Night lords against dark elder

Today I took my night lords off to try them out against the new dark elder codex. My opponent had hoped to bring a number of new toys to the fight but he had failed to get everything assembled in time. We had arranged to field 2500 points each which I was hoping would allow me to bring out the strength of the legion list as well as allowing us both chances to try out new things.

My army featured the following…

Praetor – jet bike, paragon blade, iron halo, digital lasers, trophies of judgement

Command squad – jet bikes, 3 x combat shield, 1 x chainglaive, 1 x power fist, 1 x charnabal sabre

Contemptor mortis dreadnought – 2 kheres pattern assault cannons

Contemptor mortis dreadnought – 2 kheres pattern assault cannons

Dreadnought – flamestorm cannon

10 tactical marines – additional chainswords, artificer armour, chainglaive, meltabombs, rhino

10 assault marines – power sword, power axe, artificer armour, thunderhammer

5 tactical support marines – 4 x volkite caliver

5 tactical support marines – 4 x volkite caliver

3 outriders – 1 x twin linked flamer

9 heavy support marines – 9 x volkite culverin, augury scanner

Fire raptor – reaper autocannon batteries

Sicaran battle tank

My opponent had a standard force org plus some guys from the grotesque circus supplement (or whatever the hell it is called).

I did take my camera but I was so focused on trying to avoid making blatant mistakes that I did not actually take any pictures so I am afraid there is no eye candy to support the battle report.

My opponent won choice of table edge, choice of deployment and basically everything in pre-game. We ended up with the battle where there is an objective in each deployment zone and they ended up being in completely opposite corners of the battlefield.

I failed to seize the initiative and off we went with the dark elder swarming forward ensuring that they would get in to a position to charge on turn 2 with Rakath bolstering the centre by ensuring they started the battle with feel no pain 6+, the combat drugs gave the jet bikes +1 toughness and the grotesques got the same from Rakath playing around with them. The dark elder shooting was aimed to cripple my firepower with the heavy bolter of the sicaran being blown off by a ravager (thank god the random weapon was not the accelerator autocannon) while the other opened up on my firestorm dreadnought and scoring three penetrating hits. I got a cover save from the grotesques between them and promptly passed all three saves. Additional splinter weapon fire managed to down one of the assault marines but that was it.

The night lords swung in to action aiming to tear apart as many of the dark elder as possible, the sicaran managed to gun down one of the ravagers while a contemptor managed to down drazor’s venom. The heavy support squad target a beast host and unloaded, with 20 wounds caused prior to deflagrate my opponent simply picked up all of the models. Other shooting saw a grotesque killed panicking his unit, another venom was blown to pieces and the flamestorm dreadnought managed to incinerate three bases of razorwings. I did manage to forget to scout my outriders which reduced them to comparatively moot for the battle but hey I cannot do everything right.

Turn 2 saw all of the dark elder reserves come in, the archon landed his raider through a webway portal behind the heavy support marines who activated their augury scanner and blew the transport to pieces but the archon and his court passed their pinning check spot on. A venom with four blaster wielders inside dropped in aggressively but scattered out of optimal range but remained safe. The mandrakes outflanked just in front of the outriders. The fleeing grotesques managed to rally on their leadership of 4. Shooting saw the outriders butchered to a man by the massed firepower of two troop squads and the mandrakes while the remaining ravager targeted the flamestorm dreadnought again and this time was unlucky and only caused a glancing hit. Three more assault marines were gunned down and they fled but then in what turned out to be a shocking move the beast host charged them, they pass their leadership check and rallied. The archons’ court murdered the heavy support squad with the medusa flamers doing a complete number on them – if only I had taken artificer armour on their sergeant who was the closest model. The jetbikes swept in to obliterate one of the tactical support squads. The blasters only managed to take an arm off the contemptor and aside from them did not achieve much.

Close combat saw the assault marines prove their worth and slaughter the beast host to a model for no losses while the tactical support squad were murdered by the jetbikes.

