Sercius the denied

So in futherance of developing the mood and feel of the force here is the details behind the first of my terminators - Sercius the denied.

Sercius was born on the darkened world of Nostromo in the wake of the night haunter's reign and as he approached adolesence the world was already sliding back in to chaos and lawlessness. Sercius joined one of the first gangs to form once it was realised Konrad was not returning, he was young but brutal and soon came to the attention of the recruiters for the legion.
Taken from the streets and transformed in to a marine did nothing to reduce to ruthless practicality in his personality and only empathised his blood lust.

His progression through the ranks took years but eventually following his exceptional brutality on the battlefield he was promoted in the ranks of the veterans and was given a suit of cataphractii armour of his own. His natural instincts towards overkill are present in his preferred weapons, the plasma blaster makes a mockerey of personal armour and can even wreck many vehicles while the thunderhammer completes the destructive potential.

Over the years he has been accorded many honors and he carries many titles but he is still bitter about never ascending to the atramentar, while he was paramount (in his on eyes) amongst the first company he was never deployed to the right theatre of war to attract the attention of Sevetar and receive the honor he believes he is due. Because of this he is often referred to as the denied and he takes almost a perverse pleasure believing it is because his legion acknowledge the rank he should have possessed.

He is a beligerant, blunt individual who favors nothing more than pushing straight towards the enemy in the knowledge his armor can protect him until he is in range of his deadly weapons. He has a dislike of risking teleportation but does admit being able to get to the enemy all the sooner makes up for the risk.

Cataphractii Terminators

While I have not completed the terminator squad as yet I have three of them completed with another on the way and I figured I could put them up now for consideration.

I have to admit I was finding it somewhat difficult to get good quality shots of the terminators, this is something I am going to have to work on for future photos but hopefully this captures the feel of the infantry than I am trying to capture. I will try and get some more shots which show more detail and I will be added some names and lore to each of them as time goes on.

Night Lords Drop Pod

Well I now have the tools to take some reasonable pictures of the models I have painted up. The first one is the drop pod I have completed. Please bear with me as this is my first attempt to upload pictures and make good use of the light box and camera I have.

 This first picture shows the exterior color scheme including the lightning pattern as well as the impact of some of the weathering powders I have used. I have to admit that I think there is too much silver on the model and future drop pods will have a darker tone.

 Simple view of the interior painting, I did not do as much work as I would have liked to on the interior but I was so keen to get the whole model complete I rushed it a little. The next drop pod will have more attention paid to the interior detail.

This final shot gives a bit clearer view of the whole model with all of the ramps extended, I have also turned the model somewhat to give a view of the painting on some of the other upright struts.

So that's the first drop pod, not really worthy of naming I guess. I did toy with writting some iconic Night Lords saying on the outside such as "Ave Dominus Nox" but I decided to save that kind of touch for more significant models such as any storm eagle that I eventually add to the force.

My hopes are that when this is deployed with a whole terror squad surrounding it the effect will be visually impressive and possibly even a little intimidating, what else can you aim for with the Night Lords?

Standard Night Lords Army

After the first couple of test games where I tried out several things and discovered that the lack of mobilty was going to cause my a lot of issues especially since my force can easily appear all over the battle field and then be unable to support the various elements I had a sit down and tactical discussion with my friends who form the core of my gaming group.

We agreed that the terror squads work best in ten men squads and having two drop in makes sense, while they can all outflank I need the potential to target weak points in the middle of the battle field and without acute senses I cannot make too many guarantees with the arrival point of outflankers.

We also agreed the army needed long range firepower and a mobile reserve force, after going through the army lists a fair amount and discussing what we all thought would and would not work we came up with the following army list.

HQ - Praetor with jetbike, boarding shield, thunderhammer, trophies of judgement

Elite - contemptor-mortis dreadnought with 2 x twin linked lascannon
Elite - contemptor-mortis dreadnought with 2 x twin linked lascannon
Elite - dreadnought with flamestorm cannon, heavy flamer, dreadnought drop pod

Troop - terror squad with 10 volkite chargers, headsman witrh artificer armor and nostramen chainglaive in a drop pod
Troop - terror squad with 10 volkite chargers, headsman witrh artificer armor and nostramen chainglaive in a drop pod
Troop - terror squad with 10 volkite chargers, headsman witrh artificer armor and nostramen chainglaive outflanking

Fast Attack - 7 Night Raptors - one with meltagun, huntmaster with artificer armor and nostramen chainglaive

Heavy Support - deathstorm drop pod with krak missile launchers

The theory is that the Night Raptors provide some mobile support to the force and are able to back up which ever of the terror squads need it plus they have some range with their jump movement and charge which gets around some of the immobility of the terror squads. The Praetor is a high impact reserve option more than capable of wrecking vehicles as well as mugging units, a 2+ armour save, defensive grenades from the boarding shield, generally a jink save out of melee and a 5+ invulnerable in close combat and a toughness of 5 should keep him active in to the later stages of the fight.

