40K Friday: Knights & Angels & Wolves Again

 

I have managed to make steady progress on finishing up the Grey Knights unit by unit these last few weeks. This week it was the last of the 3 regular Dreadknights going into the display case and it did feel good. 

I also did some serious figuring on what unbuilt parts I had left and how I wanted to allocate them. Some serious reassessment of the options led me to believe I can fix my broken Interceptor vanes on my mostly painted squads so that's 10 bodies no longer needed for that. If I can that gets me to 3 squads of 5-men each. I have one mostly painted strike squad that I believe I can salvage as well which puts me to 6 squads of 5 which is as much as anyone probably really needs. This should leave me enough strike squad type bodies to build out Purifiers and indulge myself in some extra Purgation squads.

I was in pretty good shape with Terminator bodies having finished two 4-man squads and a 5-man with all the extras. But they are also core troops for a GK army and I only had 15 more to build AND I want 10 Paladins AND there might be a character or two I want to build so when I found a nicely painted squad of 5 Paladins online I went ahead and got them and a matching GK Termie Librarian too. This should let me build the remaining squads I want and fill in the others to their full complement as well. I would say the end of "acquisitions" for the Knights is in sight! Finally!

This is not mine but it's a damn good looking model

For the Dark Angels I did get the winged helmets I mentioned in the last post though I have not attached them yet. I will start with the characters and the Bladeguard squad and then maybe the Vanguard Vets. This army is already in decent shape build-wise. I just need to get moving on the paint. This is not a new story for me.

Then there is the deliberate retro army with the Space Wolves. It sarted out mainly as a way to use up the rest of my non-primaris marine bodies and gear ... well it didn't stay that way. There was a lot of "acquisition" activity this week as scope creep exploded and it became an effort to see if I could get a squad or unit of most of the things in the 5th/6th/7th edition codexes. This is not a completed effort by any means but it's a bigger force now than it was a week ago. Another decision: They're all going on 32mm bases for the regular infantry. It's retro but it's not that retro.

The core (planned anyway) is:

• 3x 10-man Grey Hunter Squads (prob 2 with plasma, 1 with melta guns)
• 1x 10-man Blood Claw Squad (sized for Rhinos or Drop Pods more than a Land Raider)
• 3x 5-man Long Fang Squads (prob 2 distant shooters, one stupid one with 4 multi-meltas to jump out of a Rhino or Drop Pod or something because that's possible)
• 3x 5-man Terminator squads (could turn into 2 squads with all the weapon options and a Lone Wolf or three)

Then some dreadnoughts, some Rhinos, some tanks, characters - the usual things one would expect to find in a classic Wolf force. The problem is the add-ons. I want some jump pack guys so ... Skyclaws? Jumping Wolf Guard? Both? Swiftclaw bikers? Thunderwolves? Lot of Fast Attack choices on the menu right now. Some I could already build - some I could not. Some will be joining the force regardless. Lotta wolf claws in the mix here now. Now to make this into a coherent army ...

40k Friday: Dark Angels, Grey Knights, and the Focus Thing Again

 

Despite the sidetrack into Oldhammer this week which did take up some time and some budget I did manage to progress on the Dark Angels for 11th. One of the problems though is when you are part of the way into a project and find a piece that brings things to a screeching halt and forces you to reconsider how you want to proceed - and by "you" I mean "me". In this case I was working on a unit of Bladeguard Vets to give the army some melee punch and also to give the captain a unit to lead. My BGV were originally allocated to the Templars but all I had done was build them and spray them black so it was not a big deal to reassign them to the new (old) chapter. Then I ran across a picture online where someone had put winged helmets on their BGVs and it looked really good ...

Winged helmets are a thing with Dark Angels especially on their leaders but I figured the veterans might have them too. Poking around a bit I found these:

That's just too good of a look to not do it so a batch of these is making its way here. My Armageddon captain and standard bearer's heads both popped back off so I can make the change there easy enough but the BGVs I have now ... there's no way. I tried. So the first set will likely be reallocated back to the Templars and a new squad  - with nifty helmets - joins the Unforgiven. I don't really need a second unit and I'd want them to match the others so it's better to put them back in the non-winged-helmet-army. If I need more elite melee Dark Angels there are always the hooded and robed inner circle vets.

With that many wing-heads available that also means my jump pack vanguard vets will likely have them too, and maybe some sternguard vets if I pull together a unit of them as well. For this army it could just be a standard for the leaders and veterans to have them - we will have to see if I can sustain that over time. Now should I take it down to the veteran sergeant level? Have to ponder that - might be too much of a good thing.

