Throne of Skulls - a retrospective

Well, it’s been a week since our first tournament at Warhammer World; time to reflect…

Duncan emptying his desk now that Citadel Contrast is being released…

We completely failed to comment on our first night…the highlight, other than buying things, was seening Duncan in the flesh! Albeit from a distance, and walking away from us….he was holding a bag…maybe contrast has indeed ended the reign of Two thin coats.

We also spotted a minion crossing from the main building to the office carrying a stack of older GW texts, including the 54mm Inquisitor source book….what on earth could that mean….

First off, any mild/minor sourness about lists/tactics/competitiveness has dissolved. (Brother Handro: Speak for yourself!) I enjoyed all the games, and on reflection I wish I’d enjoyed the last game more. I feel that the sudden appearance of two Primarchs and their terminator fan boy squads made me dread the game and that carried on. But the Heresy is all about hordes of guys, and their badass Primarchs. The chance to fight two of them on the table, see the awesome power of Magnus, and to see first-hand the power they bring to their legions is epic! Hell, Der H even got the chance to go one on one with Magnus with a Delegatus and STRIKE FIRST thanks to the epic IIIrd legion Initiative buffs.

Secondly, the opportunity to play against some competitive lists highlighted the bits that are missing in our own Legion forces. Our lack of anti-psyker, anti-air, army-wide buffs, (Brother Handro: Is that all?) and failing to play to strengths were all punished - hard.

For Der H, the fact that initiative bonuses to the IIIrd can mean even a lowly, non-combat ready Delegatus could go toe-to-toe with Magnus (Brother Handro: He did get mulched though, right…) is awesome. By this point Magnus was on one wound. The guy we were playing could have hidden him, denied the challenge, avoided the fight, but even in a competitive event there is that little voice in our (heresy players’) heads that says…..do it, it’d be epic….two hits, could easily have made one wound, and a lucky rend could force an invulnerable save. (Der H: I mean, it didn’t…. but hey!). In my next event, I’m going to try and utilise the initiative buff to better effect. I usually have a unit of Phoenix terminators or Palatine Blades to do my cutting, I think I’ll go back to that and see what else they can do. The Kakophoni as troops in a IIIrd company elite RoW are a thing of beauty, but with my next list planning including an Army of Dark Compliance I’m not sure I’ll get the chance!

For Brother Handro the main highlight was the event itself. Good people, good games, good atmosphere, and some beautiful armies. Equally, having an event to attend usually generates vast amounts of progress. Nearly 1200 points’ worth this time! As a not particularly competitive player (Der H: you do surprise me!) I was pleasantly relieved to find games played for the most part in great spirit, and equally pleasantly surprised to find that our lists were vaguely competitive. We were in with a shout approaching the final turn in all bar the last game. The revelation that we came mid-table in our first ever competitive event, and that people actually liked our armies, and us as players, was really heartening. With a bit of luck, list-tinkering and experience (Der H: so not much then…) we might even challenge the top half of the scorecard one day!…

In the end the event was fun, not as gamey as anticipated, and was a good opportunity to meet people. We had the joy of meeting the awesome couple that are Wrights Adventure Guild with their nomination for best army (Der H: They were robbed in my opinion…) with an Emperors Children/Alpha Legion combo. Great army, and James’ IIIrd put my guys to shame! Lucy won Icon of Legend with her Alpha Legion Contemptor and James’ Storm Eagle is my new favourite thing ever….(Brother Handro: Is that why you bought one?) We were also privileged to play against the tournament’s most popular duo, Iron Talon. These guys won more events than sin with at least 3 awards including a new one just for them having won a best game and best army vote from every opponent they faced - this put them 3rd with a gaming score of ‘only’ 12! Great guys, great army, great fun!