The contemptor-mortis dreadnoughts provide some savage mobile long ranged firepower with BS5 and twin linked meaning they should be scoring a lot of hits through out the game and they are durable plus they can take advantage of night fighting like nothing else in my list. Added on to that if they do not move or run then they gain interceptor and skyfire giving my army some element of defence against the flyers which everyone seems to love at the moment.

The standard dreadnought is something of an answer to aegis defence lines and the like which are popular in my metagame, he can drop in and butcher swathes of gun line troops behind cover and the dreadnought drop pod gives him some element protection against interceptor fire especially when potentially combined with night fighting bonus'.

The deathstorm is an amazing option for the Night Lords, loads of krak missiles all firing at BS4, able to target multiple enemies and flexible in its deployment and best of all to me it is totally in keeping with the Night Lords theme so if I can only have one heavy support choice then I see no reason to not make it this one.

So that's the army plan as it stands, it is going to be tested some more in the near future, I think i have a battle against some daemons coming up which should be extremely interesting. I do not currently have many of the models, in fact all I own currently is the two normal drop pods and only one of them is assembled. I do have a unit of 5 catapractii terminators which I purchased since they look amazing and because originally I was going to be using Jago Sevatarion as my HQ and taking the master of the Atramentar and not having any terminators in his force felt wrong. Sadly they do not fit in to the basic list at the moment but since this list is only the starting point in my army collection they are going to see use and and they great models so I am happy to have them.

I should be getting a light box in the next week which will allow me to take some decent pictures of the painted models I have completed, when that is done I aim to begin posting them on here.

Tactica - Terror squad

The terror squad is one of the most iconic units for the Night Lords and with my army plan is the unit I have tested the most and since it is all of my troop selections it is a unit I need to really get to grips with.

The terror squad is at its base pretty expensive but for those points you get some amazing men, base two attacks, preferred enemy (infantry), infiltrate, fear - thats an amazing package but it is signifcantly more expensive than the tactical squads other legion forces will be fielding. The lack of any alternative for transport than the drop pod is somewhat problematic.

Since the squad as a whole lacks long range fire power and have little to no way to redploy once they are on the battefield you have to be extremely careful with how you use them, they will shatter alot of enemy units when they arrive or should the charge be needed but after that they are going to have limited impact on the battlefield unless against the most compact enemy force (which is not something I tend to face in my local metagame).

The first choice for the unit is if you stick with the base 5 men or boost up to 10, personally I go for 10 men. These are your troops so you need them to be able to absorb some firepower without becoming redundant. As with most legion forces expanding the squad is a lot cheaper than buying another small squad which has to be borne in mind. On top of that Night Lords excel when they outnumber enemy infantry units so 10 men in my opinion is almost essential.

Once you have planned out the unit size then there is the choice of weapon fits, the basic guys only come with bolt pistol and close combat weapon but they can all be upgraded with a longer ranged weapon. My personal preference is for the volkite charger, this is a reasonably expensive upgrade but the shear quantity of fire from this assault 2 weapon is scary, the base strength 5 makes it amazing at butchering lighter infantry such as eldar guardians (especially with preferred enemy) and they can do a number on light transports since with their deployment options they should be able to get in to flank or rear armor. The main issue is that with a range of 15" once they have demolished the enemy nearby they may have nothing else to do for the battle but hide and try and hold objectives.

The headsman (sargeant) has plenty of nice upgrade options, personally I feel artificer armor is a great choice since it gives an option of trying to use him to soak some AP3 attacks. I also generally prefer to give him a nostraman chainglaive and meltabombs. I like the AP3 weapon in the squad to give him the option of carving up marines and the fact that the chainglaive also has rending gives him some nice options against light tanks while meltabombs give a solution to very heavy tanks.

