Well folks, here it is. The launch box for 10th Edition 40k has been revealed in all its glory today at Warhammer Fest, and I have to say, I’m very excited about it.
I think this is the first 40k launch box where I have a genuine desire for both sides – having recently embraced the Primaris for my Flesh Tearers project, I definitely want to get all those glorious bits; while Tyranids have recently come back to the fore for me as I’ve been arranging a game for the coming week using my bugs.
The Tyranids side of the box doesn’t look to be as big a departure from the current line as the Necrons were for their relaunch, which is nice. There are some huge things in here, which I’m quite excited about, so I’m looking forward to getting some of these onto the table in the fullness of time!
The Space Marines side of the box has got a lot of interesting things as well, which I’m intrigued by, to say the least. Aside from more character models, we’re getting a squad of flamer guys, the new Terminators, a new Dreadnought and Primaris-scale Sternguard. It’s these final two that really surprise me, though.
Since the launch in 8th edition, the official line has always been that Primaris marines are not going to replace the firstborn, but here we have a clear swap-out, as the original Sternguard, one of the “newest” mini-marine kits, is now being upscaled. The new Dreadnought is basically a Redemptor-scale Dreadnought, with the las cannon and missile launcher we know and love.
It’s interesting, because 10th edition could well be the start of these things disappearing for good, not that I want to get my tin foil hat out, of course! It’s a surprise to see, I suppose. A lot of people were expecting Primaris assault marines, with jump packs, but it looks like they may have to wait.
It looks like a cracking box, though, and I’m very excited to get my hands on it, assuming that it doesn’t just sell out in the first few seconds, as happens normally!!
Hey everybody, In a move that will surprise nobody, I am currently pondering making a new army for 40k. I’ve been reading some of the stuff about the upcoming 10th edition, and have been thinking that it might be a good time to get myself some of the Emperor’s Finest. I’m also still slightly reeling from the fact they get all of the best rules, and I think it might be time to game the system and take advantage of that! The thing that has tipped me over the edge, though, is this.
Specifically, the Flesh Tearer.
I love Terminators, and years ago I had a bit of a phase where I wanted to create a whole first company of space marines, but it never really came to pass. I think partly because I wasn’t as good a painter back then, but I remember using the Macragge Blue spray to paint them, and it hadn’t really settled well on the models, so I had all manner of issues to contend with!
However, I’m now plotting to start buying some marines and paint them as Flesh Tearers, which is quite exciting!
For those of you who don’t know what I’m on about, Flesh Tearers are a successor chapter to the Blood Angels, formed from the fifth company of the original Legion, led by Captain Nassir Amit. Amit and his marines were known for being particularly bloodthirsty even before the death of Sanguinius and the Black Rage induced all Blood Angels and their successors to a ferocity hitherto unheard of. Through the years, the Flesh Tearers had gained a reputation that meant many chapters would hesitate before fighting alongside them. Their ranks had dwindled, however, until they numbered just four companies at the Devastation of Baal, before being bolstered by primaris marines. Interestingly, it’s during the events on Baal that Gabriel Seth, the current chapter master of the Flesh Tearers, tells Dante that the primaris are designed to replace first-born marines. At the time, of course, primaris were new and Black Library authors were playing into this idea of a schism in the ranks with Cawl’s new marines.
Now, I’m not going to say that I’ve always wanted to have a Flesh Tearers army, because I haven’t really given them much of a second thought before. I have made a couple of attempts to build a Blood Angels army, and they’re a force that I do have some measure of sentimentality around, because (a) Shield of Baal was the first big boxset that came out when I started to really throw myself into 40k, and (b) I was planning to make a Blood Angels army when my eldest daughter was born, so I have pinned an association with her and the sons of Sanguinius.
The main thing, for me, is the colour scheme. I love that maroon and black mix, and I think it would look beautiful in a small, elite force. They are, of course, all about in your face aggression, and their current, 9th edition chapter tactics are all about melee attacks (+1 to wound when you charge or were charged, and unmodified 6s to wound improve the AP by 1). It’ll be interesting to see what changes, if indeed anything does, in the move to 10th edition!
In terms of what I want to build for the army, I think I’m going to try my very best to keep this on a small scale, and indeed, I want to try as much as possible to keep things as cheap as I can. Assault Intercessors are probably going to be the name of the game, and these were released as part of the Imperium magazine back in the day, so I will see if I can get any of them as back issues. It’s a shame that the boarding patrol box seems to have sold out in all the third party stores, because that looks like some very good value savings on the models there!
I’m quite excited about this project though. I’m going to have to try to keep myself contained to getting a unit and then building and painting it, before moving on. I don’t want to be drowning in plastic, after all…
Hey everybody, Over the last few weeks, I’ve been doing a lot of “stock taking” of my various miniatures that are in all manner of shapes, and one of those armies that I keep coming back to is the Deathwatch. It was something I was incredibly excited for when the models first came out; I invested heavily in boxes of the new marines, then a battleforce at Christmas, but I ended up in the usual position of being swamped, and so they went into a box for a very long time. I think part of my disillusionment with the project was how I found myself being swayed by the meta, and building marines “because they’ll be powerful in the game” and not “because they’ll look awesome”.
Let’s delve back into the mists of time…
In 2016, we were in the heady days of 7th edition 40k. Out of the blue, Deathwatch: Overkill came out in February, and gave us two completely new armies for the game, the Deathwatch and the Genestealer Cults. It was very much a board game, almost in the similar vein to Space Hulk, and pitted a specific Deathwatch kill team against an unstoppable horde of Genestealer Cultists. Kill Team Cassius was a varied mix of marines, including a biker and a terminator among their number, as well as a librarian and the chaplain himself, Ortan Cassius. While they were monopose models, they were rather magnificent, and paved the way for more in the summer.
