40K Friday: More Orks

 

Progress was slow this week but I have another Grey Knight Terminator squad almost ready to go in the case. I'm still fighting the stupidly fiddly nature of the "almost done" model where the last 10% of finishing it takes as much time as the entire process before that. It's why getting to that clearcoat & flocking stage feels so good.

Most of the time however went to Orks. I am trying to maintain focus on them right now. There is some finishing happening here too - mainly the Morkanauts - but there is a fair amount of building happening too as I try to finish out stuff they should have had years ago. The goal is to get it to a certain point and then see what the new edition brings, knowing full well I will still be building as the new edition starts too. 

They look good painted up - this one is obviously not mine

The other wild idea that has crept in is the one I mentioned last time about a potential Blood Axe force in half track-ish looking vehicles. It's been in my head for a few years now as the ork battlewagons look like a half track of some kind if you leave off the top. Some head-swaps for the boyz riding inside and suddenly we have a old-school-looking new force using mostly stuff I already had. I might throw in some of those new guard vehicles as trukks and a looted Russ or three as tank support. It would be far more sensible to not do this and instead roll it all into either my Goffs or my Evil Sunz but I'm really feeling this as it's own sub-force that I could use on its own or team up with other parts.  

I mean it -is- a halftrack technically anyway already!
(Imagine this in a kind of camo grey scheme) 

So now the question really is do I compile the parts to do this but save it for later once I have finished more of the stuff I have started? Or do I work some of it in too and just make a mess of it - though it would still be "working on orks" which at least sounds better than switching over to Guard or Dark Eldar or something else. 

More to come.

40K Friday: Orks!

 

I am still working on the GKs part of the time - got to move a terminator squad and a dreadnought into the "done" case last week - but as 11th edition draws closer I decided I ought to take a serious look at my Orks and try to get them into shape/fill in some gaps/grab some units that may be disappearing or getting replaced soon.

On the Replacement Candidates front it matters because I like some units to fit together, to look like they go together, and while it matters less with orks than with some other armies it does still matter. I assume anything new will be bigger and a least slightly different style-wise. I like most of what I see in the new box for orks though I am not a huge fan of that new weirdboy. So if I am going to fill in some units alongside some existing units I am inclined to pick up more of the existing kits and use whatever new stuff comes out for something new. Also - parts! I am not sure that some of my alternate ork heads, for example, will fit right or look right on the newer boyz or whatever they end up doing with nobz so I need to make sure I have enough heads and bodies that are compatible with each other before these old kits go out of production. 

This guy is great, no complaints here

Right now I have a good-sized Goffs force that is the bulk of force. It's mostly infantry with walker support and I think I'm going to stick with that theme. So the first round of painting time went into improving the pair of black partly-painted Morkanauts I've had sitting around for a few years. They've been used but I've never been ready to call them "finished" so why not try to get them into that state? Plus it's a nice break to paint something orkish that doesn't come in batches of 20. A bunch of boyz, nobz, meganobz, dreads, kans, 'nauts ... i think this makes a great core ork force.

Not as crazy about this guy ... I like my weirdboys to have crazy hair, not Doc Ock tentacles

For a long time now the other part of my ork army has been an Evil Sunz force. Buggies, bikes, trukks, battlewagons - you know, vehicle heavy! There are some boyz here too, plus a unit of meganobz, and some walkers but the emphasis was on the speedy stuff shooting things up and dumping out smaller units of boyz here and there. I'm probably going to stick with that here but there are a lot of things that need to be finished - concepts are easy, building is pretty easy, but finishing things is clearly a stretch for me. 

There may be a third element lurking around now. For a long time I was thinking I might add a Bad Moons force, mostly big gunz, some lootas, probably some walkers and tanks here too, but it never really coalesced into "yes I want to do this now". Recently though I've been looking at how my official battlewagons are built and some of the custom ork heads I picked up a while back and I've been thinking a lot about a Blood Axe force. This would be 50-60 boys, possibly some burnas, packed into 3 battlewagons and then maybe a few trukks. Not sure what else yet but I'm really stuck on the visuals in my head for this and a lot of it is stuff I already have. If the Goffs are my ground pounders, the Sunz are my Recon in Force element, then maybe Blood Axes would work for mechanized infantry.

This just screams "Ork Trukk for Blood Axes" to me

Do I need this many orks? No. Would I ever let that stop me? Also no. Lord knows it hasn't so far ...

So anyway there's the update on the latest area of focus. Yes, I've jumped around a lot this year but I am actually getting things done with these armies so I feel pretty good about it. More to come!

40K Friday: Grinding Away at Grey Knights

 

I should probably post something about all the new rule reveals but in my experience it's very difficult to draw any real conclusions when you only have part of the picture. Sure, we've seen the contents of the big box for the new edition, and some of the new combat rules, and WarCom is banging away every day now with details on some detachments and it's a lot of fun ... but it's not enough to actually play a game of 11th and until I can do that it's all speculative and incomplete. I may put up a post about it next week but I'm still not sure there's a ton of value there. I'm watching and reading for sure but it's a little early to say one army is going to be terrible or that another will be amazing. Nobody who knows anything can talk about it yet ... so we wait. Looks like the new stuff is coming out in June so we will all get a chance to check it out then.

In the meantime ...

