Home Made Damocles Command Tank

Another day, and a fun conversion. today we have my home-made version of a MK I Damocles Command Tank.

The Damocles is an existing kit from Forge World, based on the MK II Rhino chassis. I am thinking of using one in a tournament coming up in October (Inferno IV, in Brisbane. If you're in Australia, do check it out, it's a lot of fun and a great opportunity to meet a bunch of passionate HH hobbyists) and I decided I needed one. Since the kit is around $115 Australian, I thought instead I could convert one rather than pay all that money for a tank I may not need.

Thus, the MK I Damocles was born.

The old red rhino I repainted had textured paint on it, which meant that I had no option, bar completely stripping the textured paint (which is much harder than regular paint, without plastic dissolving solvents) than to paint some dust and mud onto the tracks. So, I painted some mud and dust onto the tracks. It's not ideal, but it's good enough.

I cast myself a mid-size Iron Warrior emblem for the front visor, as well as making a small scroll for the IVth legion on the opposite side. The hazards had to be worked into the vehicle somewhere, so I put them above the slits. I think it's the perfect spot and it actually complements the vehicle, as opposed to painting them into all the inlays on the side.

The tank has a nice Olympian sounding name and this Greek pattern motif throughout. These are off the Minotaurs Transfer Sheet from Forge World, because I felt my freehand wasn't up to the task of such tiny tiny symbols.

The dish itself is a pair of grates off a Nephallim Fighter from 40k, attached to a chaos searchlight, with a small aquilla from an old Leman Russ kit attached to make it more imperial-y. The assembly is mounted atop a chaos rhino cupola slightly modified to look more like a scanner.

A few spare cables, a filter off a German King Tiger tank and a bit of a hunter killer were combined together for the small generator unit behind the dish.

IRON WITHIN, IRON WITHOUT

Here is the starting Rhino, it was a mess!

  

So, all in all, this is the kind of project that I have come to LOVE about the hobby. A simple idea, for a budget command tank, realised with just parts I had lying around. I think it looks good enough that nobody will complain, well, at least I hope.

~Macca

Iron Warriors: Erasmas Golg and more Consuls!

Erasmus Golg.

Not many photos here, as he is the most simple conversion, simply a Grave Warden with a head swap and a vexillia.

Primus Medicae.

This guy was a little more effort. Apothecary lights and sensors were glued onto his torso, and his weapon is a conversion of the grenade launcher, combining a melta and bolter together for a combi-melta combination.

Multi-HQ.

The most fun of the three, this guy is a combination of a little Forge Lord, Siege Breaker, Warsmith, Praetor, Champion, Consul etc. This is my Jack-of-all-trades character, something I can use in multiple lists.

Befitting his stature and techno-prowess, I elected to modify the grenade launcher arm in a different way, combining a melta into it, and adding a small augery scanner (just above the hand). He has a large servo arm on his back, as well as a single frag assault launcher.

Three HQ's.

So there they are, three HQ's. The choice to go with more Cataphractii is in response to a few things:

-My previous force, the defensive siege force was too dominant in the ranged game, reducing the entire tournament I played in to a shooting game, I felt like dirty Tau.

-I have little to no effective Zone Mortalis forces. Can't defend the Contrador with MK IV armour!

-I lacked mobility. The one situation where my shooting failed was when Michael from the Eye of Horus backed away with the Relic hidden inside his Spartan. I had to cross the battlefield to grab it, I couldn't just shoot both the Spartan AND the Stone Gaunlet Breachers with Feel No Pain to death. I needed strong assault options to do it.

So, here I am. I hope you enjoy these quick snaps.

~Macca

A Galaxy In Flames Battle Report: Inferno III Round 3 Iron Hands vs Iron Warriors

So, as promised, here is the second battle report from Inferno III, this time between the Iron Warriors, and Age of Darkness' Nate. This was the 3rd and final game, and despite having known each other for years, it was the first game we ever played against one another.

The setup was simple, Dawn of War deployment, kill points, 2VP per infantry unit, 1VP per vehicle, with the standard secondaries, as well as bonus VP's for the player with the most units left alive at the end of the game. Nate won the deployment, however, his Force Org chart forced him to take second turn, so no seize roll was required.

Due to a lack of enclosed tables, we played on a relatively open table. With the Iron Warriors on the offensive, poor Nate proceeded to be violated, repeatedly, and without lube. The Graviton Cannon Rapier battery proved throughout the tournament to be an ungodly powerful AT platform. Once combined with the Tyrants and the Deredeo, well, turn one saw the loss of 2 Sicarians and 2 hull points from a Predator before Nate even could retaliate.

