Marcharius IX Campaign: Curtain Call

"I dont care about that damned planet,I only care that the heads of each and every [Chaos] Lord there is on a [expletive] pike" - Uriel Bejz (Renegade Marine, once of the Minotaur's chapter 999 M41)

"I commend them, the Gue'La. Not for their tenacity, not for their ferocity nor for their cunning. It is for their honor that I now have great respect for them. Even when drawn down to a man, even when death was inevitable, they still fought us with all they had, instead of cowering or surrendering like dogs. When faced against overwhelming odds, they stood strong, even when scores fell. These...humans...they will forever have my respect." -  Shas'O BrightSun (T'Kain Sept, Marcharius IX reclamation Force M41)

Today ends our groups Marcharius IX Table top Campaign. Marcharius IX first appeared in our Dark Heresy game as a world on the edge of the Imperium. Located between Tau Space and the Imperium, this world would come to have drastic consequences for the party.

The party first encounter Marcharius IX in their pursuit of the Rogue Trader Josiah. Josiah had been spreading chaos tainted wheat across the imperium for years, having been chased by Inquisitor Herodotus and his warband. Bo Terran, the charismatic interrogator and de facto leader of the party, unintentionally brought the party to the world after getting captured and pulled into in a webway with eldar pirates. What the party found was a world high in tension. Tau and Humans living together in tense truce. After reestablishing contact, they found that the local Governor of the world had made a trade deal with Josiah in order to sell the world's resources to chaos in exchange for immortality. It was discovered that Bubo the plague father and Kordan of the Thousand Sons would soon arrive. Bubo with the Rogue trader, and Kordan in pursuit of Bubo. The party only barely escaped as the world fell to chaos around them. Having made it out alive, the party called upon the Marines of the Dorn's Raiders and "The Coalition", a mass gathering of Space Marines, Guardsmen, and other factions of the imperium in order to retake Marcharius IX. When the party returned to Marcharius, they had one goal. Kill the 2 chaos lords. While Bubo was killed in the fighting, many members of the Coalition were lost. Unable to stop the imperium, Kordan summoned a warp storm and consumed the planet in the warp. The party was only barely able to escape having suffered major losses in friendly Non player characters and major damage to themselves. The Coalition along with the Dorn's Raiders took massive causalities in the fighting as well.

100 years passed......

This is where the table top campaign took off. After 31 days in May, each of the former PCs and GM recorded a total of 20 games played.  The armies were as followed:  Jon: Detachment D-44 (Imperium), Jerry: T'Kain Sep (Tau), Greg: Dorn's Raiders (Space Marines) and Tallarn (Imperial Guard), Kurtis: 186th Death Korp (Imperial Guard) and Chaos Marines (Night Lords) , and Matt: Brother Hood of Ferrus (Iron Hands Space Marines).

 The Imperium had a 1:4 win loss ratio.  The Tau had a 1:1 win loss ratio and chaos had a 0:0 ratio. The height of the campaign was when the Dark mech stole a former PC's power lance that they had left behind for the survivors. What chaos wants with the Power lance is a story that will be told when Wrath and Glory (the new 40k RPG) releases this June This is not the last we have heard of Marcharius IX. In the mean time, the Tau of the T'Kain Sept had reclaimed the world in the name of the Tau Empire. What they found was horrific and barbaric......

Post Campagin Patch for Detachment D-44

The last of the Gue'la lay dead in a pile. The firefight had been tough and many shas'la of the T'kain sept lay dead near where the Gue'la tank had blasted their position. After a month of fighting, the human world, once known as Marcharius IX had been reclaimed by the Tau Empire. The Etherals wanted to cleanse the world of all chaos taint and make it into a new sept world. One that would be a shining example to the rest of the Empire. However Commander Brightsun was not so sure. Having seen the horrors of the landscape and the chaotic influences that had ravaged this world for so long, Bright sun was sure that no tau citizen could ever truly consider this a home. The surviving human forces had either been scattered or died en masse. As for the chaos forces, they had disappeared as quickly as they had come. Many of the Imperiums soldiers had escaped and command reported that they had gotten back to the Imperium lines. Entire parts of the world burned. The Imperium had not left quietly and Brightsun believed they would back someday. Among the survivors had been found humans as old as 150 years old. Many Earth Caste believed this was not natural for the human life span and questions had been asked of those who had been found. One of them, a young human had responded that the warp had kept them alive to live their own personal hells. Many Earth caste scientist took this be the ramblings of a insane human.Whatever the case was, there was still work to be done. The twisted barren landscape was still full of daemon creatures and resistance cells. Whether or not the world could ever  be fully reclaimed Brightsun did not know. Taking a last look at the deadpile of tau warriors Bright sun activated his XV-8 and flew off to find another battle.

