Scout Movements

I'm continuing my current interest in 40k, and continuing to insist that 5th edition is the main one that counts.

A standard mission in 5th edition requires at least two Troops choices, which the space marines I've been collecting through the Combat Patrol magazine don't form a legal force by themselves. 

Bastards.

To correct this clear error, I needed a simple Troops choice. Enter the scouts!

These were an eBay find at about a tenner, which for some reason included one model that was magnetised at the waist. They're older models and much smaller than the primaris models that form the rest of the army, but I'm fine with this - background wise, the scouts are newly-created marines so I'm happy with them not having fully bulked out yet.

Since they have sniper rifles and camo cloaks, having these guys in bright red armour with bright blue weapons didn't seem quite right, so I went for more muted colours based on the army scheme (having looked through the Insignium Astartes to check that this was allowed, because non-sanctioned colours on my toy soldiers would be unforgivable). 

So I matched up in a way that made sense to me:

Red = Brown (Speed Paint Hardened Leather)

Blue = Grey (Speed Paint Runic Grey)

Yellow = Beige (Contrast Skeleton Horde)

Metal = Dark Grey (Constrast Basilicanum Grey)

I used Speed Paint Sand Golem for the camo cloaks and non-armoured bits of uniform, drybrushed with Vallejo US Field Drab to match the bases.

I also wanted to try a low-contrast version of the chapter icons and squad markings - reasoning that a flash of white on each shoulder would probably somewhat undermine the other camo efforts.

I went for Vallejo German Grey and Vallejo Iraqui Sand to replace the black and white parts respectively. I also finally went for the freehand version of the chapter icon that I had in mind when I picked Genesis in the first place.

So there we go, I now have a legal, if unbalanced, space marine force. I look forward to having it completely wiped off the table at some point soon.

A Litany of Excuses

In my last post, I owned up to being behind with my efforts to paint all the models in the Combat Patrols magazine series as they arrive. Now, I'll belatedly make the case for my own defence.

Essentially, it's that I was painting other 40k stuff, in order to use it playing 5th Edition 40k Apocalypse, as we'd planned for our big Christmas game (which, it turned out, was festively delayed due to snow). 

So, to save some amount of face, here are some pictures of those things. It occurs to me that many of them have been sat around in pile of shame for close to two decades, so finally painting some of them is cause for celebration, even as it distracted me from painting new stuff. So that's something.

Inquisitor and retinue! Painting these was entirely critical, as it allowed me to include a land raider as a transport, and I definitely wanted that to happen.

Servitors! I think these are probably the oldest sculpts I've painted for a very long time - I'm reasonably sure they appear in the 2nd edition books somewhere, although I can't be bothered to check. In any case, they are still very nice models, and sit there shaming me for not having painted a tech priest to go with them. In the Apocalypse game they filled out the crew for an artillery platform.

A Valkyrie! When these first came out, I knew immediately had to have one, I think they're great models. I even went so far as to wire it up to have LEDs on the wings, but then, unaccountably, never finished painting it. 

Even more unaccountably, when I came back to it I decided I wanted to go for a dark "special forces helicopter" scheme rather than the light grey "fighter jet" version I'd previously started. I also ripped out the wiring and LEDs as on second look the wires were far, far too obvious. I suspect it won't be my last ever go with lighting though, because I'm a glutton for punishment.

Having used this in two games now, I can say that the model is much more imposing than its stats in the game would suggest, so there's a definite psychological advantage to having it too. 

Speaking of which...

Assassins! 

Since Apocalypse allows you to ignore army selection restrictions, you can also ignore the "0-1 Assassins" rule, and therefore field them from all four temples. 

Maths fans will have spotted only three in the photo, which is because I also had an Eversor Assassin painted, so he isn't new and doesn't qualify for a picture here. Also, he doesn't look great, so he might get a repaint at some point.

I've run out of things to say about these, but there was another photo, hence this sentence. 

Grenade launcher Arbitrator fella! This guy actually didn't make it into the Apocalypse game, but I painted him, so here you are.

And yet, here's something that did make it in. Apocalypse practically requires super-heavy tanks, so here's mine, the technically super-heavy Malcador!

Mostly, what this did was trundle about slowly and miss things, but it's a satisfying chunk of tank to plonk on the table, so that's nice.

In my head this is associated with my Praetorians. Does that matter? No. But I've told you anyway. Main paint colour for this was Vallejo Green Brown, a piece of information that I'll find useful should I add another at any point.

It's a big boy. Have a look at it next to some Leman Russ tanks for scale:

In fact, have a look at the Leman Russes on their own!

I'm not sure I'd say these are technically "done" but they're "done for now" so that'll do. They were both painted very poorly in the distant past, so I stripped them and gave them a very quick paint job. It doesn't match the Malcador because I want these to be associated with my Cadians... which also desperately need repainting but that hasn't happened yet.

But here's something that did happen! The Apocalypse game itself. I didn't take enough photos to talk through the game itself, but there were lots of models on the table, which is nice.

Statistically, if you're reading this,
you're probably in this photo.

And finally! To go with the Genesis marines I've been painting from the Combat Patrol magazines, I've painted a few more intercessors to edge them towards having enough troops choices to be legal in 5th edition. Not there yet, but it's getting closer...

40k Combat Patrol Delivery 3 - Invisible Touch

Ok, so things haven't stayed fully to the plan.

I was supposed to be painting each delivery from the Combat Patrol magazines, then getting in the games from the magazine, and posting here about it all before the next delivery arrived.

I realised that if I just use the Combat Patrol
logo every time, I can't tell the posts apart,
so now there's a photo of a model here first.

