Adepticon 2012: The Battle for Piscina IV

I'll get to my tournament reports later, but for today I wanted to talk about another event that I attended, this year's narrative event.

Put on by the gentleman behind 2nd City Warzone, this year's event concerned the Belial v. Gazhgkull beat down that took place in GW's Storm of Vengeance campaign, which is also detailed in the BL novel The Purging of Kadillus, which is a terrible, terrible, novel.

Anyway, for this event we each had to choose a particular special character to lead our forces to victory. I chose Veteran Sgt Naaman, a scout sergeant who through his questioning of Belial's decidedly terrible command decisions managed to save the campaign and put an end to Gazhgkull's assault on the planet.

I've already detailed the forces that I hastily painted up here, now let's get to the battles!

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It was early in the morning when the alarms started ringing in the barracks. A training regiment had failed to report on time, and then long range scanners picked up a large mass of  infantry heading towards the capitol.
"Wake up ladies, we have incoming!" roared Commander Heinrich as his Lieutenants rallied their squads as quickly as they could. Flak jackets were hastily thrown on and rifles unlocked from storage.
"What could possibly have overrun the outer barracks? How the hell did an invasion fleet get passed our sensoriam?" Heinrich asked the watch officer.
"Orks, sir, and I have no idea, but they're charging into the square as we speak!"

The hastily assembled troops charged on to the scene, flamers and grenade launchers at the ready. Commander Heinrich barked out orders.
"Commissar Sebastian, have first platoon hold the center! Lieutenant Julian, peel off four flamers and move up the right, try to sneak up on the sons of bitches! Stormtroopers, move to support the LT! I'll take the high ground, get a better idea of what we're up against."

Heinrich clambered up the ruins, Pvt Edelson and the rest of his command squad close behind. What he saw wasn't encouraging. Ork bikes belching noxious smoke were careening down the middle while mobs of Boyz were smashing their way through the ruins of what used to be the outer barracks. Heinrich snarled and primed his plasma pistol. Even if he didn't have the manpower to stop the green tide he'd make these monsters pay for invading his world.

The vox crackled open with urgent communications from one of the Dark Angels commanders that had come with the recruitment team, the Chaplain Boreas. The situation was growing dire indeed, Heinrich mused, if the even the mighty Astartes were encountering difficulties.
"But why the generators? It's not like they are the fuel reserves." mused Heinrich. But the onrushing Orks quickly pulled the commander back to reality, and he offered up a silent prayer to the Emperor to give him strength.

In a blaze of blue light Heinrich's prayers were answered. Standing in the square were a squad of the mighty Deathwing, led by none other than the third company Captain himself, Belial. The men of Piscina let out a mighty roar of thanks and bounded forward with redoubled fervor at the sight of the mighty Astartes. These cheers grew even louder as two more squads of noble Astartes joined the fray, taking up firing positions along the main square.

Heinrich smiled. "Now we have a fight on our hands. Privates Edelson, Matthews, there's some Greenskin hiding in that ruin over there. Would you kindly be the first to drive the enemy from our shores?" The privates grinned, and the air soon rang with the sounds of fragmentation grenades exploding among the approaching Greenskins.

Belial and his command squad shared the feeling, sending fragmentation rounds from their Cyclone Missile Launchers into a herd of Grots, causing the tiny greenskins to panic back towards the Ork lines despite the urgent thrashings of their handlers.

The rest of the Orks, however, weren't fazed. If anything, their bloodlust was only increased by the sight of the grots blood flowing on the cobblestones. Their whoops increased in volume, and the engines of their bikes revved up for the inevitable assault.

The Vox crackled again, the sounds of close combat coming through in patches. The Chaplain's exhortations sounded heroic, but even from this distance Heinrich could tell that the battle was not going well. At that moment the Orks on the ground floor opened up with their Shootas, killing privates Edelson and Matthews. Their hearts already lowered by the news of the Marines' impending defeat, Heinrich's squad fell back from the upper floors.

In the square the Orks' charge was devastating. Deciding that the "really 'ard Beakies" were the prime targets for their bloodlust, the Bikes and Boyz crashed into Terminators with terrific force. Having weathered their shooting, the Deathwing attempted to hold their own but the Orks were simply too many, even for the vaunted First Company. Three of their number fell to the onslaught, Belial and his two remaining veterans pushed back by the sheer force of the Green Tide.

