So where to begin? Why Howling Griffons?

I'm part of a group of 40K campaign weekend veterans. After a few beers in Bugmans at Soul Devourers, we learnt that the next campaign weekend was going to be based on the Badab War and would involve those factions. We'd all wanted to have a uniformed themed army for a while so that we could turn up to the weekend as a task force. It was also about the time of the new Space Marine codex and while we already had a space marine chapter individually, the idea of all collecting the same chapter was too good to pass by. We agreed to kill two birds with one stone and paint a chapter involved in the Badab War to use at the forthcoming event. Looking at the chapters, there was one that really stood out from the others (particularly to my eye as a painter and modeller first and a gamer second)..... the Howling Griffons. We decided to make our HG's even more individualistic by painting them in the original double quarter scheme. So, all that was left was to make our lists, buy our toys and get painting...

Onto the list,

For these campaign weekend you're given 1500 points to play with, fairly standard stuff. The catch is that 1000 points of this must be able to play as a legal stand alone army, with another 500 points as a reinforcement. This is used in situations where you might have two imperial players against one chaos player, the campaign weekends are pretty hectic; mad but highly enjoyable things!

The campaign rules also had a nice twist; if you are bringing a painted chapter of the forces involved you got a free unit. For the HG's this was a choice between an insurgency force of five marines with a sniper rifle or a callidus assassin. In the end I chose the assassin, really to save some time on the old painting, I'm painfully slow!

So troops, well, I for one think scouts are the unsung heroes of the space marine army and decided to take two squads to prove it. Their ability to infiltrate being one of the best skills to have in my opinion. Similarly, I decided to take a big command squad (for no other reason than the new plastic command squad was so cool) with infiltrate. Together with the assassin, they form a large chunk that can threaten the enemy from the word go. But who to lead? Well, I for one prefer squads to single death dealing characters, So I went for a standard captain. He did later get upgraded thanks to a few points I had spare but decided that the leadership boost he gave to the whole army was more beneficial than a chaplain, and I still don't trust psykers...

Other troops; I decided for a large tactical squad with plenty of plasma weapons. Whilst risky, they could threaten any other unit on he board and could quite happily take any objectives if necessary. For mobility, I took a squad of six marines in a razorback. It will be their job to reinforce the line where need be, most probably to help out the infiltrating forces who will be, by now, in the thick of it. It also gave me an excuse to buy a forgeworld razorback, yay!

Fast attack; with the new assault cannon rules I decided it would be rude not to have a landspeeder tornado. It could either zoom ahead to assist the infiltrators if they were trying to bite off more than they can chew or deepstike behind enemy lines and give them a big surprise.

Heavy support; time to take some tank busting weaponry. A big devastator squad should do the trick. Eight strong with two lascannons and two missile launchers. The missile launchers give them a bit of flexibility being able to fire frag at troops of concentrate krak on vehicles. I also added a predator annihilator as I wanted my opponent to have something to fire at or to regret. No one like staring down the barrels of three lascannons!

And finally a dreadnought. The dreadnought has been , without a shadow of a doubt, the star player in my games so far, having killed three obliterators and eight terminators in two rounds of close combat, even after having his power fist destroyed. There's nothing like kicking chaos scum to death!

I decided not to upgrade any of my squads with the "trust your battle brothers trait". I decided to squeeze a few more marines out for the points. I am however keeping the "never despair trait" as it's all part of the background!

Ok so list sorted, ... on to the painting....

Xerxes: Not too much that's very special here, I do however like the basing. The skull is clipped to fit inside a spare cadian helmet then filed down to look like it was half buried. The razor wire is from Forgeworld.

Medic: Not sure I'd want him as my medic but hey. I decided to keep as much of the original heraldry as possible. I'd do the same for techmarines etc.. but maybe not chaplains who I think look awesome in black!

Vet sergeant: One of my favs as I love the pose, just smacking someone in the chops! The power fist is again from the commanders sprue.

HQ Melta 1: This is a space marine biker body on plastic legs with a loincloth from the Commander sprue to help hide the gaps.

Dreadnought

Tac II (4): Body and head from Iron warriors set, horns clipped off and an antennae from a techmarine (from the vehicle accessory sprue) glued on. The boltgun box-drum clip is again from the vehicle accessory sprue, it's from the stormbolter.

Tac II (5): The original test model for the army is actually a Battle for Maccrage marine, just goes to show how good they are.

Tac II (7): A classic marine with a belt fed boltgun, adapted from a chaos boltgun.

Tac II (8): My fav boltgun, a drum "tommy gun" boltgun. The magazine is actually from a cadian grenade launcher. The loincloth from the command squad box.

The sergeant's arm is actually the bionic arm from the commander sprue and the banner is made from a pennant from the Witch Hunters Immolator sprue and some green stuff. The flamer model is converted from a cadian flamer backpack and some guitar wire, I just feel the little canister on the flamer isn't going to last that long in battle!

The two gunslingers are my favourites, particularly the Deathwatch marine. I have a small Deathwatch squad somewhere at home and this is made in the same pose as that one. I guess his service with the ordo xenos is up…

The Razorback is from Forgeworld with extra armour made from both the Forgeworld conversion kit and some of the older ablative armour plates.

Scout II (3): Easy conversion, snip away the bolt pistol and add a boltgun, looks great though.

Scout V (1): This is veteran sergeant Naman's body with a Vindicare sniper rifle. Snip ship and a little green stuff later and voila, sergeant with sniper rifle.

Land Speeder Tornado

Dev X (7): Loincloth from command squad and head from commander. A little repositioning of the hands make him look like he's reading the auspex.

Dev X (8) and Tac II (3): Two obvious uses of substituting Chaos heads/bodies.

The techmarine is really nothing more than a pintle-mounted stormbolter, but I had enough pieces in my bits-box to make him so I thought I would.

Callidus Assassin (Special allowance for this event)

Click this text to see Robin's Army List for Badab War Event