Death Masque was a battle box that launched the main line of Deathwatch miniatures, pitching them against the Harlequins. In this box, we had a Venerable Dreadnought, a squad of Vanguard Veterans, a squad of the new Deathwatch marines, and the Watch Captain Artemis model. Artemis was originally a model produced for the Inquisitor game, so was reimagined for 28mm scale in a pretty stunning mini. In addition, we had Deathwatch upgrades for a variety of Space Marine kits, like Terminators and Bikes, along with a couple of new kits, like the Watch Master and Corvus Blackstar flyer. In terms of actual Deathwatch kits, then, we have a grand total of just five – the two HQs, the flyer, the marines and the Kill Team Cassius set. But that didn’t stop there being a full-blown codex for them in both 7th and 8th editions! For 9th edition, however, they have gone down the route of a Codex Supplement, meaning that you also need to buy the Space Marines book to get the full set of rules for the army. It’s a move that I have not been impressed by, and I think it’s one of the reasons why I’ve not been that into them for a long time.
Another reason for this apathy, I suppose, is that I rarely play games against xenos armies. The whole Deathwatch schtick is that they are xenos killers, and their “chapter tactic” allows them to re-roll hit rolls of 1 in melee against xenos (and re-roll wound rolls of 1 against a specific battlefield role). A lot of the army rules have moved away somewhat from this kind of specificity, much like Grey Knights have lost a lot of their daemon-specific rules, in an effort to make them more rounded as an army that can fight anything.
Deathwatch Veterans can take a bewildering array of weaponry, reflecting the fact they are basically Sternguard Veterans drawn from across the many chapters of Space Marines in the Imperium. The basic troops, Veterans can swap out their wargear for close combat or heavy weapons across the entire five-man team, meaning you could have a squad of five basic troops, four of whom are carrying heavy bolters, or the Deathwatch Infernus heavy bolter (a heavy bolter strapped to a heavy flamer). The fact that the basic load-out of boltgun and power sword also comes with four different kinds of special issue ammunition that you can choose to load into it before shooting begins really adds an extra layer to the whole, as well!
In my ruminations on my army, I’ve discovered that I have just over 1500 points of Deathwatch built, although with four HQ options I can’t field them all in a single force. That said, they aren’t really equipped as I would like them to be, so I have had to start looking at ways to better-organise the force. While mixed kill teams is very thematic for the army, in terms of practical gameplay, it isn’t exactly the best for keeping track of everything that’s going on! So I have been trying to find ways of altering the load-outs, swapping marines around, so that they are a bit more coherent across the force.
I’m not looking for a big game to start with, because I would like to keep things as straightforward as possible. That said, there is often the problem of having a small-scale battle that is also interesting to fight, so I’ve gone for a list that is closer to the 800 points mark. My regular opponent JP has roughly 800 points of Necrons as well, so at some point we’ll look into getting a game with these armies!
In this sense, then, I have come up with the following build.
As you can see, it’s literally a basic battalion with two leaders and three troop squads. Each squad has got some special weapons, but primarily the focus is having some fancy guys with a baseline of basic guys. The two kill team squads have a base of the boltgun/power sword guys, on top of which I have layered some assault weapons in one, and the other kinda has the remnants of what I have built to date!
The Proteus Kill Team includes the fancy terminator that I added into the army after seeing one of the Deathwing conversions in the codex. It looks beautiful, but it becomes a bit of a problem when trying to squeeze things around! Proteus kill teams can include terminators, vanguard veterans and bikers, so they are quite exciting, though they need to have a minimum of five Veterans in there anyway. It all just gets a bit of a faff, somehow, making sure I have the right ratio of models. They all have heavy weapons, although the sergeant has the combi-plasma in there as well.
The army is going to be led by Watch Captain Artemis. He has some good defensive rules, as well as providing a number of buffs to nearby units thanks to his warlord trait. I’m thinking that he will be moving around the field of battle, with one or two of the kill teams in his wake, shooting things up and generally doing what needs to be done.
Chaplain Cassius is not only a beautiful model, but he also looks like he might be quite useful, and comes in under 100 points which is always nice! He has a fairly decent statline, but I think I’m primarily going to be using him to support other squads nearby. His litany gives +1 to hit for shooting units within 6”, so I think I might use him near to the Proteus kill team, as they all have heavy weapons so it would be nice to get some of that meaty damage through; I always feel it’s better to have a to-hit bonus to give the maximum dice for potential wounds, rather than only getting a couple of hits through and being able to buff those after the fact, if that makes sense?
All in all, it seems like it might be a bit of a boring force to play, given that there’s not a lot of variety of units. However, there is a lot going on with their myriad rules that I think this is well more than it perhaps seems on paper. There seems to be a lot of buffs going around, and a couple of useful stratagems are available both from the Deathwatch side as well as the Space Marines book. It should be interesting, I think, anyway!
Hey everybody!
It’s been a crazy couple of weeks for seeing more new awesome models coming for Warhammer 40k, as we’ve seen some new terrain features that I’m sure will be gracing Armies on Parade, if not actual battlefields for a while yet! Then yesterday, of course, we had some very exciting bits shown off as part of the inexorable marketing campaign for the upcoming Indomitus boxset. What a time to be alive!
I’m very excited about this new Necron stuff, I have to say! As I’ve said many times already on this blog, Necrons are my first love, and they’ll always have a place in my heart – even if some of these new models that we’re seeing are a little bit… strange. Necron terrain is something that I never thought I’d see, though, even with the promise of faction-specific stuff coming. Just goes to show, doesn’t it?! These “starstele” sound like they’re going to be really useful to the faction, as well, packing a punch in and of themselves while also supporting the army with buffs and movement shenanigans. Excellent stuff! Price dependent, of course, I’ll take a few!
I think we all need to pause for a minute, and realise that the Silent King himself now has a model that can be used in 40k. I mean, I don’t know whether he’ll be usable, as defined by the tournament elite, but he has a model that you can put down as a part of your army, and that is just bonkers!