Seeing that the heroic captain was in danger, Commissar Sebastian exhorted his squad to join in the combat. Meanwhile the Dark Angels chaplain led his squad into the assault as well, their combined force chopping down the marauding Orks. Seeing this Heinrich and his squad rallied, and Lieutenant Julian and his flamer squad roasted two outflanking mobs of Boyz.

The Orks attempted to sally forth again, their numbers coming in an unending tide. Another of the Terminators was cut down along with four noble Astartes of the Tactical squad. The Stormtroopers charged in to assist, prayers to the Emperor on their lips and helped vanquish the marauding beasts. Belial himself stood toe to toe with the Ork Warboss, eventually defeating the massive leader in single combat with a beheading sweep of his Heavenfall Blade.

With their leader defeated the remaining Orks fell back to their lines, no doubt to toast Gazhgkull's victory at the power plant. First platoon cleared out the stragglers with lasbolt and flamer and reclaimed the docks from the invader. Heinrich lowered his plasma pistol wearily, its power cell burning hot. His men had gotten off light, only losing seven of their number, but the Astartes had lost four of their elite and nearly half of their Tactical squad, not to mention the losses they had no doubt suffered at the power plant.

"If even the Angels couldn't hold back the Beast of Armegeddon," muttered Heinrich, "what chance do we mere mortals have?"

Adepticon 2012: 40k Tourney Armies, part 2

More army pics for y'all- enjoy!

Adepticon 2012: 40k Tourney Armies, part 1

As usual there were plenty of pretty armies at Adepticon, so I shall post them up here. If you see yours here, leave a comment and I'll be sure to give credit where credit is due.

Anyway, pics!

And finally, last but not least, a pic of my buddy Russell's army of Grey Knights. And yes, he is only running 10 Terminators, and no, they aren't Paladins.

As always, thanks for reading!

Adepticon 2012: My Armies

Hello blogging community, I'm back! After a long hiatus traveling to that mecca of gaming culture that is Adepticon has reawakened the fire to both get back into the hobby as well as post on this here blog. While I may not have gotten terribly much done hobby wise in the past couple of months these last three weeks or so have blown my productivity way up!

While my tournament army (Imperial Guard) was ready to go, I had also signed up for the narrative event, which for this year was to reenact the Battle of Piscina IV, i.e. the old Storm of Vengeance campaign. Seeing as I was looking for pretty much any excuse to get into Dark Angels I jumped at the chance and, seeing as I have a love for Scouts that borders on an obsession I quickly decided on having Veteran Sgt. Naaman as my commanding officer. I then grabbed a copy of the Black Library book detailing the event, the Purging of Kadillus, to see what forces I would need. Note: painful, painful read, and really not sure how Belial gets to be the Master of the Deathwing after messing up that badly.

Of course, there were a couple of problems that got in the way of me just cranking out the 1000 point list that I needed ahead of time. First off, I've been traveling quite a bit for work so I've had little time at home to speak of. Second, I'm a procrastinator by nature. If I can put something off till tomorrow then by golly that's what's going to happen. Third, my Ogres were distracting me with their greenstuff work, which is hardly conducive to me painting up Marines.

It took some near constant painting and quite a few long nights both before and during the convention, but here's what I had after it all:

Scout Squad Naaman, with the veteran sgt. himself out front (build time: one week)

Scout Squad Damas, those brave souls that sacrificed themselves to get the teleport homer to the midst of Gazhgkull's telly-porta array to allow Belial to save the day. Bastard. (build time: one week)

Ravenwing Squad Aquila, who made sure that Naaman could report the resurgent Ork threat to company command. (build time: one week)

Tactical Squad Nemaus, who stormed the Kadillus Harbor Basilica and joined Belial's final assault on the Orks left on Piscina. (build time: 3 hours)

Nemaus' ride (build time: 4 hours)

And finally the Predator Hammer of Judgment, which also sallied forth on the final Dark Angels assault. (build time: 5 hours)

All are what I'd consider to be works in progress- table top ready, but definitely in need of quite a bit of work to make sure that they're up to snuff, i.e. highlights, better shading, scroll work, weathering, magnetization, etc. But they were well enough that they served me admirably in the campaign, which I'll detail in a couple of posts.

Next time, though, we'll take a look at some of my favorite armies that I saw at Adepticon. Until then, thanks for reading!

