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So slow progress. Week was a bit of a hot mess. Folks were visiting last weekend, had The Boy full time for the start of the week, and spent the second half of the week in NH with family. But I got a layer of red down on the Eldar, so some progress?

So I did a read through of the datacards for both the nids and marines. Lot to unpack. And with no points, real hard to guage. If something got nerfed, but got a price cut to go with it, that’s fine. Different, but fine. The rolling of all the SM chapters together opens up some options. Like 2x special weapons on tac squads, or meltas in assaults. Some restrictions are going to be problematic. Like a lot of places to take a single lightning claw are gone. Some simplification I am fine with. Power weapons as just one profile is good. Combis less so. And vanguard vets were done a disservice. I get simplification, and we all have our lines of what is too far.

I’m less vested in the nids. So seeing things wrapped up into “tooth and claw” doesn’t bug me.

One thing is with characters back to joining squads, and with very tight lists of what’s allowed, I’m going to have to evaluate what I have and how I want to put squads together.

Still a lot to digest, much of which will prbably wait until after the codexs are out. Or we have points at the very least.


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One thing I did notice is the primaris champ that I just build should now have a bolt pistol per his card. Space on his belt for one, and I’ve not primed him yet. To the bits box!


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Edit2

And pre-ordered for Leviathan.

Doesn't "bug" you...

I see what you did there. Here's to a burst of productivity. I could use one, too.

Productivity is a bit low right now. Got another color on the rangers and the basecoat on the nid.



Joining us is the free mini of the month, who will get primed in the next batch. When the rain/dreary weather stops.

Gotta keep plugging along, but it’s a slog through life right now. Anyway, everyone have a great week!

Layer at a time...

Cleaned up a bolt pistol for the champ and hung it off his belt. Also got a fresh head for the tank commander, so the primed one can go back ot the librarian. He also got a Ultra shoulder pad and glued together. Off to the primed pile.

I actually got that mini of the month too, as while I was out of town I did happen to be close to a Warhammer shop and made sure to stop by and check it out. I'll probably save it for when I don't have anything else for one of the painting challenges or something.

Rangers are coming along nicely. Their new(ish) plastic kit is pretty great. Haven't looked at their abilities in 10th yet (index only dropped today) so no idea how they'll play.

 ZergSmasher wrote:
I actually got that mini of the month too, as while I was out of town I did happen to be close to a Warhammer shop and made sure to stop by and check it out. I'll probably save it for when I don't have anything else for one of the painting challenges or something.

Rangers are coming along nicely. Their new(ish) plastic kit is pretty great. Haven't looked at their abilities in 10th yet (index only dropped today) so no idea how they'll play.

Having the monthly free models adds a nice buffer of random stuff for the comp. Also good for testing paints.

Rangers are going to depend a lot on points. They are pretty fragile, even for eldar. T3 with a 5+ does not last long in the open. Now, they do have a 5++ vs. shooting, so at least they get to keep their crappy save regardless of what’s being tossed at them. And stealth for a -1 to hit them baked in. Their special ability is to run away when things get close (but not engaged) is pretty situational.

Their rifles are nice, and softer armies might need to worry. But S4 AP-1 D2 precision shots is going to put like 2 wounds on a marine a turn for a squad of shooting.

They don’t have a lot of synergy with the rest of the army. They don’t buff/debuff others, and don’t have abilities that can really be leveraged. What they bring to my army is infiltration, which is a nice perk. More importantly, they get a pass on the “Getting mud on your boots is for lesser races” so are a unit I can include and not need to find a transport slot for.

Nice to see some Eldar getting worked on.

Cheers,

CB

Just about done with the basecoats and how much month left? I’m sure it will be fine…

Did a little more work. Plugging away.

Also hit the FLGS and grabbed my Leviathan box. That’s a chonky boy right there. I think my priority will be to get the combat patrols build and painted out of it first. The whole thing will keep me busy for a while

Nice! As always, I look forward to seeing the new Marines get their blue.

Those Scouts will have plenty to shoot at.

 youwashock wrote:
Nice! As always, I look forward to seeing the new Marines get their blue.

Those Scouts will have plenty to shoot at.

5 burrna boys clipped from the new box. I can fake the terminators and TDA characters with old lead until the new plastics get done, but need those guys for the marine CP. Will be good to get some blue across the bench. It’s been lacking this year.

Looking at Eldar, I have all the models, but a few gear issues. My glave WL has flamers, not cats, but that’s a pretty trivial counts-as. Spare heavies to swap for her and the platform. One issue is, ironically, the lack of scatter lasers for the bikes. Despite playing bike heavy eldar, I never bothered to build any. My dozen windriders are 2/3 cats, 1/3 cannons; old school. That said, the 6 modern ones are set for magnets. So I dug out 3 scats and will clean them up and mag them. I could counts-as cannons in the meanwhile.

SoB is the launch box I painted plus a rhino, so that’s all done and sorted.

Nids is a lot of fresh stuff needed. I can use old gaunts, but everything else is new.

Deathwatch I’m short a few models for and my agressors have the wrong options. Not the the bolters vs flamers would be a huge deal. But I’d need to get a Lt, an apothecary, and another intercessor to replace a sarge so I could go with a 10 man squad instead of 2x5.

