From StuartL - Laying Siege at the Lair of the Great Beast - 324 Points

Hello again. With only one chamber between myself and the Altar of the Snow Lord, I have prepared my biggest entry to date. I believe the term is "Points Bomb"?

The theme for the Chamber was The Lair of the Spider, so looking through my collection for anything Spider-esque, my eyes settled on a Chaos Space Marine Venomcrawler. A Venomcrawler is a part daemon, part machine, war engine, covered with claws, guns and mechanical tentacle things. So, I thought to myself, 'This will be a perfect addition to my Iron Warriors Army.'

However, the name of the Chamber on the AHPC information post was different from that on the map itself. The Snow Lord had decided to change it to the Lair of the Great Beast. Something bigger than the Spider, something worse. 'Okay,' I think to myself, 'What have I got that is bigger and scarier than the Venomcrawler?' Luckily, I had something. A Chaos Space Marine Forgefiend. The Forgefiend is an ever BIGGER part daemon, part machine, war engine. 

So with those two settled on, I was all ready to set to painting when I realised something vitally important. 'Hang on.... I don't have an Iron Warriors army.' If you could have seen the look on my face. Soooo... long story short, I have also painted up a Chaos Space Marines Iron Warriors army.

A Chaos Lord is the leader of a Chaos Marines army. A Veteran of hundreds of years of battle and no slouch when it comes to getting stuck into the enemy.

This fellow is a conversion based on an old Terminator body and some spare parts from an Adeptus Mechanicus kit. He will be my Master of Demolitions, as the Iron Warriors are noted siege specialists. This isn't a game legal mini, so he will only come out for narrative missions and the like.

Adding some more punch to my army is a Helbrute, a (you guessed it) part daemon, part machine, war engine. In this case the Helbrute began as a Dreadnought, a life support machine for wounded veterans attached to a walking tank. Over time it has become possessed and mutated into the beauty you see before you today.

A Rhino APC adds a bit of mobility to the army and a little fire support for the guys at the front line.

This squad are a unit of Chosen, veteran marines equipped with the best weaponry the warband can lay it's hands on.

Havocs, as pictured above are the heavy weapon specialists, bringing anti-tank and anti-personnel weapons to the battlefield.

These chunky fellows are Obliterators. They began as regular marines that were infected with the obliterator virus, which transformed them into hulking monstrosities able to morph their bodies to produce all sorts of weapons. They are pretty big, standing on 50mm wide bases.

Finally we come to the rank and file of the army. 3 squads of 10 Chaos Marines. One squad is geared up for storming the enemy positions, while the other two lay down suppressing fire and advance more cautiously to hold the ground.

And the army as a whole. I have gone for quite a grubby look for this force. The Iron Warriors are noted for being siege experts and spending a lot of time digging trenches. Unlike some other 40K armies, they are fairly pragmatic and don't run around with massive banners or huge amounts of 'bling' on their armour. I will admit that the hazard stripes were a tiny wee bit challenging, but the most difficult part was the transfers on the pauldrons. The convex shape of the pauldron does not do you any favours when it comes to putting on transfers. I actually used two different types on the army. As the Iron Warriors insignia is a metallic grey skull, on minis with metallic grey shoulder pads, I used older style transfers which had a black background to help them stand out. On minis where the pauldrons had hazard stripes, I used a newer set of transfers with no background. The older transfers really didn't sit well on the minis despite using decal softener, decal medium and various prayers to the darkest of gods. If I ever do more minis for the army in the future, it'll be hazard stripes and the newer decals all the way. I have no idea how many points this represents in game, as I don't currently play 40K 9th edition. I intend to use these for games of 5th edition using some house rules and modifications. I think it's a big enough force for the games I have in mind, but a project is never truly finished is it?

Anyway, that's all for now. 42x 28mm infantry, 2x 40mm infantry and 4 vehicles, plus the bonus for the chamber earns me 324 points by my calculations. This also opens my way to approach the Altar of the Snow Lord.

For the side duels, all of these minis are from GW, so 304 points goes towards the GW minis duel. They are also rocking an impressive 209 skullz between them, an average of 4.35 per model.

My running Duels totals:

GW Points - 591

Skullz - 352

Squirrels - 8

For anyone worried that two of my Duels totals just doubled, my work is starting to get busy again after the winter break, so I expect my output will drop off a bit from here on out.