Blog update

 So it's been a while since I've posted but fear not! I have been busy in the back ground, modelling and painting. 

It has been a busy few months with the wee one, working and dealing with life in general, so I haven't had a great deal of time to sort out pictures and get posts written. However, things have settled down a bit now and I'm finding some more time to blog. I have been getting painting done of an evening, half and hours here and there but it means that models have been moving along.

Also, it's that time of year again, when me and a few.other brave souls venture across the seas to the Northern Invasion tournament. I'll have a few posts up with a couple of warm up games and list considerations, plus the actual tournament itself, as it's literally hours away when this post goes live!

Hopefully, if all goes to plan, I will have a number of posts up soon leading to the run up to Christmas. 

Blog update.

 Ok, so there has been a bit of a quiet period for the blog recently. Again, as will previous quite periods, I haven't stopped blogging or fallen out of love with the process, rather there has been several events over the recent months that have meant that blogging time has been reduced, yet content to blog about has increased!

The first big change has been a change in jobs, meaning that I have increased my working hours from 18 across two jobs to 35.5 hours across two jobs, with the majority of these hours now coming while the small ones are at school. This means that I don't have any time during the day to sit and blog while the kids are out and when I am home, I am busy with kids clubs and house work. 

A change that has gone alongside this is the youngest starting school, which has enabled the above work expansion and not enabled the extra hobby time I thought it would!

Another change has been due to shifting around kids clubs and also my other hobbies. The my daughter is a keen swimmer and her pool sessions have changed to take up more time including weekends plus I have switched one of my clubs, from said weekends to weekday evenings, eating in to yet more hobby time.

Additionally I was away south at Northern Invasion 2024 a few weeks ago and I spent every spare moment in the lead up to that event painting and sorting my list, plus helping to sort out my son's and also his friends list, who joined us for the weekend. With all the painting and practice games I didn't get much of a chance to blog and now have nearly 20 posts sitting in the draft folder waiting to get properly written about the warm-up games, list thoughts, the actual weekend and games plus my thoughts and the others thoughts on then lists and improvements form next year. 

I have also been working on a couple of other projects, just small side projects but they have been fun. I'll try and get some pictures up of them when I can. I have also started on a bigger project for my AdMech\Knights army which I hope to get some pictures of them up as soon as I can. 

There is also some extra special news going on but I can't say anything about that yet, as soon as I can I will.

So, all in all, there has been a lot going on behind the scenes, even though there has not been a lot of movement up on the blog. I will hopefully get a chance to play catch-up before Christmas, if not I'm hoping the Christmas holidays should give me time.

Summer holiday lull

 So there has been a little bit of a lull thieve last few weeks. I have been away on the family summer holiday and finding time to write and post has been hard. I have however been working on the codex review and it should be finished and starting to go up over the next week. The articles are written i just need to sort some pictures and proof read, because most of them have been written on the fly and at speed!

In other news, I’ve just realised that my blog has adverts! I have no idea when this happened. I have applies to get ads, mostly to see if i can gain some sort of funding for this hobby of ours, no matter how minor it might be (9p so far!) but every time i applies i was rejected for some reason or another that i could not work out, so i gave up but i was checking something out the other day on a different device and looking at the actual blog rather than the blogger interface and there they were! Mostly rubbish Temu ones, but they were there. I will have to try and figure out if i can get more targeted ads or something, i have no idea if or how to do this though. 

Lastly I have a lot of projects ready to run, so hopefully I’ll be able to share these over the coming months, so there will be lots more to come, the blog is not dead yet!

10th edition armies

 So, I’ve had as very quick look through some of my armies, namely, all three guard armies, the Eagle Knights Marines and Deathwatch strike force armies  and the AdMech and other marine incursion armies and so far its a pretty mixed picture. Ill list some of the key points here quickly but i will be going in to detail on all the armies soon, firstly though I’m going to run through all guard data cards over the next couple of weeks. 

I’ll start with the guard and there have been a number of changes overall. The Hjaltland LI has lost it scout sentinels, as these are now needed with the Wyverns in the Hrossey MechInf, due to the synergy. Apart from that they are still pretty similar. The Hrossey has lost some units due to price increases and the addition of scout sentinels but on the whole look fairly similar. The Dagr Ormr Militarum tempestus list gave me a bit of a scare, as i have six squads of scions and was thinking i could only use 3 of them, having spent time, effort and money redoing them for the last codex. However, i seem to have missed the but about having a Militarum tempestus command squad as a warlord makes Scions battle line, and thus i can take 6 of them! There are a few changes outside that, as points have gone up and units have changed but they should still work the same way.

The Eagle Knights have not had much of a change, as the army is all primaris and they have not seen very many changes, mostly points wise but not units rules wise. 

The Deathwatch are a different matter, these have had to have some big changes. With the way points work, the 6 and 7 man units are now going to be reduced to 5 man units, with the extras being put together to form an additional unit of veterans. The Vanguard vets have also had a rejig and the addition vet has been removed and has become an additional Captain. Why Captain? Well you apparently can’t take a Lieutenant with a jump pack anymore. So my Lt with jump pack has also been promoted to Captain. So the army now has 3 Captains with only 2 units that they can join! I will have another look but I can’t see jump Lt’s, which is a real hit for them. I could run the vets and vanguard vets as 6 and 7 man units but its a lot of points for just a couple of extra bodies. Lastly, i was running two apothecaries, but now i can only run one as part of a command squad, which i, luckily, had the right members for. So I’m an apothecary down, which is annoying. Why they got rid of command squads to bring them back again is annoying!