I never thought I’d see it, and now that I have, I can’t believe I’m seeing it! It’s a beautiful model, and I cannot wait to have it as a part of my army – even if storage and transportation are going to make this thing an absolute nightmare!
Szarekh isn’t the only big dude coming, of course…
If the Silent King looks like a delicate model… this one looks nigh-on impossible! The C’tan Shard of the Void Dragon is stunning, let’s be real here, but he’s also going to be an absolute nightmare, worse even than the likes of Nagash (from whom he seems to have taken a lot of inspiration).
It’s an incredible piece, and in some ways could almost be more striking than Szarekh there, too. Am I going to get one? Probably. But not just yet, methinks…
Of course, it’s not all about the Necrons, as the Space Marines are seeing an extension of the Primaris range, as well. Chaplain on a bike is a nice addition, although that gives us three Primaris Chaplains, as the Indomitus box is coming with a new one, too! Clearly someone in Nottingham has decided that Chaplains need some love and attention, after all! Of course, this has got me wondering if we’re going to be seeing Librarians on bikes… maybe Techmarines on bikes… well – speaking of that last…
So then, we’ve got Primaris bikers, the start of Primaris Devastators, and new Primaris characters coming out, in addition to the assault Primaris marines… I suppose the question now becomes, how long have the mini-marines got left? Their time has got to be limited now. I’m guessing we’ll see more tanks to bring stuff like the Predator up to date, and then that’ll be it! Move them to Legends, their time is done!
It’s been three years since the Primaris line was launched in Dark Imperium, and this expansion for Indomitus has been huge, so I don’t think we can expect the Tactical Squad to last. Which is a shame, really. Though I suppose we can’t really be surprised…
Hey everybody!
It feels like it’s been a while, doesn’t it? After celebrating my blog’s sixth birthday, it seems like other things have come into play, and I’ve not had a great deal of time for much else… well, let’s see, shall we?
To start with – check it out! I’m calling these chaps done for now – last weekend, there was a painting competition at my local Games Workshop (that is, a competition that was held via facebook, given the current climate). The brief was to paint an infantry unit at minimum squad size, and while there are perhaps a couple of details I could improve upon, I still like the fact that I’ve managed to get these done! The start of my Blood Angels – so let’s see what comes next, eh?
In the meantime, I’ve decided to resurrect this old project, and have been putting some details on to the chap in the middle there with the plasma gun. They’re real nice models, as you can see, and while the trim there is quite fiddly, it’s nevertheless really gratifying when these things start to come together like this! Of course, it’s going to make it difficult to keep going with the entire platoon, for sure, but it’ll be worth it!
This week, I’ve started to read The Emperor’s Legion, the first book in the Watchers of the Throne series by Chris Wraight. I’m only about a third of the way through it, but already it’s gotten me really hooked! I’ve felt a little let-down with some of the 40k novels that I’ve read lately, so it’s really nice to finally be enjoying one again! The book has three point-of-view characters, one of whom is a Silent Sister, and one a Custodian Guard. I’ve been considering building up the Custodians that came with the Battle of Prospero box back in the day, and I’ve also thought about getting on with the Sisters of Silence that have been built since 2016!
Let’s move away from plastic now, and instead take a look at some paper products! Arkham Horror LCG is something that I want to keep playing, but haven’t really had a great deal of time for since baby Phoebe came along last year! I did manage to get through the entire Dunwich Legacy campaign before her birth, though, and it’s certainly whetted my appetite, and while I’d been buying all of the cycles without playing, the most recent cycle, the Dream Weavers, was the first one that I didn’t get. I was actually thinking about calling it a day with the Circle Undone, but now that we’re off to Innsmouth, I’m thinking I may need to invest in this one, as well!
The expansion feels like it’s a bit of a return to some aspects from the classic board game, with blessings and curses, and flooding locations!
As the Lord of the Rings LCG appears to draw to a close with the Vengeance of Mordor cycle, the fourth pack of which arrived last week, I think it’s time to get back into this game above all, and get playing more once again. I’m hoping that I can persuade Jemma to join me on this venture, as well – husband and wife against the shadow of Sauron, what could be better?
I’ll be sure to update you all with progress, at any rate!
Magic the Gathering is something that I’ve definitely moved away from in the last year or so. I think War of the Spark was the last set I bought cards from, and haven’t actually played the game for a long time! However, Ikoria has caught my eye because (a) it has massive creatures, and (b) we’re seeing a return of the Tarkir shards! There’s a massive creature in the Mardu colours (red, white and black – my favourite!) that is a “dinosaur cat nightmare” – I mean, what’s not to like?!
The Shards also get Ultimatums, there are new tri-lands with the land types so that you can tutor for them; the Tarkir dual lands are back, and we even get a new Narset planeswalker card! There are a lot of nice cards in this set, and a lot of them would fit nicely into decks that I remember playing and enjoying from back in the day. I need to fight the impulse to get some of these cards!! But they’re so nice…
Oh, Ikoria is testing my resolve not to buy more cardboard crack!
Finally, let me go off-topic now, and fill you in on what I’ve been doing in the couple of weeks since my last blog. I’ve started work on another blog – though don’t worry, I’ll still be sharing my ramblings with you all here! I’ve been learning French once again, after having gone sixteen years since I did my A levels, and thought it’d get me into doing a lot more with it, as I try to put everything that I’m learning into practice! So I’ve started a blog as I try to make sense of it all, which can be found here, if you’re interested in that kind of thing!
So the world is currently in lockdown, as we all try to stop the spread of coronavirus, and the hobby community has really embraced this enforced isolation as the perfect time to get some of that old backlog painted. Personally, I’m classed as a key worker, so I’m still going into work every day, but I’m trying to stay inspired by the posts I’m seeing on social media, and I think it’s safe to say that I’m quite firmly over the hobby slump of a few weeks ago!