Night lords turn 2 saw the fire raptor stay off the battlefield, the assault marines moved to target the jetbikes while the flamestorm dreadnought and the jetbikes moved in to a position to support them. The one armed contemptor moved up to challenge for my objective and try and shoot down some of the incubi supporting drazor – I should have held off shooting and charged instead but I got carried away with the idea of shooting the elder to pieces. The second ravager was riddled with holes from the intact contemptor and the rhino began moving up towards the elder objective. The flamestorm incinerated a couple of the jetbikes. The assault marines managed to get in and butcher another 3 jetbikes for no loss before the dark elder did a hit and run leaving them stranded in front of a nasty grouping of dark elder assault specialists. The venom with blaster troops on board somehow managed to avoid being blasted apart by the sicaran with its flicker field.

Turn 3 saw the dark elder pounce on the assault marines, the shooting from splinter weapons managed to get a couple of wounds on to my praetor (2 unsaved after 7 wounds taken). The assault marines were slaughtered before they were actually able to make an attack when they found themselves being mobbed by the archons and his court, the incubi with drazor and rakath and his grotesques but they had definitely earned their before being butchered. The remaining jetbikes swung in on the flaemstorm dreadnought hoping their cluster caltrops would do the damage but failed and watched one of their number incinerated on the charge and another smashed down by the dreadnought close combat weapon. They held and opted to stay in the fight (in fact my opponent rolled for hit and run, failed and then asked why he tried to roll and tying up the dreadnought was essential at that stage with it able to flame half the dark elder army)

The blaster venom swept forward and disembarked its guys to try and remove the one armed contemptor as it was sat on the night lords objective and was not something it was going to be easy for the remaining dark elder forces to shift, 4 shots only hit once and that one rolled a double 1 for the penetration roll and achieved nothing

Night lords turn 3 saw me carefully consider matters and then decide to hold true to the principals of the night lords and run away from that close combat potential. The fire raptor arrived and managed to take a hull point off a venom as well as gunning down a member of the archons’ court.  The one armed contemptor and sicaran combined to slaughter the blaster armed troops to remove that threat. The Praetor and his jetbikes turbo boosted away to completely avoid the enemy forces. The rhino pushed rapidly forward and the contemptor moved up in support. The flamestorm dreadnought managed to crush the remaining two jetbikes but losing the turn of shooting meant they sold their lives well. The remaining tactical support squad unloaded on the two rallied grotesques and killed one routing the survivor again.

Dark elder turn 4 saw the archons’ court charge the flamestorm dreadnought, survive the overwatch fire and managed to get the sufficient amount of glancing hits to wreck the dreadnought. Drazor managed to pull off a long range charge and get on the contemptor, managed to get 5 hits and glance with 3 of them and I managed to fail all of the axiomatic saves and thus lost another venerable walker in the turn. The mandrakes unloaded everything they had on the jetbikes in front of them but I managed to somehow pass all of the saves to keep them intact. The fleeing grotesque rallied again.

Night lord turn 4 saw the fire raptor move in to a central position, kill a few of the dark elder around the objective and put another wound in to the archons’ court. The contemptor dreadnought  and rhino moved hell for leather forward to swamp the elder objective with models and to get away from the pursuing elder. The sicaran tried to down drazor and failed to completely. The praetor and his lads hammered in to the mandrakes and butchered them without loss.

Dark elder turn 5 saw the elder move everything to try and shoot down the jetbikes as they were definitely the most valid threats but even with two venoms and two units of warriors they only managed to put a wound on the standard bearer. The archons’ courts charged as fast as they could across the open ground but were still out of charge range. Drazor charged the sicaran and managed to get two more glances on that to wreck it as well, furious charge paying dividends in his attempts to get something from the battle. Drazor and Rakath firmed up their control of the night lord objective. The last grotesque charged the rhino but failed to do anything to it.

Night lord turn 5 saw the rhino power forward and disgorge 10 tactical marines on the dark elder objective, concentrated firepower removed all of the dark elder warriors, killed the grotesque, killed all but two of the archon’s court and the corpses included the archon himself. The game continued.

Dark elder turn 6 saw the remaining court members charge the contemptor to try and tie it up while the last intact venom moved flat out to get to contest the dark elder objective  - since I was using the age of darkness force organisation chart I did not get objective secured so he had to hope it survived for the turn and the game ended in order to get the win.

Night lord turn 6 saw the tactical marines unloaded with fury of the legion and take down the venom which guaranteed me the win of the battle.