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Ad Mech: Electro-Priest of Metalica and Tournament play?

"Sons and Daughters of Metallica! The Enemy cannot hear you! Play your metal song and drown the enemy out! For Metallica! For the Omnissiah!" - Tech Priest Magnus Nicodemus

It's that time again for another blog post! Today I have finally finished the electro-priest that I talked about last time. Although there are a few touch ups I know could be done, I have spent the last 3 months on these guys. Im done. At least for the moment. Maybe in the future I will return to them and get them a little bit more up to snuff but I can't bring myself to do it for the moment.

Lately I've had a hard time motivating myself to paint. It seems that this is not a unusual occurrence for me around this time of year. Usually around the summer time my painting picks up and I do a bit better at keeping on track. In the mean time I have restarted my Dark Heresy Game. Once again, the team is going out into the grim dark in order to stop the enemies of the Imperium. Will they be able to survive or will they perish? Only time will tell.

Finished Electro Priest

Game 1 featured the team meeting a new member. Death Watch Marine Uriel of the Minotaurs chapter. This character will be played by my friend and contributor to this blog Matthew Rodgers. What will the Bull think of the war band? If the first session is any indication, things will certainly be heating up. Speaking of war bands, the new Esienhorn model is coming out from the Black Library.  This is exciting. With new rules for the famous inquisitor, it might be time to play a mixed Guard and Inquisition list.

So now onto the new topic of today. This past weekend I went to my stores ITC tournament. While I did not participate I certainly enjoyed seeing the tournament players from our local area play to their fullest. One of the main games I watched was a Imperial Guard vs Blood Angels game. The Guard player was playing a Cadian doctrine and was successfully able to hold out against the angelic host.

While the game was going on I was able to grab a few shots of this wonderfully painted army. The armies owner was able to take the Guard all the way to the finals and ended up winning our stores ITC tournament. Second place went to the Space Wolves. Third went to another Blood Angels player playing Flesh Tearers.

BaneBlade!

What stood out for me though was the work and dedication each of the players had put into their own models. From highlights to washes, every model on the tables was painted and done up. Long time readers of my blog will know that im not a fan of using grey models but I have in the past. However, these action shots really motivated me to start working again on my own armies. Hopefully this will bring me out of the lull I've been feeling.

While writing this post our group updated the stats. One local player lost every game but we a great sport about his games. In honor of the spirit of the game, our local admins gave him a best sportsmanship award.  What a neat idea! While winning is always fun, this is a game at the end of the day. A contract if you will between two people who are going to roll some dice and move models on a table. Fun should always been near the top of priorities in any war game.

Another group of photos I got were of the Sisters of Battle from Raging Heros. These models were awesome to look at. The paint job done by the local admin team was beautiful. They had chosen to do bright colors for the sisters. It is rare to see a nicely painted sisters army on the table and these were done well. Although not all of the army way painted, the models that were, allowed for a idea of how the army would look when they were done. I was excited to see how the army played since I have not seen a sisters army played in 8th Edition.

Overall it was a fun weekend and I really enjoyed seeing all the painted armies. Hopefully next time I will be over this lull and onto my next project!

Until next time!

Leman Russ tanks

Infantry Rush!

Tank Park

Sisters Walker

Raging Heros Sisters 

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Ad Mech: Electro-Priest of Metalica (WiP)

Today I have a real treat for you all. Since the beginning of the year, my time has been filled up with work and real life task so this blog has suffered because of that. However today I hope to fix that. Originally I had planned to start a new painting series but since my time for painting has been so limited, Ive decided to put that new series on hold for the moment.

 Instead Im going to show off some Works in Progress. Bare in mind that these are not done but have been sitting on my work bench for a while.

