Mantis Warriors Huge Update – Oath Complete!

Earlier this month I had oathed three Mantis Warrior land speeders at Something Awful. We’re sponsoring a prize for a person who does a good job with their oaths.

Before paint

Why land speeders? I think land speeders are one of the coolest vehicles in the SM armory. The Ultramarines movie portrayed them very well – flying around, scouting out territory, super loud and fast. They’re also well-armed and versatile – they can deep strike, start on the board and shoot missiles, or fly on from reserve really quickly. With the typhoon missile launchers they’re a bit expensive but I like the look.

Work in progress. Lots of coats of Iyanden Yellow went into this project.

I should say I really like the Army Painter color primers. They make painting Space Marines so much easier. For vehicles this is amplified x100 for me. I hate base coating vehicles with a brush, it just never comes out looking good for me.

I really like how they can be brought in a squad if necessary; having two in a squad is alright on points and it leaves you space for more fast attack options.

Side shot – each one is numbered. Getting decals on the shoulderpads was toughhhh.

Each speeder was painted with yellow on the ‘bumper’ to stand out a bit more. I’ve seen a ton of photos of land speeders painted with basically one color and shade. I didn’t really want that with these.

I added scorch effect to each one’s engine thrusters. I really like the look of this. Geneguard showed me how to do that with the titan gun I painted. Each one was also based with jungle flock and then some debris you’d find in a jungle.

Each speeder was given a Maelstrom Warders logo on the right side. I think these would be very dinged up after their penitent crusade plus the Badab War, so you can barely see them.

The Mantis Warriors are on a penitent crusade for what they did during the Badab War, so I wanted these things to look super banged up. I love painting armies on campaign as opposed to parade ground.

When I play with these models they’re bullet magnets (super fast, in your face, bolters can hurt them) so I figured they’d be knocked around quite a bit.

These models are just part of a batch that has been finished recently. I commissioned Geneguard to paint my Rhino chassis vehicles in trade for some WHFB models I had. He has returned to me three rhinos and three predators looking AMAZING. I added on some decals and they’re set to go. He used methods to make them look very weathered like they’re on campaign. Love it.

Contemptor Month: Revered Brother Marius of the Mantis Warriors

I have to confess: I’m a super lazy painter. I cut corners so that things look battlefield quality so I can get the stuff knocked out quickly. I usually like to take more time on the important centerpiece models, though. This dreadnought took me a week and a half to paint off and on… at some points I got fed up with painting it, and painted some Hordes models.

Didn’t like this pose that much

Once I got over my rage at painting the model I finally finished it. I think the thing that was making upset about it was the pose – I just didn’t like it at all. I took him off the base to paint it and re-posed him, and put the basing material on it to make it look like a jungle…  much better. I put a hive tyrant head on the base that Marius has just killed. This was from a model that I had painted but really didn’t like.

A more intimidating pose… he’s coming straight at you bro.

As always, covering the green base coat that I put on was trouble. I used Iyanden Darksun for the yellow portions. I really like the look of the silver parts of it… the hood around his head, the weapons, the codpiece. I like silver a lot with MW.

Rear shot… I used the same extreme highlighting on this one. I really like the look of the jungle grass on his base, since the rest of my army will be on jungle bases, and my Tyranids are too.

I used the weathering method that Geneguard showed me to make him look battle damaged. I also made his melta scorched, as they’d be super heated and he used it a few times taking down that hive tyrant.

I think the cool part of this model that will make a few people ask about it will be the hive tyrant head. I tried to make it stand out with a really bright blood color without going over the top like a 12 year old’s first dreadnought. Marius just cut off it’s head with his fist.

I used hot glue strands to make the arteries.I really like how that turned out. If Marius is good enough to take down a hive tyrant, he could take down anybody. Right?

Mantis Warriors Update – TERMINATORS!

I’ve been working steadily on my Mantis Warriors this winter. I am trying to get one squad done per week right now. This past week I’ve been working on my thunder hammer / storm shield terminators.

