Inquisitors

 So to go with the lore update, I have finally got around to building the remainder of the Inquisitors! I've shown of my main Inquisitor Sophiana Tullus and I have spoken Inquisitor Tamhas Adrien in the past as well. Tamhas was originally a power armour wearing inquisitor, fitted out for close combat. Now alongside the original Tullus, these models had to be ditched when the rules were updated a d power armour removed as an option and while to conversion process from power armour to Carapace armour (I assume it's Carapace anyway, as that's the standard 4+ save Imperial armour) also change Marcus Tullus in to Sophiana Tullus, it has not had a similar effect of Tamhas Adrien, who remains pretty much as he was. 

The third inquisitor I had named, Inquisitor Sophiania Etiennia, has also had some changes. While she never had a model, she has had her name pinched by the new Tullus and as such is going to be given a new name. In this case it will be Laurissa or for full effect Inquisitor Laurissa Etiennia.

So that's, Inquisitor Sophiana Tullus, Inquisitor Tamhas Adrien and Inquisitor Laurissa Etiennia. Now, I know what your thinking, how many Inquisitors do you need! Well, 4 actually. So, welcome to the floor, Inquisitor number four!

The last inquisitor is inquisitor Jameelis Henryk. There is no lore to be said about Jameelis at the moment, he will be fleshed out with the others in due course. 

So, that's the 4 players, but why 4, what's the point in that! Surely all you need is 1 inquisitor? Well yes, you do only need 1 but to field a patrol you need an Inquisitor and 3 troops and you can take acolytes as single man units. So I built an Inquisitor and 3 acolytes, but which can also be used as 4 separate Inquisitors if I want. Now, lore wise, Sophiana is the lead inquisitor, being the only inquisitor during the first uprising, but by the time of the second, 3 of her acolytes have been promoted to full Inquisitors and she to a lord inquisitor, in command of a regional conclave, that covers the area including the Hamnavoe system. That's the basic full anyway, more to come at a later date.

The four Inquisitors, from left to right, Tamhas, Laurissa, Jameelis and Sophiana.

Jameelis and Sophiana

Inquisitor Sophiana is a well established character, bring a radical Ordo Hereticus Inquisitor and a follower of Xanthism ideology. Jameelis on the other hand has no lore but will also follow a more radical path, like his old master. He will be a member of the Ordo Machinum and to many is know as "the Collector" for his habit of collecting archeotech and Xenos artifacts. His link to the admech is also a bit deeper, due to his relying on their tech for life support due to his origins on a high radiation world.

Tamhas and Laurissa

Tamhas is also a xanthism Inquisitor, although he is an Inquisitor of the ordo Xenos. There is already some background on Tamhas, but this will be expanded to take in his origins as a soldier and how he lost his arm. Laurissa is also fairly sparse where the lore is concerned, other than being a bit of an outsider. This will change, although she will still remain fairly aloof. She is a former sister of battle who's faith was shaken to its very core by what she witnessed in the service of Sophiana, and as such now searches the galaxy for "miracles" to ensure that they are indeed what they say they are. As such, she counts herself as both an inquisitor of the Ordo Malleus and also of the lesser ordo Obsuletus. 

Inquisitor Laurissa, still carrying many items from her time as a sister. 

So there you have it, my little inquisitorial conclave and it's Inquisitors. I will get around to expanding the lore when I do my full rewrite soon. 

Pariah nexus

So, a few weeks ago, I took the plunge and brought something on pre-order, something that I've never done before! I know there has been a few negative comments and reviews about Pariah nexus and although I have not actually played a game using the rules or the board, I have to disagree with a lot of what has been said. Yes, there are some issues with the box set, such as the disparity between the two factions and the low model count overall. That said, the rules look good, the board looks just as good as the previous ones and there's no doubt that the new models are amazing. 

I think the main issues with the box were the fact that Warhammer Community cocked up the pre-release pages, which initially stated that this was a starter box rather than an expansion. This gave a lot of people the wrong idea about what to expect and so when there was no core rules or dice and rulers and the two sides didn't match up, people went on a little moan and complained about how rubbish the set was and how over priced it was. As an expansion it sits pretty well, as it doesn't need core rules or dice and rulers and the sides don't need to match up perfectly. I do think it's pushing the price range a bit, maybe 80 would have been a better price but 95 is not unreasonable. Many people have compared this to the Indomitus set, however there is no doubt that this box was a major bargain and I suspect was sold as cost or even at a loss to build hype and drive 9th edition forward. 

Anyway, the models. The heavy intercessors are up first and are pretty simple, almost mono-pose in their construction, pretty typical for the new marine models. They are still dynamic poses though and really give the impression of bulk and power. They were a joy to build and had a number of accessories with them. 

The full squad

Two base marine

Sergeant on the right.

Heavy bolter

Next up are the Necrons. These are the new Flayed Ones and they are beautiful models but an complete pain to build. They are each formed of about a dozen bits and all of the claws are in at least two bits. I'm glad that I've got thin fingers, as there are a few bits that require some careful manoeuvring to get them in the right position. I have yet to paint them but I think that they will be a pain to paint up as well, as the claws don't half get in the way of a lot of the front model. I'm painting up my Hrossey Yeomanry troops at the moment and my get these done between the troops and the tanks but I will have to see what happens.