• Primary focus has been the Grey Knights because theoretically they are the closest to completion. As often turns out to be the case, getting them from "almost" to "done" feels like a whole bunch of work because I want it to look a certain way and until it does it is not "done". It's not quite perfectionist - I outgrew that a long time ago - but it is still amazing sometimes how much more work a "90% complete" model takes to finish. Some examples: 
  
  
  

  

  Those extra antenna things stick up just far enough and are just fragile enough to be absolute nightmares over the lifespan of a miniature trooper.

  
  
• My Interceptor squads - I had 3 completed before - took a little bit of a beating, probably in the move and while one of them was good and is now in the "done" case the other two had some weapons break (@#%@#$@$ force halberds!), some arms pop off, and those little teleport nubs on their power packs broke off on multiple models. So now I'm very slowly working through the process of matching up broken weapon heads with broken shafts, weapon arms with bodies, and figuring out how exactly I want to deal with the power pack situation. Yes, it is very tempting to just remove the remaining nubs on the broken ones and call them Strike squads but I'm trying to make it work without throwing in the towel like that. We will see if my resolve holds.
  
  
  

  

  See without the gun the piston/support plugs right into the arm ...

  
  
• My "painted" Dreadknights took a beating as well so I am fixing broken bits here as well. One that was fully painted did not have a second arm weapon - in the age before one could save some points by not paying for a second gun and just charging them into melee. In the points-less now, you might as well load them up. The problem is that adding an arm-mounted cannon is blocked by one of the many cables on these things. If you put the gun on first, the support/piston/cable plugs into it. If you do not, the thing goes directly into the arm. So now I am working out what I have to cut to do the last damage to the paint and still get it on there. Of course I also need to paint the gun too. Cut and reposition the support? Cut off half of the gun? I may just give up and say there's an invisible incinerator there and not cut or paint anything.
  
  
  

  

  ... but to attach the gun that same support plugs into the gun - which is tricky to do when it's already there.

  
  
• The Paladins and Terminators - <sigh>. The variable number of these guys in a squad has kind of turned into a pain because I have multiples but some are 3, some are 4, and some are 5. You can still use them that way in 10th edition, but I know there is a big reset coming for the GKs in 11th and I hate to do work that won't matter in six months. Of course, that could apply to the whole army so who knows? I'm getting to the point now where I'm just going to finish them up in whatever numbers they are in and build some new 5-man  squads to try and be ready for the redux. My concern is that even if they leave most of the army structure intact - no guarantees there - that they might get weird with say, Paladins and put them in 3-man squads. There is no assurance that all of the current squad types and character types and vehicles will say as they are or even stay in the army at all so it's probably pointless to try and pre-game this stuff. Ah well, one of the perils of trying to update an older army going into a new edition. It will all be playable in older editions so that's my ultimate refuge I suppose. 

Anyway I'm working through this stuff and will hopefully finish soon. I have started looking at my orks and counting up numbers and types because yes, they are the poster-fungus for Armageddon and I'd like to get them on the table again. I expect some model and unit updates here as well so it's another battle of "what will still be useful" for the new edition - I'll talk about that next time.

40K Friday: The Imperial Fists Update

 

 Well I talked about it briefly in this post and as it turns out an update was entirely achievable by adding a pair of Redemptor Dreadnoughts ... so I did! It ends up with 3 characters, 3x shooty Terminator squads, 3x Assault Terminator squads, a Land Raider, and the two dreads. There is room to add an enhancement or two, or I could change Darnath to a regular Terminator Captain and take either another Chaplain or Librarian for exactly 2000 points. The army list is down below.

Is this a balanced force? No. Once they hit the ground the Terminators will be slow. Deep striking does give them some initial mobility, and the Land Raider could get them up the board on turn 1 a bit, but there is no speed here. The main anti-tank are the dreads and the tank - beyond that it gets a little thin. 

There is room to change things up even further by dropping the Land Raider or changing out some of the Dreadnoughts for a Balistus or a Brutalis which are cheaper and more specialized. Right now this is almost everything I have unless we went Legends. I could also expand it beyond just Terminators using the more modern definition of the Deathwing or First Company to include Primaris units like Bladeguard and other veterans, plus a Repulsor or two. Also the detachment structure in 11th edition might make it smart to move some bikes back in - we will see. But this is what I have painted now so this is what the army will look like for some time.  

I need to do some work on the bases and with some decals to make it look more cohesive but at least i have all of the parts and all of it is painted!

Background: I bought most of this force as a painted army around 13-14 years ago and I played it quite a bit when I first got it - how did I never post about it? Wait ... I did! Tags updated! I added to it over the years here and there and just never worried about it too much. I loved the idea of an all-terminator army so I kept with that theme. It was built under the 4th/5th edition Dark Angel Deathwing army rules so it did have a pair of bike units (Ravenwing you know) - which I have used many times as they add some mobility to it but the core has always been 30+ Terminators dropping or driving into the fight. Sure, the newer termies are bigger, but they still all look like termies and that's what matters to me. This was the first time I bought a complete army already painted and I have never regretted it. It makes me very happy to be able to continue using it pretty much as-is with the same theme all these years later. 