Final score was one objective and linebreaker each, I also had first blood and slay the warlord to get the win.

So overall I managed to eke out first out and out draw with the nights lords, I have won battles with them when I have had allies like the guard or the necrons but this is the first time they have won outright on their own and I was pretty pleased with my play, aside from a couple of minor mistakes like forgetting scout on the outriders I think I played well and the main thing is when it counted I managed to keep sight on the objectives and not do something silly like charging the praetor and his command squad in to the core of the dark elder army in the hopes of killing the opposing general since I would have lost mine as well.

MVP for me was the assault marines, they took a charge and slaughtered the foe without any problems and then butchered half a unit of toughness 5 eldar jet bikes all without loss, yes they lost 4 guys to random splinter fire and they were butchered when they were charged by the opposing warlord and two special characters plus supporting units.  But the fact that my opponent committed so many models to dealing with them and that draw them out of position to have a massive impact on the rest of the battle was amazing and really won the fight for me. It would have never have happened if my opponent had not made the mistake with charging them when they were running but he did and it allowed them to shine in the battle.

The sicaran was pretty solid but nothing exceptional really, it worried my opponent but very quickly his forces were in combat so his transports were not as critical as they could have been. The flamestorm dreadnought is something I really like as it poses some very different questions to my opponent, if he pushes forward to get to grips with my shooting forces they are having to walk in to the face of some exceptionally nasty firepower and it gives me something else which ignores cover.

The heavy support squad did sick levels of fire but they are exceptionally expensive for what they do, I think 5 of them for 185 points might be an option but more than that is over kill and to be honest they are competing with fire raptors, sicaran’s and the like for the heavy support slots and I am not sure they do enough to win that competition.

The tactical support squads were ok but I do not think they do all that much, they are cheap even if they cannot be my compulsory troops – it may be that 5 of them, 4 with flamers in a rhino for 135 points is actually a massive boost for the army especially as it would allow me to deal with enemies in cover a little more effectively.

Battle report - Night Lords/Necrons vs Khorne Daemons/Tyranids

 So yesterday I was able to get a game in with a couple of gaming circle in which I brought just over 1500 points of night lords and teamed up with one of my mates Necrons (who spent the entire battle claiming to be mechanicum forces, honest guv) and we went up against my most regular opponent who had opted to bring Tyranids with a khorne daemon ally force.

The opposition wanted to try an assault force so only had two mastery levels and one shooting attack in the whole army, the hope was that with our short range armies we would be unable to shoot him down before he was able to gets swarms of small guys in to combat or lumber some of his various monstrous critters in to smash things.

Finding the maelstrom of war battles to be some what unsatisfying due to the randomness potentially making it impossible to win no matter how good a player you are (and I am not a great player) the necron player had found some tournament rules which merged the standard missions with some element of maelstrom but in a far less random fashion.

For this battle I had been doing a lot of painting and not only had I gotten the fire raptor in a tabletop condition but I had also blitzed out 10 assault marines to make this a minimally proxied force which maximised the visual impact on the battlefield - it would have been even better if one of the contemptors had not encounted some issues in transport meaning only his legs were in a position to be fielded in this fight.

 

As you can see here there are some pictures of the assault marines and they all have been given the night lords shoulder pads which is something I am totally set on doing for all of my power armoured guys, it gives them something iconic Night Lord'ish without having to get the silly winged helms involved.

 As you can see the necrons are extremely well painted (a lot better than the Night Lords if I am being honest) but they are also somewhat less numerous since the player has a young family and cannot devote as much time to painting as he might otherwise like to - plus he is something of a perfectionist so getting the models to the right level takes a fair amount of time but I have it on good authority that the Necrons will be expanding a fair amount especially since his other army of grey knights has been hit hard by the nerf bat.

 The daemon army contains some exceptionally well painted models which added to making this one of the best visual battles we have had to date.

