Hobby Diary Lockdown Edition: Unforgiven Crusade Army

 

Hi folks,

We have just started the school holidays here in Australia and another wave of COVID-19 has just hit our shores. We had planned to take the kids to North Queensland, to explore the Daintree Rainforest and go snorkelling on the Great Barrier Reef, but that has been cancelled. We knew the risks when we booked everything; the tickets were purchased using credits from our last cancelled holiday! Now, I am stuck at home for two weeks in lockdown. To keep my mind off what could have been, I have resolved to make some serious progress on my 9th Edition Dark Angels. I have decided to build a Crusade army, using Power Levels instead of points, in the hope that my group of gaming mates can get a rolling campaign going at some point. After much (much) consideration, considering both my playing style and the narrative I want to tell with my army, here is the list I am going to start working on:

Dark Angels Patrol Detachment 49 PL (2CP)

HQ

Primaris Captain (Warlord)

Wargear: Special Issue Bolt Carbine, Heavenfall Blade

Rites of Initiation (Deathwing)

Warlord Traits: Rites of War, Brilliant Strategist (Paragon of the Chapter)

I am going to use this Captain to represent the Master of the 3rd Company. Both weapon choices are fairly efficient, with the option of upgrading the bolt carbine for the Lion's Roar combi-plasma during the campaign. I am also going to model him with the Mantle of the Seneschal, which may be wishful thinking on my part! Such a cool relic though. I have chosen the Rites of War trait, which grants Objective Secured to CORE and CHARACTER units within 6". It seems like the kind of thing the Master of the 3rd Company would be able to do (he didn't get to his position by losing objectives). I look forward to running him around with a blob of Hellblasters. I also burned a CP on Paragon of the Chapter, to give him the trait Brilliant Strategist as well. This will give me another turn of Tactical Doctrine (and another turn of Fire Discipline...).

Troops

Infiltrators x 5

Wargear: Helix gauntlet

I'll be expanding this squad to make it bigger, and hopefully adding some Intercessors or Tactical Marines as well. At the moment it looks like a bit of a Troops tax kind of situation, but that will change. With my Warlord handing out ObSec, it is not so much of a problem at this stage.

Elites

Deathwing Terminators x 5

Wargear: power sword, 2 x chainfists, 2 x powerfists, cyclone missile launcher, stormbolters.

It wouldn't be a Dark Angels army without Deathwing support. I have these five built, primed and ready to go. 

Ravenwing Black Knights x 6

Wargear: power sword, corvus hammers and plasma talons

It wouldn't be much a Dark Angels army without some Ravenwing bikes either. I have had these floating around on sprues for seven years or so, gradually being sacrificed for parts (arms especially).

Heavy Support

Hellblasters x 10

Wargear: Assault plasma incinerators

I have always been a sucker for plasma. After receiving these for Christmas (from myself) last year, I have been chomping at the bit to run them in a game. 

Work has already started, with some big builds scheduled over the next couple of days. Let's see if I can get this done, so that I can look back on this holiday a little more favourably!

See you across the table,

Marc

2nd Edition Army Challenge: Devastator Squad TO-DONE!!!

 

Hi folks,

Today is the first day of the winter school holidays. You may already know that Sydney is in the grips of a third wave of COVID-19, which has forced us to cancel our holiday to Queensland. The plan would have been to head up North to escape winter for a bit and spend some time exploring the Daintree Rainforest and the Great Barrier Reef. Instead, it look like we are going to get some much needed jobs done around the house and spend some time doing simpler things.

Last night, to unwind from the Term, I spent a good couple of hours working on my June project for the 2nd Ed. Challenge. The final construction of the heavy weapons marines was pretty hectic: it took a considerable amount of superglue and prayers. One of them just would not fit; I couldn't get the backpack to fit into the cavity in the heavy bolter. Knowing that I would need to either reposition the whole right arm or cut the backpack, I left it for the night. In the morning I ended up cutting the backpack, but submitted the final post an hour or so late to the challenge. That will probably mean no stamp for me this month, but I was very glad to get the squad finished, which is really the aim of the whole challenge in the first place! 

I have tried to convert a mix of arm options for the left arm, including a bolt pistol (for when the heavy bolter inevitably jams), a combat knife (guns are for show, knives are for pros), an auspex scanner ("That's not possible; that's in the room!") and an empty fist. In the good old days, I used to use Hellfire shells with these guys.

I keep forgetting to use my To-Do list stamps, but these guys certainly deserve something, they took so much out of me to finish 😂

See you across the table,

Marc

Hobby Diary Part 7: Ghost Bears and Devastators

 

Hi folks,

I haven't had a whole lot of energy the past couple of weeks; family, health and work issues have been rolling me in the foam. It hasn't all been bad, some things have just caused me to be ridiculously busy, but that level of business is unsustainable. This weekend is a long weekend in Australia, as we celebrate the Queens birthday, and all I can say is that I have spent most of my time sleeping on the lounge with dogs on top of me.

At some point last week I managed to finish paining these Ghost Bear mechs from the first wave of the Clan Invasion Kickstarter. Both the Adder and the Nova are over-gunned Mechs, which I love; if you want to unleash hell to your own detriment in a game, these guys can dish it out. The Nova has 12 Extended Range Medium Lasers, with only enough heat sinks to fire half of them. But if you want to fire all of them...

The Adder has two Particle Projector Cannon "head-cappers". It can also fire just one comfortably, but I'll happily ride that Heat Scale a little higher if it means taking down Mechs twice its size.

For the 2nd Edition Army Challenge I have been tinkering with a combat squad of Devastator marines with heavy bolters. That has mostly involved converting arms to fit them, as they didn't come with any ($50 on ebay only buys you so much vintage 40K!).

 

I'm fervently hoping that today's mindfulness will provide me with some energy to get on with some painting tomorrow.

As a side note, I have been participating in the Push up Challenge for the past couple of days. This is an event held in Australia, which raises money for critical Mental Health services. In short, I'm trying to do one push-up for every person who committed suicide in Australia in 2019 (3318 in 25 days) to raise money for Lifeline. Lifeline is an emergency counselling hotline, which serves over a million people every year, but struggles to meet demand. If you feel like donating to help me support this cause, of just feel like following my progress through the challenge, check out the link below: 

The Push Up Challenge

See you across the table,

Marc