40K Friday: The Work Continues - Praetorians and Tyranids

 

My two "building" armies right now both made some progress. Not a ton, but a little.

The new command squads are now on 28mm bases so they won't fit into my 25mm movement trays. I was tempted to put them on 25s but I'm trying to go by current rules so now I get to deal with this. Base size used to be tied to figure size - now apparently it's tied to status. Maybe I'll just velcro them to the damn things.

I did manage to finish the Praetorian command squad, probably the first of 3 or 4. I had to stay with the banner since this one is going into the big combined unit and that +1 OC is a difference maker. For the weapons guy I stuck with a melta gun as I figure it will make the most difference if something gets in close. Having 3 of them altogether should be a bit of a deterrent as even the guard should land a hit or two at that point. For the officer I went with a bolt pistol and a power sword. I just am not that big a fan of a Strength 6 power fist and I don't really like the way it looks on normal humans most of the time. I think of these guys as being more about the swords than maximum efficiency so the power sword is good enough for me and it just looks better! 

At least it will make them easy to tell apart - "Wings Up" and "Wings Down". Years ago with Battletech I had a pair of metal Marauders named "Leans Left" and "Leans Right" so this is not a new thing for me. 

I also finished a pair of "winged tyranid primes" - the character/leader units from the Leviathan set. For itself it only has a bunch of melee attacks but it can join a unit of gargoyles to stiffen them up with "synapse" or a unit of warriors to give them Sustained Hits 1 which is a pretty nice buff.  I wonder if they might be useful just flying around solo doing actions, interfering with gun batteries, or jumping on lone characters. I might try it with one of them.

Modeling-wise I changed up the wings on one of them as the default downward pose is ... fine ... but I certainly wasn't going to have two like that in an army. 

I may have a chance to try them out this weekend as aside from the M&M game I'm also supposed to play Boom-Gun Brother Brandon in some 40K and I'm leaning towards taking the 'Nids. It'll mean throwing a bunch of un-painted and base-coated stuff on the table but that's not exactly uncommon around here. I'm going to try to get a few more units together before that game but even now it's reasonable progress for January. More next week.