This has... not come to pass.

However, it's not all bad. Although posts here haven't been up to date, I have been painting things a little faster than that. I'm not quite up to where I should be, but I think it's possible to catch up, so I'll just keep at it, post here as fast as I can, and see whether I can manage it. 

So, here we go then. Issues 7, 8, 9 & 10.

I used this photo on the previous post
by mistake, and no one, including me,
noticed. This might suggest that
these photos are pointless,
but I've taken them, so meh.

This set includes the first "big" squad, in the form of 10 termagants, and the sprues there also make a ripper swarm base. I used the paint scheme I'd already started for these, which kept the painting time very short. 

Scuttle, scuttle

Nice as it is to have these, I already had a decent number of termagants anyway. So, this makes my Tyranid army a little bit bigger, and it's nice that other than the inevitable scale creep, these models don't look out of place among the older stuff I already own. 

More visually interesting was the terminator librarian. 

Yep, this photo again. I didn't think this through.

I quite enjoyed painting this guy. I was still trying to keep things quick so he's almost entirely done in contrast paints (his armour is Ultramarines Blue to keep him codex-compliant) with some blue ink over silver on his shoulders. The runes I picked out in white and then drybrushed on some sky blue - just enough to give them a bit of a glow. 

Wouldn't be 40k without an obviously
oversized close combat weapon

Models done, it was time to sort the games... but that didn't happen until embarrassingly recently.

Not so recently though that I can actually remember what happened (I was using the marines with Kieron again taking the Tyranids, I think I lost the final game), so here's a set of photos of... something happening.

Marines engaging in a confident fashion

Some sort of standoff

Ah.

Something of an issue for the librarian

Starting to look like an actual game of something

The takeaway from all of this is that even though I'm definitely still more onboard with using the models for older editions (2nd and 5th, until we decide randomly to do something else), I don't actually hate the 10th edition Combat Patrol rules. They are definitely more abstract, but it will let me use the new stuff without proxying as something else. Can't see me buying anything specifically for it, but since in Combat Patrol the forces are set anyway, that's not an issue. 

So, I'm now somewhat less behind than I was! More to come, as I catch up even further. Optimism!

40k Combat Patrol Delivery 2 - Problems Take Root

I'm going to say right off the bat, I'm still on track here, and everything is fine.

My goal was to keep on top of the arrivals in the post, now that I have a subscription to the 40k Combat Patrol magazine. This means painting 4 weeks' worth of models in 4 weeks, before the next delivery arrives. I'll keep posting them here, and also working through the missions in the magazines to possibly learn how to play 10th edition, or more likely get a few missions through and start complaining bitterly about 10th edition.

Anyway, things were going fine - I got everything painted with what I thought was a few days to spare, only for the next delivery to arrive about 12 hours later. Unfortunately, at this point, real life happened and I've struggled to get the games in and write a blog post about it.

As you can see, that's now rectified, the post is written, there are photos and everything.

I won't say much about these, since I laid out the colour scheme in the last post and this is more of the same, really. What I will say is that given my intention to use the models chiefly for 5th edition 40k, this is the least useful delivery I can expect, until we reach the Leagues of Votann somewhere down the line.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Here's the delivery, first of all. 

Stuff

For the Tyranids, we get 5 barbgaunts. These don't have an equivalent in 5th edition, but given their general feel and size, I think I'm most likely to proxy them as pyrovores, if I use them at all. I don't hate the models, but they are a bit different from anything in the 5th edition lists and so that's probably my best bet.

The marines get an Infernus squad, which was followed in the next issue by an alternative sergeant. This is apparently a model unique to the magazine, but seems a bit daft since they literally tell you to swap it out for the sergeant that came with the squad. If I was really getting these as my first ever models, I'd probably be a bit miffed about that. 

As it is, I figured that the basic sergeant, drawing a combat knife and holding a bolt pistol, seems a lot more "sergeanty", so I did a little bit of kitbashing (which these sprues really don't allow for much) and used extra "sergeant" bits on him and turned the unique fella into a standard marine. 

This is a sergeant!

This isn't!

One thing I will say here - I've never been a fan of sculpted flames. There's been a real trend for it from GW for a while now but even brilliant painters don't seem to be able to make them look realistic, presumably because a model has to be more "solid" than flames really are. But since we're stuck with them on the tactical Tyranid head on this model, I found a tutorial and while I still don't think they look very flame-like, they do at least give some idea of being bright. 

They're also out of focus. Whoops.

This left me with a spare marine with a flamer, so he got a tactical squad badge and will join a squad as soon as I get some more marines painted. 

Models done, let's have a look at the games...

Just like last time, Kieron took control of the Tyranids for these. To start with this didn't mean a great deal as in effect the Tyranids were scenery, represented by some cards for "infestation sites" that came with the magazine. 

Action!

Somehow, the imperial forces prevailed against largely inanimate enemies.

Things escalated slightly with some more combat...

Technically this is the wrong
Tyranid, but it doesn't really matter.

and then culminated in a scenario where the Infernus squad, now out of ammo, was meant to just escape while under fire from barbgaunts. This didn't go so well for the Emperor's finest - the whole squad were cut down, the sergeant succumbing within touching distance of his objective. 

"Quickly, brothers!
We must rejoin the main force!"

The whittling begins with the first barrage

Cue mournful classical music

Nooooooooooooooo!

Sadly, this ruins my unbeaten record at 10th edition 40k, and I'm now at a paltry 87.5% win rate.

Still, that's delivery 2 dealt with. I've now somewhat lost track of when I received delivery 3, but I'm motoring through, so another post for that should show up soon. I bet you can't wait.