Now we get in to the other armies, the smaller ones. I’ll start with the other marine armies, all of which stay the same, the points have changed here and there, but really haven’t changed that much. I haven’t had a full look at them as i have been dealing with my main armies. 

The AdMech, while not a main army, is one i really like, however, the army is now pretty much useless. With the changes to the codex, mostly in respect to the Skitarii units, has cause quite a few issues for me. Previously i had several MSU units, 4 ranger and 2 vangaurd units, but now that i have to field 10 man units, i can only field two ranger and 1 vanguard unit, leaving me with several models spare, mainly a special weapon and a Sgt model. I have thought about adding in more models to make a full unit but i think if i do add in models it will be a separate close combat unit. I also have issues with the knight allies. I currently have two armigers and a knight to build, however, I can’t ally them all in, as it’s an either/or situation. 

I’ll go in to each army in detail later but first up i am going to look at the various new guard data cards.  

 

Thoughts for guard in 10th

 

So we have seen a fair bit of information so far on 10th and so far it’s looking good. However, i want to put some thoughts and ideas, both good and bad, on guard in 10th. There is not a huge amount of information specific to the guard apart from the faction focus article. 

Overall, i am looking forward to the new guard, however, there are a few issue that I foresee. I say issues, they might not be issues as we don’t actually have nearly enough rules to decide what’s and issue and what’s not.

The first thing that jumped out at me when i read the faction focus article and that was the new orders. While the orders look good and all are useful, it was the fact that there seem to only be 6 orders in total, for both armoured and infantry units. Now, the six orders can easily be used by both types of unit and will give a good bonus to the unit, however after having just been given 18 orders, it feel like a step backwards. On its own I don’t necessarily see this as a negative thing but when combined with a couple of other factors, it does seem more so. The first factor is the orders range, which is back down to just 6 inches and also doesn’t appear to bounce between squads. This means that you’ll have far less orders to issue, even with officers going back up to two orders per character. At one order per officer, it’s going to feel quite lack lustre. This is even more so for armoured units. Having to keep your tanks or other vehicles so close together reduces their mobility and ability to dominate the battlefield with their firepower. 

The second issue to this is the changes to Vox casters. The new rules for these have nothing to do with order and are instead about gaining command points. While it is nice to gain additional command points, there are a lot of conditions to gaining them. Not only do you need to use a stratagem on the unit, you need an officer in range and you need to roll a 5+, so all in all, it’s unlikely that you will get many command points over the course of a game. Why the Vox caster does not enhance the orders range i don’t know, even if it doubled the range, i would have taken that over the CP generation. 

When you combine all these things, the reduced orders, short range, no bouncing and Vox caster no longer having an effect, orders, while still useful, don’t seem nearly as powerful or useful as they were. As i said above, we still don’t know how many orders officers will get or if vehicles will get additional range, as it stands i do think this is a minor nerf to the guard. 

There is a minor offset to the no bouncing of orders, that the new squads can be taken in squads of 20. This means that you’ll get more bang for your buck with each order, however it’s still not quite as good as being able to bounce an order to multiple units. The 20 man squads are good for many reasons, not only is there a greater output of fire from the squad but it will also have an effect on battle shock. With twice the number of men, you’ll need to loose twice as many men in order to need to worry about battle shock. The other good thing about the 20 man squads come from the fact that battle line units are restricted to 6 units of any one type. If you wanted to run more than 60 men in the only 10 man squads you would have to look else where, now with 20 man squads you can take up to 120 men, which for some might still be restrictive, but for me it should work out nicely. 

The reduction in AP is something that might go either way.Firstly it helps us with our poor saves, meaning that we will get our full same more often than not, keeping the guardsmen alive for longer, however, it also means that were not going to be dishing out as many wounds to our enemies. This seems especially true for some of our bigger guns, such as the Leman Russ and artillery, like wyverns. While i do think that this a good move in general, it feels bad as some of our weapons have only just got the boost that they needed in our last codex. Also the reduction in the number of weapon profiles is a bit of a negative, weapon like the death strike have taken a bit of a nerf when they have only just felt like they were where they should always have been. 

The changes to leadership will also be interesting. The way morale works and the new battle shock rules will mean that guard will most likely suffer most battles and might find it hard to run proper infantry lists. Characters like commissars will be very important and what their special rules do will also be critical to keeping infantry squads working. Hopefully they will enable us to ignore battle shock tests, probably through the loss of one or more guardsmen or they will have a very low leadership value making passing the tests easier.   

In relation to commissars is the fact that many guard squads can have two separate leader units attached, rather than one like many armies. Having two attached will be interesting, especially as command squads seem to only count as one choice. That means that in theory you could have a squad size of 26, with 20 guardsmen, a command squad and a solo character. In addition to this what’s going to happen to the command squad advisors? At the moment they are just added to the command squad, will this happen in 10th? Or will they be separate characters that you attach to units? 

There are currently a lot of unknowns with the new edition and there have been a number of additional previews and leaks since I started writing this article, so some of this will have probably changed. However i will be writing a full review on the new guard when we get all the rules and i will also go through each of my army lists and look at the changes that will need to be made (again!) and also look at how i think they will work in 10th.

10th edition

 Its been a little while but we got a big reveal at Warhammer Fest a few weeks back and we've had a number of other previews since then, however, I just wanted to have a little look at the release box and talk through the various indices and codices that we'll be getting. 

