White Templars progress #1

So I started work on my White Templars, here's the Captain...

...Well, here he is, I switched out his torso and helmet. SO much better!

Here's the Crusader squad...

After I primed them I (of course) changed my mind. One thing that makes Crusader squads unique is the ability to go chainsword+bolt pistol instead of just Bolter so I switched out all their arms!
I even had to fix an extra left arm from a pair of arms meant for the gunner on an attack bike to make it work with the bits I had. 

Then I finally repainted their arms and started giving them some colour.

Of course on the first guy I did the shoulder pad all wrong, carefully filling in the trim with black. Only to then realize it should be white...

Switched the heavy weapon for a power sword (same amount of points!) for some extra punch in melee.
What's extra juicy is that because that guy isn't a character like the sergeant, he can't be challenged out and dealt with! Nifty.

White Templars. A bunch of total badasses, and quite literally the reverse colour scheme of the Black Templars.

FOR THE EMPEROR!

Clan Foraks new Allies: The White Templars!

For some time now I wasn't quite happy with having a home-made Tech marine
So I started thinking of how to make him into a Captain instead, and if so what weapons he should bring.

Theeeen I started thinking maybe I wanted to be able to use the Relics from the main Space marine book. Which I can't with Clan Raukaan. And also if I had another chapter my Marines wouldn't be all black and retardedly boring to paint. So I was looking up if I could ally Raukaan with 'vanilla' Iron hands so I wouldn't have to keep track of two different chapter tactics, and also I could then tackle painting Brazen claws. That would be a cool dream/nightmare to paint but it would look really cool.
But you can't ally like that because they have the same chapter tactic. Bummer.

This Allied Detachment will consist of a Captain, 5 Sternguard and a tactical squad.

So I started looking at other successor chapters and chapter tactics, because I didn't want to pick one of the way too common founding chapters. Some that I like the most are the Silver skulls, Storm lords and yeah...Brazen claws. But looking at chapter tactics Storm lords use the White scars one and that won't benefint me more than to give me hit & run. Sortof not worth it. Silver skulls could be quite good because of the Ultramarine chapter tactics. Well, at least the tactical squad doctrine.

Then I started looking at Black Templars. Now I do like their feel and their chapter tactics a lot. In fact it was one of the possible chapters I chose from when beginning to play Space marines. But they are also nearly entirely clad in black so I googled to see if they had any successor chapters. Two were rumoured to be of Black Templar descent. The Red Templars and the White Templars. Now I didn't want red space marines, it just looks like blood angels, but the White templars would contrast nicely with my Iron hands without looking too far off, being almost exactly reversed in colours!

Then a thought hit me that sealed the deal. Black templars (or White ones in my case) have access to crusader squads and 3 characters! As an Iron hands player I have access to zero special characters, and what I like about IC's is those that either switches around unit types or gives buffs to the army. And bott IC's of the Black Templars do give buffs, and the Emperors Champion is just a total badass.

Altough Black templars are reknown for being an assault oriented army and I'm building a more shooty army with my Iron hands I thought this might be a bad idea too. But after reading a lot of tactica and stuff about the 6th ed Black templars it seems they are quite good as a shooty army now as well.
For example, unlike the other vanilla space marines, Black templars can take a 5 man crusader squad and still have both a heavy and a special weapon. As well as a combi-weapon on the sword brother (their sergeant). That's a lot of firepower on a small squad.
And in the other direction they can take a Crusader squad with 10 space marines and 10 scouts (initiates and neophytes), for a rather cheap price, if you don't equip them for close combat they are a formidable unit to bunker down on obectives with, heck they're good at that even if they only have bolt pistols and chainswords.

So White Templars it is! They have almost no fluff what-so-ever apart from their homeworld being Sanctum.

So my guys are a Crusading Templar chapter that focuses more on ranged combat.

FOR THE EMPEROR!

Maximum Raukaan!

So I wanted to try to maximize the benefits of Clan Raukaan in an army list. What they do is that they can put Dreadnoughts of any kind as Elite or Heavy, they can also field two techmarines for pretty much any HQ and three for a Master of the forge.

Now the Master of the forge also grants the ability to field dreads as elite/heavy but I brought one anyway because it fits the whole Iron hands theme, but you can just substitute him for something else. Altough in a shooty list the conversion beamer is pretty much the only long range weapon the HQ's can have.

Onto the list!

