The Tau Muppet Auxilaries enter the fray

"Kids, today's letter is "G'. 'G' is for the Greater Good..."

Or rather they would have last weekend, but everyone else bailed ceding whatever planet we would have been fighting for to the Tau Empire with nary a shot fired. 

Scraping for enough points to bring my Dal'yth Tau list up to 1k., I rediscovered these Muppet Auxiliaries (I dropped the 'f' in their name, thus they are simply the: Jaloo) in a recently unearthed box from the move. 

No doubt there are educational PSAs continually scrolling by on their packs' little screens

Like my Hogziliaries, I'll be fielding these critters as another counts as strike team. With downgraded stats of course. Their strength and toughness has been reduced to a 2, though they'll not be doubled out by bolter fire thanks to their guardian drone. Their pistols and smaller carbine-esque guns have been reduced to strength 3, whereas the longer guns are stock Tau Pulse rifles. 

I experimented with this little bot's paint by forgoing primer and applying yellow contrast directly to the bare metal in hopes of making a metallic yellow. However on the finished mini, the 'metallic' torso just looks duller than the head and bottom. Experiment result: FAILURE.

Clearly the Jaloo's antigrav technology isn't as advanced as that of the Tau, meaning it only keeps this top heavy little drone upright, and still needing its little legs to move around. Thus I reduced it's speed to the squad standard of 6", and removed the Fly ability.

These painted up quite easily thanks to the yellow contrast paint. By the time I finish their squad I'll no doubt have painting yellow technique perfected and will be ready to start on my squad of ANGRY MARINES!! Mwuhahaha!

In a fit of stubborn nostalgia, rather than wear appropriate camo as the rest of their allied Tau brethren do, the Jaloo insist on only wearing colors that would blend in on their home worlds (prior to being devoured by the Nids). 

Disappointed by this, the Tau have simply vowed to keep them out of the vanguard so as not to give away any positions. Once battle is joined, Fire Caste commanders are resigned to the obvious conclusion that the Jaloo will inadvertently draw fire due to their ridiculous, brightly colored uniforms. 

Ultimately, it's all For the Greater Good, and thus is accepted.

The entire squad on the workbench.

Maelee, the 'female' space marine

Purists like Neverness, no doubt already feel their gorge rising at this heretical notion...

So...given that the Primaris marines shit-canned decades of fluff by their sudden appearance into 40k, I ask why stop there? If Cawl could so improve upon the Emprah's work, why couldn't he exponentially double the potential recruitment pool by adding in female space marines?

Note the ANGRY MAHREENZ!!! trademark power wrench in her hand. No doubt she prized it from the grip of it's previous owner's still twitching corpse.

Entirely chauvinistic reasons aside, I still like to think of the two missing Legions that even the traitor astartes won't discuss as being female legions. I mean seriously, what holds their treacherous tongues on the subject?

 (30k and 40k fanboi nerd rage in 3, 2, 1...)

I shaved off the accent plate on her torso just beneath the collar to make room for an Aquila decal or the like.

Maelee, is Bombshell Minis' Gencon release mini, and a fine one at that I think! I didn't care for her not-bolt rifle and power pack (can't be too similar so as to avoid a lawsuit...) and so replaced them with a spare arm, holster and then sacrificed an actual primaris marine for his backpack. 

Yeah, I need to attach a helmet to her belt so as to add the obligatory Lt. stripes.

In the rare event that she sees the table top rather than just the display case, she'll serve as a Primaris Lieutenant (well of course, lol). I was thinking of painting her up in the colors of the ANGRY MARINES!!!! arch nemesis-the Pretty Marines. 

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...

2nd hand vehicle woes...

o/

Overcompensating much?

Prior to Christmas I picked up a 3rd party Big Momma space marine vindicator for barely more than the price of the conversion kit (plus the shipping cost). Basically the attached rhino hull clocked in at a mere $3, awesome right? Yeah not so much. It looked as though it was assembled but a 10-year old who thought 'the more glue the better!' And then there are the tracks...what the actual fuck happened there?

In true ANGRY MAHREEN!!! fashion (with Floyd Uberson included in the pic for scale), they could easily be fired out of this gun, perhaps even two at a time!

