Iron Warrior Heavy Bolters

A update on the Iron Warrior Heavy Bolters.

I managed to get them primed black and then give them a good drybrush of bolt gun metal.

These will give me four heavy bolters for a havoc squad. I am still deciding what new models to add to the army. My original plan was a rhino swarm with a bunch of minimum squads with lots of special weapons. After further thought, I don't know if I will have fun playing that style army and I still need to get four more old style rhinos to field it. Now I am thinking of a Chaos marine horde army. Nothing like sixty chaos marines and a half dozen or more vehicles in 1850 points.

ColKG

Chaos Rhino Progress

A little progress on the Chaos Rhinos.

After a black prime, I added a Brazen Brass dry brush to match my other old Chaos rhinos. Unfortunately I am down to my last pot of Brazen Brass and GW quit making it. Luckily Vallejo has a Brassy Brass I will pick up and use once the Brazen Brass runs out.

ColKG

Scout Sentinels finished

After languishing on the painting table for too long I have finished up the Scout Sentinel Squadron. I added the roll cage tops and a clip to add a lasgun behind the pilots head.

I added magnets to so I can swap out the Multilaser and the Autocannon. It also allows me to add magnets to some other weapons at a later date for more selection.

A side view showing the lasgun behind the roll cage. To hold the last gun on I added a short piece of angle styrene behind the pilots head when I assembled the sentinels. After I got the roll cage together I glued the lasgun to the piece of styrene to hold it in place.

The Scout Squadron ready for the table with the extra weapons.

ColKG

Operation Barras at Catawba Gamers

The day finally came for us to put on the Operation Barras game for the Catawba Gamers club. Once again we returned to Parker Banner Kent and Wayne in Cornelius North Carolina for the Catawba Gamers monthly game.





The game is loosely based on the British rescue mission in September 2000. A group of Royal Irish troops were taken hostage by the West Side Boys. The British tried negotiating the troops release but the West Side Boys threatened to kill them. The British sent in the SAS and Paratroopers to rescue the hostages.





First a disclaimer, we didn't plan a historical refight but to try and make an enjoyable game for a group of players. We played the game using the Disposable Heroes rules and their modern supplement Seek Out, Close With and Destroy. From SOCWAD we used the UK elite infantry list for the Paratroopers and the UK Special forces for the SAS troopers. The SAS team also benefited from the Delta force rule were every man in the unit fires not just half like normal units. We used the ZIPRA list from the Rhodesian War supplement Man Among Men for the West Side Boys. Last we pulled the stats for a Mi-24E from the By the Knife: Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan supplement to use for the Sierra Leone government Mi-24 piloted by security contractor Neall Ellis who provided fire support for the British.








The British ground forces, two paratrooper command teams, six fire teams and a SAS observation team.

The First group of West Side Boys.

Another group of West Side Boys

The remaining West Side Boys some support weapon and the Captured British Land Rovers.

The battlefield looking North.

The Battlefield looking West.

The forces start to deploy. One note about Rokel creek down the center of the table. The real Rokel creek is seven hundred yards wide so to model this any weapon shooting across the creek would have forty inches added to the range.

The British begin their assault in Magbeni. Fast roping in and destroying one shanty with the rotor wash for their Chinook helicopter. The one fire team jumps into the Land rover and starts it up.

The West Side Boys survivors from the collapsed building take cover in the wreckage.

The second Chinook hovers over Geberi Bana.

The rotor wash collapses another building and kills several West Side Boys sleeping inside.

The Paratroopers fast rope out and begin to search for the hostages.

The SAS team moves up to support the Paras in Geberi Bana.

Neall Ellis arrives in the Mi-24 and fires a rocket barrage into Magbeni.

After a Chinook crashes into Rokel creek after taking a SAM missile hit the West Side Boys stream from their shanties and head into the jungle.

The SAM Team in Gebri Bana fires at the surviving Chinook but fails to damage it.

The Paras start up another land rover while under fire.

A group of West Side boys man their 82mm Mortar. A side note is this it the first time my Eureka ZANLA models have seem the table. It is probably close to a record of little more than a month from purchase to painted and on the table.

After dodging missiles the surviving Chinook leaves the table.

The lone West Side Boy with a Rpg stands in the middle of the road to fire his rpg at the Paras in the Land Rover.

"When in Doubt Grenade it Out" The pars lob hand grenades into a shanty full of West Side Boys.

In Magbeni the West Side boys hug the jungle line and keep the Paras under fire.

The Mi-24 hovers over Rokel creek and sends salvos of rocket into Geberi Bana.

The West Side Boys start a land rover and brings its .50 cal. hmg into action.

The surviving West Side Boys pinned in their shanty as the paras ready another round of hand grenades.

The shanty burns after a second round of hand grenades kills the rest of the West Side Boys inside.

The Mi-24 takes a SAM missile hit and is forced down. Except he made his forced down roll and will last another round.

The Paras destroy a land rover to prevent the enemy using it.

The Paras hightail it away in their recovered land rover.

The damaged Mi-24 fires off the rest of it rockets and limps away from the battle area.

Another group of Paras leave in a second land rover.

The West Side Boys leave cover to fire on the fleeing Paras.

In Magbeni the West Side Boys stop one land rover by killing all the Para crew, while the surviving Paras make a break for the jungle.

In Geberi Bana, The Paras and SAS start a fighting retreat, while the West Side Boys still hold the hostages.

