Blog update - very long overdue! What I have been up to the past 2 years

 

Hello everyone. I have been off the radar for almost 2 years now it appears from the date of my last post. Many a reason for this. Exams, new baby, new job, working on the house and garden, COVID etc etc. the blog(s) just fell by the wayside sadly. Hobby output is less now than previously but I’m still plodding on through the endless backlog. Sadly not gaming at present due to COVID (my last game was 8th edition). Still, today I am sitting down for a few hours and updating some things on both sites, as well as clearing out the spam comments. Hopefully this will be a more regular thing from now on but as my hobby output is less, there'll be less to share. 

It looks like the points I had got to before my hiatus was to have all the marine armies were at a good point - I had all the models I wanted base coated as a minimum. Since then the collections have migrated from the house, to the garage, to the loft. My only real updates have been to expand the primaris content of the sons of orar / deathwatch, as well as adding in the occasional unit, such as my black Templar assault terminators and a few iron hands characters. I did add a few painted items to my blood ravens and salamanders too. This has allowed me more time to focus on non marine armies for a change so be sure to check for updates on my other blog.

The sons of orar have seen some expansion with 9th edition and I am hoping to further build on this, as well as adding to the deathwatch, once the rest of the marine releases land in the not too distant future. Aside from Primaris named characters I'm not going to be expanding the existing armies, save for these two. I also need to sort some custom decals for the Sons - here are some examples of the fully painted models so far. 

Much of my hobby time the past 3 months has been taken up by a marine side project which I have now completed. I will save this for a post of its own in the near future as I';m anticipating some studio quality photos I will be able to upload. In addition I will put up a post talking about a brief youtube venture and some warhammer world trips prior to covid. For now I’ve added a compilation of hobby pics from my phone since the time I last posted. Cheers. 

Salamanders showcase and overview.

Salamanders are here! When building a themed army I usually build in restrictions depending upon what the background for the army is and what aspect of it I want to focus on. With Salamanders, therefore, I imposed a few restrictions with my army building and weapons selection. Also note that most of the bases are scratchbuilt, though painting all that lava was driving me mad so they're only about halfway painted.

For the army itself I’ve built it around a battle company with no bikes or jump pack included. There are lots of transports to aid mobility - 4 rhino/Razorback and a land raider redeemer (plus a drop pod not pictured) First company support comes in the form of sternguard and 10 assault terminators, while first company support is a mix of bolter and sniper scouts. 

I donated an ironclad to my imperial fists, leaving a standard dread and adding a leviathan. In terms of characters there is the usual selection but also including a cataphractii captain, vulkan he’stan (and Primarch Vulkan as I love the model) shen the chief apothecary, chaplain Xavier and a squad of company veterans. Lastly, air support comes in the form of a caestus assault ram. 

As you may have noticed this army lack anything that the fluff states they do not make much use of, such as bikes and anti gravs. It also leans heavily towards the use of thunder hammers, flame and melta weaponry. It is designed to be used in such a way that it is mobile with the transports, favoring close assault over ranged warfare. 

All salamanders units with chapter tactics benefit from a large amount of rerolls so it makes sense to min max and equip the squads for maximum damage output. Relic wise, one of your characters can benefit from the -+1 strength and your warlord (compulsory if Vulkan) gets +1 strength. Other things to consider are their stratagem which adds 1 to flame weapons to wound (such a shame blood angels gets heavy flamer devs and we don’t) and, the almost compulsory Vulkan in this list will grant you rerolls to hit and wound with flame and melta. 

As of yet they are untried in 8th edition. I think they will be tricky to play with the self imposed restrictions, relying on a few units to hold the backfield while the majority deep strike in or surge forwards. My friend Alex plays a very strong salamander list but it is a mixture of primaris and standard marines thar relies on a strong fire base with reroll bubbles and no unit restrictions. 

Cheers.

Air support inbound - Fire Raptor, Storm Eagle and Caestus ram

Hi Chaps,

Finally achieved dragging some of my Marine armies kicking and screaming out of 5th edition and giving them some air support recently. Keen eyes may have spotted the Raven guard Storm Eagle in my recent batrep, the Imperial Fists Fire Raptor in the army showcase and the flying bases for all 3 here. My new hobby philosophy when working on a project is to get everything as close to tabletop standard as possible before moving on to the next - this allows me not only to game with them but also to be able to revisit the army at any time and crack straight on with detail work.

The Imperial Fists got a Fire Raptor as it fits nicely with their overwhelming firepower philosophy. All the weapons are magnetised and the army painter yellow looks pretty tasty on it. The Raven Guard got the Storm Eagle as it can transport jump pack squads as well as providing some much needed heavy firepower. The cockpit window got the yellow treatment to fit with the eye lenses on the rest of the army. Lastly, the Salamanders got a Caestus ram, perfect for transporting lots of hammernators and providing a melta blast. Sadly, the caestus ram isn't actually all that good vs other flyers and so doesn't give them a great deal of AA but never mind. It looks the part. Next flyer on my hit list is a Xiphon Interceptor for my current project, the Luna Wolves. Cheers.

Hobby progress part 2/3 - Raven Guard, Salamanders and Dark Angels.

Though Ultramarines have been a key feature of my hobby revamp, they're not the only ones getting some attention of late. Here's a rundown on what's been going on with the other Chapters for now.

Salamanders:

To bring these chaps up to demi-company status they needed one thing: assault marines. Now due to the way the demi-company works, I had the choice of choosing bikes, marines or speeders to fill that role and also wanted to keep melta/flamers as the key elements. I decided against the speeder as the purist in me still remembers when salamanders shunned anti-grav. It was a close contest between the bikes and assault squad but ultimately I went with the assault marines, mainly as it meant not having to buy anything as I had 5 spare. I also magnetised their jump packs to allow them to be transport mounted also. Speaking of the transport, I had a dodgy lime green Rhino I bought second hand that needed a refurb so that also got some attention. This and reinventing the devastator squad to use the new legs and have magnetised options brought them up to speed. Plus a few random models I included pictures of as they had some treatment too. Worth a mention is the fact that I bought some base expander rings recently (they'll get their own post soon) and so I used them on the assault marines as a testbed. WIth some greenstuff it actually worked out pretty well. There are a few things still lacking in this army, most notably air support, which I hope to address sometime in the next 12 months. 

Raven Guard:

These chaps gained a few sniper scouts (RG can never have too many) from Ebay as well as donating a pair of no longer needed Land speeder storms from my Crimson Fists, all of which needed a bit of a trim and a new basecoat. Now, the Raven Guard share some generically painted rapiers with my Luna Wolves, yet they lack anyone to operate them. I therefore raided the bits box and grabbed some spare legs (mostly former members of the Salamander Devastators) in order to make 3 spotters and 3 gunners for them. This places the army only 3 things shy of being complete. The first is some Brass etch to decorate any new additions with. The second, some air support, hopefully in the form of a Storm Eagle, and lastly a 3rd Thunderfire cannon to get benefit from the squadron rule.  
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Dark Angels:

With the advent of the new Codex I found myself one Tactical squad short of a demi-company and so committed to building that final squad from a tactical box and upgrade sprue. Simple enough really, but at the same time I tried to  re-base some of the army onto 32mm and swap out weapons on a couple of veterans. Due to a gaming session we planned at Warhammer World I also painted up about 1/3 of the army to at least tabletop standard, which puts it at half done now. Not only that but a few veterans required weapons loadouts seeing to in order to make them even semi-biable on the table. It was a worthwhile deviation from the schedule I set out and the results can be seen below.