New Digs: Rules Manufactorum

Hi guys!

You may have noticed that it's been a bit quite around here of late. While part of it has to do with work, that's not all! You can now find me doing a weekly article over at rulesmanufactorum.com! I'm aiming to post every Wednesday with new ways that we can subtly tweak our current rules system to either make it better, more interesting, or just closer to the fluff.

You can find my first article on reworking the Sniper rules right here!

But, I can't leave without posting a picture, as it hasn't all been work, work, and more work (though it mostly has). Here's a sneak preview of what the Circus has been getting up to:

Adventuring into Arctura: Matthias the Grey Shepherd

Recently I've been invited to join a local roleplaying group. They apparently play a loose variation on D&D 3.5 rules using a fairly amazing and well thought out campaign setting created by the GM called Arctura.

Essentially the world is for the most part covered by either ocean, jungle or savannah, with only small areas devoted to farming and cities. Humanity constantly needs to fight the jungle and its monstrous beasts back or be overrun. There is also only one god in this setting, Pelor, the god of Good and Light, though there are many lesser deities such as the great animal spirits of the tribesmen that are worshipped by some.

Over the next couple of posts I'm going to post up different possible character ideas that I have, and I'd like you to take a look at them and tell me what you think. It doesn't matter if the character can't easily fit into a class, as it sounds like the GM is very flexible when it comes to assigning mechanical abilities and it's more focused on roleplaying than dice. Since I like to play weird, out of the box characters, this plays to my tastes.

To start off with, though, here's a character that could probably pretty easily be created using character classes, Matthias the Grey Shepherd:

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Necromancer by m00nlight101

Matthias comes from a parish in the Founts [largest amount of consecutive farmland on Arctura and one of humanity's great strongholds]. The teachings of Pelor hold strong there, but they have been a bit… corrupted over time. Y’see, the problem that Matthias’ corner of the Founts has is the dead. When you die, you either get to join the Sun God in his paradise in the heavens above or you get cast down into the earth, never to be heard from again. Where most priests would just call it then and there, Matthias’ flock are a bit more… forgiving. After all, doesn’t Pelor love those who return to him after succumbing to darkness and doesn't he cherish those who labor in his name?

So Matthias and other priests of his peculiar brand of Pelorism, called Grey Shepherds, give the dead a second chance. They use “sanctified” rituals of necromancy to reach down into the earth, pluck a damned soul from there and intern him in a corpse (preferably his own, but any will do) to earn his place in the heavenly kingdom. For small time offenders this might mean something like tirelessly tilling fields or performing other manual labor for a few years or decades after death. Some even volunteer if they know that they have sinned and join a quick response defense force for decades or centuries beyond death, animated when needed. For others, they might be called on crusade to push back the hellish jungle and convert the heathen by force if necessary. For if the heathen won’t be converted by speeches, punishment or even the threat of death, there is always an eternity of service that they can be called to perform…

Matthias, of course, hates unsanctioned necromancy, as it is a vile and evil sin to manipulate the dead into serving any aim but the furtherance and protection of Pelor’s realm. He is currently wandering as a missionary, using his undead servants to further Pelor’s cause and help push back the jungle.

Personality: Matthias is very out going and genuinely happy to be alive and doing the lord's work. He honestly thinks that raising sinners and unbelievers is the right thing to do, and even believes that by doing so he is bringing them closure and eternal happiness. While he has had some exposure to outside cultures and the threats of the wild, this adventure will probably be his first real encounter with the Jungle and the predatory outside world. His naive faith will keep him strong for a time, but I do not know if he will have the strength to persevere. He often knows what the "right" thing is that his faith has taught him, but exposure to the real world might change or at least challenge a lot of those beliefs.

Possible conflict: Matthias' belief system is, frankly, based on a lie. Now that he's outside of the Founts he'll likely come in contact with those that see Necromancy as an evil art, and Pelor forbid that he should wander into temple, undead manservant in tow. How Matthias will deal with this will define his character. I currently see him as soldiering on, seeing this crisis of faith as a new test but feeling inexplicably guilty each time he raises the dead, but who knows what role playing will bring.

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So that's what I have for Matthias so far. He could probably be easily made into a cleric/wizard or cleric/sorceror. Comments and critiques are very welcome, as well as any cool insights that I could have on his personality and outlook on the world.

Thanks for reading!