Fluff for the Sons of Malice

Yup, decided to go for the most nerdy things of nerdy things, to write up fluff about my models.
It's just a very short story that I think I will try to elaborate later on.

Here goes.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

The Ultramarines captain Arman Aequita of the 4th company was finally allowed a moment of peace and observation of the battlefield.
His every step hammered into the broken rubble that used to be the city of Glass, home to millions of Imperial citizens. Clad in his barroque power armor he made his way toward the other Astartes leader overlooking the destroyed plaza in front of them. Aquita would seek retribution from those who failed in their duty to the Emperor.
- "Lose your helmet captain! I want to look into the face of the one responsible for this massacre!"
Moments fled past and yet the only response he was given was of utter silence. He could not see past any of the visors of the helmed warriors but he felt the glare of everyone of the strange Astartes force upon him.
Most of them wore black and white armour, split in four-by-four on their gear, and the symbol of a leering skull, half in black, half in white, glared from their left shoulderguard and banners. On the right shoulder they had the same kind of company and squad markings all Chapters had used since the Heresy. But the captain and his honour guard wore shining gold armour.
Yet something was very wrong with the company standing infront of him, Aequita could not really tell what, except for the almost unnerving silence that seemed to fill the very air.

- "Should I consider this an insult, or have your forgotten Primarch cursed you with arrogance and cowardice?
There still was no movement from any one of the silent Astartes, and all that was heard was the cold wind whipping the ruins where the two giants of men stood before one another.
- "You will answer me now, you forced us into close quarter engagement with the World Eaters warband without even attempting to come to our aid. And even though we killed their every man, your ignorance cost me many of the finest soldiers this Chapter has ever had."
The opposing warriors reloaded their guns and charged their close combat weapons but otherwise remained silent and still.
- "Has your arrogance now turned to treason fool?
A silent mocking laughter was heard in the wind as the Ultramarines in response readied themself for battle again.
Arman Aequita drew his magnificient sword and activated the power field in one smooth motion, his honour guard mirroring his move, preparing to battle with the same Frater they had previously thought of as allies.
The masked captain in golden armour raised one arm and pointed towards Aequitas, still without uttering a word.
"In the name of the Emperor and our Primarch, I will hold you responsible for letting the enemy advance freely into the habitat areas, slaughtering thousands of Imperial citizens and offering them to their false gods. Your crime is only furthered by letting my company get decimated in a battle where your force's prescence could have saved many lives. I might not know the name of you or your chapter, but the Inquisition will not take that into account when they declare you excommunicate traetoris for your actions, and I will have you kneeling and surrendering immediatly."

The mute Space Marine drew his own weapon for the first time, revealing a long glaive with a strange mist swirling around a dark red blade. The voice in the wind was heard again, low and threatening, and seemed to come from the blade, which pulsed as it spoke:

- "Falssse gods? There is merit to your claim Ultramarine, however you have no means to grasssp the truth of our actions."
Without any further command being uttered, the black and white army sprang to life, clashing hard with the Ultramarines arrayed for battle.

The heavily weakened Ultramarine army quickly wavered under the pressure from the silent traitors, outnumbered and weary from the desperate battle with the World Eaters. The planet Denubia was once again home to slaughter as the army led by the masked golden Space Marine butchered the remains of their opponents force.

---------

Some hours later the golden Space Marine stood before an hastily erected altar, on it lay the lifeless body of Arman Aequita. His armour removed and his chest open to the mistfilled air.

As the leader of the traitors cut a series of sharp angular shapes in the ultramarines flesh the blood started to flow. Slowly, at first, but it speeded up and suddenly it started to bubble and hiss as it touched the air. A dark shape was manifesting over the corpse of the Ultramarines captain, and a low dark voice could be heard from the growing shadow surrounding the glaive standing in behind the altar:

- "Ahhhh, Faceless One, the Massster is pleased. Today both hisss brother and the human corpse-king sssuffered greatly from your handsss. Return to your shipsss and we will find you more... suitable placesss for you and your army to continue His work. But now, feast my friendsss."



------------------------------------------------------------------

Hope you enjoyed it! :)

The Faceless One takes shape

So, here's my kitbashed commander for my Malal-force I probably never will use on the battlefield...











