Gladius: Metal vs biomass

Earlier, I wrote about how Warhammer 40,000: Gladius - Relics of War is a really good 4X game. After beating the game a couple of times as the Marines, I decided to try a steeper challenge and play as one of my favorite Warhammer factions: the Imperial Guard.

A great thing about Gladius is that consecutive games can be very different. After my Marine playthroughs, I bought the Tyranid DLC, and started a couple of games with them included. The first time around, I got into a proper fight with the Nids - until the Necrons, having first wiped out the Orks, steamrollered us both. Next time, the Tyranids were destroyed almost immediately, and as I was beating up on the Necrons, a massive Ork horde crashed into us and totally derailed everything. But the one thing that seems to be constant throughout is that the AI Imperial Guard gets wiped out.

To make a long story short, the Imperial Guard challenge is to survive your enemies' attacks until you can go all Steel Legion on them (although Chimeras are nowhere to be found!). This is made somewhat challenging by the basic infantry squads only having flashlights and being generally quite useless. The native wildlife is a real challenge, especially the Enslavers, not to mention any AI factions. Marines and Necrons are particularly bad news.

The key units in the early game are the Tank Commander and your Heavy Weapons Teams. Even with the nerf to heroes' damage resistance, the Tank Commander can really take a beating, and dish out some damage to enemy vehicles as well. Once your heavy weapon teams start levelling up and get a Lord Commissar to supervise them, they will fuck up anything in the game - but they need to be protected. It's a fun exercise to build cities that provide firing lanes for heavy weapon teams while keeping them screened.

As you move up the tech tree, more options become available. The Guard are the only faction in Gladius with any real artillery, in the form of the Basilisk. I really like artillery, and to be honest I was hoping the Basilisk would have been more effective; its damage output isn't brilliant. Where it excels is range and mobility: with a range of six hexes (I think? The wiki is wrong) and a movement of four, a battery of Basilisks can switch targets with ease. They also make besieging cities very economical; just rain shells down on the enemy city while your tanks wait outside the range of their defenses to beat up any counter-attacks.

Speaking of tanks, if you can stick around for long enough, the real fun starts when you get Baneblades. They will simply roll over everything while soaking up absolutely ridiculous amounts of fire. And unlike Dawn of War, you can have as many of them as you can afford. Which is amazing.

To get that far, though, there's one key thing you have to consider as an Imperial Guard player: cities. While the Marines are limited to one city, the Guard can found as many as they like. Each city inflicts a penalty to loyalty, which can really cripple your production; but on the other hand, cities automatically pool their resources. In the early game, you need food to support your infantry units; later you'll need ore to build your vehicles. If your starting location is, say, on some grasslands, founding a second city in an ore-rich area is a very solid move. The special resource bonuses are definitely worth grabbing; I don't think a city should be founded without two special resource hexes in its (potential) radius except for extraordinary reasons.

If you can weather the storm and make the Manufactorum go brr, victory through overwhelming firepower is yours.

Of course, the AI Guard doesn't always get wiped out. If they make it further into the game, it turns out they like to build flyers.

And I mean a lot of flyers. These huge flyer swarms are actually surprisingly difficult to deal with, and if I'm honest, they're one of my few real criticisms of Gladius: they are just silly as hell.

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After succeeding with the Guard, it was time for Necrons. Chaos Androids with a vaguely Space Egyptian theme, I thought the Necrons were a slightly silly addition to the 40k universe when they showed up back in 3rd edition. Innovation is anathema to Warhammer 40,000 anyway, and it felt like they were being shoehorned into the fluff way too hard. However, they've been around long enough that I've kinda gotten used to them, and frankly I ignore most of GW's fluff innovations anyway.

As it happens, Gladius is a really good way to get to know the Necrons a little bit. They play a lot like Marines, with very durable basic infantry and limited cities: Necrons can found as many cities as they like, but only on spaces with a Necron tomb. It makes the decision-making process a lot easier! Necrons also regenerate, which can be immensely frustrating when fighting them, and their higher-tier vehicles, especially the Obelisk, can take massive amounts of damage. One important thing in Gladius is that you need tough units that can absorb enemy fire; the Necrons definitely have them - and they regenerate.

Playing as Necrons is actually quite good fun, and somewhat forgiving on the lowest difficulty level, which makes them a good faction to learn about the game with. Their faction quest is all right; while it's a little boring that it mostly involves fighting other Necrons, it does help to get properly acquainted with the units when you have to use them and fight them. If you can beat up your fellow Necrons, you'll gain victory and a strange compulsion to buy a Triarch Stalker model.

