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.

My first encounter vs a Riptide...

o/

This weekend I got to play with Patrick. He's an old friend of mine, and largely responsible for painting all of that wonderful terrain I posted a few posts back! Not having played in a few years (somehow) we remedied that this past Saturday.

Storm wardens with Subjugators and an Ordo Xenos inquisitor vs. Tau. 1750 points, Big Guns never tire (three objectives, one in each deployment zone and one in the middle of the table), standard deployment. He won the roll and decided to let me deploy first. Failing to steal the initiative I went first into night fight conditions...

The mostly painted Storm Wardens prepare to walk into hell on my right flank.

My full battle line, with Captain I Killed Draigo, the Obsolete Assassin (inquisitor) and a 10-man tac squad in the Landraider.

The predator's performance in this game would not move it up any higher on the painting list, the landraider...maybe.

The Subjugators, many of whom were assembled mere days before battle.

Ugh, I dread what that thing will do...

The Tau center with the Special character tank commander inside the Hammerhead.

2 Broadsides (one is a proxy) with a pair of funny looking shield drones faced me on my left.

Turn one, the dreadnought drop podded in, scattered badly, but took out a quarter of the fire warriors. The Landraider did nothing useful aside from illuminate the hammerhead with its searchlight. The bare plastic pred failed to put a dent in it, whereas the Subjugators pred put all three hull points on it, killing it with the final blow coming from a hunter-killer missile (quite the rarity for that to actually work), giving me 1st blood!

The Subjugators heavy bolters took out the 'shield drone proxies' but the Broadsides held firm.

The Cadre Fireblade, firewarriors and riptide hammer the advancing tac squad. The brute firepower proving too much for the Librarian's 'Invisibility'.

THIS folks is what you call the proper use of cover! This pic was taken from my bare plastic predator's point of view...

One broadside down and the scouts arrive in the backfield to cause problems...

Somehow still untouched (the Tau's opening turns went badly dice roll wise) the Venerable dread wipes out the center Fire Warrior squad.

Invisibility indeed. Overwhelming firepower annihilates my left flank!

Oh yay, Faresight and friends land in my backfield and the Subjugators pred goes BOOM!

PHOTO BOMB!!! lol, compliments of Patrick's brother Matt.

With Tau appearing in the Subjugators' backfield, their Librarian with Iron Arm moves to intercept. You can tell by his absence from this pic just how well THAT worked...

Having gone a few rounds in HTH losing once and fleeing form the broadsides. The scouts are reduced to just their Sgt., who succeeds in wiping out the Broadsides, and saving the Dread from anymore railgun shots to the back (especially as it was already down 2 hull points at this point...).

Oh great, MORE of them...

The last few Subjugators fight bravely, but are wiped out by overwhelming firepower (this seems to be a theme with the Tau...).

Thus my left flank, like the right before it (and my other predator) cease to exist.

The landraider disgorges its cargo into HTH with the monster, to no avail...

The Storm Wardens use their White Scars' chapter trait to leave HTH (and the inquisitor) behind via hit-n-run. Their intent was to avenge their dreadnought which had just fallen to the Cadre Fireblades' EMP grenades (at the expense of his accompanying fire warriors), but the game ended.

4" from the objective, idiot.

Tallying up the final scores, we came up with not a whole lot. Nobody had any objectives, I had 1st blood and line breaker with the lone scout (and only just barely). Whereas Patrick only had line breaker giving me a 2-1 victory. Had he kept his squad on the objective rather than try and kill the dread, he would have had me, but vengeance took over it seems...likewise had I not moved the landraider too far away from it's objective...

In the end a good close game it turned out to be, so we were both happy with it.

The Riptide didn't do too much, as it was his 1st game with it and as my GF doesn't have one, I couldn't help him much with the rules for it (he's new to the new codex and so hadn't heard of 'supporting fire' till I explained it to him, lol!). That said, a dozen shots per turn via nova charged burst cannon was murderous! Beware of that folks...