He is built using mostly parts from the Blood Angels Sanguinary Guard (awesome models) with the loyalist parts scraped off, and the head from one of the Empire Wizards, with a base from the Warhammer Basing Kit and the weapon from the new Lich Priest.










His backpack and base are not glued yet, to make better room for the brush!

Modelling project: Sons of Malice

Yup, fell back into the good old GW-trap and read up on some Sons of Malice / Malal fluff.
Very interesting stuff, and quite cool to have a chaos army that fights chaos.
Decided for a few things beforehand (had help from Bolter and Chainsword forums <- the best place when it comes to anything with power armour).

The parts of them retaining the old "loyalist" markings and some codex guidelines while still following a chaos god makes for a few cool twists.

- Astartes squad/company markings,
- Using mostly loyalist models and gear,
- Trying to find explanations of the stuff that's not in the loyalist codex that's in my army,
- Will try to leave out models without helmets.

• HQ
- Lord: The Faceless One, using a daemon weapon, based on Sanguinary Guard model with a mask from one of the Empire Wizards
- Sorceror: Space Marine Librarian.

• Elites
- Chosen: Elite troopers a bit like Sternguard.
- Terminators: Terminators.
- Chaos Dreadnought: The madness part of the Dread might be authentic, but it makes it unusable.

• Troops
- CSM: Tactical Marines.
- Thousand Sons: Librarium Guardians, defining their rules with them being careful guardians of the Librarian (Minor Sorceror), both from outside threats, and the threat of the Librarian falling to one of the other gods.
- Berzerkers: They will be melee honour guard for my Lord.

• Fast Attack
- Bikes: Bikers will be bikers.
- Raptors: Assault Marines obviously, but the Raptor models are way too cool to ignore, so I will probably use them.
- Spawn: I don't really know how to implement them into my list.

• Heavy Support
- Havocs: Devastators.
- Obliterators: Thinking of something similiar to a gunplatform, but don't really know yet. Maybe a Dark Mechanicus Techmarine with a bunch of weapons.
- Predator, Vindicator and Land Raider: Predator, Vindicator and Land Raider.
- Defiler: I love the model but I don't know how to get it into a "loyalist" look and feel.

Daemons:
- Greater Daemon: Be'Lakor. Obviously. Painting him twosided with bright(white) and dark(black).
- Lesser Daemons: I'm gonna use converted Dryads (not painted as such, obviously).



So, now I have something else to fill my already full life with. Great.

Battle #857 against Circle..

Yup, we fought it out again.

Decided first to make it to 35p, but my friend wanted to try out his new models so we pushed it to 45p instead.
Sadly, no pictures were taken for a few reasons (he had a lot of unpainted models, his daughter wanted a lot of attention, and we were both very very tired).

I needed to use my TFG with UA so the army was based around that, with pSeverius as the Warcaster.
I also had, Bastions, the Avatar, Reckoner, Wracks, Blessing of Vengeance and the Paladinsquad of doom.
We (I) wanted to try out one of the other scenarios, turned out it was pretty much to my advantage, but I swear that was not my intention.

Thoughts from the aftermath:
- TFG + Defenders Ward = a very good frontline / tarpit. A full unit stood their ground against Feastlord, Argus and their defensive stats kept my opponent from even trying to hit them with his Reeve-solo, a full unit of Druids and a Gorax. They successfully camped an objective for three turns without it even getting close to be contested.
- Paladinsquad of doom (Vilmon + 2 Paladins) is crazy good it seems, especially when fielded together. Running up and parking one on one objective won me that one, even while getting attacked by Wolf Riders, the Reeve-solo and the chap leading the summoning stones.
- Blessing of Vengeance: Didn't bring anything extra to the table, sadly. A missed arc'ed immolation was all it was used for.
- pSevvy is great with all his buffs. incredibly satisfying to play with, a powerful backfield caster with an arc node is just silly.
- Bastions survived the slaughter of a full unit of Wolves of Orboros + UA and the onslaught of the Ninja Wolf (Stalker I think it's called) for three turns, enough to hold their objective.
- Avatar is intimidating, and very hard to get rid off. :)

Oh.. and I won. 9 control points in 4 rounds (I had all three points for 3 rounds, while my opponent had 0 points for 4 rounds).
Menoth is pretty powerful in the defensive game with the buffs and elite infantry. :)

Go Menoth!

