Black Templar Review and Death Company Progress

Hello again readers, I'm actually updating on a Sunday for once! Lets hope this is a regular occurrence from now on.

Today I'm going to go over the new Black Templars as seen in the new Space Marine codex released yesterday! I have the ebook addition as I am an eager beaver and downloaded it as soon as it became available and I have ebooks on both my phone and tablet so it works out pretty well. In general the book is very nice looking as we have come to expect with GW's recent releases but I shan't dither on that today, lets get right to the meat of the topic, the Templars!

Black Templars - Chapter Tactics

Now there are 3 of these and 2 of them are essentially unchanged from the previous codex with one lost and one gained. Previously we had:

Accept any Challenge, No Matter the Odds - re-roll failed hits and gain rending in challenges (REMOVED)

Crusaders - gain crusader and adamantium will rules (KEPT)

And a separate rule outside of chapter tactics was the inability to take Librarian (damn witches!)

I am sad to see the loss of Accept any challenge.. it was nice and fluffy but was very situational and my sword brothers usually got smushed anyway :(

Now what do we have from the new Chapter tactics? We have:

Holy Crusaders - exactly the same as the previous crusaders rule

Lost Librarium - No librarian allowed - just rolled into CTs

Righteous Zeal - casualties sustained in the shooting phase or during overwatch grant the squad the Rage and Counter-Attack special rules (NICE!)

I think this is an overall gain for the Black Templars as with a 20 man blob squad of crusaders your are unlikely to lose all of your models in the shooting and if you are assaulted you have a good chance of putting wounds on the enemy with the additional attacks from counter attack and having 2 x CCW. A 20 man squad at half strength after shooting being charged still puts out 30 attacks! That is awesome sauce. Not only does this work well in combat I feel the knowledge of this will make people sit back and just shoot them even more so than usual, this has implications with board control and manoeuvring your enemy with threat bubbles. Stuff I know about but never really put into practise....

White Dwarf Exclusive Black Templar Warlord Traits

1: Masterful Swordfighter: +1 to WS and Attacks of the Warlord

2: Furious Rage: If the unit the Warlord is in fails Morale Test in the Psychic or Shooting Phase, it does not fall but, but moves 2D6 inches towards the next enemy unit.

3: Loathe the Witch: The Warlord has Hated (Psyker) and Preferred Enemy (Psyker)

4: Honour requires Battle: You can re-roll failed Attack rolls for the Warlord and his unit

5: Loyal to the Oath: The Warlord gets Fearless. Additionally re-rolls failed rolls to hit in Challenges.

6: Iron Resolve: The Warlord and every friendly Unit in 12” around him re-roll failed Morale, Pinning and Fear-tests

I bloody love these! They are characterful and great for individual characters but also buff the Warlords units nicely. They aren't the most competitive if you're going for tournament level but for regular games where you still want to win they will hold their own nicely!

Black Templar Special Characters

Lets start with Helbrecht shall we. Sadly he is almost virtually unchanged. His warlord trait now grant Furious Charge to him and his squad all game which is a nice minor buff, but for a space crusade borne chapter master he still lacks an Orbital Bombardment which makes no sense whatsoever. I will still pick him up as he is an awesome fluffy character with some good rules but I wish he had a little more punch about him in close combat to be honest.

On to Grimaldus now. His is now 150 pts. That is a whopping 35pt drop! His rules remain largely unchanged, but I now have great incentive to use his awesome model (after I paint it.. cough) as it makes him so much more affordable. His warlord trait Rite of War also now grants his leadership to all models in his detachment whilst he lives, its no longer limited to a 12" bubble, great news! His cenobyte servitors have got more expensive but still grant FNP to units within 6" of one of them. Whilst this sounds good, I always have preferred putting him in a unit to protect his squishy 3+/4++ myself. But I can see use being had out of Grimaldus at the centre of 5 Servitors flanked by 2/3 20 man crusade squads in a true black tide!

Finally, but my no means least, The Emperor's Champion! This fella remains the same points value as before but is infinitely better now I think. Instead of choosing between a stance that grants Instant death rule on a 6 or a stance that grants +2 strength but unwieldy The Emperor's Champion now has re-roll failed to hit rolls AND Instant death on a to wound roll of a 6 AND +2 strength (so strength 6) AP2 goodness AT INITIATIVE! Oh and the sword is mastercrafted... The only thing keeping him from being an absolute monster is his 2 wounds, but any more and he would need a good points hike or be OP I feel. 