Speaking of results…. we weren’t as shit as we thought! With the results published on the Facebook Warhammer World page, we can see our team The Bolter Wanderers placing 37th out of 65, 6 points for wins (Brother Handro: That’ll be 1 then….) with 3 favourite game and 4 favourite army votes! This means that of our opponents, only one didn’t vote for our army, and 3/5 thought we were a fun game!

Invigorated by this news, and the feeling that we aren’t completely shit, we shall push on toward our next event, The Purging of Melos, in July…..how many thousand points shall we paint in order to do this…..well, let’s find out!

Brother Handro & Der H

Fulgrim (...finally)

Everybody loves a ‘pretty boy’….(Brother Handro: apparently! It’s not something we’ve dealt with often….) and in 30k there’s only one true choice…

(Brother Handro: *cough* Sanguinius *cough*)

…FULGRIM!

This beautiful model was released long ago, but I’ve simply not got around to buying him (Brother Handro: *looks around in disbelief surrounded by resin*). Finally, the wonderland/perpetual hell* that is the Heresy Trading Facebook group gave results in the form of an abandoned, part converted, Fulgrim.

The cloak sculpt is a thing of beauty, and the feathers are pretty tasty too!

Fulgrim, in game, can be run wielding either The Blade of the Laer or Ferrus Manus’ creation, Fireblade. The model only comes with The Blade of the Laer, which is beautiful in its own way, but in game terms Fireblade nearly always wins.

Blade of the Laer: Strength User, AP 2, Rending, specialist weapon, two handed

Fireblade: Strength +1, AP 2, Murderous strike (5+), specialist weapon, master-crafted

With the model only having the Laer blade, things went to Heresy Trading pretty quickly, with this as the result!

The G-Dubs mainstream Rowboat Girlyman has a lovely sword which is quite large, and certainly larger then the Laer blade from Forge World, but works well as an alternative.

The plan is to magnetise the swords, extract the fallen banner from the base to be carried by Phoenix terminators/Command squad, and to finish the sculpting on the cloak in the next few months…

…Painting however will take longer. Miles of Lil Legend Painting Studios has a fantastic series via his Patreon covering some techniques…guess I should get started!

What do people think? Does the larger sword look too big?

Der H

Throne of Skulls - Day 2

After a fun-filled quiz, in which we did poorly, the Hobby Butterflies returned for a second day of battles in the Age of Darkness. 

Game 4 saw us come up against an opponent who, it turns out, was a crowd favourite! The Boys of Iron Talon, Raven Guard and Iron Warriors, brought a gorgeous list. A deep strike/outflank Raven Guard force with Fire Raptor and an armoured Iron Warriors force with Medusa and Minotaur!

The diagonal corners deployment that everyone hates came up, and we squeezed into our edge. We quickly immobilised and weapon destroyed the Medusa, reducing it to a glorified tarantula. We moved up the board and tried to head towards the objective.

The Iron Warriors were the main played turn 1 with some movement up the table and some early fire from the Minotaur. The Raven Guard Dreadclaw arrived and started to cause its usual havoc in our back field. 

Some lovely destroyed markers!

Meanwhile the Kakophoni took great joy in killing most of their own! 

The last few turns saw a pair of fliers arrive and wreak havoc in our lines. An outflanking Javelin hit hard and the Fire Raptor was a machine!

We had a brief moment of tactical genius when two empty Rhinos rushed up the board causing much confusion for Iron Talon (Der H:  I did tell them before they assaulted! Especially considering they were being very sporting in considering how gamey it would be if they charged it at the table edge....true gentlemen! )

​In the end we couldn’t hold the objective, but it was a thoroughly enjoyable game! Iron Talon went on to win 3 awards (​Brother Handro:​​ at least!​) including one made specifically for them winning every favourite game possible!

Game 5 was an interesting matchup given our 1 win and 3 losses; a dual Primarch list with Pertuabo, Siege Terminators and cataphractii representing the Iron Warriors and Magnus with two squads of Sekhmet. ​

Null deployment meant a useless first turn for us. Perty landed and blew our Predators off the table, and the Terminators hit the volkites hard. Our return fire didn’t really hit home. Our Kakophoni and Vets rushed the objective in the supposed opponents’ deployment zone.