(Next time I promised to use my Skorne. Just gotta finish painting them...)

New Menoth models, yay!

I gave in to the temptation and got myself pSeverius (so far only one short 11p game which ended in a tabled Circle, it was nice!).
I've also bought myself a couple of Paladins, the Avatar, a Dervish and a Vassal of Menoth.

Plus I finally painted my Temple Flameguard that I've had lying in a box for more than a few months.

So, without further ado, here are the models:

(Temple Flamguard full unit + UA, and right is a close up of the banner.)











(Blessing of Vengeance, converted from a Revenger among other pieces and loads of scripture.)












(pSeverius himself, and a Vassal, the gloweffect on the Vassal turned out meh.)











(My Avatar of Menoth with prolonged and "flamed" sword, the original one looks a bit too short and wimpy in my opinion.)












(Paladinsquad of doom (Vilmon in the middle) and my Dervish!)












(And the Wracks, look at the shadows they cast on the table, incredibly awesome looking silhouette.)

There you go, hope you like them!
I still have my Vanquisher and a unit of Knights Exemplar to finish... and then the extra Crusader... and the Exemplar Errants... and the 2nd Bastions unit... and my second Reckoner... and eFeora... and the extra Wracks (for Rezniks ability)... and the rest of the Choir... (...and when they're done, I have my Skorne army...)

New army! Skorne is on the march

Heya everybody!
Hi Dr. Nick!

So, since I desperately (yes, desperately...) needed something else to paint, and more or less every other army in the game was taken by someone else (no need to start duplicates when there are other armies out there imho), I opted for a Cyclops heavy Skorne army.

I'm not too fond of the look of the elephant-monsters so I tried to make a list where they would not be needed, which in it self is pretty hard to do since the Titans are pretty awesome gamewise.
After looking through the miniature range a few times and checking up on the different warlocks I chose eMorghoul with Molik Karn, one Savage and one Brute for 15p.

So far I've had two games with them, one against a new Scyrah player (doesn't really counts as a win) and one against pButchers Khador (20p, I proxied 5p's of Bloodrunners), also a win.

Here are a few pics (please excuse the quality) of the first 15 points of Skorne:

Molik Karn (front and side), an absolute joy to paint.













eMorghoul (the silliest pose ever, and very hard to get a decent photograph of) and Brute














Savage.














But my urge could not yet be satisfied, so I have already invested in another Warlock, Zaal, and a few other models....

I just love the Ancestral Guardians (which is why I chose Zaal) and decided not to paint them in the obsidian black but a more sandstone-finish (I love Gryphonne Sepia). I will have to get my hands on a bunch of Immortals sooner or later.










Basilisk Krea, I'm not sure if I like the model or not, but it was fun to paint at least, and the animus is very handy against shooty armies.

I wanted to somehow make it look "strange", and so instead of just making its stomach and underside paler, I painted it blue. Turned out pretty ok. :)





WIP Praetorian Swordsman, great unit with Zaal and his feat, plus they are pretty cool looking. :)











And there we are! Hope you enjoy them!

Battles fought and (almost) forgotten...

Took me long enough to update the blog about the latest developments, I blame my son, and my laziness.

So, we had a few fights a couple of weeks ago, 15p battles, me (Menoth) vs. Khador, Circle vs. Cryx and a lot of talking in between. :)

My fight against Khador went perfect for about 95%. The other 5% cost me my Warcaster. Silly game.

I fielded a 15p eKreoss list consisting of:

- eKreoss
- Crusader
- Dervish
- Min. Choir
- Hierophant (my new favourite)
- High Paladin Vilmon
- 2 Paladins of the wall.

My opponent fielded:

- Butcher
- Dawg
- Destroyer (I think...)
- Juggernaut (I think...)
- Widowmakers


For two turns I just walked upfield, keeping Hymn of Passage up on the Warjacks, and Impervious Wall on the Paladins and hid the rest of the army behind them, he flanked me with his Widowmakers and eventually took out my Hierophant before getting killed by two Paladins and Kreoss.
Upon arriving at his Warjacks he blasted three of my Choir-boys halfway around the world and cut one arm off of the Dervish. The next turn I decided to pop the feat and clear the house of his Warjacks.