Space Marines are possibly the most iconic part of the Warhammer 40k setting, and even having had multiple redesigns over the years, there are design elements in there that effortlessly evoke the grim darkness of the far future. The most recent, Primaris iteration, has seen them almost with a meaner face, and they’re certainly much bigger now than they used to be. But for me, I think there will always be something about Mk VII armour that calls to mind the “classic” space marine.
A few years ago, I decided I was going to paint up a force of Space Marines in the quartered scheme of the Novamarines, a successor chapter to the Ultramarines. However, with barely two squads painted, I had to call a break, and I’ve not returned to them since. It’s a shame, because it’s a lovely scheme, and I was really very pleased with myself, with the units that I had painted. For this project, I had decided I would only use Mk VII tactical armour, and bought a host of bits for the occasion. However, I’ve since called a halt, and I’m now planning a wholly different project.
When I made the move from Fantasy to 40k, Space Hulk was a big deal, and there was a lot of hullabaloo around tyranids and Blood Angels. Now, I love the faux-Catholic vibe of the Imperium, and really appreciate that aspect of both the Dark Angels and the new Sisters of Battle. However, as far as marines go, the Blood Angels have always grabbed my attention for the sheer number of Chapter-specific units that they have. Along with Space Hulk, one of the cornerstones of my early days and weeks with 40k was the Shield of Baal series, and I picked up that box of good stuff that included the demented greatness that is the Death Company. However, as time went on, I sold all of that stuff off, but back in September last year, I began to reminisce about the Shield of Baal – in part, thanks to having finally started playing games with the fairly substantial tyranid army that I had by then amassed.
I’ve said it before: everyone probably has a Space Marines army. For me, I’ve hovered around the Dark Angels and Ultramarines for years, but last autumn, in the weeks and days leading up to my wife going into labour with our firstborn, I’d settled on Blood Angels for mine. As such, I feel almost a special place in my heart for this force. It was this Codex that I was reading while we were waiting to go down to the labour ward, and these were the models that I was building when, once our baby was here, the hospital staff had sent me home but I couldn’t sleep through sheer nervous excitement.
So far, then, I’ve got a few units of the older mini marines that I’ve had hanging around for years – a Devastator Squad, and an Assault Squad, and something that I’m really excited about, a Sternguard Veteran Squad. On top of that, there are a couple of HQs – a Captain and a Lieutenant. It’s really interesting how Lieutenants aren’t exclusively a Primaris thing, but have been reverse-engineered for the older marines, as well.
One of the things that really attracts me to the Blood Angels is the Chapter-specific units, as I find all of those fancy gubbins that make them unique really exciting! I’ve got a couple of squads of the Blood Angels tactical squad waiting in the wings, but I do want to add in some Sanguinary Guard as a sort of focal point for the army. I mean, there’s a lot of red, and with some Death Company bits in there, I’ll also have some black on the sides. Having a massive blob of golden warriors in the middle will really stand out, I feel, so hopefully I’ll be able to get them once lockdown is over, and things return to normal!
Death Company were a significant feature of the Shield of Baal box, with one squad alongside the dreadnought. Almost four years ago, I built up these chaps, although I have sadly since sold them off when I was trying to concentrate on just a couple of xenos armies…
Alongside the tacticals and the devastator gunline element, I do want a massive sledgehammer of a force to really just assault the enemy – the assault squad will be part of that, of course, but I think this is what is really exciting me about the Blood Angels, the fact that we have so many heavy-hitters like the Death Company and the Sanguinary Guard. With the right buffs, as well as the plethora of new rules from Blood of Baal (review coming soon, I haven’t forgotten about the Psychic Awakening!) it seems like the army really ought to hit like a brick to the face.
Of course, that isn’t forgetting the guns, and another reason for wanting to start on this project was the simple fact that I liked the look of red marines with blue helmets! So I’ve started out painting the Devastators, and so far I think they’ve been turning out pretty nicely! Don’t get me wrong, I’m not good at painting the red, but they don’t look too terrible, I think!
I hope you’re all coping reasonably well under the pressures and the strains of the current crisis, and that you’re all managing to stay safe. I’m going to try not to comment too much about this, as I do want my blog to remain a fairly decent escape from the world. While things have been quite quiet here in recent weeks, I’d like to pick up the pace once more as we head into the second quarter of 2020, so there will be plenty more of the usual fare coming up – book reviews, random musings and waffling is all just par for the course, now, after all!
Hey everybody!
It’s been a while since I’ve properly caught up with all of the goings-on in 40k here on the blog, and it definitely feels like there has been a lot to catch up on, to say the least! At the start of the month, we had GenCon, and some early looks at stuff like Aeronautica Imperialis, which I don’t think is for me, but certainly seems to have a lot of people excited, nevertheless. Of course, while we were enjoying the boxed game goodness such as these previews, as well as the eventual landing of Warcry, things quickly became all about the Space Marines, as GW began to reveal the next wave of power armoured good stuff on the way.
I think it’s been pretty much expected since Heretic Astartes had their second edition of the Codex earlier in the year, but the second edition of the Space Marines Codex seems to have both surprised and angered several folks here on the internet, who keep clamouring for more Xenos and so on. Sure, Space Marines are everywhere these days, and it might feel a little bit like Astartes Overload, but the simple fact remains that these guys are the brand icon for GW, and they’re clearly going to put their main efforts into producing stuff for them.
Despite all of the negativity, however, it’s been really interesting to see how GW are going about the release this time around, with these Codex Supplements that focus on a single Chapter. It does feel a little bit like a money grab, how you need to pick up the main Codex to get the rules for all the generic stuff, then your Ultramarines-specific supplement to get the rules for Ultramarines characters and whatnot. They’re a business, of course, but this is perhaps the first serious time I’ve felt like people may well be priced out of the hobby. It’s cool to get an Ultramarines codex, don’t get me wrong, but not if you need to still buy the main book. Wasn’t 8th edition meant to be doing away with the bloat of 7th? Why are we once again faced with the prospect of carting around most of a library to play this game?
