All the parts!

Today I realised I have hit a landmark. I finally have all of the parts I need to complete all 10 companies and a significant amount of support material.

There are still a few holes in the collection and I am a little light in terms of tanks and flyers, but after so many years of working towards it is finally some light at the end of the proverbial tunnel.

Now I just need to get everything painted, based and into a game!

8th Edition Warhammer 40,000

8th Edition Warhammer 40,000  is on the way and so far I have to say I like it. There is no faction destroying, no Warhammer ends times. GW are making fantastic offers of support refunding codexs bought in the last 8 weeks and are being very open about the upcoming rules.

I have  already seen stat lines for 2 wound Terminators and although this may not be the final outcome it has left me pretty happy and a single profile type for all units can only simply the game. Dreads and monstrous creatures will be on an equal footing for a change and that will clean up a lot of bitterness about the flyrants, Grey Knight Nemisis and the Wraithlord.

2nd ed movement distances are back which leaves me wondering what is going to happen to the charge range. It also makes me wonder about the effectiveness of vehicle shooting, but in my head I can already guess it will be something like not moved, moved, "ran" as it would be for infantry.

There is loads to come and it is very exciting as well as a huge accolade that GW has taken what was a hostile and largely negative community and managed to make huge strides in turning it around.

Keeping the faith

I am keeping the painting going with this somewhat mauled Chaplin and his half cybernetic head along with a few more arms for the Dreadnoughts. I am starting to think I need a mass basing session to get the snow flock on a few miniatures.

Iron within Iron without... no, wait!

Completely armless

Marked for Censure - Ultramarine Sergeants

Ultramarine Sergeants have long had a distinctive red helm, handy for spotting troop leaders in the swirl of combat and making snipers' jobs easier since some time in the 1980's.

It is a nice distinction and has a practical gaming purpose. In fact, when playing games of Apocalyptic proportion I often find that it is simpler to try and keep track of the Sergeants than it is to try and remember the plan for each squad. They are certainly easier to find. 

With the growing fluff of the 40k universe, indeed thanks to the 30k setting and Brother Sargent Aeonid Thiel we have come to know a lot more about the origins of the red helm and in Gathering Storm III we get to use the original artefact as war-gear.In fact Gathering Storm has sent me back to my painting table and over the last couple of days I have produced the Brother Sargents you can see in this post. I have been trying to push up my normal standard of painting and I have spend longer than usual on these, making sure to highlight the models.

Some of the keener eyed among you might wonder why the Ultra symbol is on the wrong arm of the Sargent above. This is because the article white stripe with the inset Ultra is listed as a Tactical squad marking in the Index Astartes and I think it is nice to mix in the other symbols, marking out suits of power armour that may have remained unchanged since a specific feat in their history, or just more generally following the Codex rule of changing up the markings to confuse the enemy.

Guilliman Returns!

Games Workshop have gotten ahead of the rumour-mill and announce that for the first time in 10 millennia a true son of the Emperor will walk the stars. Guilliman returns!

Gathering Storm III is going to be the latest release in a major advancement of the 40k universe narrative. It is big news for the Ultramarines, but I am left looking at the horizon with a little trepidation. Guilliman being the first to return to the loyalists leaves him open to a fast power creep and the end time narrative also heralded the literal end of the Warhammer franchise.

Leaping over this trepidation though, it is monumental news and exciting enough to get me back to building, painting, playing and (when I remember) blogging.

Shiny new Ultra Dice for the Dice God!

If you have ever played a game against me you know that I am often subject to the fickle whims of the dice gods, from failing sure thing armor saves for my captain' artificer armor rolling fives ones on five dice, to pulling off improbable first turn tank kills rolling three sixes in a row, because I had nothing better to shoot at. The dice laugh at my good generalship, or make my opponent wonder why they bothered showing up in an almost equal measure, but there is nothing wrong with trying to curry a little favor with the dice gods as any gamer will tell you and few ways are better than shiny new dice! So behold! Brand new Ultra dice, with Company coloured dice facings and Ultras on all the one faces, to make me feel slightly better when I roll low. Twenty in all are handy for a full squad rapid firing Bolters (praise the Emperor), but sadly no scatter die, so I will have to use a few others as well when hurling fiery doom across the table.

The Scouring of Vibros

Hulls Angels recently ran a “day of war”, two thematically linked games, with a 2,000 point battle for objectives followed by an apocalypse scale game. It has been a while since my Ultramarines have taken to the field, but I love the madness that is an apocalypse game, so I dusted off my codex and headed over to the club to join in.

With no lords of war and no formations, it was back to the classic force organisation chart, what is now called combined arms. One of the great things about Ultramarines and marines in general is that there are so many viable styles of play, so I decided to go with a fast list, composed of the 10th and 8th companies (Assault), with scouts in Landspeeder storms as my core backed up by three whirlwinds, a Storm Raven two Landspeeders with melta guns, an ironclad dreadnaught and 5 Thunder Hammer Terminators in a Landraider Redeemer.

For the apocalypse game I also had another 3 Vindicators and a combat squad in a Rhino for an easy 500 points.

This will not end well

Game 1 was a slog-fest against Tau in which both sides completely forgot about the objectives and tried to wipe the opposition off the board. Three Riptides were making a nasty mess of anything they decided to remove from play, but as a combined unit they were only killing one unit a turn. A very early lucky shot with the Landspeeders killed a Hammerhead and won me first blood, while my Scout Bikes advanced in a death or glory attack taking out the one unit of Tau pathfinders on turn 1, suffering the wroth of the rest of the Tau army for their trouble. It was a high price to pay for them, but made a big difference to Tau shooting in the rest of the game.

Turn two and three were largely manoeuvring while the Whirlwinds acquitted themselves well, accounting for most of the enemy troops on the board. My Terminators underperformed, denting, but not destroying a unit of Ghost Keels, the Ironclad deep struck with skies of fury, positioned badly and died to pulse rifle fire. Time was running out, so the game was called early, but a turn four flanking move by the Landspeeder Storms got me line breaker as well, leading to a narrow victory in a very tough fight.

Scout bikes on the offensive

Game 2, the apocalypse game, saw most of my forces facing off against Eldar. The three vindicators sat almost on the other side of the board, dropping an apocalypse template a turn on advancing Orks. My Scouts made an early objective grab with their scout move and managed to sit on it through the rest of the game. So much happens in an apocalypse game that spanned 5 hours that I can’t cover it all in detail.

The Whirlwinds performed well again, killing Orks, Chaos Cultists, Tau and an entire unit of Banshees the turn they were forcibly disembarked from a wave serpent until Karandras assaulted them from the rear and totaled three in 2 turns. My Captain went toe to toe with an Autarch and won, splitting the Eldar in two with his relic blade, before being shredded by return fire from Dire Avengers and Dark Reapers. Death Korps of Kreig hammered out 7 or more strength 10 large blasts a turn and the whole game was very close until the last turn, where Dark Angel bike units made a grab for the objectives and put us ahead, with 3 out of 4 possible slay the warlords, with only 1 in return and 6 of the 8 objectives, leaving Vibros safely in Imperial hands.