In terms of mission we got the relic in a hammer and anvil set up, there were also a couple of maelstrom objectives (one in each deployment zone), each turn we would both roll a couple of dice to find out what our objectives for the turn were - I had a habit of being able to always get a 4 which was destroy an enemy unit completely.
My praetor was our warlord and turned out to be a strategic genius giving us rerolls on reserve rolls which was needed since the tervigon leading the opposing force was imposing a penalty of one on our rolls and with three flyers we felt they had to come in as soon as possible.
Deployment saw both armies deploy as close together as possible, we went close since we were in theory going first and we wanted to be able to shoot as much as possible. This led to their being a lot of space behind us which was then inhabited by 15 infiltrating genestealers (one of them was a broodlord)

Our opponent failed to seize and we went to work, this mainly consisted of backing off as bit and bringing all of our firepower to bear on the genestealers as the maelstrom objectives for the turn led to us wanting to wipe out a unit and our opponent getting a point if he had a unit in our deployment zone making the genestealers priority number one.
The shooting was savage but due to line of sight we could not down them all, after everything had been shoot the genestealers had gone to ground and there were only two left, my assault marines needed a 8 inch charge to leap in and hopefully butcher them but sadly only reroll a 4 and so we failed in that task.
Other shooting downed a bloodcrusher and put two wounds on a second one.

The gribby hordes charged forward, two mawlocs burrowed although it was slightly dubious when the opponent realised he had deployed them out of synapse by mistake but they passed their leadership checks and vanished from sight. with no shooting the entire force ran and scarily enough everything rolled a 5 or 6 for their additional movement with the exception of the tervigon. The Tervigon also birthed 10 termegants but that was it for the battle. Our opponent had both objectives for maelstrom this turn with 3 of his units still in his deployment zone and one in ours so we were immediately behind on that front which was not good.

Turn 2 saw the fire raptor arrive but even with the warlord inspired rerolls both of the necron flyers remained resolutely out of sight. This turn we had to secure the objective in our deployment zone as well as eliminate an enemy unit.

The fire raptor moved in to a position to shoot the remaining genestealers with one of its autocannon batteries while the remaining primary weapons lined up the bloodcrushers who my ally and I decided had to be eliminated. One of the contemptors remained stationary in the hopes of using skyfire to gun down the hive crone and everything else got to long range to ensure they could shoot without being charged. My assault marines leapt back on to the building with our objective since it offered protection from mawlocs.
The shooting phase saw 4 wounds go on to the hive crone annoyingly especially since it passed its grounding check to avoid being killed. The genestealers were mowned down by autocannon fire to get us the maelstrom objective and first blood. The bloodcrushers disappeared from the shear weight of fire - one contemptor, 4 jet bikes and a very deadly fire raptor was simply too much for them.

Following up on this the destroyer lord and the wraiths decided to get in to a fight on their terms instead of being charged and assaulted a brood of two close combat carniflex - my concerns about this were massively eased when one of the carniflexes succumbed to the sickness that is the mindshackle scarabs and proceeded to batter its companion for three wounds. The remaining active carniflex only managed to put out one wound which the wraith phased through with its invulnerable. The attacks from this deadly unit shredded the carniflexes but with only a one inch consolidation the wraiths could not unbunch enough to avoid mawlocs let alone move enough to get back in to difficult terrain to neuture the counter charge.

With no shooting the gribblies settled for trying to mawloc the wraiths, two hits put 16 hits on to the unit but after poor wound rolls and very good invulnerable saves the only impact was two wraiths each having taken one wound. The hive crone bereft of its firepower due to jinking settled for a vector strike on the annihilation barge but failed to break armour.
The bloodthorster vector struck my rhino for no effect but his whip then struck the rear armour, broke through it and exploded the vehicle, three night lords were immolated in the wreckage (either that or they faked it seeing a freaking bloodthirster was practically on top of them)

 Then came the assault and here the demon prince of khorne joined a unit of 14 hormagants and a brood of 6 ravagers in swarming in to the wraiths, the destroyer lord found himself facing hormagants and mindshackling one of them before being spotted and challenged by the demon prince. We felt that at this stage the wraiths were doomed so aimed to have the unit wiped out so we could at least shoot at all of these enemies in the next turn, especially the ravagers who had picked up the relic.
The mindshackles went to work and saw three of the hormagants die, the demon prince then managed to do exactly what was needed to kill the destroyer lord. But the necrons had a chance since the ravagers had plowed through terrain and were striking last. Hormagants did a little damage and then lots of them died and eventually the battle finished with 11 hornagants dead and 8 wounds done to the necrons so not only had they not died they had actually won the fight. The nids did not care and the demon passed his instability check so the end result was use not being able to shoot them next turn which was not optimal. The destroyer lord failed to return from the grave.