Firstly the started box, Leviathan. This looks like another great release box, full of new and exciting units, exciting for someone else that is. While I appreciate the models and box value, it just doesn't do it for me. The new space marine models are generally very nice, I really like the new terminators, as with some of the other recent Imperial releases, they keep enough of the classic look but updated in keeping with new range. The flamer dudes and dreadnought don't do it for me. Mass flamers don't shout marines to me and the dread just looks odd, too long legs for the beefy body. The whole marine side is just a bit disjointed as well, terminators with two terminator characters, a gravis character with no gravis squad and a Phobos character with no Phobos squad. Plus two normal armour squads with no characters to join either of them. 

The tyranid side of the box is equally as nice looking bit just feels far more cohesive. I say this but i have absolutely no idea about tyranids and so it could be a complete mishmash of units as well. From my perspective there are a couple of bug bugs, some medium bugs and a number of smaller bugs, just how i always imaging a tryanids list looking. 

Overall i think that this box is a really good box though, with tons of value (the the rumoured price tag is right) especially when you include all the books and stuff. However, i will not be buying the box, as it just doesn’t offer anything to me. The only exception to this is the Sternguard.

I really like these guys, however, they appear to be single pose mono build and i think if i want to have these in a force, i would want a very different weapon load. I really wanted a couple of small squads of these in my first born armies, a squad each with combi-flamers, plasma and melta. Looking at these guys, you don’t get that choice. If the individual kit for these is realeased and its a proper MPPK or Multi Part Plastic Kit, then i may well have to get to and put them into one of my primaris forces, which I don’t know. Anyway, this one kit is no where near enough of a reason to buy the whole box.

One thing i will be looking at buying when 10th drops are the data card packs for my various armies. There are quite a lot of them here that I want, i know that they are on line free and so some will just be downloaded and used from my phone, but there are several that i want actual cards for. These are the Astra Militarum, Blood Angels, Imperial Agents and Deathwatch. The ones i will just download are AdMech, Dark Angels, Space Wolves, Space Marines and possibly Imperial Knight. 

The Astra Militiarum cards should be fairly obvious, as will the Blood Angels (as my Eagle Knights) but the Imperial Agents and Deathwatch might not be. I really like the idea of an Imperial Agents force, just a collection of units around my inquisitor, just for fun really. The deathwatch is an odd one out, as I don’t have any of the current codicies but i have a 1000 point force ready to role. Of the others, i have various forces that i can play but font really and so I don’t have a need for buying the new data cards for these forces. I have an AdMech force of 1000 points ready to play and i do intend to try and play this more in 10th as i hope their rules will be significantly simpler.

Talking of codicies, we do actually have a road map for the next nine months to a year, and none of my forces are on it! The Astra Militarum, having only just been released for 9th will have to wait at least another year for anything from 10th. It’s ok, were use to waiting! The Blood Angels are not listed either, however i could run it as a standard Space marine army as I don’t have any BA specific units in my army and unless they release any primaris specific units with the new codex, then i won’t. 

So the new edition is shaping up nicely. I was initially sceptical of the new edition and the return to indices so soon after the release of the latest AM codex, however i am becoming far more enthusiastic for the new edition. I am likening the new system and slimmed down rules. We have yet to see the full rules but so far, so good!

Battle foam boxes£

We hobbits are forever on a quest to find the most cost effective and easiest storage solutions for storing our precious models and up until now I have tried a few different options. I have magnetic storage trays, KR multicast, GW cases, shoe boxes with foam bits, ice cream tubs and plastic bags full of models and I’ve always come back to KR as my first choice in storage. However these are not cheap and have their limitations. However, while surfing the internet or rather eBay, I can across some options for storage boxes and while comparing prices to see if they were worth a punt I can across some Battle Foam boxes and on checking the website I found that their empty D-Boxes are on discount, down from £8.40 to £3.36. With the cost of postage I managed to get 6 boxes for less than £30. With some foam purchased from the local haberdashery, I managed to put together all the stuff i needed to build storage for all my remaining models for less than £35 or £30 for just the material (not including postage). 

D-Boxes

I brought 6 boxes, two of black, green and white. They were a little bit smaller that i though they were going to be, but that’s not a problem. The boxes are are about half the size of the KR standard boxes but are a little bit deeper. For me this works well as they are to be used to store my smaller armies, like my AdMech and my Deathwatch. One thing that i was surprised at was that despite the fact that the boxes are empty, they came ready assembled and in a huge box.

The factory

So after getting all the stuff together I started to build my new storage boxes. Yes, this takes a bit more time than just buying ready made but this way i get fully customised trays. It quite simple to build, just takes a bit of time waiting for the glue to dry properly.

Rhino storage

It can take a bit of working out to get the best use of space and also to make sure that you get a full box and are no it over or under the box capacity. I didn’t find this to much of a problem, just have to take your time with it, the hardest thing I found was making sure that you cut the pieces to the right size and I cut several to big and to small but managed to get things to go together alright. 

AdMech box

This is an example of the custom trays that i managed to build. The Dominus models are significantly bigger that the standard Skitarii, but i only have a couple of them and I am not planning of getting any more. Therefore I build a tray that was uneven to hold the Dominus models and also fir a number of Skitarii.

The vehicle tray at the bottom was also custom built to hold the two armigers and the AdMech tank. I probably could have built this try slightly differently however it works very well.

