Long overdue hobby updates

Hello everyone. I have been off the radar for almost 2 years now it appears from the date of my last post. Many a reason for this. Exams, new baby, new job, working on the house and garden, COVID etc etc. the blog(s) just fell by the wayside sadly. Hobby output is less now than previously but I’m still plodding on through the endless backlog. Sadly not gaming at present due to COVID (my last game was 8th edition). Still, today I am sitting down for a few hours and updating some things on both sites, as well as clearing out the spam comments. Hopefully this will be a more regular thing from now on but as my hobby output is less, there'll be less to share.

Previously I have let my love of loyalist marines dominate my hobby time, but am branching out now into other armies. The past 2 years I have expanded several fledgling armies into full blown complete collections, most notably imperial knights, death guard, genestealer cults and adeptus sororitas. These are collections that are fully assembled and basecoated. With a couple of hitches that is. I stupidly (after several weeks of hard labour) took a load of sisters and death guard outside to spray them on an unusually warm day. Long story short - the spray finish was rough rather than smooth on leaving me rather annoyed that I'd tripped at the final hurdle. I still need to strip a load of them.

For loyalists, I've made a good start to my sisters (another separate post on them coming up in a while) with a fair few fully painted. Several of my custom knight household are painted as things stand. The admech have been updated with all their bases done and 'most' models basecoated, though I am slowly ploughing through airbrushing chrome onto the vehicles. I have a small cadian (necromundan) infantry army which I have developed a speed painting technique for as seen below. I also have a leman russ tank division but am struggling to find a colour I like for them. Once I've decided I can blast through spraying them fairly quickly. 

Moving onto chaos now, I've done nothing in terms of daemons (except a copy of wrath n rapture gathering dust) but have collected a fair few chaos marines for an upcoming black legion project. I assembled an alpha legion force (Test models seen below) and also the aforementioned death guard - my only  army painted using contrast. (Note the skaven cultists)

 

 Lastly the xenos. No action for orks or tau, though I did paint up a fair few nids for a game at whw pre-COVID. I've recently started to put the finishing touches to my Alaitoc army incorporating some corsairs as swooping hawks and rebasing most of the army. I'm now starting to move on to updating my necrons with the new releases. Fingers crossed I will post up about my sisters soon as i'm particularly proud of them. Cheers. 

 

 

Imperial soup army - Ultra-Mordians. Plus Thousand Sons.

Hi all. Though technically this isn’t exclusively a non space marine army I just wanted to share it and haven’t updated this blog in a few months. Sidetracking for a moment, I’ve organised a tale of gamers type event at my local club with 12 of us participating, mostly 40k. This is to incentivise is all to regularly commit to painting up and gradually building an army of choice. Although I still have a couple of outstanding hobby commitments (namely admech and imperial guard) I’m trying to move on to chaos stuff now and this seemed a good way to do it. My first fully painted model can be seen below. Another aside, I will share pics of my genestealer Cult army in a post soon. 

Back to business. I chose this army as I wanted to paint a few marines to base standard and some imperial guard also. I’ve always loved the Mordian models and so though lt a small detachment of them would be great. In addition, I have the Guilleman model but have never used him in battle so now seemed a good time. Hence the ultramordians were born. It was a 1500 point battle and I think at this points level g-man, beast that he is, is a little too pricey relative to the overall army cost. I won one game and lost 2 (one of which was to the overall winner) but had a great day and feel I made a good achievement getting everything painted to tabletop standards. Cheers.

Astra Militarum: the problem with regiments

Greetings folks,

Before business resumes as normal in the hobbying department I thought I would share this article. There were rumours in advance of the Imperial Guard (I will still be referring to AM as IG) that the regiments would be gone completely and that the whole galaxy would use Cadian standard equipment. Thankfully, this turned out to be false. Sadly, so did the usual rumours about greatcoat guard, which seem to have been around forever. Another rumour about snap-fit steel legion has yet to be totally dismissed and with the Ork/Blood Angel started rumours, it's at least in the realm of possibility that the Armageddon boys may get a look in. 

On to actual discussion about regiments then. Cadians remain the poster boys of the model range with the much maligned Catachans a close second. After that though you're looking to forgeworld for more comprehensive ranges (more on this later). If, like me, you started your 40k obsession during second edition, you would have seen the original Cadians (not bad ) and Catachans (which I prefer) in addition to a whole host of other regiments. These metal squad sets would see further augmentation later and would be joined by no fewer than four additional regiments. Suffice to say, although some of these regiments have become casualties over the years, GW still has most of them available in limited format on their new website. The fact that they bothered to update the art/packages for them suggests they will be around for some time still (plus the notable mentions in the codex) and so my question then becomes, how would a new Imperial Guard player go about fielding them?

