Isstvan Weathering and future projects

Hi everyone and welcome to my latest blog post, this one as you can probably guess by the title is all about weathering my 30k vehicles. It isn't a tutorial or weathering master class but I wanted to share my method as it gives me the desired effect and is quick and easy to do. I was told this weathering technique at the Horus Heresy weekend event I was at a few weeks ago, as prior to this I was painting on weathering powder or just using texture paint. Now what I have done is using the forgeworld weathering powders, brushed on the powder in the desired areas and sprayed over it with army painter matt varnish to seal it on to the vehicle. I took a few pictures as I went so I could share them with you in this post. The look I was going for with my weathering was the black sands of the Urgal Depression on Isstvan V, the scene of the Dropsite Massacre and my legions first involvement in the Horus Heresy. Because I wanted the black sand look I was using Black Soot and Dark Earth powders.



Spartan with powder brushed heavily into the tracks and mud guards / assault ramp.

Sicaran with powder brushed and sealed onto the tracks and lower hull section.

Fire Raptor with black soot powder brushed back across the wings and hull to give a streaked effect.

Legion vehicles complete with weathering powder.

This is where I spray paint, on a beam of wood laid out across two chairs in the back yard.

I used black soot on the lower legs and feet of the Contemptors too for a burned or ash stained look.

Infantry I weather the lower legs using Typhus Corrosion paint, but Matt Varnish all the same.

So that's my quick overview of how I weathered my vehicles. I especially like the look of the raptor and intend to do something similar on drop pods in the future to represent the burnt after effect of atmospheric entry, with much heavier weathering from the bottom working its way up. That will be a project for another day however, currently I have a Legion Glaive to paint as well as several smaller tanks and some infantry. I have also started a couple of other projects which I will blog about in the future, including working my way through painting the entire Horus Heresy character series.

Horus Heresy characters waiting to be built and painted, each will get a post covering it's progress.

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Fresh from the Forge

Hi everyone and welcome back to the Ashes of Isstvan blog. In case you missed it I started this blog earlier in the week and the first post contains an introduction and a summary of a weekend of gaming. In this post I will instead talk about some models, as I have just received a box of reinforcements for my heresy era Salamanders from Forgeworld. I want to talk about not just what I bought, but why I bought it. I learned a lot about the current 30k meta this weekend and what you need to bring to do well. Now don't get me wrong, the balance in 30k when compared with 40k is great, most likely due to the fact that everyone is playing the same army from the same book, with slight variations in legion as opposed to various races with different books, units, play styles and flavour. There really isn't many bad choices in the 30k Crusade Legion list from Forgeworld books 1 to 3, but some certainly stand out from the crowd to me.

Opening a box full of forgeworld toys never gets old.

So what did I get? Well first I'll start with the blister packs. Aside from a couple of the necessary legion upgrade packs, which are really good sculpts by the way, all I got were Contemptor arms. In fact, all I got were lascannons. Why? Because of everything on the table over the weekend, it was the lascannons that stood out to me. Contemptor Mortis can take a twin linked pair for just 30 points, and with Skyfire and Interceptor they usually spell the end of any drop pod or flyer as it arrives. They even come in cheaper than the Talon Contemptors' I was running previously, which I tend to give two Kheres Assault Cannons. The main disadvantage is each one uses up an Elites choice all by itself, but if that becomes an issue consider the Onslaught detachment to gain a 4th Elites slot.

The more I look at the rules now, the more I want to run my Talon of 3 Contemptors with double fists, taking melta or graviton guns in the palm weapons. With Fleet and WS5 they are clearly intended for getting into combat. I think the extra attack and strength of the two close combat weapons will make sure they do it right when they get there. Getting in close might mean giving them meltaguns is a good choice, I do have a few multimelta arms already which is a good choice if you wanted to extend the range of your melta threat but this does mean losing one attack. Personally after seeing how useful Haywire can be in 30k I would stick to the graviton weapons. Running in 3 Contemptors with fists and haywire could be an enemy vehicles end before you've even had to hit it. With the sheer amount of Av13 and 14 vehicles in the Crusade era Haywire comes in really useful. So too, do lascannons. Strength 9 at least allows you to penetrate Land Raiders, Spartans and whatever super heavies have armour 14, usually at least on the front. With Flare Shields being common on Spartans, strength 8 can't even touch them if firing from the front, and lascannons once again end up proving their worth when firing en mass at vehicles like these.

Lascannons... lascannons everywhere.

Armour 14 vehicles like this Proteus are a tough nut to crack.