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So, to sum up, Gladius remains one of my favorite 4X games of all time. What next? There's the Chaos DLC; I'm a little disappointed they apparently don't get any tanks, although there is a crab enemy, which might be fun. Or anime space communism! I'm hoping there are more expansions coming, by the way. Dawn of War had everything Gladius has now, as well as Eldar, Dark Eldar and Sisters of Battle. I would love to see the Sororitas in Gladius! I will certainly pick up at least the Chaos DLC next time it's on sale.

I recommend the Tyranid DLC. It's a thrill to see Carnifexes and Biovores and Hive Tyrants and everything rampaging around, and uniquely even if the nids are wiped out, they'll leave their mark on the world as they reduce entire hexes to bare rock when they scarf up all the biomass - very cool. But above all, I recommend Gladius. It remains a criminally underappreciated game, given that I think it's pretty clearly one of the best Warhammer video game adaptations ever.

Let's Paint Star Wars: Rebellion, part 2

Last time, I painted most of Star Wars: Rebellion; now it's time to (finally!) finish the job.

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We scheduled a game with some new players, so the first thing I need to do is finish the models in the base game. Luckily there aren't that many of them left; we'll start with the Empire.

13. Star Destroyers

My Star Destroyers got the same treatment as the Interdictors: Dark Seagreen base coat, Light Grey drybrush.

I'm very happy with the end result!

14. Death Stars

For the complete Death Stars, I simply painted them Neutral Grey and drybrushed with Light Grey.

I painted the open parts of the Death Star under construction Black Grey, and drybrushed with Gunmetal Grey and Neutral Grey; the rest of the hull I painted the same as the completed ones.

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15. Shield Generators and Ion Cannon

With the Imperial forces finished, it's time to get the rebel hardware done. I decided to do something a little different with the ground installations, and painted the base of the ion cannons Basalt Grey, and that of the shield generators Light Green.

16. Mon Calamari Cruisers and Rebel Transports

I've been very lazy with the rebel starships and just given them a base coat of Ivory and a Smoke wash. I kept the wash very light for the cruisers:

But hey, I think it works. I made the transports a bit more grimy:

17. CR90 Corvettes

Although the Rebellion models have been fairly high quality, as Fantasy Flight models usually are, the sterns of the CR90s looked pretty horrid.

But it was nothing a file and a pin vice couldn't fix!

Then it was a simple matter of Ivory, Smoke and the same squadron colors as I used on the smaller rebel spacecraft.

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And that's it! Here are all the base game models, starting with the rebels:

And the Empire.

I'm absolutely delighted to have finished painting these models. After all, this was the project that relaunched my modeling hobby, and I feel like it's done wonders for my mental health. I'm also very happy that this is the first modeling and painting project I've finished after my sort-of-New Year's resolution to finish things.

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Unfortunately, the four-player game of Rebellion we were planning to try never happened because of the coronavirus. Instead, I painted the Rise of the Empire expansion's models that I hadn't done yet.

18. Golan Arms Turret

I painted these to match the other rebel ground installations, i.e. Ivory, Smoke, Gunmetal Grey, with some Basalt Grey along the bottom.

19. Nebulon-B Frigate

For these models, I followed the Armada example: the grey parts are in Dark Seagreen with a Light Grey drybrush, and the lighter paneling is Ivory with a Smoke wash.

20. Shield Bunker

Finally, the shield bunkers I simply painted Dark Seagreen and drybrushed with Neutral Grey.

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So there they all are: the project that got me back into this whole painting business is finally done. Of course, since we're still in coronavirus lockdown, who knows when I'll get to use any of these models for anything? Maybe when we've finished Here I Stand by email we'll do a remote game of Rebellion!

Here I Stand: Power cards and a list of units

Here, for reference purposes for our PBEM game, is the game board without any counters on it, and each power card in impulse order, followed by a list of the unit counters available to that power.

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9 naval/corsair squadrons
10 1-strong armies
7 × 2
4 × 4
1 × 6

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6 naval squadrons
11 × 1-strong armies
7 × 2
4 × 4
1 × 6

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5 naval squadrons
9 × 1-strong army
4 × 2
2 × 4
1 × 6

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5 naval squadrons
10 × 1-strong army
5 × 2
3 × 4
1 × 6

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2 naval squadrons
7 × 1-strong army
4 × 2
2 × 4

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8 × 1-strong army
5 × 2
2 × 4

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Independent and minor power unit counters all have a 1-strong army on one side and a 2-strong on the other, except for one Hungary-Bohemian army of strength 4, and the Knights of St. John who are strength 1.

