40k Combat Patrol Character 1 - Chief Librarian Tigurius

As an absolute sucker for the Combat Patrol magazine, I declined to opt out when Hachette warned me that they would charge an extra tenner for another delivery. 

As such, I ended up with an extra model to deal with - Chief Librarian Varro Tigurius of the Ultramarines.

In keeping with my approach to the other marines, I've gone for a "2nd-edition-inspired" colour scheme, and tried to follow the rules from the 90's Codex Ultramarines. 

For that reason, I've gone with a bright red cloak and yellow sash thing - which was listed as part of the uniform for a librarian but these days seems to have been forgotten. 

I did agonise over that for a bit, given it means he looks different to other versions of him and this is after all a specific character rather than a generic librarian, but then had the blindingly obvious revelation that it's possible that the centuries-old, very high-ranking psychic supersoldier might just possibly own more than one cloak. 

I also went for a bit of a stylistic choice on his armour - Ultramarines are generally very bright blue, and the librarians of any codex chapter are also meant to wear blue armour. I decided to make a distinction between the two - so the majority of Tigurius's armour is a darker blue to show he's a librarian, with his shoulder and kneepad in the brighter Ultramarines blue of his chapter. 

I'm really happy with how he's come out, and I really enjoyed doing this model - something with a decent amount of detail but enough freedom in how I painted it to avoid things becoming a chore!

Of course, this is currently my only Primaris Ultramarine, but the genius of choosing Genesis as my main chapter then shines through - it's entirely plausible, since Genesis's background is basically "spare Ultramarines", to justify Tigurius joining them for a mission - or even to have him come with an Ultramarines bodyguard. So maybe I'll do a few more at some point.

Anyway, the delivery was labelled "character 1", so that's ominous, and I expect Hachette will make a further move on my bank account in due course.

40k Combat Patrol Delivery 8 - Leaving on a Jet Bike

This time, I present a set of six relatively simple models that for some reason took me ages to paint.

Eldar jetbikes! 

Or, if you absolutely must, Aeldari Windriders!

For some reason, I really struggled to get going with these, so painting the first three models took a long time to do.

It was only when I realised I was half way through that I suddenly shook myself by the shoulders and did the other three in a batch really quickly, which had been the idea all along.

Anyway, not a lot to say about these. I decided to make the bikes mostly white because the green I think looks a bit streaky on large flat areas and I don't have a good non-contrast match for it yet. That lead me to inverting the colours for the riders compared to the squad of guardians I'd already done, just to break things up a bit visually. 

I did also enjoy doing the barbed vine things - I like messing with freehand anyway, but these were particularly nice as I'm going for unique, natural looking patterns, so it's much more forgiving than trying to paint something very neat.

I suppose if I was up to date, this smaller delivery would have given me time to do something else. But I'm not, so onto the next thing!

40k Combat Patrol Premium Delivery 1 - Bigger Boys

Part of my insane, money-burning approach to the 40k Combat Patrol magazine is the Premium subscription. I pay a bit more for each issue, to then get some extra deliveries with more models.

The first of these gave me extras for the Tyranids and space marines - a Hive Tyrant and a Brutalis Dreadnought.

I went for the Hive Tyrant first of all.

The approach of the publishers is to use the full kits, but without the packaging or original instructions. So, following the instructions I was given would have meant building the standard "venom cannon and lash whip" build, but there was no way that was happening...

So I had to build it with wings. 

I really like this model - I won't go through the colour scheme again as it's the same as for the other Tyranids, with maybe a bit more Absolution Green to pick out some details.

It's a satisfyingly huge model, so I assume it will never survive to turn 3 of any game.

The marines get the Brutalis Dreadnought. 

I varied this one slightly from the suggested build too, by giving it the power fists rather than lightning claws. 

Partly this was to make it a nicer fit for the 5th Edition rules (it has twin multimeltas, two power fists and two storm bolters - easy enough to count as one of each and comply with the rules).

Mostly though, I'd had the idea to put the classic black and yellow hazard stripes on the fingers and I really wanted to do that.