Then Magnus happened...a long psychic phase later and all but one Rhino was destroyed and most squads took 2-3 casualties. 

​The rest of the game was an excercise in our remnants trying to wound an army with buffs galore, invulnerable saves, multi wounds and long psychic phases. Nothing stuck. We managed to get Magnus to one wound, and despite not being a close combat list my Delegatus got a charge. Thanks to Emperors Children shenanigans, and a charnabal sabre, I got to strike first with two hits and no wounds being punished by a stern punch to the neck from the primarch of the Thousand Sons.

We weren’t tabled, but lost on VPs with two slay the warlords, attrition and fewer units on the objective.

We ended the weekend on 1 win to 4 losses, and a last game that was simultaneously awesome (going up against two Primarchs) and tedious (not being able to take part in a phase of the game and being completely out matched).

The weekend showed us that our tactics and list planning were evidently consistent with a pair of gamers who, despite being in the hobby for years, have only been really playing since December!

Some quick impulse buys, an award ceremony and a 2 hour drive home saw our first Throne of Skulls complete! 

Now we just need to play for the next phase of the Melos campaign in July! 

(Brother Handro:  To the painting table!) 

Der H & Brother Handro 

Throne of Skulls - Day 1

Our first doubles event and our first event at Warhammer World.

A quick 15 minute walk from our hotel had us at Warhammer World, along with everyone else, in a queue (Brother Handro:  as is tradition... ) sign in was quick and easy so we grabbed a coffee and a bacon sandwich!

Our team name, The Bolter-wanderers , was a last minute thought so as not to besmirch our good (Der H:   well maybe neutral... ) name of The Hobby Butterflies.

The organisation seemed good, and pretty quickly we were up against our first opponents;  Custodes and Dark Angels. The Custodes ran a shield captain, 2 squads of 3 Custodes, a Telemon and a Caladius. The Dark Angels ran a delegatus with jetbikes, a sicaran Venator, two javelins, and two veteran tactical squads in rhinos.

We set up well and held our objectives scoring a reasonable number of Victory points, but failed to wipe any units. The dark angel acid rounds reliably denied any armour saves and with a 2+ poison, AP 1 barrage from nearly everything we couldn’t hold our ground. Two Javelins hit hard, and our flank fell on turn 4. In the end they won on VPs, gained a point for slay the warlord and were well ahead on points of units killed. A solid loss saw us move down the ranking system to a more balanced second game.

Game 2 seemed to start so well, with our match up being mostly infantry! Space Wolves with 2x 15 man grey slayers, 5 death sword, Geigor and a wolf priest. The heavy hitter was a contemptor cortus. The Dark Angels ran two basic tactical squads, 5 destroyers with a moritat in a termite, 8 heavy bolter marines and 3 phosphex quad mortars. Ouch.

War of lies is an interesting mission with objectives scoring anything from -D3 VPs to 3 VPs at the end of the game. Kill points were in play! The grey slayers ran, as they do, and were up in our grill early doors. The Termite by my Rhino and bogged down our initial advance, and the quad mortar shatter shells destroyer the sicaran. ​

Our counter hit the Dark Angels hard and pretty soon the heavy bolsters and mortars were gone. The grey slayers on the Emperors Children flank failed to hit hard, but did clear a unit of Kakophoni whilst the other unit of Kakophoni fell to the Moritat, after taking out all of the destroyers. ​

​The wreck of the Sicaran and an immobilised rhino blocked Brother Handro’s advance and left him penned in against grey slayers.

The game ended with them winning ​on kill points anyway. With some good rolls for the objectives adding a further 6. Overall; better, not great!

