It’s finally here! The long awaited (by me at least) finale to the Battle of Morgan’s Reach narrative campaign with SorcererDave! If you want to get caught up with the previous three instalments, go here! Otherwise, go directly to the video below, and clear three and a half hours of your life to watch it!
This game was an epic, a fitting ending to the campaign. A valiant last stand of the Cadian 404th against the unending swarm of Hive Fleet Goliath, hoping against hope for some kind of reinforcements to answer their call. I loved playing in it, and SorcererDave has done an excellent job of adding some narrative touches during the editing process. (He does a passable Sean Bean impression it seems.) If you’ve been following along with his content, or just these battle reports, there might be some shocking, even emotional moments, and fair warning, as always the comments section is full of spoilers!
Yesterday, after many delays, I finally got back down to SorcererDave's house to play the last installment in our Morgan's Reach Campaign, pitting the forces of the Cadian 404th against the might of Hive Fleet Goliath. It's been an awesome experience, and I think we ended the campaign on a high note - it was a fantastic game of twists and surprises.
Without wishing to spoil anything, we planned a few things to bamboozle the viewer, but the dice also gave us some glorious moments. In addition got to be a complete bastard in using a particular Tyranid stratagem, which was fun. I think you lot are going to like it, and I'm sure SorcererDave is going to do an excellent job in the editing and it's going to end up looking even more epic than it was to play!
So I thought, instead of doing my usual 'here is my list' bit, I'd do a quick run down of the story so far, with links to all my various blog posts and the videos themselves, so you can all catch up if you want/need to. I'll try and keep it spoiler free for anyone who hasn't seen them.
The Campaign began with the planet of Morgan's Reach in the Acheron Sector readying itself for a Tyranid invasion force. The Imperial command was aware of the approaching Hive Fleet, though they were convinced by an apparent Inquisitor of the Ordo Xenos that the attack was many weeks off, and that the defences would be more than enough to withstand the attack. As it turned out, an insidious evil was already working away on Morgan's Reach, and the forces of the Cadian 404th were caught out of position as the invasion started much earlier than predicted...
In the second part of the campaign, in a scene that was being repeated in all the major cities of Morgan's Reach, the walls of Hive Hephaestus had fallen, and the Tyranids were swarming into the ruins surrounding the spire. With the Imperial forces split, it came down to bloody, street to street, hand to hand fighting to attempt to keep the xenos menace at bay.
In part three, Imperial command ordered a bold flanking attack of the Cadian 404th, who attempted to use their heavy armour to break through the Tyranid lines and strike a killing blow to the attackers of Hive Hephaestus. But out on the plains, after weeks of absorbing bio-matter, Goliath had grown it's own monstrous, heavily armoured defenders.
And finally, in a battle report coming to your screens soon, the last of the Cadian 404th and the Imperial high command on Morgan's Reach stood defiant in their last bastion, in the shadow of Hive Hephaestus, aiming to sell their lives dearly against the oncoming swarm of Hive Fleet Goliath. For them it seemed all hope was lost, but in a desperate bid for aid, the last of the planet's astropaths congregated behind the defensive lines and attempted to break through the shadow in the warp to call for aid from any nearby Imperial forces...
It's been a while since I've posted anything. Sadly life has conspired through various means to stop me playing 40K, but I have been doing plenty of nerdy stuff, including rebasing/updating more Orks. I got a bit bored of just Boyz, so I jumped ahead a bit and grabbed the Nobz mob and a few elite characters to base up. The Nobz also needed a bit of a re-arming, since I have decided I really like Big Choppas, so now I have a mob of 10 with 9 big choppas, and double Killsaws on the Boss. Choppy!
Here they are all done! A mix of original paint jobs from the mid 2000s and repaints, hopefully it's not obvious which are which. I've included several weapon options from the AoS range instead of just chain choppas, which hopefully, along with the squigs and their warpaint, gives them a nice Snakebite feel.
More shots of the unit divided into two so you can see the individuals a bit better. I think my favourite is the one in the middle of the bottom picture. He looks like he has had just about enough and is ready to split some gits in two!
Rear/side angle for a better view of the warpaint and stuff.
And finally the elite characters that often follow the Nobz around. A WAAAGH! Banner, a 'Mekboy' (Smithboy perhaps?) and a slightly redundant Painboy, who's main special rule (6+ to ignore wounds) is pointless to Snakebites because they all get it anyway.
Anyway, hope you like them. Now back to the Boyz...
I took a break from the Orks in order to do a bit of terrain building! These terrain pieces are to serve the purpose of entrances to a Tyranid tunnel network in an upcoming narrative game (that may or may not be the finale of a narrativecampaignI'm part of on YouTube) though they could easily work as generic rocky crater things.