I did still have a problem - for 10th Edition, the twin heavy stubbers (which have another name I can't be bothered to check) are required, but there's no way to do that in 5th. Fortunately, those sit on a sort of hatch thing that will sit in place without glue, so I was able to print a set of smoke launchers to match the 5th Edition loadout.

I was particularly lucky to manage a perfect fit on the first try, so now I'm able to swap between them depending on which game I'm playing.

I will say I found this model overall to be very fiddly to paint - the sarcophagus opens, for no apparent reason, and lots of bits are visible but inaccessible on the finished model, so have to be painted before gluing everything together. 

Still, it's done now, so as long as I avoid getting another one, everything is fine!

40k Combat Patrol Delivery 7 - Guardians of Part of the Galaxy

This month's set (I can't even remember what month this was, but I'm catching up, I swear it) is all about the Eldar. Or Aeldari if you must.

I mentioned in the last post that I'd gone somewhat out of order, as I used the set of guardians to work out the paint scheme before tackling the Farseer. Here they are:

The green helmets were the most annoying part of these. That's partly my own fault - I need to find a decent non-contrast match for Speed Paint Orc Skin, as that would give me an easier way to deal with big smooth areas like these. 

Still, I'm not complaining - these are bog standard troops, and they look fine with that in mind.

Of a bit more interest was the Wraithlord, which is a model with a surprising amount of options for something apparently so simple. This led to a fair amount of agonising over the loadout, before eventually going for exactly what the magazine told me to do anyway.

I went for basically the same colour scheme on this as I did for the guardians, and it was a pretty quick paint job overall, so that's a win. More of these to come!

Those Who Fight Monsters

As a result of The Decision, I now need to start posting about games of 40k Combat Patrol, from the magazine of the same name, that I've been playing with the long-suffering Kieron.

This is almost certainly the awkward crossover point. I've not made notes about what happened or taken photos of sufficient quality, but I've committed to posting about this sort of thing and now it's going to happen. Brace yourself. 

I used the marines against Kieron with the Tyranids for these. 

Scenario 14: Monster Hunt

Following a titanic battle, the only survivors are a Tyranid Prime and a Space Marine Captain. These warriors duel in the centre of the battlefield, fighting past their limits as a second wave of reinforcements rushes into the fray to support them.

As that exciting background text lays out, this scenario had the prime and captain already in contact in the middle of the table, reinforcements for each side in a more usual deployment zone.

We were fighting over objectives, so for all that the deployment was unusual, the game itself was pretty simple. 

Immediately, the two leaders fought each other, and were both killed - we weren't actually 100% sure on who should have counted as charging when this happened, but the result seemed fair enough.

The terminator librarian and Von Ryan's leapers both went for the objective on the objective on my right flank. I didn't actually take pictures of this part but the leapers were eventually brought down by the librarian and some crossfire from the Infernus Marines. 

For their part, the Infernus squad advanced on my left, and were pounced on by two broods of termagants.

Fortunately, that didn't seem to pose them any problems whatsoever, and the marines fought their way through and held the objective with no losses.

Despite being battered by barbgaunts, the librarian likewise suffered no damage, and so held his objective to the end.

This resulted in a strong victory for the marines, and confirmation of my tactical genius.

Onto the next game then...

Scenario 15: Alpha Strike

As yet another strange alien beast is sighted among their foes, the Space Marines prepare to launch an attack to purge the xenos corruption from the planet. But whatever malign intelligence guides the Tyranids seems to have anticipated such a move...

This scenario introduces the Parasite of Mortrex, and to make it seem effective appears to give the Tyranids a bit numerical advantage. This follows a general theme of pretty one-sided games in these scenarios, but clearly that didn't apply to scenario 14, since I won.

Things opened with the marines advancing towards the objectives on the right in a confident fashion.

On the left, the librarian was immediately the target of the psychophage, which scuttled towards him very quickly...

The Von Ryan's leapers pounced on the Infernus marines on the right, and although one leaper went down, the marines didn't last long.

The psychophage closed in on the librarian, and unceremoniously ate him in short order.

The captain now stood alone and faced off against the Von Ryan's leapers.

But with his comrades down, the captain was now surrounded...

