Stone Dragons

 The next force on the paint table was the Stone Dragons. Now, the Stone Dragons have had a bit of a convoluted  development, switching from ultramarine successors to space wolf successors, from system based to fleet based and back to home world based. One thing that hasn't changed is that the chapter is a crusading chapter, formed of many small crusading forces, such as this one. 

This force is based around the Phobos armour and stealth, a classic hunting party is you will. Lead by a Captain and a couple of Lieutenants, this force is the largest of the 500 point forces, coming in at 19 models in total. 

An incomplete family photo

Another angle

The force works in a number of ways but it mostly works around infiltrating and the unit of reavers and infiltrators backed up by the suppressors and eliminators. Now, there was a slight change of plan with this force, the suppressors were actually supposed to be part of the Eagle Knights but by the time I realised this they were already painted and transfers applied! So they are now part of a slightly bigger Stone Dragons force. 

The aforementioned suppressors with their eliminator buddies.

The eliminators are still headless as originally I wanted something classically Blood Angles but now I guess they will have to get the Space Wolf treatment and some wolf themed helmets. 

Headless warriors.

As with the previous marine forces I have tried my hands at transfers and I think that after some practice with the others I'm finally getting the hang of it. Ok so there not perfect, not by a long way, they are better than the first ones I did. I have tried to add in lots of details and extra little markings, to try and signify some of the deeds that they guys have done, I did think of adding in a lot more and I might go back and adds more later but for now they will do. 

Some of the transfer details. 

Eliminators

The eliminators are different from the rest of the force as they are a lot plainer, loosing a lot of the yellow markings, except their chapter badge and also a lot of the silver\metal parts. In addition, these guys are not finished as I really want to camouflage the cloaks to blend in to the grass basing and battle mat that i have. I had a go at doing some camouflage patterns on spare parts but I have yet to master the art. What I have decided is that I want a stippled effect but I have been struggling to get the right colour and intensity to the pattern. I have been asking around at the club and I think I've got a plan, I just need to try it out and see if it works, I'll let you all known as I'm brave enough to try it out!

Some of the extra details

Infiltrators

The infiltrators form the one half of the main force and are designated for ranged interactions. There was a slight error made here that I need to correct, as the Comms array man has his markings on his shoulder but the sergeant is missing his (the bloke holding his pistol), he has his Sgt insignia just above the chapter badge but no flashes below. I could probably just leave it but then it would fall foul of the lore, as no marine would reach Sgt without having claimed some sort of battle or personal honours. Apart from this minor issue, the squad is sorted.

Reavers

The reavers are very similar to the infiltrators but at least the Sgt has the right markings on. The only issue with these guys is that I really should have stripped a couple of the guys as the paint \ primer on them is very thick and not particularly flat in places. Luckily this isn't to noticeable from a distance and so it won't be noticeable on the table, it just annoys me that I didn't spend a bit more time preparing them.

The commanders

The leaders of the force are made up of a Captain and two lieutenants, one reaver and one infiltrator or Phobos armoured one. As usual I've taken a bit more time and care over these guys and I think I've done a good job. I've also gone and added a few more transfers, especially to the Captain.

Stranger details

More details

All in all, I really like these models and think that this is the best paint scheme of all the smaller marine force. The classic grey and yellow really works and stands out with out being to much. I will base these up with all the others when all the marines are finished, that is after I have dipped them in quick shade! 

Next up are the Dark Guardians, however, this may take a little longer than planned. We are currently away from home for a wedding, however we had to fly earlier than planned due to predicted weather issues, so we headed south several days earlier that originally booked and as such I didn't get a chance to finish the models and get pictures to post. I will try and get them done as soon after the new year as possible but that might be a few weeks away yet.

Emperor's Disciples

 Here we have the Emperor's Disciples, an even smaller band than the last lot! These fine examples of space marines are scions of Guilliman and if they are ever fielded they will form the core command and warlord for the army, which will makes sense in a bit, if it doesn't already.

Family portrait to start

The Emperor's Disciples are not very codex compliant and while it was thought that they were sons of Dorn and the Imperial Fists, the coming of the Primaris Marines and detailed genetic testing showed that they were actually sons of Guilliman. However this did not cause much change to the chapters structure, with them.maintaining their fleet based ways and more independent company structure. Here we have the chapter master and his personal guard of hand picked veterans. 

The chapter master and guard

Ok, if you haven't notice yet, then this figure is actually Marneus Calgar, chapter master of the Ultramarines, however for my purposes this is the chapter master Marcellus, Master of the Emperor's Disciples. There is a backstory to both him and the men he commands, namely that he was one Company Master of the 15th Campaign Company (lost \ destroyed companies are not replaced but new ones raised under a new number) and established himself as one of the most capable commanders of the chapter before crossing the Rubicon to become a Primaris marine. Unfortunately the then current chapter master did not survive the procedure, due to a number of reasons from old age through to damage to many of his current implants and systems. This elevated Marcellus to Chapter Master, by way of company master votes. 

Marcellus and his chosen honour guard.