This is the finished product. I'm happy with how they turned out for relatively minimal effort. I think they will look good on a table swarming with Tyranids, pouring out of the ground to overrun the pathetic defences of the Cadian 404th. Or indeed, any enemy force...
This is how it started, some roughly cut segments of hardboard with chopped up chunks of dried bark slapped on in a loose circle. The bark is the stuff you can buy for vivariums presumably from pet shops - I got a big bag of the stuff off eBay ages ago for pretty cheap. It needed a bit of a clean up before hand - note that if you are going to do this you will want a mask to cover your mouth and nose for this, there is a LOT of dust. Chopping it up does have the advantage that you will have a flat-ish surface to attach to the board. The chunks were liberally glooped with PVA, and with a bit of superglue added to the least stable ones to keep them in place while the glue dried overnight.
Next stage was to fill gaps and make the shape with Polyfilla (or other brand of quick drying filler substance). If I were making nice smooth hills I would have sanded these areas down afterwards, but this is supposed to be the result of a huge monstrous snake creature rupturing the ground from below, so it is lumpy and uneven.
Next, I added a load of modelling slate, gravel, sand or whatever (plus more globs of PVA), and when that had dried, sprayed it all black. I mainly focused the rocky stuff around the base of the bark and over the filler, making sure that the centre of the tunnels was left bare.
Some drybrushing of light browns and assorted greys, and it's starting to look the part.
Finally, a bit of a wash of Agrax Earthshade semi-randomly of the gravelly bits, and a bit of static grass around the edges, and we're done! It took a few days to put together, but most of that was waiting. Probably about an hour's work in total, and most of that was preparing the materials.
And here's what it looks like 'in action'. I think they look about the right size for Trygon tunnels, and are appropriately sized to allow small to medium bugs through. Hopefully they will look good in game, and if you like them, hey, now you can make your own!
I'm working my way through Da Boyz, one mob at a time!
First there were Da Yellow Wuns...
Then they were joined by Da Pink Wuns...
And now there are Da Red Wuns as well! All based up and ready to go! That's 80 Boyz, half of the Troops in the collection.
You don't mess with the pink boyz! Especially not Ugg in the front row there. The pink unit consists of 30 boyz with choppas and sluggas, including 3 tankbusta bombz and a Nob with powerklaw.
The red unit are similar to the yellow ones, 25 boyz with shootas, included two with big shootas and two with tankbusta bombz. There is a Nob among them with a powerklaw and an alternative with a kustom shoota. You might notice that some of these boyz are notably better painted than the rest - these were a gift from a long time ago. They have been put to good use over the years, though I have not yet managed to meet their standard myself!
This time I've finally gotten round to the actual rebasing stage of the Great Rebasing. At this point I'm working through 160 Ork Boyz, doing a few repairs and repaints along the way to sort them into 6 units of 25-30 with squad identifying warpaint. At the time of writing, I have finished one 25 Shoota boyz unit (Da Yellow Ones) and have started on 30 Sluggas (Da Pink Ones). If you've been following you'll know I've gone with 32mm base adapters from Tabletop Adapters, so this is kind of a review I guess?
Here's the yellow boyz with their new base adapters attached. The front rank are special guys with two big shootas, two tankbusta bombs and two Nobz - one with a powerklaw and an alternative one with just a kustom shoota in case I want to field a nice cheap objective holding unit. At this stage you can see there is still work to be done!
Sand on the bases immediately makes them look better, but having to paint all that sand black again before drybrushing is a bit of a pain. I've experimented pre-spraying some slate and rubble bits for the next batch to speed things up a bit, we'll see how that goes.
The TTAdapters are certainly faster and easier than ripping off the bases and starting again, but I have found that they are not usually a perfect fit. Possibly because the bases they are going on are already painted and they are designed to fit nice and snug over unmodified bases? Or maybe older GW 28mm bases just vary in size slightly? In any case there is a gap on most of them that needs filling.
Green stuff over the gaps. It's not super smooth but it should make it less obvious in the end. At this stage the sand has been painted as well which really hides the fact that the bases have been extended.
First mob finished! Boom! Yellow markings on the base for ease of identification, and dags on the special ones in case opponents have trouble picking them out. Looking at them all done, I think the bases look pretty good. Definitely hare to tell they were expanded unless you know what you are looking for.
A close up of one of the gaps. It's not been filled perfectly but once painted over I don't think it stands out at a glance. Perhaps I'll put a bit more effort into hiding it on characters and elites, but this is a standard I'm happy with for 160 troop minis!
Finally, a comparison between new and old bases! I hope you'll agree they look a lot more stable on the new ones! I think it's a big improvement, and definitely worth the (relatively little) effort involved!