So that was one box with around 1000 points of AdMech and i have built a second box with 1000 points of Deatchwatch, with a couple of Rhinos and a Dread (the rhino tray above) plus a number of troops. I have 4 boxes left and I’m not quite sure what I’ll be putting in these. One will most likely get my Dark Guardians first born marines army and i would look to put the Eagle Knights First born in another although it will most likely need two boxes for them. Depending upon the Rutledge for 10th, i may well look at building a full Inquisition army (about 1000 points) and put that in a box. Alternatively I may look to put all my kill team stuff in one box, with all the teams, counters and other bits.

The big box

This is the big box that that all the smaller boxes came in, with a ton of small bits of foam, mostly the cut outs from other trays. They are a bit useless and I feel bad about just chucking them out but I have no need for them. The kids have been having great fun with all the bit though.

Points changes

 So, with the new point updates, I though I would see what difference it would make to my various forces. These list are from battlescribe so may not be 100 percent accurate, as we all know battlescribe can have some glitches from time to time. 

The first list is the original list, which, despite having various vXXX numbers, are all the the latest points prior to the last update. The list titles Game can be ignored, as this was a list I put together specifically for a small game with my boy and the Kill Team list, is rather unsurprisingly, a list for kill team and is unaffected by the points changes to 40k proper.

These List are all of my current 40k armies, excluding the two first born marine armies that are sat in my loft. Most of them are painted, with just the Deathwatch being primed and half the AdMech still being built.

In addition to this list, the there is the Tau list, which has fallen off the bottom but now comes to a total of 805 points. My phone is supposed to do this thing where you take a screen shot and it will take a picture not only of the screen but also whatever is off the bottom of the screen on the same page but it seem to be a little temperamental as to when it works of not. 

Anyway, the points. There have been points drops across a lot of the armies but there are also several that have not changed at all. The armies that have not seen any changes are the AdMech, Deathwatch and the Eagle Knights (Blood Angels). The reason for this is mostly down to the fact that many of the units that received points drops are not units that these armies contain, as they are not exactly optimised. However, this is not the most interesting points change, is for Marine 2, which has apparently gone up 35 points, although I'm not sure why?

The other random one is the Marine 1 list, which some how seems to have dropped 260 points. Where and how, I have no idea, but I'm guessing it's not because of the latest points drops. 

The main list to look at however are the various guard lists. We'll start at the top and work from there. The Dagr Ormr are my Militarum Tempestus Scions list and there are two list, the current list and the plan for when the new codex comes out (if it ever does!). The current list has dropped a massive 135 points, that's quite a significant chunk of points. This is mostly due to free squad upgrades, which every squad was carrying. The planned list however has also only dropped 135 points, as most of the plans extra points is taken up with conscripts, with just a few other additions. Still a drop of 135 points is a significant boost to the overall force, and reduces the cuts needed to the the planned list under the 2000 point games limit. 

Next is the Hjaltland LI list, which has also dropped 135, which surprised me quite a bit. Again, most of these savings have come from the infantry squads, which all have special weapons and vox casters in, as well as heavy weapons in some squads. Again these changes are good, as the points have come off the core of the list, meaning that the number of extras that can be included has gone up. This will hopefully mean that the overall power of the list is increased. 

Lastly we have the Hrossey Yeomanry, which has dropped only 24 points, which is minimal at best. This is mostly as it contains units that did not receive many points changes. However, while it didn't receive many points changes it was the biggest beneficiary of the other rules changes, with Armour of Contempt being a huge bonus to this vehicle heavy list and to be fair, I would take AoC over points drops at this point in time. 

Lastly I should mention the Necrons and the Tau. These are technically my son's armies but there on the list so I'll mention them. The Necrons have dropped 15 points to 745, not a huge drop and seeing as I don't intend to add to this army, it doesn't really make much difference to me. The Tau have actually gained a few points, going from 803 to 805. We've since added another unit, so the force is up around a 1000 points, and so the additional 2 point that it gained have not had an impact on the force. 

So that's a very quick rundown on how the latest points changes have affected my armies, not very in-depth but I'm not going to spend the time going through each unit and noting points changes and I'm pretty sure you don't want me to either!

Points and balance

 Again, I'm a little behind on this topic but I wanted to throw my pennies worth in to the pot. I'm not going to go through each point change and the finer points of each change on the balance sheet, I really just want to give a general overview of how I think the changes will affect me.

There are really only 3 changes here and all of them will affect me in one way or another. The first and third changes on the list are linked, with all Astra Militarum vehicles gaining Armour of Contempt and all titanic vehicles gaining the 2+ save. This means that all Astra Militarum have become more resistant, especially the various Baneblade chassis. The other change that was introduced was that Scion units can now take Hammer of the Emperor, as long as all the scions are from the same regiment, which they would have to be Under the current rules anyway. 

These changes will make quite a difference to my Hrossey Yeomanry lists, which are vehicle heavy, especially when combined with the previous changes to vehicle orders. I really like these changes, although there are a few clashes with some of the existing regimental doctrines. It also mean that I might actually run my Hellhammer again, now that it is not completely outclassed by the Leman Russ. 

Scions gaining Hammer of the Emperor is also great. I currently only run them as a completely separate force, so there is no issues with them gaining the benefits and will add to there punch, as with mostly S3 weapons, wounding has always been one of the harder parts. Hopefully this will see them become a lot more competitive, although -2ap isn't quite as good as it was with Armour of Contempt on marines now. 

