Dark Heresy Scout Vehicle Complete

Here is the finished scout vehicle. Check out the previous post about this project here. My 7 year old son got a hold of this just before I took the picture and dropped it-- breaking thee antenna. So I guess it's technically not finished! Actually, I am thinking about adding some weathering and road grime at some point in the near future... we'll see!

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About 30 minutes before our last Dark Heresy session began, I decided to quickly paint up some stowage. They are not glued on, they are just sitting on the rack.

A GW ammo crate and dual fuel tanks plus a Tamiya 1/35 scale
Military Miniatures tent.
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As a finishing touch, I stretched my free-hand skills by adding an aquilla to the spare tire cover. It's a little crude, but it gets the point across.

My Dark Heresy Cadre of Acolytes mk 2

Here is the group as it was originally formed. We have since lost 2 players due to scheduling conflicts. We will probably reach rank 5 in 2 session.

• Denathor (Adept) - WH40K IG Master of Ordinance by Zorcon
• Venris (Cleric) - Converted Necromunda Redemptionist Leader by Zorcon 
• Kaarl (Tech-Priest) - Custom figure by Adeptus-B
• Quintillia (Assassin) - Warmachine Captain Kara Sloan by Hmack
• Nickodemous (Imperial Psyker) - Converted Dark Age Bane Leader by Zorcon
• Skull Servitor - Skull Servitor by Zorcon

Next upgrades: I have a Techpriest Enginseer ready to paint for the mk 2 Tech-Priest, but the player has yet to take a servo-arm advancement!! Hmack  is already looking for a mk 3 assassin.

Dark Heresy Character Showcase - Cleric

I finished converting and painting our Dark Heresy cleric. Check out the WiP post here.

The cloak is a base of GW Iyaden Darksun Foundation. Then a layer of GW Bleached Bone covering almost the entire area, leaving only the deepest recesses. Finally I highlighted with GW Skull White. The vestments are a base of GW Hormagaunt Purple Foundation with a layer of GW Leviathan Purple Wash. I then added another layer of Hormagaunt Purple, followed by Reaper Elderberry, and finally a 60/40 mix of Elderberry and Skull White.

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Well... I'm not sure what else to say about this figure. I think it turned out great! Actually in hind sight, I would have added grenades or a melta bomb instead of the scrolls (as the player has an affinity for things that go BOOM!).

I wanted to base the figure on a marble (or granite as it turned out) floor with gold detail. I used 4 classic chaos shields. After the glue set, I trimmed and filed the shields around the edge of the base. I then filled the holes with putty.

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I painted the marble (err... granite) with random short strokes of reds, browns and oranges, with alternating layers of thinned Delvian Mud ink..

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I also have the mk 2 psyker and adept finished and will add an entry about them in a later post.

Mutants in a Frontier World Village

In our Dark Heresy campaign, we recently investigated a small village just outside incorporated land on a distant frontier world. We knew through inquiries, that something afoul had occurred in this place. We also suspected that a (now dead) Rogue Trader, that we have been retracing his steps, had visited this place.

The picture above was taken with my phone as my wife had the camera (sorry for the poor quality). I circled where the PC's are located plus there are a number of "mutants" afoot. Following is a retelling of the session...

We made it to our destination (the abandoned village, Crimwell) after 3 overnight stops at small towns. We split room, food and fuel costs (all 5 of us stayed in a single room each night to save money). Very little was discovered until we arrived at the last town. Mostly it was back story, but we did learn a bit of info on the local sheriff and a rich land owner (this will come into play next session).

There was a canal with a neglected dirt bridge that looked very unsafe about a half mile from Crimwell. So we decided to have Quin and Kaarl guard the vehicle, while the rest of us hoofed it to the village. We kept comms open. As we approached Crimwell, we hid in the tree line and sent the servo-skull to scout things out.

After the all-clear, Nic threw on his cameoline cloak, activated his chameleon power and headed out after the servo-skull. He found a "fresh" horse head on a spike at the center of the village. Denathor and Venris came over to check it out.

We scoured the village, and came across a room above the saloon-- it appeared to be a room for rent. On a desk, we found notes that appeared to be an attempt to translate Cowlee (the language the Vermillion Codex is written). Nic stashed the papers in the false bottom of his backpack, and Venris torched the building with his "holy" flamethrower. We heard bestial noises nearby in the woods.