I’m also trying to focus on following the Forgeworld IA 10 book as closely as possible with my decals and coloring. There are some things I just won’t be able to do, like the lines on the rhinos – I just don’t think I have the ability to do that.

These terminators turned out way better than I could have expected. I did some heavy highlighting (something I haven’t done a ton of with Tyranids) and dry brushing and followed it up with badab black wash. I painted each one’s helmet a little differently to provide some variation. I ended up using Iyanden yellow on their shoulder pads just because it is a foundation paint and it goes on so much better than regular yellow paints. I think iyanden yellow will be my go to for the rest of the army. (Thanks Cerberus).

The thunder hammers and storm shields are from Maxmini. The one thing I messed up on are the crux pads. They’re not yellow like in the FW book. I think I can manage to deal with it… not every force will look the same.

You can see the yellow on their helmets in this photo.

 

All of my painted Mantis Warriors, minus two drop pods.

Geneguard painted up a Chaplain for me for Christmas. You might notice that he is very similar to the one in our blog header 🙂 He’ll be based and decaled tonight!

 

Mantis Warriors Update

Hipster filter! I liked Mantis Warriors before they were cool.

We’re in Week 2 of Scott’s campaign at Gamers Sanctuary and I’ve painted some models, purchased some hobby upgrades for the army, and come to an epiphany.

I decided to paint my sniper scouts first because I imagine I’ll be using them in every game. I like scouts a ton, I like how they can infiltrate and they can get a 3+ cover save. Mantis Warriors are also known for their stealth skills so they’ll be one of the main elements of my army most of the time. They have performed admirably in most of the games I’ve played so far.

Shots of the two units (2x sergeant with sniper rifle, 3 scouts with sniper rifles, missile launcher). I have to finish painting their bases black.

I also purchased some custom dice for my Mantis Warrior army from Chessex. You may recall that I had these done for Tyranids as well. I think having sweet dice that tie into your army and a nice display board just makes everything really cool package that impresses people.

My Tyranid dice design

The last thing that happened this week with Mantis Warriors was that I had an epiphany. I’ve been a grognard for a while about special characters. I hated how they changed the game, introduced dozens of special rules that I had to learn, and encouraged players to be as non-creative as possible.

This pretty well illustrates how I view myself in my mind’s eye

It is pretty clear with 5th Edition coming to a close that in 6th Edition special characters will be even bigger than they were in 5th. If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em. I feel like special characters have been created to encourage you to use them and their dozens of special rules and the codexes are built with them as the centerpiece.

The other thing is that I always always always encourage people to play their game differently than they usually do, and special characters open up those differences everywhere. I was being a hypocrite!

The first special character I’ll be using will be Telion. He’ll be the dude with the scope in hand in my scout sniper squad. He’ll be sweet for making a missile launcher BS 6 or picking out sergeants. After that, I’m looking at Captain Muggario Khan with a command squad on bikes with storm shields and thunder hammers depending on the points limit for week 3. I’ll write up some fluff for Muggario to protect my wounded pride.

Keep watching the blog for more news on FOODHAMMER!

Mantis Warrior Librarian and GS Tourney

I’ve been working most of the week on my second Mantis Warrior model – my librarian. The Black Library stories that involve Mantis Warriors usually star a librarian, so I figured my army should be led by one. There is also a pretty awesome character in the Badab War books that is a librarian.

I bought an Emperor’s Champion model and cut off his head, one arm, and one hand. I had a “marine standard” arm that I cut the flag off of and just had a bare shaft. I cut off two blades from a rhino dozer thingy and glued them on the ends (the Mantis Warrior librarians use a special force weapon that has blades at either end). Then I glued a bolt pistol arm on his other side (man I wish they could take a storm shield without terminator armor).

I printed off decals from Bolter and Chainsword and printed them on water slide transfer paper. Using Micro Set made it a lot easier to put the decals on. I had to Dullcote them but the decals turned out really well. The above picture doesn’t really show the shoulderpad one very well.