This makes the terror squads extremely expensive but from experience they have the potential to dish out hideous amounts of damage, you just need to be able to support them and have long ranged firepower in the units to negate some of their weaknesses.

My army plan has 3 units of 10 all with volkite chargers, two of the squads are assigned drop pods while the other outflanks. These three units equate to almost half my 2000 points army and with so many points gone on these 30 men it means I will not have many models and I will not have redundant troops. This is a massive change to what i am used to with imperial guard which is probably why so far I have had been brutalised in the test games I have fought.

Terror Assault

When it came to planning out my force I immediately decided to use the terror assault rite of war laid out in Massacre. Terror assault is a Night Lords specific rite of war and is based around rapid attacks and exploiting night fighting rules.
This is not as amazing for me as it might be since my opposition include Space Wolves who pretty much ignore night fighting as well as including Tau and Eldar who both have plenty of answers in their codex's but at the end of the day it is a characterful option so I feel it will push me even more towards a iconic Night Lords force.

The first aspect of the rite of war is that i can only use terror squads to fill the compulsory troop slots, since terror squads are otherwise elites this is a significant change to the tone of the force i can field. On top of that with this rite of war I am required to field three compulsory troop choices so thats three terror squads that are going to be fielded.
Terror squads (I will do a tactica appraisal of the squad in a future post) are brutal troops so i am not concerned about having to field three units of them but they lack anything like rhino's to give them mobility during the battle. My units will either come in via drop pods or will outflank so they should be able to appear in a tactically powerful position and dish out a substantial chunk of damage but once they are in place there is very little flexibility.

The second important aspect of the rite of war is that I can only field one heavy support choice, this means the choice I make is somewhat important and my eventual army is not going to be packed full of options but it also means I have to ensure i can add impact and flexibility in to the other slots in the army.

Being unable to take fortifications is a significant change from what the imperial guard attitude was but it does fit the Night Lords so I am more than happy to work with that.
The final change to the army list selection options is being limited to only having one model using the consul rule within the force, since I am currently not planning to field any consuls at the moment I do not see this as a massive issue but it is worth bearing in mind for when the army eventually expands beyond the base level.

The most important aspect of the terror assault is the potential to have night fighting for the first three turns, I have to admit so far in the minimal amount of battles I have played the Night Lords in this has not been a critical issue but it has got to be factored in since it potentially allows the Night Lords to isolate elements of the enemy force and neutralise them while their support elements are unable to see and support them. This is going to be something i need to get to grips with since it is going to be a type of tactical thinking that i have not had to consider previously. Even if there is no practical way to exploit this it is an extremely characterful rule to have in place and something i will always enjoy having the possibility of triggering.

Introduction

Welcome to this new blog. My name is Graham and I am a gamer, this blog is going to cover the creation and development of my new warhammer 30k heresy era Night Lords army.

I have been a fan of the Night Lords ever since I got in to Warhammer 40k more than 20 years ago but initially backed away from collecting them since I did not feel my painting abilities were anywhere close to good enough to do them justice with all of the terror markings and lightning mottifs.

Since then I have collected large numbers of models for warhammer and warhammer 40k and I have slowly developed my painting skills up. Recently I invested in a airbrush which I hoped would take my painting to the next level and that combined with the release of forge worlds second heresy era book "Massacre" led to me deciding to take the plunge and collect this army I love. I will admit my passion for the Night Lords was also bolstered by the amazing series of books written by Aaron Dembski-Bowden which have to rate in my opinion as some of the best 40k books ever written.

One of my resolutions for this army was always to take it slowly, complete one set of purchases before giving in to temptation and getting any more while all of the time using proxy forces to play battles with my friends and develop up something of a competative list. I am not collecting the force to win battles, rather I am opting for models which I feel suit the feel of the army and which I think look amazing but at the same time I do want to be able to field them against my friends armies, there is no point having the models and never getting to use them.

This blog is intended to serve multiple purposes, the first is to allow me to share the models I am producing, the second is to provide me with motivation to continue to do the painting as I am somewhat prone to losing interest in projects.
This blog will also contain battle reports and unit analysis as I try to get to grips with playing this army which is distinctly different from my normal imperial guard force. I also want to try and capture some of the lore and background i develop for the force as I go along attempting to capture some atmosphere of the army.

I am currently awaiting some more photography equipment prior to being able to start positing some images of what I have already gotten in the force and then I hope to start bringing reasonably regular updates on the development of the army.