The triple T's - Temu Taurox Transports

 So, the other week I took a gamble and brought a couple of models off Temu. For just over 10 pound I picked up two vehicles as Taurox proxies. These models armed with a Gatling cannon and small coaxial guns, which seems to represent Hotshot Volley Guns. The original design I think came from NFayma, as the Minotaur APC (link). The original is better is a lot of ways, apart from one major point, it's a 3D print and I don't have a printer. I did fine some pre-printed versions, but they were only marginally cheaper than the GW Taurox. These were less than a quarter of the other versions and about a 5th of the GW original. 

Now, I do question the legitimacy of these prints, being as they are off Temu but I have no idea if they are properly licensed or not. Given they they were advertised under a whole host of other names, I guess probably not and I honestly don't know how I feel about that. 

Anyway, on to the models themselves. The prints are pretty decent, a few minor issues here and there but nothing of any note. The weapons fit in to the turrets nicely, one is a bit looser than the other but it holds fine, with some paint on it will hold properly I think. The size of the models is pretty good as well, they are, as far as I can tell, the right height and width but slightly longer than the Taurox, bug I don't have the GW model to test against. Hopefully someone will have one down the club at some point so I can check it properly. 

The plan is to paint these two up for the Scions, although the final colour scheme is yet to be finalised. It's either going to be black with red highlights, or maybe a similar red\brown to the Scions. I'm tempted to go for the black, with some spot colours but I'll need to have a think about it. 

Space marine Detachments

So a bit late, but here are the detachments for the marines, that were shown off a number of weeks ago. There is a lot that can be said about each one of these, and you can spend hours going in to details on each unit within each detachment and how they they work together. I'm not going to do that, at least not yet. I might do a deeper dive once 12th is out and the various detachments for Guard and Blood Angels are out but not right now. 

Fulguris Task Force is based around the various speeders, including the new land speeder. This basically means that speeders can deep strike. For a lot of people this is not going to be useful, unless your running a few of these units, which is possible given the relatively low cost of the units. (Points wise, money wise their actually quite expensive!). Overall I don't see this being used very often, unless the new speeders are cheap both points and money wise!

Librarius Conclave is the classic psychic detachment. This hasn't changed from the current version, as far as I can tell anyway. This detachment now actually makes sense, as before it could only be applied to a handful of unit, nine if you maxed out the psyker options (not including epic heros, but then it only really went to 10 units), however, this requires you to take three terminator and three phobos, which limits unit options. Now you can take your three Libby's and not really loose access to an actual army rule that will benefit the majority of your units. I can see this being the third detachment choice for a few people, probably me included. 

Subversion Assets applies to phobos and scout squads, giving them the ability to increase the detection range of enemy units by 3 inches, pushing it from 15 to 18 inches. This is similar to the Guard detachment that grants the same bonus to scout sentinels. I think this works better for scouts and phobos units rather than sentinels, as they are a smaller unit and have greater ground coverage, plus the some units have infiltrate, meaning you can take advantage of this detachment from the start. As yet, I don't know how important the hidden rule will be, so I don't really know how important this ability will be but I suspect this will get a fair bit of use. 

The Blood Angels: Wrath of the Doomed detachment seems good on paper but really doesn't do it for me. Your basically loosing one marine, possibly even two, for advance and charge. If your running 5 man units, it's pointless. If your running 10 man units your loosing up to 20% of your force before you even swing a blade. No, it's just not worth it for me. If it was battle shock, even with the new battle shock rules, it would be better but as it is, I just don't think it's worth the sacrifice. 

The Black Templars: Living Miracle is a very narrow detachment, because as far as I know, you can only include one Emperors Champion in your army. The only real use I can see here is the enhancements. If they are good enhancements, you could have several extra in your army, buffing more units and characters than usual but until we see the enhancements, I think this detachment is probably one of the worst on this list.  

The Dark Angels: Dark Age Arsenal on the other hand looks like a main stay of any Dark Angels army. Having +1 strength to all plasma weapons is always useful and really helps out on a number of fronts. The base strength going from 7 to 8 is the main bonus, as it wounds T4 on 2's now. There is less effect on supercharged, as it only goes from 8 to 9, going up to 10 would have been better. I think as a base detachment though, it's a good one. 

