Painting more minis for yet another game that I don't play...

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I say another game I don't play as I've been perusing the collective opinions of the blogosphere on the new 40k faq/errata updates more commonly known as the Iron Hands nerf. I haven't made it to an FLGS game night in about a year or so and I'm not at all involved with playing 40k at the moment...indeed my last game was back in June (wow, WTF?), and I haven't read any of the new current codexes. 

Thusly, I found myself oblivious to the new space marine codex 'doctrines' and equally perplexed by all of the wailing, crying, sudden ebaying of Iron Hands dreadnoughts, and gnashing of teeth mixed in with the simultaneous (and wide spread) thunderous applause from across teh interwebz. Honestly, my overall impression of all of this hoopla is this: 

Do I even play this game? 

Seems like I've only been paying attention to what folks are painting in my usual perusal of blogs, rather than what they're playing. Sure I check on rumors and all, but even then mainly to see what is coming out that I can't afford and (again) not bothering to read the associated rule previews for. 

Oh well whatever...so what the hell is it that I'm painting this time? My beloved Quar (and no Monkeychuka, they are still not Skeksis) lol.

Whilst only 6 are in this pic, I do have 7 in-progress. I forgot one back at my desk and....well, they're picturesque enough in their current state for a photo-redo. 

These are nominally my (weird War II but not Konflikt 47) Bolt Action British army. I use that term loosely as they total up to a mere 200+ points at the moment, and am still a squad short of a legal list (indeed, this is the only infantry squad I have). However army legality isn't really an issue as (1) they're anthropomorphized anteaters instead of humans, (2) Bolt action isn't really my cup of tea, and (3) most importantly, I don't know of anyone who is currently even playing it here locally.

As for the Quar themselves, I bought this bunch back in September and they've been sitting on my desk, glowering at me all the while in their dusty, bare metal state ever since. That made me sad, so I decided to give 'em some love following the completion of my Astral Claws tactical squad.  

Only having seven in total to paint I opted to do them all at once in a generally loathsome batch painting process. Luckily, painting 'em this way is going fairly quickly thus far and I'm not hating it. Maybe I'm finally coming 'round to the process...maybe. Once done, my little force will be fully painted barring their forthcoming tank. As such, with that as my (so-called) armor support these are very much in the early war, British Quar Expeditionary Force category.

Admittedly, it does look better than the original ginormous gun. 

Speaking of tanks, I regunned the universal carrier with it's original LMG. I removed the HUGE one as the LMGs that came with the model itself matches the squad carried LMG in both size and design (for the most part). I guess the need for a ridiculously over-sized 'big gun' back when I built it was due to my gamer upbringing in 40k.

Hopefully I'll have these finished up before the ol' hobby butterfly strikes again! 

15mm 40k

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We all know that nowadays I have a love/hate relationship with 40k. However 8th ed is an easy system to learn and readily available to most everyone. For awhile now I’ve wanted to try a 40k/kill team hybrid in 15mm (indeed, I’ve pondered this idea previously). 

Huzzah! These are FINALLY available!!

To start out (on the cheap) it’ll likely be Marines vs. Nids. On the Nids side I just need to pick up a single gargoyle to use as a flying Hive Tyrant, I have a genestealer which will fill in as a Carnifex, and I have 18 old Termagants which will work as Tyranid warriors. 

(no idea why the above paragraph won't justify like the rest...)

Primaris LTs.

For the marines I preordered a 32 man platoon of Khurasan's new earth doom reserves minis which I'll use as primaris marines in terms of stats. I want to ditch 40k's backstory/aesthetic/universe entirely and we can easily make up our own instead. I'm just calling them primaris here for familiarity's sake. 

Basically will just be using 40k rules with KT's initiative and the you go-I go, on a per unit/character basis in lieu of an individual model as per the KT rules (essentially), rather than the 40k one side annihilates the other turn method.  We can also leave out with bits we don't like (CPs and CP farming, the endless, mostly situational stratagems that slow game play to a crawl, oh and those fucking maelstrom cards that turn strategy into the luck of the draw would be my top picks for omission!). 

