Reflections

This is a quick filler post for that inter Christmas\new year period, where mostly of us just want to relax and enjoy. I wrote this a while back and it doesn't really have an aim of objective, other than to give a very rough overview of the Eagle Knights and there mindset. Hope you enjoy.

He stood on the ridge line, looking down over the fires below and the figures hunched around them. They were slowly growing in number as they woke from there slumber, though there was little noise. As he stood on the ridge looking down he could see without issue, but he knew that he would still be invisible to the invisible to those below. That would change soon, as he could see the first signs of dawn, the sky behind him was starting to lighten and soon the light would frame him, showing him to the soldiers below and once this happened, he knew that the actions of the men would change. Any talk would stop, all actions would cease and they would stand and stare at the warrior on the ridgeline.

They were fools the lot of them, dead men walking. He would stand and watch as they would make their signs and kneel in prayer or some kind of respect, as if he needed their respect. He could feel the anger rising in him, he could feel his fists tightening, could feel the rage building in his hearts.

"Your shaking, maybe that pack is getting to heavy for you old man"

The voice shook him, he had not heard the other approach. He was about to chastise himself when he recognized the voice and let himself relax. It was not really a surprise he hadn't heard anything, not that that stopped him being brusk in his reply.

"At least I can still carry one"

The second man stood just as still as the first, looking down on the encamped guardsmen, going about their morning routine as the sun rose behind the two orange clad champions of the Eagle Knights Space Marine chapter. Some of the guardsmen were starting to look to the ridgeline, just being able to make out two figure in the morning mist, not quite knowing yet whom or what the figure were, but that would change soon enough.

"You sound angry, battle is not yet joined and won't be for a few hours yet brother. Maybe you need to reflex somewhere else?" Brother Champion Raphael was not a tall astarties, nor was he broad. He was average in almost every way, at least average for an astarties anyway. It was not his strength or his sngththat made him a champion but his sheer ability with shield and sword. He was the best swordsman in the company, he was probably the best man with an axe and maul as well and many believed he could easily be chapter champion, if he ever chose to challenge for the position.

Brother Champion Furian on the other hand was not skilled with blade, axe or maul, no his abilities laid in other areas, namely the ability to completely overwhelm an opponent through relentless overpowering attacks, relying on his relentless attacks to deny the opponent any chance to counter. Against many opponents this worked, but against truly skilled opponent, such as brother champion Raphael, it was all but useless and this was the main source of conflict between the two champions.

The Champions were silent for a long moment, standing immobile as they looked down on the camp below. Their presence had been noted now and they could see numerous guardsmen kneeling, others making the sign of the Aquila, others still just standing and staring up at the two figures. The dawn was truly here now and the sun itself was starting to crest the horizon, giving the two an even more imposing stature. Furian was the first to break the long silence, he tone was dark and angry.

"Look at the fools, if they put as much time in to their weapons and training as they spend on their knees they might actually live long enough to be useful."

"Brother, you are always so quick to judge. Remember, we are few and they are many, its not everyday that they wake to the sight of a battle brother, let alone two! We are the Emperors Angels, harbingers of death. It is their lot in life to die for the Emperor, it is ours to ensure their deaths are not wasted. Allow them their moments of worship, for it is those moments that will carry them in to battle and on to the enemy."

"Sometimes I think your as deluded as they are. Their duty to the Emperor should be enough to carry them to the enemy and if its not then I would happily kill them myself. Only the weak need to delude themselves with talk of religion."

"They are but men, they are not astarties like us. They are not forged in the fires of battle. That is why we exist. If they need to worship us, then I will not stop them, if duty is enough to carry them alone, then it will but remember, without them we cannot hope to win this war, for we are few and they are many, and even we need help occasionally"

Furian did not reply straight away, his attention was caught by two things. The first was the black clad man, the second was a half naked soldier.

The black clad man, a commissar he guessed, both from the dress and the reaction of the men around him. There was fear in the mens movements, all averted their eyes and threw themselves in to whatever task they were doing with renewed vigor. It was clear that the men despised  the black clad man, it made Furian chuckle, well, if duty wasn't enough to motivate a man, nothing worked better than fear. It was another thing that Furian despised about guardsmen, that a commissar should be necessary. That they could be that weak willed still astounded him, even after all these centuries.