 Lastly, the Space Wolves: Champions of Fenris detachment. This is based around characters, which is useful, as you generally have a few characters in space wolves armies. Heroic intervention is not a bad stratagem, especially if you have a combat orientated army. If your going for a shooty army, this is pretty useless. Depending upon the army, this will be either good or bad, for most proper space wolf army players I suspect it will be pretty good. 

Overall the detachments seem pretty good, there are obviously some that are better than others, but I think it's a great start and look forward to seeing the rest of the Detachments. 

New Inquisitor model

 A quick one this time, as I wanted to have a brief look at the new Inquisitor model. Straight up, I don't like this model, it looks like something that got rejected AoS. 

I understand that they have gone for an archotech look, with the old style armour and weapons, however, I just don't like it. The animal is interesting, and it's good that they have gone away from the standard horse but there is still something about it that I don't really like. It might just being the paint scheme that makes it look rubbish but I have t seen it in any other schemes, so I can't say. 

The rules for this guy are pretty good though, his ability to grant re-rolls to units is going to be very useful for guard models, with their high BS. His rifles abilities are even more insane, granting extra damage and strength every time he hits, means by turn 5 he could be shooting a strength 14, damage 6 rifle. At -2Ap he might not be insta killing anything but still, there isn't much that can deal with that!

All in all, this is a fun little unit. I don't see him being a common sight on the table top but he could be a fun unit to just run around the table, popping the odd character. I will wait and see it in a different paint scheme to decide if I actually want one or not, but as it stands he interesting but not essential. 

Cadians kill team

A couple of weeks ago, a new Kill Team box was released, with Guard Vs Tyranids, or more specifically the Cadians Recon Squad Vs the Red Terror. Now I don't really care about the Nids but the guard is something different. Now, I'm a bit torn, as these are yet more Cadians, and could have been some many other cool models, Tanith first and only, Catachans, or even something like the Armageddon ork hunters could have worked (especially given 11th edition releases). Obviously I would have preferred Catachans, who would have been right at home here given their experiences with Catachan Devils!

The datasheet is a good one and has a few little tricks, which are very useful. There are five things that's jump out at me from my reading through everything. 

First, orders. When an order is issues to these guys, it does not finish at the next command phase as normal but continues until another order is issues, this means you can order it early game and just leave it alone, saving orders for elsewhere. This is really good and eases the orders conundrum. 

Secondly, the Vox-relay beacon. This is another very useful ability, which I can see being used one of three ways. Leaving it behind with some support units, such as mortars or lascannons, so you don't need to leave an officer behind. Place them up and axis of advance, so that units that move more freely away from officers, or sacrifice them by putting them somewhere you want your opponent to think your going to go. Whichever way you choose to play them, they are going to be useful and a reason to take multiple squads. 

The third thing to note, and one I almost missed, the lasguns have the Assault keyword. Now, is this a unit specific thing, a typo or the new lasgun profile? I suspect it will remain unit specific, but I'm surprised they didn't call the weapon something else, like recon lascarbine or similar, like they did with the Scion weapons. 

Next up, is Infiltrate. We don't have many units that can infiltrate, the only ones that spring to mind are Ratlings and Gaunts Ghosts, so a max of 4 units, 3 of which are not great. Being able to infiltrate up to three decent infantry squads will be very useful for us. 

Lastly, the ability for the squad to take twin snipers or a heavy weapon in the squad is also very nice. Personally, taking the missile launcher in the squad is really useful. Placing the unit in a vantage point in no mans land, ready to either snipe some enemy characters or hit a vehicle early game is really useful. You'll probably not kill the character or vehicle but knocking a few wounds off them can really help and give your opponent cause to be more cautious. 

At 80 points, I think they are very well pointed as well. I had thought that they would be more but I'm very happy with where they are. They are not going to be game breaking but they will be very useful, especially early game, while the rest of your infantry move up the board. 

One last thing that WarCom called out was their interactions with some detachment rules, the one they names was Ruthless Discipline. 

With this rule, the unit will pretty much always be re-rolling 1's, as you'll give them an order turn 1 and they will carry that through the game. 
 

Overall, this is a very good units. The main question is how long will it last before it moves to legends? That and what the 11th edition changes will mean.