Night Lords Tyberos Painting

Mid-week painting is a very welcome change of pace for me at the moment, and a happy respite from what is going on in the wider world. I have finally tackled my Tyberos model that I bought from Forge World a while ago. The plan that I had all along was to paint this particular model up in the colours of the Night Lords.

The reason behind this (seemingly peculiar) choice was to see how he looked in these colours due to the fact that the Carcharodons might be descended from this traitorous chapter. For a more in-depth crawl through the possible successor chapters of traitor legions, I wrote a popular article on the topic in April. The Carcharodons are noted as having possible Night Lords elements within them, or even inside their gene seed in a chimeric fashion. Hence this was a strong motivator for the choice of colour scheme for Tyberos, coupled with a potentially new opponent for some of my smaller games. To be clear, I won't be collecting Night Lords as they simply don't appeal to me greatly beyond their paint scheme (I'm not a fan of their background, although I can readily appreciate the work gone into this legion over many decades of background fluff. Nor do I relish playing against this legion and their fear inducing ways of fighting!). 

Painting followed a home brew approach to the Night Lords colours. A black undercoat was applied to give the model depth, before using a base colour of Caledor Sky for most of the model's bluer parts. This was washed down with contrast paints plus a touch of Nightshade to give the model some depth. Edge highlights were applied to the bluer parts in Teclis Blue followed by Lothern Blue. Some of these edges could have been neater, but I've not managed to purchase new paint brushes in a while (will be getting out more soon, hopefully! And yes: I like to purchase my brushes in person rather than online, before anyone says that). I attempted a lightning effect on the model's left leg which I am pleased with overall. It is almost impressionistic in nature, but seems to work a treat on this model. 

I decided to use reds on the fists and helmet, inspired by Sevatar. This battle brother's life is therefore held in the balance by the Primarch (or potentially was, until he was assassinated). Two tones of red were used here, including a wash of contrast paints and darker tones to blend in. Eye lenses were picked out in white before getting a sampling of green to offset the red helmet, and a careful pin prick of reflection inserted at the back edge of the lens. 

Cables, recessed metal, and other metallic parts were picked out in lead belcher before receiving a cost of Guilliman Flesh (yep: really). On the upper parts and edging of the shoulder pads, I was quite liberal with this and it has created almost a semi-bronze trim which I am very happy with the blend of. More edging in whiter colours picks out the edge highlights for the uppermost parts of the pads.

Finally, like many people, I only have the older Night Lords transfers that used to come with the older chaos space marine boxed sets. They're aged and don't look terrific these days. So I decided to live a little dangerously and do a free hand icon on the right shoulder pad. The basic shape is done in Mephiston red, with a fanged skull placed in the middle, over the top of this. Black then gives the outer edge of the freehand a good outline that is more than sufficient to round of the basic shapes required here.

Overall, this has been a very interesting experiment to undertake, and one that I hope will be appreciated by readers -- changing the status of a miniature and its in-game loyalty purely by its paint scheme is an adventure, and one that I would fully encourage anyone to try out! 

Alpha Legion Praetor

Here is the assembled Alpha Legion Praetor, based on Sevatar's scenic resin base from Forge World. 

I am very happy with the result here. To my mind it looks like the Praetor (or his men) have made a quick kill and are storming along the ruins of some kind of forge world to take their due of equipment or to ransack an important component of the works. I think to be controversial, I will paint both the Praetor and the victim in Alpha Legion colours to emphasize the internecine war within the Alpha Legion and be representative of some of the fiction found within the Black Library (e.g., the Seventh Serpent, and the Serpent Beneath). 

Praetors Deserve Quality Bases

Every praetor deserves a good base. The one that I'm planning for my new Alpha Legion acquisition is not different in this regard. Luckily for me, I picked up this beauty recently that I will be using with the praetor miniature (as opposed to constructing one from scratch). 

Of course, this base belongs to Sevatar of the Night Lords legion. It also happens to be one of my favourite ones from Forge World. I like the way that the actual base itself slots into the side of the display base. Many Forge World bases are fully encircled by the display base (cf., various other praetor level marines, and some Primarchs). The ones that slot into the side are without doubt my favourite type due to their simplicity and low level of messing around to get the playing base out from the display base. And of this type, I really dig Sevatars. In fact, I was toying with using this one with Alpharius himself at one point, but decided against it. 