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

+ FACTION KEYWORD: Imperium - Adeptus Astartes - Imperial Fists

+ DETACHMENT: 1st Company Task Force (Extremis-level Threat)

+ TOTAL ARMY POINTS: 1930pts

+ WARLORD:  Darnath Lysander

+ NUMBER OF UNITS: 12

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

1x Chaplain in Terminator Armour (75 pts): Crozius arcanum, Storm bolter

1x Darnath Lysander (100 pts): Warlord, Fist of Dorn

1x Librarian in Terminator Armour (75 pts): Force weapon, Smite

1x Land Raider (220 pts): Armoured Tracks, 2x Godhammer Lascannon, Hunter-killer missile, Multi-melta, Storm bolter, Twin heavy bolter

1x Redemptor Dreadnought (205 pts): Icarus Rocket Pod, Redemptor Fist, Macro Plasma Incinerator, Heavy Flamer, Twin Storm Bolter

1x Redemptor Dreadnought (205 pts): Icarus Rocket Pod, Redemptor Fist, Macro Plasma Incinerator, Heavy Flamer, Twin Storm Bolter

5x Terminator Assault Squad (180 pts)

• 1x Assault Terminator Sergeant: Storm Shield, Thunder Hammer

• 4x Assault Terminator: 4 with Storm Shield, Thunder Hammer

5x Terminator Assault Squad (180 pts)

• 1x Assault Terminator Sergeant: Storm Shield, Thunder Hammer

• 4x Assault Terminator: 4 with Storm Shield, Thunder Hammer

5x Terminator Assault Squad (180 pts)

• 1x Assault Terminator Sergeant: Storm Shield, Thunder Hammer

• 4x Assault Terminator: 4 with Storm Shield, Thunder Hammer

5x Terminator Squad (170 pts)

• 4x Terminator

    1 with Chainfist, Cyclone missile launcher, Storm bolter

    3 with Power fist, Storm bolter

• 1x Terminator Sergeant: Storm bolter, Power fist

5x Terminator Squad (170 pts)

• 4x Terminator

    1 with Chainfist, Cyclone missile launcher, Storm bolter

    3 with Power fist, Storm bolter

• 1x Terminator Sergeant: Storm bolter, Power fist

5x Terminator Squad (170 pts)

• 4x Terminator

    1 with Chainfist, Assault Cannon

    3 with Power fist, Storm bolter

• 1x Terminator Sergeant: Storm bolter, Power fist

40K Friday - Iron Warriors vs. Ultramarines

 

In addition to building some updated units for my chaos marines I managed to get a game in with them over the past weekend. This time was against Boom-Gun Brandon's Ultramarines.

The kid has been remarkably consistent with both his army and its composition - possibly because he only has the one army - but he has started building Tau and he's always free to borrow units from my marine forces so he has some options now and will have more in the future.

This was a 2000 point dawn of war deployment (start on the long sides of the table) with a "hold some objectives" type primary and the normal "draw some cards" secondary. I did not take as many pictures as I usually so I won't try to turn it into a battle report here but it was fun. 

The Ultras had Guilliman, Captain Titus, a squad of shooty terminators, a squad of assault terminators, some assault intercessors, two aggressor squads each led by a gravis captain, some bladeguard, then his heavy hitters: A Redemptor dread, a Balistus dread, and a Repulsor executioner.

My IWs went tank-heavy. The main reason was that I wanted this to be an all-painted force, up to date, etc, and all of my old infantry are still on 25s. So it was pretty ridiculous: 3 Predators, 3 Helbrutes, 2 Vindicators, a leviathan dread, a daemon prince, a Heldrake (I know, right?), and then a squad of chaos terminators led by a terminator chaos lord. So I was definitely outnumbered but certainly not outgunned.

HELLOOOO BAAAAYBY!
(BANG!)

I actually won the first turn and started working on his anti-tank units. The predators blew up the balistus and both the redemptor and the executioner were at half wounds or less when I was done. 

The Ultras moved around quite a bit including running the executioner right up near one of the vindicators and dumping out his intercessors + Titus. he didn't manage to kill anything - my vindicator just barely survived the assault after being blasted by the executioner's big laser  - but he was sitting on his home objective plus the center so he was in scoring position early. 

Hello there!

My second turn I rearranged a bit myself and then blew up the executioner and the redemptor. I managed to shoot down the primarch as well but he did stand back up - of course! During my rearrangement I managed to move out of range of my home objective so my scoring fell off of a cliff here.  

Ultras second turn saw the Heldrake chosen as his Oath of Moment target and thus saw most of his army shooting at it and it managed to survive this with a few wounds left. Granted he was missing most of his real anti-vehicle weapons but he had a lot of lesser guns left. He still scored more points though. He also dropped in his terminators this turn.

Third turn and onward we mostly shot up each others remaining infantry. I blew away both aggressor squads and one of the gravis captains. His assault termies failed to kill a predator that was all by its lonesome on an objective and my killing one of them on the way in meant that we were tied for OC so neither of us got credit for it. He did finally manage to kill the damaged vindicator and he was pretty happy about that. 

One wound left - I can still nail the dread!

He ended up winning on points but I had done a lot more damage to his force so I still felt alright about it. It was pretty low scoring as we both mismanaged our secondaries in a big way. 