Rear details

Ancient and Lieutenant

The company standard and it's attending ancient, a piece I'm quite proud of. I took some time with the details on the banner and while I've no doubt that it could be better, I think I did a good job on it. The Lieutenant is just a standard Lt with nothing special on him or about him. 

More details of the transfers

Standard details, i need to do something on the scroll but haven't found the right thing yet. 

I have done this up as the first company standard rather than the chapters standard for a couple reasons. The main one being that I didn't think that this was a very ornate and flashy standard that would befit a chapter standard, plus these are not being deployed as a chapter but as a chapter command force and such wouldn't be bringing the chapter standard. Lastly, I didn't have the bits I wanted to really make this a chapter banner, namely the transfer for the middle. While there is one there, it's really to small. If this was going to be a chapter banner, I would want the chapter symbol to take up most of the standard, which would involve freehanding the both parts, something I am not keen on! I do need to fill up the banner with something, what thought I don't know but I'll keep an eye open for something.

Veteran intercessor honour guard

Lastly we have the "veteran" intercessors. These will.be run as either standard intercessors in smaller games or veteran intercessors in larger games, where I will be able to.use troops from some of the other marine detachments. There are a few special intercessors in this unit and there is a reason for this, they are the units that my son painted up when he first painted some models. (You can see them HERE)

The company elite showing theor personal and campaign honours

While they are not exact copies, they a have taken a lot of inspiration from those models and with any thing I do like this there is a backstory to each model. I won't go into the details here but the short version is that one was honoured for exceptional individual bravery by s space wolf successor chapter and now wears the helmet of the wolf lord who he saved from certain death. The other wears the symbols of a blood angels successor chapter for his solitary stoic defence of their apothecary as he collected the geneseed of the chapters fallen warriors to stop it falling to heretic's from the death guard legion. Lastly the Sgt is honoured by the primogeniture themselves, the Ultramarines. Honoured for leadership and bravery during the plague wars, he wears his honours with less flash than his brother's but with just as much, if not more reverence.

The last two members

The last two members of the squad are just regular marines who have shown themselves to be exceptional marines through countless battles and deeds and have been chosen to accompany the chapter master as part of his body guard, they have yet to earn themselves honours such as their squad mates have but time will see if they manage to. 

Next up are the Stone Dragons, Space Wolves successors.

Brazen Hawks

 While there hasn't been much posted on the blog lately and those posts that have been up have been pretty randomly posted, I'm glad to say that there has been some goings on in the background, namely the painting up of my marines. Having finished all of my guard armies finally (apart from the quickshade dip that is), it was time to.move on and first on the paint table were the Brazen Hawks chapter. 

Now these guys were recently resurrected from the dead when I switched all my marines to Primaris marines. Under the new lore these are Imperial Fists successors but they may well also be played as Deathwatch. 

The full force

The full force is quite small, as with most of the marine chapters and comes out at just over 500 points. Annoyingly there is no way to drop it under the 500 point mark without dropping one of the characters. Talking of characters, some more eagle eyes amongst you might have noticed an issue with the list.

The force is comprised of a Captain, a Lieutenant, 5 Heavy Intercessors and 5 Hellblasters. Now, I would have liked the list to be completely filled with the heavy armoured version or mk10 "Gravis" armour but I didnt have a full force for this, so I figured that having the majority heavy armour and some standard armour was fine.  

The commanders, Lieutenant and Captain.

Now, more obviously, here is the elephant in the room, with all the versions of marine Lieutenants that GW have released over the years, I don't actually know if there is a Gravis armoured on, there certainly doesn't seem to be one listed in the codex. So despite these two both technically being Captain models, one is being played as a Lieutenant with Bolt rifle and the Captain with have his Boltstorm Gauntlet and sword. While both models are quite blingy I think the Captain is pretty obvious with his extra gold trim and sword. 

Some of the extra details.

The Hellblasters

The Hellblasters are the only non-heavy armoured unit here and that's a shame but I still like these models. They are the main support elements and heavy hitters in this list. While only 5 strong, once backed up by the Captain and Lieutenant, they should be a formidable unit. While technically armed with the standard plasma gun, the Incinerator, I think that the whole force will be armed with the assault versions of each weapon, meaning that the force can keep moving up the table and move surprisingly fast as well. 

The Heavy Intercessors

The Heavy Intercessors are the lead elements of this list and are the main reason for its inception. The Heavy Intercessors are again armed with the standard rifles, the heavy bolt rifle but will probably be armed with the assault version as well. 

Now, there is a little mistake that I have to admit to. I don't know 8f anyone has noticed but both the Hellblasters and Heavy Intercessors are both wearing tactical or battle line symbol. This was a mistake I made when putting on the transfers but I'm getting around this issue by stating that rather than the squad roll, it designates the company roll and as such this is a tactical or battle line company. 

Matching symbols. 

Talking of transfers, I hate transfers. Ok, that's a little bit of an over statement, I hate them on anything but flat, level surfaces. This is the first time I have used transfers on a 40k army, i may have used some on individual models in the past but these have all been vehicles and even then I think there's only one or two transfers on one or two vehicles, so not masses. Getting the transfers to sit nicely on the shoulder pads is a nightmare. With some minor knife work and a few cuts I managed to get them to sit on the pads but there not perfect by a long way.