Nic went out after it, with the servo skull leading the way. The servo skull found it first and got whacked-- hard! Nic came upon a humanoid creature smashing the damaged servo skull on the ground. Nic quickly dispatched the creature and ran back to the village with servo skull in hand.

Reinforcements were called in. Kaarl managed to get the truck safely over the canal, and by the time Kaarl and Quin arrived on the scene, more sounds were heard from the woods. Before we could prepare for an assault, we saw 5 humanoid creatures emerge from the woods.

Venris torched two... as well as another building. Nic took out a couple too. One managed to charge Nic and Denathor. Fortunately, Denathor managed to act as a speed bump and allowed Nic to pump 5 shots of dum-dum bullets from his Hecuter pistol.

Nic and Venris advanced towards sounds in the SE side of town. The last creature charged Nic, but the attack was parried. Nic tried to finish the thing off, but found it slow going with being limited to single shots. A shot rang out from the tree line behind us, hitting the creature. Venris advanced and took a shot, missing his target but hitting Nic.

Quin tried to find the shooter in the woods, but before she could find a target, the shotter dropped the last creature.  It turns out the shooter was the sheriff, whom we drove past on the way to Crimwell. We exchanged pleasantries after cautiously approaching each other. He is in cahoots with the rich land owner, but we are unsure if this is a good thing or a bad thing.

We ended the session by taking some boards from a building, bolstered the bridge to make it safe to cross, and followed the sheriff to meet the land owner.

Flames of War - First battle

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 After a few scheduling hic-ups, Laertes and I finally had our Flames of War battle. This was simply a "training battle". We wanted to get the rules down, and didn't put much effort into strategy or tactics (well, at least I didn't!).

Fortress Europe was the book we pulled our forces from, and I detailed our army lists in this post. We played on a 4'x4' board with some hills to break LoS. We chose to play the Free-For-All mission.

Here are a couple of thoughts on the battle:

1. The US stabilizers were nice, but with the German Veteran troops, I needed 5's to hit (6's at long range).
2. Even with the extra firepower the US forces had, the German armor was tough to crack.
3. We completely ignored the objectives and slugged it out in the middle of the board.

We made a some mistakes throughout the game. Here is a summary:

1. Morale Checks.  If I shoot at your team of 3 tanks, and I destroy 1 and make 1 crew bail out, there's no morale check, because the team is not below half strength.  The number of tanks that can fight (one) equals the number of tanks that are destroyed (one).  The tank whose crew has bailed out does not count in the calculation.  If another tank was bailed out then a check would be required. 
2. Protected Ammo. The protected ammo on the Panzer IV's would have meant that they should have re-rolled every failed roll to re-mount the tank.
3. Allocating Hits. Once the hits have been allocated across the unit, THEN we start rolling saves and firepower rolls to destroy or bail out.  But we're rolling for a specific team or tank.  If a tank that is bailed out gets another bailed out result, it has to take a Motivation test or be destroyed.
4. Company Command. We probably should have had our company command "join" one of the other platoons.  They're like independent characters in Warhammer, although if you have the company commander in your unit you are then able to re-roll any failed Motivation test.  So not only would we have had 5 tanks firing as one unit, but we would have been able to re-roll the unit tests and the bail out tests.
5. Objectives. We only placed one objective (not 2) and we placed them in our own deployment zone (not the opponents)

It was fun, and we are planning to try another match, this time with more effort in defense!!

Dark Heresy Scout Vehicle WiP

Almost ready to paint
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This is a scout vehicle for our intrepid throne agents. Our Dark Heresy group was sent to a frontier world equipped with a means to easily get around. I expect we will have 3-4 more sessions on this world.

 It was originally going to be one of my Arbites counts-as Rhinos.
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This is a toy Iron Man car I found at a Dollar Tree store (the green one is a Hulk car).

I didn't like the back end, so I decided to remove it. I used a Dremel tool with a cutting disk.

Cutting off the back end.
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I Decided to remove more. The original back end had a taper that I wanted to get rid of.

Removed the taper.
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I used plasticard and spackling paste to fill in the hole I created. I didn't want a "pick-up" style bed, but more of like a "roof-rack".

Rear shot of the almost complete model.
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Resin Bases Review Redux

BioTech Bases-- There are 12 sculpts in the range.
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These are 25mm BioTech Bases from Micro Art Studio's vast range of bases and figures. I picked them up in late January along with some Iron Brotherhood miniatures. I only picked up the 10 bases and 8 figures-- not enough to make a squad in 40K or a gang in Necromunda. These will be used as future NPC encounters in our Dark Heresy campaign.