In the end I was pretty happy with the game. I got to dust off an army I haven't played in years and finally play them in 10th edition. A few more notes:

• I did forget to Dark Pact a lot - the perils of not playing very often - which probably lowered my offensive output. It's a cool ability when you remember to us eit.
• I took the iron warriors detachment (Fellhammer Siege Host) and its signature ability is a -1 to wound when you get shot by a gun with a strength higher than your toughness. Well, with a mostly tank army it was useful for the first two turns then ... not so much a I had eliminated his big guns and was mostly getting hit by various types of bolter and punched in melee. I still like it though.
• The Leviathan Dreadnought ... man I love these things. It's been a long time since I took one and the double-stormcannon setup is basically 4 twin-linked versions of the Predator's turret autocannon. It is really nasty and I am hoping now it's Legends status at least makes the jump to 11th so I can continue. I have 6 or more of the things spread across a few armies so ... yeah ... it's in the list as long as I can take it.

This has also encouraged me to continue with the modernizing as all of the vehicles are up to date, terminators are still on 40mm bases, and so painting up some legionaries, chosen, possessed, and some havocs will give me an up-to-date infantry force to go with them. It's maybe 35 models total, so I should be able to knock it out fairly quickly.

More to come ... 

Primarchs - still need to look both ways before crossing the street ...

40K Friday Off-Schedule Edition: Modernizing the Iron Warriors

 

The title pretty much says it - as I discussed here earlier I have quite a few chaos space marines painted up as Iron Warriors and a surprisingly large percentage of it is still the current production model. This is mostly the vehicles though - the infantry is all older and smaller.

The Helbrutes, Rhinos, Predators, and Vindicators (and the Heldrake!) are all still good. 

All of my actual marines though are the older style, aside from a few characters. 

Now I don't care that much about this state of affairs in general but unit options have changed too and the new hotness is building Chaos Marines for melee and almost all of mine are built for shooting so maybe it is actually ... finally ... time to look at upgrading things around here. At least I only need to consider the infantry, which is a plus. I do have some newer current stuff sitting in the IW box in a closet. I should probably start there. What I have is:

• Abaddon (we will get to him in a minute)
• The Hammer Lord on foot  (technically not the latest and greatest but still fairly recent)
• An unbuilt recently built Terminator Lord/Sorcerer kit (still technically current but likely to be replaced soon)
• A normal sorcerer (the current plastic kit)
• Fabius Bile
• A Master of Possession
• A Lord Discordant (how did I not build this guy already?)
• Some Daemon Princes ranging from the older metal kit to the now-older plastic kit (I loved that kit) to the newer plastic kit.
• Six of the newer monopose plastic Obliterators. I never got around to actually painting these. 
• A box of the newer Possessed
• 3 Venomcrawlers
• More Helbrutes
• A Defiler (now technically the Old Defiler since there's a new one coming out)

There's more - it's a bunch of stuff. There is however, precious little infantry in there. The MoP and the Possessed make a nice combo element but they aren't allowed in Rhinos anymore so what am I going to haul in those? Looks like I'm going to have to start with some legionaries!

That's cool - I like having "core troops" in my armies. I am not one of those "only the chrome" type army builders. If I build a box then I could make it into two 5-man squads with one going melee + chaos Lord and one going ranged + Sorcerer. There's a start. Of course I'm probably going to end up with at least 3 boxes but I'll try not to go for the crazy backlog right out of the gate. 

Then of course we have the other major modern infantry box - the Chosen. These are 5 to a box but have lots of equipment options and 3 wounds per trooper. I'm thinking this is where Fabius Bile comes in and leads a squad of these boys. This is a unit heavily slanted towards melee anyway so why not give them a buff character and put them in a Rhino too?

The other new kit I lack is the Havoc box. My existing Havocs are 3 or 4 squads of the old style marines like everything else and are all autocannons, missile launchers, or heavy bolters. Right now I would just blu-tac them to some 40mm bases but I think a box or two of these new-style troops are worthwhile down the road. Between all the tanks and helbrutes etc. I don't lack for heavy weapons but I think a Devastator squad equivalent has a place here somewhere. 

Mine are all from this era

I do also have 10 Terminators already. I think we are currently on the 3rd generation of plastic chaos terminators and mine are from the prior gen but they still look like Terminators so good enough.

So I believe this will be the core of my updated Iron Warriors. It is a lot of new kits but I'm not going to do it all in a week:

• 10-30 Legionaries (Picked up 10 this week)
• 5-10 Chosen 
• 5-10 Havocs
• 10 Terminators (Have 10 now)
• 5-10 Possessed (Have 5 now)
• 2-6 Obliterators (Have 6 now)
• Chaos Spawn (Have 5 now)
• A bunch of tanks and daemon engines (Have a bunch of these now)
• Add characters to taste (Have a bunch of these now too)

I have to figure out what to do with my Raptors and Bikes as they are technically current (though the Raptors just got a new kit in Kill Team) to add in some Fast Attack options (dating myself there). I like the idea of keeping a lot of my old stuff on their 25mm bases to use in old school games but the Raptors may have to join the modernized army for now. 

I think I have 4 of the old ones and I'm sure I will be adding at least one of the new ones down the road.

A side unit making occasional guest appearances would be Abaddon and a 5-man Terminator squad. I already have the termies and they are painted up as Black Legion so part of the work is already done. Could be a fun unit to add on for certain fights.

The other interesting part of Chaos Marine armies now is the whole sub-codex of cultists, weirder cultists, beastmen, traitor guardsmen and just a bunch of mortal infantry that feel like an entirely separate army. I have a couple of units of cultists left from the old 6th edition boxed set which I might add in at some point but I've just never been excited about adding in a bunch of weaker, unarmored troops to my glorious power armor & tanks force. It has gotten interesting now with all of the units they've added in (a traitor Comissar and his Ogryn Bodyguard? Really?) but I would lean towards it being a separate force most of the time. At least that's how I feel right now.  We will see once I get the IW's tuned up and finished out. 

