Order of the Valarous Heart

Well since I decided to get my half completed armies finished I have been tinkering around with army lists when I am not painting. In a previous blog titled Inquisitor Lord or Canoness?, I was debating on which HQ to use. Well I have since decided to go with an all Sisters army and I am very happy with that decision.

I thought that today I would post my initial 2000 point list of the Order of the Valarous Heart and get some feedback on it. I already know most people will probably tell me to get a 2nd Exorcist and trust me as soon as I purchase a 2nd one I will be altering my list to accomodate it. Ok now on to the list.

The Order of the Valarous Heart

HQ:
Canoness
Book of St. Lucius
Rosarius
Inferno Pistol
Eviscerator
7 Celestian Retinue
Bolter (x5)
Heavy Flamer
Banner Bearer
Sister Superior
Rhino Transport
Storm Bolter
Extra Armor
Smoke Launchers

Elite:
7 Celestian Squad
Bolter (x5);
Meltagun
Heavy Bolter
Veteran Sister Superior
Book of St. Lucius
Melta Bombs
Power Weapon
Combi-Flamer
Rhino Transport
Storm Bolter
Extra Armor
Smoke Launchers

Troops:
9 Battle Sisters Squad
Bolter (x7)
Meltagun
Heavy Flamer
Veteran Sister Superior
Book of St. Lucius
Bolt Pistol
Close Combat Weapon
Rhino Transport
Storm Bolter
Extra Armor
Smoke Launchers

Troops:
9 Battle Sisters Squad
Bolter (x7)
Meltagun
Heavy Flamer
Veteran Sister Superior
Book of St. Lucius
Bolt Pistol
Close Combat Weapon
Rhino Transport
Storm Bolter
Extra Armor
Smoke Launchers

Troops:
9 Battle Sisters Squad
Bolter (x8)
Heavy Flamer
Sister Superior

Troops:
8 Inquisitorial Stormtroopers
Frag Grenades
Targeter
Hellgun (x8)
Chimera Transport
Turret Multilaser
Hull Mounted Heavy Flamer
Extra Armor
Smoke Launchers

Fast Attack:
4 Seraphim Squad
Twin Bolt Pistols (x3)
Twin Inferno Pistols
Veteran Sister Superior
Bolt Pistol
Eviscerator

Fast Attack:
4 Seraphim Squad
Twin Bolt Pistols (x3)
Twin Hand Flamers
Veteran Sister Superior
Close Combat Weapon
Plasma Pistol

Fast Attack:
4 Dominion Squad
Bolter (x2)
Meltagun (x2)
Sister Superior
Immolator Transport
Extra Armor
Smoke Launchers
Twin Linked MultiMelta

Heavy Support:
4 Retributor Squad
Bolter (x1)
Heavy Bolter (x3)
Sister Superior
Immolator Transport
Twin Linked Heavy Flamer
Extra Armor
Smoke Launchers

Heavy Support:
Exorcist
Exorcist Missile Launcher
Extra Armor

Total Points: 2000

Ok so this is the list I am going to start practicing with, please feel free to give me any feedback. I will be going through and naming the Squads and Vehicles as well as the Sister Superiors and Canonness, but I usually wait to do that untilI have a more finialized list.

As always thanks for taking the time to read my blog.

-BJ

Change of Plans

All was quiet yesterday afternoon as I was finishing up assembling my Vampire Counts. I was just about to fire up Army Builder and make a few VC lists when I heard a crash in my garage. I rushed out to see what happened. As I was about to open the door my cat flew through the pet door, past me and up to our 2nd story. I walked through the door to see my gaming shelves have fallen down (I am sure the cat was involved somehow) and terrain and minis were all over my garage floor.


Luckily most of my minis were on the lower shelves and took almost no damage, but my Tomb Kings were on the 4th or 5th shelf and were devastated. I spent the rest of the afternoon cleaning up and fixing my terrain that took some damage. I then spent the rest of the night and most of this morning fixing all of my Tomb Kings.

Through all of this I realized a few things. I have too many half-painted armies. My Tomb Kings were just one of them, I also have my Witchhunters/Sisters of Battle, Daemon Hunters, Dwarfs, and an Imperial Fleet for battle Fleet Gothic. So I am changing my future projects list to getting these armies completed.

So my Valhallan conversion will be temporarily on hold while I get to work on these half painted armies. Since my Templars are almost complete they will make the list of things to do. So it look like I will be doing allot of painting over the next couple of weeks, and I will be sure to update my progress on the blog.

As always thanks for taking the time to read my thought and comments are always welcome.

-BJ

Cookie Cutter/Flavor of the Month Lists

Earlier in the week I was on BoLS and read a post called 40K Editorial: What Really Matters? I read the post and in it Jwolf ask us players what we think of List Maximizing, Wargear Spamming and Denial tactics. It is a great article because you get plenty of opinions from other players. I highly recommend reading it.

