Imperial Knights for DT4 - Hobby Progress

Just a quick update today. I'll hopefully get the Obligatory Pie Chart Post for DT4 done one evening this week. Anyway, in the meantime I'm working on my army for the event. As it stands at the moment I'm not playing but just in case I have to stand in I thought I should have something ready. If nothing else it gave me an excuse to get some Armiger Helverins and the motivation to get them painted up.

I'm painting them in the same scheme as my existing Questoris knights (still can't get used to calling them that). In case you've forgotten what they look like:

That means breaking out the airbrush again because orange really isn't much fun to paint without it. I've therefore kept all of the armour panels separate from the skeleton. The skeleton itself I've sprayed with Leadbelcher then washed with Nuln Oil.

The armour panels have been hit with Wild Rider Red as a base over the black primer and then Troll Slayer Orange over that. I then masked off for some of the orange bits on the skeleton like the "hood" over the head and hit them with the same red then orange. The shoulder and ankle armour then got masked off to spray the back half Abaddon Black.

Finally, I decide to bring the hazard stripes onto the carapace this time instead of the white on the bigger knights. I'm not sure how I feel about it yet but hopefully it'll look better when it's tidied up there's some of the washes over the top.

You might also spot a missile launcher in there. This was in my pile of spare parts for the big knights and is needed for the list. I'll therefore be painting this up along with the Helverins to be ready for the event. Not sure if I've got enough time to finish but I'm going to give it my best!

Looking forward to seeing what you guys will be bringing along.

Tournament Report - Desperate Allies II (The Outpost) - 1500pt Doubles

You may have been following my progress painting my knights up for Saturday's doubles event at the Outpost in Sheffield (my FLGS). Today I'll fill you in on how they got on as my half of my doubles team with Matt. First off, here's our list which we're calling Knights of the Rectangular Table:

750pts of Imperial Knights
Knight Paladin
Knight Warden

748pts of Eldar
Farseer w/ Spirit Stone of Anath'lan, Singing Spear
14 Guardian Defenders w/ Warlock
3 Windriders
6 Swooping Hawks inc. Exarch
Wraithknight w/ Wraithcannons and Scatter Laser

We'd talked at one point about taking 4 Imperial Knights but we decided against it because we didn't think it'll be dynamic enough and also because it'd be pretty miserable to play against. I'm not pretending this list isn't any less powerful (probably the opposite in fact) but at least there's some variety in there. Anyway, the IK are pretty obvious in role. The Wraithknight has a scatter laser so it can shoot something with its wraithcannons and still fire a weapon at its intended melee target. The Farseer is there to buff the Wraithknight but along with the warlock it can also make the guardians pretty nasty and tough to shift from an objective. Windriders are, of course, for late game objective thievery. The Swooping Hawks seem to catch people out (more on that in the batreps) but they offer quite a lot to the list and some much needed anti-air.

Bear in mind that we haven't been to the Outpost in over a year and normally the field is thick with filthy lists. We figured we'd need somet
hing powerful to be in with a chance.

Game One vs. GK/SM (Imp. Fists)
This was Jim and Owen's first tournament game since their recent return to the hobby so we felt pretty guilty that they'd be in for a rough ride. They were fielding a GK terminator librarian with GK terminators and two dreadknights along with an SM librarian, two tactical squads (one in a rhino), several bikes (2 grav) including an attack bike, a devastator team (3 missiles) and five scouts. We'd be playing Purge the Alien on Dawn of War deployment.

Our opponents elected to deep strike all of their GK force which was especially risky given that we got the Strategic trait that gives -1 to their rolls. They got the first turn and none of the GK arrived. Surprisingly they chose to drive the rhino forward and disembark despite being out of range. Other than coming closer to us the only thing they got from their first turn was two wounds from the Wraithknight. Our response was pretty brutal with the Knight Paladin taking out the recently disembarked tactical squad for First Strike and the Wraithknight adding the rhino to the pile. The Knight Warden then took out a handful of the bikers too.

One of the dreadknights now arrived but the other and the terminators stayed in reserve. The dreakdnight wiped out a swathe of guardians with its incinerator and psycannon though leaving the farseer more vulnerable. The swooping hawks arrived and their grenade pack made short work of the scouts. The wraithknight turned its attention to the newly arrived dreadknight and its wraithcannons made short work of it thanks to Guide when it failed both of its invulnerable saves. Meanwhile the Warden cleared up most of the remaining Imperial Fists who held on just long enough for the terminators to arrive. Sadly for the terminators they struggled to hit the guardians with their storm bolters and were whittled down with fire from pretty much our entire army before the Paladin charged in and put his reaper chainsword through the librarian.

