The Great Crusade: Enemies of the Emperor

Good afternoon all.

After writing my post last week it occurred to me that I'd been a Battle Bunny for nearly a year. I started reflecting on the day I sat down with Kaelo and Drake to discuss projects I was working on that they wanted to have a home on the Battle Bunnies blog, and it occurred to me that after nearly a year I haven't as yet made good on any of those things.

You've seen a lot of Mechanicum from me and some legion but what I'm really interested in is offering a genuine flip side to legion forces to truly make the Great Crusade a feasible gaming experience.

As you know I'd spent a fair few years (almost 10 years ago now) at the forefront of pre-heresy gaming as part of a fringe and moderately exclusive group of gamers, I had lots of fun converting and scratch building models for legion forces (and towards the end Mechanicum forces too) it was after playing several campaign weekends that I started to feel that legion vs legion or human vs human was a little limited in its scope so I began the Enemies of the Emperor project.

The project was an attempt to provide more flavour to heresy era games but to form the main stay of any pre-heresy games set during the Great Crusade era.

Cue the bad guys (or in fact the guys oppressed and destroyed by an invading alien army).

The project initially started with the Laer, I was captivated by how alien they were and how they tied in seemlesley in to the 40k universe. After researching them in the novel Fulgrim and digitally sketching them out I decided to write rules for them which matched the fluffy descriptions of them in the book. From there it snowballed and after about 9 months I had a book of 6 unique alien races, with unique wargear and special rules. The book went through vigorous play testing at my FLGS and I was finally happy to get it saved as a PDF to share around.

The first draft took a while as each new novel presented more races or more info on races previously introduced. I trawled through each book in order to get the rules and descriptions as accurately as possible - as it was also my intention to build a 1000pt force for each of the races in order to play games. Then the inevitable happened - I started book 2. There was such a wealth of character out there in the Heresy novels that 6 races just didn't cover it - so book 2 (and another 6 races were nessecary).

The first book looked at the Laer, The Nurthene, The Nephilim, The Olamic Quietude, The Storm Scions and the Megarachnids. To date I have an army for the Megarachnids, half an army for the Nephilim and sone units made for the other races.

In the new book I'm focusing on The Demiurg, The Keylekid, The Jorgall, The Hrud, The Exodites and the Interex. I've begun models for the Jorgall, Keylekid, Demiurg and Hrud but as you can imagine it's a big job for one man 😊

Here's a line up of some of the models I'm working on. 

(L-R Megarachnid Warrior, Keylekid, Nephilim, Jorgall, Storm Scion Militiaman, Hrud day warrior and an imperial fist space marine - for scale)

What I would like to do is every so often show you the progress that I'm making with each army - and possibly farm out the painting of some to the other Battle Bunnies to paint up for the blog and potential campaigns and one off battle reports.

So if you too would like to build and play an army firmly enshrined in the Great Crusade era that isn't fighting for the Emperor then I'm happy to help where I can - it would be great to see lots of variety out there and who knows there might be events in the future where we can pit aliens against each other and against legion forces.

Here's the link to the Great Crusade Book 1 - Conquest:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/7eugwq8pcz1z3db/TheGreatCrusadeConquest%20%281%29.pdf?dl=0

I will be revisiting the book in the near future with amendments to the Nephilim human forces and a few little tweeks but for now it's a completely usable addition to 30K gaming.

Here's some page previews of the new races from Book 2 - Conflict but they are mainly untested as yet so may well change in the future.

Well I hope I've whet your appetite for more Xenos and insurgents in the coming months and look forward to showing you a bit more of the process involved in each respective army along the way.

Remember: if you can't beat em join em.

KF

30k Xenos: Orks

Hello all!

Having completed the Mastodon for my Sons of Horus, I needed to move onto getting some of my Orks painted. I am playing in a 40k competition at my local club over the weekend and needed a few more orks finished to make my list work. I had 7 boyz, 1 nob and 2 trukks to get done. The boyz and nob are done, I also took the time to rebase my other painted nobs onto 32mm. They look better on the bigger bases! The 2 trukks are well under way and I will be finishing these over the next few days.

The trukk in the background was one that I already had painted!

Current progress on the trukks. 

The orks will be featuring in an upcoming campaign with Kaelo. This has got us to thinking about the orks as a 30k army and how well they will match up to the with the legions. Are current plan is to use them straight from the current codex and see how they get on. I know a lot of people think that the orks were bigger and I plan to include more units of nobs than normal. I'm of the opinion that boyz would still have been around in large numbers. 

I would love to know what your thoughts are of orks in 30k and any experience you have in using them! 

If you're around this Saturday 24th my local club The Bastion in Basingstoke is holding an open day. I will be present demoing 30k, we have a few stores coming, a bring and buy and another 5-6 games being demoed to try out. Check it out on Facebook here.