Okay wait-I'm getting ahead of myself. We're just trying to go super basic at the outset, to see if this is viable and/or if anyone is really interested (so far my buddies Scott and Hoss are). I have PDFs of all of the codexes and will pare them down to just what is needed. Am wanting to see if this works w/o having to write a whole new game. 

Intercessors Colonial Marines.

As for miniatures…if you really wanted the 40k aesthetic, Vanguard minis makes 15mm Orks, Marines and IG, Onslaught minis makes 15mm IG, SoBs, Chaos, Squats, Dark Eldar, and a sorta Kroot faction. The Ion Age has these space...umm...frogs? that ought to work well as Tau...maybe, as well as Space marines (male and female) of their own. And of course Zombiesmith makes HORDES of 15mm Quar which are easy analogs for the Imperial Guard (as aliens), or rather they did and will soon do so again. Currently they are retooling/resculpting the entire line. 

The above is just a small sampling though as there are TONS of 15mm mini gaming manufacturers/retailers out there!

Regardless, this endeavor will be MUCH CHEAPER than actual 40k though as the platoon I ordered clocked in @ $34, which is the price of just ONE fucking character model for 40k these days! Seriously, WTF?

A Rhino Hippo with a turret slapped on top at the
expense of 2 troops carried, kinda like real life AFVs

Conveniently, 40k points are structured so that you have to buy the weapons for the basic tank hull/trooper allowing you to essentially build the tanks and infantry with whatever you want, and ignoring the 40k aesthetic altogether. 

As you can see, my 'datasheets' just a few examples, with all of the rules*, points, and stats coming from the Space Marine codex. 

*Okay, I made up the Amphibious rule because tanks plowing thru water like its not even there is dumb. I also shortened the walking speed because these guys are little!

I HAZ SPESS MAHWEEN!!

lol, sorry, but when it comes to buying a Funko Pop Marine, I think 'lol cats' speak is appropriate. I sent pics of this to the gang, Hoss, Screech and Kushial were amused, Neverness, not so much. 

I think the lack of a bobble-head option is a missed opportunity...

Meanwhile Funko Pop collectors are no doubt choking on their Mountain Dew thinking: Ack! You IDIOT! You don't take 'em out of the box! You're depreciating it's (meager $10) resale value!!

Yeah what the fuck ever. Personally I think the only reason people never take these out of their respective boxes is that it makes 'em easier to dust off.

As for this one, I need to find a suitable plinth/base for it. Will then prime it black followed by dry brushing in various shades of grey (to look like stone) and then will use it as an Honored Imperium (Impeerweeum?) Kill Team/40k terrain piece.  

I'm blaming the Chucking Monkeys blog for this...

...actually, I'm getting ahead of myself. So lemme back up a bit and explain. 

So, the Primaris marines...yeah those, more of a gorilla in the room than monkeys, but we'll get there. Their fluff is in general hideous, no need to revisit that. Personally i think that the Intercessors look alright though and I gotta cheap squad aways back to bolster my Rainbow Warriors. 

However aesthetically they don't fit. My rainbows are the last dregs of the chapter, adorned in a motley assortment of scavenged and standard issue armor, and all have at least one chapter specific, and time consuming to paint shoulder pauldron. Whereas the Primaris' armor all conforms and being easy-build models, they have generic pauldrons meaning I'd have to come up with something more even more difficult (like free-hand painting) for the chapter iconography. In a word: no.

Then there's the Salamanders. I did paint one Primaris marine for them but...originally being a 30k force, with a color scheme as laborious to paint as the Alpha Legionnaires they were supposed to replace...I think I'll just ebay the last of 'em and be done with that failed project.

Yeah I can't paint this good! This was lifted straight from the Chucking Monkeys blog, which is linked below...