The final dreadknight arrived and in some of the ballsiest play we've ever encountered our opponents dropped him right in between both Imperial Knights in order to try to take out our guardians for a VP. The dreadknight not only didn't scatter but rolled a double 1. That guy really meant it! He continued his badassery into the shooting phase where he annihilated the guardians, warlock and farseer for 2 VPs plus Slay the Warlord. Incredible play! The joy was short-lived though as the Imperial Knights and Wraithknight let rip with their firepower bringing him down to a single wound which was easily stripped with a double knight charge for the 14-3 tabling.

As an interesting side-note. Jim and Owen went on to play a double IK and Stormsurge list which they tabled thanks to deploying everything and some vicious use of a Vortex of Doom! They played off for third place on table two at the end, narrowly losing out 5-3 in a nailbiter.

Game Two vs. Ravenwing/White Scars
Jim and Adam had a pretty nasty combination of White Scars and Ravenwing. They'd got a Chaplain, 7-8 black knights, a darkshroud, 3 MM/AC landspeeders, librarian on bike (with some funky upgrades that gave him Ignores Cover amongst other things), three bike squads (1x 2 melta, 2x 2 grav) and a pair of lascannon toting stormtalons. They'd annihilated their first opponents who had no way of getting around their 2+ re-rollable cover and therefore succumbed to all that plasma talon goodness. It'd be Big Guns Never Tire and Vanguard Strike.

Well, we made short work of that with the first shot of the game being a double wraithcannon hit on the darkshroud and that all important 6 on the destroyer table (giving us First Strike too). We achieved little else though as the black knights still have 3+ re-rollable! With the White Scars in reserve we'd tried to keep out of range of plasma talon fire. Not 100% sure why but our opponents had elected not to use their Scout moves for the black knights. Nevertheless they were able to strip two wounds from the Wraithknight with the speeders' weaponry. The black knights elected not to shoot the knight at all and instead turbo-boosted into the corner to benefit from their formation rules allowing Jink and normal BS in turn 2.

The Wraithknight hopped out of cover and set up for a 3" charge on the speeders electing not to shoot them in case they ended up too far away. It didn't help mind you as Matt double 1'd it and couldn't re-roll having used the jump move to get out of cover. The IK started to whittle down the black knights too taking a couple more down. We knew the reprisal would be fierce and were pretty confident the Wraithknight was a goner. The White Scars were arriving too! The Ravenwing advanced allowing the white scars to pile down the flank towards the Wraithknight. Their entire army let rip but when the dust settled the Wraithknight survived on a single wound!! This was definitely the turning point in the game.


The Wraithknight didn't make the same mistake twice and walked through the speeders in short order. The Warden did the same for the black knights too. Meanwhile the white scars had left themselves bunched together so with help from the Warden's gatling cannon they were whittle down considerably killing both the librarian and chaplain in the process. The stormtalon had also arrived into the mix but fortunately within range of the Swooping Hawks who leapt over it sticking haywire grenades to its hull in the process and bringing it down. The Imperial Knight Warden then finished off the White Scar bikers.

We'd brought the Windriders onto the far side of the board without much consideration hiding them since everything was happening in the opposite corner. Their plan was to hop onto one of the objectives in the last turn (standard really!). The plan was scuppered when the remaining WS stormtalon and bikers came onto that flank and easily cut all three down. This left at least one of the 5 objectives in jeopardy with the potential for another to be contested since they were going second. Had the game ended on turn 5 we'd have lost two objectives. Fortunately for us we got right through to turn 7 which gave us enough time to get the Imperial Knights over with the last biker falling to a heavy stubber for the 18-0 tabling but not before the Swooping Hawks had done a number on another stormtalon!

Game Three vs. Skitarii/Blood Angels

We fully expected to be playing the winner from the second table which was a pretty scary combo of thunderwolves and cataphron destroyers but thanks to a big score from table 3 we found ourselves up against Tom and Anthony who were fielding a librarian, tactical squad, assault squad, 3 bikes (2 grav) plus a stormraven. The Skitarii half consisted of rangers, vanguard, 2 ironstriders, 2 dragoons and 2 onagers.

