Rogue Trader battle : Ork Versus Squats

I managed to find an opponent for Rogue Trader at my local games club and had a skirmish this week with my Blood Axe Orks versus his Squats.

There'd been a miscommunication and I'd brought 500 points while he'd brought double that so there was a lot of Nob promotion and additional equipment brought to bear to bring my total closer but I still ended up 200 points under.

  I'd brought the warboss and his retinue riding in their rhino, a large squad of 10 boyz with bolters, a smaller squad with bolt pistols and a mek, runtherd and a shok attack gun with a couple of bases worth of Snotling ammunition.

  

I'm no stunty expert but he'd brought 3 (or 4?) squads of squats, a trike and a couple of heavy looking dudes in exo-armour.

  

  The foot troops slogged it up the table with minimal casualties on each side, while the heavy weapon squats nestled up in the building took pot shots at my rhino. The trike shot at my smaller squad while took casualties but eventually both squats riding it were shot with the bike careering off the battlefield.

  My rhino got bogged down in terrain so my warboss took the executive decision to disembark with he and his nobs dodging heavy weapon behind walls and craters.

  Meanwhile the shok attack offloaded its frenzied snots behind the middle squad and into a protracted combat with the middle squat squad. Another squad joined that combat and eventually got rid of the nuisances but they are a right pain with spore weapons!

  

The larger ork squad eventually engaged a  squat squad in combat and was eventually defeated. But after the middle of the battleground battle with the snots, the rhino proceeded to drive up and down over the squat almost obliterating them all. The remaining squats used their krak grenade on it, immobilising it and rendering it all but useless. 

  Meanwhile the remaining nobs (and humie advisor) legged it to the building and engaged in a prolonged combat with the heavy weapon squats. We called it a night at one point at which time there were only two nobz and the stationary rhino on my side and about 5 squats on the other.

  All in all good fun but the vehicle turning rules are very clunky!

  

Blood Axe Warband Update - Oddboyz and Snotlings

One unit I really wanted to include in the army was Snotlings. The thought of them being turned crazy by being hurtled through warp and throwing some smackdown on a space marine within his terminator armour was, and still is, quite funny.

  For this I need a Shokk Attack Gun and to have that I need a Mekboy while the little guys need a Runtherd to be allowed to be taken, it all coming together in a beautiful kind of way.

I acquired most of the snotlings from the talented Mr Rusty Painting. I painted the snotlings in brighter colours than the rest of my Ork force, as I didn't want them to be dwarfed simply because of their size and figured Warp transit does strange things to one's colouring.

One of the snotlings got so scared by his journey he couldn't control his bowels.

Keeping these guys in check is the Runtherd. 

I've decided each oddboy type will get its own signature colour and this one gets a brownish-yellow colour that reminiscent of an explorer's get up. This synchs with my vision of runtherdz as collectors and organisers of strange creatures rather than slave drivers.

Mekboyz get a blue uniform reminiscent of the jumpsuits car mechanics wear (which made sense in my head at least) This sculpt is woefully underestimated in my opinion - just looks at the detail of the gubbins on the gun - it has an egg timer, a tap and all sorts. As my fiancé pointed out it's really steampunk! 

The contraption looks like something the Doctor would assemble from odds and sods lying around in the Tardis. I imagine the Mekboy follows the same MO but probably doesn't know how the resulting machine works. It just does....

Until next time...

Blood Axe Orks Big Mob

  Sorry that I've been away for away too long ...

  Pesky real life got in the way in the form of buying a house. While I have been painting the setup at the new place in only slowly getting less chaotic and so hindering me from blogging about them or actually finding them!

  Anyway to make up for this here is a whole unit I've painted which is part of a Blood Axe Ork Army I'm preparing.

Here's pics of the unit split out:

And now altogether:

The army list is being drawn up using the rules from 'Ere We Go which is a supplement to Rogue Trader, the very ever first incarnation of what would become to be known as Warhammer 40K.

Each Ork Clan gets it's own list (a clan has it's own cultural identity) and the untrustworthy, human mimicking Blood Axes can employ humans and Ogryns in their number which attracted me due to the variety this allows me.