However, there are some very pretty models coming out this time – and by pretty, I mean badass, such as Chief Librarian Tigurius in his post-Rubicon Primaris iteration! White Scars are the first non-blue Chapter to get the Codex Supplement treatment as well, without any kind of biker emphasis which seems decidedly strange, but never mind… Maybe Primaris bikers will be a thing sometime? Who knows…
We are set to get all of the Shadowspear stuff though, which is exciting, along with some more units to more fully flesh-out the Phobos-armour section of the force. Not only that, but Space Marines are now building battle suits! I do quite like this chap, and I’m thinking I might treat myself to one at some point in the future – when I eventually decide what I want to do with the various Space Marines that I’ve picked up over the years!
Kill Team is well over 12 months old now, and is getting a new starter set in celebration. Well, I’m not sure if that was the actual motivation, but anyway! T’au Fire Warriors vs Space Wolf Primaris Marines, battling it out among the ruins of the Sector Mechanicus. Cool beans, though I’m not sure if that is going to prove to be as popular a box as the initial one, simply because of the terrain on offer. But it’s good that they’re recognising the game is popular enough to need the starter box as a range item.
I can’t do a 40k update blog without mentioning the latest reveals from the Battle Sister Bulletin, starting with the incredible new Canoness model. What a sculpture! I suppose the centrepiece model of the army will still be Saint Celestine, but to have a really ornate character model like this to stand out is a real treat, for me. Several people have pointed out the fact that it’s nice for GW to be portraying a more mature lady for the role as well, which I suppose is a good thing, though I wish it was something that didn’t have to be made an issue of. I’m sure she’ll be the subject for many painting competition entries for years to come, anyway!
I was a bit sceptical when I did my Bulletin round-up blog last month that we’d see the Sisters Repentia, but in the very next bulletin, we got the first look at these girls, and they are pretty good, I have to say! The half-naked look has been replaced with one that is vaguely unsettling, but which echoes the purpose of these miniatures really well.
If the canoness miniature is going to form the subject of so many competition entries for years to come, I think the latest reveal is going to be adorning display cabinets across the globe for decades!
The Hospitaller model is stunning. There’s no other word for her, really. She’s got a similar sort of scenic base to the Primaris Apothecary, I suppose, but what an incredible model to include in the army! The rules for the Hospitaller in the beta-Codex are actually quite bland, albeit fairly powerful when used at the right time. I guess the miniature itself seems to suggest a much more grand position than just returning D3 lost wounds / a single miniature to a squad per turn. She costs less points than a swarm of Canoptek Scarabs, but the model is just insane!
Sisters of Battle should be a very cool army once they start to be released, and I’m sure there will be forces cropping up all over the place! My inner-hipster wants to wait out the initial flurry, and see how the land lies and the Codex fares before I go all-out, though. It’s not like I don’t have plenty of stuff going on, after all!
I’ve talked about my Necrons project, the Great Reanimation, plenty of times now – most recently, after the flurry of games that I’ve managed to get in with the army. It’s definitely a work-in-progress, as I try to get to grips with the force and experiment with new army builds and the like. I’ve recently passed about 5 years of being in the hobby, and in sort of a celebration of this, I’ve been trying to rescue my Tomb Stalker, the first Forge World model that I’d picked up in the Autumn of 2014. I wrote up a blog about this gentleman that you can read here, but it’s time to try to bring him up to date with the rest of the force (and, sadly, to repair all of the various breaks he’s experienced over the years!) So far, so good, though there’s probably a lot more to be done before he’s ready for the tabletop once again!
I’m really enjoying the Necrons, I have to say – they’ve been enjoying a lot of air time with me recently, and I think I’m getting more and more ideas as to what I can do with them, and so on. They were, of course, my first army, and the attention that they’re finally getting from me is, I think, befitting that status! I’ve got a few more games lined up, where I’m planning to change up my army build to include some (for me) really exotic units, so stay tuned for my further adventures!
Finally, let’s talk about this Psychic Awakening trailer that dropped at the start of the month!
40k Endless Spells seem to be the forerunner for what it means, and while at first I thought the same, I’m no longer so sure. Endless Spells feel a little bit like GW’s attempt to make AoS different to 40k. The fact that they’ve been quite successful, by all accounts, doesn’t make me think they’re suddenly going to port over the idea into 40k just to make more money. I feel like we’re going to be in for another campaign idea along the lines of Vigilus from last winter.
The sigil that forms the main visual interest in the trailer is that for the Adeptus Astra Telepathica, the organisation responsible for finding psykers out in the galaxy and, where appropriate, training them. Such psykers often become sanctioned for use by the Astra Militarum, become astropaths, or sometimes join the ranks of the Inquisition. So far, in the game we’ve got the old Primaris Psykers and Wyrdvane Psykers models for the Imperial Guard, and the Sisters of Silence.
This is where we are, but the announcement that went alongside the trailer promised “a new, galaxy-spanning event that’s going to have a significant impact on every Warhammer 40,000 faction“. The fact that it’s called an event is probably what is causing the Endless Spells speculation, as Malign Portents that introduced them for AoS came with the same tagline. But I’d much rather see something much like the Gathering Storm that came at the very end of 7th edition, which brought out Triumvirate boxes of major characters for a few factions.
I don’t see how every faction can have something linked to a Psyker event, as so many of them are anti-psychic, such as Necrons, Dark Eldar, Adeptus Mechanicus and T’au Empire. So I wonder what we’re going to be getting? Plastic C’tan Shards would be cool, and maybe plastic Grostesques for the Haemonculus Covens that act as Psyker-hunters? I suppose we don’t have too long to wait, if it’s coming this Autumn! At least the Ultramarines got to have a Primaris Tigurius to help them!!
To finish, I thought it worth mentioning the next expansion for Blackstone Fortress that is coming up for pre-order this weekend. Escalation is a sort of traditional big-box expansion for the game, and one that I hadn’t honestly expected to see until much nearer Christmas, if I’m honest!