I painted the librarian Mordian Blue because I wanted a really dark blue. The hood, loin cloth and kneepads were painted green. His shoulderpad was painted yellow. I tried to wet blend his force weapon – it looks pretty cool in person. I’m not very artistic so a lot of those kinds of techniques are way out of my territory. I’m lucky I can highlight anything.

There was also a tourney at GS today. I think the Sunday time was bad for people because unfortunately only 5 people showed up. All 5 armies looked super sweet, though. I took some pics:

Spearhead

Over the weekend we gathered at Brian’s house to test Spearhead, the game variant GW put out a while back in a WD. We’ve played many of the variant game types so far and it makes the game a lot better to mix in a change once in a while. I wasn’t too keen on Spearhead from the start, since 5th Edition is already Warhammer Tank Battles and the Tyranid spearhead formations were abysmal. We played it this weekend and I used my newly minted Mantis Warriors.

My army was made up of the following:

Captain on bike, relic blade
Librarian in terminator armor
Terminators with storm bolters and fists
Bike squadron, attack bike, melta, fist
Bike squadron, attack bike, melta, fist
Land speeder storm, melta
Scout squad with bolters and missile launcher
Predators x2, autocannon + bolters
Vindicator
Venerable dreadnought, TL lascannon and fist

Not a super spearheady army, but really I used all the tanks I have so far. I have three rhinos to put together and a crusader that needs new guns. The bikes and speeder were part of the “Seek and Destroy” spearhead formation where they can go flat out or turboboost and still shoot a shot once per game. The tanks were part of an armored spearhead where they got a 5+ invuln save.

My partner Brian brought three vindicators, three baal predators, and three lascannon predators. He also had two deep striking units of terminators.

We faced off against Eldrad and Tau. Lots of railguns, lots of wave serpents and fire prisms. Eldrad is the biggest jerk in the world.

The game played very similar to regular 40k. We ran at each other from two short sides of an 8×4 board. Rather, the Blood Angels and Mantis Warriors charged headlong and then deep struck our terminators in. The Tau managed to land some crisis suits in the back of our lines that didn’t die to a torrent of fire, so they contested one of our objectives.

Our terminators and most of my bikes were ‘Doom’-ed by Eldrad and died like babies. We did manage to destroy quite a few things, but not enough to hold their main objective at the end of the game.

Brian’s vindicators charged forward on the first turn. My bikes moved up. This was pre-Eldrad.

My land speeder storm (nicknamed “Deathtrap”) managed to scout 24, move 24 in my first turn, then move 24 in my second turn. He made it all the way across the board in two turns, it was pretty funny.

Josh’s Eldar made a suicide flank march to try to blow up our tanks. It worked out pretty well for them, then they died.

Deathtrap takes on an entire tau armored division

Minutes later everything was dead from Doom

I think we had a great time. It was pretty much 40k as the book says it should be – lots of stuff blowing up. Next time I think I’d take less bikes and three more tanks. We’ll try to kill Eldrad in turn one as well. Dude is a jerk.

Teaser! Mantis Warrior drop pod priming:

Trials of the Mantis Warriors: First Blood

I played my first game with my Mantis Warriors last night against Tau4Eva’s Blood Angels. I haven’t painted a single model yet, mostly just trying things out. I’ve not played as Codex Space Marines before.

My whole idea with this Mantis Warrior force is to present them after the Badab War. They don’t have a lot of anything – no spam, really, except a few tac squads in rhinos. The chapter has always been focused on stealth tactics and lightning strikes, so I’ll include sniper scouts, land speeders, and bikes.