The full squad

Some of the skin details

I really like the hand on the left model ( hanging just in front of the leg) 

Lore rewrite

 I spoke about my issues with my own lore and the integration of primaris marines into the timeline in a previous post. I also spoke about how I wasn't sure how I was going to bring it all together and have a coherent lore which didn't stray in to the fantastical to much (even for the 40k universe). After looking at things from various angles, I think that either a partial rewrite of the lore or scrapping everything and just starting again. As you can imagine, scrapping everything and starting again is not really something I want to do, so a partial rewrite it is. Now, this isn't actually as bad as I thought, as a lot of the issues I though I would run in to with a rewrite are not as bad as I though. 

The timeline won't change that much really anyway, there will be a few changes but mostly it's going to be adding dates.

Old time line

755.m41 - Sabbat world crusade starts

C.780-785.m41 - Hjaltland rebellion

C.790.m41 - inquisitor arrives Hamnavoe system

999.m41 - devastation of Baal

999.m41 - Cicatrix Maledictum (the Great Rift)

C.200.m42 - 2nd Hjaltland rebellion

New time line

755-800.m41 - Sabbat World's Crusade - arrival of refugees

999.m41 - devastation of Baal

999.m41 - Cicatrix Maledictum (the great rift)

999.m41 - Hjaltland rebellion

004.m42 - Inquisitors arrives Hamnavoe system

005.m42 - marine Reinforcements arrive

007.m42 - rebellion suppressed

150.m42 - 2nd Hjaltland rebellion

155.m42 - rebellion spreads system wide

160.m42 - Inquisitors returns 

170.m42 - primaris marine reinforcements arrive

This new timeline should fit in with both my first born marines, the primaris marines and also the various guard armies. It will also help to explain why there are the various different guard units all mashed together and why lots of marine units are present at a small one planet rebellion on two separate occasions. I can keep some of the back story the same, with the arrival of refugees from the Sabbat World's Crusade but instead of causing trouble straight away, they start spreading there ideas and opinions, creating various cults, to a whole host of different gods. 

The Great Rift also allows for lots of different armies and factions to be present within the system, for all sorts of different reason, plus it allows the marines to be upgraded from first born to primaris and retain the characters. It also allows for the Inquisitors to be present at both occasions. I will go in to a few more details for the Inquisitors in another post soon, as there have been quite a few changes there. 

I will probably take all the pages down soon and repost that as I update them to the new lore. I will keep the old ones around as a record of the evolution of my lore but that will be somewhere else and not here. 

Eagle Knights Elites update

 So, it's taken a while and there have been some stops and starts, I have the majority of my Eagle Knights Elites slots painted up. I say the majority, as I am still ummm-ing and arrrr-ing about how to attach the wings, once I do decide how I'm going to do it I will post it up here (and yes, I am aware that the Libby is actually an HQ selection, he's just been dumped in with all the other models here)

Anyway, here are the completed models!

Family photo to start

First up are all the characters, the Bladeguard Ancient, Apothecary, Judicar and Chaplain. 

The four completed characters

The Chaplain is probably my favourite character out of the ones here. This is due to his cloak thing, its not actually a cloak but more of a collection on Oaths that he has attached to himself, for his benefit but also others, sort of like a handy cheat sheet of the most prominent and important oaths a space marine should know. When he is based up properly with the grass, it will show up the rock that he is standing on and give him even more of an air of authority and presence.  

Details on cloak/oaths

Details on the right arm, which came out really well and I'm quite proud of these.

Next up are the Bladeguard and Apothecary, complete with dead Knight. Only minor conversion work done of both of these characters but I think that they work really well and fit with the rest of the force. The one divergence from the overall force also happens there, as all of the Sigmarines have skull helmets, to represent the fact that they are all sworn to the Chaplaincy and death but not the Apothecary. He has a bare face with mask, for although he is fielded with the force and wears the same decorated armour he is not sworn to the chaplaincy but is still part of the Apothecarion and is gifted the armour by the Chaplaincy out of honour.

Standard and Apothecary

Dead Knight about to have his geneseed removed by the good doctor

Ornate backpack of the Ancient and backside of his Standard

Next we have the main bulk of the force, the actual Bladeguard, all 6 of them. Now I have modelled these so that I can field them in one of two ways, firstly as a squad of 6, that can be combat squadded in to two units of 3, or two separate squads of 3. This is due, mostly out of luck, to having two figures with pistols out and mounting extra details on their packs, basically smaller versions of the Ancients.

The complete 6 man squad

The 2 Sergeants. The one on the left is the main one, as he is carrying a plasma pistol and only the actual Sgt in a 6 man squad can carry a plasma pistol.

Shoulder detail, not a good as the Chaplain but not to bad. This is actually not the best but was the one I could get the best picture of.

The four remaining members. 