Micro Art Studio is a boutique company in Poland. They have a nice looking website, but I found it a little difficult to navigate at first. Once I got my order processed, shipping took 23 day-- more that I expected, but in hind site, it was acceptable.

The bases themselves are great! The bottoms are sanded flat, and there is no flashing. I have not found air bubbles anywhere-- a top notch product all around!! I highly recommend you check out what these guys offer!

I tend to prefer a more flat texture/detail to my bases, but I love the look of these bases. I will be using these bases with the Iron Brotherhood figures. So with 2 extra bases, I should be able to match figure to base without too much hassle.

Communications Console WiP

Here is something I started working on, it is a communications console. I will use it as an objective marker in WH40K and in our Dark Heresy campaign. Its a pretty simple assembly project.

A communications console.
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The main piece (the purple and silver part) is a stripped down body of a Transformers Constructicon (mixmaster, I think) that I had when I was a kid.

The top section is most of the Imperial Guard vox-caster from the Apocalypse Command sprue (the antenna has been cut off).

The "feet" are cut down Space Marine teleport homers. I used the top part of the homer as sirens for my Adeptus Arbites (counts-as) Rhinos.

The control panel is a piece I bought from a 3D print on demand store that I discussed here.

On the back is the antenna I removed from the IG vox-caster and a bit that came with the Imperial Bastion kit.

Dark Heresy Character Sheets revised

Back in this post here, I shared a WH40K role play character sheet that I created. It was meant to be compatible with "all" WH40KRP games-- only Dark Heresy and Rogue Trader at the time. But now that Ascension and Deathwatch is out, and the announcement of Black Crusade, I decided to perform a minor face lift.

While compatible, the core WH40K role play games are not suited to a common character sheet. So I decided to make a sheet for each game. I have completed the Dark Heresy sheet, and have started working on one for Deathwatch.

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The above images are not suitable for printing. You can download a print quality PDF of the character sheet here.

Dark Heresy Character WiP - Cleric

Venris, the cleric-- ready to paint.
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Ive been working on the mk II figure for the cleric in our Dark Heresy campaign. I am still a bit "green" when it comes to sculpting, but I am very pleased how this project turned out (even though it was not very complex).

I started off with an old school Necromunda Redemptionist gang leader. This was a simple head and weapon swap. I managed to get the original head off in usable condition for a future conversion. I replaced it with a Dark Angels hooded Space Marine Head. The stock of the melta gun was too integrated into the figure for me to remove, so I decided to cut the gun in two, just in front of the trigger. I then cut a flamer in a similar fashion and pined and glued the two parts together.

The original figure.
A Necromunda Redemptionist Leader.

Then I added a small brass etched Inquisition symbol from Forge World on his chest, and another one on the back of the book.


Lastly, I sculpted a simple chain necklace attached to the Inquisitorial medallion (see first pic, above).

A little green stuff to fix the missing vestments/collar and to
better merge the flammer with the back half of the melta gun.
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Overall, this project exceeded my expectations. The figure looks completely different and is more appropriate to represent the cleric.

I welcome questions, comments and/or critiques.

Flames of War

Two Panzer IV G tanks take on 3 confused M4 Sherman tanks

Laertes picked up Flames of War last week, and we are planning to play an introductory battle on Friday. He will be taking control of a German force and I will be fumbling my way through with a US force.

We both like big armored machines with guns, so we are opting to play tank companies. Which also works because we don't have any miniatures for Flames of War! Fortunately, I have a small collection of Axis & Allies miniatures, so they will be substituting in for the "real" models. While the A&A figures are less detailed and less historically accurate, they are apparently the same scale as FoW miniatures.

The army lists have been chosen (limited to figures on hand)-- Laertes will have 8 Panzer IV H tanks and I will be sporting 11 M4A1 Sherman tanks. The total points will ring in at 760.

German Panzerkompanie List
1 Company HQ, 190 pts
   2 Panzer IV H

1 Panzer Platoon, 285 pts
   3 Panzer IV H

1 Panzer Platoon, 285 pts
   3 Panzer IV H


US Tank Company List
1 Company HQ, 140 pts
   2 M4A1 Sherman

1 Tank Platoon, 205 pts
   3 M4A1 Sherman

1 Tank Platoon, 205 pts
   3 M4A1 Sherman

1 Tank Platoon, 205 pts
   3 M4A1 Sherman


Wish me luck... I'll need it!