Adeptus Mechanicus models always seem to take the longest for me to do, and since I wanted to have something to show for February, Ive decided upon these electro-priest. I first tried the electro-priest on table top simulator against my friends Death Korp of Krieg. Seeing how powerful the unit was, I quickly set about ordering myself a squad of 5. When the squad got in, I set about assembling them and then got them primed. Long time readers will know that I play Forge World Metalica and so I have set about painting them in the white robes of the priesthood. As mentioned earlier this year I plan to redo my Metalica list and in doing so adding more Electro-Priest to my army.

This rebuilding of my army is going to be a slow job but its one that will be enjoyable over time. I have planned for this build to take me on towards 2018-2019 and in doing so will be allowing myself ample time to paint each unit. Our local store is doing a Path to Glory game and so this is the perfect time in which to build my forces up. Once this squad is done, I hope to be able to break out my airbrush for another unit that Ive been eyeing to complete. More on that later.

In other news, I have gotten my knight primed up and base coated in a silver spray. When the weather gets clear here, I intend to break out my airbrush and set about painting up the knight. My plan is to add it to House Raven, which is allied with Metalica.  As we work our way further into this new year I hope to have a few more exciting new articles and models to show off to everyone.

Until Next time! Keep rolling those dice!

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Forge World Metalica: Seek and Destroy (Part 1)

 Today I present to you some of my recent work. Finally, after along time, I have finished painting up my Metalica breachers and Ruststalkers. Readers of my blog will remember that I have posted my breachers before. However, now I have the full shots of them all done up together and so ends my journey with these models.

These models are stand in models that I got from Exclusive Miniatures. I have never been a fan of the Games workshop Breachers and so I went looking for something that I felt would represent my idea of the models better. With Exclusive miniatures I got a female magos and two squads of their first set of stand ins. However I was sent a wrong order of the female models and so they sent me a third set. I converted the second set to a proper loadout of breachers and so was able to run three squad of breachers back in 7th.

 My friend  Praetorianofthe_east gave me a few of his Ad mech models and so the army grew from a lousy 500 points to 750.  One of the gems of this army was the Ruststalkers he gave me. Those too have been painted up as seen here today.

So whats coming next down the pipe? Well I got a Knight! Yes, for my birthday i decided to get a knight for my Metalica force. I have decided upon House Raven for its ties to Metalica. This, like the riptide done earlier this year, will be one of my biggest challenges to date. The Marauder Bomber is also still in the works but has hit a snag. A snag I hope to change soon.

 In the meantime, I have also picked up a Black Templar army from Praetorianofthe_east. This army will stripped of the horrible paint job it has and will return to the battlefield as proud Templar. However that is a while down the road. At the moment, I am trying to prepare myself for August and the return of the school year with it.

Till next time! Leave a comment, say hello or just let me know you were here. Every little bit helps! Stay Tuned for Part 2 where I will be showing off the Ruststalkers and talking about how I painted them.

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Battle Report: Investigaton at Hive Felix (7th Edition)

"Foolish Mon-Keigh, thinking they can save this city. Let us show them the true meaning of Pain" - Archon Linnaeus before his raid into Hive Felix

Today I bring you another battle report from the front lines. This battle was between my brother's DE (Proxying with tau here) and my own Adeptus Mech forces of Metallica lead by my Female Magos with Inquisitional support. The mission was kill points with a extra point award to me for every Heavy support choice that i killed and claimed with my forces.

My brother and I rolled off and he claimed turn 1. Turn one saw him move up his forces and shot a bunch of my ruststalkers. He killed two. The raiders shot at my Onager but missed and the Ravager did as well. The Inquisitional Chimera was killed during this turn by a Raider. He also claimed two objectives during this turn.

My turn 1 saw my forces move up and claim a objective. My shooting however was ineffective and so I did very little damage to him.

His Turn 2 saw him move up again and fire upon my magos. Those shots went wide and missed mostly. The breachers were the next target and he got off some good shots. However the breachers made their saves and were able to tank the fire. His Raider had moved up and the warriors inside the raider fired upon my ruststalkers killing two of them. The incubi hide and held a objective in the back.