Which brings us to Chucking Monkeys, and his beautifully painted Primaris 'scouts'. Actually all of it is beautiful, check out that Ancient! Anyways, the idea of Primaris scouts struck a chord...no doubt harkening back to my Aurora 10th Company debacle of an army. I like the idea of scouts...well, the old scouts, with the WS/BS of 3 (hitting on a 4+ for you 8th ed only noobs out there), and I thought: Why not take the ol' Primaris' down a peg and use 'em as poorly trained scouts? Might make 'em a bit more palatable too (kinda like Space Wolf Blood Claws, just without the pretending to be the ANGRY MAHREENZ!!! part)!

So that's what I set out to do. Great Idea MC, glad you thought of it! Given the 5-6 painted models that I average befor-squirrel!,  I decided to just do a Kill Team of them, and skip 40k proper in its entirety.  

First up I needed a chapter. I figured I'd just make 'em an Ultramarine Ultima Founding chapter, but none in the SM codex caught my interest. I dunno, with each just having a color scheme/name/icon, and fluff blurb, you can tell the GW game designer's hearts weren't really into the primaris marines. Then I pondered making up my own chapter from scratch, and was going to go that route till I found a good halfway point: The Silver Drakes (The warhammer wiki page seems to be far more detailed, until you realize that its just a repost of the generic Primaris fluff). 

The Silver Drakes are a canon chapter who's sole existence is a small blurb on pg. 39 of the Nid codex. They have no colors, chapter icon or anything else known about them. Talk about lazy...sure I'll just use that, write up a blurb of my own which (hopefully) justifies the 2nd rate stat line, come up with my own colors and to top it off, I can use the fallout hobbies decals I had made for my abortive Black Dragons army (which totaled just that one mini...).  

So here ya go, the Silver Drakes in Kill Team:

I won't make any changes to the point values
as those are already nonsensically allotted.

Well that was easy enough to do. Next up, and easy but good looking color scheme. My first test model was kinda meh and after it was finished, I gave it a good once over and summarily submerged it in some simple green. Here's my 2nd try:

In all honesty, the couple-three layers of white on the base felt like the hardest part. Also the aquila color denotes the company, the 7th in this case.

A detail view of his wrist comms.

Much better me thinks, and relatively quick and easy to paint as well! Speaking of the paint recipe (just so I don't forget) is: GW's leadbelcher for the silver, Coat D'arms' enchanted blue for the metallic blue, GW's mechanicus standard grey for the gun, Army Painter strong tone for the wash, GW's bleached bone drybrush as per the norm, and whatever shade of Vallejo's white that I have for the base (its the only white paint I have). The remaining colors for the other little details, bits, and bobs don't really matter for consistency.

I'm hoping that I can manage to paint up the squad before I inevitably get distracted yet again...

The Warmadillo is complete!

o/

Well it took a bit longer than anticipated, but my 30k Auxilia / 40k Imperial Guard Vanquisher tank is finally finished! I'm quite pleased with the model overall, and am not adverse to the idea of getting several more at a later date. For the time being however, I'll just have to content myself with just this one. 

Damn it! I need to touch up the right side vision slit on the front hull.

If I were to get more, I would do a few things differently. First of all, all of the wheels in the running gear will all be of the same color! It doesn't look like much to do, but for whatever reason, it was a royal pain in the ass painting them different colors! The green especially-which didn't want to coat the primer at all! No idea what that was all about, the vallejo green had no issues covering the base coat of paint...

Also I might take a page from Inso (yeah, check out that Chimera conversion based off this same model!), and omit the tools and chains on the hull. A few of those fuckers simply did not want to fit into the allotted slots and at one point I was afraid I was going to break the tank's hull trying to force them in! Apparently snap-fit doesn't allow for even the slightest inkling of' paint!

