year-old-metal-head sort of way embraced by Games Workshop, but otherwise things look good so far for these guys as my prime contender. I think I could live with my army having a goofy name as there is just too much history in 40k of terribly bad names to let this one detail stop me, right? Apologies to anyone already running their army as BOA or who thought the name sounded badass, by the way, I mean no offense.

The picture above is supposed to illustrate a Beasts of Annihilation Chaos Lord, though unfortunately the chapter symbol can barely be glimpsed. The red appears significantly brighter than that which I painted onto my own Chaos Marines, but I don't think that is too much of problem... just look at how many different shades of Blood Angels there are running around. Considering how minor of a role the Beasts have in the 40k universe, I think armor a few shades darker would be okay. Therefore assuming some latitude in the colors, I think the remaining portion of their background seems appropriate as the entry states that:

"The Beasts of Annihilation is a Chaos Space Marine warband. These warriors are devout followers of the Dark Gods and frequently allow creatures of the warp to inhabit their bodies. As such the Beasts of Annihilation field an unusually large number of Possessed squads."

All of it sounds pretty cool to me and, perhaps more importantly, like something I can apply to the collection that I already have at hand. The description of this warband reminds me of the Word Bearers upon whom my army's style of play was based in the previous edition of their codex. I have enough chaos icons for each of my squads and more than twenty lesser daemons which I believe would do an adequate job of demonstrating their devotion to the Ruinous Powers. And even though I have only one squad of Possessed marines, that should at least satisfy the minimum needed to be true to the background. So barring some pending flash of genius in the next couple of days, I believe I will be the proud commander of a Beasts of Annihilation warband in the near future.

As for the chapter badge, as far as I can tell there's practically nothing to go on officially so I've got pretty much free reign in choosing a design. I have a few ideas but right now I don't know what I want to do. I'd especially love to hear any suggestions anyone might have, otherwise I'm going to mess around a bit and see if anything looks good (i.e., easy) for me to paint onto my marines. Currently I'm considering either coming up with some sort of stylized monster face to use as their symbol, or else giving each guy a unique set of mystical or alchemical symbols and just not having a common chapter marking. I'm worried the latter might make the army look too disunited but it would nonetheless be good freehand practice at least.

Okay, so that's where I'm at with the Chaos army. Time for me to get ready for the opera... wish me luck!