Happy hobbying! 

Darien 

King Fluff's New Year hobby resolutions

Well sort of...

Hi King Fluff here in a contemplative mood, reflecting on my hobby highlights of the year and looking forward in an attempt to order out some projects for completion.

As you know I joined the Battle Bunnies shortly after last years Horus Heresy Throne of Skulls. The event itself has to be a highlight of last year. I had a fantastic time but I have to admit that I was a little reticent at first as I'm very much not of the tournament ilk. That being said the event really did re-spark my interest and passion for 30K (not that it ever really went away but life can intervene). I took my Questoris Knight army of House Krask to the event (as it was the only 30K army that I had any chance of finishing painting before the event started). It was a great opportunity to motivate me to get stuff painted - and although they weren't 100% finished they were close enough not to embarrass myself with.

I also managed to squeeze in a rather big (9000pts per side) game at a local GW store, which although I lost (Phantom Titans are obscene lol) it was a great opportunity to game with some of the bigger models in my collection (it also prompted me to get my second Reaver Titan standing.

Obviously joining the Bunnies crew has been fantastic for me in motivating me on a weekly basis in order to show you guys what hobby has been floating my Heresy boat.

So what does 2016 hold for King Fluff...?

Of course my Night Lords will be an enduring part of 2016 for me, I want to work on more of the kits I've bought in the vein of an all flying Night Lords army but for now my focus will be on characters and walkers whilst finishing the infantry units I've already started.

I've now settled on my avatar character for the Battle Bunnies campaigns: Jared 'King Fluff' Dane, Praetor of the 5th 'The Painted' Harlots of Nostramo - his fluff will follow in the future but I have started to collect the parts to do him justice.

 I'll also be drip feeding in mechanicum units, looking at completing 250pts worth every month until I have amassed a decent sized force which could go toe to toe with a legion (or support one). I've really enjoyed painting the Graian mechanicum force and I hope to add in the plastic GW kits into that mix over the next year, I'm also hoping to throw in the odd conversion too along the way.

Titans...

They're a big part of my hobby and collection and I want to do more with them over this year, I have Reavers still sitting in boxes and I have an option on a pre-loved Warlord too. To this end I want to expand my force, adding another Reaver and a Warlord to the legios number and also adding in Titan Legion Skitarri and possibly a Triaros.

2016 is also the year of INFERNO!!! and I am so pumped for the return (or release) of the story of Prospero. I am poised to dive into the Thousand Sons again, I'm starting with Betrayal at Calth and making the set up into a 10 man tactical, 10 man heavy support (missile launchers) and 10 man tactical support squad (flamers) - I'm unsure of what my HQ choice will be as yet (and probably won't come from the BaC box). What I am intending is to add a sub-orbital attack wing consisting of Doomwings (or infact a converted version of the Xiphon interceptor). I made a Doomwing some time ago when the Valkyrie kit was released - I feel now is the perfect time to update it and cross my fingers that the Doomwing doesn't get an official model before I finish mine (which I call the King Fluff Curse).

I also have a few background projects (namely Space Wolves and Imperial Fists) which I will be dipping in and out of...

But the biggest of these will undoubtedly be getting my gaming table painted and ready for battles on. It's a custom built table with multiple tiers to game on. It houses my 6x4 Zone Mortalis, my three (undecided) Realm of Battle table tops, my 6x4 Forge World city tiles and a 6x4 custom printed Battlefleet Gothic gaming surface.

And so that's about it....

Well nearly...

As you may have seen in previous posts, 2016 is the year of the Xenos and it most certainly will be but not the kind you can buy from a store.

My lips are sealed.

But keep your eyes on the blog.

All will become clear in the next few months.

For now I bid you all good evening and leave you with this thought;

The song Ironic by Alanis Morissette contains many situations that are unfortunate rather than ironic, thus it is not ironic but in doing so it makes the song ironic.

Your ear worm for this evening....

KF    

King Fluff: An Introduction

I thought I’d introduce myself as the newest member of the Battle Bunnies bloggers, my name is Ben, but I’ll be posting under the pseudonym King Fluff (you may be aware of my Facebook page or may have stumbled across my stuff on boards around the hobby internet).
I’m currently a University student studying a PGCE in primary education, which as you can imagine has sapped quite a bit of my hobby time just recently but I’m hoping that blogging here will give me the motivation to get some of my hobby projects to completion over the next year or so. I've also worked in high schools, colleges, as a graphic designer for the NHS. I've worked in a zoo and I've also worked for GW.

 Essentially I got into war gaming to make friends. Two of the guys I 'latched onto' collected but didn't really play, one collected WHFB Orks and the other collected Blood Angels and Empire. I remember the days enviously admiring fire dragons and paint sets until I took the plunge and asked for some models one Christmas.

I started collecting with the old skeleton horde box set and used Humbrol paints. They were painted with blue war painted skulls and were VERY shiny. 