With great difficulty is the answer. Unless you resort to Ebay or have a friend who just happens to own a regiment, you'd be very hard pressed to field any of the named regiments save for those mentioned above and the forgeworld ones. The Mordian range, for example, consists of a single set of 10 models, which although they are all unique, only leaves you with a single choice of special weapon and officer. Unless you turn to one of the alternative ranges (and Victoria miniatures is a very good if expensive alternative) you would not realistically be able to represent Mordians on the battlefield any longer without simply repainting Cadians. My next series of questions is therefore aimed at what the future may hold for these regiments. The way I see it there are 5 options:

1. They gradually disappear from the GW site becoming OOP models as some of the range already has.

2. They remain as they are now indefintely, making them mostly unviable

3. The range returns to the relatively comprehensive state it was in a couple of years ago, making it more viable to field as an army but made up of old (but still good) and expensive metal models. (who knows what the future of finecast is at the moment?)

4. Forgeworld gradually takes up the mantle and reimagines some of the regiments in resin as part of the Imperial Army for Horus Heresy

5. Games Workshop, having run out of kits to produce for IG, starts to remake regiments in plastic.

Now, IMO all of these options are potentially viable, with 3 and 5 being the least likely. However, because it's a bit of fun and I love to speculate I'm going to delve into option 5 a bit. To do this, let's start by summarising what we have so far for the named regiments:

GW plastic - Cadians and Catachans, each represented as command, squad and heavy kits. Sentinels also represent both and several vehicle kits represent Cadians.

FW resin - Death Korps and Elysians, both comprehensive ranges with DKoK having more variety. The odd kit for Cadians/Tallarns

GW metal - Tallarns, Mordians, Valhallans, Steel Legion, Vostroyans, Tanith. (more on these in a moment)

Out of production - old style 'Necromundan' (rogue trader era) guard made obsolete by Cadians. Praetorians (Mordian resculpts) and Attilan rough riders. (you never know, a Rough rider kit may appear sometime as it is one of the only codex entries without a model)

So, the current GW metal models are the ones I will focus on discussing the most from here on. Although these model ranges were some time back a lot more complete than they are now, most were missing at least one special/heavy weapon and items such as vox operators, standard bearers, medics etc. Should any of them ever get a model range then, following the model laid out with the Cadians/Catachans, you would need 3 boxed sets in order to fill the range: a command set, a squad set and a heavy weapon set. Spare parts could easy be used to augment tank commanders, artillery crew, sentinel pilots and the like to make them fit in. How would this work in a more practical sense though?

Mordians have a lot of similarities with the Cadians uniforms, but not enough to be represented with Cadian models without taking a lot away from the Mordians distinctive look. The beauty of a Mordian kit would be that some existing elements that made them so impressive could be retained, such as the strap holding the grenade launcher, the greatcoat officer, trouser stripes, shoulder epaulets and heavy weapon carriages. also, were such a kit ever to be produced, it would be criminal not to include the pith helmets to represent Praetorians from the same kits. 

Tanith are, quite frankly, unlikely to ever get represented as a regiment. They feature mostly as characters in a novel series and, although I've seen some small homage armies out there, their model range was never meant to be able to represent a full army on the tabletop. Modifying Cadians with ghillie suits could be a  fair representation anyway. Tallarns have a very distinct look, which in recent artwork seems to have changed somewhat to appear closer to the standard Cadian appearance. 

Vostroyans, being relatively late to the party, have a command squad, snipers and the like. Though they share some elements with other regiments (same length greatcoats as Steel legion, similar hats to Valhallans) the intricacy of their uniforms would make combining them into a box difficult. Steel legion too have knee length boots to distinguish them, where Valhallans have the full length greatcoats. By sacrificing these elements to make a multi-regiment kit, the object of the exercise would be somewhat defeated.

My conclusion is that we may see one regiment in the distant future make the upgrade to plastic but I doubt we would ever see all of them updated. It just isn't practical or cost-effective for GW to do so, any more than it would be to produce an entirely individually tailored range for each Space Marine chapter. I would love for a smaller scale project either by forgeworld or finecast to take place, wherein the individual models are reorganised again into more appropriate, resin bundles, with new and old scuplts supplementing the range so that each unit/weapon could be represented. It might be expensive and monopose but at least it would give players the option to use something other than Cadians in their army. 

Upcoming imperial guard release - what to expect.

Hi guys.

Time for one of my lame analysis and speculation posts. Imperial guard are right around the corner so we are led to believe. Pics of the codex and models have been leaked and we also have the whole militarium tempestus release to consider.