In fact flare shielded Spartans are possibly the toughest vehicle in the game

It comes as no surprise then that as well as bringing a counter to the Av14 threats, I also want to be using these tough vehicles myself. I already own a Spartan, which did a great job of ferrying Vulkan and his Fire Drakes around at the weekend. I would be tempted to buy another, and there was even talk at the weekend of 2500 point army lists that just feature 3 units of Terminators in Spartans. But I looked at what I already had, and Heavy Support was already pretty heavily dominated in my selection. One unit I have found underperforming so far is the Pyroclast squads, usually due to their very short range and me being unable to get them where they need to go. Well, they can take a Land Raider as a dedicated transport so I finally bought the Proteus I have been meaning to get them. Hopefully in games it will just be another Av 14 threat for my opponent to deal with, and like the Spartan it will get whatever it is carrying exactly where it needs to be without so much as a scratch.

Pyroclasts will be riding in style from now on.

Now I said my Heavy Support section was already pretty full, but that's because I had already added the next two tanks to my order. Currently I am running a Sicaran and a Scorpius. The former is great at shredding light vehicles, excellent at pulling Eldar out of the sky in those legion versus xenos games due to the Rapid Tracking rule, and is also good at shooting Terminators with two lascannon sponsons and Rending on its main strength 7 weapon. I was going to go ahead and order another one, but I decided to go for the Sicaran Venator this time instead. It loses the Accelerator Autocannon with Rapid Tracking, but the gun it gains instead gains a Shock Pulse ability a bit like the Cerberus super heavy tank. I found at the weekend because people know exactly what it can do, which is stun a vehicle after hitting it into only firing snap shots, and thus not being able to fire blast weapons, it becomes a priority target for the opponent to destroy. This can of course be turned to your own advantage, although it makes a very expensive decoy so you still want it to be getting shots off every turn.





Sicaran Venator - you wish you had these 40k.

I went ahead and ordered another Scorpius though. I bought my first one on a whim at Forgeworld open day last year, actually intending to use it to represent a standard Whirlwind as part of an Artillery squadron. I figured three tanks for one Heavy Support choice had to be a good thing, and I already have a Legion Medusa. I guess I can still run that squadron with two Whirlwinds now, but since I built the Scorpius I have never used it as anything else. The ability to remain stationary and fire d3 extra shots is brutal, not just against marine squads that its Strength 8 AP 3 will utterly destroy, but also against hitting vehicles. Even those Av14 vehicles might not survive too long with Strength 8 templates landing on them turn after turn as they cross the field. Firing two at the weekend I took 2 hull points off a Land Raider, and in came the lascannon Contemptors to finish it off. Of course, getting them to fire on target due to the Barrage rule is not always easy. For a vehicle on a rhino chassis they are surprisingly survivable with Av 13 on the front, but you probably still want it tucked away in cover. Over the weekend I learned to use the tactical squads with Nuncio Vox to grant it line of sight from different positions, ensuring it always fires on target.

Whirlwind Scorpius - another great vehicle of the hersy era.

The final thing I got was another 5 Fire Drakes. Every legion has it's elite unit of Terminators, and there is an optional detachment for the Pride of the Legion which makes them troops. I mentioned earlier I will probably be using Onslaught now for the four Elites and four Heavy Support choices, but if I'm not I am definitely going to consider Pride of the Legion. Not having to take marines in power armour may sometimes be a bonus, because despite what I just said above about their use with a Nuncio Vox, they still die horribly to just about everything in the game. Over the weekend the tactical squads that seemed to do well were those that just hunkered down in cover all game. There are way too many high strength, low ap and blast weapons out there in 30k for infantry to survive. Of course, they still have their uses too and I'll be ordering more tactical marines next, this time to make tactical support squads. A whole unit of flamers, plasma guns or melta guns is just too good an opportunity to pass up on...



Pride of the Legion, the Fire Drakes.

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Introduction and 30k of 30k

Hi everyone and welcome to the first post of this blog. As you can probably guess by the title it is about Warhammer 30k, or The Horus Heresy, and a large game that was played this weekend. Before I get into that however, I just want to take a moment to introduce myself and my blog. My name is Jason and I am an avid gamer, collector and to a lesser extent painter, and it's probably safe to say also a Warhammer addict, just ask the missus!

I've already got a youtube channel called The Lords of War, and made a page on Facebook called the same, you can find it at www.facebook.com/thelordsofwarbatreps. The channel is going well, me and my friends uploading a battle report video once or twice a month, and the facebook page was done just to put links to videos on and also get pictures up. The only thing missing then, is the written word. That's why I decided to create this blog now. I have so much to say about this weekend between photos that a facebook album just won't do.