Overall The Emperor's Champion is the best of the three for character and values for points, followed by Grimaldus and then Helbrecht, who while fairly fluffy doesn't fulfil his points cost compared to a standard Chapter master with the Shield Eternal and Burning Blade and getting Orbital Bombardment, a real lost opportunity with him personally (Oh Holy Orb of Antioch where art thou!).

Crusade squads and conclusions for my Army

Crusade squads are exactly the same, no change there at all, nope... Wait, whats that? Neophytes (or scouts as lesser chapters call them for some reason) now have a marines stat line with a 4+ save!? This is brilliant for Crusade squads, we alone can now have a 20 man squad that pours out up to 20 bolt pistol shots hitting on 3's and on the charge at full strength this squad will put out 60+ attacks hitting on 4's most of the time. The Black Tide lives!! As I have said earlier this coupled with Chaplain Feel No Pain Grimaldus would be a nightmare to face (unless you're a wraithknight but yeah, who do you struggle against!?)

I will be taking 2 of these 20 man squads all with bolt pistol and CCW set up I think, and I have plans for a 10 man squad of 5 initiates (2 x CCW) and 5 neophytes with shotguns in a drop pod for funsies.

Other than reinforcing how I would play my army anyway and making me overjoyed to run my Emperor's Champion even more so than I was already not much as changed for my Black Templars. I will happily take the Black Templar Specific traits as they are fantastically fluffy and a lot of them will buff The Champion (I'm looking at you +1 WS and +1A), or are great unit multipliers so would be great for a character in a black tide crusader squad high tailing it at the enemy to bash their heathen skulls in!!

Other stuff

Right after that wall of text here are some pictures of my Death Company as they come along and also a little chat about paint brushes right at the end (If you aren't already sick of reading!!)

So here is my death company at the moment after almost all base coats, there are some blue gems that I will leave till the end and I am leaving the eyes till everything else is done. I plan on trying a dark blue highlight for the armour and seeing how that turns out.

And finally brushes! I have been after new brushes for a while and I have been pestered a few times by Nathaniel at objectivesecured and Nick at theburningeye about buying Windsor Newton series 7 brushes. I bought a very fine, fine and a medium/large brush today for about £25 and I am very pleased with the results. I used the two smaller ones for putting all the paint onto the death company an it was a wonder to not have to fight the paint and it really follow your direction. On the flip side I can't blame mistake I made on these models on the brushes any more.... Would thoroughly recommend these brushes to anyone else looking to upgrade! I also went the whole hog and bought brush cleaner to boot!

Anyway, thanks for making it through the wall of text if you did and see you again soon!

Peace out

Rob

Blood Angel Progress

Hello dear readers!

I have some Blood Angel progress to share with you today including a little group shot of my growing painted force. This will be a short post, but I have booked this Sunday off from friends family and the girlfriend specifically so I can review the rules in the new Space Marines Code that are pertinent to the Black Templars which by now we know are still included! And the rumours all indicate we have received a nice boost, but I shall go into that in more detail when on Sunday when I have the facts in my hands.

For now I will show you my progress on Captain Karlaen. The last picture I put up was the good Captain in the latter stages of basecoating:

And he looked like this last night:

And now the dapper fellow looks like this:

I am relatively pleased with how he has come out, but once again I look at him and I see so much that I wish was better. The face is better than I expected but still seems very flat and I am also surprised how not unhappy I am with the cloak as I expected to really really struggle with that. All in all a not too shabby average job on him. Still hoping to make marked improvements as I move forward, but part of that will be dedicating more time and certainly patience to the hobby.

I have become a little tired of painting red for the moment so I decided to have a go at painting Raphen's Death Company which I have made up. When I painted my Templars I ran their black by line highlighting but I was not very good at it, so on the Death Company I decided to try dry brushing with Dawnstone with the following (poorly photographed) result:

I am relatively happy with the effect actually and it was nice to just do some heavy drybrushing to be quite honest. I am looking forward to putting some colour on these guys on Sunday as well as writing my review of the Black Templars.

Finally here are a couple of group shots of what I have painted so far. My main gripe with this group is the whiteness of the Hammernators but I am reluctant to go over it as I have already done so several times and I feel the detail is just about on the edge of being lost so I think I will just put up with it:

Righto that it for today! I still have plenty of stuff to paint in the months to come of both Templar and Angel Variety so hopefully you'll keep with me!

