Colossus Complete

 In focus, nose art of Marauder 13, the Emperor's Own

This past weekend, I finished up the Marauder Colossus.  It was a fun conversion of the Marauder Bomber.  I am not super concerned if the studio announces next weekend that conversion kits are coming.  I will appreciate rules beyond my own homebrew.

From a game-play perspective, the Colossus needs to be a one-hit wonder against ground targets.  When you get there with the bomb, it has to do something, even on a miss. To this end, I propose a rule such as Heavy Ordnance and Firestorm.

Heavy Ordnance: On a hit, it lands on the intended target see Fire Storm below.  On a miss, the bomb still hits the ground and explodes!  Roll a d6 numbering the hexes surrounding the target hex clockwise.  The bomb lands in that hex!
Firestorm:  The Colossus Bomb creates a massive fire storm around where it hits.  The surrounding hexes suffer Bomb Creep on a 3+.

A view of the Colossus Bomb

Marauders 7, 9, and 13 in flight

Distancing

Today's post is more of an admin update.  Similar to many people throughout the western world, I am operating under a COVID-19 driven government "lockdown" order.  In some ways I am fortunate as much of my work is digital and can be done from my kitchen table.

The biggest impacts are that I am now spending 9+ hours per day in the same 3 m2 space, even if I context switch from work to hobby time.  It is why I bring it up here.  I am jealous of those who have been able to take a few closed in days and spend them diving into modeling and painting.

Last week's progress on the pair of Marauders is below.  They are excellent at maintaining appropriate distancing.

The big difference is what they carry

A Better Colossus Bomb

After a discussion about my previous design for the Colossus Bomb did not look good.  I brainstormed possible bits.  I initially considered the bombs from the Ork AI range, but they were too large a diameter and not long enough.  I considered the 40k range of space marines, but not many of them are not complete bombs or missiles.

New Colossus Bomb

On Sunday, I realized that I had Imperial Guard Cadian Missile team a nice large missile.  I spent some time on Sunday converting a new Colossus bomb!

Starting Marauder Variants

The replaced bomb-bays of variant Bombers

Since I bought a second Wings of Vengeance box, I decided that I did not need a flight of four Marauder bombers. There are two variants of the Marauder and I think having one or two could be interesting for scenarios, the Marauder Vigilant and the Marauder Colossus.  The Marauder Vigilance is a reconnaissance variation.  The Marauder Colossus carries a single very large bomb.

An important piece is that they both only carry a pair of Heavy Bolter turrets fore and aft.  I have decided to make them magnetic and rotate.  Eventually, I will develop basic rules for them.

Championing a Game or Range

I overreached on planning and running the Rynn's World Campaign event day.  What I had hoped would be at least 9 to 18 games of Aeronautica Imperialis by six people across a Saturday day of gaming ended up being me playing 3 games of Aeronautica Imperialis against 3 different opponents.

New Rynn City during the Blitz

The first game was notionally just an early game of the intended event.  My son played the Orks and I played the Imperials.  He tried to bomb targets in New Rynn City and I defended them.  We set it at 150 points.  Biggest learning piece from it is working out how to deploy ground assets (still not sure).