That was vengeance for our previous game, where my Redemptor and Ballistus teamed up and smoked his Hammerhead turn one. That game, however, was much closer than the team game.

Tyranids and Tau are actually a match made in heaven: the Nids rushed forward, forcing us to focus on them before the Screamers Killers hit our lines, which left the Tau guns free to tear us apart. We couldn’t hold the xenos back and they soundly defeated us. Play of the game had to be Greg’s Phobos Lieutenant charging a Broadside and the ensuing combat lasting almost the entire game until the suit finally took out the marine.

The Tavian Crusade

When I moved to Toronto, I found a gaming home at the local Games Workshop and joined a group of friends that became an informal gaming club. During the pandemic, the store closed its play space and our group was cut adrift. Though it still exists on discord, our little club doesn’t really have a home, which can make things challenging.

Despite this, Wrong Side of the Maelstrom’s very own Techpriest Jeff is currently running a campaign for our group (you can actually see the campaign map on our blog here) and the Tavian Crusade has been the focus of my 40k gaming the last few months.

We kicked off the campaign with a game day I hosted, setting up two full tables and a Boarding Action board. I played three great games that day.

The first was a game against Mathias’s Genestealer Cult. This was my first game against GSC in 10th (possibly ever, can’t recall facing them before) and boy howdy were they a fun army to fight. A lot of their troops are squishy, so I felt like I was taking an early lead as I took squad after squad off the table. But then they just kept coming back, with more and more slinking from the shadows or climbing out of the sewers. Where my marines became depleted, the Cultists just kept coming back and they won the day.

My second game was against Zach’s Nids (the campaign is themed around Imperium vs. Tyranids, with a couple of other factions in the mix) and this game was quite the brawl. I learned to hate the Neurolictor, which took out my Eradicators over several turns of combat. Zach’s Norn Emissary was also a force to be reckoned with, eating several squads, including my Lieutenant leading the force. I just could not kill enough, and Tyranids defended the outpost.

For game three, the Lieutenant returned…in a dreadnought! This was a really neat requisition I’ve never had a chance to use and it has really built up the story of the character in my mind. This was a team game where my marines and Jeff’s Krieg Militarum faced off against Zach’s and Mathias’s armies. This is where things went our way: we’d gotten enough experience to have decent target priority and I was able to get a few key charges off. My Vindicare also came into his own, sniping several GSC characters over the course of the game. I’ve seen Vindicares fail spectacularly before and have heard plenty of criticism that they can’t reliably kill marine characters, but they do great against mere mortals. Jeff and I were able to seize victory, making for a great capstone of the day.

Further campaign games have been against Elton’s Nids, where he learned a hard lesson about Blood Angels’ charges (taking out a Screamer Killer with a Judiciar and a half squad of assault intercessors), though he ultimately almost tabled me with only a few Bladeguard left when we called it. I played a Boarding Action game against Zach’s Tyranids, where the Eradicators took sweet revenge against the Neurolictor and I snatched victory at the last minute after my boarding party had been severely mauled. Finally, I had a rematch against Mathias’s GSC, this time at 1,500 points. By now, I’ve really tuned my force and brought in some heavy support in the form of a Land Raider and two Dreadnoughts (more on those below), which was more armour than the Aberrants and Abominant could tackle, leading to a sound victory for me.

Thinking about Crusade

Crusade was introduced in 9th Edition, in the middle of the first lockdown. The rules really demand players take their time and play over a lot of games. I’ve tried cramming Crusade into a weekend event and it really doesn’t work, slowing down the action far too much. But over the course of months, where you have time to go home and think about your upgrades and choices, it fits much better. We have a discord channel set up specifically for rolling post game and that has been super handy for dealing with things after the fact rather than holding things up at the table when a player needs to leave or start their next game.

I helped Jeff a little with planning the campaign, so I can tell you that it uses the conquest system from the Horus Heresy Book 4, Conquest (the fourth first edition Horus Heresy campaign book), where each side launches attacks against various strategic points, expending resources each time. Again, we have channels on our little discord where we issue challenges each round (usually written in-character for awesome narrative flavour) and teams can privately discuss where to attack and who will defend. The defender doesn’t get anything for winning the game: they simply stop the opponent from capturing the point. The system has worked very well, and I highly recommend it.

Finally, not having a dedicated game store/hall/space for our club can be challenging. Most people in our group do own some terrain, even if they don’t have the space to host an event. I’ve thought about setting something up where we could rotate club members organizing game days (whether that be a private venue like their garage, renting a space, or just finding a store with available space and time) and the attendees can bring enough terrain so it doesn’t fall on the host’s shoulders, but that has its own logistical challenges. 

These are all topics we may expand on in future articles, so watch this blog for more!