Enough rambling for now - more chaos later.

40K Friday: In Which the Writer Loses All Focus

 

It's Spring and the miniature ADHD goes into full bloom! Oh Lord what have I done? Several factors at work here:

• Boom-Gun Brandon wants to play every time he comes into town now
• Some of the rest of the crew has started building 40K armies 
• 10th edition is in the wind-down phase now so what you have is what you're going to have as far as rules and datasheets and FAQs
• 11th edition is coming this summer which tends to ramp the energy levels up - and also increases anxiety over which units will be replaced or removed in the new edition

So this recent energy burst started up by looking at all my chaos armies and shifted into me mostly working on Grey Knights about a month ago and that continued for a couple of weeks. Then I started feeling some Firstborn Anxiety - the feeling and wondering mentioned above that I expect the next edition to pretty much finish off the older styled marines as they exist now, outside of Rhinos and Land Raiders. 

The smaller-guys replacement is just about complete with Chaos Marines as all of the major groups of units have been upscaled over the last 5-ish years. They won't get rid of the Rhino here - they may make a new kit but the Rhino as primary Chaos transport will live on and I expect the Land Raider to continue on as well. 

For loyalists, as much as a certain segment of players wants to see the marines go all grav-vehicle I think the Rhino and the Land Raider are just too iconic and too much a part of the game and the lore to drop. New models? Sure, maybe even "likely" at this point as these are 20+ year old kits. I wouldn't be upset if they just rolled the Horus Heresy kits into mainline 40K as those look great but I doubt they will do that for a variety of reasons. The bikes and speeders have been replaced already and they did not go retro with those. Anyway I am not as concerned about the vehicles here - it's mainly the infantry.

I have a lot of firstborn stuff. Some of it makes up a big chunk of my marine armies but I have a lot of unfinished projects, half-built units, squads on the sprue, stuff still in boxes ... it all was part of a plan at some point but right now it looks like kind of a mess. I should be focused on updating armies with some of the newer units but I'd really like to get some of the old stuff finished up too. 

So...

I spent over a week with all of my firstborn stuff pulled out on to the big game table and started going through it and figuring out what I actually had and who could use what parts. For example my Crimson Fists are pretty close to one old version of a Space Marine Battle Company so they need some more assault marines and some devastator marines and I can check that little box that's been in the back of my mind for a while. Predators and Vindicators are still totally useful and allowed (non-legended) in current 40K so let me count up how many parts and sprues and hulls I have and see if I can get those built and field-able. 

I am at well over 50 Rhino hulls of various types and marks at this point. Most of them are even painted. This is not something I set out to do.

Then it gets a little more complicated. Some of the infantry I have needs to be rebased if I'm going to stay current, mainly 25mm to 32mm. I've done it on several armies and it's not terribly enjoyable. While the rules could change down the road Rhinos and Razorbacks are not seeing a ton of use right now as Primaris marines can't ride in them - one of the few remaining separation type rules in the codexes. So I should probably keep them in my older armies but how many Rhinos do I need for one army? This is also true of something like a tactical squad - I have at least six of them (various editions and styles) sitting around unfinished but I don't really need all of those added to one army.  

This whole process ended up leading to a few conclusions:

• A lot of the old-school infantry  and vehicles are going to finish out whatever thoughts/plans/dreams I have for my Crimson Fists and Blood Angels. A few things are going to the Black Templars but I never really  prioritized them as a firstborn army so they get a smaller share. 
• My Dark Angels are definitely one of my retro armies - way too much old stuff there - but I am also bringing them out of mothballs and into active service, mainly via the Ravenwing/Deathwing options. I've picked up a few missing pieces, I will spray those this weekend, and suddenly I have a 2000 point Ravenwing army with options for Deathwing drop-in support. This should be fun.
• This still leaves me with a lot of uncommitted stuff so I am indulging in an old dream and building a Space Wolf Army! Specifically a 3rd to 6th edition type Space Wolf army - no primaris. I always wanted a Wolf army and I had collected some pieces way back but when Blaster got into 40K he immediately focused on the Wolves so I gave him what I had and sensibly stopped adding more space marine armies to focus on what I already had immediately started modernizing and expanding my Blood Angels. Well, he's been out of the house for a few years now so I wouldn't be stepping on his toes anymore. I'll talk more about Project Wolf in another post but I'm pretty happy to have a place to put my strays and orphans. Of course I did need some wolf components so I immediately went out and hunted down some of the now out of print 5th edition era space wolf kits ... some things never change. At least I know what my problem is. "It's like a free army because it's stuff I already had that I wasn't using" ... well, except for the new (old) stuff I went out and bought to really fill it out. 

Project initiated ...

I do feel good about getting all of it organized. Much like building my Tyranids, it's good to realize it's finite and to be able to see the boundaries of the firstborn stuff. It will be finished at some point. 

An unexpected side note to this as I looked through my stuff started when I realized Terminators new and old still pretty much look the same and that I could add a Redemptor or two to my Imperial Fists Deathwing army. Since dreads are considered Deathwing too they are a legitimate part of it lore-wise and it would give me some extra oomph in that force. So yeah, reversing the point of the entire effort there is one currently all-firstborn army that's jumping to effectively primaris. Miracles happen every day!  