It was not the commissar that interested him most though, it was the half naked soldier. Naked from the waist up, a sword strapped to his back and a bolter slung at his side, this guardsman did not look like any of the others. He strode through the encampment of guardsmen, all dressed in their cadian pattern uniforms and with their cadian pattern rifle, like a man walking amongst children. It brought a dry smile to Furian's face, it was most likely how it looked when he went down to see the latest bunch of initiates. This man was obviously a veteran and most likely a sergeant or even a platoon commander with the sword on his back. He strode with confidence and arrogance, he looked up at the champions but showed no signs of awe, if anything he looked bored by the spectical. The men around him seemed to be equally in awe of him and fearful, not in the same way as the commissar, more like they did not want to upset or dissapoint the man.

"They are Hrossey Yeomanry troops I believe and that I would guess would be a Hjaltland Infantry man, a commander by his weapons."

It did not surprise Furian that Raphael had all but read his mind, for despite the animosity between the two, the had fought together for many many years, across more battlefields than he could remember, from when they were new and young battle brothers, experiencing their first taste of combat as fully fledged marines.

Furian would have thought longer on the subject, but the vox chimed in his ear, the company master had called a meeting and he was being summoned to attend. With one last look at the encampment and the guardsmen below, Furian turned and activated his pack. Let them see and hear, let them witness the true power of a marine he thought as he arched high into the sky.

Raphael had hear the same vox chime and turned away to, laughing to himself at the childish need for Furian to show off.

Below many of the guardsmen looked up is awe and astonishment, many praising the Emperor, one guardsmen however stood in the mist of everyone, sword strapped at his back and bolter slung at his side and watch as the astarte lept in to the sky and mutter just one word;

"Wanker"

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas one and all, I hope Santa has been and to you and you have lots of wonderful new toys to play with!

40k update

After running through my Deathwatch kill team and starting a post on all my other teams that I have plans for (it'll be up soon), I thought that I really should give an update for my 40k stuff. I haven't talked about 40k in a long time, apart from the games I played when I was hoping to get to the Northern Invasion Tournament. Unfortunately there have been a significant shift in my thinking I. Terms of 40k armies, one I'm not to happy about but I unfortunately don't really see another sensible option.

I'll start by talking through my guard armies, as these are my main armies. I currently have 3 armies, my Hjaltland Light Infantry, the Hrossey Armoured Yeomanry and the Dagr Ormr Militarum Tempestus force.  The Hjaltland Light Infantry force is pretty much complete, with only a few extra units that I need to paint up, a couple of heavy weapons squad and special.weapons squads. These shouldn't take much to finish, it's just a case of getting the time to do so. The second force, the Hrossey Armoured Yeomanry, is also complete, although far less finished. All the tanks are primed\based green and the troops are primed but there is still quite a bit of painting to do but it should be fairly easy as most of it is formed of vehicles. The final force is the scions of the Dagr Ormr. The scions are built but not primed or painted, except for a hand full of models. The scions only form part of this force though, the other being formed of the Hildasay PDF, of which all but two vets squads and a couple of characters are painted.  I would love to get all the models in my guard armies painted and I will one day, as these are going to be my main forces for the foreseeable future. I can't see the guard changing dramatically anytime soon and I'm sure all the models I have will remain current for quite a while too.

That fact may not have seem relevant a couple of years ago but with the changes to the space Marine line it has taken on a new meaning. I currently have 2 main space Marine armies, a small faction and was planning another smaller faction as well. These plans have now been shelved and all marine armies have been put on hold. Why you ask? There are a couple of reason for this move, the most obvious one is that they are comprised of old school mini Marines and it's pretty obvious that they are living on borrowed time. The only thing that's is keeping many units alive is that there is, as yet, no direct replacement for them in the primaris line up. This will change over the next couple of years, as more and more primaris units are created. My main focus has always been on my Eagle Knights (Blood Angels) and as such they actually have a 2000 point list of fully painted Marines but there are about 1000 points of unpainted models as well. I will paint these up in the future, to complete the force as I see it but there will be no hurry for this. The Dark Guardians (Dark Angels) are even less complete, as although the colour scheme is simple and pretty much all the models are based black, only about 3 or 4 models are completed. Formed entirely of Raven wing and Death wing units, they are again mini Marines and it's only a matter of time before they are replaced as well.

