End of 2017 look back plus 2018 hobby targets

Hi everyone. 

A belated merry christmas. As per usual I thought I would post a rundown of my hobby throughout 2017 and hobby aims for next year. My aim for this year was to finally get all the marine armies finalised, make headway on the non-marine/non chaos armies I have and then start the turn to chaos in 2018. Despite a promising start I didn't quite get there. In no small part this was due to the release of Dark Imperium which threw yet another marine collection into the mix. If that wasn't enough, the new marine codex shook up the organisation of my armies and made me go back to the drawing board with some things. I have also been spending more time playing 40k with the advent of 8th. Here's a rundown of my hobby targets I hit. 

Whitescars were deemed complete fairly early in the year having been rebased onto both 32mm and oval bases for the bikes. I added a Jump lieutenant towards the end of the year and now consider them complete. Blood Ravens too were deemed complete earlier in the year but will need a brief revisits since the codex dropped, as will space wolves. We're only talking about adding a couple of infantry models so no big deal. A small aside was assembling, spraying and basing the Legion of the damned as a nice little side project. 

I finally finished my Luna Wolves army, which for me was a tremendous milestone as I never quite believed I would get there. Grey Knights also got some refinement and were brought up to standard. The Crimson fists are also now deemed complete having been slightly restructured and had time spent on basecoating the infantry to tabletop standard to go with the half of the army that is fully painted. A last minute hobby session (literally today!) also brought my Raven guard up to spec with a few characters and bases being added. 

Sons of Orar were a wishlist army based on a fanfic I wrote. When Primaris Marines dropped, I decided to keep them totally seperate from my other collections and draw a line under them. This left me with a Chapter to make fully Primaris and the Sons fit the bill. They are now complete save for a few characters I still haven't assembled which will be addressed in the new year. Sticking with red, Blood Angels were another milestone for me as they too have sat in their boxes for quite some time and desperately needed the last few models organising, building and magnetising to call them done. Now this is complete, I just want to add a land speeder storm and stormhawk to them which Claire kindly bought me for Christmas. 

So all in all a productive year. I'll be sailing into the new year by finishing up the last few models for my blood angels and then continuing to fight the good fight updating all the other armies as I go. Dark Angels will be the first on that list followed by the other in turn. Some, like the blood Ravens, require only minor attention, swapping out some scouts and adding an ancient models. Most require some form of updating to their command squads / now individual characters and having a lieutenant adding. One other thing I am trying to do starting with my marine armies is to change models that are on clear flying bases to sit on oval bases with a clear stem in the middle. Some xenos armies such as nids and eldar will be a lot of effort, but marines usually only need land speeders addressing. 

Three armies will give me a bit more of a headache and these are Salamanders, Ultramarines and Imperial fists. The Salamanders really only need the above updates but in addition still need about half their bases to be done - as these are scratchbuilt and need painting before the models are added they will take a bit of time. The Ultramarines are missing a dozen models, which were used to fill gaps in other armies, the idea being to replace them with the amazing looking Japanese exclusive models. If I ever get my hands on them that's the plan. Lastly, the Imperial Fists need a few models (command and Lt) adding as well as their land raider being refurbished to an achilles pattern and 5 centurions being put together. 

Well, that's about it for now. Undoubtedly there will be more Marine releases to come as time moves on, perhaps more Primaris and special character focussed going forward. This has been a real labour of love for me and a grand ambition that, with a lot of time, dedication, ££ and paint I have against the odds nearly brought to a conclusion. There's plenty of detail painting to be done on them in the years to come but it's extremely satisfying to know that I have the armies all converted, themed and basecoated sitting in boxes ready to game with or paint further whenever I choose.  2017 is almost over and 2018 looks set to be the year I finish all the marines armies off by halfway and branch out towards chaos marines. 

Here's wishing everyone a happy new year.  

