Kindred II Champion tells it how it is

After finishing K2, i thought that it would be nice to have the Tournament Champion say a few words. Perhaps to bask in their glory and take pot shots at the other participants...just joking. So after convincing James that it was a Kindred tradition for champions to write something, he finally sent me his write up yesterday. All for us to share in their experience.

Aftermath K2

By Chapter Master James

Phew…after much intense crafting, painting and gaming, K2 is over and I came back with so much more than I expected. It was a great experience meeting and playing with old friends and meeting new faces and also being my first Legio Malaysia Tournament.

The Theme

First and foremost, me and Zaki decided that in order to have decent chance of winning any of the various awards we would have to cover all aspects of the Tournament concept. In this case, with the expendables and being an allied team, it gave plenty to feed the creative juices!

Space marines and Tyranids. Hmmm..definitely not your typical alliance, in addition to the fact I was wielding my Blood Angels Successor Chapter the Archangels. While gaming some old scenarios of Starcraft 2, a thought struck my head. In that legendary computer game, the Terrans were always trying to interfere with the Zerg, an insectoid race with more than eyebrow-raising similarities to Tyranids. Ultimately the Terrans managed to create a psionic device that could manipulate the thoughts of the Zerg. Eventually, an infamous infested Terran female destroyed the device and gained control of the Zerg swarms. Thus formed the cornerstone of our army theme: Mind Control and Infestation.

The Models

I’ve unashamedly always loved the characters and machines of the Starcraft Universe. Siege Tanks that humble Vindicators, lumbering Battlecruisers and plenty of heavily armoured and teched-up chicks to go around. Sadly, there weren’t many miniatures available since it was still a computer game so I decided I would have a laugh and model some characters from that universe. The expendables were the perfect excuse since they stood ‘apart’ from the rest of the army.

After much headscratching and money spent on miniatures outside of the 40K universe, I had my first Terran Marine prototypes. They do bear many similarities with 40K marines, with key differences in helmet gear and weapons. Zaki also came to my place to paint and brainstorm and finally we managed to include all the models we wanted to field in the expendables squads – both starcraft characters and Genestealer infested marines. One of our greatest joys were matching the two squads in painting scheme and style, we achieved this by teaching each other how to recreate each others army appearance. With Psi controller equipment modeled up, we were ready to go.

On the Table

As with any so-called ‘Uber List’ on the actual hobby table, Murphy’s Law always applies – Sh** Happens!!!

Zaki’s murderous Devourer gaunts scattered way off many times forcing him to shoot at not-so-prime targets and the Doom of Malantai somehow couldn’t get anyone to roll over 10 on 3D6! For my part, Mephiston got screwed up by Psychic Hoods(Interestingly against 2 other Mephistons) and my Attack Bike’s Multi-Melta was always shooting wide!

Lessons learnt here was to stick to more stable units the next time round. Devastators and Tervigons seem to float to mind… Anyhow we managed to pull off a draw and win of 3 rounds – not too shabby.

Pleasant Surprises

I honestly didn’t expect to take home so many awards from the event considering many of the competing armies were very well-painted and included many spectacular models. In our hearts though I think we knew that we had our trump card in the Army theme, from concept to models which was coherent with the fluff. Overall we learnt much from this event and thank the Organizers for their hard work and bestowing us the honour of Hobby Champions K2.