I have also  mentioned the second factor a couple of times above, the fact that these models are unpainted and I have moved a long way from playing with completely unpainted models and now like to have the majority of models painted, as it does look a lot better. As I mentioned before, I do want to have bother these armies full painted one day but at my current rate, that could be several decades away. It's a shame that I haven't gotten around to painting and playing with these armies more. I started with the Knights but never really got to grips with them, loosing all the games I played with them.

The other two armies I mentioned were my stone dragons (Space Wolves) and Deathwatch. The Stone Dragons were to be a small, around 1000 point, very elite army but I never got time to get them going, however, they will continue with two kill teams being formed out of the remnants, which will also provide a small force that could be used in 40k proper if I wished. This will probably be around 500 points, certainly not up to the 1000 point minimum I was planning. The Deathwatch are in a similar position, as I have a 25 Marines ready, primed and part painted for kill team, plus one venerable dread primed and based black ready for 40k. I also have a contemptor dread that was going to be used for the Stone Dragons that will most likely be used for Deathwatch now.

Although the forces of the Eagle Knights and Dark Guardians are going to be boxed up and put into storage, a select few will find themselves else where. Both forces have dispatched 10 man kill teams, based around the characteristics of the chapter. The Eagle Knights force includes lots of close combat weapons, including three with jump packs. There are only 2 weapons capable of firing more than 12 inches, in the form of two bolters. The Dark Guardians have 4 terminators and a number of company vets (armed with plasma) in the roster. These teams are, in general, based around combat and shooting respectively but there is also the two stone dragons teams, one of which is formed almost exclusively of scouts, 17 to be exact, with 3 full Marine mentors and a second team is formed mostly of elite units, with a lot of storm bolters and a mixed combat and shooting. The three teams will all operate in different ways, which I will go in to in another post.

I also had plans for an AdMech army, again only about 1000 points,with a knight, a couple of Armiger's and some Skitarii troops. As it stands I will just be using what I have, just the two Armiger's and the Skitarii I already have. I would live to own a knight or two, but I can't justify the cost nor do I have the time to really paint one up properly. The Skitarii are all painted and ready to use, I just need to paint up the tech priest Dominus to lead them.

In addition to all these I had considered other armies, such as grey knights and sisters of battle, both of which would have been around 1000 point armies, aimed to ally in with the guard or Eagle knights. Again, this idea has been down graded to kill teams with one command element to form a patrol detachment for 40k if I want to.

So where does this leave my 40k hobby? The guard will continue as is and be completed. The Dark Guardians and Eagle Knights will be boxed up and put into the loft. The Deathwatch will be completed to a small force around 500 points, as will the AdMech force but that's it. The other armies I had planned are also being shelved. This is not the final say though, there will be a revival of sorts for all the armies at some point in the future.

The Eagle Knights will be reborn when some proper combat units and death company units get released in the future. The whole army is based on fast moving, close combat units with vehicle borne support units. There are rumours of primaris combat units coming so we'll see what happens.

The Dark Guardians will have to wait for some heavy troops, Terminator equivalent, units with fast moving biker units in support. The army is supposed to revolve around the bikes providing mobile firepower while the terminators get stuck in to the main force. At the moment neither of these units exist for primaris Marines.

The Stone Dragons are supposed to be an elite mobile hunting force and are probably the only army that I can see moving forward at the moment, as the new vanguard units could work for my idea of a hunting force but I've no plans to start anything yet.

The Deathwatch will also get an update in due course as well but in what direction I don't know and only time will tell.

Another great wall wa text! I seem to be writing a few of these posts at the moment and there's a couple more to come as well, hopefully I'm not boring you all to death with my ramblings.

Kill team: deathwatch

It's been a while since I had a bit of a sit down and ran though a kill team and my thoughts on it, so up for discussion are the deathwatch, the quintessential kill team, designed and built specifically for this type of mission. I think that I said that I would be looking at my chaos team but I'm not, I'm going to do Deathwatch, mostly due to the elites supplement.

So, I could spend many, many hours thinking carefully about the best models to bring and the perfect weapon selection, all tied in to the most appropriate specialism or I could just get one box and build every possibly combination from said box. I went for the latter version of events in case you were wondering.

Now, it's not going to be a very good list, most heavy hitting lists are full of frag cannons and inferno heavy bolters but I've just one of each. Also, I've added in some of the vanguard vets to add some extra mobility. So what have I got exactly?