The army is being prepared for a Rogue Trader 'tournament' at Bring Your Own Lead in August (from the 5th to the 7th) which is probably the biggest 'Oldhammer' event in the UK. Like minded individuals play the games and field the figures of Games Workshop's golden past - it's not to be missed if you can get there.

http://bringoutyourlead.co.uk/

Space Pirate

This miniature was painted for the Oldhammer Legacy warband challenge this year which this time around is a band of Space Pirates (each entrant paints up a member).

His name is Burns McCluskey and he likes to blow sh*t up.

The Radical Ordos Xenos Warband of Akexis Krahni - Part 2

As promised, here is the second post showing the members of my Radical Ordos Xenos Warband. These two are the mercenary sisters Florence and Celeste Duvalier, thrill seekers who tag along with Alexis for the exciting life of hunting and tracking exotic alien breeds.

I've tried to keep orange and purple as the colours that link all the members of the warband without trying to make it a uniform.

The first miniature is from Hasslefree and its tone fits a rogue trader/space pirate vibe perfectly while the second is from the Street Violence range from War-games Foundry. It was fun to paint a purple afro!

The Radical Ordos Xenos Warband of Akexis Krahni - Part 1

I think it's interesting how some painting projects grow and develop over time. Some are planned with a military style precision with set objectives and sometimes even deadlines, some develop organically like a plant stalks and leaves develop and branching off from a set of roots.

 My inquisitorial warband project is one of the latter - I read the mini codex for 7th edition of 40K for Inquisitors and captured by the background I decided to build a small warband. The creative freedom afforded by these groups is immense as in principle an Inquisitor will rope into service anyone he or she thinks will get the job done.

The idea sat in the back of my brain for a while until I read the 'Oldhammer Salvation Army' thread at the Oldhammer forum (located here - http://forum.oldhammer.org.uk/viewtopic.php?f=29&t=4488) where the idea was that peeps show off their unfinished models and another volunteer is sent that model on the proviso they finish it. Asslessman from that forum showed this model and I eagerly took it off his hands to paint it up to be my Inquisitor.

And this is the final result.

A little back of back story (as who doesn't like backstory?) ...

Akexis Kranhni is of the Ordo Xenos. Secretly he has no religious faith in the Imperial Creed or the corruption posed by the Xenos but perpetuates these ideologies as he believes they are useful tools for the defence of mankind and the threats it faces. The rod he holds was acquired after the purge of a diminutively populated alien race called the H'chanti. He claims it emits a manifestation of the Emperor's Divine Will reducing those under its gaze to docility until they regain themselves but it is a composite piece - the globe was retrieved from the ruins of the devastated alien civilisation. Some other inquisitors suspect his heresy and would like to see him struck from the order or worse.

The fella to his left has the moniker Greener Creed, and is a vicious and brutish bounty hunter who puts his knuckles before his ethics. Akexis encountered him on the hive world of Burnstein III after he traced a significant haul of Tau tailored weaponry being illegally distributed through the Imperium and tasked himself with tracing every item down. 

Not wishing to blow his cover he won a knife fashioned using the circuitry of a Tau equalizer from Greener in a card game. Greener then ambushed him outside attempting to pummel the Inquisitor to give it back. The fist fight lasted twenty long minutes and eventually Akexis bested Greener and gave him an ultimatum.  Either join him in paid work or spend the rest of his life in a labour camp for his crimes.

  The rest of the warband will follow soon..follow this blog to keep yourself posted!

NB. I owe a big thank you to JB who not only contributed my Inquisitor model but has also given me much photography and lighting advice! 

His very excellent blog is here - http://leadplague.blogspot.co.uk

Bring Out Your Lead 2015

Bring Out Your Lead is an annual event about all things Oldhammer. People play with with Citadel Miniatures from its heyday play editions of games that were once and now are not other than in the hearts and minds of Oldhammerites, meet the creators of those games and that universe and generally have a good time.
  Unluckily I only got to attend Day 1 but luckily my girlfriend got some great pics of the event. First up pics of JB's fun game 'Do Rogue Traders dream of Electric goats?' where an assortment of factions battle it out in an Blade Runner like atmosphere of paranoia trying to sift out who is who while trying to make sure they don't shoot their friends of protect their enemies.

Next up Warhammer Ahoy - the quality of the fantastical ships were just astounding. As you can see the one with the balloons was a fave of Irina's.

Sneaky pic of Oldhammer godfathers Ricky Priestley and Anthony Ackland.

Axiom checking out excellent Ackland art with the great man beside him.

'Cool man, wicked old lead........' Some random fool.