Crimson fists army complete

Yet another army joins the ranks of the completed. The crimson fists are now represented in their entirety and have been for about a month now. I’ve been waiting to get ahold of some oval bases to post the final pics of them, having decided to put all speeders in army’s onto oval bases to fit in better. (At the bottom of the post I’ve also put a couple of white scar speeders on oval bases too)

On to the army theme. My crimson fists are post-Rynn’s world which explains the units present. I didn’t want to use any vehicles that would have been in the chapter Armoury at the time the monastery got nuked and so, for a few years after the disaster at least, kantor and co were operating with lots of elites/specialists and only orbital based vehicles, such as drop pods and flyers. The theme of the basing is a grey, rocky terrain to represent the mountains which they fought in during the campaign. 

For 8th edition I had to make a few adjustments to the line up. An apothecary was added and my 10-man Honour Guard unit was broken up and rearmed, now forming a 2 man unit, 5 vanguard, ancient, lieutenant and chapter champion. The full line up can be seen below:

Chapter master kantor

Captain Cortez

Terminator captain

Lieutenant 

Apothecary

Librarian

Chaplain

Imperial space marine

Chapter ancient

Chapter champion

10 tactical

10 tactical

5 scouts

5 scouts

10 sternguard

5 vanguard

5 terminators 

Venerable dreadnought. 

3 drop pods

3 thunder fires with tech marines 

Land speeder

Storm raven

2 stormtalons

With that the army is complete. I toyed with the idea of adding devastators but ultimately decided that tactical marines should be the only rank and file present post-disaster representing those promoted from assault/devastation squads with a smattering of newly recruited scouts thrown in. Half the army is fully painted with 1/4 base colored and the other 1/4 undercoated awaiting basecoating. Cheers. 

Space Marine codex review part 5 - Conclusions and example builds

Final part folks as promised. Phew, this has been an extensive amount of writing and there are bound to be things I've got not quite right or missed. I thought I'd round things off by talking less about content and more about the wider implications for myself personally and SM players. Also, I strung together a couple of example builds using the Gladius strike force.

Conclusions

Bottom line I guess is how will this release influence my armies which, to be honest, are already beyond the scope of reason. The honest answer is not very much TBH. To quantify this there are 3 different aspects to look at:

1. What was I trying to achieve from the armies? The honest answer is a fluffy, themed army for each, which I hope I have done as follows:

Iron Hands - lots of bionics, lots of technology and vehicles especially techmarines and vehicles.

Ultramarines - well rounded army with several special characters

Salamanders - fluffy army, no anti grav, lots of flamers, meltas and hammers

Raven guard - mostly infantry army heavy on the assault, scout and mobile artillery elements.

Whitescars - lots of bikes and fast vehicles.

Imperial Fists - probably my least themed army - comes across as more a cross between UM and salamanders.

Crimson Fists - heavily themed post-Rynn's world. No tanks, Stormwing and Elite units mainly to represent the destruction of the fortress monastary.

Black Templars - Infantry themed crusade army.

Blood Ravens - designed around the units and characters available in Dawn of War.

Heroes of badab - specifically themed to represent each faction of the Badab War with the most appropriate unit.

2. Some new kits. So I've invested in 3 new devastator kits, a new assault squad and an UM upgrade sprue. Idea being more to invest in the look of the armies (which will all need 32mm bases at some point - sigh)  than the new rules. This really is a very minor update and actually I probably spent more time pre-release giving each army a good eyeball and sorting out any modelling/basecoating issues. Ultimately I have a wishlist of about 10 things I want to add to these armies, many of which are flyer units (still not caught up with 6th edition) to bring the armies into line.

3. New rules. If I'm absolutely honest, after looking through the new book I'm not sure if/how I will use the new Gladius strike force. Firstly, only 4/10 of the armies can actually field a demi-company and I'm not willing to invest/sacrifice the theme I've developed in order to do so. Secondly, those which can field a demi-company have insufficient units to make up a Gladius, and so I'm left with either i) combining two armies under the same chapter tactics as proxies, ii) Using a Demi formation from one army and another type of formation/detachment from another or, most likely, just sticking with the plain, old, combined arms detachment. Sad really as I'd love to use the codex to its full potential but the fluff and having lots of smaller armies is more important to me so that's just the way it will be. This was the same conclusion I drew with the Eldar Codex TBH - great for power gamers who want force multipliers but not all that great for people with established armies that don't fit the format.  

