I've slowly been working on the first 498pts of my Cheesestealer Cult aka the "Nezu". One mostly finished guy and a bunch with yellow down (using Minitaire's Golden Yellow ghost tint, just applying by brush instead of the intended airbrush).
sonofsonsoftaurus has also been busy, painting up his Reiver squad for his Ultramarines. He still has washes and some details/basing to go.
After a while of not doing much modelling or painting I'm getting back into the swing. I picked up this fella on ebay and added the mask and axe and plan to use him as Lord Taurus, ascended leader of the Sons of Taurus renegade marines. The listing said it was from Creature Caster, but I haven't been able to verify that. Anyone recognize him and able to point me to some confirmation of origins?
I'm also bulking up the Scythiak Usurpation . Above are my unimaginative Crusaders. Very on the nose perhaps, but pretty much fit perfectly how they're supposed to be equipped (heavy armor, storm shield, power sword) and fit with the aesthetic already established with the marauder rough riders and use of fantasy chaos heads elsewhere. I plan to put them and a priest in a twin heavy flamer Chimera and go try to fry and dice some loyalists.
Sonofsonsoftaurus has also been busy, assembling mostly on his own (I did some trimming of flash and sprue remainders) a Primaris Apothecary and an Ultramarines herald/ancient. The head on the herald is from a different heresy kit (MKIII command I believe). Cape/backpack left off of the herald for painting. That Apothecary has a bunch of tiny pieces. If I get one myself I may have him and his small hands build it for me.
I finished up the Guilliman model for sonofsonsoftaurus according to his specifications. I will paint up the bare head later, but thankfully he has come around to liking the helmet. I took a few cues from how he has been doing the ultras that he has been painting himself, so the blue is washed a little darker than I may have done on my own, and he's dulled down a little more than I would have done on my own. Still, pretty happy wiht him and glad to have him wrapped up.
Enter the Preceptors of Vertex! With 8th edition 40K on the way, I have been working on a force that I wouldn't mind leaving at the game store for others to use to try out the game or use while they are building their own armies. Using old Space Rangers as Space Marines and some old foam vehicles a friend of mine carved years ago. I went with yellow and brown as their main colors mostly because those would work well with the wood stain shading I planned on using. Dirty urban ruin bases to fit in with a lot of the ruined buildings we have at the store.
Once the rules are in-hand, I will sort out some forces at various point and power levels and leave those as well with some sheets on the unit stats.
I had started them before a lot of the info dribbles started coming out. They are big enough to probably pass for Primaris marines, so I may go ahead and also see how they could be arranged as Primaris. I may need to paint up a second HQ as well to fit them all into one of the the new force orgs.
We have so far:
Captain with plasma pistol and power sword
2x10 man tacticals with plasma gun and lascannon, sgt with plasma pistol and power sword
4x5 man tacticals with plasma gun, sgt with plasma pistol and power sword
5 man devastator squad with four lascannons, sgt with plasma pistol and power sword
2xRhinos
Whirlwind
Vindicator
So these guys are coming. Upgraded Space Marines, bigger, better, with better gear.
From a background standpoint, this is a huge can of worms being opened. Some of the worms I can see resolved more easily than others.
Developed in secret for 10,000 years? I can maybe see that with the AdMech. Perhaps Guilliman made Cawl program himself to not reveal the project until Guilliman told him to, and then G goes into stasis for a few millenia. Oops.
How will the other Space Marines react to being the old model? I wonder how many remember stories about the Thunder Warriors. I would expect for there to be significant friction between these new marines that are added to existing chapters and between older chapters and these new Primaris foundings. This could be an opportunity for a lot of interesting storytelling as the Grimdark reasserts itself, but I doubt they will go down that route.
New foundings of Primaris Marines. How exactly does that work? A whole unit of rookies? When they found chapters, don't they bring in leaders from other chapters to run the show for the first generation at least? Are they going to have old marine chapter masters, captains, chaplains and such and Primaris line troopers? Or somehow enough of the Primaris have distinguished themselves enough to immediately go to leadership roles, even without experience? Again, could be fertile ground for stories, as the theoretically elite run into problems with a lack of practical experience to draw on.
Logistically, it seems like a nightmare. Different armor that all the old chapter serfs and techmarines don't have experience with, weapons that will require different maintenance and ammo, troopers that may have radically different physiology that Apothecaries will have to adapt to. Will they need different drop pods, transports, etc.? Why not just take all this effort spent on this project and just make a few hundred extra chapters of old marines instead? Or why not just give all marines the new bolt rifles? There are bound to be logistic chokepoints and problems. To an extent this feels like some of the 1980s toy/tv show combos - manufacturer is coming out with new toy, you guys figure out how to feature it in the show. Yeah, I know the other guys are robot cars and these are robot dinosaurs. Make it work.
