Eagle Knights Vanguard Vets

Lastly for the Eagle Knights updates we have some Vanguard Vets. These are second hand models that I go off eBay for a bargain. The plan is to convert them by switching the heads for skull helms, add jump pack, similar to the Sanguinary guard but without the wings, and add some weapons or shields, depending upon what squad they will be in. The plan is for five with shields and five with pistols, probably plasma pistols or hand flamers.  

Full squad

There are some strange tentacle objects on many of the bases, plus many have been given a cobble stone base. 

Tentacles and cobble stones

Standard

There is also a standard, although there is no need for this in game. I  may have a look at removing it but i will have to look through my bits box to see if I have an alternative arm that I can use. 

Shield bearers

Five of the models, the five above, will probably get shields, as their poses lend themselves for shield and spears. 

Pistols

The other five will get pistols, probably wrist mounted some how, due to the arm mounting for the shields needing covering up. As mentioned, I'm not sure if they will be all plasma, for some additional elite hitting power or hand flamers for horde control. I have enough plasma pistols but don't think I have many flamers, so they may get plasma pistols simply due to availability. 

I got all the shields with these models as well, so if I don't use them all, then I will have some spares for another project. 

Merry Christmas

 Merry Christmas, one and all.

Hope Santa was good to you!

Eagle Knights sanguinary guard

Here we have my Sanguinary Guard and Captain with jump pack. 

As you can see they are not resplendent in gold but rather black and foreboding with bling! 

The captain, not being part of the Guard itself, still wears his orange armour, just with winged pack and black robes and the familiar skull mask of the elites. I really like this model and while he hasn't had much in the way of conversation, I don't think he looks like an AoS model with a gun at all.

Jump pack

Deathwatch shoulder pad

Next we have the Sanguinary Banner. Unlike usual banners, this is a brazier or torch. The model is obvious as there are no other models with models carrying anything other than axes. 

I probably could have spent more time on the brazier to give it some depth and colour but I don't think that it would make a massive amount of difference here. 

Here are the two Infernus pistol guard. I wasn't sure initially if I would actually include Infernus pistols in the squad but I decided that they might be useful against vehicle and especially monsters. Being able to chip a few wounds off before charging or, if they survive long enough, in subsequent shooting phases, could be very handy.

Again, there isn't a lot of conversion work on these models, mostly the addition of a shoulder pad, heads, jump packs and the weapons in place of the shields, but with how detailed the models are, I didn't want to cover anything or stick something on that would look out of place.

Scroll on left model snapped off, a minor issue with thin resin parts.

Lastly, we have the three remining Sanguinary Guard. The isn't much more to say here, they have the same minor conversion work as the others.

Overall I am very pleased with these models, both how the original AoS models have transformed in to very nice 40k models with out much effort and also the final product with the skull heads and jump pack. I really do think these are significantly better than the GW official Sanguinary Guard. I just need to finish the bases off now.

Tournament game 1

So, my first game of the tournament was against another space marine list, and one I was not looking forward to facing. There were a couple of other marine lists, but two stood out to me, one was a jump pack based list and one, this one, was flamer based. There was a full squad of Infurnus marines, Aggressors and a Land Raider Redeemer? 

Deployment \ Turn 1

Deployment \ Turn 1

Reinforcements

I honestly don't think my plan of action was wrong during this game, I think that I carried it out badly. I had my Land raider facing his and my Redemptor again opposite his. Most units did what I needed them to do, however, the amount of flamers was just to much for me to deal with. The sheer number of dice I was required to roll was meant it was never going to end well. Unfortunately with a combat focused army I couldn't just sit back and shoot either.

Turn 2

I think the biggest problem I had was that when I did get in to combat, I couldn't maximise my results. I think I should have kept the Sanguinary Guard on the table for turn 1 and not put them in deep strike. This meant that when I pushed up to take on the units on the bottom of the table, his land raider with aggressors, I could have thrown forward my Blade Guard and Sanguinary Guard and eliminated them, rather than leave some alive. I could them have picked up the Sanguinary Guard using a stratagem if needed or just used their speed to push them forward. Additionally I was very cautious turn 1 and think I should have been a bit bolder pushing forward, rather than sit back and let him come to me. 

