"Booma" Rhinox, Coarseman of Rockridge.

The constantly recycled air, water and food have an inevitable effect on the inhabitants of Necromunda. Pollutants and toxins build up in the bio-system causing genetic instability and mutation, and the effects of these are worse further down the Hive where the toxins are more concentrated. Because mutation is so common, minor deformities are tolerated to a degree, even Uphive. 

Underhivers are more tolerant of mutants than other Necromundans. So long as mutants keep a low profile and are not obviously or grossly deformed, they can live peaceably even inside a large settlement, and for those too mutated to live in a big settlement, the lawless expanse of the hive bottom  provides ample opportunity to hide.

Deviants, Muties and Scalies are just some of the many names for the mutant, and such names are often spoken aloud by the inhabitants of Rockridge. However, there is one name that is only whispered for fear of invoking their wrath....the Coarsemen!

The Black Legacy (Part IV) - The Laboratory

Dragosani watched as the Voodoo Dolls moved out to secure the perimeter of the compound. Despite the Escher gang's reputation for dabbling in alchemical technologies and pharmaceuticals, the gang had shown little interest in the Inquisitor's prize.
"And if it stays that way they might just get out of this venture alive." said Jared flashing the Inquisitor a smile.
Dragosani scowled at his Interrogator "If you direct your talents towards the task at hand instead of eavesdropping on my thoughts. then perhaps they might at that."
Jared offered up a rueful grin and an apologetic shrug by way of reply. He had every confidence in the Voodoo Dolls holding the line, he was more concerned about what awaited them in the Laboratory...

Aaron Quaid, master charlatan

Born the son of a ripper Jack Wrangler he always knew he was destined for Greater things.
Ever since a hard of hearing slaver ticket salesman wrongly thought he said his name was Baron Quaid and gave him free premium tickets to to the big fight Aaron has really made quite a lucrative lifestyle for himself. He took the money he had saved on tickets and spent it on some exotic furs to better blend in and hope nobody noticed..... they didn't and now he's gained quite a few tricks of the trade and no short measure of free rides.

Jack Slice, Pumpkinhead.

Once a year when the night is blacker than a preacher's shorts. Jack slice stalks the hive!

The Black Legacy (Part III) - The Compound

Fellon cursed as the papers tumbled from his desk and scattered across the floor. He quickly snatched them up and stuffed them into his journal in no particular order.
"Calm yourself Fellon" he muttered to himself.
He took a deep breath to still his racing mind and formulate a plan.
He had to get away, leave the compound and travel deeper into the Underhive where even the most determined of Inquisitors couldn't find him. With his notes he could set up another laboratory in a more remote level and continue to perfect his rejuvenation serum. He would leave with only a handful of retainers to avoid drawing unwanted attention. Of course, he would need to take one of the aberrations with him to carry the specimen but hopefully the Inquisition would be too preoccupied dealing with the miners of the Kindred to notice him slip away.
The Inquisition!
Just the thought of them was enough for panic to claw at his mind once more. Fellon took another deep breath to calm himself. Fellon was convinced that they had stumbled across him while investigating another matter. They were Ordo Hereticus, the witch hunters, and not the Ordo Xenos that he would expect to be searching for him. Perhaps, once they realised that the Kindred harboured no Psykers, they would leave the Kindred be....perhaps.
Guilt gnawed away at his insides as he contemplated the Kindred's fate. They were just simple miners who had overcome adversity; with the help of his serum he told himself; and were no threat to the upper echelons of the Imperium.
Not everyone had overcome their adversity in equal measure though, mused Fellon as he glanced across the room at his faithful retainer. There had been 'aberrations' with his earlier work but that was to be expected with such ground breaking work.

 Every adjustment he made to his serum showed improvement and he was convinced he was close to completing his work.
"But your work is complete Fellon."  said the stranger entering the room.
"It has been completed for some time now."
"Who are you....and what are you doing here? stammered Fellon.
"My name is Malakhi my good doctor....and I'm here to show you the fruits of your labours!"

"I don't understand....I don't have..." Fellon's words fell away as the Magus stepped aside to reveal the figure standing behind him.
Fellon stared in horror at the creature standing before him. He looked at the thing in the tank, then back to the monstrosity that moved towards him. This couldn't be... he had been meticulous in his research... all those years of careful testing and re-testing... this wasn't possible!
Fellon Black opened his mouth to scream and the thing in the tank made manifest sealed it with a kiss....

Games Workshop Team Championships 2019

So the weekend just gone was the long awaited Games Workshop Team Challenge event with the CSM sending 2 teams of 4.