More to come as I sort this out ...

40K Friday - Continuing Distractions with Grey Knights

 

Not a lot of progress on the Tyranids or Praetorians these past two weeks as I've really been pulled towards finishing/updating some already substantial and mostly finished armies.

For the Grey Knights I've moved 20-odd figures into the "done" cabinet with more coming close behind - hopefully this weekend. All of these are already painted to some level. It's mainly sorting them back into squads, fixing any broken parts, a final clear coat and then re-doing the bases. This includes a few more marine squads and the dreadnoughts and dread knights . I also have to finish up my Rhinos/Razorbacks that I started a few years ago and a Stormraven & Land Raider  as well. This may all happen in stages as I jump around to different projects. The pull here is that this army is this close to being done-done, which is a good - if rare -  place for me to be on an army. 

Please ignore the Chaos Knights lurking below ...

Once I am  through these I will have some "from scratch" work to do as I need a big squad of Purifiers which I lack right now. I do have the newer Crowe model to go with them so that will be one effort. Then I also want to do a big squad of Paladins with all of the bling. 

The only new acquisition recently was the new upgrade sprue for one of the Dreadknights. I do want to finish up building and painting what I have but the only thing I might want more of would be the full-kit Dreadknights as everything else I've mentioned I already have. I think I'm OK with 1 grand master and the 3 regular DKs as I do have the Land Raider and Stormraven to bring big guns and take up a lot of points if I want to go that direction. 

I also expect much of this army, the infantry at least and probably the dreadnoughts, to be replaced in the next 3 years so I am not really feeling a need to spend more money on expanding it right now. One more new Dreadknight (to be able to field all of the cool new stuff) is about the only temptation and despite the new upgrade sprue those could get replaced as well so who knows? It's already more points than I could ever really field outside of an apocalypse game so it's not like I need more of anything.

So yes, the goal is to finish up the easily-finished stuff, take a look at the rest and maybe advance one chunk of that and then switch to one of this year's other efforts. 

40K Friday - 3-Day Weekend Distraction Edition

 I did make some good progress last week with the Tyranids. That's 9 Von Ryan's Leapers in the one tray and a pair of Neurotyrants and their little gribblies in the other. At this point I have a bunch of 'gants left to do and the Norn and then I am completely built ... 5000+ points of the 'Nids. Yes there are some units I do not have but I'm probably not going to push very hard to get more as I need to start painting these things. I do have a scheme mostly figured out but I need to start getting more of them going beyond a base coat of Wraithbone.

I had thought about working on more of the Guard this weekend. I try to break things up into chunks as I go so I don't burn out or get bored with what I'm doing which means I am usually working on at least two armies at any given time. This weekend though something came out of left field and bit into me hard.

That's right for some reason I went down the rabbit hole on Grey Knights. It's been a while since I posted about them here - that was 9th Edition 40K and here's where I started talking about them for 8th Edition and they have been an army here ever since those days but for some reason I took them off the shelves and put them in a box after the move and just let them sit. 

Now the distraction started while I was looking at my Iron Warriors and thinking I needed to do some updates as I have added parts and pieces the last few years but I haven't really sat down and hammered away on them. A lot of my stuff is old-school, my marines are mostly still on 25mm bases, and I haven't really finished out even the new stuff that I have added. So I was thinking I should put in some effort on them as I wrap up the Tyranids as there has been a lot of "new" for Chaos Marines recently and their rules seem to work pretty well so I should get some games in before 10th goes away - or at least modernize them a bit going in to 11th. 

While doing this I decided to make a "Conclave of Chaos" on the big table and drag out all of my other chaos stuff too - World Eaters, Death Guard, some of the daemon stuff - to see if I had things loosely assigned to one army that I could use in another. 

While doing that I had to move my Grey Knights Holding Facility (a big cardboard box) and while looking down into it I realized I had been ignoring them this entire edition and they were far more "modern" than the IW's. Well, they're at least on the right size bases. The path of distraction is insidious ...

So I made some room next to The Conclave and started sorting through my Knights of Titan and discovered things I had picked up in the last round of GK interest and never finished and some things that were - I have a painted Kaldor Draigo! Of course it turns out they took him out of the latest codex! But I have a Draigo! Also more normal powered armor guys, more termies/paladins, and more characters than I remembered. I also have 4 dreadnoughts ... not sure why I went to 4 but OK. I have an unbuilt Dreadknight which syncs up perfectly with the one new model the Grey Knights got for 10th which is an upgrade kit to more readily distinguish a Grand Master Nemesis Dreadknight from the regular Nemesis Dreadknight. 

The main thing though is that there are a couple of thousand points worth of painted GK's that just need to be sorted out. I am fixing some of their bases along the way - I painted for several hours this weekend and it was all snow base updates. They were not super-unified before but they will be now. The vehicles need more work as there are a lot of "well it's silver at least" vehicles right now but it shouldn't be terribly hard to improve on that. Right now the plan is to tune up what's done/almost done and then based on what that looks like get some of the other stuff finished. I did manage to pick up the codex for 10th and read through it and I have ordered the dreadknight upgrade sprue so I am fired up about it all. 