One thing that you may notice is that two of the models do not have gold shoulder pads. I has come up with a explanation for this, these are new inductees in to the order and have yet to be fully "blooded" by the order and thus receive their golden pauldrons.

The shields

One extra little detail that I did for these models was to give each an individual shield. The guys are supposed to be quite rare on the battle field and so i figured that they would want some way of identifying each other and also being identified by others and what is more obvious and easy than the shield. Nothing fancy and sticking with the chapter colours and basic shield heraldry.  

New Imperial Guard! Sort of.....

So on the final day of Warhammer Fest 2021 online and we had a huge, huge guard update! Ok, so maybe not that huge, but it is big, for a couple of reasons.

We had a reveal earlier in the week, on Wednesday, of some updated Gaunts Ghosts. Now, this was nice but rather limited. Six special characters, probably running as commissar, company commander, platoon commander and some other types of characters, all with fixed profiles is a nice little release but not really useful for building an army. 

Now, the sculpts themselves are amazing, full of detail and, well, character. I really do like them and they continue with the recent guard character releases in really bringing up the guard sculpts several notches. A full army of these sculpts would be amazing to see but probably mean that you have the same 10 man squad repeated 10 times over. 

As nice as the Ghosts are, the really exciting thing was the new for the Cadians. While this isn't quite as good as a whole new sculpt, it is really good and a giant step in the right direction.

So what are we getting? Well, as you can see from the image above, were finally getting female guard! Not only this but special weapons in the standard troops box. No more having to buy a command squads box to get the bits we need. There are already quite a few heads in the Cadian box, 14 if my count is correct and this new sprue seems to have another 25 different heads, giving a grand total of 39 heads, with 32 different styles for a 10 man box set! That's a lot of heads! This is actually really great news, as it means that there can now be even more variety for the troops and it will be nigh on impossible for two people to build repetitive models. The fact that some of the heads are female, 8 or 9 by the looks of it, is also great and really brings the full imagery of the guard to life on the tabletop. 

The addition of the special weapons sprue is great as well. With the standard pack only having a flamer and grenade launcher, we had to buy the command squad box to get the other options. 

However, there is a downside to all this. No new models. It looks like we are stuck with the same base models with just the two new upgrade sprues. While this is fine for Cadians, it doesn't work for Catachans quite as well. Yes, we can get the special weapons and new heads but they would be all male. For female Catachans we need a while new box and we know they can do female Catachans pretty well, as seen with Ripper Jackson, which is a beautiful sculpt. 

This upgrade sprue does give me some hope though, as there are a few options for this sort of thing and there are a few regiments that can be formed by simple changes to head dress and weapon arms. Things like the Ventrillian nobles,the Mordian Iron guard or Tallarn desert raiders could be formed from the base Cadian kits with a head sprue and weapons sprue with several lasgun arms in addition to the special weapons. A second kit with long coats and similar upgrade sprues could be used to make Valhallan ice warriors, death corps of kreig, Armageddon steel legionand savlar chem dogs. Yes, this leave the Catachans a out, but Cadians with the right arms and heads would make a suitable stand in. 

I know that it does strip some of the variety from the units but would give us the individuality we all want to see from the GW line. I would love to return to the glory days when we had boxes for each individual regiment but let's face it, were not going to get that again. 

More terrain

 Right, this will be the last lot of terrain for a while, I promise. I still have all the MDF buildings to spray and I'm hopeful I can get them done over the summer months when I can spray in the garage without freezing to death, although the new garage door should help with that, when it's fitted that is. 

Anyway, here are the new terrain. First up the loading system. This is using bits from the Mantic Terrain Crate I got a while ago but modifying the prices with some plasticard and tubing. The original set had the top sections sitting on sections of the large pipes, so I had to build some sort of support structure. I have tried a few things over the years I had this set but none have worked out how I wanted. This however I think works rather well. The solid sections of in the middle work as line of sight blocking terrain and hid even the tallest primaris models. 

I tried to make them look like concrete blocks, sort of like the precast slabs that you get, with support columns at each end. There is one section that is supposed to look like a wood plank repair section and there is the green mould\gunge\ooze or whatever it is. This is there to add some extra colour to the otherwise dark prices but also to his some truly epic gaps in the construction. Some of the panels were not well fitted at all, a sign of both my inability to scratch build and also my haste when building these things. Overall though I think these look really effective.

Next up are some more pipes, just little ones this time. These are not really much use in terms of game terrain but are something else to add to the table to take up some of the open ground to make it look less open. Very basic in construction but a nice little addition to the terrain pool.

Lastly here are some pipe storage rack type things. These were built to add some addition container sized terrain features, that when placed with the two containers can form a large blocking price in the centre of the board. Simply made from some plumbing pipe I had spare and a few bits of plasticard left over from the other builds, painted to look like concrete pipe. Oh and there is the small pipe rack as well, again just bashed together with left over pipe and plasticard. 

I still haven't found the rest of the crates and also some of the other bits from the Terrain Crate, which I had completely forgotten about until I looked back at the previous post from when I bought the terrain crate. I really have no idea where some of these pieces have disappeared to, hopefully I'll come across them at some point, so I can add them to the collection.