I moved onto 40K and collected a custom chapter of space marines (something to do with dragons - Crimson Dragons perhaps) with the RTB01 beakies. It was all a kind of progression from collecting Star Wars toys and making airfix models (which I painted and hung from my bedroom ceiling with bits of cotton). In the 1990s I moved on to the Space Wolves when they were re-imagined with Ragnar Blackmane as their commander and a standalone codex. I was blown away by the models and at that point pledge my steel to the Wolf King Leman Russ. I spent hours and hours and HOURS copying the paint schemes from the codex and White Dwarf and I remember the particular challenges of doing the wolf skin diagnostic patch on the Iron Priest (which must have taken me a good 2 months to paint).

When I went to uni (the first time) I dropped out of the hobby for a while, I just didn’t have the time to continue but once finished I was keen to get back into it and I renewed my allegiance in my first job by starting a Warhammer club at the school I worked at, I picked up the Necrons army box of the time and they became my first fully painted 40K army. After this point I found my hobby growing exponentially, I had at least a 2000pt force for every army that Games Workshop made, but I only really found enough time to clean them, build them, base them and prime them black – there was a long period of me just having black armies, something that I’m keen to avoid again and I’m only now getting to the end of selling off all my surplus. It was around this time that I began to become aware of Forge World and its resin goodies.

For the battle Bunnies I’ll be looking at the plethora of inspiration tied up in the 30K universe, namely the Thousand Sons, Night Lords, Knight Households and Titan Legios of this heroic and epic era.

I was pretty early to the HH train, having been a collector of space wolves for a considerable amount of time I was really interested in looking at the flip side of the coin so I began converting a pre-heresy Thousand Sons army. This was around 2006/2007 so almost 10 years ago now, I spent many an hour taking chaos space marine, chaos warrior and space marine bits and combining them with plastic card strips to create the army, which (for the time – prior to any kind of HH armour or rules from FW, including the initial Badab sets) looked pretty good. At that time I got involved with the Tempus Fugitives led by the illustrious Stuart Mackaness, helping to shape their rule systems by playtesting and with The Great Crusade (then run by the now infamous Laurie Goulding) where we were blogging our armies. For the Siege of Terra element of the TF campaign in 2010 I decided to go all out and made my own armour variant space marines for MK2 – MK5 and formed these into a Space Wolf army, shortly after FW announced the Badab War books and released official models for the earlier marks of armour. Undeterred (well perhaps a little) I decided for the next event set in the scouring I would make a Mechanicum army. Lots of conversion potential and alongside that project I started making my own Imperial Knight models. As is the way, Games Workshop now make both these things in plastic (happy days), so being a little frustrated with ‘wasted effort’ and constant bolter vs power armour games I decided to start the Enemies of the Emperor project.

The Enemies of the Emperor is a ruleset for using any (and all?) alien and lost human culture armies against FW ruled space marines. Whilst writing the rules I'm also working on small 1000 - 2000 point forces of these great crusade era aliens and humans; Laer, megarachnids, scions of the storm, nurthene, nephilim, olamic quietude, keylekid, exodites, hrud, demiurg, interex and Jorgall. As you can imagine this is pretty exhausting, making the models from scratch and then painting them – so I’m hoping the other Bunnies will be able to help out in this respect.

I currently don't play very much (having two kids and a busy schedule) but currently my army of choice is Imperial Knights. I've always loved big, impressive models and these fit the bill quite nicely. I'm currently working on a gaming room in the house we just moved into and hope it will be complete over the Christmas holidays, I'm hoping home will be my regular gaming hang out apart from meeting up with the other Bunnies for campaign games.  As I said earlier I don't play very often, I do a fair bit of rules play testing when I do but I would consider myself more a collector than a gamer.

On a side note to the 30K focus of what I’m currently doing I’m also collecting Skitarii and Adeptus Mechanicum armies for 40K but I'm planning on these blending in to my 30K armies.
I also picked up an all tree Wood Elf army whilst working at GW which I still need to finish building and painting for a throw down with Templarscrusade01. (Ohh and I may have also got an all Khorne daemon army for WHFB too). If that wasn’t enough I’m also collecting all my 30K models in 6mm scale to do micro campaigns (and for easier transport – it’s not easy taking 5 reavers, 2 warhounds and 17 knights to a gaming venue)

Well that’s a little about me… I’m really flattered and excited to be asked to contribute to the Battle Bunnies and I’m very happy to have found like-minded people to truly unleash the magnitude of the Great Crusade upon the interwebs. My first foray for the Battle bunnies will be the Night Lords legion but stay tuned for some mad cap conversions, stompy titans, large scale terrain, lots and lots of MK2 and MK3 armour and possibly even the big E Himself. 

