Grey Knights and Nurgle.
Inquisitor Sigfreid strolled out of his dedicated Chimera, pulling his cowl tighter over his face, preventing himself from being temporarily blinded by the harsh sun of Septemeus 9. He surveyed the scene around him. Desolation and decay were the primary inhabitants of the surrounding forgeworld factories, abandoned due to suspicious occurrences and an increase in worker fatalities. His retinue was slowly filing out of the tank, stumbling as their eyes slowly adjusted. An acolyte walked up to him.
“What do you make of it, sir?”
Sigfreid made no reply other than a quick hand gesture. He turned away from the acolyte to watch as his servo-skulls were deployed from their storage compartments within the Chimera, sent to survey the adjacent buildings.
“It tastes like death.”
The acolyte, attempting subtlety while sticking his tongue out to taste the air, gave the Inquisitor a confused expression. The Inquisitor ignored him, striding forward to the large set of stairs and embossed double doors that marked the entrance to the facility.
“Shouldn't we wait for the Knights sir?” Shouted the acolyte as he ran to catch up. In response, the sound of Mark II Mars Pattern engines filled the air, soon followed by the grinding of gears and a shower of gravel as both Rhinos came to a quick halt. The sound of marching feet replaced the roar of the engines and one of the Grey Knight Strike Squad Justicars pounded up to the Inquisitor. He recited a quick prayer in greeting.
“We are here to serve.” Intoned the Justicar.
“Is the Vindicare in position?” The Inquisitor questioned.
“Yes, Inquisitor.” Replied the Justicar. The inquisitor nodded and turned back toward the towering doors. He then did a mental review of his orders.
- - - ~ - - -
Inquisitor Eyes Only
Planet: Semptemeus 9
Investigate Suspicious Forgeworld Factories
Inquisitor Sigfreid, there have been a rash of abnormal reports from a number of primary Forgeworld Factories on Septemeus 9. Many workers and machinery are testing high on several known by-products of Chaos infection, especially of the Nurgle variety. Those involved have been quarantined or purified. Check the situation and confirm that everything is at hand, these factories supply many arms and machinery to the Cadian campaign effort. An Adeptus Mechanicus Sect may also be conducting their own investigation, do not let them interfere, they are entirely expendable. If the taint is deeper than perceived, you have full authorization to implement exterminatus.
- Inquisitor Lord Amanox
- - - ~ - - -
Sigfreid primed his power sword, ready for any eventuality. He removed his glove and punched in the access code with pale, scarred fingers. The loud groaning of immensely large machinery permeated though the air. Slowly, the doors began to open. Despite the brightness from the harsh sun, little light cut through the inky blackness beyond. Inquistor Sigfreid, unfazed, strode into the factory, gesturing to one of his henchmen to turn on the main circuit breaker. As the artificial lighting flickered to life, the Inquisitor came to a sudden halt as the floor ahead abruptly ended. The light illuminated a large pit carved deep out of the factory floor, within it a large demon prince was stretching it's wings, surrounded by more than a dozen Nurlge Plague-Marines. The Demon prince lazily raised an arm. Raw chaos energy crackled into manifestation, forming into a sphere of psychic devastation aimed directly at the Inquisitor.
A couple hundred yards away, the Vindicare Assassin viewed the scene through his high powered scope. Carefully selecting a round from his bandolier, he loaded it into the chamber and took careful aim. His finger quivered on the trigger, waiting for the moment of perfection.
“Bazinga.”
CRACK.
There comes a point when working on a project, a point when one realizes that the time needed to complete the task is far more than the time in which one has left to complete said task. In short, you're screwed. Luckily for me, I reached this point about one week before Warmasters, and barreled right through it. I was fairly confident that I would be able to get everything done, but I had no idea as to how close I'd be cutting it.
As of Thursday night, the 18th, I was done all of the grey knights, and the two Rhinos, this was already after many late nights. However, It was about 1 am when I finished the chimera, and still had an entire retinue of Inquisitorial Henchmen to go.
That Friday, the day before warmasters, I hit panic mode. With thirteen models to do and less than 24 hours to do them, I went painting crazy. I think that day I got up at eleven, started painting at 12, and did not stop until it hit 2 am. By the end of that I had a full inquisitorial squad done. Mostly thanks to the help of Randall, who took pity upon this poor procrastinating soul and did the basing for the henchmen unit, as well as helping out with the servo skulls. I also have to give thanks my sister, who agreed to paint a lot of the display board as I collapsed into bed a 3 am. So let me tell everyone out there, you CAN finish tons of work in a short amount of time. It just takes a lot of persistence, patience, good friends, and a disregard for sleep.
Getting all this done, I woke up at 7, packed up and went to participate in my first ever warmasters. And man was it a blast. The first game me and Phil played was against a Blood Angels and Space Wolves team. The Primary objective was to capture and control 4 objectives, which were placed just outside of each teams respective deployment zones. The Spacemarines had us locked down from turn one, pegging our rhinos with missiles and lascannon fire. Not to mention the 3 drop pods that eventually came to be almost dead on top of one of our objectives. Needless to say, we got trashed. The only highlight of that game, for me at least, was Mephiton's glorious charge into my grey knights. Taking down half a dozen guys with his attacks, he is untouchable until my justicar pops his head like a balloon with his force weaponed Daemonhammer. Of course they then got shot to pieces, but they had a brief moment of triumph.