1 Captain with artificier armour, Traitors bane and a storm shield.
a five man Command squad with an apothecary and company champion, 3 grav-guns, riding in a Razorback.
This is my warlord in his sweet ride. Would have been nice to fit a Techmarine in the razorback as well, but he just won't fit!

1 Master of the forge with the conversion beamer and the Ironstone.
Sitting back and holding the line, repairing walkers and buffing their IWND, and blasting fools with the conversion beamer.

4 Techmarines, all with the Servo harness. I could go for 5 but I don't see it as necessary.
Sprinkle them around the army to repair vehicles, sticking some in the tactical squads to buff their combat abilities some with their weaponry and 2+ armour.

2 Dreads with assault cannons and power fists. following the Rhino or the captains razorback around as bodyguards.

2 Ironclad dreads in drop pods, with 2 hunter-killer missiles. Dropping down on the enemy to take out their heavy vehicles.

1 ten man sternguard veteran squad in a drop pod, loaded with combi-flamers and heavy flamer, dropping in on turn 2 or later to clean up infantry. (and allow me to alpha strike the two ironclads on turn 1)

3 nine man tactical squads, plasma gun and sitting in Rhinos. Nine in size so the Techmarines can fit in there.

1 Stormtalon gunship with Typhoon missile launcher. To come in and shoot stuff or provide AA support.

3 more dreads, two with twin-linked autocannons on both arms,  Venerable so they don't blow up as easy
and one of them with a missile launchers and plasma cannon for some blasting, extra armour to stop it from being stunned.


so that's 7 dread, 2 dropping down turn 1 to cause havoc and 5 to stand back and light the enemy up!
lots of techmarines to keep everything alive and a solid core of tactical marines in transports to take and hold objectives. The sternguards should help taking enemy held objectives as well!

Pretty gross. And to be honest, kind of one sided and boring to collect (unless you're REALLY into painting dreadnoughts) And if you want to go for a better shooty list I'd suggest thunderfire cannons, devestators and devestator centurions instead of all dreads.

For the emperor!

An update on painting my Iron hands

Yesterday I was browsing through the successor chapters of the Iron hands, because nigh all black isn't that exciting when colouring. But I only really liked the Brazen claws and Sons of medusa. But I'm not that keen on an all green space marine army, or painting the half red half blue pattern of the brazen claws either.

I had seen some artworks were the Iron hands shoulder pads had metal coloured trims and I decided to try that out as you can see below:

I think it really lifted the look of the Iron hands, contrasting against the black armour nicely, making them look more painted and less 'just primed in black'.

Don't think I've posted pictures of my chapter master painted before so here he is!
I'm thinking of turning the cloak grey or something as I think it adds too much blue-

and the plasma pistols glow looks more like it's been dipped in goo. Eew!

added some more paint splashes to my centurion devestators as well, mostly the blue spot colours, and some glow on the grav-cannon and grav amps (also blue). The grav weapons glow green on most pictures in the codex but in my mind that will always be the colour of plasma.

Sternguards assembled! This guy is packing grenades all round his belt! xD

Might help me to remember I can use them... But it probably won't.

1700 pts Iron hands Vs. Tyranids

played a 1700 pts game against Anders 'new' Nids outside of the local tournament.

Mission was The Emperors will, long sides deployment (dawn of war?)

My list was almost my usual one with 10 tactical marines, 5 snipers scouts with a ML+flakk, 3 attack bikes (all heavy bolters now), 3 Centurion Devestators with 2 Grav-cannons, a TL-lascannon and all missile launchers + the Omniscope

Chapter master with Chains of the Gorgon, plasma pistol and a thunder hammer, 5 Honour guards with chapter banner, power swords and one power axe. In a Razorback with storm bolter and TL-heavy flamer, another 10 man tactical squad with plasma cannon & plasma gun. And lastly a stormtalon gunship with the heavy 2 s8 ap3 shot weapon (thunderstrike?)

The nids consisted of 30 termagaunts, 2 Zoanthropes, 1 Venomthrope

2 Carnifexes (as one brood, with TL-devourers)

one Tervigon, a Foot-slogging hive tyrant and one flying with TL-devourers

An Exocrine and 3 hive guard.