If you're wondering why the blog is called Ashes of Isstvan rather than The Lords of War or similar, that name appears to already be taken. I searched for other gaming groups using the name when I first thought of using it, a name I of course took from those mighty warmachines of the 41st millennium, but only found a Warcraft card game. Thus the name was decided for youtube, my channel of course having nothing to do with the cards. If there is indeed another blog using that name already, I have nothing to do with that either. Ashes of Isstvan is actually a video blog I started on the channel, focusing on the 30k aspect of our groups' gaming.

Again, it's just a name I came up with and checked wasn't already in use somewhere else. This time though instead of relating directly to 40k it is just a name I thought up whilst trying to think of a Horus Heresy related and memorable title. My legion of choice is of course the Salamanders, my army based around the Isstvan V Dropsite Massacre, so I combined the fiery element of the legion with what happened. The blog therefore follows my Salamanders and the other legions of our gaming group as they rise once more from the ashes of Isstvan V. As we all know from the novels, the dropsite was far from the end for Vulkan and his sons.

Anyway, that's enough about me and the reason for starting the blog. It's also enough about my own gaming group for now, I'm sure I will introduce them and their armies at some point, but this weekend I wasn't playing at home. I had signed up to a Horus Heresy weekend tournament way back before the new year, which was to be held at Slayer Gaming in Mansfield. Now I'd never been to the store before what with it being a few hours away, but I signed up regardless as at the time I hadn't even started my youtube channel and wasn't getting much 30k gaming in due to a severe lack of opponents. In my own region gaming is very 40k dominated, with a lot of other stuff like X wing and Conquest going on. Fantasy and 30k have somewhat of a backseat, but I hope to change that for the latter. But for now, if you can't bring the heresy to you, bring yourself to the heresy!

So I turned up at the event, and waited for everyone else to arrive. Unfortunately after an hour or so, there didn't seem to be anyone else coming. What had at first promised to be a quality tournament with 14 players on the list could have been a complete flop when only 6 of us turned up. I think it was a mixture of it being Easter weekend, the tournament having first been announced way back in about November, and just the general fickleness of us mortals failing to show up for something without prior notice. Hats off to the guys at Slayer though, they turned it into an enjoyable and memorable weekend and gave store credit compensation. I really can't rate these guys enough now, I should really stop and talk about the gaming store as well, but I don't want to stretch this first post out too much so maybe I'll do that at a later date.

So we ended up playing a mini tournament on the Saturday, which was good fun and gave me a chance to face three legions I hadn't previously gone up against, the Word Bearers, Iron Hands and Iron Warriors. There's a few pictures included from those games, but most are from the Sunday. We decided to just have a big game on the second day, and worked out we could run 15,000 points per side with what we had available. The other guys were all local to Slayer so could go home and get more stuff, but I only had what I had brought for the tournament. I hadn't anticipated the game so I didn't have my camcorder either, or I would have done a video report of the whole thing instead of pictures. I hadn't planned on taking videos at the tournament due to these events usually being both very loud and on a very tight time schedule where filming between turns would only slow it down. I guess if I had filmed though then this blog might never have been born so it was maybe for the best.

Vulkan's moments of glory from the three mini tournament games.

On to the game then. So we had four loyal legions facing off against the same number in traitors, some having a larger representation than others. On the loyal side were my Salamanders with Iron Hands, loyal Iron Warriors and Raven Guard. The traitor legions were made up of Word Bearers, Sons of Horus, World Eaters and a few Death Guard. I ended up in control of half the Iron Warriors, since the player that owned them was also controlling the Iron Hands. Likewise on the other side, there were only three people, with the Word Bearers player also using the Death Guard which were his anyway. This made it a 3 vs 3 match up which I decided to call 30k of 30k, as in the name of this first blog post. We started by setting our armies out and I grabbed a photo of each, so I might as well start with those here as well.

XVIII legion - The Salamanders

IV legion - Iron Warriors and X legion - Iron Hands

XIX legion - The Raven Guard

XVII legion - The Word Bearers and XIV legion - Death Guard

XVI legion - The Sons of Horus

XVII legion - World Eaters



As you can see, the guys had some really nice armies. It was nice to have such a variation of colour on the battlefield too, even the dark coloured legions were noticeably different from each other thanks to stuff like the hazard stripes of the Iron Warriors. There was so much forgeworld resin on the table it was like being back at the forgeworld open day or last ever Games Day back in 2013, with those huge tables covered in beautiful miniatures enacting great scenes from the heresy timeline. The only difference was that this time I was actually reliving the battle rather than just imagining it, and the battle was of course an entirely fictional event. Such a game demanded an impressive table and Slayer had pushed several of their usual gaming tables together into one big 12ft x 6ft board for the occasion.