One was designated the team shooting for a painting award, the other was designated the team actually expected to do reasonably well with gaming.

I was in the team shooting for the painting award...

I've posted my list before on the blog and figured I'd do a quick run down of my games. I didn't take any photos as I was actually feeling a bit ropey over the weekend and it took all my significant brain power just to focus on the games! ;)

My buddies were running Salamanders, World Eaters and Chaos Marines. Me, Wolves for maybe their last outing for a while...

Game 1 vs Imperial Guard - Narrow The Search

This is my toughest mission as there were no invulnerable saves to be had within 12" of the centre of the table which put the jeepers up my wulfen, wolf lords and battle leader. Aka a significant portion of my army!

To make it worse you get points for having more models then your opponent in the centre of the table, and I drew Guard...

Oh and deployment was hammer & anvil.

Great.

Things started well when I won the roll to deploy first and go first. Except my opponent stole the initiative.

Double great.

He had a bunch of infantry, a bullgryn squad, 3 tank commanders one of which was Pask and a bunch more guard. Oh and a vindicare.

Slightly oddly, given the mission, he deployed about 30 of his infantry on top of a 2 level ruin comfortably in his deployment zone. Meanwhile he advanced the other half of his infantry and his bullgryns towards the ruins. His shooting popped a rhino and killed a few wulfen.

My army essentially barrelled forward and used psychic powers and a stratagem to make everything hard to hit and in cover whilst taking 2 rounds of shooting from his tank commanders.

It came down to me just about managing to get my wolf lords and battle leader into the bullgryns a hairs breadth outside 12" of the centre so they could pummel them with hammers until he failed enough 3+ saves (this took several turns!) whilst the blood claws chewed through guardsmen and then took the punishment from the tank commanders.

Essentially - play the mission!

In the end I got a decent win and a good start to the day.

Game 2 vs Tyranids - Beachead

This is the mission where you get 1 point for holding an objective in your deployment zone, 2 for the objective in the middle of the table and 3 for holding your opponents.

My opponent had the usual nid list with 40 genestealers, swarmlord etc.

I'll be honest I was a bit cheesed off with their captain going into this game.

I carry my stuff around in the box because I don't want 30 blood claws sliding off the top and going on the floor and it makes it much easier to actually deploy the army come game time. The claws stay on the foam tray in the box until theyre needed.

We did the usual pre pairings discussion of what was in each of our lists and my 3 team mates had their armies out on their trays. Come my turn I say:

"Yeah I've got 2 wolf lords with jump packs, battle leader with jump pack, njal, 6 units of claws with fists, 4 rhinos, 6 wulfen and 7 long fangs. Basically old school rhino rush!".

His response: Oh let's at least see your models.

What a cock. Did he think we were going to do the pairings and suddenly I'd pull our a knight, 3 units of long fangs and some terminators or something?

Anyway come game time my opponent immediately starts apologising for how long his army takes to play.

I've played this style of nid list a few times before and know I need 4 turns to stand a chance of winning. One turn to clear out the inevitable genestealer rush and then the remainder to kill his support units and score points myself.

His deployment and first turn took an hour and a half.

The game timed out after 1.5 turns.

Don't think I need to say anything more really, I had literally no chance to score points in the game.

Game 3 vs Tau - Vital Intelligence

This is the game with 5 objectives and you roll a d6 at the start of the round to determine which objective is worth the 2 points that round. The others are worth 1 point.

I made a blog post about the limitations of an army weighted heavily in one direction (combat or shooting) and this is a prime example.

My army relies on charging and assaulting. Tau absolutely chew up charging units with 5+ overwatch, drones, their main hitters having fly.

The final nail in the coffin was my opponent getting first turn.

I knew from the start I had no chance of getting anything out the game so just had to grin and bear it and hope my buddies could win their games.

Sure enough I was shot off the table in 3 turns and, because I was feeling crap by that stage, resorted to suicide charging stuff at him so he would shoot me off the table quicker to finish the game quicker!

End of day 1 and I was 1-2 and feeling awful. So awful I couldn't even eat my curry at our meal out :(

Day 2...

After a relatively early night and some sleep I was feeling a bit better. So it was on to...

Game 4 vs Custodes - Cut Off The Head

This is the mission where you allocate intelligence points to your characters and then try and keep them alive and, if you're brave, within 3" of the centre of the table.

He had a shield captain on bike, guy with a banner and another chap on foot (special character?), 3 bikes, 3 terminators, a dread, the loyal 32, 6 custodes guys on foot. I think that was it.