Those two complaints aside, this was a lot of fun to both build and paint! I ought to have added some decals to the hull, but got ahead of myself with the weathering, leaving me with only the turret to apply them too. Not too many though, just aquilas on the left and right sides, ID #'s on the left and rear, kill marks above the left side aquila, and lastly, a bit of decoration on the right: the skillfully painted (by the crew, not by me) Warmadillo icon! That decal was a Fallout Hobbies' custom design that was originally intended for my now long defunct 15mm Gruntz army. That said it works just as well for 28mm scale, as it would have had for the 15.

Now all the Warmadillo needs is an enemy Landraider, Battlewagon or the like to blow up!

This week's round up

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For those fearing a sudden exodus of my 40k collection, well...it hasn't happened yet. Patience grasshoppers, patience... 

This really looks weird given the two different types of resin.

This week was Battletech's turn on the ol' auction block: 5 mechs and half a dozen tanks. In exchange I did recently got a new Mechwarrior Online-styled Awesome 8R for less than half the cost of the pewter MWO mechs I got last Christmas. For those not familiar with the Awesome variants, well...let's just say that of all of 'em, the 8r is the worst one. That's alright though, it looks cool and I have a fondness for mediocrity.

All told now I have a mech company, a single tank lance and a reinforced conventional infantry company. Given that we play maybe one or...two games per year at best. This little collection still ought to give me wondrous variety.

Its coming along...

As for my Vanquisher, I've managed to paint the basic camo on the turret, still needs another coat, plus details, decals and dirtying up, but its getting there...slowly. 

Here we see Chapter Master Profanitus, as he slays
the accursed leader of the Fallen!

And finally, I got in a thousand point, 8th 40k game with Bob Saturday evening. It was his first bout of the new edition, and he's only coming around to it begrudgingly, much like I was/still am. He'll be posting his thoughts on the game soon, and I'll add a link to it just as soon as that post arrives.

40k King Tiger Vanquisher WIP 3

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Still chugging along... 

Note how much better the tank looks when the gun-to-turret sizes are better proportioned as compared to GW's actual Leman Russ offerings.

The main body is 'done' essentially, barring the tools, tow chains, etc.. Those are primed black and just need some dry brushing to add detail/dirty up before popping them into their allotted slots in the hull.

Hmm, those exhausts are a bit too clean...

The tank looks much more complete now that the turret is assembled and attached! The fit is snug but does fully rotate. I trimmed down a Grymn Sergeant who is speaking into a comm-link to serve as the tank commander. 

Cutting him in half at the waist (gulp!), I removed his hand and rifle then shaved down his right arm for a still snug fit. I found a spare button (from who knows what article of clothing) that fit perfectly into the underside indent of the turret/hatch bottom to affix his now severed body to for good measure.

Jeez! Even these little guys have to squeeze to get in!!

The Mechanicum Onager Neutron Laser-turned-Vanquisher cannon fit almost perfectly, only needing the barrel's end point trimmed off  where it meets the mantlet for aesthetic reasons. I did add a co-axial heavy stubber but as expected it popped off at the lightest touch, and I'm loath to drill into the turret at the seam to secure it better. Thus I'll just leave it off. 

Double tap the cannon? Yes please!!!

In 40k now, the Vanquisher can fire twice if the tank is stationary or moving at half speed, and better yet doesn't suffer the -1 to hit (which EVERY fucking tank ought to have!). Though curiously, not the hull mounted heavy stubber. I'll still pay the points for the nonexistent heavy bolter to keep my list 'battle-forged', but that's of little concern as the tank is essentially the same point cost as it's 7th-ed incarnation was. 

Now I just need to get some more desert tan spray to re-prime the turret and hopefully get this project moving towards its conclusion.

WIP Grot Tanks

o/

I've been wondering what to do with my Rivet Wars Stug walkers. They were originally supposed to be Armored Sentinels for my Grymn IG army, but then my Grymn migrated to 30k and its Imperialis Militia. In 30k they won't work as (1) there are no armored sentinels and (2) the unit size minimum is 3, and (3) the cost of acquiring more of these has become cost prohibitive.

