The Hired Gun

 

Last september I played the great Necromunda Hired Gun video game. The story is about a bounty hunter that becomes embroiled int the hunt of a rogue noble known as the Silver Talon, a chase in which he cuts his way through veritable hordes of gangers with the inestimable help of his cyber-mastiff and that loose cannon Kal Jericho. Needless to say I wanted to make my own version of the character for tabletop, and here he is, armed to the teeth with a veritable arsenal of weaponry.

The fellow in question, Janus Draik from the blackstone fortress set was an obvious choice for him, as his miniature looks surprisingly similar already to the PC

Sagittarum guard

 

This squad of gun-toting custodians will give a much needed firepower to my Talons of the Emperor army, and since they're troops now, these are an ideal choice to castle up on an objective

I decorated their helmets with horsehair plumes, inspired by the above artwork of Adrian Smith, my main custodes reference for conversions and paint schemes

Equipped with a misericordia powerknife this guards are no slouches in melee either!

Achilles Diomedes, custodes blade champion

Custodian Achilles is one of the most accomplished swordsmen of the Ten Thousand, having honed his craft during thousand of years in service to the Golden Throne. He eschews ranged weaponry altogether, wielding instead a pair of  ancestral meridian blades capable of slewing any foe

I used several bits from the box to make the fifth custodian into a blade champion, giving him two 3D printed swords and a rather heroic pose

Shadow of the Planet Killer

After the expulsion of the chaos hordes from the plague ravaged planet of Ulthor, the heretic player decided to flee forwards rushing away from the imperials capturing the agriworld of Sarlax. The Imperium of course went into the offensive and attacked the Albitern system, to take out the chaos main base in the Agripina A system

We rolled your run of the mill fleet engagement, with the heretics bringing the massive Planet Killer to defend their blasphemous foothold in imperial space

The gargantuan traitor vessel soon prover her worth by crippling the imperial Retribution battleship with her awesome firepower

On the other side of the battlefield the imperials scored a win by setting a chaos cruiser on fire with a torpedo salvo

After being gutted by torpedoes, the battleship traded ineffective fire with the Planet Killer

Only to be killed next turn

The imperial flagship then exploded in an awesome fireball

To make things worse a dreadclaw wave crippled all weapon systems on the tyrant cruiser

Who then attempted to ram the foe without success

It was all up to the dictator squadron then

Which with several precise torpedo hits and bomber waves destroyed both chaos cruisers

All the remaining imperial vessels then turned to face the Planet Killer

That answered with weapons and torpedoes, setting a dictator on fire

Both sides engaged at close range, but the superior gunnery of the heretical warship soon saw one of the cruisers completely wrecked

The two last imperials then cut the T on the Planet Killer, opening up on its rear quarter

Then turning and launching a spread of torpedoes that hit the destroyer of worlds amidships

The manoeuver dance continued over several turns, with the imperials dodging the lethal armageddon gun mounted on the front of the enemy battleship

In a bold gambit, an Imperial cruiser made full speed and rammed the Planet Killer

Crippling the heretical beast

And then zooming out of the battlefield

But the giant spaceship still had teeth, and used its last armageddon shot to cripple the imperial cruiser

Both ships then engaged on a close quarter firefight

With the tyrant taking advantage of the gravity well to move behind its foe

A tactic copied by the chaos player in his following turn

The game was decided when the chaos vessel, unable to turn due to a critical, made full speed over the lava planet, coming too close to the edge

The imperial cruiser used gravity to slingshot behind the Planet Killer, and blew it away after two turns of sustained fire

With orbit secured now it's time for the land forces to shift the chaos filth from Albitern

The harrowing of Ulthor

 

Retaking the Agripina A campaign after the easter hiatus we are back with a 40k game. After beating the chaos filth in space the Imperium invades the corrupted world of Ulthor

Seizing the first turn knights of house Cervaria and their household troops rush for the objectives, laying a curtain of fire that almost kills the enemy knight despoiler

In the chaos turn the giant engine aims all its guns into a lone armiger and blows it up

In the second turn the imperials assault the chaos lines, laying waste to both cultists and marines

Concentrated fire kills the despoiler, the final blow being delivered by a lascannon team from the household squad protecting the objective in the imperial deployment zone

Thanks to a stratagem a badly mauled armiger surges forward and kills its opponent with melta guns and a chain reaper to the face

Safely located in the imperial backfield the leman russ squadron bombards the chaos lines, killing a terminator squad and then the second armiger

A bit too late the chaos reinforcements show up on the battlefield

A chaos lord charges suicidally into the Cervaria lancer

While its terminator colleague is melted by a termal cannon

Kharn manages to come on top in his duel against the armiger, but all the khorne berzekers have been deleted by the relic gatling cannon of the crusader knight

The chaos lord is also squished

With so many losses the battle ends with a brilliant imperial victory 55 to 0

Thanks to this victory the imperials are one step closer to winning the campaign