We called the game with a win for the West Side Boys. The game played quickly and I think most of the players had an enjoyable experience. The game still left me with some more ideas if we play it again.

ColKG

Scout Sentinels nearing completion

Another project I am starting to clear off of the painting table. Last year, when I was playing my Catachan Imperial Guard army in the 40k league, I planned to build a scout sentinel squad using magnets so I could switch out the standard multi lasers for autocannons. I could have just slapped them together but I decided to do a detailed interior paint job before I finished assembling them and that is as far as they got. Into a box to be completed at a later date.

So I finally set down and put the paint to them. I really liked the way the interiors came out.

Pleased with my progress I started assembling the sentinels. Only to discover that the majority of the well painted interior can not be seen once assembled. So much for super detail interiors in sentinels. I have painted a bit more since I took the picture and only need to add the top of the roll cage and some other bits and they will be complete.

ColKG

Hydra Turret progress

Another catchup painting post as I clear some of my painting table back log. These are the Hydra Turret conversions I built to field with my Catachan Imperial guard army when I was playing in a 40k league last year.

I worked on the turret conversions to get them to be more table friendly. I have both of them to what I consider table coat but I have a lot more detailing to do.

ColKG

Venusian Bombards painted

I have been finishing up some projects that have been sitting on my painting table. I speed painted them to get them to table ready for the last French Foreign Legion on Mars Victorian Science Fiction game. They then went into a box on the painting table for a few more touch ups and called complete but that didn't happen. They lounged away and mocked me. Not any more.

The battery in all its glory.

A close up of a bombard. I used them for Venusian cannon the last time they saw the table, but I think they will work just as fine as mortars in a Warhammer fantasy battle Empire army or in any number of other historical armies. That is what I like in a figure versatility.

ColKG

Chaos Rhinos With Combi-Meltas

More progress on the Chaos front. I finished sculpting the greenstuff on the combi melta conversions and glued them on to the Chaos rhinos. I also added pintle combi bolters.

The two new editions to the fleet of Chaos Space Marine rhinos.

Here is a close view of the finished combi-melta. The one thing I really like about having a combi-melta is the fear you can put into your opponent from a rhino rush. It only has one chance to get off a meltagun shot, that will most likely miss but people will put mass amounts of fire on a combi-melta armed rhino to avoid that one shot.

A view of the business end. Behind the combi-melta is my combi bolter conversions. It is real simple, just take a couple old style bolters,cut off the handles, trim down the sides and glue them together. Then take a length of sprue and cut a piece the width of the glued together bolters. Glue this piece to the rear end of the bolters were the handles were. Set it aside and let everything cure. Once it is solid, use a pin vice and drill a hole in the bottom of the sprue and a hole in the top of the turrent. Use a piece of wire to pin everything together.

There are snazzier ways to build a combi bolter but these are easy and there is no mistaking what they are from across the table.

ColKG

Plaguemarine Rhino

Hello everybody, I managed to get some hobby time in. I have been working on adding to my fleet of Chaos rhinos. I plan to use it as a transport for a Plaguemarine squad. I normally keep my Rhinos pretty generic so I can use them across several Chaos Space Marine armies but this one is Nurgle all the way. The latest additions are the doors, hatches and spikey bits. I decided to go with an exposed pintle gunner to match the Deathguard vindicator I built a while back.
There is allot of story behind this tank from where I picked it up and it progress to now.

I originally bought this tank from a kid at a now closed game store for five or ten bucks.. It was very poorly assembled as a vindicator. The metal parts still had chunks of flash on them and the whole model seemed to be covered in super glue to hold it all together. I took it home broke off all the metal parts and started trying to get the superglue off, that was easier said than done. I not sure what kind of glue it was but it wasn't super glue. I scraped, gouged, filed and used solvent but couldn't get the glue off with out destroying the model. I ended up using the metal vindicator bits on another rhino and filed the parts of this one in a bits box.
Later I was looking for something else and found the parts of the old battered rhino. It still had the hull and both sides, so I figured what the hell and glued then back together. It was beat up bad and I filled some of the worst gouges with contour putty. A bunch of battle damage just adds character to a Chaos Rhino. This is about the time I decided to star adding the greenstuff to make it a Nurgle rhino.
Everybody who has used greenstuff has had leftovers. I started adding my leftover greenstuff to the rhino and slowly building the layer of corrosion up. The exhaust stacks had been too torn up to use so I made some more out of styrene tube and glued them on the sides. Later I started covering them in greenstuff to add more nurgle goodness. Now with the doors and everything else back on the rhino it is beginning to look ready to return to the table.
I haven't decided on which inlet pintle combi-bolter to add to the gunner. I am leaning toward either a Combi-plasma gun or a Combi-melta. Both have their uses and I already have a couple combi-melta armed rhinos in the works but I will put some more thought into the selection. This is a slow burn project and I will probably cover alot more of the rhino with greenstuff in time.

ColKG

Eureka ZANLA models painted

In a possible new record I have finished painting the Eureka ZANLA I received barely a month ago. They will be on the table for Chuckaroo's Operation Barras game he is putting on for the Catawba Gamers this weekend.


Here are all the lads ready for the table, including a TAG African Warlord with SVD rifle I have had waiting to be painted for years.

A close up of the ZANLA commander, point the way forward.

The African Warlord figure from The Assault Group. This is one of their freebies model that is only available if you buy a bunch of models from them. I received it when I purchased a bunch of African militia models from The Assault group.

Saturday will be their baptism of Fire.

ColKG