40K Friday - Calling up the Reserves

I've been working on my Chaos Marines, even after the beatings I took previously. I figure the bikers and other things will change the force up enough that I can make a better showing. I'll show more on them next week.

While building them - you know building Chaos Marines takes a lot longer than building regular marines. There are so many choices about how to arm them, how many to put in a squad, whether to mark them, how to tool up the champion ... loyalist marines it's pretty much 10 guys, missile launcher + flamer + maybe another extra guy with a different weapon. The only thought goes into the sergeant and that's still not much compared to an aspiring chaos champion. It took me a long time to build out two CSM squads and the biker squad and I'm still working on the terminators.

The old reliable Arm Sprue ...

Anyway, while building them I ran out of arms! I've been building marines for 25 years now, and I doubt I have bought an actual marine box in 10 years, other than starter sets, and I have never thought twice about arms - now I'm out! Those old 2E/3E blister packs came with (typically) two metal guys and 4-5 pairs of marine arms (so lots of spares), and I bought a LOT of those packages. Now, sadly, they are all gone. I actually had to break down and pick up a batch of marine arms (thanks eBay!) to finish them up. The loyal marines burned up those "under the bolter" left arms, and the chaos forces finished off the "holding something" left arms.

While ransacking the house for arms, I made another discovery. I have a lot of spare marines sitting around waiting to be drafted into one of my armies. In particular there are a lot of old metal and RT era guys that I was planning on *someday* adding to my RT-era Howling Griffons. Some of them have been "pending" for a very long time (longer than my kids have been around). I realized that it's pretty unlikely that I'm going to go back and do a significant expansion to that army. It is what it is, and while I do take it out and use it every once in a while it's mostly "retired". The Crimson Fists are my current vanilla marine army and my Ravenwing/Deathwing armies let me abuse that other codex. So what to do with that reserve force scattered from the garage to the display case?

Spray 'em red! Old school vindicator, dread, 2 squads of assault marines, a death company squad of old RT plastic bare-head guys, Mephiston, some librarians, some chaplains, and two squads of RT terminators (1 assault, 1 shooty) - instant Blood Angel force! It's somewhere around 1500 points depending on characters and gear - plenty to start with and adding a unit of sanguinary guard or some older Baal Predators or Vindicators will be simple enough.

Rather than adding to an old army I've built a whole new one without adding any new figures! They will be using the new arms, since I'm out of those, and I did pick up a used Codex, but that's pretty cheap for spawning a whole new force. No, I probably didn't need yet another power armor army but these guys were just sitting around - at least now there is a chance they will get to see some action.

Now of course the temptation is to become the "marine guy" - I have to Codex forces, two Dark Angel based forces, and now a BA force, and Chaos marines too. All I need is to build up some Gray Knights and some Space Wolves and I'l have the complete set, pending the future of the Black Templars as a separate codex.

When will I use them? Hard to say, but I am supposed to play a game with Apprentice Red tonight. If he can tolerate armless marines they may see the table then. More on that next week.