I also think I was a little unlucky with the cards but not so much that I think it would have changed the result, I think it would have just made things a little closer. Ultimately we only got to turn 4 and if we had gone the full game, the loss would have been even larger, as by that point i was running out of assets. 

Lastly, I know I made quite a few fundamental mistakes this game, including with my army rules. Some of which I basically repeated thought the tournament, this all being down to lack of playing time. Overall though, this was a good game and I was happy with the result. On to game 2!

 

Chaplains

Next up we have some Chaplains. There are two chapters represented here, with a jump pack Chaplain from the Eagle Knights and the Bike Chaplian from the Dark Guardians. 

The bike Chaplain is just the standard bike Chaplain from the Combat Patrol magazines. I picked one of these up when it was released, as I wanted to add it to the Outrider squad from the Dark Guardians. I have done no conversion work on the model, its just the standard model as is. 

The jump pack Chaplain however, is a different matter. This is an Aos model, as most of the Knights characters are, in this case it is a Lord Veritant. He has had his flaming sword replaced and his shield has found a new home possibly with a Bladeguard or maybe with the up coming Vanguard vets.

Apart from swapping the sword arm form plasma pistol arm and the standard head and jump pack, this model doesn't have a lot of alterations, the paint jobs does most of the heavy lifting.

The brazier was the most difficult part and I'm not sure if I like it or not. I think it's does the job and I'm not sure my skills have the abilities to do much better.

I do really like this figure and think it makes a great chaplain model.  




 

Northern Invasion Practice Game 2

Practice game 2 was against Necrons, again at 1500 points and slimmed down tournament lists. This time I left the Repulsor and stern guard and a intercessor squad at home. 

This was a good test of several units, namely the blade guard and bikes l, and thought me a few things.

I forgot to take a picture of deployment but you get the general idea from the T1 picture below.

Turn 1

Turn 1

Another Turn 1 picture

Turn 3

The long fight, I think this lasted 3 full turns

Sanguinary Guard doing there thing, turn 3

End of Turn 4, I think?

End game

 

This ended up being a very close game and reminded me how annoying the Necrons can be! At one point, at the end of Turn 1 I had the Doomsday Arc down to three wound, by the end of the game it was on 8. After a turn of great shooting by the Land Raider it then failed to do anything, either missing or my opponent making his invulnerable saves. I didn't even bother attacking the C'tan

Overall I was happy with the game, although the blade guard showed some issues, one that I was already aware off to be honest. While they are good they are not an excellent combat unit. They don't hit as hard as I would like, S5 is good but only 4 attacks is not great. It's not terrible either but they just seem to lack something. They did however do their job, so that was good. Like I said, overall I felt the lost was good and was happy with taking it to Northern Invasion this year. 

With the few practice games over it was time for the real thing!

Eagle Knights characters

I though that I would start off the Eagle Knights with some of the characters, important for running the Angelic Inheritors detachment. Here we have a Combi-weapon Lieutenant, Librarian and Ancient plus a Sanguinary Priest seen further down. All four are conversions of AoS models, some more so than others. 

The three amigos 

The Combi-weapon Lieutenant is based off of a underworlds model, Farasa Twice Risen of the Ember guard. The Librarian is based off another underworlds model, Averon Stormsire, of the Curse breakers. 

Both had had some conversion work done, with new heads and power packs, plus some other minor work, like removing some iconography and the like. 

The Combi-weapon Lieutenant got some extra work done, to remove the weapon on his back and replace it with a combi-plasma from the bits box. It's not overly obvious but it makes the model more complete. He also gained some additional bits and pieces, mostly grenades.

Along side the Ancient we also have a Sanguinary Priest. 

The Sanguinary Priest is a conversions of Stormcast Knight Arcanum. He (or she as it originally was) needed a bit more conversion work doing to remove various bits of.kits and fill in the holes. The Chain sword for example came from an assault intercessor Sgt. He also gained a aquilla on his chest plate. 

The ancient is a proper mash up, with the body of a stromcast, not sure which one, just one of the standard models, the standard itself is from a Brentonian Knight of the Realm, on a Stormcast arm.

He also gained a rifle and various other packs and grenades. I liked this banner as it already had the shield sculpted in, making painting up the symbol quite easy. 

I may well add some additional details to the banner, some extra symbols or number, or I may just leave it plain, I haven't quite decided yet.