Sadly this proved to be another one-sided affair. We took down very little in the first turn apart from all three bikes for First Strike. In return they could only strip a wound or two from the Wraithknight. Since range and cover were an
issue the next turn didn't prove particularly destructive which meant the dragoons were able to charge the Wraithknight. Sadly for them they failed to harm him. Matt took one out in response but we forgot about Stomp so one survived to keep him locked in combat. The Swooping Hawks arrived and used their grenade pack to wipe out the vanguard. The ironstriders fell to the Imperial Knights who also mopped up the rangers and tactical squad with charges and two lots of single stomps rolling 6s! The Swooping Hawks then swept (pun intended) in and took out the onagers with haywire whilst the Guardians finished off the assault marines with the help of Guide.

That left the Stormraven to arrive on turn 4 and stripped another couple of wounds from the Wraithknight. Since it stayed up in the air we were unable to damage it but when we got a turn 6 they elected to hover to assault the guardians off the relic. That led to wraithcannons at the raven before the Warden charged in, finished off the tactical squad and librarian with its reaper chainsword. Game over, 12-0.

Conclusion
We finished with a maximum 44 VPs (although more would've been available had there been Heavy Support in Game 2) having only given up 3. The team in second place scored 26 VPs. Suffice to say I was pretty embarrassed but Matt being Matt, wasn't. As I said earlier, we were surprised by the relatively tame armies in attendance. Granted 750pts a-piece limits things but we still expected more FW stuff and other Wraithknights.

There's no question we were lucky with our first round opponents. I'm not sure we'd have faired well against 2-3 of the other lists in the mix that we fortunately avoided. In the end we played our first game on table 1 by chance and never moved. This suited me fine because a) I'm lazy and b) my Knights are based on snowy terrain and this was a snow table!

The Eldar took some hammer with the guardians taking heavy casualties in games 1 & 3. The wraithknight nearly bought it in 2 & 3 and the Hawks were heavily depleted in 2 as well. Ultimately the Eldar force was squishier meaning they got targeted far more. My Knights on the other hand only took 2 HP all day which goes to show how dominant they can be when they meet the right opponents. I don't think they're invulnerable by any stretch though but it was a nice way to christen them! They never felt particularly devastating although on reflection they did rack up a pretty decent death toll.

Daylight is your friend for photography!

I have to say the Swooping Hawks were the stars of the show for me. They annihilated the Scouts in game one. Took down two Stormtalons in game two (which the rest of our army would've struggled to do). They also cleared out a whole squad of skitarii and two onagers in three. For their points they were insane. I think they're an oft overlooked unit purely on the basis of their past. In their current form they're almost a must-have I reckon and not too expensive to justify inclusion.

Well, I can't complain with the £25 store credit and hence £9 Ghost expansion for X-wing (£42.99 RRP). What was disappointing though was that the organiser chose to abandon best painted awards because of the nature of doubles. Our team for example had a horrific clash of green and orange! It's a shame they didn't have a per player competition though. I'm not saying I'd have won but it'd be nice to be judged for my painting for a change. I've won Best Painted there before but that was in a field of barely painted models!

I have to say that playing doubles (and generally tournament play) has got me very excited for Double Trouble which is now under 3 months away. There are still tickets available of course and there aren't any superheavies allowed!! With that in mind, check back later in the week for a rundown of my list for DT and the mammoth hobby task ahead of me in the coming months!

House Tangryx Imperial Knight Painting - Part Six - Finished (sort of)

Well folks I may not have completely finished them but I knew that would be a long shot at best with the time available. Bear in mind that I've only been working on these "after hours" i.e. when my wife and son are in bed. I'm looking forward to some full nights' sleep in the coming week! Anyway, I decided at the end of last week that I'd be happy if I got them to a point where all they needed was highlights and weathering. Obviously they're still pretty big chunks of painting but the time cost versus reward is low in my opinion. Enough rambling. Here's the pair of knights that I'll be taking to a doubles tournament at the Outpost in Sheffield tomorrow:

Since the last post I've painted in the areas around the shoulder pad transfers with Ceramite White to complete them before applying a coat of Lahmian Medium over all of the areas which received a transfer. This is to help dull down the shininess of the transfers and hopefully make them look a bit more painted on. When (and if) I get around to highlighting and weathering these fellas, I'll give the whole model a coat of matt varnish through the airbrush but for now I just wanted to sort the transfers out.