Peace out,

Rob

Musings + Finished Dreadnought (mostly) and WIP Captain Karlaen

An early post for me this week as I will be off up north at the weekend for a family reunion. As nice as it will be I really want a weekend where I can sit down and just crack on with my hobby for a solid two days. I'm determined to make some serious headway into my Blood Angels over the coming couple of months and hopefully finish off some Black Templars Vanguard.

With regards to my Blood Angels, I now have 5 Hammernators and a Furioso Dreadnought finished and Captain Karlaen on the go as you will see below. This leaves a lot to do! I have 2 drop pods to finish filing ready for an undercoat, I have 5 lightning claw terminators ready for a lick of paint that I am hoping to start on Tuesday depending on my train times and then I have a librarian in terminator armour that needs undercoating and also Raphens Death Company. Thats all the built stuff... but I still have 10 sternguard veterans, 10 vanguard veterans and 10 blood angel tactical marines that need building! I need to pick up 32mm bases for the veterans as I want them to match the other power armoured infantry in the army.

Primarily my blood angels will be set up around the archangels strike force which allows 2 HQ in terminator armour and then a crap load of elite choices! These guys can re-roll reserve rolls in this formation (and possibly again if Captain Karlaens ability stacks with that? Anyone know?) and they are a fun fluffy way to field expensive units that will probably get destroyed post-haste! 

Raphens Death Company and the tactical squad are there to give me the option of utilising a CAD if I so wish. I also have 20 old metal scouts that are awaiting stripping before painting, originally these were going to form the neophytes for my fluffy templars list so I could have a black/red tide of 40 marines plus neophytes storming towards the enemy as the emperors champion rocks up in his crusader with a terminator squad. Lovely stuff. However I am going to hang fire on getting started on these because of the rumours surrounding the Black Templars being squatted from the vanilla marine codex, I'm hoping they are still there but if not I will make a nice scout heavy force for my Blood Angels so all is not lost.

I'm hoping to make it to two other tournaments this year with Fluffageddon going on in September and Blog Wars 10 happening in November (here is a link to Blog Wars 9 if you are interested). Both of these are happening at the Stockport Gaming Centre that I have heard a lot about but have never been so the prospect of a couple of weekend of good gaming here really excites me. If anyone in the south west would like to attend and provide a car share to save me an exorbitant train fare as well as have half your petrol paid, do drop me a line :).

Anyway that is enough of my ramblings for this week. Here is pictures of the mostly finished Dreadnought, I noticed there is some grey under one of the arms that needs touching up and when I get confident enough I would like to add battle damage to him (as well as to the termies already painted)

And here is the colour blocking mostly done on Captain Karlaen, his rules are OK but he very nicely fills the special character fulfillment for Blog Wars should I choose to take Blood Angels and he fulfills the terminator HQ for the Archangel formation so he's handy in that sense!

Obviously a long way to go with him, I've been sloppy and spilt blue all over the place gah! I need to finish blocking out the blue, overlay the brown with auric armour gold and then the model will be liberally washed with sepia/agrax in varying measures.

Any thoughts, comments and criticisms (if constructive) are always welcome :)

Peace out

Rob

WIP - Blood Angels Dreadnought

Just a quick post from work today with some picture I took last night as my girlfriend watched Wallace and Gromit The Wrong Trousers (the best by any measure of the films :p). I had done very little hobby stiff beyond planning and buying over the past month or so, after a very productive April so I decided to just jump in and get started. Thankfully the bug took over and I made good progress on my Blood Angels Dreadnought to go with the Termies.

Pics are below:

Obviously quite a bit of work left to do on this fella. Need to first and second highlight the blue and greens (also realised I missed a few of the green areas off on the first run through), need to highlight the red, give the grey areas a very thin coat of white, add some small gold detailing around some of the blue gems and ammo feed for the frag cannon, the black needs highlighting. the scroll work and bones need a wash and highlighting and the gold needs silver highlights. After that all the rivets need picking out. And the base of course!

After all that, once I have a technique that I'm confident with then I will have a stab at weathering as well.

I'm hoping to get the majority of this done tonight so hopefully some pictures soon, especially as I am away again this weekend so free hobby time is still at a damn premium! After this chap is finished I think I will put some paint on to either Captain Karlaen or my Blood Angel Librarian. This would give me a valid (if pretty tactically rubbish) Archangel Strike Force to ally in to my Templars which is nice!

Peace out

Rob

Mars Mania and the Templar Lament

Hello dear readers! (All 5 of you!) I have been having the usual real life problems getting in the way of my hobbying lately. I have spent a couple of weeks in Hong Kong with work though so I shan't complain too much.