The points changes are pretty minimal and are mostly restricted to wargear. No, there are a few people out there, who may be a little sinical, point out that most of the points changes match up with the new releases teased a few weeks ago. It's possible but either way, they are good changes. Most of these changes will impact me, with wargear price drops for basic units like company and platoon commanders, Tempestors, infantry, veteran, special, command, heavy weapons and Scion squads. A couple of these squads, mainly the Infantry, special and veteran squads have received a small price increase but with all the drops in wargear, unless your running them bare bones, you'll be saving points and when all the wargear is now free, why would you be running them bare bones? Other units that have received some points drops are Sentinels and Baneblades (and variants), although the base sentinel did get a slight point hike, taking any weapon other then the multilaser will actually result in a points saving.

Overall, these points drops will mean a saving across all my armies, some more than others. The Hjaltland LI and Dagr Ormr Scions will both benefit from the drops to the various squads, meaning a saving of over a 100 points apiece, the Hrossey Yeomanry will get far less out of the points changes, having a lot less troops and the only vehicle receiving points drops was the Hellhammer. However, the biggest boost to the Hrossey Yeomanry is the addition to AoC and 2+ saves rather then points drops. 

Both of these releases really help my guard armies and should enable me to field some good extra firepower without having to sacrifice other parts of the list. I'm hoping to be able to get a couple of games in the coming weeks but we shall see if thing plan out as I hope!

Chapter Approved 2022

 As usual I'm a couple of days behind most people out there when it comes to putting pen to paper and getting my thoughts out there on the interwebs. This information comes direct from GW community page and has been discussed widely already and there have been some pretty strong opinions but as usual m, quite a few people have missed one key point. These changes only take effect with the latest warzone book, in this case Nephilim. For those of us not using this book, these changes have zero effect. 

The first change that was announced a while ago was the change to command points. Not command points have always been something of a sore point for me. While I agree the old system was a bit broken, with the likes of the "Loyal 32", the new system is not much better for the guard. Typically we have significantly more units than most armies and therefore need more CP to buff an equivalent percentage of our forces, the new system hamstrung us a little and now the new system does so even more. With the addition of having to pay for warlord traits and relics as well, we are not severally behind the curve. Hopefully when our new codex comes out we will have some new tricks that mean we can compete on a more level playing field but at the moment these changes don't help us at all. 

Both of our competitive builds at the moment require significant CP input before the games, either with upgrading white shields or with tank aces and relics, both of which would mean we would be starting on very little, if any, CP. 

The other change is the secondary objective options and we now have access to 4 new secondaries. However, it's not all good news. Of the 4 only 1 or 2 are actually useful.

By lasgun and bayonet is not great as scoring it requires you to kill units on objectives, doing this a few times in a game should be easy but 15 times is significantly harder, so not a great option. 

Special orders is a better option, especially for missions with a number of midfield objectives. Getting a unit on an objective and near an officer should be relatively easy for most guard armies and completing in in a turn also means you don't have to survive a turn in the open. This is going to be very mission dependant but you should be able to grab a couple during the game and bag yourself 10 point of so.

Boots on the ground is probably the easiest one to score points with. Getting units in to table quarters should be fairly easy, it's whether you have enough to keep it up for the whole game. With gaining one point per quarter per turn, you should be able to score 10 plus points a game with your infantry. The second half of the secondary is a little harder, getting a regimental standard in the centre can be harder. For this one you might be able to manage it for a couple of turns, as long as your not in the open. Realistically I think this is the one that will net the most amount of points regularly over the course of the games. 

Inflexible command is our last option and has the possibility to score highly but requires a lot of thinking and could well comprises your match to achieve. Having to maintain all your troops withing 6 inches of an officer or all your vehicle's within 12 of a tank commander could result in you bunching up your units and not being able to move out properly. Yes, if you've vox casters it pushes the range to 24 inches for infantry but even so it's still going to restrict you somewhat. The last part, destroying an enemy unit whilst under an order is fairly easy these days with the way orders now work and should net you a few points over the game. This is not the worst option here (that's By lasgun and bayonet in case you hadn't guessed) but it's not the best either. 

Overall, these are these changes are not really going to affect me much. The command point changes will have no effect on me at all, as I don't plan on playing any of the new missions and the new secondaries won't effect me much as, due to lack of play time, I don't have any set secondaries or preferred ones, so it's not like I now can't take the ones I want.

Adepticon previews

 

So we have had a round of reveals from Adepticon and while there's has been some interesting reveals, there has been nothing guard related or even kill team related.

While there is nothing of note for me personally, there is still a few bits to mention. We have seen the next couple of codex releases, namely Knights and chaos Knights. This means that we will get Tyranids next followed by the two Knights, which will probably take us up until June or July, depending upon how quickly they release them. After this there is still Chaos Marines, Chaos Desmond and Guard. Now, while there is nothing concrete out there that I know of that I can point to, several people have made suggestions about the Chaos Marines book being fairly well progressed and likely to be sooner, rather than a later release. This would suggest to me that we might see a complete chaos release, as in Chaos Knights, followed by Marines and finally daemons. This would leave guard until last and push them back to as late as September or October this year. 

In addition to this one of the previous rumour pictures, this one; 

Appears not be be the hoped for new plastic Tauros vehicles for guard, it's appears not to have been guard at all, which was one of the original possibilities. It was revealed to be part of the new necromunda ash wastes game.

