Jaakko and Forin - Leader month

To guard against the misuse of Brotherhood troops by unscrupulous stronghold Lords, a Brotherhood force is always led by a close relative of the Lord, known as the Warlord. Under his personal command is a unit of the Hearthguard, drawn from the Lord's loyal retainers, who form an aristocratic class in the stronghold.

Warhammer 40.000 Compendium

And so the final month of painting for OWAC VII has passed! I had to finish ahead of time due to family holidays and didn't get to paint everything I would have liked, but, nevertheless, I'm very happy with this months output. It's a leader month so I spent most of the time painting leaders but managed to squeeze in some other models too and a small surprise.

I finished two sets of Warlords with their Hearthguards (one regular one and one in exo-armours), four Squat troopers, a Tarantula and a Termite tunneler to carry the exo-armoured heroes into battle. I ran out of tufts and my LGS didn't have the right kind so some of the bases are a bit minimalistic.

Warlord Forin Leadenshield with his Hearthguard. A land raider is allocated to these guys but I couldn't quite get it finished before time ran out. There's a bit more patina in the metals than with regular Squats as I figured their gear would be ancient artifacts.

 

These guys have access to a large variety of equipment but this one trusts the dreaded laspistol.

Next we have the still unnamed Warlord with his Hearthguard in exo-armours. I'm glad that I could find enough of these models to make a full set.

The power gamer's choice for leaders bursting out from a tunneler

I fell a bit short of painting a full Combat Squad and it needs a further four models. This unit will be a close assault one and I have a nearly finished chainsword wielding Squat to join these guys.

 

Vollmer Adams leads the squad with an iron fist

 

Gunner Karl equipped with a multi-melta. He will stay in the rhino while his mates charge the enemy with their pistols and chainswords. I modelled a rhino with a hatch mounted multi-melta (as in the art piece by Paul Bonner) to represent this but it's still only partially painted.

 

Krag Jorgensen kindly gifted to this project by George

 

Smoothbore Sten

 

This Tarantula was kindly gifted to this project by Graeme. There's no such thing as too many heavy weapons in a Squat force.

In the very end of May I found out that Ramshackle games makes tunneler models. I've always liked the Epic scale Squats and had to include one tunneler in the force. Luckily the delivery was fast and I managed to finish this one in time.

I figured it's a Termite class tunneler. There are no rules for these things but I thought to use the rules below for them (which are essentially the Rogue Trader landing pod rules with the word tunneler substituted for landing pod).

Tunneler assault:

Roll for each tunneler at the beginning of your turn. A score of 5 or 6 indicates that it emerges somewhere on the table. A score of 1 indicates that it has emerged off-table. Scores of 2-4 indicate that it has not emerged yet and should be re-rolled in the beginning of your following turn.

Tunnelers emerging on the table surface at a randomly determined point (divide the x and y axis of the table and roll randomly along each). The tunneler will be travelling in a randomly determined direction and will plough through D6" of ground before coming to a dead halt. Work out damage from collisions immediately. Surviving tunnelers will burst open immediately and the crew can disembark to any position within half their normal move from the tunneler. Tunnelers emerging off-table are assumed to survive intact and the crew will enter at a random point on a random table edge on the following turn.

Termite:

So it's a completely random and potentially risky means to enter the battlefield and I love it.

This month in points:

What's next? I don't have a lot of time to paint before the wrap-up post deadline but might be able to finish some models that are nearly done. It would be great to add some tanks and possibly the terrain piece I built last month, but I'm not taking any stress about it as I'm very happy with this project already.

Until next month!