Index Astartes: July hobby update - Sons of Orar Primaris begin.

Greetings all.

As always, it appears my plans to keep up regularly with the blog have failed. Hobby time is extremely limited between the shifts I have been working and recent holidaying but the good news is my shift are about to revert to a more civilized pattern and so I'm hoping to get on track. Not much to add from a non-marine perspective sadly. My original plan for this year was to wrap up all my imperial marine plans by end of second quarter to focus on non marine stuff the second half of the year so I could make a clean break for chaos in 2018.

Suffice to say this hasn't happened…..

To my credit I have it a damn good go though. In honesty I have found that an enjoyable hobby can sometimes turn into a chore if you set to restrictive targets, whereas having no targets to aim for at all can result in making no progress whatsoever. The past 6 months have allowed me to make great progress, but have taken away some of the enjoyment from things. Therefore more recently I have been less focused on meeting rigid deadlines and have allowed myself flexibility to just pick up a squad here, assemble some xenos there and it has made things a lot more enjoyable. However, I am drifting away from the goal somewhat so need to reestablish some focus.

I have 17 (now 18) loyalist marine armies and getting them all up to assembled, basecoated and based (rebased in most cases onto 32mm) was no small feat. As it stands, I have finished all but a few of these tasks. The main outstanding ones to me are rebasing all my salamanders (about halfway there), some centurions for imperial fists (1/6 done) and, always pushed to the bottom of the pile, finally sorting out the entire luna wolves army. These in themselves pose an interesting question - now 40k and 30k have different rule sets how would I ever run them on the tabletop? For now I'm happy to carry on as if they are 30k on the assumption they will be unlikely to ever get a game regardless.

It became apparent with the leaks that some of my squads would need a little tweaking, such as command and honour guard squads with the new changes to squad numbers and also I might swap a few scout squads around to spread the sniper love between armies. I am waiting a little longer though to see precisely what the lowdown is on things from the official marine codex. Initially I was a bit annoyed that after almost 2 years of trying to get all of the above armies to fit into the new detachments (some swapping and purchasing involved) that it's now all invalid. However, the newer way to build armies is much more flexible and allows fw units to be easily incorporated so I'm more than happy with it.

I mentioned army number 18 above. I always had a pipe dream of making a small sons of orar force to represent the forces from my one attempt at fan fiction. The arrival of primaris marines gave me 4 options:

Don't collect them (obviously never a real option)
Integrate individual units into existing armies
Start a new faction
Change my sons of orar idea into a primaris faction

As my fan fiction didn't feature primaris marines it would mean giving up on that aspect of the army build but ultimately this is what I chose to go with. As can be seen below I have made a test model and intend to gradually incorporate the new range of primaris marines into the army once I have an idea of what units will be available. I wasn't a fan of the idea of simply adding one unit per existing army as it would look a bit odd and at least this way I would have a unique army on the battlefield. The rest of the models are basecoated and ready to go and I need to settle on a basing theme also. Although I promised not to touch chaos just yet I couldn't resist assembling the death guard also and having a play with some washes.

Test model done aside from the weapon

Dark imperium sorted

A stab at plague marines

My Original Sons of Orar test model who sadly has no place in a Primaris army. Any takers?

It's been a while since I have done any decent codex reviews or tutorials. To be honest the pace of 7th was just too overwhelming to keep up with reviews in the end and, as I haven't even managed a game of 8th yet, there seems little point in me trying to review anything. I may drop a small review in once the marine codex hits but that will be more comparing old to new rather than analyzing what's best in 8th as I don't feel qualified to comment. I may do some basing tutorials as one thing rebasing all those marines has taught me is how to make a few nice lava bases.

That outlines where I am and what I'm likely to do on the blog but states very little about actual hobby intentions over the next 6 months. One thing that my relentless drive to completeness has taught me is that it's very easy for a pleasure to become a chore. I realized after a while that it had been ages since I'd actually sat down to paint a squad or individual model. Plus there's only so much basing and power armour assembly you can do before getting fed up with it. To this end I have been painting the odd squad here and there and even assembling some admech and harlequins ahead of schedule in order to stave off boredom. Therefore my hobby targets have shifted somewhat but remain overall similar. New targets to be interspersed over the next 6 months are as follows:

Finish basing salamanders
Finish assembling imperial fists centurions.
Any loose ends for marine stuff i.e. Scouts
Finish assembly and basing of luna wolves.
Continue with collecting/assembling new primaris army
Aim to paint one unit every 1-2 weeks
Assemble harlequin army
Base harlequins/dark eldar in same scheme as craftworld eldar.
Assemble admech army.
Loose ends with other Xenos bits i.e. Necron characters, phantom titan.

Now that's more than enough for a (less than) 6 month period. And this is not including the inevitable curve ball that will be thrown with new codex releases. If it's a simple matter of a new release or two accompanying a release I may use it as a reason to focus on that faction for a week. For example, the grey knight codex we know is coming (and I recently rebased and got the army up to scratch) but around its release I may use that as incentive to paint up another squad and generally give them some attention. A release like say sisters of battle on the other hand would need a change in approach…….

As for imperial guard and chaos, I am growing less enamoured with my ‘counts as’ mantic guard as time goes on and so am putting them on hold for now - no point going to a huge effort assembling them if they will ultimately be replaced. As for chaos, I intend to get the codexes and have dabbled worth the starter set death guard but ultimately am still waiting until all my other armies are where I want them before getting stuck in. Though the call is strong. (Heresy!) Below is a selection of things I have been working on the past few months. Cheers.