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).

Preparing for Rynn's World Event

Staged shot of the battle at Scar Lake

 Next weekend, I am attempting to run an Aeronautica Imperialis event at my FLGS - specifically enabling folks to play through all six of the Rynn's World campaign book scenarios as possible.  My biggest concern is either 1) not having enough players to really make it interesting or 2) being hugely successful and having too many players!  I think a good result will be if about six are able to play several games on cool maps I bought and I have good confidence to try and push for a similar event in the summer tied to the release of the Taros Campaign book.

Adding Thunderbolt 1 and 3

In the build up to it, I am working on adding more Thunderbolts to my Imperial Navy squadron and maybe a uniquely painted Ork Fighta-Bomber ace.  A long-shot is getting another Dakkajet added to the Ork skwadron.  We will see where my painting motivation takes me after this weekend.

Starting Dominion

Top-Down of the 3-way

This past weekend, I played some Necromunda with my brother and best friend.  We threw down a three-way fight: Escher-Orlock-Palatine Enforcers.

This was followed by setting up a Dominion campaign between the three of us.  My best friend is playing The Goddesses, an Escher Gang.  My brother is playing the Palatine Enforcers of Sector 225.  I am playing my Orlock gang, the Lowland gang.

We got the skeleton setup and the territories selected.  Our first moves, the Goddesses moved into a Stinger Mould Sprawl.  The Lowlands faced off again the Palatine Enforces in a Stand-Off.  While the Lowlands succeeded in taking down the Enforcer Captain, multiple members of the Lowland gang were taken out of action and the gang bottled.  The Lowlands retreated from securing the services of the Rogue Doc.

The Occuption phase moves have all been planned out and we know the games we need to play - just have to play them!

Van Saar Gift Gang Complete

Completed Van Saar Gang

I surprised myself on Saturday.  I completed the Van Saar gang I am built and painted as a gift for a friend.  Having a deadline to get a project done is a great driver.  I have completed two gangs now in about six weekends of effort. We will see if I deliver it in person or not.

The gang is likely far from optimized.  However, 10-models provides a lot of options for when he eventually gets to play.  By him having a gang, it means we can setup a get-together in the future themed around playing a weekend Necromunda campaign.

Gift in its packaging

The Van Saar models were fun to paint.  They are the first set of models I used the black contrast on and the results were solid. I also leveraged the Grey Seer base to allow for more precision and touch-ups throughout.



Up next is spending some time on my Kharadron Overlords, especially with the new book being out.  Starting off with the foot Endrinmaster and a set of three Endrinriggers.  Busy next few weekends with lots of other stuff going on, I probably will not get the opportunity to play more games of AOS before the league bumps up to 1,500 pts.

Prep for AI Event

At the end of the month, I am planning to run an Aeronautica Imperialis event at my favorite local gaming store.  In preparing for the event, I am planning to make an investment in some additional maps for the event.  I have prepared images for four additional maps to make scenarios more themed.  This took up my Saturday morning.  Need to put in the order/get bids this Friday/weekend.

Mountains for Ruins of Arx Tyrannus

River Valley for Desolation Valley

Ocean with an Island for The Long Flight 

Airbase next to a dry lake bed for Assault on Scar Lake

Painting is continued progress on the gift gang.

Back to the Skies!

My FLGS is starting back up an Age of Sigmar escalation!  Add to that Kharadron Overlords just got a new army book and you have excitement for adding to me existing collection.  This latest army book provides an opportunity to field armies of ballooned troops or the classic Arkanauts in Frigates and Ironclads.  GW also added an Endrinmaster in a suit to lead the ballooned troops!

Endrinmasters Maxvel and Franklyn

 For the first 1,000 points, we provide two army lists.  My first army list is a 1k even Arkanaut Squadron of 2 Frigates, 2 Companies, an Endrinmaster, and a team of Endrinriggers.  My second list is Endrinmaster in suit, 3 teams of Endrinriggers, and 3 Gunhaulers!

Volleygun Endrinmasters to add to the Endrinriggers

Van Saar in Work

Completed building out the Van Saar gang that is my second gift gang.  It will be the primary project on weekends for the next few weeks.  I really have about 3 weeks to work it and send it.  Two of those weeks I am on business travel during the week!

I am going with green as primary for the armor and yellow as the primary for the weapons.  I am going to use blue as the secondary color for both.  The base colors of the suit will be black.  Lots of work to do.

Second Necromunda Gift Gang

I am embarking on another Necromunda Gang as a Gift project.  This time it will be a Van Saar gang with Gor Half-Horn as the attached Bounty Hunter.  Gor Half-Horn is the first beastman I have painted.

The Fireslayer Flesh contrast paint worked great for his skin.  For his fur I used Aggaros Dunes.  The yellows, bright green, and bright blue are all contrast paints.

I have begun to keep Greyseer on hand to let me touch up areas that need to be repainted.  It has worked great to touch-up skin and create better separation between areas.  The Orks let me be pretty messy and still achieve a nice result.  For anything not Orky, I definitely need to be cleaner.

 

Grot Bombers Complete

Grot Bombers from Above

Being sick mid-week really cut down on my progress miniature wise this past week, really only ending up with completing the Grot Bombers by Sunday evening.  I did get some small additional efforts in on two Adeptus Titanicus Imperial Knights.

After painting up a second set of the Ork bombers, I have decided that Orks are more difficult to paint than Imperial Navy planes.  The Imperial Navy planes are fairly flat and uniform and lack the exposed detail of the Orks.

Grot Bombers from ahead

Up next: Cleaning some Necromunda Van Saar gangers and diving into another gift project over the next few weeks/weekends.  I am aiming to have it done for a February birthday!  This also includes having two complete forces of Aeronautica done by the end of February for a campaign day event I am running.  A busy next eight weeks of assembling and painting, not to include getting back to work.