Skittering noises will be required in the movement phase! 

So, what to do with these otherwise great minis? I tried selling 'em on ebay to no avail, leaving them to collect dust once more before deciding to use 'em as Grot Tanks! Grot tanks have a minimum unit size of 4, however you can field an understrength sized unit as an auxiliary support detachment for -1 command point. So, Grot tanks it is!

The painted one may needs some more gubbinz prior to being painted.

I just have the two for now, the painted (and soon to eventually be repainted) one has a multi-barreled big shoota, and the other has a grotzooka, loaded with Stikkbombz (indeed, one is even protruding out of the muzzle). If there's one thing to be said about grot tanks, its that consistency is not a concern. So in the future I can add other small vehicles of some sort to flesh out the unit to the minimum of 4 (or more)

My 2nd 8th ed 40k game

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As I mentioned in my prior post, I gave 8th ed another try this past Saturday. With four players, of which three of us (myself included) only had a cursory knowledge of the new rules, and one actual 8th ed veteran player, we opted for a 2 v. 2 team game. With 750ish points per side our opponents were the Tyranids and the Death Korps of Krieg-turned-Genestealer Cult (poor Courtland, his DKK usually gets lumped in with Chaos, but never loyalist marines it seems).

Against this veritable tide of little gribblies and Guardsmen were the Glorious Dark Angels featured in my previous post, and my Rainbow Warriors which, true to form, was the only not-fully painted army on the table. Yay.

We opted for kill points, and no command points to keep things simple, though even then it was a seemingly endless marathon game that we called at the bottom of turn 4 (11:30 pm). We all had fun and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves! In the end the Nids won out with 3 Kps plus first blood, whereas we only earned 3 KPs  despite having so, sooooo many models to grind thru.... 

What follows is my usual photo dump, captioned with random highlights. My thanks to Neverness who volunteered to be combat camerman for a goodly portion of the game.

Can ya guess what deployment we used? 

Turn 1 and the Dark Talon swoops in and starts strafing the hordes!

Massed autocannon fire along with my Primaris marines,
all shooting at and failing to kill the Flyrant...

Said Flyrant mocking us with its majesty!

Unfortunately the Dark Talon only has so many guns....

The Gribbly tide lurches forward...

With the demise of my Rhino (1st blood), my Captain and accompanying Combat Squad steel themselves for their approaching demise...

Accursed Zoe's, they can take an inordinate amount of punishment and yet they just keep on floating forward.

Instead of receiving one, the Rainbow warriors charge themselves and my Captain slaughters the cavalry! The few survivors would soon thereafter rout giving us one of our few kill points of the game. 

The thin primered line follows up into more gribblies and guardsmen.

I hate it when a beastie like that pops up out of the ground! Unfortunately, my Predator's autocannon did little more to draw its attention than anything else...

The Flyrant & Dark Talon 'dogfight' for several rounds, badly damaging each though both remained airborne thru to the end.

Unlike my dreadfully performing Aurora Chapter scouts, the Rainbow Warrior scouts proved to be shockingly resilient (though per standard procedure they were wiped out). Here is my remaining Sgt., tying up some DKK for a turn or three.

Ugh, more Gribblies! So many gribblies...

The Primaris marines were slogging thru the other end of the hoard.

The dogfight continues overhead to little effect.

My other combat squad gets stuck in as well. It must be said that the DKK's ability to fire their lasguns as pistols in HTH has frightening potential!!

With his accompanying combat squad dead, my captain continues to hack away with his Prismatic Blade (Teeth of Terra), remaining unwounded by game's end. 