I don't know about you but that is definitely the rear wheel of the buggy, everything matches up. I mean, there is a chance that it we will see the same wheel on a new Tauros, it is obviously an imperial style wheel but I think that it's unlikely. So, as it stands, we've had one teaser that might still be a guard one, the grenade Lance thing, but that's it so far, which makes sense if we're not looking like we'll get a codex until September time. 

As it stands, the guard have the oldest codex out there, (at 4 years and 5 months) followed by daemons (at 4 years and 2 months) and Imperial Knights (at 3 years and 8 months). This means that once we have the Knights as well as the Tyranids codex, the only other codex to release is the Chaos Marines codex (at just 3 years old). Is it any wonder why we can't seem to win much of anything right now?

New terrain peice

I've had this piece for a while, I just haven't managed to get it painted until now. I painted it as a bit of a palette cleanser, although it wasn't much of a pallette cleanser as it used all the same colours as I was using on my other models! The only difference was that it's significantly bigger that the Primaris marines I'm currently painting. 

As you can see I've used the same colours as my Eagle Knights chapter, to help tie it in to some of the games I'll play. It also helps it stand out as a sort of centre piece terrain model on the board as it's very different from all the other terrain pieces, which are mostly quite dull in colour. 

I spent a bit of time on the interior, trying to make it look more used and less like just a lump of metal. I even added a little bit of "graffiti" on the inside, making it look like it's been used as a little bunker or staging point for imperial troops. 

Lastly I added the blood splatter details, which add to the use as a staging post, with the blood splatter being either from defending to point or dealing with the wounded. I had considered adding bother details, that might work as discarded kit and equipment but decided to just leave it as it was and not overly complicate things, as I like my terrain to add to the models and story not take centre stage in it. 

Now, I know that a lot of people will notice the print lines and markings on the model. This is because it's a 3d printed model I got off a fellow club mate who had printed them as test pieces for his new machine. I have a few barrels as well that I still have to paint but they are for another time. I may have to look at getting a few more pieces to go with this, maybe a fallen dread or similar, maybe something like these;

A quiet weak.

 So it's been a quiet week on the hobby front this week, for a couple of reasons. The first being that I've been busy trying to get all the house work and stuff sorted before the kids break up for the holidays. The second one is that I have had a bit of an eye injury this week, nothing serious but it has meant painting has been off the table. 

The kids have the next 2 and a half weeks off school, which with the wetland windy autumn weather we get up here should be fun, I've got a few bits and pieces ready to occupy them but to say I'm not looking forward to it is an understatement. 

On the eye injury front, well, it all started with a trailer, a horse trailer to be exact. With the proposed changes to towing regulations hopefully happening soon, we have invested in a horse box trailer for towing our two horses around but seeing as it could be a couple of months before we can actually tow the dam thing we decided to fit to cover over it to protect it. The previous owner had mostly used this to cover the hay in her barn rather than the trailer, as it two was parked in said barn. Well, at some point in fitting the cover, some hay or straw must have gone in my eye and it was not a pleasant experience. My eye was very sore and it swelled up like a balloon. It's been several days now and it still isn't quite right but significantly better than it was! 

Anyway, I had been hoping to have the Brazen Hawks finished by now but as it stands, the Capt. And Lt. Are finished, alongside the five Hellblasters, with just the bases to finish. The five heavy intercessors are based but need all the details filled in. Hopefully I'll get that sorted this week ready to post next Friday, provided the kids aren't to late to bed that is! 

After I finish these guys it's going to be on the the Stone Dragons but that might be a few weeks away before any of that gets finished!

So that the little weekly update this week, just the keep the blog ticking over, hopefully I'll have something more to post up next week!

Objectives

 Just a short post today but I thought I'd show you my objective markers. There are now 8 after a quick building session to make two more. Why 8? Well because 2 of the onslaught missions require 8 objective markers. So I'm not going to play these very often, if at all, but at least I have the option to place all the markers down properly if I wanted too.

The markers are all very simple, just some spare bits and pieces placed on a 28mm base which is then placed on a larger 40mm base, or at least they will be when I find all my spare 40mm bases. The plant bits are all from the Catachan jungle fighter boxsets and the rest of the bits are just spares from various sets I've collected over the years. 

The full selection

The blue colouring of the larger base is to help the objectives stand out from the surrounding terrain. I think it strikes a nice balance between being visual enough to be easily seen but not so much that they are all you notice on the board. The main 28mm bits will get a basing of grass as well as the grey paint, I just have been waiting to do a whole load to them at the same time, after I've army painter quickshaded a whole bunch of stuff. 

A slightly better photo

The mainly "bits" based objectives

The "plant" based objectives

The full colour spectrum. The crappy photo doesn't do the colours justice

I have tried to keep.the objectives very distinct from each other, to try and make telling them apart easy but still keeping a common theme running through all of them. I will usually use 4 of the plants, adding in a couple of others as necessary. With the plants being coloured differently, orange, red, yellow, blue and purple, being able to identify which objective we are talking about should be easy, especially as objective numbers are not really a thing in most game. I may well add numbers on to the blue bases if I need to, but I don't plan on doing so at the moment. 

Hopefully these will just add another little detail to the boards and make the game just that little bit more fun to play.

Fluff updates and changes

 Right, there have been quite a few picture heavy posts recently and there are some more to come, this however is going to be very wordy, so put the kettle on, this one's going to take the long and winding road to nowhere.