 

Turn 3 saw the necron flyers both arrive from reserve with no rerolls required meaning the warlord trait had achieved absolutely nothing. This turn we only had one objective we could achieve in killing an enemy unit and we decided to target the tervigon to try and remove one the last massive threats and to get rid of all of his synapse.

 We also moved a lot of our forces in to the central ruins to ready to mug the survivors of the massed assault and also to put some bodies between the enemy and the contemptors as we really could not afford to have them tied up in combat and not continuing their excellent shooting.

Shooting saw the tervigon ripped to shreds getting us slay the warlord, the feedback killed 7 of the termagant unit which was holding his objective which he was going to score for maelstrom this turn so the fire raptor picked them off. The rest of the shooting was thrown in to the bloodletters to remove one of his remaining swarms of guys. It seemed our shooting was sufficient to deal with weight of targets, atleast with the time the wraiths had brought us. Sadly despite their heroics the wraiths finally succumbed to the inevitable.

The nids looked to seal the game by running off with the relic sadly with synapse gone the ravagers failed their check, devoured each other causing four wounds and then stayed stuck in place which crippled our opponents strategy. The demon prince assaulted the annihilation barge, the remains of the hormagants tried to slip through to one of the contemptors but overwatch fire was sufficient to put them out of range but barely.
The bloodthirster dropped from high altitude and whipped one of the jetbikes, I managed to look out the wound on to the standard bearer but he failed his invulnerable save.
The hive crone dropped down low and hid due to a lack of wounds.
Mawlocs tore up from the ground trying to consume some night lords but the scatter rolls were horrible for him and they both failed to do any damage.

The demon prince managed to strip a couple of hull points from the barge but was unable to wreck it.

Turn 4 saw the necron flyers desposit their cargo of necron warriors close to the relic, the assault marines continued trying to work their way round to a sensible place to influence the battle. In a moment of madness I came to idea that my tactical squad could tie down the bloodthirster. Shooting saw the demon prince torn to shreds by contemptor fire, the remaining bloodletters and almost all of the hornagants were slaughtered as well leaving 4 small gribblies and a bunch of monstrous creatures.
The cunning plan to stall the bloodthirster completely backfired, the unit lost 4 guys but managed to cause a wound and then failed their break check by one, my ally had assumed I knew what I was doing and that legion forces had "and they shall know no fear", this was then compounded by the bloodthirster rolling a six for his consolidation move.

The enemy turn started with one of the mawlocs failing instinctive behaviour and deciding it had to attack one of my contemptors, the other mawloc went for the assault marines while the bloodthirster used its mobility to get next to the jetbikes with the intention of carving through them and on to the relic. As a safety net the hive crone went high and flew on to the relic making it impossible for us to claim it (something I know is within the rules but I hate because it makes no sense, if it is so high that we cannot effectively shoot it or assault it how does it prevent us moving under it?)
The mawloc on the contemptor managed to pull off its smash and I failed my invulnerable save and it was promptly blown to pieces. The other mawloc managed to kill one assault marine for no damage in return (my thunderhammer could not get in to the fight) and the assault marines fled but actually got away safely.
The bloodthirster charged in, his hammer of wrath bounced off the artificer armour and then since he had charged through terrain I was able to get my attacks, the charnabal sabre did nothing but then the praetor swepth in, swung the paragon blade and got lucky with a single six on the wound to trigger a murderous strike (he actually caused another two wounds since my dice rolling was very good), the bloodthirster failed his invulnerable and was slain. There were some comments about how I should have made the paragon blade better known but since it has been in my army list for over three months and I had even mailed them for comment when I changed from the thunderhammer.

 

 Turn 5 saw us get objectives to claim our opponents objective and again to wipe out an enemy unit while our opponent got a couple of objectives he could not realistically achieve. The fire raptor managed to go in to hover mode and then turbo boost on to the objective. Shooting wiped out the hive crone and then we moved guys as close to the relic as possible to try and ensure a mawloc could not sneak in there.
With the store closing shortly and no visible way of getting the relic our opponent conceded. On our side we had just squeaked the maelstrom score 6-5 which netted us 3 victory points, the relic would have been worth 4 VP's to whoever took it. We also managed to achieve first blood, linebreaker and slay the warlord while at best our opponent could get linebreaker.
In this rule system whoever wins the maelstrom side of things gets three victory points meaning you can win the game off that if you can get first blood but the main objective remains extremely relevant.