I've two leader, Watch Captain Artemis and a Librarian. For kill team purposes they are playing Watch Sergeants, with Artemis playing a Sgt with Combi melta and power sword and the librarian is playing a Sgt with bolter and Xenophase blade. This is a bit away from WYSIWYG, as Artemis has a Combi flamer and the Libby has a bolt pistol, but hey, I doubt anyone up here will mind, although I don't know why I can't take a combi flamer anyway.

Next up are the Black Shields, two of them as well. One has a storm shield and maul and the other has a shield and sword. The maul will run as a combat specialist and the sword as a zealot. This is because the maul gets a bonus to strength anyway but the sword needs a little help from Zealot.

The two Deathwatch gunners are armed with the infernus heavy bolter and the frag cannon. Now, the issue I have is what to run them as, either heavy or demolitions. The issue comes from that fact that both can benefit from both specialisms. Both are either assault or heavy, so would get the bonus from the heavy specialism but both also have auto hit weapon that would benefit from the demolitions specialism as well, although I think that that bolter would benefit more due to it's lower strength but that only effects T3 or lower.

Next up are the vets, and there's a lot of them, 14 in all, made up of a mix of shooting and melee units. I'll start with the heavy hitters, the two heavy thunder hammers. These guys will also run as Zealot and Combat. Why? Well with the -1 to hit the extra attack will be useful, plus the +1 strength have a very useful but niche benefit, taking a Marine to ST and so to S10 with the hammer, useful for doubling out nurgle (death guard) units.

Following from the hammers, are the Deathwatch shotguns. These are in for several reasons. Firstly there there for some short range fire support for the hammers, effectively taking the place of a flamer but with some extra flexibility with the various ammo types available. Secondly, these guys are cheap, so they can be thrown In to a team to fill a roster.

That's all the short range vets, granted there's not many of them, two Black Shields, two hammers and two shotguns, not a great selection but good enough for basic games. I do however have a solution to this but more on that later.

The rest of the vets are made up of bolter wielding troops, the first of which has a stalker pattern bolter. I'm not to Keen on this one, in the games I've played with him, he hasn't done to well, taking 3 rounds of shooting to put 3 flesh wound on a guardsman in one game! After this we have 5 bolter troops, 4 of which also have power swords. This are the basic fill in troops and I usually always have at least 1 of these guys in a list. While a power sword is cheap at just a coupe of points, I still have one vet without one, just in case I don't have to points and I don't really want to be running a lits that's 15 points down. There's nothing much else to say about these vets, there just there to fill the list and be cannon fodder basically.

Lastly we have the combi armed vets. We have two combi plasma and two combi meltas. I didn't really have a plan for these vets when I built them, I mostly did because I could. The plasma is always useful, especially when over charged. Having the bolter as well is also useful, especially when you don't need the extra strength of plasma. The meltas were a bit overkill before Elites came out but with the inclusion of terminators and the like, they have become a lot more useful. In addition, one of the plasma is armed with a power maul and 9ne of the meltas is carrying a power swords. The other two are just with the combi's, to keep points down.

Lastly I have decided to take some vanguard vets from the Elites book. There are two reasons for this; one, they look cool and two, they add some extra combat punch, not to mention some extra mobility. I did think about adding in terminators but decided against this in the end, mostly as I don't really see terminators as being sensible for kill team style missions.

Anyway, I went with the vanguard vets for a couple of reasons, mainly the extra mobility that they offer, with a maximum move of 12 or 18 when advancing! With a board that's only 22 by 30, getting around the board is considerably easier. Also the combat ability and weapons choice is considerably better than the standard Deathwatch vet. I chose to go with 5 models, mostly to enable me to switch them across to 40k proper if I feel like it.

There's not much variation in the models, as three of the five models have storm Shields and either a sword, axe or hammer. They all fill the same basic role, charge up and hit stuff but it depends upon what there going to be hitting, as to which will be deployed. Of the others, one is armed with a pair of claws and one with a grav pistol and chain sword. They will all be combat or zealot specialists for extra punch as well.  Now, you'll notice the odd one out the grav pistol and chain sword. Now there is a reason for this, basically I didn't know what to do with the last one and decided that maybe some shooting would be good. Also I don't have a grav pistol anywhere else, so I thought it would be fun to include.