Which I did. After my turn was up, all he had left was his Warcaster and his pup.

Up until this point, I had not yet come across anything that could slow me down properly, but now, the last 5% of the game kicked in.

My first mistake was showing my Warcasters face on the wrong side of a building, my second was forgetting about free strikes on his warcaster charging past one of the paladins, and the third was me totally forgetting that wrecked Warjacks leave a wreck marker, slowing advances and giving cover.

Needless to say, the Butcher handed my ass back to me in very tiny kebab-pieces on his charge-feat-totally imba-turn.
He won fair and square, we both forgot about the wreck markers and free strikes (he could've just moved his dog closer to my paladins to deny the paladin any free strikes on the Butcher), but it was a bit frustrating to lose a game like that. I had total control of the board, had both 'jacks left as well as the Paladin Squad of Doom with full boxes. I probably wouldn't have needed the Warcaster to charge in like that.

Well I learned my lesson. (Don't play against Butcher on 15p games that is.)


---------------------------------------------------------------------

We also had a few battles at my place the other weekend, mostly 11p battles to get the new players in on it. I think all of them ended with the new guys getting there dreams and hopes crushed by the not-so-polite-but-more-experienced-players. :)

I went up against Circle (yay Circle, that's new) 35 points baby!

- eKreoss (my new favourite)
- Reckoner
- Hierophant
- Min. Choir
- 3 Bastions
- Full Zealots + Monolith (also a favourite)
- Knights Exemplar
- High Paladin Vilmon
- 2 Paladins
- Madelyn Corbeau
- Vassal

Exactly what my friend fielded I will probably never know, but I think he had the following:

- Baldur
- Woldwarden
- Argus
- Gorax
- Warpwolf
- Min. Wolves of Orboros
- Blackclad Wayfarer
- Lord of Feast
- Druid Wilder
- Shifting Stones with Stone Keeper

( <--- Deployment (me on the opposite side).)

Turn 1:
- Menoth:
My first turn ended after me just advancing upfield behind a wall of Zealots and the Paladin Squad running up my left flank and the KE's on the other flank buffed with Sacrosanct. I wanted his Lord of Feast to be forced away from the KE's to use them as a counter charge or something similiar.

- Circle:
He charged my Zealots with his Lord of Feast, killing 5 in one swoop, and advanced towards me with the rest of his army.

Turn 2:
- Menoth:
I popped the mini-feat with my Zealots (basically making them immune to damage for one round) and spread them out in front of the rest of my army and tried to chuck a few bombs at his Warwolf (all but one of them missing the target). With help from the Vassal, the Reckoner then put two large holes in the WaWo (should've fired his gun first, giving the -def debuff on the WaWo, making it easier for the Zealots, but I got that right in the turns to come). My KE's missed the charge on one of the Stones, but I now forced him to charge the KE's with his Argus and Woldwarden, leaving my right flank denied for one turn.
My Bastions charged in and chopped the Lord of Feast to little bits and the rest steadily walked and ran into his half of the field.

-Circle:
His Argus and Woldwarden slew all but one of the KE's making the last surviving one a real monster!
His Warlock moved into position within the wood and the rest walked towards me.

Turn 3:
- Menoth:
I can't really remember exactly what happened during this turn except for me shooting with the Reckoner and throwing all the bombs I could at his WaWo and getting him down to just a few boxes, and charging his Wolves of Orboros with Vilmon (sacrificing him for a charge with the other non-reach-paladins the next turn).


-Circle:
He charged Madelyn, killing her in the process, with his Argus, and shot my last KE (I had totally forgot about him during my own turn) with one of the solos (don't know which). His Wolves ran in to kill Vilmon but only got 4 of his boxes! Great Success! :D

Turn 4:
- Menoth:


eKreoss feat party dancy time! (click it for maximum feeling)
With the pieces now set up perfectly I decided that it was feat-time and popped it early so everyone could make the best use of it. The Bastions slew the Argus, the remaining zealots charged one of the Shifting Stones (rolling double 6 on the damage roll!), one Paladin killed the WaWo, the Reckoner took out the Gorax, Vilmon and the other Paladin killed all but one Wolf of Orboros.
Very devastating for my friend, now missing three out of four beasts and more or less all of his Wolves. Very satisfying for me. The only way he could get out on top was if I screwed up this by myself.

