40K Catchup for February

Somewhere along the way 2018 has turned into the year of the new army.

I spent 2016 focused on my Eldar and getting them shaped into a decent, usable force and I was happy with the result.

It seemed like a good approach so I spent 2017 building up my Chaos armies, mainly my Iron Warriors, and I was pretty happy with the results there too even if I was a little less focused than before.

For 2018 I was thinking I would focus on my two "angel marine" armies, the Blood Angels and Dark Angels, especially since they both received a codex in December. Somehow, that has not happened.

For one, I just can't seem to shake the interest in the Chaos armies. I got distracted with World Eaters over the holidays. I played a series of battles with them and got sucked into trying to refine my force into something really nasty. I'm a little better now but I am still spending time on them each week refiguring the force. More on them Friday!

Chaos-wise I also checked back into my Death Guard army which had kind of been shelved for a while now. I took a fresh look at them, realized how much I had for them, put together some new army lists for them and started figuring out how I want to make them different than my other chaos marine forces. I haven't gone on a big acquisitions or painting binge for them just yet but it's close.

I still have Iron Warriors work to do but that's just production stuff at this point - I know what I want them to do, I just need to get them painted.

The first big new army thing that popped up was Chaos Daemons. I had been putting together demon forces all last year when I saw opportunities, but I had not really tried to play them with the index. I had a collection of stuff for each of the four powers but I had decided not to dig in too far until the codex was released. Well it was released in January and I really like what I see. I'm starting with my Khorne nasties and a side order of Nurgle and I'm sure the others will inevitably follow since I am clearly not good at limiting myself in this area. They will probably get their first run against one of the other new armies we've developed.

...like Imperial Guard!

We've been toying with a guard army since 6th edition - Blaster and I - and it looks like this is finally the year we get it together, painted, and on the table. It's possible to do an all-tank army with guard (including HQs!) and that's our goal. We will mix in a few infantry squads here and there just because it's smart to get those Command Points, and psyker power is always nice to have too, but the focus is on tanks tanks tanks. We have around 10-12 right now and I'd like to run that up to around 15-16 plus a super heavy. Because we can. This is a "shared" army that I figure we will take turns playing as the mood strikes us.

Blaster has also been struck by the need for a new army of his own. He's very happy with his Eldar force (and he should be, grumble grumble) but with his Space Wolves still lacking a codex he's feeling a lack of power armor, especially with all the shiny new stuff out there. So he's building a Primaris army. An Ultramarines Primaris army.

He has a pretty good force of them already - beware your kids getting jobs, all of a sudden they don't need you as a gatekeeper on their toy soldiers - and he's ready to use them before he paints them. So, it looks like I'll be fighting Guilleman pretty soon. I'll let y'all know how that goes.

The final new army for me for now is a somewhat unexpected one - Grey Knights. I've known about them since the Rogue Trader metal mini's, but never picked any of those up. When their 5th edition book came out and they got all new plastic miniatures I thought they looked really really good but for whatever reason I did not feel like I needed to own or play them. With the coming of 8th edition I decided to pick up all of the codexes as they were released to keep up with the entire game and not just the armies I do play. So one day I sat down to read the Grey Knights book and the fluff totally grabbed me. It's really good! I mean really really good! And I say that as someone who has read a lot of 40K stuff over the years and isn't always impressed with it.

So I figured "well it's an elite army - I could pick up a few boxes and paint them all myself."

That's not happening.

For whatever reason, the GK's are pretty easily found in a decently painted form all over the place. They also have a pretty standard paint scheme of shiny silver with accents of white and red. So ... when a decently painted unit is available for the same or less (or quite a bit less) than an unbuilt and unpainted box of the same unit ... well it's an easy choice. One factor may be that since they are not perceived as a top competitive tournament army people are letting them go a little easier but I'm not planning to take them to a tournament so it works for me regardless. In fact this may be the first army I field that is entirely unpainted by me,other than some touch-ups here and there. I'll probably end up fighting orks or eldar or primaris marines since I'm the main chaos player here but I am looking forward to it regardless.


I'm also going to use these shiny Paladins of the 40K universe to try and drag in Paladin Steve and his kiddo to join in some of our games. Now if I can just get him to read the fluff ...

The immediate future with the newest codexes:

• Custodes are out but I'm not jumping onto them - at least not until I finish my Grey Knight buildup!
• Thousand Sons are cool but I don't think I need another Chaos Marine chapter right now. 
• Necrons are coming - Red will be pleased!
• Tau are coming - an army none of us have but one of Blaster's friends plays them. We'll see how that goes.
• Dark Eldar are coming too. I have a force, I've played it a few times. Who knows, I might be ready to dive into them by the time the book arrives. Or I may still be painting Daemons.

That's about it for now. World Eater talk on Friday!