Chaos. So, Guilliman broke the legions into chapters to limit the power available to any one commander, then forms chapters that are more powerful than the old ones. And at some point, someone will say the Primaris aren't bound by the Codex restrictions on size. Some of these guys are bound to start falling to Chaos, creating problems for the Imperium, and another layer of narrative issues as super-renegades start muscling their way around in heretic circles.
Speaking of Chaos, this really makes Fabius Bile look like a chump. He's been struggling to make better marines all this time, while Cawl had done it already and was just waiting to pull them out of the drawer. And other experiments like the Cursed Founding went on to disaster while Cawl already had succeeded? Or perhaps that will be retconned into being part of Cawl's project, with the final perfecting of the process happening afterwards?
I could see them doing a lot with these guys that could be interesting, but I doubt it will happen. Of course they could surprise me and explore these things or handle them in a different way that works. It's still early, we have just had a brief reveal, as more comes out some of the holes may fill in.
Despite all of my trepidations narratively...gosh those guys look nice. And with heads and pads being the same size, they could be beakies, or altered with a multitude of alternative heads and pads, both GW and from other companies. I look forward to seeing the primaris versions of assault marines and other things. I'm tempted to start a force of primaris, one of these brave new chapters in a Second Great Crusade. I expect to become part of the "problem".
The Iron Warriors are pretty far along. I still need to:
arrange to pick up parts to finish some things - mk III missile launcher squad, techmarine servo harnesses, and jump packs for the assault marines
When cleaning and organizing, I apparently lost the drill bit small enough for bolter barrels, so will need to wait for a new drill bit before doing those. I did the meltas and flamers with a hobby knife, but would like to go deeper for the bolters
Seal
I will also make a jump pack captain and a squad of MkIII vanguard vets, but have not even started construction on those yet, but those are just extras. Aside from the Mk III missile squad and the parts, the 2000pt core army is almost done
We're starting up a Kill Team campaign over the holidays, using GW's Into No Man's Land set (see your local store or online such as HERE for details.
Today we clarified if we were going to do any modifications (set leader and specialist skills for the duration) and got some test games in. Only three of us showed up, which made the meeting portion of the day go quickly, but hopefully is not an indicator of overall attendance.
Most of the assembly is done for the Iron Warriors. 25 tacticals, 5 assault, 5 sternguard, 15 devastators, 11 terminators, two thunderfire cannons, dreadnought. Still waiting on parts to do a Mk III missile launcher dev squad. Most backpacks left off until after initial painting.
Sternguard, simple MKIII legion armor, bolters with box mags and scopes, Iron Hands heads for some extra bionics/upgrades. Awaiting MKIII Iron Warrior pads.
The bases are temporary, I will be using the GW Sector Imperialis bases for them. Now that they are assembled, when I get another warm day I'll prime them and get to work.
I also picked up the Burning of Prospero set, pretty neat. Love the plastic MkIII marines. A little disappointed in them as a kit in that the only HW they have is a heavy bolter (Mk IVs had HB and ML) and no flamer as far as I can tell (have melta and plasma). They do have a thunderhammer for the sgts, so I will forgive them a bit.
I had all these MkIV tactical marine bits in front of me, and thought that I should get started assembling those, as they would be the most useful, using the bodies for my tac squads and dev squads for lower point games.
So of course, my brain went SQUIRREL! and I assembled the terminators instead.
Not the most practical early build, but progress is progress!
I had always liked the idea of the Iron Warriors. Siege warfare, trenches, ruthless application of logistics and firepower to achieve their goals. I never got around to making them before, as I didn't really picture them as the standard Chaos Marine kits, even with the upgrade set GW released 3rd edition. The extra ornamentation, horns and such always seemed to fit armies like Black Legion and the Word Bearers well, while the cult legions had their own aesthetics. But it didn't fit Iron Warriors well to me. Neither did regular marine kits, focused on Mk VI and VII armor with eagles and purity seals featured prominently. So I waited.
I've been asked by Shapeways to give them a plug, and being an accommodating fellow who has used them in the past, here it is!
Shapeways is a 3-D printing company that makes all sorts of things based on designs others enter. As miniatures gamers, there's a lot on offer there. I personally have used them (through the designer CustomMinis, who has a ton of 40k useful designs) for shoulder pads for both the Space Sharks and Sons of Taurus. If I end up expanding the Space Sharks I will probably end up getting the door set pictured above, as FW has dropped the Badab War ball and even stopped making their Carcharodon transfers. Boo. If you have a custom chapter or just want some variety in pads, check them out. I expect you'll be able to find something you can work with.
