Chaos Legionary kill team

 I'll start this post with a warning. I know my usual photo quality is not great but these are truly terrible, with rubbish focus, awful lighting and harsh shadows. Unfortunately it was the best I could do in the situation, maybe I'll get better shots another time and I should probably invest in a light box or similar at some point.

Secondly, after a period of lots of posts, theres going to be a relatively slow period, as were in to the middle of the school holidays and all my scheduled posts are now up and I've not had the time to write as I would normally have. Plus, we're off on the family holiday soon, which is a no phones zone! So no sitting around messing on the phone with a cuppa for two weeks! 

With that out the way, the team. I haven't built a full team, just the basic 6 man one, the minimum number needed to field the kill team. I could add a couple of extra models but they would be just basic legionaries and not any specialists, as I don't have any more spare models of this type apart from bolters. I may well do this at some point but not right now.

The full team.

I have built this team with what models I had along side what rules I though would be good to play with. It's not focused on being highly competitive, mostly it's just to have a non-imperial marine team. I suspect that we will get several marine teams, I'm mostly waiting for a bespoke grey Knights, Deathwatch and scout teams. 

Aspiring champion, butcher, shrivetalon

The first three models are all wearing the Eagle Knights space marine colours, albeit with some modifications and extras. These were originally from my first born army but have been repurposed for kill team. While the models aren't quite WYSIWYG, they are, I think, obvious enough for what they should be.

The leader, or aspiring champion, with his power fist and bolter is easy enough to identify, he's the only one with a power fist, plus he's got a random black and gold backpack as he originally had a jump pack and needed to swap for a normal pack and the only suitable one I could find was black, still I think it works well and marks him out a bit from the rest. The butcher is also pretty obvious, he's the only one with a bloody great big axe, so nothing else needs saying there. 

The Shrivetalon however may not be quite so obvious. He comes with flensing blades and a bolt pistol and so I though that a pair of lightning claws was a pretty good substitute. Not quite sure how he's going to hold a bolt pistol, but I'm sure he'll manage some how! In the actual model range he is holding a pair of knives, so it's not really that far out. I had thought about trimming out some of the blades, maybe just leave the top two or something, but thought that would mean I would have to do a lot of repainting and couldn't be bothered.

Balefire acolyte, icon bearer, anointed

The next three units are painted in different colours, with the balefire acolyte being in generic librarian colours, the icon bearer being in Brazen hawks colours and the anointed being in Stone Dragons colours. I chose these colours as they are quite bright and a contrast to the orange of the others. 

Now, one of the other reasons I painted the balefire acolyte in blue, is that he is the least obvious model. There is very little about the model that shouts either acolyte or psyker. He is also the same model as the butcher and so it would have been even less obvious as to what he was. That being said, I did chop off the axe and replace it with a sword, held in reverse to act as the fell dagger. Hopefully being painted in librarian blue will make up for the lack of psyker accessories. The next model is the Icon bearer and while not being quite as obvious as some of the models I think that he is reasonably easy to identify.

Last we have the anointed. I believe that he is fairly easy to identify, as he's supposed to have a Daemon claw and pistol, so the single lightning claws and pistol represent this well. He also happens to be carrying a bolter around with him, but we'll just have to ignore that one, as it would be a bit of work to trim it off and I don't really see the point in creating more work for myself. 

All in all, a nice little team. As I mentioned earlier, I could add a couple of extra bodies here, but they would be normal legionary warriors with bolters, at least if I wanted to keep the same aesthetic. This does mean that I am lacking any heavy weapons or special weapons, especially plasma but as this is not supposed to be a highly competitive team, just a fun one to add some options to my rosters, I don't mind at all. If I do paint them up, I'll post some pictures up here of the full team again. 

 

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!

Random thoughts on Inquisitorial Detachments

 This is a bit of a random post in amongst all the picture and progress posts but it's something that sprung in to my head the other day while thinking about the new guard codex leaks. The current rules allow you to take a single Inquisitor under the Agent of the Imperium rules but this is a bit useless as it doesn't really give you the full experience of what an inquisitor can do. 

To really enable inquisitors to gain a proper feel, I think that the agents rule needs to be changed from an inquisitor to an inquisitorial patrol detachment.

Now, I don't think that the detachment should be a straight replacement for agents rule but just the basis. Firstly there should be three parts to the new rule;

1) only consist of a patrol detachment.

2) only one inquisitor per army.

3) detachment can form a maximum of 25 percent of the total force.

This would restrict what you can take and not break the game with a whole lead of inquisitorial detachment with tooled up inquisitors. It would give you just one Inquisitor and a nice supporting force to supplement the main army. Again this detachment would sit outside the main rules for battle forged armies and at wide doctrines, i.e. not resulting in guard loosing regimental doctrines or space marines loosing chapter tactics. To do this there would have to be some changes and to be honest, I'm not a hundred percent sure how some of this would work but I'll keep going and I'm sure I'll figure it out at some point.

There would need to be a couple of changes to Inquisitorial units for this to work as well, as currently Acolytes are elite choices, which I can understand but they are really the basic troop units of inquisitors and should be troops, with Jokaero and Daemon hosts remaining as elite. All the other rules for the various units should remain the same, as I don't see any thing wrong with them. 