Some transfer details

Now, I have noticed a that there is quite a difference between new transfers and old transfers. When I say old, what I mean, is the ones that have been sat in my box for several years and then some more. Some of the sheets must be 10 years old, maybe even more and while not yellowed, they are not the same. Not only do they take quite a while longer to soak, they also do not transfer from the paper to the model as well. They don't stick very well either, taking a long time to dry and harden. The new sheets soak quickly, transfer smoothly and stay in place nicely. However, I still hate transfers! There are several products that you can get, microsol and microset are two that spring to mind, but I don't use the stuff enough to justify buying such luxuries. So far I'm over halfway through the transfers for my marines and I will be doing some vehicles next, but they will be fairly flat surfaces, so shouldn't be much trouble. Hopefully as I do more I will get better at them. I'll let you know if that holds true in the next post!

Codex supplement; Cadia

This post has been a bit of a nightmare to write, not because of the content but because I've written it 3 times! Don't know what happened to the first one, it just disappeared! Second time.i.managed to publish it half written and didn't even notice, which ment that when I wrote the last part it disappeared again! So I had to rewrite the last part of the article again and now finally, nearly a month after the article came out it's finished! Enjoy.

So we have the lasted war zone book, Octarius and in this first part we have a number of new rules, including a new guard supplement, Codex supplement; Cadia. 

Now, I don't yet know the full rules for the supplement, even if by the time I actually finish writing this the book has been released but we know that there will be new stratagems, relics and warlord traits, all presumably based on Cadian heroics during the fall of Cadia. We did get a sneak preview of some of the rules, thanks to WarCom, these included two stratagems, a relic and a warlord trait, plus we get to see that they haven't changed the Cadian doctrine at all. 

All this will not effect me very much, mostly because I have zero interest in buying the book. Partly as 90 percent of it will be useless to me and partly because I refuse to be drawn in to buying countless books in order to play games bit that's a rant for further down the page, first of all I will cover what I know of the supplement. The fact that it is concentrated on Cadian is not a surprise but given that Cadia has been destroyed, it would have been a great time to introduce a new regiment as the main guard regiment, it could still be Cadian centered, maybe a bunch of Cadians settling on a backwards planet and bringing the Cadian ways to it and building a "new" Cadia. Anyway, they haven't, which is a bit of a shame. 

What do we know of the new rules? Well,enough to know that not much will be changing. We will have a look at the relic and warlord trait first, slightly out of order from the article and then look at the stratagems. The relic is alright but not amazing and probably won't get taken much as it's a power sword, a close combat weapon, which guard commanders to not excel at! The aura ability it gives is handy to have but overall not that useful. If your taking moral tests with guard, then your just lucky they survived at all!

 The real disappointment with this relic is that they killed of Bastonne in the process. I always liked Bastonnes character and was disappointed when he was removed from the codex. Having "killed" off Creed, Bastonne could have been a good Cadian character to use. The Warlord trait is quite a good one, allowing you to redeploy a vehicle or 3 non-vehicle units after deployment. This can be really useful for counter deployments and faints, causing your opponent to commit before pulling back and rendering his plan redundant. This is a tactic I could see me using but I still think there are better Warlord traits out there. 

The first of the two stratagems we have been give is Cadia Stands and it gives us a mini transhuman physiology, working on 1's (which always fail anyway) and 2's to wound. This may not sound like much and it isn't massive as it will only take effect on S6 plus weapons, which generally speaking will be hitting your armour rather than troops, but more importantly a bonus to your save against D1 weapons, which are fairly common. It means that you'll still be saving on 4's or 5's against most of these weapons, which is a nice little bonus but again, not spectacular. The main issue with this stratagem is that it only effects a single unit, which for the most part will be a 10 man squad and will therefore have very little effect keeping these guys alive. Even when placed on a conscript blob it will not have a significant impact. I can't see this stratagem getting much use at all. 

A stratagem I can see being used a lot is Whiteshields. This stratagem is used on conscript squads and can effect any number of squads you have in a detachment. It come in three part, the first just gives the squads the "Whiteshields" keyword and does little else, the second boosts leadership up to 6, which sounds nice but in reality will do little to the squad. Most of the time having a leadership of 6 will not effect any moral tests you have to take and you will.still be relying on other forms of leadership buffs, either through commissars or psychic powers. The last part of the stratagem is the most important part and removes the Raw Recruits "ability". This is a rule I have never like and was part of GW's knee jerk reaction to conscripts in tournaments. Now we have the option to get around this silly rule, even if it costs CP. The change means that orders will now automatically take effect and you won't have to roll for them, which is a lot better. The only downside to this all is that the Warlord has to be Cadian, which can limit your options for other things but in general I do not see this being a major issue. If your going to be running a lot of conscripts, then this really is the best way to run them. 

Overall I think the new supplement will be a nice addition to the guard toolbox but not a must have. I certainly won't be buying it anytime soon.