Despite that, on arrival the big fucking gun bit was (luckily) separate from the rhino. After a fair bit of scraping of excess glue and trimming, etc., I'm thinking the rhino is going to be a total write off. I mean it would be workable if not for the fact that I need to replace the tracks and well...those bitz cost so much by themselves on ebay (assuming you can even find 'em) that hell, I may as well just get a whole rhino for not much more.

Damnit!

Looks like I can get a rhino hull in pieces for a fairly reasonable $25 or so. But that'll have to wait for a bit as our Pacifica decided it wanted a Christmas present too in the form of a new starter/ignition. Yay.

Oh well, the tank is functional enough for the time being in the event that I actually manage to get in a game of 30k.

VEAL DONUTS!!!

 Take 2 (due to blogger deleting the 1st version of this).

A little ways back I bought some minis and bitz to make a Deathwatch Kill Team for Kill Team (fitting no?). When they arrived I tossed them aside as Dreadtober was in progress. However now that that's over its time I started putting these guys together. 

Smurfs, why does it always have to be Smurfs...

As I was perusing ebay I came across this guy: The Ultramarine Vael Donatus. However at first glance my mind read the words Veal Donuts, lol! Come on GW, surely when that name was tossed around the room, somebody must've made that connection! Luckily there's no such thing as a veal donut right? Hmmm...to the google!

Wow, seriously people?!? What the actual fuck??? 

Yup, veal donuts are a thing.

Thanks Malta, you've just ruined donuts forever, moving on...

Still looks AWESOME!

So anyways, I got Vael for almost the same price as a single generic space marine because-yeah, Ultramarines are that popular! I didn't want to field him in his stock configuration and swapped out his artificer-forged bolter (because everything Ultramarines is AWESOME!). Instead, sticking to his boy scout heritage, he's now armed with an astartes assault shotgun just like he did when he was a lowly scout (though admittedly the ammo of the DW shotgun is vastly superior).

Not to totally beat up on the Smurfs, Vael will at least serve as my Deatwatch kill teams' watch sergeant. He's highly respected by all of his team's members save one, the lone ANGRY MAHREEN, Floyd Uberson (I linked to that post purely for the hilarious-to-me Ferengi comment beneath Floyd's pic). Floyd will soon to be repainted/pauldroned into DW colors and insignia. 

I wonder who threw that choppa?
An Ork? Or was it Floyd?

The enmity between these two began with Floyd's insistence on calling Vael (you guessed it) Veal Donuts, and will no doubt throw a wrench into every well conceived plan (which is cover for the fact that I never actually have one of those when playing...).

Neverness NEEDS a challenge!!!

My buddy Neverness' blog has hit the 6 year mark (approximately) and he's giving away a Space Marine painted by him! Okay, so you can get it as is but where's the fun in that, right? He's a very talented painter (art school does that to you) and as such, I think what his post is really about, is the want of a new 'challenge' (aside from finishing a project in a timely manner, snicker...).

Here's some suggestions that you can give him if you win:

How bout a marine painted in the original Tiger Claws' color scheme?

(((shudder)))

Or a marine painted up in chocolate chip or some other camo?

Yeah this would suck...

Or, if you really want to twist the screws, how bout one of his FAVORITE chapters: have him paint up an ANGRY MARINE!!!!

They're so angry, they don't even care about typos in their memes!

So head on over and fill up his comments section with your favorite of his posts and get entered into a fun little contest as well. Congrats Neverness!!

(Oh and uh...lol, you're welcome buddy!)

For the 1st time in my 20 years of gaming, I DON'T have a Space Marine army!

How did that happen?

Oh that's right: ebay.

Yes, this pic came from their ebay auction.

The most recent marines sold (the Storm Wardens) were ironically made up of almost all of the exact same models as I got 20 years ago in the 2nd ed 40k starter box. At my height (somewhere between 4th & 5th ed) I topped out at 19 40k armies! Don't ask where the hell I stored them all, because even now I can't figure that madness out. Currently, I have 3 (Orks & Eldar, both of which struggle to reach the 1500 point mark and my Grymn Militarum and friends who can't even reach 1k). Wolfy still has her Fem Fa'Tau though, which is easily the largest 40k army in the house.

What can I say, the twin travesties of 7th ed 40k and more recently the Age of Sigmeh have really strained my love of all things GW. However their redemption may possibly be in the near future. Ya see, unlike so many miniatures that have gone the way of ebay over the past year or so to keep the lights on, food on the table, credit cards at bay, etc., the Storm Wardens have a higher purpose. Their funds are going into a savings account, to await the day that plastic 30k arrives.