Independent: 9 × 1/2 + St. John
Venice: 4 × 1/2, 4 squadrons
Genoa: 2 × 1/2, 1 squadrons
Hungary: 3 × 1/2, 1 × 4
Scotland: 3 × 1/2, 1 squadron

Warhammer 40,000: Renegades and Heretics

In our last game of Warhammer 40,000 we introduced vehicles, and it turns out my partner quite likes them. Also, a friend of mine has an Imperial Guard armored company list from back in 3rd edition, which will, sadly, be just as viable in 8th. So my Chaos army is going to be seeing more tanks and Knights in the future. This is a bit of a problem, since anti-tank isn't exactly a Chaos strength, and definitely not a Word Bearers one.

Of course, I could answer with more knights of my own, and maybe I will. But knights like to burn through command points, and a chaos marine battalion will be quite expensive and not that useful against armor. Where can Chaos get anti-tank weapons and cheap command points?

Renegades and Heretics, that's where.

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The Renegades and Heretics army list is in Forge World's Imperial Guard Imperial Armour Index, along with all kinds of Imperial Guard vehicles they can use. I've always loved the idea of traitor Guard, but it's so rare to actually get to field them properly. Renegades and Heretics hit the spot very well: they have cheap infantry and HQs, and access to a plethora of Imperial vehicles from Sentinels to the Baneblade. On the down side, they suffer from atrociously bad leadership and the cheap infantry has terrible stats in general. Sadly, Chapter Approved 2019 dropped Chaos Cultists to 4 points each, making Renegade Militia and Cultists kind of pointless and scuppering my plans for a Renegades and Heretics battalion. Therefore, I think I'm looking at a vanguard or spearhead detachment.

First of all, whatever detachment I make, it needs an HQ. The Renegade Commander is a slightly odd choice: if they're not your Warlord, they provide no buffs or other useful bonuses, while their stats are quite weak on their own. They do, however, have two advantages: they're cheap, and since they're a Chaos character, they can summon daemons! I'm bringing a Renegade Commander with a power maul, which is a ludicrously low 29 points. Some of you may recognize the model.

It's a pretty good model, by the way! I added a Victoria Miniatures shock mace to represent the power maul.

Overall, though, I'm not all that impressed with the Fallout: Wasteland Warfare models; I think most of them don't really look all that interesting. I do kinda want to get some Super Mutants, though, and they're pretty good value compared to, say, GW Ogryns; so maybe we'll see...

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While painting my Renegade Commander, I decided that the color of my Renegades and Heretics would be orange. I miss the old GW days, especially in Epic scale, when they'd have absolutely outrageous color schemes for the Imperial Guard, with the fluff justification that they might be fighting on planets covered in toxic industrial waste or whatever. In memory of this, my Renegades and Heretics are going to be orange and blue. I tried out the color scheme on a Sloppy Jalopy BMP-2, which I could field as a Renegades and Heretics Kirov-pattern Salamander recon tank, but really mostly for the sheer fun of painting a BMP orange. I love how it turned out!

I started doing Daedric lettering for my Renegade Armigers, and I really enjoy it: it's actually surprisingly easy to get into, and I think the end result looks great.

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The best way to fight a tank (or rabbit-piloted AT-ST for that matter), though, is with an anti-tank weapon that's hard for the tank to destroy. One intriguing option in the Renegades and Heretics list is the Renegade Disciples elite choice: basically regular humans with a 3+ BS who cost 6 points apiece and come with a minimum squad size of 5. So that means a minimum-size squad with a lascannon is 50 points. I think I have to try this.

The great thing about Renegades and Heretics is that you can pretty much use any damn models you like. Last year, I published an article on Finnish army anti-tank guns before the Winter War, and built a Warlord Games Bofors 37mm gun to go with it. So I ordered a Finnish rifle squad from Warlord to make a minimum-size squad. Here they are!

For a second Disciples unit, I wanted to build some Chaos Squats. That's right: for those of you who didn't know, the beer-drinking, bike-riding mad mechanics of good old Warhammer 40,000 times also had their Chaos brethren. For models, I used Thundrik's Profiteers from Warhammer Underworlds, equipped with some Tau Fire Warrior rifles and a Victoria Miniatures lascannon. They're wearing Dark Red, and Brass and Copper armor with German Grey accessories and a Black Glaze wash. I'm very pleased with the result.