The downside of all this is twofold:

• This army has not done particularly well in 10th edition and the way they work now is *significantly* different than what they did in earlier editions. They used to be the all-psychic space marine force where each squad had powers and each character had powers and I can tell you the cognitive load of running them in 8th or 9th was massive. It was challenging, it was fun, but it was the most complex army in-play that I have ever tried to run. They had potentially 5 different melee weapons in each squad, plus a choice of 3 different support weapons at 1 or 2 per squad, and then each squad could pick from at least 1 psychic power out of 6, then the characters had a different set of powers to choose from ... it was a lot. But it fit the lore!
  
  Fast-forward to 10th and all of that has gone away. They do still have the 3 support weapons to pick from but all of the melee options are now "Nemesis Force Weapons" and have a single statline. The psychic phase is gone and the various abilities are just pre-set per unit as a special ability if they have one at all. The psychic down-tune is a general 10th edition thing but it hit the psychic-focused armies pretty hard. The GK's signature feature now is teleporting - every unit has deep strike, they can pick some units up off of the table during the opponents turn, and there are ways to jump on and off and around the board more than any other army in the game. Hey, mobility is a huge thing in this kind of game and they have a ton of it but it is a very different thing than what they used to be. A lot of long-time Grey Knight players are not happy with this take on the force and have pulled back from playing & building and talking about Grey Knights. It's a shame but that's where a lot of people are these days.
• Secondly there have been rumors for some time that the GKs are getting a full refresh in 11th edition - that's models, not rules. So I am diving in and building/painting/prepping a bunch of models that are going to be "obsolete" in a year or two. I will be sad to see them go because I absolutely love these things. They are just about the coolest of the firstborn era plastic marines with their awesome helmets and inscriptions and weapons and the GK color scheme just lends itself to making these things look amazing. That said they are from 5th edition, circa 2010, and a lot of that stuff is getting replaced now. They do look tiny compared to all of the primaris stuff and the new scale for marines but to me that doesn't mean they look bad - they just look small. Also, scaling has never been a strong suit for 40K, right from the start, even among the same army, so it really doesn't bother me. 
  
  So sure, we will see all-new models for the Grey Knights in the next few years. OK. Right now I have a pretty nice pile of the current ones, and I have rules to play them, so that's what I'm going to do. I am hoping that when the update comes they don't change the structure of the army a whole lot so that what I have will still work and I can keep playing with what I have while I contemplate if/how/when I want to upgrade to the newer stuff.
  
  They might not! They might turn it completely upside down! If they do, well, Blaster has been making some noise about how strong Eldar were in 5th Edition so we might have to have a retro showdown and see if they were really all that tough. 

More to come.

40k Friday: Tyranids vs. Ultramarines

 

With Boom Gun Brandon back in town last weekend we managed to get in a game of of 40K - first one of 2026! This was 2000 points of my still-being-assembled Tyranids against 2000 points of his still-being-painted Ultramarines with some assists from my Crimson Fists where he doesn't have certain units.

Now we only got in a few turns but it was a lot of fun. The forces:

The Defenders of Ultramar:

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

+ FACTION KEYWORD: Imperium - Adeptus Astartes - Ultramarines

+ DETACHMENT: Blade of Ultramar (Mastered Doctrines)

+ TOTAL ARMY POINTS: 2000pts

+

+ WARLORD: Char2: Roboute Guilliman

+ ENHANCEMENT: 

+ NUMBER OF UNITS: 14

+ SECONDARY: - Bring It Down: (3x2) + (1x4) - Assassination: 5 Characters

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Char3: 1x Captain in Gravis Armour (80 pts): Master-crafted Heavy Bolt Rifle, Master-crafted Power Weapon

Char4: 1x Captain in Gravis Armour (80 pts): Master-crafted Heavy Bolt Rifle, Master-crafted Power Weapon

Char5: 1x Captain in Terminator Armour (95 pts): Storm Bolter, Relic Weapon

Char1: 1x Lieutenant Titus (70 pts): Astartes Chainsword, Heavy Bolt Pistol

Char2: 1x Roboute Guilliman (340 pts): Warlord, Hand of Dominion, The Emperor's Sword

10x Assault Intercessor Squad (150 pts)

• 1x Assault Intercessor Sergeant: Heavy Bolt Pistol, Astartes Chainsword

• 9x Assault Intercessors: 9 with Astartes Chainsword, Heavy Bolt Pistol

3x Aggressor Squad (95 pts)

• 1x Aggressor Sergeant: Twin Power Fist, Flamestorm Gauntlets

• 2x Aggressors: 2 with Twin Power Fist, Flamestorm Gauntlets

3x Aggressor Squad (95 pts)

• 1x Aggressor Sergeant: Twin Power Fist, Auto Boltstorm Gauntlets, Fragstorm grenade launcher

• 2x Aggressors: 2 with Twin Power Fist, Auto Boltstorm Gauntlets, Fragstorm grenade launcher

1x Ballistus Dreadnought (150 pts): Armoured Feet, Ballistus Lascannon, Ballistus Missile Launcher, Twin Storm Bolter

3x Bladeguard Veteran Squad (80 pts)

• 1x Bladeguard Veteran Sergeant: Master-crafted Power Weapon, Heavy Bolt Pistol

• 2x Bladeguard Veterans: 2 with Heavy Bolt Pistol, Master-crafted Power Weapon

1x Redemptor Dreadnought (195 pts): Redemptor Fist, Heavy Onslaught Gatling Cannon, Heavy Flamer, Twin Fragstorm Grenade Launcher