The base comes in three parts (four if you count the black circular citadel base as well). The smallest part is the arm of the marine who lies dead near the foot of the shallow staircase. This part is simple to glue in place though, but I would advise dry fitting your miniature of choice to ensure that this arm works with the rest of the miniature before gluing everything in (doubly so for a kitbash like what I'm up to here). 

Kit Bashing Alpha Legion Praetor

Following a small amount of kit bashing, I created this Alpha Legion praetor from the recent Forge World acquisition. 

The left arm is a lightning claw from the Mark III power armour range and gives the miniature a very unsubtle pose and message of intent. The right arm features a plasma pistol, once again from the Mark III range. All the other bits for the main part of the miniature are via the Alpha Legion praetor blister pack noted above.

I like the pose of this one - commanding from the front and mid-stride to take on the enemy forces in close combat. A harrowing awaiting to happen. Looking forward to getting it painted up. 

Horus Heresy Review: Carnodon Strike Squadron

Background.
The final entry in Book 9 is the Carnodon Strike Squadron. This comes in two different guises: one for the Solar Auxilia, and one for the more regular Imperial Army. Fundamentally, this is a middle of the road battle tank, with statistics to match. 

Strengths.

The twin-linked autocannon is very nice here, although I suspect that most players will want to swap out the heavy flamer sponsons for something else. 

The Saturnyne version for the Solar Auxilia comes with the option of also swapping out the main turret which in some cases  might be desirable to create (e.g.) a lascannon based tank.

Weaknesses.

Arguably the armour isn't that great, but as stated above, the price about matches what you might expect.

Builds.

Carnodon with Twin Linked Autocannon, and autocannon sponsons (65 points).

A reasonably good amount of bullets coming out of this tank for the points cost here. Take a squad of 3 if you have the points.

Saturnyne Pattern Carnodon with Twin Linked Lascannon, and lascannon sponsons (105 points).

Not quite a predator tank, but still very nice.

Saturnyne Pattern Carnodan with Twin Linked Multi-laser, multi-laser sponsons, and a multi-laser pintle (85 points).

Purely for those of you who can't get enough multi-lasers. 

Unit Coherency in Age of Sigmar 3.0

I've been wanting to make a few notes about the upcoming new rules for Age of Sigmar (i.e., 3rd edition). I don't play Age of Sigmar very frequently, but given that my children seem more interested in the game compared to 40k, staying on top of a few of these things does literally find its way to my desk. [And before anyone says: yes, my children like 40k, 30k as well, but just not quite as much as Age of Sigmar which they have really taken to in tandem with RPGs].

The main change -- among a good number of changes -- for Age of Sigmar 3.0 is the changes in unit coherency. I regard this as a pretty fundamental alteration to how the game is played at a game level, strategic level, and tactical level. 

In previous editions, we saw a large number of single rank units stretching far and wide (cf., gratuitous bloodcrushers image!). This clearly was good for screening and other uses. Yet its basis in reality is not too strong. [And again: you will have to forgive me for using the term "Rank" here -- I'm very much an old timer now and remember those heady days of early Warhammer Fantasy Battle very well]. 

So what has changed?

In a nutshell: for units that have 6 or more members, they need to be near 2 other members, instead of just one. 

On the surface, this feels fine. Small units can still stretch out conga line style, but larger squads must now think about having ranks on surface inspection. In that light, I actually like the new ruling since it starts to feel much more realistic and gives a flavour of what the old WFB rules might have once been like. 

But there are plenty of configurations of large units that we can now consider for use with this rule. 

Of course, a player could arrange blobs of three models close to each other and have other blobs of 3 a little further apart. But who is going to play that other than "win at all costs" types? Well, I suspect some will in all honesty. And it will be popular. 

I'm also going to go one step further: we are not going to see ranks either, despite my initial enthusiasm! The obvious reason is that the back rows will not contribute to combats as effectively. 

Instead, I think we are going to see a lot of zig-zag arranged units such that the rear row can still reach over the top and strike in combat. I also think that some amount of adaptation to the zigzag will be seen so that attackers tessellate will be seen. Of course, the Khorne player won't think too much about this, and will hopefully just charge in recklessly anyway - as befits such an army. Or at least, I hope that is what will still happen.