Tyranids got first turn, I think night fighting was on. one of the Zoans hit the scouts with The Terror psychic power and managed to pin them

he then basically just moved up, his flying Hive tyrant shooting at my scouts 

(because they have the flakk ML)

despite being in area terrain, gone to ground and having camo cloaks

he managed to kill all but two Scouts with his Twin-linked Devourers

Luckily for me, he had placed his other Zoanthrope a bit off and it could not see the Razorback

On my turn I moved the razorback up, trying to keep it in some cover by the rocks up ahead.

The Ironclad Dreadbert dropped behind enemy lines and fired all his weaponry into the venomthrope, because if I could bring it down, it would be way easier to take out the rest of the Tyranids. It however failed to kill it, leaving it with one wound, as well as getting a few hits in on the carnifexes and termagaunts with the heavy flamer, killing two termagaunts. the Drop pod fired its Deathwind launcher, hitting the carnifexes and tervigon, I think it managed to make a wound on one Carnifex. In my opinion 15 points for a  s5 large blast is quite worth it if you expect to drop in close to massed infantry.

My attack bikes fired at the flying hive tyrant to try and bring it down, but failed to do so. The two remaining, and pinned, scouts shot at it as well (with snap shots, they might as well), but failed to hit it.

my plasma toting tactical squad moved up behind the razorback, with some covering fire coming from the heavy bolter on the first tactical squad.

The Centurions fired at the Exocrine, because I needed this beast dead! An Ap2 large blast hitting my honour guard? No thank you!
They felled the monsterous creature with combined missile launchers, grav-cannnons and the TL-lascannons.
One less to worry about!

The Nids once again surged forwards, the Zoanthrope (nicknamed Zoey) blew up the razorback this time, leaving a crater full of honour guard, and the chapter master took a wound! but rather him than killing off an honour guard.

 the two Carnifexes charged the Ironclad, taking wounds from its massive melee weapons and heavy flamer on overwatch, but succeeding in blowing it up. The Tervigon charged the Drop pod and turned it into scrap.

the Flying hive tyrant murderized the scouts with 11 hits from the TL-Devourers.

My honour guard nudged into the cover of the rocks, making sure to still protect the chapter master

who called down an orbital bombardment but it scattered way off target and hit nothing.

The attack bikes moved up to get line of sight on a Zoanthrope on the left flank, and managed to take it out.

The Centurions took out Zoey, the Other Zoanthrope. Ridding me of their pesky psychic powers.

The Stormtalon came in and I made the tactical error of moving it way too close to the Flying hive tyrant,

the TL-Devourers only having a range of 18" against the Stormtalons 48".

Tactical error aside the Stormtalon opened fire with its Twin-linked autocannon and typhoon missile launcher. Unfortunately, not only did the Hive tyrant survive, it wasn't even grounded!

Once again the Tyranids moved up, theTervigon hiding the venomthrope behind it and the gaunts screening the advance. 

The Flying hive tyrant moved towards the table edge, and then shot the stormtalon out of the sky by glancing off its two hull points!

the carnifexes opened fire on the tactical squad with plasmas and took out a few of them with the help of the hive guard.

The Hive tyrant (on foot) tried to charge the attack bikes that I had moved up too far, but instead failed his charge distance and managed to instead take a wound from overwatch!

on my turn I moved the honour guard up and debated for awhile wether to charge the Tervigon but suffer terrain hindrance and fight at initiative 1 (against a creature with ap2...) or tarpit myself  in the termagaunts.

I chose the latter and charged into them, slaying somewhere around 15 of them in a single go while only losing my honour guard champion. Then we remembered that he had cast the feel no pain on his gaunts and he saved 10! altough we forgot that some of those should not have gotten FNP from the wounds caused by my chapter masters thunder hammer.

the attack bikes moved back, away from the Hive tyrant. My centurions moved up and shot at the tervigon, putting some wounds on it.

when the gaunts piled in they completely surrounded the chapter master and his honour guard, thus denying the tervigon and carnifexes from charging in, so they instead moved towards my objective, the carnifexes and hive guard shooting at the tactical squad again, leaving only two standing! who failed their morale test and almost ran off the board.

on my turn the combined fire of the centurions, tactical squad and attack bikes, killed of the carnifexes and the tervigon, and at that point Anders conceded and it was gg!

I have a concern that the venomthrope, while being amazeballs, sometimes seem to almost hold the tyranids back, being a crutch almost as many units in the Tyranid army need to get across the board and into melee, but it's kind of hard to move fast and keep in range of the shrouded at the same time. Oh wel, just a thought (and having multiple venomthropes should fix that I think)

FOR THE EMPEROR!