We've all seen the sprue pics, so we know its going to happen, the question is when. Luckily GW's marketing division likes to keep their customers completely in the dark, so who the hell knows. Right before Christmas is my guess. Regardless, I'm generally not in the position to make a triple-digit impulse buy (which often seems like GW's overall marketing scheme). Thus the Storm Wardens' funds will await that release. I may add to it in the intervening days/months/years as well...we'll see.

I do still have marines though. My current inventory of them is as follows:

Dark Hands/Subjugators: I have the periodically retired predator that I got an honorable mention with at Gamesday Atlanta some years ago, along with my Subjugators Librarian. Not sure why I kept him, I just like the mini I guess.

Exorcists: Yes, the accursed Matt Fucking Ward still exists, in my game room...I forgot about that model until just recently actually.

ANGRY MAHREENS!!!: Floyd Uberson is the only one I actually painted, and the only one I have left...and he's really fucking pissed off about it!!!

Aurora Chapter:  How in the FUCK can there still be a damned Aurora scout sniper left in this house?!?!?! I've sold them to Sweden (literally), given them away, repainted them and then given them away, and yet there's another half painted, headless one in the fucking mini case! Its like a god damned conspiracy or something...

Techmarine: He's a 'non-denominational' techmarine, meaning he's bereft of chapter iconography as I got tired of switching/repainting his shoulder pads (you can see him in Floyd Uberson's link above). He has 2 heavy bolter servitors that have been primed green for years now.

Blackshields: My former Emperor's Children, 30k contingent. Currently I have the recently painted Centurion and 5 recon marines (a.k.a. Scouts), a Techmarine with a conversion beamer along with a pair of Servo-Automata flunkies to serve as ablative wounds for him. I also have the now former Captain I killed Draigo (11th pic down, fighting some losers...), swimming in simple green who will be demoted to a mere grunt, an original rhino that's swimming with him, and my original predator which is the very first 40k model that I ever bought (in another year, that tank will of legal drinking age in this country!).

Storm Wardens: (3) bikers, of which only one is assembled and painted. These are the first minis my beloved Wolfy bought me, and thus they have sentimental value, yes even on the sprue.

Red Corsairs: with the demise of my Chaos marines, Centurion Niro has found himself retired to my Hall of Heros awaiting the day he can scratch the cowardly name of Tigurious off of his Murder Sword...

*****

I was going to further list the chapters I've fielded in the past as the number far exceeds the total number of marines listed above, but...I'm kinda tired and its getting late,  so screw it.

Maybe some other time.

Battle Demi-Company Formation: a rant and some questions…

Okay first off I'll get my rant out of the way:

Personally, I think formations are investor driven cash grabs and nothing more. GW is well aware that a lot of gamers apparently want an 'I WIN' button and many are all to happy to buy into the new winning bandwagon if it is presented to them. Why field a C.A.D. list when you can have a formation (or two) which will blow the other player off of the table due to the *free* rules incentives?

A complete lack of even acknowledging game balance is why GW insist that 40k is a narrative game. The forged narrative being spend more = win more (with the ultimate winners being their investors). Its like the Ferengi are now writing the rules.

Floyd Uberson of the Angry Marines HATES the fucking Ferengi!!!

Moving on…

The other day I was perusing my new Spess Mahreen PDF which was made available to me via our Russian friends on the internet. The hacked iPad interactive PDF was free-to-me BUT, in order to make that possible, the process turns the hyperlinks and drop downs into nothing more than blue type, limiting the PDF's usefulness considerably. Unfortunately I'm poor so beggars can't be choosers (and anything useful for Noble-Knight Trade-in credit has already been used as such).  At least I can build army lists with it which brings me to the following questions…

Starting off in an act of COMPLETE hypocrisy (when considered with the above rant and why not? GW retcons their code of conduct all the time, so why shouldn't their customers?) I was looking at the Battle Demi-Company Formation and realized that I can actually field that with the remnants of my Storm Wardens army. Well, I think so anyways. As such, I'll be looking at the formation based on what I have left of my army and without adding in any future purchases.

First up, I don't see anything that says I can't use the minimum squad sizes. If that's the case them my half-company is more like a quarter company, but it's still legal, right?