I did manage to finish building and basecoating the hellblasters - all heads and backpacks accounted for, sprayed, and attached. So there's a unit ready for the rest of the paint. I picked up an apothecary for the unit as that's an important add-on for a unit that can blow themselves up regularly. They will also have some version of Azrael the chapter master as he is way too useful to not put him in there. I might give in and buy the new one but I'm still leaning towards using one of the versions I have already. 

There is still plenty of work to do but I  feel like I'm figuring it out. 

Also: Obligatory Grey Knights Update:

Special reflection appearance by Nelson Doggo

That's two Dreadknights added since the last update so the finishing continues. It's at least a useable force now with 5 strike squads (probably more than I need honestly). an interceptor squad (need more), 3 terminator/paladin squads, a dreadnought, the 2 dreadknights, and some characters over on the right. Still more to do but I'm happy with the amount of progress I am making.

40K Thursday: Retrograde or "7th Edition?"

 

So after the game last weekend Blaster mentions that he's been looking into 40K again recently - he hasn't played a game since 9th - and while he despises 10th/11th edition (too many cards, too many changes for no good reason) he is interested in trying an old edition again. We discussed that option for a bit and settled on 7th, last of the 3rd edition inheritor generations. Now I won't try to tell you that 7th is the best or my favorite but I am always open to playing a prior edition of the game and if it gets my kid* interested in playing again I'm all for it. His run with the game was 5th thru 8th - and we played a lot when he lived at home and we had Red and Who as well - so somewhere in that range made the most sense. As a throwback here's my take on 7th at the time.

So, interest declared it was time for dad to dust off the stacks and see what I had from 7th. I still had all of my books from then but exactly which book did I have? This was 10 years ago and I have added armies since then so I had some figuring to do. Besides the codexes 7th also had a set of cards for each army - most of them anyway - so I had to take a look at those too.

Objectives & Psychic Powers - useful but not necessary. With four of us in the house playing back then it was an easy call to pick them up. Plus they were handy stocking stuffers.

As it turns out I had a pretty good swath of them and we still have all of those armies so that's good. But ... I added Grey Knights with 8th, Necrons & Imperial Knights with 9th, and Tyranids with 10th. Imperial Guard has been a factor since 6th but I did sell that army off at one point and I must have let the codex go too because it's not here. Plus Harlequins became a separate army with this edition too but I never picked up the book. I was also missing the cards for some of these so ...I mean you can't expect a man to play without the rules for all of his toys ... off to eBay I went!

It is surprisingly cheaper to get into 40K - when it comes to the rulebooks anyway - as they hit the ten year old mark. I suspect the 10-15 year mark is when they bottom out before becoming nostalgia items for some people and the prices begin to climb a bit. Almost everything is still findable online at a pretty reasonable price. I make no guarantees on the miniatures though - that's a whole different animal and might best be acquired at the "army" level. 

The fun part is that nearing the finish line of "completing" my Grey Knights force it is almost completely useable in 7th as-is. The line was redone for 5th edition and has had just a few additions here and there over the intervening years. It's a good feeling knowing a lot of it is likely to be revamped in 11th but what I have is still perfect for any version from 5th to "index" 11th - plus OPR of course. 

As the poster boys for 6th and 7th the Unforgiven actually got a new codex for each one 

It's a little less perfect with the Dark Angels I've also been working on as all of that primaris stuff is out but all of my older firstborn units now have a potential use beyond OPR and memories. Rediscovering those units with an actual chance to get them on the table has been a lift this week.

So anyway there's the unexpected turn for this week. Tomorrow I'll get back to the new stuff.

*At some point I should probably stop calling him a kid since he's now in the upper half of his 20's now with a college degree, a full time job/career, a wife, and a baby. It's a hard habit to break though. I did stop calling him "Apprentice" here on the blog a while back so I have made some progress. 

40K Friday: Orks, Grey Knights, and Dark Angels

 

The focus has not been super-strong lately but I've accomplished a little bit. 

The Grey Knights have been one main area and, feeling that I have enough infantry to play something fun for now, I have mainly been working on the Dreadknight situation. This is mostly because I have 3 of them sitting on the table not-finished and 2 more in boxes waiting to be built as shiny new -Grandmaster- Dreadknights with some of the new bits. It's been a fight in trying to figure out how far I want to go with each one versus what is "good enough" to call done and move on - and this army needs a lot of that last part. Hoping to get at least 1-2 of them into the case this weekend and then knock out the rest soon. That will make for a somewhat top-heavy force but I still have some Purifiers, Purgators, and Terminators/Paladins to build so it will even out. The real question is "how much of this can I get to DONE before their codex comes out and changes up a bunch of stuff?" We will see.