Each of his characters had a point allocated to them whereas I had the luxury of 4 characters so could afford to leave a smash wolf lord free to do a suicide run.

He put his terminators in deep strike and everything else formed a scrum ball, pushing forwards towards the central objective to protect his characters and start to try and score point. He shot up the wulfen a bit on the way.

Which is what he did. Because he had to push forward I was able to charge my suicide wolf lord in and, thanks to a little sloppy positioning, I was able to get him into his characters.

This combined with a bunch of charges from blood claws let me get on top of the game. The suicide run wasn't the most effective but I did manage to down his standard bearer eventually.

The surviving wulfen managed to get into his 6 guys on foot and annihilate them whilst the blood claws and rhinos cleared the loyal 32 out. The long fangs put a dent in the dreadnought and shot down 2 of the 3 bikes.

In the end, as tough as his Custodes characters were they could only stand up to so many frenzied thunder hammer and power fist attacks and once I'd bagged one of them and forced him off the central objective he'd never be able to catch up with me unless I made a really huge mistake. Like charging Njal into a Custodes dreadnought. Which I didn't do btw!

I ended up tabling him and taking the win.

2-2 with one game to go...

Game 5 vs Custodes again - 4 pillars

Last game and as a team we weren't exactly pulling up trees with 1 win and 3 losses. However we were still ahead of the much heralded B team so this was crucially important for bragging rights!

My opponent had 9 bikes, a shield captain on bike, 3 units of 3 of those custodes on foot, a shield captain on foot and the loyal 32.

I lost first turn and he barrelled forward with his bikes and shield captain on bike, shooting up a rhino and just about destroying it. He charged the unit which piled out and another rhino, blowing it up and killing a squad of claws.

However as part of his charges I was able to heroically intervene with both wolf lords which killed off a unit of bikes. This freed them up to get into his backfield and bully the small units of custodes which really don't like lots of thunder hammer attacks. The remaining blood claws piled out of their rhinos and charged the bikers killing them all.

The wulfen charged the shield captain on bike tearing him apart.

After that is was largely mopping up whilst being careful with character positioning and I was able to table him.

There's something satisfying about killing the emperors bodyguard I think...

So the weekend ended fairly well for me with 3 wins and 2 losses. That's about the best Wolves can do at an event these days so I was fairly happy.

Most importantly the team won 2 and finished above our comrades giving us bragging rights!

We didn't win the painting award but that didn't take the gloss off a good weekend.

As always the main objectives were to have a laugh with mates and enjoy some games.

I think that may be the last event with my wolves for a while and I'm very excited to be focussing on my White Scars for the foreseeable future. I've been having fun with contrast paints and can't wait to get stuck in with them.

Necromunda Backdrop - The Thing In The Tank

Most of the uninitiated population of the Spire are unaware of the existence of aliens such as Aeldari or Orks, let alone the autonomous race of Necrons or the T'au. Those well travelled have heard mention of Ambulls, Sumpkrocs or the giant spiders on the sump seas but to the teeming masses of Hive Primus the existence of alien races is unheard of.
Not so with Fellon Black.
As an Adept of the Divisionis Biologis, Black had heard whispers about strange races and read reports on ancient lost cultures unearthed over the years. But never had he read anything about something so abhorrent as the thing in the tank.
Now staring into those glassy lid-less eyes, he imagined it was looking back. It wasn't of course ... it couldn't. All the stasis locks were closed with both primary and secondary power conductors firmly attached.
Yet the thing in the tank's cold, black, unfathomable eyes burned with a keen intelligence. Even after all these years it excited him. Fellon could feel the hairs on the nape of his neck raise as he stared into those alien eyes. The flicker of a lume globe, a trick of light, his imagination ran wild that it glared at him with anger. He allowed himself a chuckle.
Where it had come from he didn't know, what he did know was that its biological makeup was immeasurably more complex than that of a standard human being. It had taken him to the limits of his intellect and no small measure of time to synthesise a biophage that would not be rejected by the human immune system. The regenerative capability of the thing in the tank's immune system was a revelation, some less scientific minds might even say miraculous or divine: And, he supposed, if not this creature, then what else would be deserving of such adoration?
A faint murmur from below lifted him from his reverie.
For a moment he had forgotten all about the man who lay dying on his gurney.
"You know" he said "I think you might just be the luckiest man alive" as he drew 300ml of thick green liquid into a large syringe "You won't be dying today sir!"