The second game we played against a very speedy blood angles double list, and we did, well, lets just say better. I think we might have managed to draw the primary, I use draw in the loosest sense of the word, because at they point they held all the cards. Both players had stormravens, which are ridiculously good. With their ability to boost 24" then still fire a lascannon or multi-melta with the Machine Spirit, they make great transports. We drop one of these on our first turn (they stole the initiative) and out comes a Furioso and some death company. Their second turn a unit of enraged Sanguinary guard (yes they rolled that one) drop down and turn my rhino to sludge. then that furioso, seeing nothing better to do, proceeds to charge into my unit of grey knights and tear through every last one of them. Now this was also my first time seeing a furioso in action, he charges in, kills four. Okay, I'm saying to myself, I can deal with that, I still got my hammer I can hit him back. The furioso says "But wait, there's more!" He gets four more attacks, because he killed four guys, he then kills two more, and etc and so forth. I was awestruck, while Phil is just laughing because he knows what it does, and their aint nothing we can do about it. By the end of the game they have us cornered and contesting the primary. Which made it a draw, if they hadn't got all of the secondary and tertiary objectives. So I guess you could say we lost that one as well.
The third round was against a Space Wolves/Eldar team. I thought, hey Eldar, their not space marines, I can deal with them. Unfortunately for me, the guy was running a seer council on bikes, giving them a 3+ re-rollable armour save, as well as a re-rollable 4+ invulnerable save. Making them much, much better than space marines. That game also went rather poorly.
By the time the fourth game rolled around, both us and our opponents had had enough. What with hard and fast enemies, some dirty armies, and some frustratingly bad dice rolling, we both figured "what the hell" let's have a blast this game. Our opponents were Mike and Miro (not sure if that's how his name is spelled, correct me if I'm wrong) and their double team of Salamander Bike marines. I think they were running 15 meltas? not to mention a unit of bikers decked out to the teeth with storm shields, feel no pain, and Kor Sarro Khan. The primary objective was scoring 500 more victory points than your opponents, with a secondary being King of The Hill. We all gunned it to the middle and had an all out brawl for that central objective.
I think this was the end of the 2nd, his land raider ramming my Rhino to death, then dumping it's load of terminators the next turn, who charged into the demon prince. Then those grey knights, who were rudely evicted from their Rhino, jumping out and taking on the unit of bikes that had everything except the kitchen sink.
It was fantastic last game, with lots of death and carnage, and many an explosion. I think we won the primary by 50 points, and due to a lucky turn of events they captured the objective. It was such blast to play, that by the end, it really wasn't the win that mattered, it was just the icing on a triple layered fudge cake of awesomeness.
Just the air of being there was pretty cool. To think that there were close to 100 people there, people who shared in your passion for rolling dice, painting and building the miniatures, and playing the fantastic game that is Warhammer. Being there made me realize that it isn't about the game, the wins the losses, it isn't about who has the best looking miniatures (though damn, there were some fine ones, I'll show those in a second) it's about the people, everyone has a story about a game, or about a model, and I'm glad to have been a part of that.
So onto those damn fine models. I was really impressed when I saw some of the armies there, the amount of time that people put into their models is astounding. Though I guess I should know, hell in that week leading up to warmasters I think I spend about a third of my time painting. There are also some really cool conversions, and for one who isn't entirely capable of bringing some of my imagination to life with modeling, some of it is really inspiring.
I wish I could have taken pictures of all the armies there, but their was not enough time, and my phone's camera hardly does them justice. And then there is Phil's army, in all of it's half board splendor, as well as mine.
By the end of the night I was feeling good, just having finished a great game, and winning a few things in the huge raffle they put on, it was a good day. Then it came time for the victors, the results for which everyone was anxiously awaiting. Somehow, miraculously, Phil and I won best overall appearance, I was ecstatic. I don't know how we did it, especially having seen the competition. The one thing I do know though, is that we went all out. What with me painting for days beforehand, as well as months in advance, I had a decent looking army. And Phil, with his massive amount of conversions and forgeworld models, he had a great looking army. That coupled with our over-the-top board, and a story to match, might have been enough. But Phil decided that, while I was busy frantically painting my army, he'd do a little more. So he came up with this:
This is the box that Phil did up. He hand-painted all the symbols, though the eagle on top is a sticker. The rolled up papers inside are the army lists and back-story that you have to present to the judges. He also made the seal out of wax, using an emblem he carved out of putty. It's supposed to represent something that an inquisitor would receive their orders in, this one has been slightly affected by the taint of Nurgle.
We added up all the points, did almost everything within our power, and then went above and beyond to get that win. In the end it was totally worth it, and I'm grateful to Phil for all the hard work and dedication he put into this. I'm also happy that I didn't let him down. I might also mention that the jakero monkey, which was on order for about 4 months, finally decided to come in the week AFTER warmasters. The one you see in the pictures is a powder monkey that Phil converted up.
All in all, this experience has been great, to say the least. I'd like to thank Bill, for setting it all up for me, to Greg, and Nate, for running the tournament and allowing me to post on the Warmasters website. I'd like to thank all the opponents we faced, for the minor wins and crushing defeats. I'd like to thank everyone who came out, and who participated in Warmasters, making it such a success. I'd also like to thank everyone who has followed, of even taken a slight look at this blog, thank you for taking the time out of your day to read the rambles of a young man. I look forward to participating at warmasters next year, in which my Harlequin/Rainbowesque Eldar shall be making an appearance in all of their blinding glory.
So for the last time, thanks.
- Quinn