Obviously this means I will have done very little hobbying. So this post will just lay out some of my new purchases and my plans with them and I will also muse a little bit on some of the releases coming out and how this effects my collections and plans with the armies going forward.

Adeptus Mechanicus

Anyone reading a blog about 40k will obviously be aware of the new kids on the block, all the way from the mean streets of Mars. Now I was pretty iffy when the Skitarii came out, and I still feel as a release that they feel terrible incomplete, in a way that the Harlequin codex never did. Yes the price point was lower, but in the same way that a motorbike costs less than a car, its because you get less wheels!! (But you look oh so much cooler...). 

However, the release of the mechanicus proper as it were has me pretty happy, and I cannot wait to download my ebook on release day. I have the Horus Heresy Book 3 rules for the Omnissiah army in 30k and I'm looking forward to designing some conversions that mean my models can bridge both codices and rulesets. 

I have been bigging myself up for some time now to develop an entirely converted entirely none GW army and the time has finally come. The mechanicum will be that army. This is in many way an odd choice as the models across all ranges are simply beautiful, however, I feel that given their multitudinous aesthetic and style it is an army that will led itself to my meagre skill set conversion wise.

I plan to design an explorator/tech heretek style force, that will be big on weird and creepy with mixed mechanics within it. I have two 15mm dreamforge mortis walkers on there way to me, these will most likely end up as Thanatar stand ins and thus be unlikely to make it into the 40k list. I also have some spider walkers from Robogear on there way which were a steal at 3 quid a pop! The legs for these walkers will be attached to ogre bodies to make some grotesque walker flesh fusion automaton that will stand in for Castellax/Kastellan and possibly a Kataphron if I go crazy with the magnets. For my bog standard rank and file I have ordered some covenant of Antarctica automata from dysopian legions at spartan games. These 32mm beasties are bigger than the usual tech thrall but that will add to their cold menace hopefully. 60 of those!!! These should be able to pass as skitarii in a bind.

Thats the ordered parts so far, so hopefully as I get distracted and excited pictures will pop up. I have the age old problem of not fixing myself to a project at once...

Space Marines

So they are coming. I have mixed feelings about the timing. I sincerely believe that vanilla marines should be done first and then all other codices stem from that release. As it is we have space wolves and blood angels (as well as grey knights) possibly left out of the loop of some changes that may occur. We may not have that but I fear for the worst. What will happen with Dark Angels will be very interesting to see where the balance of power lies.

The rumour mill is a cruel mistress and for every faction she promises to bring with the other hand she snatches away your first love. Will my beloved Black Templars still be in the codex? I dread to think, as I struggle to really see the Templars coming back as their own stand alone codex. If they are expunged from the codex and no independent rules are forthcoming I will be sad to say but I will sell my army, I have no desire to play my templars with vanilla rules. I love them for their run headlong to smash the enemy in the face attitude (might be way I collect blood angels too...) and none of the other 40k chapters that I don't already have really interest me sadly.

General Hobby

I desperately need some new brushes so they will be a quick purchase in the future, I am interested to try the new Citadel brushes as some of them look they might have really got it right for once, but I will have to have a feel up close before making my mind. GW have in general been heading in the right direction I feel with their releases in the past year, with fan favourites, new cases and functional brushes plugging genuine holes in their line rather than questionable money grab releases.

Other than that I am desperate to get a big chunk of models painted, they are mocking me on my shelves but I have a terribly hectic couple of months coming up so I would suggest that a model or two a week to completion would be a good aim for me to have. It will be sometime till I can churn out some decent sized units in a reasonable time frame sadly.

But, I do hope those of you who do read my blog and humour my paint sploshed bits of plastic will stick with me and I hope to get more people interested in my stuff and chatting away.

Peace out

Rob

PS if anyone has any good guides to blogger and setting it up for a 40k style blog I would really appreciate some links! Leave in a comment or email me :) ta!

Blood Angel Terminators and weathering - Advice needed

Hey everybody,

Another long week and another hobby light week sadly. I'm off to Hong Kong on the 16th to present some of my scientific data and all the preparation for that as well as work has me going a million miles an hour.