Iron Hands vs. Ultramarines 1500 pts picture batrep

Tried out a bit of a different list against a guy named Andreas and his Ultramarines. I think the mission was either Crusade or The Emperors will. it was 3 Objectives in total anyway.

at 1500 pts I brought my chapter master with the axe of medusa, 5 honour guard in a razorback with a TL-lascannon.
My centurions, but without the Omniscope this time due to point constraints.
left my attack bikes at home and brought a Master of the forge with the Conversion beamer and another 10 man tactical squad with plasmagun, plasma cannon and a sgt. with a plasma pistol. I forgot I had the plasma cannon for half the battle as it was proxied with a multimelta.
My scouts got camo cloaks this time! (4 snipers and a missile launcher)
my first tactical squad, armed with a heavy bolter and a meltagun got to take the drop pod, and Dreadbert got to footslog it this time, trading his power fist for a hurricane bolter (don't ever do that... Hurricane bolters are the worst, heck, they would be better of as just being 6 bolters instead of three Twin linked bolters).

I was up against 2 rhinos with 2 ten man tactical squads, 5 scouts with bolters,
a dreadnought, a razorback with a command squad with an apothecary accompanied by Chaplain Cassius!
A thunderfire cannon, a predator and a drop pod with ten Sternguard veterans. as well as a devestator squad with assorted heavy weapons. All in all a pretty decently standard SM army, with some nasty surprises in the form of Cassius and ten Sternguards. Way better balanced than mine, but on the other hand I think Andreas has a total of 5000 pts to choose from (awesome!)

Andreas got first turn but I managed to sieze the initiative. But night fighting was on, and I placed my centurions os far back that they could not actually reach anything else but a 5.

I drove up my Razorback in behind a building for LoS blocking cover.  Drop podded my tactical squad to try and take out his Thunderfire cannon.
I managed to put one wound on it with, My other tactical squad tried to shoot out the scouts in a nearby ruin, but they went to ground and made all their cover saves. then my sniper scouts, centurions and ironclad dread shot at them as well and managed to do nothing! my first turn of shooting squandered on trying to kill five scouts, and I didn't even get one of them!
My Razorback shot at his razorback, but he managed to save himself with the stealth 6+ cover due to night fighting!  Lucky!

If only I had placed my Centurions a bith farther up, they could have shot at the Predator tank and probably killed it. And if only I had not decided it would be fun to try and drop pod the tactical marines instead of Dreadbert I probably would have gotten first blood.

on his first turn he drop podded the Sternguard squad on my right flank, pretty close to my snipers but he was gunning for the Centurions. between the special ammo wounding on 2+ and his grav-gun he managed to kill all three of them, which was an incredible blow to my firepower so early in the game.

He moved his razorback towards mine for an upcoming epic showdown between cassius and my chapter master, he did however manage to blow up my Razorback. I think his predator shot at my scouts but didn't do any damage. He moved one of his Rhinos up against my drop podded tactical squad, and the other took position on his opposite flank next to an objective.

His thunderfire cannon tried to shoot my drop podded tactical squad but failed to get a good hit in.

My tactical squad that landed via drop pod charged the Thunderfire cannon to stop it from shooting. killing it and then regrouping (not the correct term) 6 inches so they pretty much just walked back from where they came, hoping to claim some cover.

the missile thingy on the drop pod scattered a bit and hit one of my guys and one of his but it didn't kill any model.

my chapter master and honour guards moved up, couldn't really fire at anything of worth so they shot at the scouts, but again failed to kill any of them. 

as did my dreadbert. the tactical squad in my central area fired at the damn Sternguard with their plasma cannon and the master of the forge's Conversion beam, killing 4 of them. the Scouts, being super close to the sternguard and probably dead meat due to this, fired at the sternguard but failed to do anything.

Cassius and his command squad disembarked and opened fire on the honour guard, with the help of the razorback they put down 2 out of the 5 guards. 

Then the bloody scouts fired, and put 3 wounds on the honour guard, and I rolled three 1's!
Now it was only my Chapter Master left standing (deja vu)...

His tactical squad shot at my squad that killed the thunderfire cannon, and killed a few.

And then my tactical squad fired back and killed a few as well. Dakkamarathon!

His sternguard wiped out the scouts with the help of the Predator.

on my turn I moved the Chapter master up, charged the command squad and killed their sergeant (the poor fella' has to issue/accept challenges). 

my central tactical squad tried to shoot the sternguards but failed to do much damage and that's about it.