Here's a few thoughts for fluffy themed armies using the Gladius strike force for the big 6 (didn't include Templars as they can't use crusader squads in the Gladius) This is really just a starting point for thoughts at 2000 points and have no upgrades unless stated and would need a bit of trimming and refining to be actually used.  Calculations are VERY approximate to save me some time!

Raven Guard:

Demi company (Shrike, 3 x tactical squads, Assault squad x5 +JPs, Devastators) 465

10th company strike force (2 x sniper scouts + cloaks, 2 x scouts + storms, scout bikes + cluster) 440

1st company task force (3 x 5 vanguard + JPs) 330

Skyhammer annihilation force (2x 5 man devs + grav cannons + DPs, 2 x 10 man assault squads + JPs) 830

Whitescars:

Battle company (Khan, Bike Chaplain, bike command squad, 6 x tactical squads in drop pods, 2 devastator squads in rhinos, 2 5 man bike squads) 1170

Stormwing 420

Librarian conclave (3 x lvl 2 on Bikes) 330

Chapter Command (Chapter master with shield eternal on bike) 185

Imperial Fists:

Demi company (Lysander, 3 x tactical squads, Assault centurions x3, Devastators) 675

1st company task force (TH/SS terminators x5,2 x sternguard x5 in drop pods) 515

Armoured task force (Techmarine, Vindicators x 3, predators x 3, whirlwinds x 3) 845

 Iron Hands:

Demi company (Bike chapter Master, 3 x tactical squads, Bike squad 5-man, Devastators, 3 venerable Dreadnoughts) 905

Armoured task force (Techmarine, Vindicators x 3, predators x 3, whirlwinds x 3) 845

Ultramarines:

Battle company (Sicarius, Chaplain,  command squad, 6 x tactical squads in drop pods, 2 devastator squads in rhinos, 2 assault squads with JPs) 1100

1st company task force (TH/SS terminators x5,2 x sternguard x5 in drop pods) 515

Chapter Command (Calgar in terminator armour) 280

Salamanders:

Demi company (Vulkan, 3 x tactical squads, Attack bikes x3 + MM, Devastators +MM, 3 Ironclad dreadnoughts) 1095

1st company strike force (2 TH/SS terminator squads, land raider redeemer, 10 man sternguard with heavy flamers in DP) 975

Before I call it a day on this behemoth of a review I'd like to touch upon past and future of non-codex Chapters, namely Blood Angels (and Wolves/GKs) and Dark Angels. Dark Angels are just around the corner and will very likely benefit from some of the perks in this book. Grav weaponry, Strike forces and formations. Dreadnought and vehicle squadrons etc. Unfortunately, Blood Angels and the others have been left behind with all of this, not having a Strike force type organisation, no dreadnought and vehicle squadrons (plus lack of 4A dreadnoughts) and many other issues. I wonder if now is the time for GW to start putting out FAQs for these guys and leveling the playing field. Anyway, that's enough for now, only time will tell. A weeks breather before Dark Angels hit. Cheers.

Space Marine Codex review part 4 - formations and detachments

Part 4 for the review will look at the formations and detachment available in the new book. It will also include the new web-only formation, which is bound to cause a stir. On a side note, this marks my 200th post on this blog since it started a few years ago. Cheers.
 

Formations

Battle demi-company:

So this formation is going to be popular for several reasons. Firstly, it forms the core of a Gladius Strike force (see later) and secondly it is probably something that a lot of marine players can / will field anyway. It consists of a core of 3 tactical squads led by a captain or chaplain (which may be one of the special characters. The other compulsory part of the formation is actually pretty flexible, allowing you to take either one unit of devastators / devastator Centurions, or one of the following: Assault squad/assault centurions/bikes/attack bikes/land speeders. Optional units are a command squad and a unit of dreadnoughts (any type).