Firstly though, what's in a name? Storm troopers are now militarium tempestus and imperial guard are now Astra militarum, presumably to further distinguish their ip from certain other franchises. Personally I welcome the changes, and suspect that in the books they will still have reference made to  their low gothic names, kind of like the space sharks. Let's face it, people are still going to call them guard. I would actually quite like it if space marine become adept us astartes and csm traitor astartes. The chapters with their own codexes and supplements need not change names as they are individual chapters rather than a whole institution. Only one that irks me somewhat is the space wolves, whose names is second only to space sharks (who are themselves second only to rainbow warriors) in silliness. Their chosen name would be hard to sell as a codex though, which only really leaves sons of russ/fenris or lupus Astra to go with. Plus I've never really liked the term 'dark' eldar. Perhaps eldar raiders/pirates or fallen eldar would be more appropriate?

Anyway, I digress. What I really wanted to talk about was guard. First up is the militarium tempestus, which as a deviation from the norm is being released a week before any guard releases. The scions and command squad are a beautiful kit with sadly far too many bits to get full use of. Whereas the other guard command squad parts can be spread amongst the cheaper and more abundant troopers, these chaps are one and the same so expect to have a lot of spare flags. The taurox I want to love but a couple of things make me hesitate. Still, it's far from the worst kit gw have put out.

I suspect that the codex will allow command squads as hq and scion squads as troops with only dedicated transports (chimera, taurox, prime, valkyrie, vendetta) thrown in. The guard codex (from the WD leaks) allows the taurox as a dedicated transport with the prime reserved for Scions, which themselves are elites which can be taken as a platoon with a command squad and 1-3 squads taking up a single slot. It seems the best way to include storm troopers in a guard force is to take them as troops via allied mt contingents rather than simply as non scoring elites, meaning guard players will likely want an mt codex. Of course they will be excellent to run with an inquisitor too.

Now, on to the imperial guard. Well we've seen the book cover, ogryns, bullgryns and hydra so far. I guess we can count the scions and taurox/prime as being guard releases of sorts too. Some of the guard boxes are already being repackaged with the new name and a price bump so it seems - expect this to continue throughout the month. Let's take a look then. We have the book, scions (stormtroopers), taurox, taurox prime, (not seen in non-mt colours yet though) ogryns, bullgryns (combo kit) and a hydra for certain. Which units does this leave?

I suspect that the hydra will be a combo kit and my money is on the griffon. It would fit nicely with a redesigned griffon on a central turntable and frankly would be a better fit than with the other, larger artillery pieces. Speaking of which, as we can see the older style basilisk alongside the hydra I doubt that a new basilisk/medusa/colossus model will be coming anytime soon. Though with forgeworld being mainstream now there's a chance that those artillery pieces will be removed from the book altogether.

Sticking with that point for a moment, models may indeed be lost completely if not simply to fw as with the tyranid book. I suspect Bastonne, kamir and perhaps some of the other special characters may disappear. As for rough riders and penal legion, who knows. Rough riders will hopefully stay as they have old but still in existence models. Penal legion however I suspect may disappear. Question still remains however, what other releases will there be to fill the rest of April? With two vehicles and two infantry sets we may well be out of luck already. After all, tyranids only got the 4 kits with other stuff either removed or left as finecast, no doubt for a wave release later on. I hope at least the army box deal will be good value.

It seems entirely possible that we've seen all guard have to offer us already. A sad truth, but possibly a reality. With forgeworld offering pretty much everything that is not mainstream and the tempestus release offering new toys, there may be no more love to come for the guard. I hope that not to be the case, but at any rate I can't see the likes of rough riders or penal legion being prioritised for release, much less a new regiment in plastic. The pros and cons of the new release schedule are that we are fed info little and often, so we won't know until mid April the full extent of the release. Here's hoping. Cheers.

Mantic corporation army box review

I couldn't resist picking up one of these beauties when I first saw the preview on Mantics website. They really reminded me a lot of the old style Imperial Guard of second edition, but in a good way.

 
I have a soft spot for the Necromundan Guard in their grey overalls and black flak jackets and these chaps reminded me a heck of lot more of them than the Cadian plastics did. So i grabbed a box as they're going for 25% off or more on many independent sites. Here's the good and the bad:

Good:

• Cheaper than cadians
• Scale looks better when compared to SMs 
• Lasguns look better scaled to the models
• Really easy to assemble with very little trimming
• They come with rules included should you want to play Warpath

Bad:

• They really SMELL, badly. I had to put them back in the box they smelled that bad. Hopefully once sprayed that'll change.
• There are no options, not even for a sergeant without power fist. 
• Special weapons are a bit meh and heavy weapons much smaller than GW IG equivalents
• The base molded to the feet needs trimming off if you are using scenic/GW bases, and you'll need a sharp knife!
• The poses are more limited than the GW models but this isn't really a problem if you ask me.

So in conclusion I am happy with them and intend to use them as the core of an IG army one day. Here's a scale comparison pic to help others decide whether or not they like them better/worse/same as GW models. Cheers.