Cassius then challenged my Chapter master and managed to put a wound on him, but cassius only had one wound left after that. 

Can't really remember what happened after at this point except that Cassius died, the dreadnought charged in and the chapter master IWND his wounds back, killed all but the apothecary in the command squad and then the game ended at turn 5.  And I lost 4-1

He got first blood, 3 pts for his objective and I got slay the warlord.

For the Emperor (x2 in this batrep).

New ideas for an Iron hands 3k wishlist!

Did I say I was gonna change my mind a few times? I sure did!

New ideas.

10 honour guard instead of 5, riding in a Land Raider redeemer (the one with flamers). it can hold both the honour guard and Chapter master and a Master of the forge, who I will give the Ironstone making the Land raider pass IWND's on a 4+
The Land Raider is heavily armoured and armed, as well as being an assault vehicle. Meaning my melee masters can get out and charge the enemy when the LR is close, for maximum protection. Also 10 honour guards instead of 5 means they will stick around even longer, even if I roll a lot of 1's...

Also the Redeemer is 10 pts cheaper than the other Raiders, not having the TL-lascannons of the original Raider, but instead two ap3 s6 flamers. those 10 pts will be spent on a multimelta as well. So it can certainly pop vehicles as it gets in there!

I would probably have chosen the Lascannon Land Raider but it only has a transport capacity of 10. Meaning I can't take a full honour guard squad if I want to bring my Chapter Master along, or the Master of the forge. Most of the time the Master of the forge will probably stay in the vehicle to keep it alive (being able to repair it on top of boosting its It will not die roll should be worth it!), but in more of a crisis that dude can certainly hop out and help in close combat as well!

I've scrapped the idea of a librarian and assault marines, as well as the command squad. My army needs to be more about firepower. I've also dropped the two extra dreads for two Whirlwind tanks to barrage/ordnance bomb my enemies with s5 large blasts. 65 pts each instead of over a 100 pts for a dread and they don't even require line of sight to fire, which means I can hide them behind stuff in my deployment zone.

freeing up a lot of points lets me take two rhinos for my tactical squads, and since my Chapter master is chillaxing in a Land Raider at this points value I'll get 5-6 Sternguard veterans to ride in the Razorback I got, they can drive up and put some pressure on the enemy with the TL-Lascannon and they sternguards special ammo.

also 5 scouts in a land speeder storm should be good to protect from deep striking units, last game (not posted yet!) my Centurions bit the dust due to a deep striking unit getting the upper hand on them.

That makes this list pretty vehicle heavy (at least for being a list from me) with 2 Rhinos, a Razorback, 2 Whirlwinds, a Land speeder Storm, a drop podded Ironclad Dreadnought, Stormtalon gunship and the moving fortress of a Land Raider Redeemer.


Still want more dreads though. and about everything else in the damn codex xD

FOR THE EMPEROR!

My space marines. Update #5

Setting up the Centurions

this ís how they 'should' look like, with their full leg guards. In my opinion it makes them look too stocky,square and stiff. (they should have gigantic shoulder pads as well!)

This is completely without the leg armors on the front. I was gonna go for this but it makes the torso look very top heavy.

So I added these waist pieces back on, as a happy middle ground.
Now you can more easily see the marine in the Centurion suit, plus I get to keep the cool details on the waist pieces and the model doesn't look as evenly thick, wich just looks bad.

Before the game I added some finishing touches like the cables, primed them in black and filled in most of the steel colours to make them look a little more tabletop worthy!

Decimator Protocols is quite possibly the most badass name on a special rule ever!

Centurions of Forak

I must say the kit wasn't very fun to assemble since both arms and legs are in a very fixed position, I did some minor changes however. I didn't put on the leg guards because they make the suit look so square/stocky. I also never put on the shoulder pads, they're so big and make them look even more square set and clumsy.

Also switched out their heads, the sergeant got an Iron hands kit helmet and the others are from the vanguard veteran kit.

My Space marines update #4

Above is my Honour guard Chapter Champion, pretty much done

this is the entire Honour guard and my Chapter master, before painting and
below is the work in progress on the Chapter master

I just recently got my hands on an Iron hands bits pack
and it included a unique thunder hammer so I changed him up a bit

and gave him a new head and a storm bolter instead of the shield, partly because I have no right hand shields
and because he looks way more badass this way!