The battlefield awaits us...

The only thing left to do was to decide on a mission and table sides before getting deployed. We decided to put 5 objectives down, one in each of the buildings along the central line of tiles. The loyalists had the first deployment, followed by the traitors. Below are the pictures I grabbed before we started playing as the armies were set and ready to go. Once the game began my taking of photos became somewhat sporadic, as I'm sure you can imagine there is a lot going on in a game this size. I didn't write notes or intend to do a full battle report, but I've captured some of the best moments which I will caption below. As I'm sure you can see it promised to be a great game with some intense and spectacular moments of 30k action, and let's just say I wasn't disappointed.

Loyalists left flank during deployment.

Loyalists centre during deployment.

Loyalists right flank during deployment.

Traitors left flank to centre during deployment.

Traitors centre to right flank during deployment.

The World Eaters seize the initiative with Kharns re-roll.

The Mhara Gal Tainted Dreadnought

Word Bearers Contemptors.

The damned Gal Vorbak.

Death Guard standing their ground pre game.

Sons of Horus Reavers with their Spartan.

They had a Glaive. If only I had brought mine with me...

Raven Guard Contemptors during setup.

Corax converted from an Angron model. Nice!

On they come! Turn 1 kicks off with traitor movement.

Tank rush...

Dreaclaws land bang on target in the ravens nest...

Raven Guard reinforcements swiftly retaliate with pods of their own.

Loyalists advance.

Spartan carrying Vulkan towards his first goal, enemy super heavy!

Left flank advance, lots of dreads and Contemptors!

Salamanders infantry make a run for the central objective.

Traitors turn 2 opens up with heavy fire from the Death Guard.

Raven Guard meltas and Vulkan made short work of the super.
Word Bearers Contemptors remove the Ravens in return.

The Glaive lines up it's first shot...

Reavers pour towards the Salamanders on the objective.

Gal Vorbak rush Vulkan and his Fire Drakes joined by Erebus and Kor Phaeron.

Sicaran Venator loses its main weapon to a penetrating hit!

Vulkan calls Erebus out... the coward refuses the challenge.

Dreadclaws took to the air over the Raven Guard to devastating effect.

Death Guard heavy tanks continue to bombard us.

Spartans square up to one another as their units clash beside them.

The Mhara Gal joins the fight, Vulkan stands his ground defiantly.

Sons of Horus Praetor accepts Sallie Praetors' challenge and proceeds to kill him.

Vulkan entirely surrounded after the Fire Drakes are dragged down by the Gal Vorbak.

Word Bearer Contemptor loses both arms to two penetrating hits. Take that!

Iron Hands on the flank were taking lots of fire.

Outflanking reinforcements arrive just in time to lend a hand on both board edges.

Death Guard continue to hold their ground in the buildings.

Vulkan dispatches the Mhara Gal, the ensuing explosion kills Kor Phaeron!

Death Guard doing what they do best. Staying alive.

More Iron Hands arrive from the flanks.

Goodbye Glaive. After much shooting, the Raven Guard dreads finish it up close.

Iron Hands getting a good view of all the action from this vantage point.

The World Eaters pour out of their transports in front of the loyalists all across the board.

What a shame strength 7 weapons can't hurt armour 14 tanks.

Even unpainted Angron looked awesome when he charged out!

Raven Guard terminators get stuck in with the enemy Contemptors.

More World Eaters arrive from the skies!

Word Bearers possessed hunting around for Raven Guard.

Vulkan still standing after several more rounds of combat and the Gal Vorbak are mostly dead.

A view from afar as Fire Raptors begin to circle the battlefield looking for targets.

Iron Hands terminator squad on the rampage.

Iron Warriors Contemptor seizes one of the objectives on the final turn.

Raven Guard sneak in to grab another on the far end!

They stand defiantly over a third as well... giving the day to the loyalists!

So there you have it. Those are all the pictures I took that came out okay to use, I had a load more but they weren't in focus or captured nothing in particular just random shots of parts of the battle I can't recall. One thing I missed out a photo of was the Sons of Horus Praetor who had slain my own later standing defiantly on one of the five objectives, contested by an Iron Warriors Contemptor he was fighting. That last turn he took several lascannon shots and a storm of bolter fire but lived, then survived combat with a Contemptor with a fist, all to keep from giving us that fourth objective. It was not to be the deciding factor though, as the fifth objective was left open after my two Contemptors that had been holding it were earlier removed in the traitors last turn. Regardless of the outcome of the battle, we all enjoyed the game and I was just happy to get some decent 30k time in and grab as many pictures as I could in amongst all the action.

Of course, winning is always a bonus!

Thanks for reading,

Jason

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