Terrain Painting

What have I been painting the last few months? Terrain. Lots of terrain.

Jason and I are hosting an event this year and we need to have terrain ready. In the past, these events have been great, but usually the terrain has been half-painted and often setup on the day of rather than tables preplanned. Not this time. Our goal is to bring the experience of my bachelor party to everyone. Which means we need to get painting.

First up is the Navigator House. This sat in my backlog half finished for years, and it’s finally been completed. I really love this piece: the third storey makes for a great snipers nest and it adds some much needed verticality to games. The only issue is I was never able to get a second kit to add another navigator statue to the empty plinth. I’ve looked at some STLs to fill the space, but that’s down the road.

Next is three pieces of mechanicus terrain. This also was in the backlog forever sitting with a silver undercoat. I’ve gone in and added some colour and details (mostly with contrast paint, other than the orange). These pieces still need an oil wash (which will be a recurring theme), but they’re much further along than before. I also need to repair the third storey platform: this was loose when I started painting and I ended up just snapping it off. I’ve decided to magnetize it rather than glueing it back on, giving me some modularity for gaming, and also to help with storage.

This Age of Sigmar skeleton was an Xmas gift from my wife and painted up very quickly after a Zandri Dust primer. Still needs the oil wash though. One thing I did was cut away and cover all the smaller bones and skulls on the base to remove the sense of scale. Now it can be used in games of Titanicus too, representing a massive xenos skeleton.

Another piece from my backlog, this MDF brownstone was a lot of fun to paint. Primed Mephiston Red, with some parts primed Dawnstone (and taped off for the red), I ended up painting random bricks and just went crazy mixing reds and browns to get unique colours. I also tried adding some moss or lichen, but this didn’t turn out as well as the brick. This piece also is awaiting an oil wash.

Finally, the last terrain: a whole damn Nachmund set. This was done following methods (Goonhammer, Guerilla Miniature Games and Vince Venturella) and painted up very quickly. I started with a deep chocolatey brown undercoat followed by a zenithal light grey. Then I went in for details, mostly using contrast paints. Since the walls have an inside and outside, I was able to magnetize them so they snap together (though I left the corners and building connectors magnet-less since those are reversible). I still have to fix up a few parts and (say it with me) do an oil wash, but this is at an acceptable tabletop quality as of writing.

Not Terrain Painting

After all the terrain, as some palette cleansers, I did two dreadnoughts and a Vindicare assassin.

The Redemptor was already in my Crusade force (the aforementioned entombing of my Lieutenant) and the new Ballistus went straight into the roster as some additional anti-tank: sorry Eradicators, you and your trash melta have been replaced.

Since the last update, I also checked off a few Storm Guard characters: my Primaris Chaplain and Judiciar, both which make frequent appearances in lists.

In addition to the above, I’ve also made a smidge of progress on the 30k Salamanders. These have been primed Vallejo Dark Green with Vallejo Sick Green as a zenithal highlight (both using rattle cans). Though it’s very little actual hobby progress in terms of time spent painting, it’s made a huge difference in the overall look of the army, so much so that it’s far less embarrassing putting them on the table – where they’ve been crushed by Zach’s Iron Warriors and Erik’s Dark Angels since the last update.

I’m still trying to get my Salamanders to a place where I’m happy. The current 2,500 point list is very much a “here’s what I’ve squeezed out of the starter box force” and it definitely shows when they hit the table. I’ve played with a bunch of list ideas to bring the army up to 3,000 points, but I need to get what I have painted before I do that. There is the fantastic Hogtown Heresy event (I played 40k the last two years: you can read about the 2023 event here) and if I can get the army painted for then I will 100% be going. But painting a massive army in a handful of months isn’t easy (especially considering how slow I paint).

I play too many games

This brings me back to the event Jason and I are planning. The idea for it is to be supermax narrative, with custom mechanics, bespoke missions, and stellar immersion. All of this takes work that cuts into painting time. Whether I’ll have time to paint a 30k army and plan an event seems unlikely, but we’ll see!

Annnd on top of all this, Age of Sigmar is getting a new edition starring the AoS army I already have. Do I pivot hard to AoS? Or even-gasp-the Old World??

My Skaven army is already pretty much setup to play the Old World, but what about a second Old World army? I already have the AoS Gotrek model and a few other Dwarf characters, surely I don’t need too many more?

Well, a friend of mine was kind enough to gift me a bunch of on-sprue Dwarves–all I’m really missing now is a few Core choices and I’ll have a nice little Dwarf army. Cool, cool, just started a second army for a game I’ve never played, totally reasonable thing to do.

And with all that looming on the horizon, I think of my Psi-Titan: primed and ready for painting in sub-assemblies. One day, my sweet prince, you’ll walk with the God-Engines.