Marines are the thing that got me into 40k, 20 odd years ago, and they still make me turn my head when I see them in Art and promotions.
My current force is a mishmash of 4 edition models and the new Primaris intercessors and Reivers. For my Birthday 2019 I got the Start collecting set with a Dreadnought, Tacmarine squad and a Terminator Captain as well as a Devestator squad mainly to allow my Kill team access to all heavy weapon goodness.
This goes on top of an old Battleforce box that had 2 Tac marine squads, a razorback with dual Heavy bolters, power armoured command squad, Captain, Ancient, Apocophy, special weapon and a champion. I had a Terminator Squad and a 10 man bolter armed Scout squad . I also had a half painted squad of 5 metal Scouts from the 90s which were part of my Blood Angels army. As I don’t intend to use or revamp the BA army any time soon I took them and repainted them for the Kill Team. I had a techmarine from the same era who came over too.
I rather stupidly started a Space Wolf army with one of the 10 man tac marine squad being painted as grey hunters. Although I was enthusiastic about the Wolves to begin with it didn’t make any sense over all to use them all like that as the Wolves have their own models and to kitbash them well enough would be more expense than it was worth. I’d still like a SW force but I’ll probably do it from the ground up. Instead with Space marine 2.0 codex being released soon I decided to go for an Iron Hands successor chapter with its own traits (whenever I actually buy the book). This was before the supplement came out so I didn’t know they were going to be meta-bendingly good. Honest. I just liked the idea of cyborg super-soldiers with lots of techmarines. To that end I took my old techmarine from the 90s that still hadn’t been painted and spruced it up in new colours. The chapter as a whole is supposed to be a bit unique in its mindset compared to the Iron Hands parent chapter. Although it follows the Codex Astates, like the SW they have different ideas about how a “Company” is defined. To their mind they have a company clan (like Iron Hands). The elite are not separated from their brothers. Each company is a fighting unit that has all the tools it needs to fight independently of the main Chapter. They are secretive in terms of their interaction with the sector government and play no part in the running of the areas under which they pass. They have a very heavy interest in space hulks. They specialise in boarding operations and their strike cruisers are often sent to hunt down sightings of the derelitic ships to cleanse and recover any material of the Imperium that may be contained there in. And most importantly destroy any threat they may contain. This obviously meant I needed an opposing force as Sadhammer is my game and Genestealers are the Space Hulk badness. The Death Tempters wish to follow the path of their Primarch before he was found by the Emperor and a fearless hunter stalking the monstrous “Silver Serpent” Ferrus Manus killed in the volcano. They see the threat to the universe that space hulks represent and like the primarch they hunt down their foe with relentless determination.
Terminators, one of my favourite units of all time, are at the forefront of the boarding actions. Each company is surprisingly well equipped with Terminator armour. The Chapter has often been accused of salvaging relics of other chapters to maintain such levels. Others point to under the table dealings with the Mechanicus, depriving other Chapters of much needed replacements.
I’ve been ebay shopping for more Terminators and there is usually a squad up for sale for around £15-20 or so. £10 cheaper than a new set. Usually requires removing a bad paint job and replacing it with my own sub-par colours. I tend to go for ones that are still grey plastic or are badly painted rather than take someone’s beautiful artwork and have to remove that. It’s weird that good painting doesn’t demand a higher price. So far I’ve managed to control myself to a certain extent only buying one 6 man squad. This allowed me to get all the heavy weapon options in the 11 models I now possess.
While on ebay I also found another Devastator squad of old metal miniatures for £6 plus delivery. Very much a steal to my mind as the five man boxset new is like £25. I wanted more scouts for a kitbash project to make an Intercessor sniper for the Kill team that looked like a beast. I managed to get 15 premade ones with a red basecoat for £1 a model. But I then struggled in my mind to slice them up as I was hoping to use the spare weapons and arms from my other Scout kits to arm them differently. But the cloaks prevented that so the super long barrel on a Stalker bolt rifle is going to have to wait. I have only painted one squad so far.
When building my chapter I originally wanted to use the build your own chapter tactics. Looking at the list I’d have gone for Bolter Fusilades to re-roll 1s to hit with bolter weapons. Probably not as good as I’d hope it’ll be but a fun one to play hopefully. Those 4 shot termies punching out accurate fire shounds like something a borg would do.
I was then torn between Master Artisans (re-roll a single dice to wound or to hit). Very tasty and matches my fluff or Scions of the forge. Damage tables count as half. Would be good if I have lots of vehicles. But I don’t. If I was going that route it’d be better just to go straight up down the Iron Hands inheritors. Therefore I’ll be going for Artisans. Slightly fluffy in that they refurbish their kit and therefore know how to make a good gun.
For boarding action specialists they could have had Rapid assault (assault weapons no longer -1 when advancing). But a thats meh unless I get a lot of autobolt rifles and its not as fluffy for cyborg troopers. Likewise Warded, Stoic, Stalwart make sense being harder to kill and make run away
No comments:
Post a Comment