Sunday 9 July 2017

Hellblade unleashed...

Hellblades are capable air superiority fighters if deployed in high enough numbers. The Death Guard capitol ship Harbringer of Woe carries large numbers of fighters such as these, and they were active in the skies of Neu-Diemensland prior to the deployment of ground troops.

This pict capture was taken during the late stages of the air war, prior to the mass landing of ground forces from the Death Guard.
This is one of two 28mm scale hellblades that I own, and the first one that I added the final details to. It and it's wingman were painted to tabletop standard not long after I bought them, and remained in that state for quite a few years.
After a solid performance in the early days of 40k 8th edition I decided to reward it by finishing the paint job off to a standard that I was happy with. 
As you can see (through the haze that is my lack of photographic skills) I added a few details to this model; some spooky fire things on each side and at the rear jet, and a couple of chaos symbols on each flank.

I painted these in a glowy green, along with the pilot to contrast the red accent that I'd chosen.
I also painted some glowy headlights on the front. I'm not 100% sure that these things are headlights, but thought they would look ok.

The colour scheme is that of my traitor guard army, the Togari 88th, but goes well with my death guard army as well.
In games it is upgunned in the 8th edition version of the game, with the autocannons of old being replaced with helstorm cannons, that throw out a capable 4 strength 6 shots that inflict an additional mortal wound on a 6+. So in games where I will be using forgeworld units, one or two of these are quite handy.

Edit: I forgot to say, but during my last game against Aeldari, my opponent had Eldrad hidden up the back in some ruins, buffing the army. A highly mobile hellblade should have been able to get into a position to threaten Eldrad, what with it's 40" move and agile special rules. While it isn't likely that it would have killed him (one turn of shooting would on average inflict 1.55 wounds on him and he has 6 wounds), its chances would have been infinitely higher than if I didn't try. Plus he may have moved forward, putting him in threat range of something else.
So, as is always the way, when a new edition drops learning to use tools like this presents some fun challenges!

2 comments:

  1. Sweet! I hadn't seen any of these in a while, you made a cool job with the additions, and I love all the OSL effects!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks Suber. I have one more that is in the painting queue. I've added a few daemonic additions to it, so it can pass as a helldrake (which in the background is a daemon possessed hellblade) as I'm not a fan of the helldrake model. At all.

      Delete