There were a couple of other little details to attend to as well such as the lenses on all of the stubbers. These got the same treatment as the eyes from Caliban Green up to White Scar. They aren't perfect but I can always come back to them at some point or at least give them some 'Ard Coat.

I also put the banners in place. Sadly I only remembered to do this half way through the basing which meant I'd unfortunately shoved some scenery in the middle of the bases that would interfere so I had to do some adjustments! Rookie error eh?

Hopefully the Baron's banner looks suitably different from the Princeps. I took the 1 = 3 to mean 1 of 3 since there's still the half finished original knight to attend to at some point. The bases themselves feature a few bits from the Manufactorum kit plus some rubble. You can't quite make it out but there's also a body of an Eldar windrider on there too! He's roughly painted as Biel Tan as my allies for this doubles will be Matt's Eldar. Question is, has the knight killed the guardian or is he striding over his corpse to avenge his death?

Anyway, the bases got a generous coat of The Fang followed by a heavy drybrush of Fenrisian Grey and a lighter drybrush of Ceramite White. It's the same recipe I use for my winter scenery and hopefully that means they look good with the rest of the pieces I've done so far. Personally I like the contrast of the orange and snow but I certainly need to frost up the legs and banner a bit to make them blend in a bit.

You know what, I'm thrilled with how these guys have turned out. I'm in disbelief that I managed to motivate my self enough to keep painting as regularly as I did. I'm also happy that I went with the orange. It's certainly different to anything else in my collection but I will say that I wouldn't have even attempted it without an airbrush and I certainly wouldn't have been finished on time.

However, these guys are actually far from finished. I need to highlight the metal, black and orange and then apply some weathering both in the form of battle damage and the aforementioned frost. I really worry about weathering after putting so much time into the original paintwork! I've also got the full pile of other weapons to get up to the same standard so I can swap them out for whatever list I want. Not to mention the third Tangryx knight. Oh and I need to come up with that backstory I promised. I'm thinking something a long of the lines of a breakaway trio of knights from Raven going against the vow sworn to Metalica and throwing their lot in with Ryza. Needs work.

Right I'll leave you with a pile of pictures of these guys. Apologies for the poor quality photos but again time was at a premium and I lack a decent lighting set up. They're also pretty hard to get well lit as they're top heavy with the big panels blocking light to the chest and legs. I will of course post a tournament report so you can find out how we got on. Been a very long time since I went to an event that I wasn't running! According to my blog posts it was January 2015!! Wish us luck!

Tango tango tango tango.......

House Tangryx Imperial Knight Painting WIP - Part Five

Well there's been plenty of progress in just under a week since the last post so this'll be a long one. I've had to make some decisions about what's a priority though as I'm rapidly running out of time. I'll talk more about that at the end of the post but for now here's what I've been up to.

First up washes! I carefully went round all the orange panels with a fine detail ("0") brush and some Agrax Earthshade. This makes quite an impact on it's own:

It gives much definition to the panels and already the model starts to look a bit weathered. Here's all of the panels post Agrax Earthshade:

More washing next in the form of Nuln Oil across all of the metalwork. I decided to hit the metal pretty hard with the shade as I think darker metal will look better against the orange and white. What do you think:

Once all that was dry I decided it was finally time to start gluing the armour panels in place and see how these fellas are shaping up. Here goes:

You can see my unloved original knight in the background. I'll hopefully find some motivation to finish him (and the as yet unassembled knight) in the near future but for now I'm ploughing ahead with his two new brothers. Before I can put the helmets on I needed to paint in the eyes and while I was at it the cockpit glass. I used Caliban Green, Warpstone Glow, Scorpion (Moot) Green and then White Scar on the eyes and Regal (Kantor) Blue, Russ Grey, Fenrisian Grey and White Scar on the cockpit (followed by 'Ard Coat). Incidentally my pot of Scorpion Green must be 20 or so years old now and it's still flowing fine. Guess they really don't make them like they used to eh?

With those out of the way I now wanted to add some soot to the ends of my guns in the form of a Mournfang Brown drybrush followed by an Abaddon Black drybrush. Thanks to Ron over at From the Warp for some pointers. You really ought to look at his stuff. He may not blog any more but he really helped me out on the blogging front early on and his tutorials are excellent.

I'm pleased to tell you I went with two-tone black and white faceplates and I'm very pleased I did. They stand out much better than the orange ones and fit with the Mechanicum theme nicely. Speaking of which, you can see in the images below that I also painted in the cogs on the front of the carapace.