From this, as you can probably tell, you can field a minimum of 3x5 tactical squads, a captain and say 3 devastator Centurions and a land speeder. So not much at all really, and of course the Formation can be expanded to over double that size with a reasonable amount of flexibility. The perks of the formation are twofold: EVERY unit gets objective secured and you gain the Tactical doctrine. This is cumulative if you are playing as UMs. Pretty darn good and not too restrictive. We'll come back to it when we talk about the Gladius later.

Anti-air defence force:

1 unit of Hunters and 1 of Stalkers, (with at least 2 Stalkers) that benefit from you being able to +1 BS to the Stalkers if the Hunter(s) score a hit with their Skyspear on that same unit. It really begs the question how many anti-air unit do you want/need in the game, as to maximise benefits you'd need 3 of each to gain their squadron perks too. Reeks of total overkill TBH and so not so sure it'll be popular.

1st Company Strike Force:

3-5 units of any of the 4 Veteran options in any combination. They all gain fear and fearless, as well as giving -2 Ld to enemy units in 12" of at least 3 of the units and also gaining preferred enemy against a pre-selected unit that's classed as an extremis level threat. TBH if you're running 3 Veteran squads of any of these types in your list you may as well group them together like this and benefit from the formation.

Strike Force Ultra:

Same as the boxed set, this is the ultimate first company badass formation. A Terminator Captain (or Lysander), 2 of each terminator squad, a Stormraven, a Land raider crusader/redeemer and a venerable dreadnought. The units must be either in a transport or deep strike reserve. Special rules are reasonable, in that you roll for reserves from turn 1, and add +1 to the number or shots / attacks that the terminators / terminator assault squads get on the turn they disembark from the vehicles. Considering the composition of the formation and the perks other formations get this one is pretty mediocre TBH.

Reclusiam Command Squad:

 

Again, another straight from the box formation - a Chaplain, command squad and razorback. This one grants Crusader and all units within 6" of the formation may reroll failed to hits in the first round of an assault. So effectively it grants zealot to all nearby units, but the Chaplain may not leave the command squad.

10th Company Task Force:

3-5 scouts / scout bikes and an optional Sergeant Telion. All bikes must have cluster mines and the following perks apply. All units have precision shots in the first turn and all infiltrators have stealth until they have moved in some way. Fairly decent, especially in combination with Raven Guard (how fortunate I have shedloads of scouts in my RG army).

Storm Wing:

Same as before, the Stormwing is a Stormraven with 2 Talons escorting. So long as at least 1 Talon is alive the Raven gets strafing run and also they all arrive as a single formation on one reserve roll. I like this formation and already use it for my Crimson Fists.

Centurion siegebreaker cohort:

2-4 Centurion assault squads and a unit of Ironclad Dreadnoughts. Man, this thing looks menacing, but actually the rules aren't too scary. Would be fluffy for Imperial Fists though. Both special rules relate to building, one allows omniscope equipped units to reroll penetration rolls against buildings, where the other adds 2D6 S6AP4 wounds to any building/vehicle occupants if a model from this formation strips their last hull point in the assault phase. This formation seems born for Imperial Fists TBH and the idea of 3 Ironclads stomping towards you is scary enough. 

Land Raider Spearhead:

This is 3 land raiders of any type, which ignore ALL damage table results (except explodes) when within 6" of another raider and reroll to wound/pen Vs super heavies/gargantuans/mighty bulwarks. Pretty darn nasty!

Librarius Conclave:

There's always one formation that is a head-scratcher, and this is the SM one. 3-5 Librarians (including Tigurius if you like) which gain the following. One nominated Librarian gets access to all the others powers at the start of the psychic phase if they are within 12". When he then makes psychic tests, he harnesses on a 3+ if one other Librarian is in 12" or 2+ if two or more are. Talk about psychic supremacy! The other Librarians are unable to manifest powers until the end of that phase (not that it matters) but imagine putting this on Tigurius (with his ability to re-roll failed psychic tests) with 2-3 pals to accompany him. Nasty indeed.

