40K Tuesday - Crimson Fists 8th Edition Prep

With 8th edition about a month away and the radical changes it seems to be bringing I am scrambling to get some of the armies updated/expanded/finished. I'm making this post to mark where the army is right now and what I am thinking as I work on it - partly to force myself to think through it as I put it down and partly as a historical document so a year from now I can come back and either  rejoice in my amazing foresight or wonder what the hell I was thinking.

Today: The Crimson Fists

I haven't posted about these guys in a long time - looks like 3 years! I may have only fielded them one time since then too, so they've been idle a lot. That will be changing soon! Current force:

• HQ: Chapter Master Pedro Kantor, various chaplians, librarians, and captains (usually in a Razorback)
• Troops: 3 Tactical squads in Rhinos
• Elites: Dreadnought
• Fast Attack: Land Speeder
• Heavy Support: 3x Predator tanks, Vindicator, Whirlwind

OK that's the finished stuff. 

In the backlog and adopted from the Dark Angels division shutdown:

• 3-4 Dreadnoughts
• 5-15 Terminators
• 3 Land Speeder typhoons
• 10 Sternguard marines
• Missile Launcher Devastators, Plasma Cannon Devastators, Heavy Bolter Devastators
• 3 Attack Bikes
• A 5-man Assault squad
• 2x 5-man Scout squads
• A ten-man Tac squad
• 3x Drop Pods
• Land Raider Crusader

Some of these are more "done" than others and many are put-together enough to use in a battle but they are not finished yet.

Let's talk army approach here. My wish is for this to be a mechanized army where nobody walks but the dreadnoughts. The basic theory is that it's an armored column of space marines. They advance to contact, spread out, and call in drop pod support. The idea is to crush the enemy between the two elements.  The Rhinos and tanks are the core with the scouts and bikes doing recon as the speeders patrol around the column and the dreadnoughts are a walking close escort.

Structure-wise 3 full tac squads and two scout squads is 5 troop units. The new extra squad needs a ride of some kind - probably a Razorback - and presto! Six troop elements! That means I have the core for a really big force.

I already have all of this stuff, so what else did I need to pick up?

• I grabbed more sternguard. I will have 20 altogether and I am planning for them to take two of the three drop pods. I'm not sure just yet how I will divide them up. I may have 5 of them escort Kantor in the Razorback or that might be a Command squad. Regardless that gives me 2-4 squads of them to field. 
• I picked up multi-meltas for the attack bikes. I'm thinking about magnetizing these to have both the MM and Heavy Bolter options.

That's really it. I didn't need much to finish out the "acquisitions phase" for this army. For the future I'd like to add another Razorback or two, another Vindicator or two, and a flyer.

If you read the other post this week about the Iron Warriors you may notice some similarities.  That's not entirely by accident. I like tanks and vehicles so I tend to pick them up for whatever army. My thinking here is that the core of both forces is similar - Rhinos, Predators, grunt marines, and dreadnoughts. The IW's have that plus the "Chaos Stuff - Daemon princes, Spawn, Possessed, etc. The Fists will have Sternguard, Drop Pods, Speeders, and Scouts. So while the core is the same, the "Extra" is different for both. Hopefully I can learn about those core elements using either army. 

I am really looking forward to getting these guys back in to action. More to come!