My turn 2 saw me move up again. Having lost most of my right flank, my forces were forced to close off that flank and leave it to the Dark Eldar. My Ruststalkers moved up and prepared for a charge against the Dark Eldar warriors. The breachers moved up and fired upon the warriors. Many warriors were killed by the breachers and Skitarii rangers. I was able to kill 2 of the Raiders on the left flank at this time but still the Dark eldar held. My ruststalkers charged into the Dark Eldar but failed to make their charge leaving them open to splinter fire.

His turn 3 saw him move up and fire upon my forces again. The jetbikes moved up and the warriors fired upon my ruststalkers. The ruststalkers were killed to a man. More fire was placed upon the Magos and Onager. Both tanked the fire and refused to die. Two breachers were killed to splinter fire. At this time, he charged his forces into my Dunestrider. The dunestrider survived and was able to kill off one reaver jetbike.

My turn 3 saw me move up some of my rangers as well as my Magos and breachers. I was able to kill off a squad of warriors and seized a point in the middle away from his witches. On the left flank, the breachers killed off a few more warriors and tried to get in range to charge the jetbikes. They would ultimately fail to make the charge. However, the Rangers and the Inquisitor were able to make the charge and killed two jetbikes.

His Turn 4 saw his second witch squad move up as well as his warrior squads on the right flank which had fully collapsed for the Ad Mech. The Magos and Onager were fired upon again but tanked it and the Dark Eldar Archon let out a sigh as his forces failed to do any damage on the left flank to the dunestrider / Rangers / Inquisitor.

My turn 4 saw my forces move up and proceed to fire upon the remaining warriors. The warriors holding the middle point were finally killed off but the breachers had a lot of room to move up before they could capture the point. In the assault phase the Rangers / dunestrider / Inquisitor were able to kill off  the last of the jetbikes and secure the objective.

At this point the game had to end due to time. Dark Eldar had earned 19 points to the Ad Mech  15.  It was a significant Dark Eldar victory but the Ad Mech had proved that they would not let the xeno off without a fight. Hive Felix had been cleansed of all those who had lived there but the records would at least indicate that the civilians had not been killed but dragged off to a fate worst than death.

Archon Linnaeus looked out over the battle field. The slaves had already been captured and dragged back to the slave pits. Now with the mon'keigh forces broken he could escape. His forces had taken a serious hit but he knew at the end of the day his Kabal would gain wealth from the slaves. He smiled to himself, A victory such as this was one that he could celebrate back in the halls tonight. With that last though, he stepped through the webway portal and left the world behind.

Now on to some 8th Edition discussion. Since 8th Edition is coming this next weekend, we here at Behind the Lines Gaming are going to hold off on the blog posting till 8th drops. At that point we will resume with our bi monthly posting as well as give you all our first impressions of 8th Edition.

Stay tuned, Exciting things are happening and we hope to be your leading source for all the newest changes coming to 40k.

Till next time!

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[Forge World] Metallica: Breachers Squad and Magos

"As the Emperor protects the faithful, so must we protect the flock" - Tech Priest Magnus Nicodemus

Breacher Squad #2

So what do I have for you all today? Well after a painful three weeks of work on these models I think im calling them done. Followers of this blog will remember that I posted my first Breacher team a while ago. Now today I have my second breacher team ready. Slowly my Adeptus Mech forces are growing.

This squad (like its other squad) is an all female breacher squad. The magos of this army is a female that believes that males are not good enough to serve the Omessiah in any leadership capacity. She carries with her task force an all female breachers squads. Both males and females accompany her in the Skitarii forces.

Her mission is to seek out lost artifacts of the Omessiah and advance her own standing within the Adeptus Mechanicus. This Magos was fun to paint up due to all the unique items that had been added on to her person. The paint job was a lot of work but once finished turned out to be some of my favorite models done up so far.

Yet Un named Female Magos

This project has helped me to become better at working with layering whites. When i started, white was a problem color for me. Since then, I have gotten a lot of practice with white and how to layer it. Sharp eyed viewers might notice that i've added some vallejo cream colors in there to contrast against the white. This was so that I could have varying degrees of white colors on the model.

In the future I hope to be able to use my airbrush in order to get a smoother white transition on the models. Due to school and lack of time, I have been unable to get my air brush out. The cooler weather of winter has also kicked in and made it hard to find a place to air brush. Once spring rolls back around though i plan to start using it again.