Anyway, this week I re-painted some Blood Angel terminators that I had become dissatisfied with. I'd previously painted them very dark and weathered them with drybrushed silver followed by bronze, in all honesty it looked as bad and lazy as it sounds. Below are a few pictures:

So, these guys had all the red open areas re-painted with a thinnish coat of wazdakka red and a thin layer of white scar over all the white areas. In the end I think this actually has lent a bit more depth to the models which was an unexpected surprise. Here's a couple of groups pics:

Or perhaps as I look from the back it less depth? Darn I cannot make up my mind.

However here comes the bit where I beg steal and borrow advice from any of you that wish to give it. As much as I like the clean cut look of them now I would like to weather them. However I'm struggling here, I've practised with a few tutorials and I just can't seem to pull off an of the main effect. I'm pretty shy from using weathering powders as I feel I would just balls up all the work painting (and then re-painting!) these guys.

I had a go at the layer light paint followed by a metallic weathering on one guy who you may have noticed at the back of the group photos. Here's a few pictures of him plus and minus flash:

What do you fine people think? I'm undecided on it, some times I think it looks good, other times I thinks its not so good. Or do you think I should leave them clean? I'm not totally adverse to that if people really think they look better. I paint for myself but also so someone can enjoy a nice cinematic battle against a painted army so its always nice to know how other people will view it.

I had  splodge around with a sponge dipped in the underlying pink used on the above model, just on tissue paper, but felt equally nervy about taking that and applying it to a model. 

So if you have any opinions on what I should or shouldn't do, or if I've already got it down OK, please do leave a comment below and help me make up my mind, I would be very appreciative for any help :)

I'm hoping to post this friday coming before I go to Hong Kong but I feel it will be a hobby-less week and it may be a week or two before I post again,

Hopefully I won't lose my 1 or 2 readers!!!

Over and out,

Rob

Assassins, D&D and lazy bones

Hello everyone,

Its been a very hobby light 7 days this week. A combination of being ill and a bit of burnout from the lead up to last weekends tournament has resulted in a lack of motivation to make any real progess.

However I have picked up my Officio Assassinorum game this weekend which was exciting, not least because the box itself in a bag made for excellent impromptu protection from the rain that poured down as I left the shop!

There are a few pictures of the sprues below. I must say that on first glance the models look to be very well thought out and beautifully detailed. There a few parts, particularly on the callidus, that look especially thin and tricky but on the whole they look well thought out. Of note, the assassins all come witht he larger 32mm bases, as do the standard chaos space marines, so I anticipate that when new models get released for chaos they too are being moved over, which is re-assuring that GW are being consistent on that front.

CULEXUS

VINDICARE

CALLIDUS

EVERSOR

The culexus assassin, being the go-to bad-ass when it comes to anti-psyker will be teaming up with my black templars in a themed 'we hate dem psykers' army list, but I am also very tempted to make an elite army based off my little grey knights collection but utilising the assassin formation. Sure it has a load of weakness' but I bet it will be fun and fluffy to play with or against.

The chaos models that come with the pack will be painted up to match my Night Lords and will give me some extra flexibility when it comes to fielding them with the addition of a terminator lord, some additional standard marines so I can bulk squads out and also chaos cultists. I am not a fan of running cultists with night lords, sincerely feel that night lords would view them as prey and nothing more so it just doesn't fit well with my fluffy view of the sons of nostramo. However I am considering painting/converting them up as dark mechanicus tech thralls to go with my planned mechanicus army.

Speaking of the dark mechanicus I have spent the week planning out my shopping list for these guys, I have promised myself that all the models will be converted and I am also keen to source them from third parties. This is not because of a lack of the range from GW and FW as both ranges are beautiful nor is it a desire to stick it to the man, for all GW does wrong I think they come in for a lot of stick that is unnecessary; it is simply the challenge of it that I'm interested in as well as the opportunity to really sample other miniature companies that I would otherwise never invest money in as the games, for the most part, simply aren't there.

Finally, I run a dungeons and dragons group at the moment. I'm the only member who actively participates in table top miniatures at the moment and I am the DM. Beause of this I have agreed to paint any model the players buy for their characters. Below is a picture of the first miniature I have painted which is a Gnome called Yolla. I loved painting this miniature as it was a nice change to a) only paint one miniature over an entire day and b) to paint something in a fantasy setting. I tried to get an OK OSL effect from the glowing stone in her hand and I'm relatively pleased with how it turned out but think I need a lot more practise.

Anyway, plans for next week, involve re-painting some blood angel terminators so I can try a more accomplished weathering style on them and sadly (in terms of content for the blog) kill a lot more things on Bloodborne which is eating a lot of my hobby time up.

Till next week, have a good one all!

Rob