While reading the article I decided that none of the topics Jwolf asked about really bother me. I like to play tough lists as I find it improves me as a player. Then I started thinking about what does bother me. My biggest complaint when playing 40K is the cookie cutter or Flavor of the armies that always show up. What do I mean by cookie cutter of FotM armies? Well those are armies that always, no matter who is playing them consist of one or two of the same proven hard hitting units. I will give a few examples, the Mech Eldar with mandatory Seer council on Jetbikes or the ork army with Warboss and Nobz on bikes with a painboy. Those are just two examples I am sure you know the others.

As I stated earlier, I am all for playing a tough list, but when every Orc player (Orks were chosen at random, feel free to insert any army) has an almost identical list it does tend to get boring to play against. Sometimes it feels like people no longer put thought into their list, they just look on the net or copy what they have seen others use in a tournament. This is not a matter of I hate playing a tough list, for me it is about not enjoying playing the same lists over and over again.

Now I have two questions, first how do you players out there feel about these cookie cutter lists? Secondly is it a problem where you play or am I just unlucky in that aspect?

As always thank you for reading the blog and I welcome any responses you may have.

-BJ

Cobblestone base tutorial

I had found this tutorial for making cobblestone bases with greenstuff. It is a fairly easy concept I know but the guy at In Sanguin Veritas has it down to step by step. I thought this might be good for anyone out there who is just getting into using greenstuff. I knocked out about 40 of cobblestone bases today for my Vampire Counts army and they look great.

Here is the link to the tutorial. Cobblestone Base Tutorial

Projects Update!

I finished a few of my painting projects this week. First up were my final 4 Templar Neophytes. They have a simple all black paint scheme which makes them stand out better in my crusade squads. The faces gave me some trouble this time but in the end I was happy with how they turned out. This leaves me with 8 more Initiates with bolt pistol and ccw, 2 Initiates with melta guns and 4 initiates with various heavy weapons left to paint and then all of my Templar troops are done.

Next up on my completed projects was my limited edition Emperor's Champion. I was so excited to find him on Ebay a few months ago. There are usually a few of him every time I look but they are either already painted or going for $50. I got lucky and found mine completely unpainted with 2 mins to go on the auction and the price at $14 so I bid my $15 bucks and waited out the timer. I am pretty happy with how he turned out, but I will need to go back over his robes, when posting this I saw some areas with bad brush strokes. He was my last HQ model to paint for my Templars, so once I finish the troops I will have a Rhino and a Predator tank to complete the entire army.

Now my biggest problem is going to be deciding which Emperor's Champion to take to any games I play. My nice new Limited Edition champion or my conversion who has served me so well over the last year? Oh well when it comes to game day maybe I will just let a dice roll decide for me.

I won't be painting minis for a day or two as I just got some new greenstuff and plan to continue my Valhallan conversions going. I will post my progress on those as I get some complete.

Converting Valhallans Part 1

In my last post I showed my first attempts at converting my Cadian guard into Valhallans. Well my first attempt was OK but I knew it could be better. Lucky for me Karitas from Excommunicate Tratoris stopped by the blog to give me a few tips. Then maybe a day later he posted a Greenstuff Coat Tutorial on his blog. After reading it over, I completely scrapped my attempted conversion and will be attempting to use his technique, only making the coats a little more winter in flavor. So I would like to say thank you to Karitas for all of his help.


Now the conversions I originally worked on were not all bad. I did manage to work out how I will make my conscripts look different from my core army. While researching way to convert Valhallans, I came across this post on Librarium Online. The original poster was looking for a conversion for Valhallan Storm Troopers. Then a few responses down a member posted pics of his conversion as food for thought. Well I loved his conversion and decided to adapt it for Valhallan conscripts. These are pictures of my first attempts. I am very happy with the results and all that is left for this model is to make the fur lined gloves for his hands.


I will continue to post as I make more progress on my conversions. Tomorrow I will be starting my 2nd attempt at long coats using the tutorial provided by Karitas. Once I get that perfected then my next problem to solve is how to convert some female troops so that I can accurately represent the Vahallan 597th from the Ciaphas Cain 40K novels.

My first attempt at converting Valhallans

Here is my first attempt at adding a great coat onto my Cadians. While I know it is not perfect i feel like I am off to a good start. I used Ron's Sculpting a half tabard post over on FTW as a starting point. I used some construction paper to get the foundation of the great coat. I then coated the paper with super glue and let it dry. Next was a thin layer of green stuff. I then rolled thin logs to use as the coats edging.



Today my plan is to make the arm cuffs and collar as well as add a bedroll onto the belt. I also noticed some areas of the coat where I will need a thin layer of greenstuff to smooth out some rough spot where I must have accidentally touched the model when setting it aside to cure. I am going to be ordering the CODE: HD.11 KOL MILITIA WINTER HEADGEAR from Pig Iron Productions, mostly because my sculpting skills are no where near good enough to do heads yet, but after this army is complete I am hoping that they will improve significantly!