Trying not to go the way of the dinosaurs…

Okay, so with my recent purchase of some Primaris marines, I’m trying to adapt to 8th ed 40k. Not going to lie, its okay…but certainly not inspiring. To be honest, 8th ed reminds me a lot of the mental shock that was the jump from 2nd to 3rd ed 40k (which I also resisted full force). However, in regards to our local gaming group, without moving forward into the new edition, we’re already stagnating and that's only going to get worse... 

When it comes to the death of 40k locally, I think that asteroid might be better labeled as the entry of 7th ed rather than 8th...

Sure there’s other games, but everyone is all over the place on what they want to play (and the FLGS primarily sells 40k). Just showing up with a 40k army (or any game’s army) and being all but guaranteed to find an easy pick up game with somebody is a fond memory. Instead, due to the lack of consistency in regards to what we're playing, we have to schedule something in advance and then hope that whomever we're playing doesn't bail last minute.

We have a FB group, and there’s always a signup for game night, but of the 230+ members, only two dozen or so are ‘regulars’ and out of them, getting anyone to actually commit to going is kindova sad joke (and of course there are those who ignore the FB group posts all together and just show up at random).

What we really need are some new people to breathe some new life into the group, but therein lies the problem. New people want to play 8th ed. 40k, but when they come and find we aren’t playing it, they have little want come back. 

Just another wayward soul, looking for an 8th ed opponent...

So…I guess this is it guys and gals. Either we adapt to what’s new, or else we need to eBay off our collections (an idea I’m dangerously close to doing already…) and find some new hobbies, because at this point our gaming group is on life support! 

Gettin' back on the wagon...

o/

Yes, yes, I know I'm late!!

(The above image is from here.)

Wow. Two weeks? Hell, I didn't even take that long off when I got married! As far as I recall (too lazy to bother looking it up), that's the longest break in posts that this blog has ever had. So. What have I been up to?

Well, to be honest...not hobbying. 

The first missed post was due to the scouring of teh interwebz in search of a reasonably priced getaway for my Beloved Wolfy and I's 2nd anniversary. For some odd reason, I assumed that posting the comparative Kayak.com results for virtually every destination in a 3-hour driving range wasn't blog worthy, go figure. 

Following that frantic last minute search, we made a decision and then enjoyed a few glorious days in the nearby Kentucky Mountains! 

We highly recommend the place and will likely go back!

It was such a clear day, that if you look closely, you can see the distant Smoky Mountains from this vantage point up at the Pinnacle overlook at the Cumberland Gap National Park.

Following that (and I mean immediately...as in just a few hours after we arrived home: NURGLE ATTACK!!!!

Yes I felt as badly as those poor Guardsmen are about to...

Luckily (I guess?), due to Nurlge's frequent predations, we were loaded to the hilt with medications, both over the counter and prescription and I counter attacked with a vengeance! In the end, the battle came at the cost of 1.5 days of 'vacation' time (we don't have sick days where I work) and about 72 hours or so of sheer misery. 

Now, when I only occasionally cough (merciful that that is...) my entire torso still literally aches (its closer to agony if I'm honest) from the recent memory of the coughing nightmare earlier in the week.

During that bit of hell, the only vague sort of hobbying I managed was to watch a 2.5ish hour long, 8th ed bat-rep on youtube at Neverness' recommendation. Watching two friends play a game, even one I don't like is easily entertaining. Ya know, playing peanut gallery and all, but watching to guys on youtube? Not so much. At least the Ork player was kinda Orky (Ork players know what I mean), whereas the Marine player spoke in the same monotone voice though out.

...yawn...

I'm still not impressed with 8th ed's rules/game play either, though I do really like the Primaris minis, well the basic ones anyways. The Intercessors (even though their name sucks), Hellblasters and the Lieutenants. As such I figure I'll give it a go for the only applicable force I have, the Rainbow Warriors. 

Lieutenant Budderbarz has already arrived, and I only need another five Primaris marines with no upgrades (starter box minis basically) to make a 500 point army which is enough to fuck around with 8th ed for awhile, so that's doable. I've already written up and am tweaking my fluff for the Primaris...uh...transition for the Rainbow Warriors. 

