Hodge Podge (not as healthy as porridge)...

As you may have noticed my posting, whilst always haphazard, has taken a further dive in frequency. No excuses, stuff happens... Yu'know?

Anyway, todays thing is spurred on by Warpstone's question: What should be in a Sons of Malice army?

Rather than an extended comment on Wot I Did, I thought I'd do a bit here, show the space wolves version I sent to Crusade, and so on. My quick answer is whatever the hell you want! I'm turning the Sons of Malice into the Ultimate Marine Army: any configuration, any unit, any codex.

While this may rub some people on t'internet at the moment, I'm of the opinion (and agreed with by everyone I've talked to or played at The Club) that as long as it's WYSIWYG, with a bit of modelling imagination on my part, I can justify almost any army configuration with minimum application of the Fluff Crowbar. For example; my Kathal's Hunt that I took to Cut'n'Thrust's Crusade tournament at the end of January:

It's a Space Wolves codex army, led by Logan Grimnar's soul twin Kathal, the current Chapter Master of the Sons of Malice. Their recruiting grounds were a barbaric backwater planet where life is hard, and the men are a little... Canabalistic.

I say 'were' because some self important numpty decided people shouldn't eat each other, exiled the Sons of Malice and genocided the planet. As hopefully you can see, the army is adopting the buddy system, each unit having a CML terminator armoured buddy. Tactically sound for any chapter!

The guys with the trophy racks are Nori and Dori, the Doomed (it's in The Labyrinth - look it up) and are honoured guys who made it through the trial - hard enough to take anything on their Lonesome.

Also in the book, you'll find giant gribblies that are mutated (space radiation, warp, whatever) failures in the Trial, and with a little electroprod application, I'm sure you could get them to carry other Doomed into battle. With this in mind Balin and Dwalin are mounted on things that aren't Thunderwolves, but beasts that are of similar size and suitably nasty. In my opinion, thats about as ridiculous as Space Marines riding giant wolves. I mean - come on!

I've also painted 5 objectives that you probably can't see too well. Sons of Malice go around Hunting (see what I did there?) slaves for a later grizzly feast. So we've got a Kroot, Ultramarine (first and last time I'll ever paint one), Firewarrior, Ork, and random chaossy dude I had nocking around, all in chains awaiting their fate.

Unfortunatly I haven't got pictures of the Blood Angles version, but as you may have noticed, most of the marines are of the assault variety and have magnetised backpacks. Yes, thats alot of magnets! So all the marines go back to the thunderhawk (no, I'm not going to buy one) and change into their jump packs. The terminators can dump their various chainfists and cyclones, and pick up a thunderhammer and stormshield (again, magnets). Then all we need is some veterans/honourguard, so I've used raptors to represent the best of the best flying dudes.

For the Chaos version (in planning), I can use all the marines (as they're all armed with boltgun, bolt pistol and chainsword, right?), terminators and raptors. For the HQ I can go terminator lord, jump pack sorcerer (they're just the same as Librarians and Rune priests in the end), or with Princes... Now on one hand this is an idea I'm particularly proud of.

In my opinion, Sons of Malice are all about Black Vs White, Good Vs Bad, and they're sitting right in the middle, no grey, just survival. So their Princes or 'avatars' of this can be seen (by me anyway) as:

Now, the only downside as miniatures is that they're not GW! Damn you GW! But I think they're awesome mini's, and will be able to use them in friendly games at least. Oh, and I was weak.

Aaaanyway, what I'm getting at here is that I'm building a Space Marine army that with the addition of unique units (thunderwolves, veterans JPs, Deamon princes) and the liberal application of magnets, can be legally and reasonably fluffily played with.

A marine, after all, is a marine. A rhino is a rhino, and a terminator is a terminator. Until they do a Codex: Sons of Malice, I can play them as I see fit. Now I've just got to win some games!

Better late than never? BT Vs SW 1500

Apologies dude (you know who you are...), but I'm finally putting up the battle report from January, as best as I can remember it.

Rightio, random pick up game, 1500 vs Black Templars, and this was supposed to be a practise game (for me anyway) for the painful experience of the Crusade tournament. Less said about that the better...

Right, he had something like:

Emperors Champ
Dread
Venerable Dread
3 biggish crusader squads
1 smaller crusader squad in a 'tactical' formation.

I had a stripped down version of my tournement army:

Logan
Rune Priest
2 Termy lone wolves
2 TWC with PF SS
1 Long fang squad with 4 ML
10 wolfguard inc 2 Cyclone termys
2 x 5 wolfguard inc cyclone termy

Deployment (smile, you're on camera!)



Since I can't remember the turns at this point, we'll go for the less organised story format I'm famous for (in my own head)!

Ok, end of the first turn, everyone more of less charges in an unorganised mess on my side, and he shifts his Dreads and hitty squads to meet me in the centre - he takes pot shots with his squad on the hill (heavy bolter I think) and dreads.



His shooting manages to knock a couple of wounds off the TWC in the centre- I thought 3++ was good?! Logan and his big squad is moving straight down the centre. Rune Priest and his 5 men are taking the long way round and heading for the dread lurking behind the woods on the left.
I stupdily charge the remaining TWC into the full crusader squad - preferred enemy hurts! Logan and squad follow - this turns into 10 of mine versus 20 of his... Guess who wins when the templars reroll to hit?!



The long fangs sit in their corner taking pot shots and successfully not being a threat... Big combat in the centre draws in everyone within reach. By the way, you probably didn't notice them, but there's a 5 man squad in the far right taking whatever shots they can... in the end my saviours!



Behind the jungle in the left third, the dreadnought keeps being shaken into submission, behind the rocks in the right third, the second dread is mostly 'armless, but feeling left out.

The keen eyed my notice an ommision in the next picture. I killed on of the guys in the rocks near his board edge, he failed his test and they ran! One of the disadvantages of BT (pass and they run forward after 1 wound, fail and they run backwards!).



They combat in the middle is drawing to a close - I move the remaining lone wolf to the left to try and do something about that damned dread behind the jungle.



With the Templars finally wiping out the wolves in the middle, their survivers make a beeline for the squad on the right. My rune squad decide to chill behind the jungle on the left.



The survivers charge into the healthy rested wolfguard squad on the right
and blood insues! Note the mostly 'armless dread sneeking around behind the rocks.
Note the dread sitting behind the jungle on the left behind repeatedly hit by a grumpy lonely guy with a chainfist... Failing to do anything repeatedly.



If I remember rightly, I had two guys left on the right who consolidated back to claim the objective they'd been loitering by all game.

Close of play - his crusader squad claims the objective in his left corner, I claim the objective in the jungle (dread was a touch out of contest range), and his sneeky 'armless dread is no more than an eight of an inch outside of contest range behind the rocks on the far right.

I forgot so many special rules, it's not funny, but it was a pleasure to play, and I have to say that trying to kill lots of marinez is not easy!

Define... Rage

Thanks to Santa Cruz for finding this...

The Saga Of Biorn from The Animation Workshop on Vimeo.

This in no way encapsulates me or my journey through life... But I frequently have what I call Skratt moments... You know, the prehistoric squirrel of Ice Age fame?

The moments of horror, frustration, rage, and helplessness when all you can do is wordlessly scream. Quite often in a slightly comedic fashion to release the tension.

Oh, and the above short is really good too!