I also managed to finish painting my Dwarf Hammerers over the weekend. This mean I have another army that is almost completely painted. Unfortunately when I was at my game store this weekend, I worked out a trade with a buddy of mine. I am trading my unpainted Wood Elf army for a Warriors of Chaos, so more distractions to keep me from getting whole armies finished.

Well let me know what you think of the conversion. Any ideas or suggestion are welcome.

-BJ

Valhallan Conversion Question

Ok I have finally gotten around to reading the new IG codex and I like what I have read. It has inspired me to start my very first large conversion army. In the past I have had a few models throughout my army that I have converted but now I am looking to improve my conversion skill and the amount of converting present in my army.

I am a big fan of the Ciaphas Cain 40K novels and so I want to make the Vahallan 597th. I could just order the Vahallans a $35 for a 10 man squad, but I have about 60 plastic Cadians just hanging around and would like to put them to good use. I had seen a tutorial on the web for converting Cadians to Valhallans about a year ago, but I searched for hours last night with no luck.

So what I am looking for is some ideas on how to convert plastic Cadians into Vahallans with great coats. I know I will be using allot of green stuff so if you have any suggestions or know where that online tutorial is I would be very grateful. I will also be needing to convert some female troopers as the 597th is a mixed company so any ideas for making females guard would be most helpful as well.

Thanks in advance for any ideas/help you may have.

BJ

After the Battles

I got in two games yesterday with my Black Templars Tournament list and I realized two things. First my list is pretty solid and performed as I expected it to. Second and most importantly I need to play much more 5th edition as I am still rusty at it.

I also learned another unit to fear on the table. My first game was against Speed Freaks Orks. I had expected to see the Nob Bike mob with Warboss and it was there. What I didn't expect or even know was a threat was something my opponent nicknamed the "Burna Wagon", 14 Burnas mounted in a basic battle wagon. I have an ork army and this is a combination I never dreamed of.

Well it got to my 15 strong Crusade Squad including my Emperor's champion. It then dropped the flame template which struck 9 models. Well there are 14 burnas in that open topped vehicle so that became 9x14= 126 wounds. Even after allocating as much as I could towards neophytes the majority of the squad had 5 wounds each with a few only 4 wounds. My Emperor's Champion was the only member of the squad to survive. This unit can be devastating if it gets to your troops.

Now it is partially my fault, one for not knowing how devastating that unit could be but also because I hit and penetrated the armor of the damn Battle Wagon in both turns 1 and 2, but with crappy rolls only managed to get a "crew shaken" result both times. That unit combined with his Warboss and Nob bikers basically gutted my army.

I did much better in my second game where I faced off against Imperial Guard. It was a blood bath and in the end ended up a draw. I did have one of those epic cinematic moments when my Chaplain and the crusade squad he was with were struggling against some Ogryn. No matter what I did the Chaplain was not doing much damage to the Ogryn and the squad was doing even worse. My Emperor's Champion and his Squad were heading for the Guard line when he noticed the Chaplain struggling. He left his squad and marched over to the Ogryn scored 3 wounds on his charge which in the end caused them to flee and were run down. It was a very heroic moment for my Champion.

This weeks projects and other gibberish!

This weeks projects are all about finishing up my almost painted armies. First on my list is my Black Templars. I have based my Limited Edition Emperor's Champion as well as my last 4 Neophytes. Later tonight, if the temperature goes below 100 I will get these models primed and ready for paint. Once completed I will then be down to 13 troop models and 2 vehicles to finish my entire Templar collection.

First up on painting today will be the Hammerers for my wife's Dwarf collection. I have been promising her for about 2 years that I would finish up what was left of her collection and I guess I should make good on that promise soon. I seem to get the "evil eye" any time she sees me painting and it is not one of her precious Dwarfs. Once I get this unit painted then I am down to roughly 3 more 10 man units 1 war machine and crew, and about 3 characters.

OK, so projects are out of the way, I had posted in my last blog Extremis Diabolus: Inquisitor Lord or Canoness? about which HQ to use in my Sisters of Battle list. I got some good responses and I think I am going to go ahead and make lists with both, then try them out to see which fits my play style better. I am still leaning towards the Canoness but I was able to create lists using both that I am very happy with.

It is looking like I will be able to get in a game or two this weekend so I am going to try out my new Black Templar list I am refining for tournament play. You can check my list out here, let me know what you think. I will post the outcomes of my battles and let you know how I thought my list did.

Well that is all I got today, time to get some painting done on the Dwarfs, my wife will be sooo happy!

Inquisitor Lord or Canoness?