Fluff is a major part of my enjoyment within the game of 40k. All my armies have their own lore, with home world's and noteworthy events. They all have named characters too, from the lowly guard commanders right up to the Space Marine Chapter masters and various characters in-between. The thing is that all this fluff has developed slowly over a period of time, many many years, from when I got back in to gaming, before I even started this blog. 

Granted, the fluff has changed in that time. My main army, my Imperial Guard Hjaltland Light Infantry Regiment were once called the Segedunum Legionnaires, after a Roman fort near to where we use to live, then changed to the current Hjaltland Light Infantry, with a period of namelessness in the middle. Characters have changed, either in name or disappeared entirely without reason. My Inquisitors have been through this, changing not only in name but also in gender. 

So what is the point of this post? Well, primaries marines. Now, it's not a other rant against the abomination that is the primaries lore or the model range, which is actually quite good. No, this is more of a pondering questioning of my own lore, the problems and issues that it has created and how I might go about solving them.

The main issue surrounding my lore is the time setting. As I said, i started all this a while back and firmed up the timeline when I put the information down on these pages. This was back in 2014, some six and a half years ago, some two and a half years before primaris marines we officially announced by GW. My timeline originally put the occurrences of the Hamnavoe system towards the middle of the Sabbat World's Crusade, sometime around 760-770.M41, with the trouble being caused by refugees escaping the violence and bloodshed of the crusade but bringing with them the taint of chaos. This did lead to a few problems with the setting but they were easily dealt with by making the timings more vague and moving the general timeline to the end of the crusade. Well I say end, there doesn't seem to be an exact end, some sources seem to put the end at 780 or 790, some just leave it as on going but as of the latter dates the imperium is pretty much cleaning up and is in control of vast swaths of the sector. Either way, it is highly unlikely that it will have lasted until 999.M41 and the beginning of the Indomitus crusade. There will no doubt be some trouble with the Great rift now splitting the galaxy in two, however, the system of Hamnavoe is on the very westward edge of the galaxy, far away from the Great rift and well within the Imperium Sanctus.

All this doesn't really help with the main question though, how to deal with the Primaris marines. I have moved my armies from first born to Primaris and so I do need to fix this problem but I really don't want to rewrite all the lore. I really don't want to come up with some funky plot twists to reason why my Inquisitors from around 780 are still alive and kicking in 999 and beyond. Yes, I know that rejuvenation treatments are a thing and people can live to over 200, and so it technically is possible, I'm just not sure about using that twist. Besides, from 790, towards the end of the Sabbat crusade, to 999 is 209 years, meaning that my inquisitor would have to be at least 230, although more realistically 250 years old. This is really the very upper limit of what is plausible, even in the 41st millennium, but it is technically possible. However, my Primaris marines wouldn't be in the Hamnavoe system around 999.m40 but more likely 200.m41 or even later, as, especially for the Eagle Knights, these are all first born who have crossed the Rubicon. If this happened sometime during the second century M41, then it would not be until early in the third century that they might be in the region of the Hamnavoe system at the request of an inquisitor who is now nearly 500 years old! 

In many respect I will have to come up with some sort of plot device to transfer the Inquisitors across from one era to the next but i suppose that in reality the marines are probably going to be easier. 

I guess I will effectively be playing two time zones, when (and if I ever do) play with first born again I will right as part of the first uprising, which I will write in to the system history as having been dealt with around 790 to 800.m40 and the Primaris marines will form part of the second uprising, sometime around 250.m41.  The second uprising will take the form of a continuation the first, not having been quite as quashed as it was thought. The inquisition will request the help of those who fought first time around plus some others and the fighting will be renewed. However, this then leads to issues with the guard, as these are all formed around the remnants of forces that fought in the first uprising, so would be long dead by the time the second uprising occurred. The forces would also have been rebuilt in the 300 plus years in-between the two events, which doesn't compute with what I have built. 

So, ultimately I think a rewrite will be in order, but not a complete one, the forces will be molded into new formations from old ones but will remain the same though plot devices and things that could only make sense in the 41st millennium. I will really have to think hard on how to do it but I think I can achieve it. 

Last week's rules previews

So we have some new rules this week to look at this week. This week is overwatch and characters.

There have been some big changes to overwatch for 9th edition, some of which I am less than impressed with. For starters overwatch itself has now become a stratagem, rather than an inbuilt ability from the core rules. This means that it will follow all the rules of stratagems, the key one being that it is a one use per phase thing. That means that only one unit can fire overwatch in any given charge phase, reducing the very act down to a bit of a nonsense. Here is the stratagem itself;

However much i dont like this move, it is compounded by the way the stratagem is worded. When a unit is target as part of a charge move, it can fire overwatch before the charge roll is made but what if the charge fails? does that mean if a second unit tries to charge it cant overwatch them? If a unit has this played on them, it could at least last till the end of the phase.

There have also been a few minor tweaks to the overwatch rules, mostly just to clean up the various interactions, mostly around characters and the like.

Over all, I'm not impressed with these changes to the game. The is a minor upside to all of this but it come with the usual GW caveats, if ypu go down the Crusade force route, what ever that may entail, you can get overwatch for free and on a 5+. So take the new shiny stuff or suffer. Thanks GW.

Next up was a small bit about the new terrain rules, which grant certain benefits to models in some situations. The example we were given was infantry dug in to a defensive position, which grants the Defensible special rules. No i do like the idea of this but it seems to be adding more things to the terrain rules! by the end of this, were going to need a whole big rule book just for the terrain rules, let alone anything else!

