Shifting Allegiances...

o/

Well, the Aurora Chapter Space Marine army has come to an end (or will shortly). I am just tired of having 9 scouts with sniper rifles and a missile launcher fail to kill anything! Even the Sgt. never rolls higher than a 2 (that photo caption is kinda prophetic in hindsight...) or barring that, failing to wound anything. The ML scout does fairly well, but only cause he is generally firing a frag missile. Screech commented 'it was a cool idea, but it really doesn't work.' 

Only my outflanking close combat scout squad really worked well, but the inability to outflank & charge in the same turn kinda kills that. So, if you're interested in an Aurora Captain & 15 (mostly painted) scouts, which would make for a nice allied contingent assuming your dice are more kind to them than mine have been, then check ebay later this week.

However I have so much unpainted SM stuff (much of it still on the sprue), that removing the painted Auroras, replacing them with my painted captain & tac squad of the Storm Wardens, and only a few minor shoulder pad & painting adjustments to a few other (now) former Auroras, and I basically have another SM army of roughly the same size (I'm such an addict...), just with more power armor this time (though I still have 2 scout squads remaining).

First up, my Librarian:

Ya gotta love Ork decals on Space Marines!

I still don't like any of the Librarian models, so I just gave him an arm swap as I didn't care for his old the GK style storm bolter. Now with a glowing plasma pistol, he looks less like a blue GK than he did before. The plasma glow didn't come out as good as the last one, and is a bit brighter/whiter meaning he'd best pull that trigger soon...

lol, its a 'counts as' Axe.

Then there is my favorite old Techmarine. This guy started life as a Red Corsair, who was a renegade from the Sons of Medusa, and has been painted a time or two since then. I really like the model & didn't want to get rid of him as I still use him frequently (even though basic Techmarines suck). Luckily his Aurora shoulder pad popped off easily & cleanly, allowing me to put a generic Mechanicum shoulder pad from the SM vehicle sprue on. Now bereft of chapter iconography, he'll outlive whichever SM army I decide to get/get rid of, plus he can go with either the Storm Wardens, or the Dark Angels (which I got enmass in the DV boxed set).

One problem is in all of the descriptions of power weapon types, there's no listing for 'circular power saw'. WHAT...THE...FUCK...GW?

...snicker...

I also wanted to keep my 'chaplain' drop pod dreadnought. That concept, while basically a suicide unit, works well enough and again, I liked the paint job. Luckily, having a chappy entombed within, the only thing that was green was the leg guard. The Hawk Turquoise that I use easily covered that, and a decal was applied. Conveniently, the Ork decal sheets have lightning bolts of all sorts of sizes though the one that fit best is in a black box. So I carefully cut around it so it just has a black outline. It works well enough I think.

The tac squad was next but I have no pics as of yet. The one time I've used the wardens previously, the Sgt. was hard to pick out as the only difference between him & the others was the color of his helmet. I have a few base coated 5th ed starter box tac marines though (former Alpha Legionnaires) and so will use one of those per squad as the Sgt., while the old one just got a helmet repaint. That mini is only half done so will post pics of that squad later.