Today I finished reading the 40K novel Faith and Fire, and have now been inspired to finish my Sisters of Battle army, the Order of the Valorous Heart. I have had this army in a partial state of painting for years so I am excited to feel like painting them again.

I starting playing the Sisters before they ever belonged to the Witch Hunters codex. Since becoming a part of the Inquisition I have had a hard time deciding between using a Canoness or a Witch Hunter as my HQ. Both have their upsides and downsides to using them.

At this time I am leaning towards a pure Sisters list. My thinking on this is I can get two units of Celestians without taking up an additional elite slot. Another benefit seems to be that the Canoness and her squad seem to be around 30-40 points cheaper than the Witch hunter squads I would want to run. The down side is that I lose the Witch Hunter's abilities against psykers and the use of Assassins.

I am going to play around with a few lists before making my final decision, but I wanted to put this out there to get some feedback on what other players see as advantages/disadvantages to each. I appreciate any feedback from my fellow games.

-BJ

Looking for advice on an Ork conversion

This is my current conversion project for my orks. My Ork clan is based off Deathskulls. This particular clan has recently defeated some Ultra Marines in battle, so naturally much of their plunder is going to be marine based gear.

My conversions have been going very smoothly until I hit this Battlewagon. When finished it will be run as a Battlewagon with a killkannon, a kannon and 2 rokkit launchas. It will have the ard case and grot riggers upgrades. Now my other conversions have ended up looking much more orky than this one. They look random and haphazard but still maintain enough of original vehicle to know where it originated.

For me this vehicle still looks to "neat" for lack of a better word. It looks very symmetric and not nearly as random as my other ork vehicles do. I still want it to be recognizable as a Land Raider, but it is just not quite ork'd up enough for me.

I still have some work to do on the front of the vehicle but I just can't move onto it because I am not happy with how it is looking up to this point, so I have set the whole thing aside to come back to at a later date.

So what I am looking for is some feedback on this model. Am I just losing my mind and the vehicle looks fine? Or do you all see the same thing I see?

I am looking for constructive feedback so please feel free to say whats on your mind. My feeling are not easily hurt.

Thank you in advance for taking the time to help me out.

-BJ

Painted Iconography or Decals?

This is a question that has plagued me since I started the hobby. I personally suck at hand drawing and painting icons, but decals were limited to what was provided and never quite looked right once applied. So as I often find myself doing, I turned to the web for help.

Luckily I found this great tutorial for Custom Decal Sheets on Bell of Lost Souls. Not only was the tutorial right on about how to make your own decal sheets, it also opened my eyes to some wonderful products called Decal Solvents. The tutorial recommended Micro-Sol and Micro-Set but there are various ones on the market available to you.

This little tutorial has really helped me improve the looks of my armies. Once I got the supplies all I did was fire up Paint Shop Pro (any graphics program will do) and a quick surf of the web for "Black Templars" provided me with many images I could use for my models. I picked out the best ones and made a few combinations and soon I had my very own decal sheet ready to print off.

Now it is important to follow all of the steps in the tutorial, you don't want to forget to spray your decal sheet with the High Gloss finish. Let me repeat... you don't want to forget to spray your decal sheet with the High Gloss finish. It is also important to know if you will need clear decal paper or white.

The solvents were the truly incredible thing for me. They make your decals soft so they better adhere to non-flat surfaces. Even on a flat surface they help the decal stick better and you end up with much less if any air under the decal. This gives the decal that painted on look and the results are awesome.

If you struggle with painting on icons for your minis, I hope you will find the tutorial as useful as I did. I have included a few images of my models so you can see the results that you can get. If you have any questions or need any help please feel free to let me know.

An Introduction

I was searching the web the other day for a tutorial on making an Ork Killkannon for my Battle Wagon when I ran across an article on From the Warp . I looked around the site for a bit and realized there were links to tons of other 40K blogs. I was amazed at not just the information available but also with the community feel I got from the whole thing. I decided at that moment this was something I wanted to be a part of.

I tried the rest of the night to come up with a creative name for my blog. No matter how much I tried I couldn't come up with anything I liked. I decided to get some sleep and come back to my dilemma later. The next day I was reading the 40K novel "Faith and Fire" when it hit me. My favorite story lines in 40K are those with an anti-witch theme, so with a quick glance through my Witch Hunter codex I found what I was looking for. Extremis Diabolus, the most serious accusation that an Inquisitor can possibly give and the punishment is death.

Next I sat down and made my logo which had the blog name, the "suffer not the witch to live" quote and the 3 icons of my anti-witch armies, The Ordo Hereticus, The Black Templars and The Order of the Valorous heart. I am sure this blog will change appearance as I learn more about blogging and any suggestions are greatly appreciated.

Well I guess that is all for now. I promise my posts will be more useful and on topic in the future I just wanted to get my first one over with and what better way than to tell how the blog got started.