Man of the match was probably the contemptor in terms of shear achievement but I am going to give it to the fire raptor as it was not only extremely effective but it also got a number of very appreciative comments from the whole gaming group which was extremely gratifying.

Fire Raptor - progress

So I have been working hard on getting the fire raptor closer to being completed and since I have now been invited to take part in a battle this weekend there is even more pressure on me to get it done.

So here is some of the progress to date, I have hopes to get the finalised model ready to rock by the weekend.

Some aspects of the model I am extremely happy with but there are some areas I do wish I had made a better job of and I am slightly worried about the shear mass of the model and being able to glue it together in a way that holds and does not require constant repairs - something that is generally less of a problem with plastic models.

Battle and Army pictures

So yesterday my friend and I met up for a 3000 point battle in which I would be bringing approximately 2000 points of Night Lords and 1000 points of astra militarium against a significant force of daemons which I was not confident about. We had exchanged army lists beforehand and I knew my opponent would be bringing five flying monstrous creatures which is never going to be easy to deal with.

To start off on arrival I pulled out my Night lords so I could grab a couple of shots of them including the drop pods which were not going to be fielded in this battle but which have been painted and here are those shots. Sadly the terminator sergeant has suffered some issues with his power sword which is going to have to be worked on carefully to reverse without damaging the weapon if at all possible.

 The following picture shows the additional models also appearing in my army, not as impressive but needed until I can get my arse in gear and get a significant quantity more models completed for the Night Lords, fortuneately I can confirm that this battle has given me the kick needed to get back to work on the fire raptor and now most of the fuselage is base coated.

This is my opponent’s army, certainly not optimised but a serious threat for my force. It is a somewhat intimidating force and very well painted, my friend not being an expert painter tends to purchase his armies off the web which gives the benefit for compensating for his lack of aptitude/patience with painting. The only issue I tend to notice with this is expanding his force is somewhat difficult since it is hard to get anything with the same style of painting and basing.

The battlefield was the typical city ruins we tend to like and had plenty of terrain.

The mission we rolled was another of the maelstrom of war ones in which there are increasing numbers of objectives every turn. I won the dice off for table edge, deployment and managed to avoid my opponent seizing the initiative from me.

I am not going to do a turn by turn report but essentially what happened was the Night lords got off to an early lead constantly getting excellent objectives which were easily achievable and it looked like it was going to be a cake walk but my I rapidly lost units and coming to the end of turn 5 I was running out of units to block my opponent from scoring objectives and he was able to score 5 different objectives and rack up 7 victory points in one hit. This meant at the end of turn 5 he was a point ahead and the game continued, at this stage I had my librarian with one wound remaining, one terminator, a contemptor locked in close combat and two vendettas and while I was able to take down fateweaver with concentrated lascannon fire (he only had one wound left at this stage) to claim monster hunter and slay the warlord my opponents turn 6 saw him draw 5 easily achievable objectives and the game was called.

Realistically I was likely to be tabled in the next turn if it continued and there was no real way I was going to be able to fight my way back in to the game sadly.

Legion tactical squads churning out savage amounts of shots was very effective as was the Knight Commander Pask in punisher squadron which I have used in the past so effectively but the main thing for me was in one fight where a tactical squad were desperately fighting some bloodletters and bloodcrushers I managed to break my streak on artificer armour saves as the sergeant managed to pass something like 15 2+ saves on the trot before finally dropping, it was a truly epic achievement and while the sergeant was felled I think he is armour is going to be salvaged and passed on to a new potential hero of the legion.

I made a number of mistakes during the battle and as much use as the battle was the analysis between me and my friend afterwards was probably more useful and as always I think I learn something more about the army every time I field them and eventually I will get them to the point where I can field a proxy free army, and possibly I may even win with the night lords but I am not expecting miracles.