These heads are perfect for what I was thinking but once they are on ... man ...

The Orks were getting a fair amount of attention before and now with the Armageddon set having arrived they've been getting a strategic rethink. As I mentioned here I've been contemplating making a new separate Blood Axe force with a mix of older and newer models. I had a pretty solid idea of what I wanted to use in it - most of which I already had - so with a theme and the units it was just a matter of building some of the parts. I started sticking my 3rd-party heads onto my older boyz torsos and ... I do not like the way they look ... at all. It's rough. The alternate heads make the hunched-over ork boyz look even more off-kilter. I'm going to try building some from scratch and see if I can make them look better as I was adapting some already built models. I'm also going to see if I can make the heads work with the older monopose boyz or with the Armageddon monopose boyz as some of them have separate heads. If that doesn't work then the Blood Axe heads may get set aside into the Ork Bits box and used for vehicle riders or drivers or something and they all get rolled into the Goffs. It's disappointing but not every plan works out.

Digging through the Armageddon box also got me to thinking about the Marine half. For the first time in a while I really had few specific plans for that side of a big box. I figured the heavy bolter guys would probably go into the Crimson Fists because that's a thing with them but otherwise it was pretty open. I'll find a home for them eventually but there wasn't really any urgency about it. 

The intercessors in the box are especially ... mundane. My core, modern (meaning primaris-updated) forces are the aforementioned Fists, my Blood Angels, and my largely-unbuilt-but-always-in-the-back-of-my-mind Black Templars. Team Blue and Team Red already have multiple intercessor squads and Team Fanatic doesn't really care about them as I prefer to focus on Crusader squads as a unique Templar thing. So what was I going to do with a squad or two of a unit with no obvious home?

I thought about whether I could convert them to something else but that's more challenging with the monopose stuff. Even making them additional Sternguard could take some work to make them look right.

Then the wandering mind pulled down my Ravenwing box while moving stuff around and a new virus took hold ... 

"At one point you had an active Dark Angels army ... earlier this year you  set up a Ravenwing force and counted up enough terminators and Deathwing Knights to make a Deathwing army ... why not fill in some Greenwing units and just Primais-ize your Dark Angels?"

I mean ... I have the other stuff already - built and basecoated - and I wouldn't be buying anything new since the Armagedodn box was a done deal ... sure, it could actually work ...

I think they will look good in black. I like to use power swords in my DA army anyway so these will fit right in.

So now the latest distraction for 2026 is tweaking the kinda-sorta Dark Angel "wing" elements and bridging them with "regular" space marine pieces. I was also trying to figure out what to do with the Vanguard Vets as I don't really want them in the Fists and my Blood Angels are already well-supplied with jump assault squads of various types - where could I put them that they would make a difference? Well, they would make for a nice flexible element for a reborn Dark Angels force now wouldn't they?

Then of course the next thought is "maybe I should get another squad too while they're cheap - NO!

Regardless I already have a bunch of older characters in the Dark Angel box, plus some modern dreadnoughts, plus these new models, plus some other uncommitted newer units (Hellblasters?) and suddenly that's a pretty solid army. I'll save the potential structure for another post but it feels good to find a way to actually use some of the new units I was undecided on. Fortunately my Dark Angels paint scheme is pretty simple too so I might be able to get them painted up fairly quick - well quick for me anyway.

More next week as I chronicle this poorly-focused journey into hobby madness.

40K Friday: In Which the Writer Loses All Focus

 

It's Spring and the miniature ADHD goes into full bloom! Oh Lord what have I done? Several factors at work here:

• Boom-Gun Brandon wants to play every time he comes into town now
• Some of the rest of the crew has started building 40K armies 
• 10th edition is in the wind-down phase now so what you have is what you're going to have as far as rules and datasheets and FAQs
• 11th edition is coming this summer which tends to ramp the energy levels up - and also increases anxiety over which units will be replaced or removed in the new edition

So this recent energy burst started up by looking at all my chaos armies and shifted into me mostly working on Grey Knights about a month ago and that continued for a couple of weeks. Then I started feeling some Firstborn Anxiety - the feeling and wondering mentioned above that I expect the next edition to pretty much finish off the older styled marines as they exist now, outside of Rhinos and Land Raiders. 