In the future I have two big projects planned that I am looking forward to. One will be a Tau Riptide! This will be my Jar'Kia septs first Riptide but hopefully not my last. I also have ordered a Forge World Maruader Bomber that I will be adding to my Phantine Air Force. These two projects will be taking a lot of my modeling time come the new year. As always we soon will be entering the holiday season. At this blog, it is tradition to do a yearly end of the year post and a New Years day post. Rest assured both of those will be prepared for the year. Also be sure to check out the Gallery at the top of this blog. Every year has been recorded with the favorite models of the year added in for good measure.

Till next time! Keep checking back, say hi or just leave a comment. Every little bit helps

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By Order of the Inquisition: Tech Priest and Arbite Gregory Alexie

Dog and Master

So today is another day for a blog post! This time we bring to you two Forge World goodies. The Adeptus Arbite enforcer from Games Day with his cyber mastiff and a titan Tech Priest!

These are two models that I have had my eyes on for a while. Each one would serve perfectly for our INQ28 games or Dark Heresy and so I went a head and purchased them.

Each of the models were done concurrently while the other was drying. Special attention was paid to the cyber mastiff since its going to be a pet for my Inquisitor in game or a bodyguard for my D-44 Detachment while playing Guard.

Another view

 The Arbite enforcer is going to be be Arbite Gregory Alexie. A Arbite from a Hive world. He was played by my friend Saltybelt back in 2009 and became a part of our warband. Alexie has a tough my way or the highway attitude and served with Inquisitor Umarus during the Ventra Majorus Campaign in 2012. This character has gone through a lot of variations before I decided upon this model for him. The other model I used for Gregory has now become another Arbite for my second warband under Inquisitor Ardastia (from DOW II) which I hope to cover in another post sometime soon.

Titan Tech Priest

Next up is the Titan Tech Priest. This Priest of Mars was done up in the traditional martian colors since I wanted it to be no one character in particular. This model was a lot of work to get right and in some ways I am still not happy with it. I had thought to make it a character from our current Dark Heresy Game but it isn't close enough to the characters description to be so, nor was it close enough to be my own Tech Priest from Dark Heresy. In the end I decided it would just be a genre priest for my guard army or Inquisitor.

This model was a lot of fun to paint and I hope to get another one sometime soon in order to paint one up again for our Dark Heresy Group. As our current game is coming to the end of its currents season, many secrets have been revealed and the party is on edge. Whether or not these secrets will destroy the party or bring them closer to each other remains to be seen. They have already made many enemies, enemies that don't want to be found out by the greater imperium at large.

Back view

Since it is November, I hope to partake in Tanks-giving and get a few Gideon Tanks worked on. I am also putting together a few models for Bandogora01 to give as a gift to him for his 18th Krieg Assault Regiment. We'll see how that all turns out.

Till next time, keep checking back!

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[Forge World] Metallica: Welcome Home (Sanitarium?)

Wip before I added the final dry brush

Today I present to you the first models of my Forge World Metallica Army. These models are all nearly Exclusive Miniatures products with a few Games Workshop models thrown in since there were no 3rd parties.This army will be a slow build army since I mostly intend to play my Guard or my Tau. These models were chosen to be Forge World Metallica for two reasons. First, Metallica is a awesome metal band. Secondly, in Dark heresy, my friend Edwazhere, chose to be a tech priest from Metallica meaning that I've gained a fondness for the planet and its priest.

Added Dry Brush

These models gained a lot of negative press review when I first posted them. Since I hate the GW breacher models, I refuse to use their ugly models (subjective) and when to find models that I felt were closer to how I envisioned my army to be. These female breachers fit with the theme of a Tech Priestess Magos and her warband. The main bulk of the army will be female with the Skitraii being males. Thats all the backstory I have for them now but Im hoping in the future to bulk it out. In the coming days I will write another post on the Skitarri as well as the Magos herself. While many of these models might seem to be out of scale, my local friendly game store and opponent are more than happy to play with conversions and proxies. I'm lucky in that regard. However I know they would not be for everyone and will mostly be a at home army. Besides carrying 2 books and 2 sets of cards is annoying. Hopefully GW will combine them into 1 army. They deserve that amount of love.


All hail the Omnissiah!  Keep checking back and leave a comment to let me know your thoughts and views.

Till next time,

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