Next up the scrollwork on the chest plate and the back of the chainswords. These are Zandri Dust (washed with Agrax then reapplied), Ushabti Bone then Screaming Skull. Obviously the house name will go on the chest but I'm not sure about the scroll on the swords and there isn't a transfer so it'll be freehand. Any suggestions?

Here's where the nights were up to once painting was finished on Sunday night:

Next up, transfers! I followed the schemes laid out in the codex and instruction book and added a few random ideas of my own. I'm using House Raven since (a) my freehand skills aren't stunning and (b) it'd take too long to design and paint a custom house. I'll come up with some background as to why they were originally from Raven aligned to Metalica but defected to Ryza. Anyway, after a few hours and a decent quantity of Micro Set, here's how they look now:

The latter shots probably get the true colour of the orange across better. It's tricky to get good shots of them without lighting the undersides so the camera on my phone tends to make the orange look more yellowy when compensating.

I need to add some white paint to the edges of the shoulder pad transfers to tidy them up and fill in the gaps where I had to trim around rivets. I also need to paint back in some of the house emblem from the shield on the Princeps which got damaged when applying. I don't think you'll notice these eventually. Anyway, once that's done it's a coat of Lahmian Medium to seal them up and Robert's your mother's brother! Oh, I've also done the banners which you can just see in the back of the shot there. Better pictures of them later I promise.

Right, we're onto the home stretch now so let's talk about those decisions I've had to make. Firstly, as I've mentioned I think the metal work needs to stay dark to contrast against the orange. I'll need to highlight it though but probably just with Leadbelcher I think. The orange and black also need highlighting but I decided that this would be incredibly time consuming and therefore something that will have to wait until after the tournament (read: probably never get done). Similarly, I wanted to weather them but that would have to wait until after highlighting and therefore won't happen before the event.

So what is left to to? Well I noticed tonight that I need to paint in the lenses on all three of the heavy stubbers and I ought to add soot to the heavy flamer too. Once that's done I'm all about the base. I've got Matt coming around tomorrow to try out Star Wars: Armada (which he got for his birthday) and then squash on Thursday. That means just tomorrow during my son's nap plus Wednesday night. Friday I hope to be getting ready for the tournament and then spending time with my beautiful and very understanding wife! Not long to get things done then!

House Tangryx Imperial Knight Painting WIP - Part Four

More progress from Sunday night's post to report. It just about killed me but I've done all of the Leadbelcher on all of the armour panels and around the feet etc. It was pretty soul destroying painting around all of those little fleur de lys type bits on the bigger panels but I got there in the end.

Here's a shot of all of the panels now that they've had their metal frames done. It really make a difference to the look of the panels particularly the hatched knee pads:

I also neatened up the feet and added some black to the guns to break up the Leadbelcher.

There's a huge amount of work left to do on these guys but once again I thought I'd clip/bluetack some the panels on to give me a better idea of my progress:

When you look at them like this you really see the effect that just one more colour has. Worst case I can now take them to the event looking semi-finished but I really want to get a lot more done. Next step is washes. I'll be hitting all of the metalwork with Badab Black and then the panel lines with a careful coat of Agrax Earthshade. Hopefully that will be done by the weekend so I can start doing some highlighting. All of the decorative metalwork will be made brighter whilst the functional stuff will just get a bit of Necron Compound. Then it's Fire Dragon Bright on the orange and Dawnstone/Administratum Grey on the black. Doesn't sound much but there are a lot of panels to highlight!

If I can get all of that done I can start applying the transfers and work on the bases. I'm now getting down to a week and a half left to get these bad boys finished. My initial optimism for the project is starting to wane somewhat.

Speaking of transfers there are a couple of things I want to hear you guys' opinions on. Firstly the transfers. They'll be mechanicum stuff of course but what house should I go for? I was thinking Raven since that's pretty much what they're based on (but orange rather than red). I do think that I ought to come up with a house Tangryx logo though. Sadly, I lack any artistic talent so that's pretty much totally out of the question.

The other question is should some of the panels be painted a different colour to break up the orange. I'm thinking of the helmets in particular. My first knight had a white and black faceplate since I used t the mechanicum skull. Perhaps these faceplates should be done the same? Alternatively the hoods (or whatever you want to call them) could be painted black to contrast the faceplates. I think I'm leaning towards the black/white faces though. Thoughts?