Dornian Heresy: Iron Hands

The unofficial background for Index Astartes: Iron Hands in the Dornian Heresy was written up and published by Bolter and Chainsword in late 2010.  To cut a long story short: the Dornian Heresy is an alternate reality timeline where the loyalist and traitor legion's affiliations have been inverted.  The Space Wolves shed blood and collect skulls for their Lord Khorne, whilst the World Eaters are the paragon of disciplined troops, loyal to the Emperor and on very friendly terms with the Emperor's Children legion.  If you haven't read the alternate reality background, then I'd encourage you to do so -- it is remarkable in a large number of ways. 

For the Iron Hands alternate history, Ferrus Manus slew Fulgrim and they went renegade.  But they're not truly renegade ... they just have a bit of a different idea about how to combat chaos than the Emperor has.  They want to upgrade (ascend?) humanity in to these metallic bodies they located on "tomb worlds" a while back.  By doing so, they will remove emotions from the weak, fallible human bodies and deny chaos their food stuff: strong, nasty emotions!  Perfectly logical, you see.  Just like a machine.  

In their research, they have mastered the phasing techonology of what was the necrons and adapted their Gauss weaponry.  And they're still modifying their own bodies, replacing parts with more reliable mechanical bits.  They're not ready to execute their master plan yet though. Only the very senior members of the Iron Hands have received the new metal bodies.  Most of the battered legion's clans still retain their power armour (etc.).

For a test miniature, I used a standard space marine torso, legs and back pack and combined them with a chaos space marine shoulder pad, necron gauss weapon and hands / lower arm (left arm) and a vehicle upgrade bit on the top of the back pack to give the suggestion of advanced and beyond-the-inert-imperium technology.  The head was chosen to be the bionic human head from the space marine kit.  I was toying with using a necron head, but the bionic head was much better suited to the background and the miniature.  The painting was relatively straight forward, with a standard approach to painting black, with silver edging around the shoulders.  I tried to add some green reflection from the gauss barrel on to the left forearm and the left hand side of the chest.  I'm not entirely convinced it works, but it's the first time I've thought about doing such an approach.  Finally, the base is one of the resin bases that I painted up some months earlier.  

Melbourne in Flames tournament sells out in under 35 mins

For those of you based in Australia, you're probably familiar (or at least have heard of) the Melbourne in Flames tournament -- arguably one of the larger ones (and most popular) run in the country. 

Tickets for this event went on sale over the weekend and were sold in in less than 35 mins! 

Good luck to those of you attending -- I was one of the ones who took more than 35 mins to attempt to purchase my ticket.  I wonder whether this argues that GenConOz should consider relocating from Brisbane?  I really enjoyed attending GenConOz in Brisbane when I was there, and it was really popular.  But I'm left wondering if it would be more commercially successful in Victoria?

Reminder for the Feb 2011 Army List Challenge

Entries are still welcome for the Feb 2011 Army List Challenge.
Can you design an army to take on chaos-corrupted Tau?
Or perhaps you'd like to have a go at designing the chaos-corrupted Tau yourself?!

Enjoy!

Pink Warp Rift Objective

This is the second of a series of objectives that I'm constructing for use with all types of my chaos armies.  The previous objective (a blue one) can be seen on this page.

As with the previous one, I've mounted the agate crystal slice on a 40mm base and used greenstuff (milliput in this case) with a liberal amount of superglue to fix it in to position. The base has had fine sand as well as larger stones from the 40k basing kit added to it.  A bit of drybrushing later, and the effect is complete.  I may add some further grass to this particular base just to contrast with the otherwise stony and urban decay feeling of the base.

On the Unholy Might Upgrade for Greater Daemons

All the greater daemons apart from Lords of Change can take the Unholy Might upgrade of 15 points (unless you're a Bloodthirster, or indeed a daemon prince, in which case you have to pay 5 more).  Having played with all variants of greater daemon, I'd like to suggest that the only one worth bothering with is the Bloodthirster.

Why?  Well, the Bloodthirster already has strength 7.  Increasing it to 8 means that it can be even more deadly to the best armour (e.g. landraiders) in the game.  By comparison, both Keepers of Secrets and Great Unclean Ones only(!) have strength 6 base.  Moreover, they both lack wings meaning that it is harder for them to apply the +1S bonus that unholy might brings.  This partially (maybe fully) explains why the unholy might upgrade is cheaper for the these two in comparison to the Bloodthirster.  Okay, so the Keeper can fleet and hit and run, but it still doesn't have wings!  And as for the Great Unclean One, well the slow and purposeful rule means that it probably won't go very far very fast (but it does have excellent staying power!).

Daemon princes are another category altogether.  With a comparatively poor base strength of 5, they're probably not worthwhile upgrading with unholy might given its cost.  The points are better spent toward wings for the daemon prince, or a 3+ armour save.

(The image is of my Realms of Chaos / Slaves to Darkness era reconstituted Keeper of Secrets).

Feb 2011 Army List Challenge

In anticipation of the Grey Knights release later this year, here's a diabolical army list challenge for you to take on.  Can you create an effective and well-themed army list to take on a chaos corrupted Tau force?

Overview
A Lord of Change has corrupted a Tau Ethereal.  A whole Tau outpost has turned to chaos worship in fact.  Your army needs to take on these corrupted Tau.  The game is annihilation.  Your opposition consists of both Tau firepower and chaos daemons' notorious close combat abilities.  And the Tau have bunkers to hide inside as well.  And did we mention dark sorceries?

The army list challenge is to design a themed 1750 points army list to take on this challenge and destroy the corrupt Tau and their Warp allies.

Alternatively, if you have access to both the Tau and Chaos Daemons codex, then please feel free to create the corrupt Tau and daemons force(!)

Rules

(1) Design a 1750 points army list from any codex to take on this mission, or a 1750 point army consisting of both Tau & Chaos daemons (using a single force organisation chart between the two codexes) to represent the corrupt opposition forces.

(2) Post your army lists as a comment to this posting and suggest why they're well suited to this mission. 

(3) Entries close at 01:00 GMT on Feb 14th. 

(4) On that same day, I'll open a poll for Warpstone Flux readers to judge which army list they consider to be the "most effective army list that also best articulates the theme" (whatever readers interpret that to mean) out of all entrants.

(5) Winner will be tallied and announced on Feb 21st (and entered in to the hall of fame!).

(6) One entry per person please.

Remember that there are no prizes for these contests, beyond kudos, honour and entry in to the hall of fame.

Good Luck!