Subjuggators Librarian

As I've stated previously, I don't like any of the SM Librarian minis. So once again I ordered a single Grey Knight off of ebay and painted it blue. I made a few alterations, including the addition of a nemesis warding stave to use as a force staff, and I swapped the stormbolter arm with a standard arm and bolter. Not sure what model the helmet came from originally, I just found it in the bitz box.

A good portion of my unpainted marines were recently recruited by the Lions of Harlech along with their Captain. Basically I got tired of painting that same, single pose marine over and over again (though I still have several of them to finish painting, ...sigh...). With their number thus reduced, it seemed odd to have a captain armed with a venerated chapter relic to be leading a half dozen marines and a tank, so he also fell prey to the Lions' recruitment drive. To my troops they're presumed to be lost in combat, so this dirt cheap Libby will be taking over command of the Subjugators (dropping the Subjugators' total down to about 300 points).

In other news...lol, ever since my GF and her cats moved in last october, I've been hiding my light box from the kitties. However as you can see I wasn't quick enough in putting it away last night and Kiya decided to give it a try. lol, its just like a kitty-play-cube!

ONE. LOUSY. MARINE.

That's all I got painted this week...that's it. Just one. Its not even a great paint job, merely decent.

At least he better matches the predator than the captain, though its kinda blah looking, even for a Sgt.

Where in the hell did all of my free time go all of a sudden? Perhaps, post holidays, things will settle down and 'free time' will reappear? The GF moving in will pass the 90 day-trial period and we'll settle into our 'new normal' or something like that. Or at least I hope its something like that...I was tempted to make a low-blow remark along the lines of 'I feel like Neverness now' but hell, I think his painting progress has easily surpassed mine by this point!

...sigh...

Subjugators 3rd Company, all of it!

Well, maybe...

So as I said earlier, I've been pondering a small allied force of the Subjugators Space Marine chapter. Again this is really just an excuse to drag my old Dark Hands Predator out of retirement without making another DH army. The Subjugators fit the bill, although as you can see, the newly painted captain (now with a visibly distinguishable shoulder icon) doesn't quite match it. I wonder if I should forgo the wash and paint the grunts to better match the pred? That ought to allow me to keep the chapter icons black as well...

The 'T's' and 'D's' on the bases distinguished tactical and devastator marines previously.

Anyways, I'd only picked the 3rd Company as the Predator was bedecked with 3's, and so added a '3' to the captain's shoulder as well. Having since read the Chapter's fluff on Lexicanum a little closer, the 3rd was 'almost completely wiped out'. Thus, its conceivable that my 500 point contingent could in fact be the entire company (assuming roughly 80% casualties from full company strength). Conveniently, this is yet another obscure chapter with only a smidgen of canon fluff, leaving me to fill in the gaping holes with whatever I want.

Such as:

The 3rd company's captain ordered the Ramilies star fort's reactor to be overloaded when he realized the station was lost to chaos. With most of the company going down with the fort (the captain included), only a handful of marines in the rearguard were able to escape the debacle.

With the dire news coming from their losses in the Cadian warzone, the Chapter Master pulled the beleaguered vanguard off the line to rest and refit. Of the shattered 3rd company, he reorganized the
company's 19 survivors (including the 2 in the predator) into the most combat effective force he could muster: two under strength tactical squads, with a single predator in support. Two marines were then promoted to the rank of sergeant to lead the tac. squads.  The company's sole surviving sergeant (prior to the reorganization) was elevated to the rank of captain. To instill in him the chapter's confidence, as well as to rekindle the sense of purpose into the defeated 3rd co. (which was ordered to leave the Cadian war zone rather than risk annihilation), the newly minted captain was given the privilege to use a chapter relic: The Primarch's Wrath.

So, 19 marines, 1 tank, and (presumably) a ship of some sort, probably an escort with a single Thunderhawk to shuttle them around...plying the space of the Imperium, and looking to ally with whomever in an attempt to regain their sense of purpose (and a paint job).  Yup, that'll work just nicely I think. Also, I realized that I have almost another full tac. squad of the same generic bolter marines still on the sprue. Meaning the loss of the 16 marines above will have a minimal impact on the Storm Warden army from whence they came.

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.