Librarian

I finally got some more painting in, mainly since I am due to be staging a 3000 point battle against daemons this weekend, and I got the librarian completed.
Working on the fire raptor would have been good but I doubted I would be able to complete it in time for the battle and I was certain that if I did it would not be to a sufficient level so instead I focused on getting the librarian completed since he was sitting around half painted and this is the end result.

 

If you know the heresy miniature line from forge world you will probably recognise this as the terminator praetor from the praetor set, I purchased the praetor set to convert the power armoured one to be a jetbike rider and I always thought the paragon blade on the terminator would look perfect as a force weapon and thus my librarian was born.

I went for a slightly more subtle lightning effect on the model and i think it has worked reasonably well, I am hoping it will get some positive feedback at the battle.

Given the natural abilities of the centurion which gets upgraded in to the librarian in a heresy list he is naturally a very fighty psyker and as such I have a tendancy to pick powers from the biomancy disciple, I know that divination is probably the more thematic night lord option but I do like the idea of the character tapping in to the full power of his gene-seed through his psychic power and for brief periods achieving almost primarch power levels.
He will generally join the terminator squad I have already painted, this has been tried previously in a battle against daemons and worked pretty well.

I am going to take the camera to the battle and make some notes and take some pictures, I am also planning to take advantage of the space to take along my whole night lord force and get a couple of pictures of it all together on the battlefield, there is still a long way to go with the force but I think a couple of complete collection pictures could be good.

Some progress

Well it has been a while since my last post and I have not made as much progress as I should have done but I can share what I have achieved so far on the fire raptor.

 These first two are of the gun pods from the flank of the fire raptor, I made a point of working on them first since they need to be completely painted prior to insertion and they require a minimal amount of airbrushing. I think they have turned out OK.

 Now here we have a decent view of the flight stand, I have modelled it in line with the bases I did for the contemptors and the ones I have done for some of the infantry models and I think it has turned out alright, the only issue is that I may have stacked the features a bit too much and as such it will be awkward to fit in to the KR multicase tray I have purchased for transporting the fire raptor.

 Finally we have a quick view of the secret weapon 2mm brass etching lettering I have picked up, the intention is to add the name of the fire raptor on to one side using this while the other will have the iconic Night Lord phrase of 'Ave Dominus Nox'. I feel that this will add a bit more uniqueness to the model and will look a hell of a lot better than any attempt by me to free hand up some script.

I am aiming to really push on with the fire raptor in the next couple of weeks, I have plenty more models to work on once it is complete including 20 assault marines and 3 outriders as well as the riders for the jetbikes and I really want to get more of the army complete and ready to deploy on to the tabletop.

Contemptor number two

Well here we go, the immediate inspiration from going along to warhammer world has shown itself in getting me to get off my arse and complete the second contemptor. Well I say complete but there is still a bit more work to do but i think it is definitely a serious step forward and going easily see play on the battlefield now.

I have also pretty much completed the flight stand for the fire raptor so all told a productive day yeasterday and now we just have to see how long I can keep this motivation up for and how much of the Night Lords gets completed off the back of it.

As it stands I now essentially have the following completed....
4 jetbikes without riders
5 cataphractii terminators
2 drop pods
2 contemptor mortis dreadnoughts
1 rhino

And I currently own and plan to get complete as soon as possible...
1 deathstorm drop pod (about half painted)
1 cataphractii armoured librarian (half painted)
1 fire raptor
20 assault marines
3 outrider bikers

Once all of that is done I will in theory only need 10 tactical marines to complete the 2000 point list but I will almost certainly be getting two units of terror squad marines to go in those drop pods so I can ensure I can get good use of them and I may well have to get a unit of destroyers with jump packs accompanied by a moritat as I think that could be a very potent addition to the list and would see good use in apocalypse games.

Once I have that long purchased and painted then I will probably be taking a break from the night lords as I am getting increasingly drawn towards a mechanicum force since they are so different to the other armies out there and they have a lot of really nice models, that army will be covered on here and can always be used as allies for the night lords or visa versa depending on what I want at the time - options are always good. I will cover of the development of the mechanicum on here along with any further expansion of the Night Lords since I am not sure they will ever really be a completed project, legion armies had the potential to be immense so I will never really feel that continued expansion is inappropriate.