These are a good little bonus, although with the fact that overwatch is now a stratagem, pretty much everyone is going to go for "set to defend" for the +1 to hit. This is going to be good for everyone but especially the likes of guard and Tau, who need every help they can in combat. 

Lastly, we have the new edition character rules. They have changed a bit and in some respects are better and clearer but in other respects they are just as flawed. 

Characters now have to be within 3 inches of other units to receive the benefits of being a character. While this is basically the same it eliminates the issue of having a character just standing out in the open miles from any other units, yet being unable to be targeted. 

  

Overall this seems to be a good move, as if I am reading this right, if a character is out in the open it can now be targeted, even if it's not the the closest model. 

One last thing to mention and that is the change to charges. In the past you could declare a whole range of charges, usually one short charge and a couple.of longer ones and then hope to get the longer charge but if not just move towards the closest one and not waste the charge. Now you need to be able to reach all the targets or the charge fails. That means that if you declare a 4 inch charge and a 9 inch charge at the same time and roll a 6, you can't just take the 4 inch and leave the rest, no, now you would fail the charge and be left with nothing. This is a good move I think and will force people to actually plan charges, rather than just going for everything they can and hoping for the best.

Well that's it for now, we'll see what this week brings! Hopefully the guard preview!

New action figures

A little while ago, GW, along side Bandai, released a primaris marine action figure at a slightly ridiculous price of £65 (I think) or $100 US. Surprisingly they sold out in a matter of hours and so it's not really a shock to see that they have released some new action figures. This time however, they have been done by McFarlane toys, not that that means anything to me. Looking at the models, they look and are presented more like a desk ornament than a play toy, so I suspect that they won't be selling for a tenner at the local toy store. That being said, I might just get one of the assault guys, as it does look cool. 

Assault marine, posing to look cool.

Necron, posing to try and not look like an idiot 

Marine, posing in hope no one notices how grey he is.

The grey Intercessor is quite a cool model and I would love to have one and paint it up as an Eagle Knight, as finely detailed as I could and display is proudly on my paint desk. Unfortunately I don't have time to paint the models I have let alone one for pure display! 

My final thoughts will be kept to myself until I see the price tag for these, as I would love to get some for the kids but if they are as much as the first one, then I will pass on the opportunity. If they are more reasonably priced, I might grab one or two of them. 

A crazy idea......

So, the other day when I was browsing eBay, which is pretty much a daily occurrence at the moment, I came across something that piqued my interest somewhat. On this occasion I was just flicking through 40k related items, from miniatures to terrain to random game related items. It was one of these game related items that caught my eye, namely Space Hulk Tiles. 

Now, I'm not planning on buying some tiles, mostly as they are quite expensive for what they are (on eBay anyway) and because after a quick search on Google, I've found a whole host of tiles for free. Only problem is that they are PNG files and not PDFs, so I'm going to have to convert them all to PDF, so that I can then modify them,as the few that I have done this to have not "printed" the same size. Do far they have ranged from 3.5 inch squares to 2.1 inch squares. Ideally I would like to have them at 2 inch squares, as this seems to be a good size for playing. 

This process of converting and resizing is going to be pretty time consuming but should not be very complicated, as it should just be a case of printing to PDF from PNG and then reprinting at a lower percentage to get them all to be the same size in the end. Once this has been done, I'll look at combining the files and getting multiple bits on to one sheet and then printing. Once this is done I'll stick the price tag to card and then cut them all out to give me lots of playing pieces to use. Now, I won't do every PNG file, as I have several duplicates, as in I have 6 different types of 3 square long corridors and 8 different 2 and 4  square long corridors, when I'll only need one of each type. 

The plan is to have a few corridors but mostly lots of rooms, including several big rooms. This is for a couple of reason, the first being that I don't want to limit who can fire to much. Yes, it will be limited, due to the terrain and such but if the maps just long corridors, then one the front person will get a clean shot, the couple behind might get a bit of a shot but everyone else can't see any thing. This is also one of the reasons that I want the corridors wider, so that more models can see and shoot, in addition to the fact that models on 32mm and especially 40mm can't technically fit in the original corridors. The second reason I want more rooms than corridors is because I want this to have a more arena feel and less of an old skool space hulk feel. Another reason for more rooms, especially larger rooms, is to enable scatter terrain to be placed, giving cover for obscurement. 

Hopefully if I manage to get all this sorted I should be able to create a versatile, modular game board that packs away pretty small and neatly. It should also, hopefully, give some good games.  

Kill Team storage solutions update

Just a quick one  ago this week, as Iive been busy with DIY projects, namely the kids playroom but a while ago I  posted about my new storage solution for my Kill Team teams. Well, I decided I liked it so much that I bought another one, only this time it's blue!

Said blue box!

This box is the same size, 5 trays high, as the pervious box (there's only 3 trays in the picture above as my son nicked off with the other trays). 

The 5 trays will be filled with my other kill teams, namely a layer for Tyranids, and a layer for grey knights. One layer will house two marine kill teams and another will house the scouts and third marine kill team. The last will house the chaos team. This should mean that I have at least half a tray empty which is good because I have 5 Deathwatch models (the Vanguard vets) that still need a home, plus a Bullgyrn for the guard. They may we'll be others at some point but nothing's planned, even so, some extra space is nice. I'll post up more pictures when I've finished.