King Fluff

Codex: Eldar Exodite Research

Hey all

As some of you may know, I have been interested in doing Eldar Exodites for our Great Crusade for a while now, so I have been doing some research. I have listened to Promethean Sun twice in the last few weeks and made some notes. I have also looked at the Exodite section in the Eldar codex for information.

This is just the beginning though. I am planning on doing some snow units and some desert units too, but I,need to listen to Feat of Iron again to research it.

I want to go for a more primitive and tribal looking Exodite vibe, which is more of the waynI picture them. As such I will be basing most of the miniatures around Dark Elf, Lizardmen and Wood Elf bitz with a little bit of Eldar armour and tech thrown in. Here is my research so far:

Forest/Jungle Exodites

Descriptions:

Mottled green cloaks

Verdant cloak

Army rules:

Stealth and Shrouded in nature

Not pitched battle fighters

Trees came alive

Swamps swallowed enemies

Bugs filled mouths and eyes

Arboreal empass - restrict movement in trees

HQs:

King/Queen:

Option to take carnosaur mount

Prince/Princess:

Can take mount

Royal Guard:

Retinue for above

Seer:

Is above Warlock

Runic symbols

Psyker/Warlock:

Veridean robes with cerulean clasp

Rune sword

Runic iconography on his armour

Powers used - Kineshield, force push, force lightning

Wyche covens:

Enrobed

Bald female in middle

Riding eldrich energies - from the Menhir

Work as group to make powers stronger

Throw electricity - crack ceramite with ease

Psychic shields

Strangle vines

Attack and defend at same time

Elites:

Blade Master Kindred:

Azure plated

More marshall in aspect

Ornate crested helms that conceal face

Vermillion capes

Long angular swords

Dragon Guards:

Sword and shields

Raptor Packs:

Raptors - rending

Troops:

Bow caster Kindred:

Fierce repeating bow casters

1 in 5 upgraded to long rifles

1 heavy weapon team - all types

Close combat Kindred:

Falchions

Javelins

Leader with ornamental sword

Dragon Rangers:

Hooded riders

Long rifles

Conical helms

Rangers - see Eldar codex

Fast Attack:

Dragon Riders:

Spears/Lances

Terrasaur Kindred:

Riders with spears, swords etc

Heavy Support:

Stegasaurs:

Heavy weapons

Hawdahs

Carnosaur Riders:

Fast

Down dreadnoughts with ease

Powerlance

Vaul Batteries:

See codex eldar

Lord of War

Dread Saurian:

Terradon: 

Causes fear

Membranous wings

Thorny hide

Horn from snout

Talons from toes

Umber scales

Axe headed tail

Seer rider with staff and rune blade - no hands to fly

2 Primarchs to fight it

Wings pulp innards and throw marines flying

Can only fight forwards

Poisonous vapour and fog

Roots pinning from seer 

So what do you think? Any modelling ideas? Anything you can add (provide references where possible)? 

I will be working on these and other Xenos projects every Thursday night. So stay tuned for updates :)

Khall Sithis

Races and Campaigns of the Great Crusade

Hey all

I have just started reading the Horus Heresy novels again from Horus Rising (obviously! Lol) and am really enjoying them a second time through. This article may contain some spoilers, so if you are interested in discovering the Great Crusade and Heresy for yourself you should probably stop reading now...

Still here? Lets get on with it then! The GC and HH provides us fans with some epic battles and cunning villains to teeth our Legiones Astartes on. These range from cunning Aliens (of various flavours) to human 'renegades' and all manor of cyborgs etc etc. many of these stories have been documented and will provide a vast catalogue of compliances and exterminations that we can recreate or even create for our audience. 

So all I want from this article is to open the floor and let our community voice the races you would like to see us create, develop and ultimately destroy. I have put in some suggestions below:

Megarachnids - Murder Campaign. Luna Wolves, Blood Angels and Emperor's Children. Horus Rising.

 

Laer - Laer Campaign. Emperor's Children. Fulgrim.

Eldar Exodites - Promethean Son. Death Guard, Iron Hands and Salamanders.

Ghost Warriors - Angel Exterminatus. Iron Warriors and Emperor's Children.

Massive Orks and Mechanical Beasties -The Gorro Hollowing - Wolf of Ash and Fire. Luna Wolves.

Nephilim - Fear to Tread. Luna Wolves, Blood Angels and White Scars.

We intend to flesh these armies out a lot more over the coming years (yes is a big project lol) but these are just a few. 

Can you think of any more? 

What would you love to see most? 

Any ideas for units, models, special rules, scenery? 

How can we make the Ork Codex more balanced for Legion opponents? 

Do you have any Great Crusade Xeno's armies that you would like to battle against our Legions with? 

Let us know and maybe we can arrange a weekend campaign at Warhammer World with documented battle reports, stories and cocktails!

We look forward to reading your ideas :)

Khall Sithis