And was cut down himself in short order.

So there you go. We won one each, and both times it wasn't particularly close at any point. 

We did also do another very short game, but I'll hold onto that for next time. Exciting stuff, eh?

40k Combat Patrol Delivery 6 - Character Study

I have made A Decision. Specifically, that it's becoming unmanageable to get all of the games played that go along with each of these posts and get the photos from them together and keep track of what actually happened. This has mainly happened because I've fallen behind the pace of deliveries, but I'd like to say in mitigation that the games can be hard to organise, and that they are getting slightly more complex as we go along. 

To deal with this problem, The Decision is that I'll post about painted models related to the deliveries of the magazine, but the games will be separate posts. There'll probably be an awkward crossover while I figure that out, but hopefully this allows me to get things under control, resolve the backlog, and bring harmony to the universe. 

Anyway, this delivery was one of the more interesting ones I think, as it gave me three characters to work on, all of which are nice models in their own right, and it also started a new faction. So let's have a look at those.

First off, probably my favourite model, a space marine Chaplain on a bike.

I had some fun working out colours for this - a couple of layers of logic applied. I wanted to nod to the Genesis chapter colours I'd already established, but those are very bright, and at the same time I also wanted to play into the very dark appearance that seems appropriate for someone going about in black armour with a skull helmet.

I resolved that by using darker versions of the colours I've already used - replacing yellow with bronze, and moving to Cloudburst Blue for the weapons. 

I used the same colour for the wax seals, so that it wasn't just a sea of black, and followed the codex rules to stick with the standard red for the shoulder with the chapter icon.

Really happy with how this turned out, but so far he's yet to grace the table in 5th edition which is where he'll be killed instantly.

Next, the Tyranids are represented by the/a Parasite of Mortrex. It's "the/a" because in 5th edition, this is a special character, but in the Combat Patrol magazine these are explicitly referred to as "parasites" plural. That certainly makes more sense, and is the justification I'll be using when I field her in 5th edition games.

Nothing much to say on the paint scheme here as it's followed the pattern of the other Tyranids. This one has been on the table in 5th edition, and was of course dead before it was able to act.

Finally, the Eldar (or Aeldari if you absolutely must) get started with a Farseer. I cheated a bit here- I was behind the schedule for deliveries so took the opportunity to try out the colour scheme on some guardians from the next set before I tackled this one. 

For when I need to remember this later and can't, the paints used here were:

White armour bits - Contrast Space Wolves Grey, then drybrushed Vallejo Sky Grey followed by Warpaints Matt White

Green armour bits/weapons - Speed Paint Orc Skin

Red armour bits/weapons - Speed Paint Slaughter Red

White fabric - Contrast Apothecary White over white basecoat

Green fabric - Speed Paint Absolution Green

Gold bits - Speed Paint Aztec Gold, then Nuln Oil

Wraithbone (blade on the spear, rubble on the base) - Contrast Aggaros Dunes, then drybrushed Vallejo Sky Grey followed by Warpaints Matt White

Lenses - Contrast Blood Angels Red

Spirit Stones - Contrast Blood Angels Red, white highlight, then Blood For The Blood God, then repeat the white highlight (little bit fiddly but I like the result!)

Not all of that applies to the guardians (coming later) but it was helpful to use them to nail down the basics.

Now that I'm not posting about the games at the same time, I don't really know how to finish, so for now I'll just sort of trail away to nothing here, as I have now done.

40k Combat Patrol Subscriber Extra - Eee, that's (a) champion

This is a very short post, but hey, it all counts!

In amongst the regular Combat Patrol magazine deliveries that I'm not entirely up to date with, there are also extra "free" gifts for subscribers. Usually these are things like paintbrushes, or a delightful mug, but there was also a model to paint in the form of a Space Marine Company Champion.

Weirdly, this came with no background, rules, or painting guide - just a single page with build instructions.

So, no mission to play, meaning it's paint and post, and I feel like I'm making some more progress!

In game for me, as I'm still mostly playing 5th edition, he's useless until I prepare the rest of a command squad... but he's done, and to be fair is quite a nice model.

So there you are. Onwards and upwards!