Also what if I want to use a Techmarine? Can I do that, and if so as what? An ally to his own army? (lame) Putting him in the list by himself (as he's not in the formation) feels like the army would instantly go unbound (and unbound armies are about as frequently played around here as WHFB is).

Techmarine aside, the same question stands for my Predator tank. Can I just tack that onto the formation too? Or do I have to buy a bunch of crap to make a legal CAD (or other formation) for allies in which to be able to use either of the two? If that's the case, then I'll just sell 'em (well, not the Techmarine, he'll stick around as I love the mini) as I can't afford to buy more stuff in order to use it, and as mentioned above, formations are apparently what 40k is all about these days.

Lastly the formation lists 0-1 unit of Dreadnoughts. Are the dreadnoughts in a squadron then? Or do they deploy as one and then wander off to do their own thing after that (which, considering their wildly different weapons fits, would be appropriate).

All told, using what I have left of the Storm Wardens, and using this formation my army would clock in at approximately 750 points (techmarine and predator excluded). Given that the average game is played at the 1500 point minimum most of the time (but often more), I wonder if I should even worry about any of this at all, or rather just sell off the whole lot (again, minus the techmarine).

That or fuck it, I'll just run a standard CAD as usual and just be behind the 8-ball since the CAD gives no free rules (because I didn't spend any $$$).

6th ed redeux?

o/

As I said last week, this weekend I took my Spess Mahreenz to the FLGS for a game of 40k. Mac was there with the Red Corsair army I'd given him, along with some reinforcements he added, all of which looked amazing! Indeed, so much so that I tried to convince him it was a loan, and I wanted them back but as compensation he could 'borrow' my Storm Wardens and Angry Marines to paint for awhile.

...sigh...

No, he didn't buy that line of bullshit but did offer to play against me at least. I did take several pics of the army but alas, I had shaky hands syndrome (can I blame my bronchitis for that?). As such quite a few photos were of no use. Thus I'm no sure how coherent the following bat rep will be (not that mine are ever the most coherent to begin with...).

1500 points, one of the old missions w/o the stupid cards...the one with 1 objective each. No psykers either, so really it was a rather enjoyable 6th ed game with a few minor tweaks to the vehicle damage chart, charging into terrain, and apparently rending is only AP2 now (making my Eldar snipers even worse than they were last week). Sorry, no pics of the deployments either, to be honest I think I just flat forgot to take any...

This was the only showcase pic that wasn't blurred all to hell. Here, the Cultists prepare to unleash the hounds (Spawn).

Unleashed they were, only to be charged by my Dreadnought on turn 1. The Spawn couldn't hurt the dread, and it settled into an oh-so-rare and happy state of winning in HTH...

Turn 2 and an already damaged Hellbrute Charged in, to try and save the hounds for some even rarer dread on dread combat!

1 Hull point lost and the hellbrute goes down, leaving my dread to return to his original targets!

My Captain lost his tactical combat squad to these Raptors with a mark of Slaanesh, though he did kill their champion in the challenge.

A turn or two later, the techmarine and another chewed up combat squad tried to save him, but his Relic blade succeeded in finishing off the Raptors, who finished him off in return. The rest of the I4 schleps could only watch in horror...

Having disembarked from their rhino, and wading thru all sorts of fire, the Angry Marines slaughter their way thru the cultist horde.

The Chaos Lord with the Axe of Blind Fury tries repeatedly to climb the wall and take my objective (in the tower one level above my tac squad), but to no avail. He would fall to overwatch fire before succeeding. That said, he did wipe out a Dark Hands' Sternguard Squad earlier, so he probably paid for himself at least.

Having wiped out the cultists, and run down the Obliterator, the few surviving Angry Marines spot what looks to be a beer cooler on the top level and advance to take it...

Here we have Mac, painter extraordinaire and heinous Chaos warlord who informed the triumphant Angry Marines that the objective only contained diet coke! Enraged they hurled endless obscenities in his direction!

I do believe my dread had found his happy place, as he never left this combat till the bottom of turn 7 when he finished off the last Spawn.

Bereft of its storm bolter, the Angry Marines rhino, after multiple turns of going flat out tank shocks a havoc squad out of its cover (pancaking one in a death or glory attempt)!