Armoured Task force:

A Techmarine accompanied by 0-3 Thunderfire units, 3-5 vehicle squadrons (Preds/Vindis/Whirlies) and Chronus if you like. All vehicles ignore crew shaken/stunned if within 6" of a Techmarine/gunner and also the Techmarines/Gunners get +1 to BotO rolls. Not that amazing TBH bu tthe only way to get tanks into a Gladius as below.

Supression force:

Lastly, this blast from the past pairs 2-3 Whirlwinds with 1-3 Land speeders. If one of the speeders nominates a unit within 18" and didn't move flat out, the Whirlwinds can now reroll to hit against that unit and have infinite range. Would be good if you used it in conjunction with the 3 Whirlwind perk and kept the Whirlwinds out of sight. More of an apocalypse type unit TBH but nice to see it featured. 

Gladius Strike Force

Last but not least, the Gladius Strike force. This is the SM equivalent to the Necron Decurion. This takes a little bit to get you head around so bear with me. Almost everything contained within it makes reference to the formations I've just described - it is a 'formation of formations' if you like with cumulative perks. Every unit must come from the same Chapter. A Gladius allows each doctrine to be enacted once per game, which is cumulative, so if you are playing as UMs then you would have 2 devastator, 2 assault and 3 tactical doctrines (as you get one for the demi-company, which is the core of a Gladius). All units in the Strike force are affected if they have Chapter tactics.

Speaking of the core choices, you must take 1-2 Demi-companies. If you take a second, you end up with a company and must take the Captain and Chaplain. Here's the big one - a battle company in a Gladius gets access to FREE drop pods/rhinos/razorbacks. Yep, absolutely free, though upgrades are bought as normal. We then move on to the optional Command choices, of which you may take up to 3 in any combo. First and second up are the Librarius conclave formation and Reclusiam command squad as above. Finally, Chapter command is 1 Captain/Chaplain/Chapter Master from the regulars and Special Characters (including Calgar). Each of the following are 0-1 in this choice: Honour Guard, command squad and Emperor's Champion.  

Lastly we come to the auxiliary choices, which are 1+ and are effectively all the other Formations above not already mentioned, the exception being strike force Ultra which is not included. (also note LotD are not to be seen) So, on the one hand we have the incredibly powerful demi-company side of things (and the command choices), and on the other the less flexible auxiliaries of which one must be taken. Some of those could be quite desirable in their minimal format, such as the Armoured, 1st and 10th company task forces (and Stormwing), but the others not so much. Personally I find the Strike force too restrictive for the armies I have, all of which would require me to drop certain units and add others in order to be able to use the Gladius even in minimal format.

Skyhammer annihilation force

The web exclusive formation has pretty much been leaked at this point so it's worth discussing here also, especially as it's so ridiculous. It consists of two assault squads equipped with jump packs and two devastator squads with drop pods. All units must start the game in deep strike reserve and choose to ALL arrive in turn one or two (a la Deathwing). They arrive automatically - no reserve rolling. So far, pretty reasonable right. Now it gets a bit silly.

Devastators, on the turn they arrive, all get relentless. Yep, that's right. You can reliably drop in your grav/muli-melta/plasma cannon boys in min squads, when and where you want, then shoot without penalty. Not enough? Of course not. All the squads they target in any shooting phase also have to take a morale checks on 3D6 regardless of how many casualties were inflicted. Fail and they go to ground. Pass and they can't fire overwatch. I mean wow, talk about screwed either way right. Never mind though, at least the assault squads don't get any perks....

....Except they do. They can charge the turn they arrive. Yep, old deep strike assault is back.  Not enough? No, of course not. They can use their jump packs in both movement and assault phases plus if they charge a unit that has gone to ground due to the devastators rule above then they can reroll to hit and wound in that assault phase. I mean, just wow. I'm not even going to attempt to analyse the benefits of this formation (yes, they get their Chapter tactics etc too) so I'll just leave it at that.

That's it for today. Tomorrow the 5th and final part of the review will draw some conclusions and also put together some example themed/powerful army lists. Cheers.