Game 3 was against Solar Auxillia and Thousand sons! Solar Auxillia had one of my favourite models, a commander mounted on a Krieg death rider steed! Two infantry squads, a Dracosan, a Leman Russ and two flyers; a Thunderbolt and Lightning (​Brother Handro:​​ ...very very frightening!​).

Deployment was triangles at each short edge with the same we mission played on Friday. 3/5/7 VPs for scoring units or tanks in own/no-man's land/enemy deployment zone. The Thousand Sons and solar auxillia tanks moved up, with the Sicaran Omega hitting one rhino, immobilising it (​Brother Handro:​ ​let’s try to remember the Rhino repair rule​). Given the range all of the demolished cannons were short.

Our turn saw​ effective counter fire destroying a rhino and the Sicaran, with the Scorpius clearing most of a veteran squad. The slow trundle continued most of the game with the midfield contested and our own deployment zones safe. The flyers hit hard and took out both Scorpiuses but failed to tip the game. A long-winded combat of Brother Handro’s Delegatus against the remaining Thousand Sons vets failed to be resolved despite the assistance of the Kakophoni! In the end, no one won on primaries, no one slayed a warlord, with our win on last man standing by 1 VP. Huzzah!

We packed up and dropped off our armies  at the hotel​ before returning for the quiz. All in all a good day, 2 losses and a win. Time for day 2!

​Der H and Brother Handro​

Throne of Skulls - a Prelude

So, tomorrow is the day! Throne of Skulls! Our first doubles event and our first event at Warhammer World!

We drove down in the mean machine that is Der H’s red and white Citroen 2CV6 (Brother Handro: I can confirm that my ears are bleeding…) and set up camp in a nearby well known hotel #notsponsored.

A quick trip to Warhammer World for supplies, beer, and a cheeky practice game and we have our armies ready for war!

Game 1 ​was Tide of Carnage with Dawn of War deployment. Emperors Children started strong hitting the rapier laser destroyers hard, and shaking the Whirlwind - snap shots FTW! 

The veteran tacticals of the Sons of Horus moved up slowly, taking out both Rhinos in close combat, but they were beaten back by Kakophoni. Bio-psychic shock gives D6 wounds at AP2 instant death, no cover saves allowed. On occasion this does nothing, but a poor side roll for Ld followed by a 5 or 6 just destroys units....like it did for Brother Handro...

before...

...after... 

Eventually, the relentless heavy 2 Kakophani, the sicaran and the Whirlwind were just too potent. With some particularly harsh shots from the sicaran at Brother Handro’s Delegatus leading to the death of the Sons of Horus warlord.

Game 2 was ​Dominion using the Vanguard Strike deployment. Brother Handro seized the initiative and promptly destroyed a predator, hull pointed the other. Turn two he destroyed the sicaran, and a rhino before the scorpius scored 19 strength 8 AP 3 wounds on the squad, killing all 10 occupants! Things were not going well. Der H’s scorpius survived all 6 turns but without Vox cover the scatters were significant!

Brother Handro

I’ve gone for a chosen duty list. My plan is two Rhino mounted veteran tactical squads each with a Nuncio Vox to provide reliable firing solutions for the Whirlwind scorpius. Two rapier laser destroyers hit hard when needed, and the list is rounded out with a 5 man volkite culverin squad, 5 man tactical support squad with plasma guns. All led by a basic delgatus. 1247pts all in, and ready to go!

The practice games​ with Der H were mixed. If the laser destroyer and scorpius get hit, it all falls apart. Der H got lucky game one with his Kakophoni rolls (​Der H:​​ well...you rolled the D6 instant death dice....) ​but it was going south before that! Placement is the key me thinks, and protecting the heavy stuff without sacrificing their LoS is going to be the trick.