Unable to contain himself from the diet coke treachery, my Angry Marines leader: The Fist Fucker, calls out the Havocs and kills them all in glorious combat!

 End result: I had both objectives and had tabled Mac's beautiful army. Huzzah!

However as a parting note: before anyone comments that I only like 40k if I'm winning, after my game I dropped right back into my usual rant mode along with Bob, who was suffering under stupid psychic phase and it's near-impossible to deny-the-witch BS.

An ANGRY redemption!!!

o/

Just a quick post today.

I have a small 7 man allied contingent of Angry marines. In their first few debuts, they've amounted instead to something more like 'mildly annoyed marines'. However this past Saturday they earned their names! Making an 11" charge, the attacked a Wraith knight (with only 1 wound on it)!

For the EMPRAH!!!!

Only able to wound it with krak grenades and a powerfist, they tied it up for 3 full turns! Winning the first round they held on and fought to the last (that being the Fist Fucker and his Power fist) putting an impressive 4 more wounds on it. The beast was FINALLY put out of action by the angry marines Landraider, as the Knight was trying to stomp it to death (only 1 hull point to go...).

Now I might actually paint some more of them up...

A new lease on life for an old favorite...

o/

Amusingly, the 'new owners' of this tank only field the Destructor pattern of the Predator.

I've been wanting to use my old Dark Hands predator but there's a bit of a dilemma with that. Mainly as I didn't want to (a) repaint it as its nicely painted already, (b) just use it as a proxy Storm Wardens Predator again, or (c) restart another Dark Hands army as I don't miss them (though ol' Captain Kurtz was a rather pretty mini).

Thus I was perusing Lexicanum to see if there were any other SM chapters out there with similar color schemes (even though the official Dark Hands color scheme uses a much lighter green) and iconography, as GW is notorious for reusing icons. Given the Imperial Fists front plate, I started there and quickly found a successor chapter I'd never heard of, but still fit the bill nicely: The Subjugators.

Perfect! Once again, I can use a bit of artistic license to alter the colors to my liking (i.e.: Catachan green instead of that more emeraldish green), and put the ol' predator back to work. About half of the minis I have for the Storm Wardens are still primed green (because Hawk Turquoise covers that much easier than it does black), and as such they're half way ready already.  No worries, I still quite like my Warden army, just not too keen on painting anymore of them here lately.  Also, these guys are actual IF descendents, so I can still use the IF chapter traits, allowing me try a different chapter trait for the Wardens.

Not enough contrast on the shoulder icon, hmm...

One thing I lacked for this little endeavor however was a leader, as all of my suitable minis are already painted. Well, except for my Angry Marines' leader 'The Fist Fucker'. Yet with a name like that, how can he be anything other than an angry marine??? lol. That said, one  of his angry marine subordinates volunteered to leave his brethren, to be re-equipped as a captain for the Subjugators. Trading in his bolt pistol and chainsword (and helmet), he now has a power sword and the 'Primarch's Wrath' relic weapon.

Old timers will recognize that gun as coming from a 2nd. ed. scout's heavy bolter, albeit trimmed down and modified a bit. Also, the Subjugators don't seem to display company colors anywhere. However the predator has 3's all over it from its former company, so I added one to the captain's shoulder to tie him in with the tank, and announce which company it is that he leads. Not too well though, as the chapter's fluff on Lexicanum states that the 3rd co. was almost completely wiped out during the 13th black crusade. Indeed, of the 3 companies initially deployed (the 1st, 3rd and 5th), 168 battle brothers were lost in short order, most with their gene seed unrecoverable! Leaving the chapter master to decide on whether or not to pull out of the conflict...

On a totally different note, Mac (last week dubbed as 'Mac n' Cheese' by Screech) sent me a pic of two of his newly acquired and now painted Red Corsairs:

Amazing! He made more progress in mere days than I did with them in 2ish years. Damn they look good too! Neverness commented: Wow! Fuck it, i quit...lol.

Also tomorrow is Thanksgiving. So to all of you out there in the good ol' US of A, I wish you a good day replete with entirely too much good food, a football game to fall asleep in front of afterwards, and then followed of course by pie! :-D

Thus I wish you all safe travels as the snow has arrived!

The view off of my deck this morning.