This change will mean that you can fill a patrol detachment without any difficulty but this is not the only change in would like to see. Back in the old days, inquisitors of the Ordos Majoris could select to bring units from there respective forces, i.e. from either sisters, grey Knights or Deathwatch. I think that this rule should be brought back but with some obvious restrictions. The main one being obvious, that you can only bring a unit from the corresponding faction, so Hereticus can only bring a sisters of battle squad, Xenos can bring a Deathwatch squad and Malleus can bring a Grey Knights squad. Now, you might have picked up on the fact that is say squad, as that's what it would be, a single troops choice squad. They could have all there options but you can only have one squad, so no bringing several sisters squads, some repentia and a couple of penitent engines. I would allow them to bring a transport from their selection of dedicated transports. 

Talking of transports, this is the last thing I would change, I would allow the Acolytes to take a dedicated transport of their own, which I would restrict to the three guard transports, the chimera and both the taurox and taurox prime. This is because there are human driven vehicles, so no land raiders or even rhinos, which while can be driven by normal humans, as shown by the sisters, they are still power armour equipped. 

Lastly I wanted to mention about assassins. Now I'm not sure about this one, I have thought about maybe having assassins in again, with the restriction of only allowing one assassin per detachment, as inquisitors do have access to assassins but I wonder if having bot assassins and a squad of marines or sisters might be a bit much. I thing in general the points limit will be a deciding factor in this, so allowing both won't be that much of an issue. 

This I think would give a nice little bonus to the main army, maybe enabling you to do something that the main force can't do, such as having a Deathwatch squad tooled up for close combat in a guard army but still keep it fluffy, as it wouldn't be taking the majority of the points. I'm sure that some one could figure a way to abuse this system but then someone always does, so that would be anything new. I honestly can't see this happening in the new guard codex or even in a white dwarf article but it would be nice to get something more that we have at the moment.

Proxie Warpcoven kill team

This is the first of a few Xenos and chaos forces that I will be building just to have some enemy forces in my collection, should I ever needs some. Most of these forces will be quick and dirty paint jobs, full of proxies to get the job done. This lot are a stand if for the Thousand Sons Warpcoven Kill Team, formed of 3 sorcerer's and 6 Tzaangors or in this case chaos cultist proxies. 

The complete team

The three sorcerer's are pulled from my collection of first born space marines, all of which were painted for various other projects but have been pulled together to form this kill team. The center model is the only actual sorcerer type model, being a space marine librarian, the others are conversions from the bits box.

Hard to see but there is actually some Nurgle mutations on the left hand model between the weapon and the shoulder pad, as this model started life as an old school metal Nurgle plague marine, his backpack still bares the remains of the 3 ringed symbol, now reduced to 3 black dots. 

The Tzaangors are played by the cultists, 5 standard Tzaangors with pistols and chain swords and Champion with great blades. 

3 standard Tzaangors

2 standard Tzaangors and champion (with gold base)

 

Now, there is a little problem with the wanna be Tzaangors, the cultist are on just 25mm bases and Tzaangors actually come on 32mm bases, plus they are a bit taller. Now I could get around this by debasing them or even just sticking the current bases straight on to the bigger bases, to give some extra height as well but to be honest, when these come out to play it will be in the company of friends and for very casual games, so I don't think that the difference in base and model size will matter at all. If it changes that I probably will.just stick them on top of the bigger bases and be done with it.

The next Xenos team to get a quick job done will be some more cultists repurposed as GSC. 

Scout kill team

 It's been a while since I painted up some of my kill teams, but I've decided that I need to crack on with getting them painted. Part of the reason there has been a bit of a brea, has been due to the releases of the bespoke kill teams for various factions, that have meant that I have needed to rejig many of the teams. A few just needed reworking, such as chaos, sisters and AdMech but a couple were also added, such as 10k son's and GSC, albeit via proxies. I'm still waiting for some, namely Deathwatch, grey Knights, Tyranids and scions to get a bespoke team, as well as a number of bespoke marine teams, such as the new vanguard one we have seen released recently. One of those marine teams I expect to get a more bespoke team is Scouts, which I hope I can bash together using the models here.

The complete force, split in to combat (red), ranged (blue) and support (green), with sergeants (gold) to the front.

The three sergeants with their chain swords, which for kill team can only be fielded individually but if I take these guys in big 40k I will need at least 2 of them.

The combat scouts, with their bolt pistols and combat bladed, well 5 of them do, one seems to have misplaced his blade, maybe in the chest of an Ork or Tyranid?

The ranged scouts, with various different weapon options.

Scout shotguns

Bolters

Heavy bolters

You may not have noticed, it is very subtle, but one of the heavy bolters is an older model painted slightly differently. This is a model my son picked up many, many years and I have decided to just leave it as it was, with a few touch ups here and there, such as redoing the hair do! Nothing quite says sneaky sneaky like a bright blue mohawk.

The support

Urban camouflage

So there you have it, the scouts. Hopefully when we do get a scout specific kill team (assuming we actually do, that is) these will be used to.form that squad. For 40k games they will be split in to squads, one based around the snipers and heavy bolters and one based around the combat scouts with a third possibly made up of the left overs, as with 17 models, I can easily field three 5-man squads. They might not be optimal but what in my armies is!