I was pretty limited to what I could take last night. My list:

Captain, storm bolter relic blade
Librarian, terminator armor
Terminators with storm bolter and powerfist (plan to get cyclone launchers)
Venerable Dread with Plasma Cannon (BS5 whuuuuuuut)
Sternguard squad with 2x combi plasma, 1 combi melta, 1 combi flamer, 1 powerfist, rhino
Tac squad with ML, Pfist, Flamer, Rhino
Tac squad with ML, Pfist, Flamer, Rhino
Scout squad, snipers, ML, camo cloaks
Scout squad, snipers, ML, camo cloaks
Scout squad, bolters, heavy bolter
Land speeder storm
Bike squad x6, pfist and meltagun

My general idea was to use the scouts to shoot at stuff and hold objectives while the tac squads reinforced where needed. The sternguard zipped to the area of need and the terminators were a fire magnet. The Speeder Storm went forward with its scout move, got assaulted first turn (he had first turn) and was wrecked.

I had to use my Chaos rhinos for now. I had an extra Rhino on the table at the beginning by accident.

We rolled the Chaos Space Marine battle mission where the world is on fire. This cut LOS a LOT on the table! the fire lanes were pretty narrow.

The tac marines in rhinos are backing up my right flank, the terminators and sternguard hold the middle, and the bikes and scouts hold my left flank.

Luckiest scout missile in the world.

On turn 1 Adam wrecked my speeder and killed the scouts inside. He moved up on my right flank and I realized I was probably outmatched there. The LOS blocking terrain made it tough.

In the bottom of turn 1 my scout on the left flank used a missile to blow up one stormraven. So awesome. I then got another lucky shot from a missile on his razorback on my left flank.

From there it was extremely bloody. He moved in on my right flank, I shot him up, he destroyed my scouts. I managed to drive off an entire 5 man assault squad with power weapon with 1 terminator late in the game to contest an objective. I then managed to kill his other stormraven with my PFist sergeant (needing a 6 to hit, glance, a 6 on the damage chart since his flyer went all-out).

It was a super close game, probably the closest I’ve played in 40k in a year. Props to Adam for the great game. We tied 1-1 on objectives with 5 down on the field!

My terminator broke the assault marines off of the objective.

My librarian. Two handed force sword.

The Grass is Always Greener!

I’ve been bitten. We’ve been playing our Deathwatch campaign, I’ve played a ton of Space Marine and I’ve been reading Imperial Armour 9 and 10. Guess who stars in all those games? Loyalist Space Marines.

I sold off my Blood Angels a few months ago because I just wasn’t digging the army or my models anymore. The way you see most BA armies was not how I imagined them in the fluff. I was just dissatisfied as a whole with the army and made a decent amount back on eBay.

I was pretty proud to not have a Space Marine army there for a while, but having only Tyranids and Chaos Space Marines makes things tough. My tyranids just aren’t that great, no matter how much I love them, and Chaos Space Marines are way overpriced points-wise. Plus, I’m not able to field an imperial army. So I decided to start a loyalist chapter that adheres to the codex.

I had been super interested in some of the Badab War chapters, so I decided to model my marines after a chapter from the IA books. I chose the Mantis Warriors. They sound really cool and I like the colors and the fluff.

I have a few goals with this new army:

• Paint all the models in order to adhere to the codex astartes
• Model them in order to adhere to the codex astartes
• Follow the fluff for the Mantis Warriors chapter
• Build a large enough army to participate in a Badab War campaign
• Paint them quickly and efficiently
• Model the rhinos with something really cool on them. Stripes, the arrow, etc.

There is a tiger stripe camo pattern that is shown in multiple pieces of fluff regarding the Mantis Warriors.My painting skills are definitely not up to that level so they’re all gonna be green, and possibly some all-yellow guys. Haven’t figured that part out yet.

I’ve been whining about all the blogs I follow and how they used to be about Tyranids and now they’re about Space Wolves or Grey Knights or whatever. I stop listening to a podcast if it is mostly about marines. I think I’ll just have to buck up and remember why I started playing the game, lol.

I’ve chosen my painting colors. I’m thinking I’ll prime everything using Army Painter to a certain green color if possible (if not, airbrush) and then paint. Yellow is gonna be tough for the marines that don’t have removable shoulderpads, so I’ll have to see how that works out.