Der H

I’ve gone with the ol’ faithful Kakophoni as my base, built around the IIIrd company elite RoW. This allows sonic shriekers for nearly everyone of note, Kakophoni as troops (with relentless to boot) allowing 17 heavy 2 Strength 5 biopsychic shock attacks per turn. Apothecaries are near-vital for this unit as without they have a HILARIOUS ability to wipe themselves off the table (Der H: you’d be surprised at how many 1’s can be rolled with 20 D6… Brother Handro: No…no I wouldn’t….). A Delegatus makes this possible, but he has to be cheap. Sicaran battle tank and Scorpius make a nice dual-threat armoured section. I toyed between using 6 Jetbikes with 2 multimeltas or rolling up with 2 predators, eventually settling on the latter!

Let’s hope they perform as well tomorrow!

More updates on our Instagram throughout the day, and on here at some point too!

Look out for our updates via MyMiniReport, and a full review of the app next week!

Der H & Brother Handro

Motivation and Events

Motivation is often a big issue in our hobby (Brother Handro: Speak for yourself!) and, with limited time available to play with toy soldiers, if motivation and that available time don’t line up then we can easily make no progress!

We have both, however, had several rapid bursts of progress related to attending events. December 2018 saw The Hobby Butterflies attend the Road to Terra Podcasts Scouring of Melos event last year in Manchester, and much progress was made with painting our respective Legions (Brother Handro: I mean, we lost every game, nearly….).

Image Source: Tomada de Securens (www.securens.in)

Many posts and videos exist around the internet looking at motivation (Tabletop Minions being particularly vocal on this subject), but we seem to progress most effectively with a mixture of encouragement, challenge and the sense of dread associated with an impending deadline!

For The Hobby Butterflies it is events that spur us to progress. Sunkillers, Jetbikes, Doom Rider and Predators have all been added to the forces of the IIIrd legion for events. Brother Handro especially pushes the borders of sanity by insisting on a new 3000pt list for each event! His 4120pts for Melos in december was truly EPIC, and adding another 1000pts for our Throne of Skulls outing is similarly bold!

Der H

For me, having a deadline is very helpful. Much of my professional life is deadline focussed with continuous deadlines followed by another over the horizon. Exams are passed to allow the next exam, courses attended to pass the next ARCP, everything a means to the end…even if that ‘end’ is just the next step.

It is good in so far as it makes me progress and leads to completion, Kakophoni, Mechanicum and armoured elements of the IIIrd being a testament to that. It perhaps explains why Blood and Plunder, Arcworlde and Bolt action sit largely unpainted - we don’t do events for these.

Bad points are aplenty. I never paint in a relaxed, calm atmosphere. It is hard to relax and enjoy hobby for hobby’s sake when there is a deadline.

How to move forwards… Option A) is deadlines for all! (Brother Handro: You get a deadline! You get a deadline! Everyone gets a deadline!) monthly pledges worked for a while, and the ETL always brings about progress! Option B) is specifically no deadlines. Only take things to an event that are finished. When writing a list only pull from completed models, and build/paint what feels ‘next’….perhaps time will tell….or perhaps I‘ll be found dead under 3.4 tonnes of Forgeworld’s finest resin…

Brother Handro

Soooo….whilst it’s true that you get a great sense of accomplishment for nailing a huge amount of completed models in the run-up to an event, I’m not totally convinced it’s the best way to achieve your hobby goals. In practical terms, you certainly get stuff done, but personally I don’t feel that much better whilst doing the actual hobbying. Slow and steady wins the race and all that…Finding a way to keep yourself motivated is the key - for me, that’s increasingly feeling like being proactive and starting a project ASAP so that it doesn’t just fall into a box when the next shiny flits along. Finishing units/models is the secret - each one finished is not only the spur to starting the next, but also another finished unit/model on the shelf lining up with the previous ones; before you know it, you’ll have a fledgling army on the go! (Der H: assuming you manage to paint units from the same army and not get distracted…)

As long as you’re enjoying whatever you’re hobbying on, there’s no real ‘bad’ way to be and feel motivated, find what works for you and run with it. For us, I think that building small Allied detachments which can then grow into armies of their own (Der H: way ahead of you!) is a nice and practical way of easing yourself into a new army but also not getting overwhelmed by having a whole army sitting on sprue…Ooh shiny!