- Circle:
He popped his feat and gave his all to get a few tries at assassinating my Warcaster with his remaining forces, casting spells and trying to spray me with everything he could get in range.
But alas, his overboosted powerfield proved too much and in my next turn my Bastions got his Warcaster down.


Wow. One of the best battles I have ever fought. I went for an infantry heavy army with a solid block of Zealots to both suck up damage on the mini feat, and also trying to focus-bombing a few targets to soften them up for the Reckoner, Bastions and Paladins to finish off.
My plans went perfectly, I decided to sacrifice the KE's (even though they were my latest investment) since they would be too dangerous to be left alive, and also let him charge me with his Lord of Feast. I knew that I would get the counter-charge in my next turn, so better have him downing a few Zealots than charging anything more important.
This made it perfect for my feat-turn, when everthing I wanted to charge was in range of my forces.
The trap slammed shut and killed more or less his entire force in one turn.

eKreoss' feat turn is insane. Especially with this much infantry, I had won half the battle before we even started since I fielded so many models.

Gotta get another big battle again...

15p Menoth Vs. Circle... again...

Surprise!

I'll just keep it short, it has to be getting a bit boring to read these battle rep's now...


PoM (same as last time):
- pKreoss
- Hierophant
- Crusader
- Repenter
- Choir (min)
- Bastions (min)
- Wracks










CO:
- pKaya
- Feral Warpwolf
- 2 Argos
- Gorax










We rolled for deployment and I won the roll and opted to go first.











Turn 1:

PoM:
I advanced up towards the building in the middle, casting Defenders Ward of the Bastions, and casting Lamentation to have it upkept through the battle (pretty effective against Hordes it seems). I then split the force and let the Bastions take the right side of the building and the rest on the left side.




CO:
He switched sides with his Wolf and one Argos, splitting the army in two and advance towards me.







Turn 2:

PoM:
Ok, let's face it, this time I was the lucky one. There was not too many shabby rolls on my behalf this evening, I can only remember two stinky rolls on my behalf, all of the others were average or above. So I guess it evens out in the long run. :)

Anyhow, this turn was when stuff went down hill for my opponent.
I moved Kreoss closer to the building and popped the feat, knocking down everyone of his models in one go. Sweet so far. The Bastions killed the Warpwolf and a boosted Repenter seriously hurt both one Argos and the Gorax, crippling their spirit (I think it was, the one which causes them to be unable to get forced).
The last thing I did was moving up the Crusader next to the Repenter (quite a menacing team).


CO:
Wow, he had taken quite a beating, not realizing just how dangerous Bastions-on-the-charge could be (POW12 with Reach and Weapon master + charge is pretty dang nasty), and it cost him his Warpwolf. I can't really blame him though, they got eaten by the Lord of Feast last game, not too inspiring or frightening. Also having two out of three surviving beasts with a crippled spirit might not be a great way to go all in offensively.

He decided to take a few steps back and heal as much as he could to get in for a charge in his next turn.








Turn 3:

PoM:
I love Reach. It's especially good on slow models, now they got another 2" threat range thanks to it, making them formidable as long as they are not tied up in melee.

This turn, I decided to try to tie up the Warcaster in melee with my Bastions, their Sanguine Bond makes them very hard to kill if used correctly, and then charge in with my Warjacks to finish her off in my next turn.
... and it worked out great. I scored a few boxes on her and opened up for a charge during my next turn.
The rest of the force advanced to go for the kill in the next round.

CO:
At this point there really wasn't too much for him to do, he tried to kill the Bastions in melee, but the SB mentioned above was just too powerful and he just managed to kill one of them. And thanks to their ability and a mistake by my opponent by killing them in the wrong order, one of the Argos eventually ended up outside of melee range.



The final turn ended swiftly after I charged his remaining Argos with my Repenter, and killing it and just moving one Bastion slightly behind the other one I got at charge in with my Crusader on Kaya and he made pretty short work of her.