Wow, that was a wall of text! Hopefully I'll be able to get them painted up some time soon!

Storage project

Recently I have been trying to sort out my storage issues. While I still have lots of other storage issues, as I still don't have proper storage for my blood angels or my dark angels armies. However, my main concern at the moment is my kill teams and getting them out of their butter tub storage boxes. After looking around various websites and looking at lots of different options and possibilities, at all sorts of prices, I finally settled on something more home made. I would have liked to get something like the tabletop tyrants skirmish case or the KR half case but there were several issues with this approach. The main one is pretty obvious, that of price. While the various foam storage cases are great, my KR cases have been around the block a few times and are still in good condition, they are still quite a few pennies. The second, and possibly just as big a factor, is model size. To get a foam case that is interchangeable between different armies would have meant that either I got a tray with a few big slots and things like my guard would rattle around or trays with small compartments and the likes of the Deathwatch would have to squeeze in and not fit properly. I could just get lots of different size trays and solve this issue but again that's lots of money I don't have. The other issues are not as big a deal, things like token storage and the roster cards. Also I wanted a system where I could switch around teams quickly and easily, without having to spend ages switching models from one storage to another.

After searching for a while I settled on the idea of a magnetic storage box but there were a whole multitude of options and ideas out there. In the end I decided to go for a magnetic sheet in the plastic storage trays and also magnets on the bases of the models. This was due to a convention of factors, such as weight, availably and ease of construction. So I ended up with this;

The box is a 5 layer craft storage box, with 10 sections to a layer. I took out most of the dividers on each layer, to create just a couple of sections. The top layer was dedicated to tokens, dice, tactic cards and specialist cards plus a tape measure, everything I need to play, except a board obviously.

The next 4 trays were all magnetised, more or less to the same area, only the guard box has a slightly bigger area of magnetic sheet on the right hand side, to accommodate the extra models in the guard roster. All the trays also include space for the teams data cards and faction tactic cards plus a few other print outs, such as orders, canticles and specialist ammo charts. I also have a couple of peice of paper with other details on, such as the AdMech Rad Saturation rule or the marines transhuman physiology rules on, just in case I forget.

The set up is fairly simple and easy to construct and all the necessary items were purchased of amazon, including the craft box, magnetic sheets, magnets for bases and (as yet to be applied) sticky dots for marking the models positions.

There is one slight problem with the system at the moment however. In the picture above, you can see some foam in the bottom right, this is surrounding and protecting the metal models, as they are to heavy and the magnets don't have enough power in them to hold them in place. I tried with the small rare Earth magnets I have, about 3x1mm ones but this didn't help, even with two of them. I have purchased some bigger magnets, 8x1mm, but these have yet to arrive. When they do I will try them out and see if that solves the problem. It's not much of a problem really, the guard only have 2 models that are metal and the scion\inquisition only have 6 but none of the other teams, as yet, have any at all (the scout Marine team will have quite a few!).

The other problem I ran in to was down to my miscalculated measurements. I thought I had the right depth of magnetic to go under the bases but apparently I didn't and they were a little to short to make a nice contact with the sheets in the trays. This was fixed very easily by sticking a thin sheet of card in between the magnet and the base and super glueing it all together.

It was a very quick and easy fix, that doesn't seem to have caused any issues to the overall construction.

Most of the models sit nicely on the magnetic sheets in the trays and nicely on the actual ground. A bonus to all this is that there is now a little extra weight in the bases and so the models are a little more stable on uneven ground.

The final test! I took the metal models out for this, as they would have just fallen strain out and bounced on the ground! The rest stayed firm, even with a little shake. Now I don't think that they will stay put if the box takes a proper hard bash, but I don't 0lan on taking it anywhere where it might receive such a bash. I know that the idea is to protect the models and those hard bashes are never planned but so far I'm really impressed with the box and how it works.

I plan on getting another box, with 5 more layers to house the remaining teams I have (scout Marines, elites Marines and chaos) and the teams I plan on having (grey knights and sisters of battle), giving me a system where I can chop and change which trays I take and which I leave behind, as all of them will be interchangeable with each other. Right now this does all seem a little overkill as I haven't actually played a game of kill team in months, but I'm hoping that after Christmas I will get back in to things as live settles down again with the wife going back to work but we shall see.