It’s exciting to see more esoteric corners of the 40k universe being explored in miniatures with stuff like the Primaris Psyker and a third Rogue Trader model. I do wonder if we aren’t in for a full Rogue Trader army soon, given the amount of stuff we’ve seen for this faction since Kill Team Rogue Trader came out last year. There are a lot of possibilities for them, after all!
The next few months are going to be pretty exciting for 40k players, I feel!
Hey everybody,
It’s been raining something terrible here in the UK for the last week or so, which has left me with a lot of indoor pursuits to take my mind off the fact we’ve had more than a month’s rainfall within hours. I’ve already talked about getting back into Magic, which has been very exciting as I’ve been rediscovering that classic. I’ve got quite a bit more to discuss on that, of course, so those blogs will be peppering my site over the coming weeks and months. I’ve already got some lined up, to keep things going while I move house (though when, exactly, that will be, remains to be seen!) so I thought I’d check in with everything else that has been going on!
First of all, I’ve really gotten back into painting, and have been really getting somewhere with my Skitarii army ideas from days gone by. I’ve been toying around with quite a number of list ideas, though for now I’m trying to focus on painting up what I’ve got built, and ensuring I can bring down the pile of shame into something more akin to a proper army.
I’ve managed to get two lots of five troops, along with one HQ and one elite slot finished. Once I’ve finished up the Tech Priest Enginseer and the next ten Vanguard painted up, I want to move back to making the two lots of five troops into two lots of ten, which I’ll probably do alongside another character model. I’ve also built up five Sicarian Infiltrators, which I really like – especially that Princeps model! I love the insane technical details on these models, and I’ve really enjoyed painting the abundance of clips and plugs and screens on the Enginseer, so I’m expecting to enjoy him as well!
It’s my plan to get 500 points of AdMech painted up soon, so that I can start to play games with them. I don’t have an Imperium army that I can play with, so I’m looking forward to seeing how they work. Once I’ve got those 500 points finished, I can keep painting and adding to the collection, but at least it will be an army that is seeing some action, at last!
My thought process here is to keep adding units that interest me, or that I feel that I need, once I’ve been able to try the army out and see what it’s all about. I’m guessing that heavier artillery will be a requirement, and I’ve already started to put some paint on the first Dunecrawler twelve months ago, so hopefully that will be making an appearance before too long!
On the subject of painting models, I’ve also been fidding with some Necromunda miniatures, the Delaque gangers that I’d built back in December. I want to get into this game so badly, but finding people to play with has been proving a bit more difficult than I’d thought – hopefully soon, though, I’ll be able to get either the Delaque or Van Saar models to the table and try it out! I just hope I actually enjoy it!
I’ve also been reading Warhammer 40k novels quite voraciously, as I try to work my way through quite the backlog that I have! The Space Marines Legends series was a short-lived set of hardbacks that focused on a single Space Marine hero from one of the popular first-founding chapters. I’d read the first book in the series, Cassius, back in 2017, and was quite impressed overall. Lemartes takes us to the Blood Angels, and discusses the cursed sons of Sanguinius with the dual flaws of the Red Thirst and the Black Rage. We follow a Chaos incursion on the planet Phlegethon, which the Blood Angels are sent to put down. The Death Company are unleashed on the cultists, along with those brothers from the Fourth Company who are particularly susceptible to the Red Thirst. When the cultists bring down the wrath of Khorne on the planet, these brothers almost lose themselves, but fortunately the unbridled fury of the Death Company is able to bring down the greater daemon Skarbrand.
It’s an enjoyable enough novel, though it felt a little bit like a non-event in the grand scheme of things. I also read Azrael recently, by the king of the Dark Angels, Gav Thorpe, but I was particularly unimpressed with this one. It just felt interminable, and the plot was particularly uninspiring overall. Also dealing with a Chaos uprising, and showing Azrael’s ascent to Supreme Grand Master of the Chapter, I was hoping we’d get to see a lot more of the inner circle, but instead it all just fell a bit too flat for me. Ah well!
A bit more recently, we have Cadia Stands, which is something of a tie-in to the Gathering Storm series that brought 7th Edition to a close. The novel deals with, well, the Fall of Cadia, as the forces of Chaos emerge from the Eye of Terror for Abaddon’s Thirteenth Black Crusade. Yes, he’s had a Thirteenth Black Crusade before, but this is a different Thirteenth Black Crusade. I really found myself enjoying this book, as we followed groups of Cadians around the planet. I thought it was really quite interesting to see how the soldiers reacted to the increasingly Chaotic events on-world, as some struggled to evacuate from the warzone.
The book has been followed up by Cadian Honour, which seems to follow up on one of the soldiers featured in Cadia Stands, Minka Lesk. I’m not normally one for Cadian stories, as I’m not a fan of the army in-game, but I enjoyed this one enough that I’m thinking I’ll probably give it a try soon!
From 40k to Lovecraft, and it’s been quite an adventure this afternoon, as I’ve finally started playing the Dunwich Legacy!
I’ve been playing this game for what feels like a long time now, but have never made it past the Core Set. Back last October, I finished the core set campaign, Night of the Zealot, and so built up some decks with the new cards and thought about starting up the Dunwich Legacy, but other things seemed to get in the way. Well, I’m pleased to report that I’ve finally made it to Dunwich!
I’ve played the first scenario, Extracurricular Activity, using my Jenny Barnes and Ursula Marsh decks. I know Ursula is a more recent investigator, but the deck was built, so there we are! I really enjoyed it, seeing how the game has evolved from the core set already was quite interesting. There is a strong discard theme in the first scenario, at least, which I wasn’t expecting – I didn’t quite see my decks completely discarded, but even so, it was something I wasn’t really prepared for, and the hate leveled at investigators by the Agenda for having a large discard pile was really something!