Now hopefully I'll get back to posting regularly once more.

The State of my 40k: 8th ed, take 2

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Sure, let's resurrect this long defunct series of mine...

So…I tried making another 8th ed list to give the game another try and found the process to be quite frustrating. I figured, I only played one game of the new edition and I have a bucket load of minis so why not give it another go. Sounds reasonable right? Right. So tossing the Orks aside (as usual) I opted for one of my other armies: The Aeldari, ahem: The Eldar.

Still viable...

From the get go it was a mess. Autarchs, what the hell happened to autarchs?!? Forget designing them however you want, instead you have 3 options: the jetbike version, the swooping hawk wing and fusion gun version, or else a footslogger with a spear and grenades, that’s it!?!?!? Where’d all the other options go?

This one, not so much...

Yes, like everybody else I want my army commander to be a footslogger (the generic version of Prince Yriel), who hits on a 2+ in both shooting and HTH and shooting armed with only grenades and a -1 to hit in HTH spear…(NOT EVEN A PISTOL?), what the fuck is he a Tau Ethereal now?

This and the Dragon Knight above are my idea of a footslogger Autarch! At least this guy can still qualify as an Exarch...

But wait! Then there’s the designer’s notes flow chart explaining that if you want an Autarch (or whatever) with options not available in the codex, then just use the index entry instead, but with codex point values. Well why the fuck didn’t they just put that into the codex in the first damn place?!? 

Quality game design right here...

The variety of wargear and versatility of non-special characters, not to mention the convert-ability of the minis has been a hallmark of 40k since the beginning. So why now are they just going for the ‘only if we have a model for it’ mindset. Yes I know they want to appeal more to kids, but us old fuckers are the addicts that have kept ‘em in business all these years, go ahead, alienate us and see where that gets ya…

Separate index for one fucking model, check. Moving on. 

Regular grunts are all but the same as before except that the having to give ‘em all of their specific wargear (half of which is ‘0’ points) making you wonder why they went this laborious route, but that's just a standard gripe of 8th ed., so nothing to add there. Anyways, all was going fine till I got to my Corsairs (requiring index/codex #3). 

Yeah, wow. Those poor bastards really took it between the legs! Whilst an interesting concept, I really never did much beyond paint a small squad and halfway convert (but still not finish) a venom for them (which will now be relegated to the role of a funky looking Vyper I guess). With no HQ’s, they’re no longer a stand alone army and I really feel for the people who had those (and there are countless forum posts of screaming, justifiable nerd rage on the subject). Also the option for a 4+ save is gone too, because that was necessary.

The 1st army casualty of 8th ed...

Basically they’re just guardians with lasblasters. Guardians on foot, guardians with jetpacks, and guardians on jetbikes skyrunners, with a handful of other options, to be added into your Craftworlds army. Yay. No command benefits for them…speaking of, the whole command benefit thing is lost on my eldar anyways. My army is made up of: Exodites, Siam-Hann, Iyanden, and Corsair contingents. So whatever command benefit my warlord would confer, would only effect a squad or two at most. Apparently variety is no longer the spice of the 40k-life.

So yeah, by this point I was annoyed with the whole process. Three index/codex PDFs AND a fucking flow chart are needed to build my list. Plus I have no idea if anything in said three index/codex’s changed even further in the just released chapter approved. Yup, no guilt on using pirated PDFs when considering that I could have $75+ tied up in books whose point values were partially rendered obsolete inside the year that they were released. 

(edit: yup, Corsair point values dropped.)

Regardless, after considerable frustration I did finally manage to make a list. Due to the demise of the Corsair HQ's, and the total lack of incentive to use my storm guardians as corsairs (with 4+ saves), the army now only clocks in at a mere 750 points. Bleh. For the time being I have no idea when, or even if I'll give the army a try though.