Nate's turn one consisted of moving his remaining armour into positions where he could draw a good LOS to my RAPEier batteries (no political correctness here, these guns were committing a crime), as well as crying into a small cup as half of his firepower was already dead.

He fired his Cerberus Super Heavy (crewed by Castramen Orth!) into the Contemptors, and where possible, any spare shots were channeled into the Rapiers.

Turn 2 for the Iron Warriors saw a full 5-model Vorax unit led by a praevian, all with tank hunter, move on from the right flank. The Gravitons finished off almost all of the armour on the left flank before proceeding to swivel towards the right flank as the Tyrants advanced (spewing an ungodly amount of frag missiles all the while).

Turn 2 for Nate saw him trying to kill the Graviton cannon rapiers, as well as targeting the Vorax with whatever shooting he had, backed by a Gorgon Terminator charge.

Sadly, as turn 2 was ending, the Gorgons charged the Vorax, and despite having to make only 5 invuls, Nate managed to fail all 5 in an excellent display of dice rolling (Danny and I have begged him to burn those dice numerous times), meaning that the Gorgons died without causing any damage.

Turn 3 saw the Vorax take out the Spartan, and the Gravitons destroyed Orth's superheavy, which ironically blew up and killed 7 out of 10 members of one of the Iron Warriors tac squads and netting Nate more kills in that explosion than in the whole match thus far... For Nate's turn 3, he tried to shoot down the Vorax and repositioned his Sicarian Venator to shoot the Tyrants, as well as castling up with his surviving armour.

By turn 4, the Iron Warrior Siege Tyrants had reached the back lines, and it was all but over. The rest of turn 4 and 5 was spent mopping up the remaining Iron Hands and taking the last hull points off the Sicarian Venator.

Nate, I'm so sorry. So very, very sorry.

We joked at the time that I would have to censor every photo of the game as the images were 'too graphic' to be shown. This was the unfortunate result of matching up a defensive anti-tank force (Iron Warriors) against a mechanised armoured company. I for one blame the Loyalist General for the match up, Tim from the Eye of Horus!

All of this aside, Nate and I had a good laugh, and it was a really relaxed game, we basically knew after turn one that it was over so we weren't playing for sheep stations. It was one of those games where we just let the other player tally up the wounds on their own units from blast templates, and overall we mostly just sat around all game talking smack. It's a shame that we couldn't play on a table which had a far more dense terrain setup, however being assigned our game late in the round meant all the tables were taken which we wanted. On the bright side, this has lead to four days of the traitors making jokes about loyalist tears, with Danny managing to make loyalist after loyalist cry for 3 tournaments (ask him about his "Toughness zero list", go on, I dare you). Also, I got a lift to the event with Nate, so needless to say, I wasn't offered a lift home :P

Thanks for the game Nate, next time out, we'll make it a balanced one.

~Macca

Perturabo: The Lord of Iron, The Hammer of Olympia, Master of the IVth Legion

G'day, it's been a while in-between drinks here at AGIF, but today I just finished my Perturabo model (which arrived yesterday afternoon. Needless to say, I was REALLY keen to get him done).

The Family

Can you say "daddy issues"?

Ok, point to note here, I magnetised both hand options for Perturabo, but I sunk both magnets deep into the forearm of Perturabo, rather than drill into the hands and risk damaging them. This of course is because Perturabo can take Foregebreaker optionally, however his girly arms mean that he cannot strike with it at initiative like Ferrus. (Even tho Perturabo is fuck-huge compared to all the other Primarchs released so far, Lorgar is like chest high on this guy. Morale of the story: all show and no-go.)

The base is very basic dull tones, light blues and soft greys and bones defined it, as well a splenty of rust-orange weathering powder from Secret Weapon.

The base of course comes in a fuckzillion parts. I have decided that Forge World's sculptors are starting to go insane from being locked up in a resin sweat shop cranking out minis, and the bases are showing the edge of reason. Comparing Perturabo's base to Angron, I can't help but feel that if Angron was released today, his base would be 54mm tall and made up of 40 dead marines. Which is fine.... in any case, every part of the base is magnetised so that it won't fall apart on my shelf.

Lucky thing to note, the magnet in his hand was able to adhere to a hidden one on the base. This means I have a place to keep the hand, and thanks to the location, nobody will probably notice it.

Oh, I also took some quick snaps of Perturabo with the Tormentor. "Yo dawg, we gonna pimp you ride. That busted ass Shadowsword? We went and put a hatch on the rear, void shields on top, and 180" mag wheels on each side. Thanks MTV for pimpin' Pert's ride!"

So another Primarch on the shelf... with the books, my Mrs likes to point to this as my cabinet of financial shame.

So, if you like it or loathe it, let me know,

~Macca