Overall, I’m really enjoying this game. I’ve been buying everything for it as it has been coming out up until the current cycle which, due to real life intrusions, I hadn’t been aware had been released! When I popped by the games shop recently, it turns out pretty much the entire cycle has been released now, though I’m fairly sure I’ve only picked up the deluxe cycle.
FFG have recently announced a fifth deluxe expansion, The Dream-Eaters, which has also taken me unawares! The way the campaign works for this expansion is quite unique, as it features scenarios set in the real world and in the Dreamlands, and you choose one of the two for your investigators to follow. There is still talk of a cohesive eight-part campaign, though, so it sounds as though it will still be a traditional cycle. I may even have caught up with it all by then, and be able to play this one as it happens!
While I am loving this return to the Arkham Horror LCG, and finally getting round to seeing what I’ve been missing all this time, I’m also excitedly awaiting A Shadow in the East, the next deluxe expansion for Lord of the Rings. I haven’t played that game for a long time now, I know, but it is still up there for me, and I look forward to getting my grubby little hands on it!
Hey everybody!
Last year, amid no little controversy, GW and Hachette Partworks launched the second Warhammer 40k part-work series, Conquest – a weekly magazine that comes with pretty much all of the stuff you’ll need to build and paint two armies, Space Marines and Death Guard. It was a pretty neat idea, and a wonderful starting point for perhaps the more younger crowd of folks who might be wanting to get into the game. For just £7.99 per week, you’d get a magazine with some background, building and painting guides, and tutorial games that build up slowly the rules for 40k.
The controversy wasn’t just the price, of course, but also the fact that it was such a limited distribution, initially just in the UK. Over the summer of 2018 there were no end of social media posts being made, decrying the fact that the magazine wasn’t available overseas, although Hachette has since been rolling it out into a number of other countries, so I’m guessing it’ll be available like this for a while yet.
At the time, I was torn. Having been quite the enthusiastic part-work collector as a child, I had never managed to actually stick with anything to get a complete collection. Well, I’m an adult now, so thought I might actually try and do it this time, and with something that I am interested in. Well, it was a nice thought, but therein lies a problem: I’m only vaguely interested in marines, and Death Guard are on my absolute periphery. I also picked up Dark Imperium when it came out in 2017, so I have a lot of the models that were being included with the magazine already. Did I really want to get into this collection?
When the publicity shot was released, I decided I’d collect it until the Redemptor Dreadnought came out – reasoning, I wouldn’t begrudge spending £16 to get the model. (I know I’d be spending however much to get to that point, of course, but this made sense to me at the time!) The other day, I took delivery of the Dreadnought, and brought my collection up to issue 26, and so I’ve decided it’s time to stop. I’ve got one ring binder that is quite nicely full of the magazine, and while I’ve actually been selling off pretty much all of the miniatures as they’ve been coming to me, I have kept a few back, thinking I might like to keep small armies of Primaris Marines and Death Guard for the future. Well, with Shadowspear on the horizon, that idea has proven to be quite a good one, I think!
But now that I’ve reached this point, I thought it might be good to come along here and talk a bit about what I think about the magazine, as we’re well over a quarter of the way through the collection at this point.
Let’s get the miniatures out of the way first. They’re an eclectic mix of models, predominantly Dark Imperium Primaris Marines and Death Guard, along with the easy-to-build kits from both factions that have been released so far. There are lots of Poxwalkers, as well as some of the character models, which I was quite impressed to see. We’ve also had one exclusive model so far, Lieutenant Calsius (a Primaris Lieutenant, who knew?) that seems to have been included almost as a stunt to keep people hooked into their subscription past the first three issues.
When Conquest was launched in Spain, the entire collection was leaked online, and you can see the contents of each issue right up to 80 over on bolter and chainsword, here. The only issue that I’m actually considering getting beyond the 26 that I currently have is 54, which comes with Typhus, but I don’t think I’d lose any sleep over missing it, and ultimately, I could always pick him up for cheaper than the cost of continuing the subscription.
Alongside the army miniatures, we’re also getting a lot of terrain. So far, I’ve had the Munitorum Armoured Containers (all three, to add to the set I bought originally, and those that have come in with some of the Kill Team faction boxes – so I could pretty much set up my own shipping company with the amount of crates I have now!) but there are also such gems as the Haemotrope Reactors, the Servohaulers, and plenty more of the Sector Mechanicum stuff. The series also includes fold-out battle maps to play games on, which is quite nice.
From a miniatures standpoint, it does have a great deal to commend it.
As a part-work magazine, it’s a bit of a curious beast. You have four sections: collect, build, paint and play. That’s all fine of course, until you realise that, once you’ve built and painted your models, you have two sections of the magazine that are pointless to keep hold of.
The Play section is really good for people starting out in the hobby, as it guides you through how the rules work without overloading you with the complex terminology from the outset – I think by around issue 20, the little rules pamphlet was included, so up to that point it was all geared towards starting slowly, with battles centred on just the models that you’ve collected up to that point. Pretty good, but that does assume a very specific target audience: children. I don’t mean to be rude here, of course, as I’m sure there are plenty of kids who would be fine to sit down with the hardback core rule book and then give you a decent game thereafter. But there is a very definite feel of this being aimed at the younger audience, with some photos of kids enjoying a game and the like.
This feel spills over into the Collect section, too, which is a history of the 40k universe, and then specific background on the Space Marines and the Death Guard. It’s not written so much as a Codex as more like the sort of hardback annuals you used to get as a kid. Pages are mainly given over to the glossy artwork, with the text pretty much skimming the surface for a lot of the time. Of course, the 40k universe is hardly kid-friendly when you actually look at it, so it’s pretty commendable that they’re able to produce this at a level that will be acceptable and allow folks to enjoy the hobby. I’d certainly be happy allowing my future kids to read through this without worrying too much about the gothic imagery and graphic violence.