1x Repulsor Executioner (220 pts): Armoured Hull, Heavy Onslaught Gatling Cannon, Ironhail Heavy Stubber, Repulsor Executioner Defensive Array, Twin Heavy Bolter, Twin Icarus Ironhail Heavy Stubber, Heavy Laser Destroyer

5x Terminator Assault Squad (180 pts)

• 1x Assault Terminator Sergeant: Storm Shield, Thunder Hammer

• 4x Assault Terminator: 4 with Storm Shield, Thunder Hammer

5x Terminator Squad (170 pts)

• 1x Terminator Sergeant: Storm Bolter, Power Fist

• 4x Terminator: 4 with Power Fist, Storm Bolter

The main theme here is "things the kid thinks are cool". I say kid but I probably shouldn't since he's an actual U.S. Marine now but he is my best friend's son and all of 18 years old so ... I will probably keep doing it. 

The Terrifying Tyranids:

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

+ FACTION KEYWORD: Xenos - Tyranids

+ DETACHMENT: Invasion Fleet (Hyper Adaptions)

+ TOTAL ARMY POINTS: 1995pts

+

+ WARLORD: Char2: The Swarmlord

+ ENHANCEMENT: 

+ NUMBER OF UNITS: 13

+ SECONDARY: - Bring It Down: (6x2) + (3x4) - Assassination: 4 Characters

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Char3: 1x Broodlord (80 pts): Broodlord Claws and Talons

Char1: 1x Old One Eye (150 pts): Old One Eye’s claws and talons

Char2: 1x The Swarmlord (220 pts): Warlord, Bone Sabres, Synaptic Pulse

Char4: 1x Winged Hive Tyrant (170 pts): Tyrant talons, Monstrous bonesword and lash whip

2x Carnifexes (180 pts)

  1 with Chitinous claws and teeth, Bio-plasma, Carnifex scything talons, Devourers with brainleech worms

  1 with Chitinous claws and teeth, Bio-plasma, Carnifex crushing claws, Heavy venom cannon

10x Genestealers (140 pts): 10 with Genestealers claws and talons

10x Genestealers (140 pts): 10 with Genestealers claws and talons

10x Genestealers (140 pts): 10 with Genestealers claws and talons

1x Haruspex (125 pts): Grasping tongue, Ravenous maw, Shovelling claws

1x Screamer-killer (125 pts): Bio-plasmic scream, Screamer-killer talons

1x Screamer-killer (125 pts): Bio-plasmic scream, Screamer-killer talons

1x Tyrannofex (200 pts): Powerful limbs, Stinger salvoes, Rupture cannon

1x Tyrannofex (200 pts): Powerful limbs, Stinger salvoes, Rupture cannon

The main theme here is "stuff I had close enough to ready to use" which meant none of the new warriors I built, no gargoyles, no neurotyrant ... some of these are built but weren't stuck to the base yet as I wanted to be able to spray their belly/chest. As it turned out I liked the force quite a bit. Fun stuff + some redundancy is a good approach.

Got to get the Landing Pad on the table for the first time too!

We went with Dawn of War deployment and ended up with Purge the Foe for our primary objective. That's fine, we were both looking for a straight-up fight anyway. The marines got first turn so away we went!

Well, after scout moves that is ...

He pretty much just moved up as much as he could and then took shots with his Repulsor Executioner and both dreads and managed to blow up my Haruspex before it could do anything. not bad - that's a dangerous unit.

Part of the Primary on this one beyond "Kill" and "Kill More" is "Hold One" and "Hold More" from Turn 2 onward so there is some positioning to set up future objective control here.

He also managed to gun down most of the 'Stealer unit after running the Repulsor right up on it and disembarking some intercessors. 

Need to get the right colors on that Repulsor Executioner since it keeps getting used

So he had a pretty good turn here. One big unit destroyed, another one gutted, and units in good positions.

I feel like this is a significant view ...

On my turn I attempted to move that surviving genestealer - he did pass battleshock - and he was promptly gunned down by Overwatch from the Repulsor - "defensive array" for the win!

I ran one of the screamer-killers up on the Primarch ...

 and managed to land 6 wounds before Guilliman laid him out.

That was most of the action for Turn 1 though I did manage to wipe out a squad of intercessors over on my left with another squad of genestealers led by a broodlord.

They were absolutely brutal doing something like 30-ish hits and a bunch of wounds before the big one even got involved. Revenge!

Turn 2 still moved pretty quick - objectives were seized and he shot my Tyrannofex with the Executioner's big gun but failed to kill it ...

Yes it does bother me sometimes that I have multiple painted armies and somehow I keep posting up fights with unpainted forces.

The aggressors and a gravis captain charged into my carnifexes and managed to kill one ... then the survivor and Old One Eye just destroyed them - no survivors there!

The main event this turn was that the Primarch got close enough to charge the Swarmlord - general against general! He ran the fight above first and then I interrupted for 2CP to have the Swarmlord go first here ...

The wounded primarch had no chance with the 'nid's sneaky move - the scream-k's earlier sacrifice had set our side up for a win and that's exactly what happened - G-man dropped and did not get up! It was an emotional moment.

On my turn I blew up the Repulsor and started collecting objective VPs. Things continued similarly and victory ended up going to the Tyranids as after that we had both a firepower advantage and a melee advantage. 

Anyway it was a lot of fun to get my swarm on the table for a real fight and also to see his army hit the table again for a second go.