Summary

Motivation is an issue for wargamers (Der H: all the ones we know anyway) and everyone has their own ways of managing it….find your own path…I don’t know, just stop asking, I’ve 3000pts of Mechanicum to paint by next month….

Brother Handro & Der H

Thought for the day: “Only in death does duty end”

We have awoken!

Good lord it has been a long time again! It’s nearly the end of May, and we’ve not posted anything since November! Since then there has been much painting (Brother Handro: Ha!), two events, and a great deal of buying!

The time has come to try harder to deliver some more frequent content to motivate our progress through our respective (Der H: ever expanding…) legions of grey.

Der H is now post-exam, with NO MORE EXAMS in the foreseeable future (Brother Handro: I’ve heard that before) and now that real life is a little more settled, has promptly bought more models than sin.

Brother Handro has, again, flitted between several options, but has fleshed out the Sons of Horus to an extent never seen in our little hobby bubble (Der H: Don’t forget your rapidly expanding Instagram account Brother! Brother Handro: Linky linky)

We’ve been quite happy dishing out tempting pictures on Instagram, but haven’t really frequented our own blog…today that changes!

The plan…

Over the coming weeks we’re going to be more diligent at posting our exploits, starting with a veritable plethora of posts due this weekend when we attend…

We’re heading down this Friday for a fun-filled weekend of Heresy gaming, and the old allegiance of the Sons of Horus and the Emperors Children will be put to the test (Brother Handro: Not really a ‘fair’ test though is it….). We’re planning on discussing our list over the weekend, and already have a sneak peek of some of the competition through our operatives (Der H: Ok…its Facebook), but more on this in our Throne of Skulls - prelude post later this week.

Following that we will be reviewing the much anticipated Battle report app MyMiniReport when it is released this week. This is much anticipated so head over to their Kickstarter for details of the (now closed) campaign, or head to their forum for general chatter.

Going forwards…

Following that we have a huge backlog of blog posts to churn through, from a review of the December 2018 Scouring of Melos event hosted by the Road to Terra Podcast, to a look forwards to their next event in July. We will discuss Der H’s exploits in Durham at the Company of Legends, and will be going through and showing all the lovely plastic/resin crack we’ve been buying…

In the mean time check our our official Instagram here…

…and Brother Handro’s instagram here…

Der H & Brother Handro

Thought for the day: “Heresy grows from idleness”

Unboxing - European Pikemen

Every day is like Christmas when you’re a butterfly...you never know which of the many (​Brother Handro: ​​many.....​)​ orders will arrive in any given day...

Despite appearances​, mainly the many hundred pewter soldiers grey and neglected in my hobby room, I love the Historical pirate era game Blood and Plunder! The team at Firelock games have designed and developed a stunning system which plays well, is easy to pick up, and (​Der H:​​ best of all...​) contains pirates!

Recently Firelock tried a new funding system; Firestarter. This system allowed pre-ordering with a view to being charged once a threshold was reached. Think of it as Kickstarter light!​

The result of this process is these gorgeous European Pikemen: ​

Two sets of 4 identical casts, each comes with a length of shaped metal for a spear NB not suitable for children/cats​!​ The unit sizes in B&P range from 4-12 usually so 8 is a nice number to get started with.

The casts are clean as always, and have some nice details making them generic enough to be ‘european’ without obvious restriction to which european faction.​

Ill probably put there guys together pretty soon, but painting them....well, that is the eternal struggle.​

I shall here VOW to paint my Blood and Plunder collection in the autumn, following the 2019 Melos campaign.... after all, I have 1000pts of Krieg and 1000pts of mechanicum to finish.​

Der H 

Thought for the day:   “Take what you can. Give nothing back!”