That's two elite choices; a third, with the Renegade Commander, would make a vanguard detachment. While I could pick a third anti-tank team, I'm actually more interested in trying something else. As a curiosity, Renegades and Heretics offers what I think is the only Chaos sniper unit in the whole game, in the form of Renegade Marauders. They're a fascinating unit anyway, with a special morale rule and your pick out of three buffs. The morale rule is that they don't take normal Morale tests at all, but if they've taken any casualties they roll a d6, and on a 1 the entire unit flees. You takes your chances! Of the three optional special rules, Stalker gives all enemy shooting a hit penalty and increases the Marauders' cover saves. They also have pretty decent base stats, and a minimum five-man squad with two sniper rifles clocks in at 34 points.

The models are built from Victoria Miniatures bits: Ranger torsos, universal bare rifle arms, Arcadian legs and sniper rifles, Anvil Kalashnikovs and Statuesque beret and veteran heads.

So overall, the disciples, marauders and commander make a 164-point vanguard detachment. This is definitely something I'm trying! Bringing the BMP bumps it up to 242 points:

Renegades and Heretics vanguard detachment (1 CP) - 242 points

HQ - Renegade Commander - 25 pts
+ shotgun (0), power maul (4) = 29 points

Elite - Renegade Disciple Squad (5) - 30 pts
+ lascannon (20) = 50 points [79]

Elite - Renegade Disciple Squad (5) - 30 pts
+ lascannon (20) = 50 points [129]

Elite - Renegade Marauder Squad (5) - 30 pts
+ sniper rifle × 2 (4) = 34 points [163]

Fast Attack - Salamander Scout Tank - 55 pts
+ autocannon (10), heavy bolter (8), hunter-killer missile (6) = 79 points [242]

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So I think this is the first painting project I've finished during our coronavirus quarantine! There will be more.

Let's Read Tolkien 67: The Ride of the Rohirrim

It was dark and Merry could see nothing as he lay on the ground rolled in a blanket; yet though the night was airless and windless, all about him hidden trees were sighing softly.

Merry and the Riders of Rohan are camped out in the woods on their way to Gondor. Merry eavesdrops on a discussion between Théoden, his captains and a leader of the Wood-woses, an indigenous people living in the woods at the foot of the White Mountains. The Wood-woses hate orcs and offer to guide the Riders to the outwall of Minas Tirith by an old, disused Númenoran road, bypassing Sauron's army. This is done, and the Riders arrive at the Rammas Echor, which they find Sauron's forces have wrecked and left unguarded. The Riders pass through and Théoden leads them in a charge on the unsuspecting main body of the Witch-king's army.

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So this chapter culminates in what I think must be the most famous cavalry charge in all of fantasy. I'm still a sucker for these parts of the Lord of the Rings; I think Théoden's restoration - almost resurrection - is still deeply moving, and it more or less culminates here, as he leads his riders into the greatest battle of the age. I love the water imagery Tolkien uses: the Riders pass through the broken outwall like a rising tide, and charge like a foaming wave.

There are a couple of messages here, so to speak. One is that Sauron and his orcs are such assholes that even the indigenous people, who have been treated the way indigenous people tend to be treated by white settlers, would rather help the settlers than Sauron's forces. The Wood-woses quite strongly recall Robert E. Howard's Picts: a crafty but strange, almost otherworldly and ugly native people; in other words, a lovely bit of racialized othering. The casual aside that the Númenorans and men of Rohan have hunted them like animals does get one wondering whether Sauron could have done more to get both the Dunlendings and the Wood-woses on his side.

The other is that Sauron and his captains actually aren't all that good at this. As Éomer points out, the outer wall could have been held against them for a long time, and that would presumably have won the battle for the Shadow. Instead they've blasted huge holes in it as they broke through, which seems kind of pointless: you'd think it would have been enough to tie up the Gondorian garrison as the main force made the breakthrough at Osgiliath, because soon enough they'd have to retreat or be encircled. This mistake is then compounded by bad planning: whoever made the decision to station a blocking force further north along the main road rather than at the wall itself was overly confident that the enemy would be taking the road and had no other path through.

Of course, this is all in keeping with Tolkien's theology: because evil is an imperfect mockery of good, they never do get things quite right, and inadvertently screw themselves over. "Our Enemy's devices oft serve us in his despite," as Éomer puts it - a recurring theme of the entire work.

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Next time: ships.