ALWAYS ANGRY!!! ALL THE TIME!!!

o/

Just a quick post this morning. Whilst I did get a game in this weekend, I didin't take any photos of it, Neverness snapped a few, but they're lost in the warp presumably. No matter since Mac (not 'Matt') and his Ultramarines thoroughly pasted my GF's Fem Fa'Tau and their erstwhile allies, the ANGRY MARINES!!! lol.

The yellow came out as more of a desert tan, than the bright, screaming 'I WANNA BE AN IMPERIAL FIST' yellow that the Angry Marines normally wear. Its much easier to paint and looks better too I think.

The battlefield debut of my little Angry little allied contingent was...mediocre at best. Landing in a (stolen from the Storm Wardens) drop pod, two died to a plasma cannon shortly thereafter. The drop pod never managed to kill anything (unsurprising with a mere storm bolter). The Wolf Guard Battle Leader (aka: the Fist Fucker) left the Blood Claws (regular angry marines) to single handedly take down a small dev squad, but bit off more than he could chew when he tried the same with an entire assault squad.

The rest of the Angry Mahreenz charged a 5-man squad of Umarine scout snipers, and after 3 rounds, managed to kill all of them whilst losing about half their number in the process. They then went on, pistols blazing and hitting nothing (much like my Orks) to charge a second dev squad, which they tied up for the remainder of the game.

As I said, mediocre, but amusing nonetheless which is all I really was hoping for. Orks aside, my armies tend to lack dedicated assault elements, so hopefully these lunatics will fill that niche. I'm thinking of giving them my old landraider crusader which I haven't really done anything with in years...

Edit: Neverness came thru with a few pics, here are two for a few scenes from the battle:

Closing the distance via drop pod and teleport homer for the termies, this pic shows the beginning of the end for the Fem Fa'Tau...

The Angry Marines Arrive! The Dev squad in the foreground would fall to the Fist Fucker (excluding one plasma cannon gunner who committed Sepuku beforehand).

Starting a few little 40k side projects...

o/

Check any of my linked posts on my Storm Wardens and you'll quickly note that all of the minis in that army are old. Indeed most are the 2nd ed. starter box mono-posed marines. Whilst kinda boring, all together they kinda work fine from an aesthetic point of view. I'm even looking to get SM bikes in lieu of assault marines, as again, the bikers are essentially all in the same pose.

I do however have a squad of marines that are all made from multi-poseable parts. They've been around the block, and all have been stripped, partially disassembled, reassembled, and back again. In general, they just look like hell. I tried using them as Sternguard for the Wardens (which are known as 'Inheritors'), but they looked so screamingly different that it didn't work at all for me. So they've sat on the shelf collecting dust, until now...

ALWAYS ANGRY!!!

A friend of mine is starting his own Mechanicum themed fan-dex, and in asking for help someone posted a link to the Angry Marines (that's not a work safe link there folks...). I'd forgotten about that home brew chapter, and reading thru the hilarity of it, I thought why not use my small contingent of multi-posed marines for them? Thus I ordered a few bitz needed as my supply of CCWs has long ago been depleted.

As an added bonus, it'll now be 'fluffy' for me to scream obscenities at my opponents while we play, lol!

ALL THE TIME!!!

Sure its only a base coat, but its a start. Rather than the screaming bright yellow of the Imperial Fists, I'm just using the Averland Sun (or whatever its called) base paint, more of a mustard yellow. It'll save me from needing 15+ coats of yellow to fix a mistake made with any other color.

Fan-dexes aren't universally accepted, so I'll use the rules for Space Puppies. Starting with Blood Claws, as Angry Marines can't hit the broadside of a barn, and just want to get into HTH combat! Give em' a Wolf Guard Battle Leader as the small allied contingent doesn't require a full Captain, and will throw in a Lone Wolf for no other reason than Neverness' Lone Wolf is always a thorn in my side, and this seems like a good opportunity to return the favor! Despite just being base coated, I couldn't resist trying my hand at painting the shoulder pad icon, and it came out reasonably well I think.

Quick! Get the Psychic bug spray!

Not forgetting the Exodites from my last post, I now have a platoon's worth of Psychic tokens. Most just have the power written on in pen till they're painted properly. But it gives me options for rolling 3 of the same of all of the Warlock powers (well, only 2 for Destructor), plus any of the Farseer's powers.  They ought to paint up quickly so long as the Angry Marines or whatever else doesn't distract me.