40K Friday - 2013 & 2014

Looking back, 2013 was a pretty good year for 40K here. Focusing on one game helped a lot as my limited time wasn't split up trying to paint and play across multiple games. I find that having a regular routine of playing something reinforces my interest in painting stuff for that game, even if it's not one particular army.

Posting-wise I had 31 posts on it this year, and compared to the 21 in 2012 that's indicative of the jump it took in priority. I covered a pretty wide swath of subjects under "40K Fridays" and I expect that to continue. I'm going to keep it as the Friday thing too - it's working for me.

It's really getting ridiculous now

For the Apprentices:

• Red remains committed to his Orks and Necrons. Christmas was good to both, filling in some needed units and a painted Ghazghkul that he was very pleased to meet. As of yesterday we found a deal locally that just about doubled the size of his Necron force, allowing him to push ahead with his Necron ork-style horde army plans of throwing about 80 warriors on the table as his core force. I'm probably going to be the guinea pig for his first test of this concept on Sunday. 
• Blaster has been "ELDAR!!!" for most of the year though he rediscovered his Space Wolves after getting a painted Logan Grimnar for Xmas and started working on finally building his tanks that spent most of the year sitting in boxes. Both of his armies are in pretty good shape and he has enough units that he has some choice as to what he fields in a typical fight. Both of them are finally past the "take everything you have" stage and have to make some decisions on how to build their force.
• Apprentice Who began his 40K experience as of Christmas with some Chaos Marines. He spent a lot of time flipping through codexes and magazines and decided he liked those the best so that's what was in his box. It's a small force, but we will see if it holds his attention enough to expand it.

Some recently recruited Wolf Guard

Personally I played more in 2013 than I have in years. I played my marine, deathwing, and ork armies all multiple times over the year and I'm pretty happy about that. Having in-house opponents does make things easier.

On the crafting side of things I made lots of progress:

• The reorganization of the Crimson Fists is finally just about complete with the core HQ's and troops and tanks and transports all done and just some new units I'm adding in to be finished.
• I made a rule to only add painted unis to the Imperial Fists Deathwing and that's exactly what I did. It's a lot of fun to be able to tweak an existing force without adding to the paint queue. 
• My Orks finally came together in my head as far as what I want that force to be. It's not all built and painted - though a lot of it is - but it's all separated in the boxes and baskets it lives in and most of it is usable on the table. The new codex coming this summer might force some adjustments but based on recent codexes I doubt it will be anything major.
• Partway through the year I decided to make my Dark Angels a 100% "new" army - no old figures. My Griffons are entirely old RT miniatures and my Crimson Fists are a mix of everything from RT to 5th edition though mostly 2nd and 3rd and with all old-style vehicles. I wanted at least one marine army that was using the modern stuff. My DA's are all recent models so it was an easy choice to make. 
• Late in the year I realized that I had enough "waiting" models for my Griffons and Fists that I could instead build an entirely separate marine army. I had been looking at Blood Angels anyway, so I decided to turn them into a BA army. Right now this is purely infantry plus a dreadnought but it's a start. They are organized, mostly base-coated, and expanded a bit to from a usable force. The infantry is almost all old-school but I want to keep the vehicles new-school, so the next step is to start adding on those nifty fast tanks and special dreads. 
• I nailed down what I wanted my chaos marines to be and organized and built the core of that force. Now I just need to paint it.  

Well they're mostly red and ... mostly together

Not everything was a win though:

• Those Dark Angels ended the year largely unbuilt and unpainted. I was leaning towards a pure Ravenwing army for them, but I like having more options than just bikes. I have since come up with a plan for them though and they are priority #1 for 2014 as far as getting an army into usable shape. They will be 100% built and painted by me, no shortcuts.
• The Blood Angels are a messy mix of built but not painted and painted but not built. I am reconsidering them right now as it might make more sense to keep them at a minimal size (HQ + troops) and put some of the parts back into the other marines I already have. The plan would be to revisit them when their eventual new codex comes out.
• The Imperial Guard force I acquired a while back continues to sit - it's mostly painted and built (because it came that way) but I just can't get excited about them. The "allied IG blob" is still a fairly popular option so I continue to hang onto them as my Dark Angels especially seem suited to some kind of shenanigans with them, but so far they are "in reserve". Maybe the codex coming this spring will fire them up again.
• I also had the beginnings of an Eldar army but even with the new book I had a hard time focusing on them. At the very end of the year I was smitten with the idea of building an Iyanden wraith army and picked up some pieces for that. This would be another "100% new stuff" army as so much of my existing one is old old old. Some of the pieces are painted too so I am a little ahead of where I might be otherwise, but in general I want to build and paint this one myself.
• Lady Blacksteel's Dark Eldar continue to lurk in their box seeing zero progress during 2013.
• The campaign theme for the year pretty much fizzled out by March. I'm debating whether I should try to resurrect it for 2014, go with a different theme, or just play the games and not worry about it. 

Part of a daemon army being repaired

So the plan for 2014 is to keep playing! After that it's to focus on Dark Angels first and get them tabletop-ready. HQ + troops and then the extra stuff. I'd like to see them completely finished by the end of the year - partly to have them finished and partly so I can work on a different force in 2015. That Eldar force will also be a factor though they will be behind the DA's. A third player is Chaos Daemons - I finally picked up the codex and I have about 2000 points worth of the things I had started converting over from fantasy a couple of years ago. There's a fair amount of paint applied too so this would be a quicker turnaround than some as far as getting a force on the table.

That's more than enough rambling for now - next week let's talk about Dark Angels!