The interface and searchability still leave a bit to be desired, though it does look like it has improved since I first scrolled through page after page to find what I was interested in. Some examples of things folks might find interesting below:
Want a BFG cruiser? (from GrimDarkBits)
Or some things for X-Wing games? (from Mel_Miniatures)
Some teeny weapons for those Hot Wheels cars you're converting for your Fury Road games? (by swinks)
How about an interesting portal glyph marker for those daemons? (by dashleysmith)
Or maybe you have been looking for the right hats for your Lego Napoleonics army? (by woody64)
Check them out, poke around and I'm pretty sure you'll find something interesting and even useful!
Brother-Ancient Spielberg prepares to take a bite out of the pointy ears.
Recently played partway through a 2500pt 40k game with Scott and his Eldar, seeing how bigger games go in prep for a planned mega-battle. Normally giant games aren't my thing, preferring smaller stuff like combat patrol or 1000pt battles, but I'm up for some variety. I scrimped around and by being able to take a lot of terminators as part of a First Company Strike Force was able to get enough Space Sharks to make 2500pts.
This afternoon I got a game in with sonofsonsoftaurus. He wanted to do a game with the high tech guys against the not so high tech guys, with both guys and tanks. So we have an approximately 1000pt game with him running the Silver Skulls against the Scythiak. 4x4 map, no real mission beyond trash daddy's guys. He set up the map with minimal guidance, mostly opening things up a bit to make his podding in easier.
Round one I was on the snow table with the Grey Knights/Space Wolves/Space Marine/Inquisition army, bunch of purifiers, squad of TH terminators, squad of centurions, bunch of psykers with various gimmicks, some mandatory chaff squads of blood claws and scouts. Space Wolf pods turned over to the Grey Knights and the marine centurions. I set up with the terminators delayed until turn two, hoping to have his guys committed then deploy termies away from the big threats and clear up his chaff, or be able to use the teleport homers on the bikes to all come in and deal with the threats one at a time. They took out the attack bike and shot up the other on-field guys a bit.
They have so much terrain they have a special shelf for Evil Shrines. I approve!
Saturday some fellow locals and I trekked out to Atomic Empire in Durham for a 40K tournament. I'm not a big tourney player, but several others were planning to go and we are in a lull between local leagues/campaigns so I decided to go along. Three rounds, 2000pts, anything short of unbound goes. I decided to bring the "Shark Angels", Space Sharks count-as Dark Angels, with a bunch of terminators and some other support.
We had:
1. Astra Militarum 2. Chaos Space Marines / Necrons 3. Space Marines / Astra Militarum / Space Wolves 4. Adepta Sororitas / Inquisition 5. Grey Knights / Inquisition / Space Marines 6. Necrons 7. Orks 8. Chaos Daemons 9. Eldar 10. Dark Angels (me) 11. Eldar 12. Chaos Daemons / Heretics and Traitors 13. Chaos Daemons / Chaos Space Marines 14. GreyKnights / Space Marines / Space wolves / Inquisition 15. Eldar: Iyanden / Dark Eldar 16. Chaos Daemons / Space Wolves
Sunday I got a game in with Leonard and his Orks. We did 2500pts, the largest game I have done in quite a while. I pretty much took a 1500pt Shark list and tacked on an extra 1000pts in terminators and upgrades.
My most recent game was against Rhett and his Chaos Marines. Rhett has had a hankering for Planetstrike lately, so I suggested we use that for our league game. We ended up at 1850pts, with me as the defender against a Chaos incursion.
I altered my standard league list a bit, dropping things like rhinos (squads would be in bastions) and the whirlwind for some terminators. When I started unpacking, I realized I didn't have the second squad of terminators I thought I had, so I quickly redid the list to get back to points, tossing scouts and the ironclad back in.
Rhett had: Typhus, seven terminators, 2x10 plague marines in rhinos, 10xwarp talons, 3xbikers, heldrake with autocannon. Other than the bikers, everything had mark of nurgle.
My latest league game was against James' Chaos Space Marines, featuring some lovely noise marine conversions as can be seen above. Dark Vengeance chosen with some chopping, chaos marine parts, greenstuff (including some tentacles) and guitars from Studio 38 . Tres bon.
Get over here wit dem brushes and paints ya lazy gits!
Earlier today I managed to squeeze in two games for our league, one at 1500pts vs. Leonard's Orks, the other at 1000pts vs. Chris' Tyranids. Both interesting games, but both leaving me a little dissatisfied with the current Shark builds. More on that later. Above is a pic of the looted wagon Leonard converted up from a WWII Greyhound model and various bits. I think the little helmet like a bowler is a nice touch.
One of us was the puppy. The other was the stairway. I'll let you guess who was which.
League game tonight at home with Eddie and his new Tau, 1850pts. We were originally going to do some mission from the Farsight supplement, but ended up rolling a random one instead and got the Scouring.