I’m very much not the target audience for this collection, and I know a lot of hobbyists who have been buying into this are also not the target audience, but we’ve all been doing so pretty much with the idea of getting heavily-discounted miniatures on a weekly basis. I find this quite interesting, because I’ve really been suckered into this one, without really realising that I’ve been suckered in for two armies that are not armies I collect! Sure, I have an off-again, on-again thing for Space Marines, and have very tangentially considered a Death Guard army following my purchase of Dark Imperium, but on the whole I’m a xenos player, with an interest in the more esoteric Imperium factions. Really, this magazine should have no interest for me! It’s definitely that allure of the new and the shiny, and in this case, the cheap, and so I’m really glad that I’ve managed to curtail myself before spending any more on it.
Of course, if you’re a Space Marines or Death Guard collector, then it’ll be a different story. And if you’re looking to get into the whole hobby thing from scratch, then you couldn’t have picked a finer collection to get going with. The total cost of the 80-issue collection is around £625, with the estimated cost of miniatures you’ll end up with in the realms of £870+. Not bad – especially considering the subscription will be providing you with the paints and the brushes you need!
It has been cool to build up the collection to this point, of course, and I am quite glad to have gotten to this point with it. Weirdly, I feel really very pleased at the fact I was in it for the battlefield scatter terrain, a set of tank traps and ammo crates that I would probably never have otherwise bought!
I’ll leave you with this link to the Tale of Painters blog, and fellow hobbyist Garfy’s journey through the magazine and its models. In the link, he shows off the painted units so far, as well as talking about the magazine in general. Well worth a follow if you’re interested in seeing how this thing progresses!
Hey everybody!
It’s been another quiet week this week, which is perhaps to be expected with Christmas and all. I’ve been trying to make some time for painting during the latter half of the week, with the intention being that I’d have something to show you all for this blog here on Sunday – which I suppose is the point of me doing these blogs in the first place, so well done me!
I’m still very busy with army lists, and having pretty much finalised my first plans for the Grey Knights, I’ve started work on the Purifier squad with gusto! I’m really enjoying these chaps for the moment, so I hope that continues. Unlike a lot of projects (Tau instantly spring to mind here), I’ve got quite a clear idea of what I want to achieve with the paint scheme, so I’m hoping that means it’ll go quicker for me! I’ve done the silver quite quickly – just a Leadbelcher base, with a bit of a focused shade of Nuln oil, then a soft drybrush of Ironbreaker. I’ve not yet gone in with the blue glaze, as I’m building myself up to that one! Having base coated the helmets with Celestra Grey, I’ve today gone in with a diluted shade of Coelia Greenshade – 1 part shade to about 4 parts Lahmian Medium. It’s left them with enough detail, but there’s a definite greenish hue to them that I quite like. The tabard on the Justicar has been painted Zandri Dust and shaded with Seraphim Sepia, and the gold details are just base coated Retributor Armour. Finally, the Force weapons have been base coated with Caledor Sky.
I’m hoping to be much further progressed as this week moves on, so hopefully I’ll have more progress for you all then!
I had the Grey Knights Paladin Squad for Christmas, and so have built myself a Grand Master using the parts from that kit to really flesh him out as a fancy chap. I’ve also been building models for both the Deathwatch, and the Ravenwing projects that I have going on at the moment – I’ll get to the latter in due course here on the blog, but for now, let’s talk about the xenos hunters!
I’ve been slowly building up a Deathwatch army since Death Masque arrived back in 2016, but have left it quite a while between the last phase of my painting and this current spurt. The reason being that I’ve been talking to a fellow gaming buddy about entering a doubles tournament in 2019, in the assumption that Warhammer World will be holding the event again!
Now, I’ve played in card game tournaments in the past, but I’ve never even attempted to go along for a miniatures tournament, as I get the impression that it’s just far too competitive for my liking. Well, Kev has not given me any reason to think I was wrong in this assumption, so far! He’s going Grey Knights (it was against his kill team that I first encountered that game, and he’s been building up the army since) so I’m going with another branch of the Inquisition, and hopefully we’ll either face Chaos or Xenos to make our army choices worthwhile!!
All weekend, then, I’ve been working my way through list ideas, and I think I’ve finally managed to come up with something that I would be reasonably happy playing – bearing in mind that I prefer fun things to play, as opposed to lists that are just too tailored and end up being boring:
Initially, it’s quite a cheap battalion list, with a fourth group of veterans that includes a Terminator taking up a significant number of the points. I’m fully intending to use this as a distraction unit though, hoping that it will draw enough fire that the other units will survive reasonably unmolested. The Venerable Dreadnought needs a new arm, which I thankfully have thanks to the bits box, and I’ve got a Razorback for the more melee-orientated unit of Veterans to get them closer to where they need to be. I did initially want a Chaplain in there with them, but I’ve instead gone for the JumpMaster as he has a slightly better stat line. Though I am wondering if the Terminator will be worth it, so might make some adjustments over time!
The first thing that strikes me about Deathwatch is just how many crazy options there are in the Codex, and how many interesting squad permutations you can get. I’m a bit confused by the whole mission tactics / special issue ammunition thing, and with the stratagems on top, I feel like this army is something that can be quite unwieldy quite quickly, so I definitely want to get some games in with it as soon as possible, as I need to get used to that side of things before I get into any kind of tournament setting, I think!!
To that end, I’m thinking I might need to make an alternative list, just to get to grips with the army in general, and then see how it goes adding in the relevant units. I do already have a sizable Deathwatch army, so I’m hoping to get to the shop in the new year and see how it goes! Stay tuned for those exciting updates, anyway!
It’s been a lot of fun resurrecting the old hobby progress blogs for December, and I almost feel a bit sad to finish the series! I do think they’re a great way to check in and keep me on track with my goals, so I think I’ll definitely be doing a monthly iteration throughout 2019. I have a lot of goals for next year, so we shall see how those pan out!
Come back on Tuesday, 1 January, to find out more about those goals!!
spalanz.com 