The smaller-guys replacement is just about complete with Chaos Marines as all of the major groups of units have been upscaled over the last 5-ish years. They won't get rid of the Rhino here - they may make a new kit but the Rhino as primary Chaos transport will live on and I expect the Land Raider to continue on as well. 

For loyalists, as much as a certain segment of players wants to see the marines go all grav-vehicle I think the Rhino and the Land Raider are just too iconic and too much a part of the game and the lore to drop. New models? Sure, maybe even "likely" at this point as these are 20+ year old kits. I wouldn't be upset if they just rolled the Horus Heresy kits into mainline 40K as those look great but I doubt they will do that for a variety of reasons. The bikes and speeders have been replaced already and they did not go retro with those. Anyway I am not as concerned about the vehicles here - it's mainly the infantry.

I have a lot of firstborn stuff. Some of it makes up a big chunk of my marine armies but I have a lot of unfinished projects, half-built units, squads on the sprue, stuff still in boxes ... it all was part of a plan at some point but right now it looks like kind of a mess. I should be focused on updating armies with some of the newer units but I'd really like to get some of the old stuff finished up too. 

So...

I spent over a week with all of my firstborn stuff pulled out on to the big game table and started going through it and figuring out what I actually had and who could use what parts. For example my Crimson Fists are pretty close to one old version of a Space Marine Battle Company so they need some more assault marines and some devastator marines and I can check that little box that's been in the back of my mind for a while. Predators and Vindicators are still totally useful and allowed (non-legended) in current 40K so let me count up how many parts and sprues and hulls I have and see if I can get those built and field-able. 

I am at well over 50 Rhino hulls of various types and marks at this point. Most of them are even painted. This is not something I set out to do.

Then it gets a little more complicated. Some of the infantry I have needs to be rebased if I'm going to stay current, mainly 25mm to 32mm. I've done it on several armies and it's not terribly enjoyable. While the rules could change down the road Rhinos and Razorbacks are not seeing a ton of use right now as Primaris marines can't ride in them - one of the few remaining separation type rules in the codexes. So I should probably keep them in my older armies but how many Rhinos do I need for one army? This is also true of something like a tactical squad - I have at least six of them (various editions and styles) sitting around unfinished but I don't really need all of those added to one army.  

This whole process ended up leading to a few conclusions:

• A lot of the old-school infantry  and vehicles are going to finish out whatever thoughts/plans/dreams I have for my Crimson Fists and Blood Angels. A few things are going to the Black Templars but I never really  prioritized them as a firstborn army so they get a smaller share. 
• My Dark Angels are definitely one of my retro armies - way too much old stuff there - but I am also bringing them out of mothballs and into active service, mainly via the Ravenwing/Deathwing options. I've picked up a few missing pieces, I will spray those this weekend, and suddenly I have a 2000 point Ravenwing army with options for Deathwing drop-in support. This should be fun.
• This still leaves me with a lot of uncommitted stuff so I am indulging in an old dream and building a Space Wolf Army! Specifically a 3rd to 6th edition type Space Wolf army - no primaris. I always wanted a Wolf army and I had collected some pieces way back but when Blaster got into 40K he immediately focused on the Wolves so I gave him what I had and sensibly stopped adding more space marine armies to focus on what I already had immediately started modernizing and expanding my Blood Angels. Well, he's been out of the house for a few years now so I wouldn't be stepping on his toes anymore. I'll talk more about Project Wolf in another post but I'm pretty happy to have a place to put my strays and orphans. Of course I did need some wolf components so I immediately went out and hunted down some of the now out of print 5th edition era space wolf kits ... some things never change. At least I know what my problem is. "It's like a free army because it's stuff I already had that I wasn't using" ... well, except for the new (old) stuff I went out and bought to really fill it out. 

Project initiated ...

I do feel good about getting all of it organized. Much like building my Tyranids, it's good to realize it's finite and to be able to see the boundaries of the firstborn stuff. It will be finished at some point. 

An unexpected side note to this as I looked through my stuff started when I realized Terminators new and old still pretty much look the same and that I could add a Redemptor or two to my Imperial Fists Deathwing army. Since dreads are considered Deathwing too they are a legitimate part of it lore-wise and it would give me some extra oomph in that force. So yeah, reversing the point of the entire effort there is one currently all-firstborn army that's jumping to effectively primaris. Miracles happen every day!  

More to come as I sort this out ...