My thoughts after the battle:
Those Bastions are SCARY when they get to charge, also with Defenders Ward on them they are very, very hard to kill, thanks to both the spell and their Sanguine Bond.
I was very satisfied to see him getting lured into my trap (It's a trap!), underestimating the might of the Bastions (thanks to them being useless in our last battle). Also crippling his force early on with the killing of the Warpwolf and the crippling of two other beasts turned the battle in my favour.

Although I must admit, I can't really see the purpose of pKaya on points as low as this, he might've fared better with someone else leading his army.

But still, very satisfying win, my tactics worked perfectly, and for once, the Dice Gods were on my side (probably thanks to my army being fully painted for the first time!).

My Menoth army in all its fully paint'edness!

So, here's a few pics of my Menoth army and all that I've painted and finished this far.










Monolith + Holy Zealots and Reckoner and warjacks
(I am very pleased with the stone effect on the Zealots menofix as well as on the weapons on the Reckoner.)











Hierophant and Choir of Menoth
(I think the menofix on the Choir Priest turned out pretty sweet.)










Eiryss and Bastions
(Eyriss cloak was painted with nothing but Thraka green wash, up from a white basecoat.)










Full army shots.
(Pics of the Wracks will be up later, the other cameras batteries went out while taking pictures...)

My Orboros-friend (and brother-in-law)

Thought I'd give a heads'up about his own blog with his mini's and games if anyone is interested in them. :)

http://oneeyepainter.wordpress.com/

Good stuff over there!

15p Menoth Vs. Circle

I know, it's getting a bit dull reading about me getting my ass kicked all the time but that's all I can give you at the moment. :C

We tried to go for a quick game, but it took us two hours to complete (still a bit noobish I suppose).

This time we didn't take notes when fighting but my friend took a few pics to show off all of our (... my...) new terrain. It looks marvellous, not even since my older 40k days have I played on such a diverse and awesome battlefield with a wizard tower, two ruins, four patches of forests (a few too many when fighting Circle...) and a hill, all of it painted and ready.











(Please excuse the bags in the background, we had laundry day...)











Thoughts from the battle:

• My opponents feeble double-1 roll on his last Lord of the Feast-attack on my last Bastion. That was _quite_ satisfying.
  Unless you consider the fact that he had just killed the other two Bastions, and then later went on to almost kill my Caster after butchering most of my choir. (Lord of the Feast is retarded awesome, at least on this level.)
• My own feeble double-1 roll during my feat turn while trying to roast his Argos (with it's survival, this critical miss most likely cost me the entire game... Stupid Repenter...).
  
• My opponents inability to roll anything beneath average (except for the above statement).
• He took down my last boxes on pKreoss with his Warlock on his very last roll for his turn. The EXACT amount of boxes. Insane.
• My Repenter survived the attacks from a Woldwarden (for two turns) and one Gorax (for one turn) without any system failures. That rocked. Even though I will never forgive him for his critical miss.
  
• I lost because I have not yet painted ALL of my army. The dice gods do not favour me yet...

... until next time tree huggers, until next time...

Terrain time: Ruins of SvFF

First off, apologies for the crappy pic-quality, I took the shots with my iPhone3gs in bad lighting.

So, I'm currently working on a few wall sections, but got sidetracked when I found a bunch of old 40k ruins (from 3rd edition I think) and decided to make a small ruined building.

I found a few 40k bits to use, and clipped and snapped a few sprue pieces and glued a bunch of small rocks to the base as well.
I found one of the brass sprues with leaves and small branches from the Fantasy Basing Kit and glued them to the side of one of the corner pillars.

At first, I thought I would just turn this into a generic ruin, but after todays totally idiotic decision from the swedish football association (SvFF) I changed one small thing during the painting process.
































I sprayed it black, gave it a drybrush with Citadel Foundation Adeptus Battlegrey, a lighter wash of Codex Grey, and for the floor tiles I used a mix between the old Citadel Brown Wash and Scorched Brown, with a drybrush with Bestial Brown, and after that a Devlan Mud wash.

The point was to make it feel abandoned and starting to get overgrown, and I think it turned out good. :)