So it begins.

Scats are cleaned and off to the to be primed pile.

Marines are clipped. Quick look shows that GW might be back to oddly cut pushfits. We’ll see how bad it actually gets. But one of the shoulderpads had part of the trim on the lower arm. Going to make painting in parts real irritating. We’ll see how bad it gets as I start actually assembling them.



Getting washes down. Used a thin brown on the leathers. Hard to tell it’s there. Oh well.

Finished with the SM combat patrol:


But seriously, working on the pyros.

These guys got a little banged around in the box. Needed to replace the grip on the sarge’s gun. Not the best quality of pushfits. Some compromises for less parts makes more cleanup. About on par with the 8th starter. Step back from the 9th, which was quite good.

Paint going down

Started the camo on the rangers. Leaving the insides of the cloaks white for contrast. Bug needs more details. Mouth, eyes, and green wash. Plus a lot of cleanup and assembly.

Hope everyone’s week is going well.

So that dread just fell together. While the pyros were a little irritating, and showed their ETB nature, the dread had no real issues. Being big and blocky has some perks.



Rangers got all 3 colors of camo down. Need to go back and do some extra splotches so it’s not as layerd. Right now all the dark is the bottom coat. They also need a lot of details touched up and picked out. Getting there.

Getting there, indeed. Camo looks sweet.

Apparently I was paying zero attention to the run-up for 10th. Those new BBQ boys look cool. As does the dread.

Your arctic camo looks great!

Agree that the Infernus were kind of annoying to assemble. They should be decently easy to paint though. That arctic camo on those Rangers looks great!

youwashock wrote:Getting there, indeed. Camo looks sweet.

Apparently I was paying zero attention to the run-up for 10th. Those new BBQ boys look cool. As does the dread.

The new box has a lot of cool looking minis in it.

JoshInJapan wrote:Your arctic camo looks great!

I feel like I need to go back and re-do my old rangers now. But that way lies madness. If I keep looking back, the Pile of Shame shall grow unchecked and devour me. Onward to fresh paint!

ZergSmasher wrote:Agree that the Infernus were kind of annoying to assemble. They should be decently easy to paint though. That arctic camo on those Rangers looks great!

From a build POV, I’m a bit torn on the Leviathan box. The pyros were a definite step back in quality. Which is a little sad, since the 9th starter was a lot better than the 8th in terms of mini quality. Once assembled they look fine, but there are more undercut compromises than I like. We’ll see what the rest of the box is like. The dread went together like a dream, but I noticed on the sculpted base bit his foot is on some random nid garbage. It’s pretty subtle, and could just be vines, but on other models there are defiantly dead nids. With Indominus there were optional necron parts on the bases you could leave off if they didn’t match your theme. Now as an Ultramarine 3rd company guy (scourge of xenos) I don’t have a personal stake in this, as I’m all about killing bugs. But as a design decision I wish they went more basic.

Anyway, with the dread build I need to figure out what to build next.

But paint:

Most of the touchup work done, guns glued on. Just need the final pass and to be based. Don’t know if I mentioned it, but the warrior of off the handle and waiting to be based himself. He’s the last of the 3 new ones I need to field a legal squad.

Next month is going to be “renewal” I’m thinking the new dread might get some paint. Assuming the weather calms down enough to let me prime.

Going to do the dread for next month’s challenge. Just a little scale creep. As that’s going to be on the big handle, need to figure out what else to paint along side.



Rocks and tufts done, just flock to go.

Clipped the barbgaunts to cleanup next.

Hope everyone is having a great start to their weekend.


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Quick post. Will probably ramble more tomorrow over coffee.

Halfway through the year:


Rangers done


New/old


Got some primer down on the new stuff. Hopefully good coat. Had to swap cans halfway through and it’s a hair on the humid side.

OK, we’ve been working on 2023 for about 6 months now. How are we doing?

I wrote:
Here are my New Year’s resolutions:
1 Paint 13 members for the primaris battle company (stretch goal: finish it)
2 Paint at least 24 Tyranids, and strive to keep them PoS neutral. (stretch goal: clear the decks of all old nids) (22/24)
3 Paint more than I buy. (41/74)
4 Paint at least 3 units that have been in the primed pile/Pile of Shame for 3+ years (1/3)
5 Update my blog at least once a week, and maintain a consistent pace of work (1 mini a week).
6 Paint at least two units for 4 different factions. In addition paint at least one model not for an active army.
7 Enter and finish an entry every month for the painting challenge. If the monthly challenge stops, enter at least one comp in the year.
8 Finish magnetizing the bases and boxes for my Tryanids, at least to fill the boxes I have (stretch goal: add more boxes and cover all the bugs)

I have painted exactly zero company marines. Heck, only one of them is even blue! This is a hard fail and one I need to get working on. Going to paint the new dread this month, so he will help. I’ve been kinda glossing over the company dreads. I know I need them, but was going to try to fake it with just assigning old ones from the dread pool. While knowing in my heart I was going to have to get 2-3 redemptors.

While I’m doing well on the 24 mini goal, the Leviathan box just dropped 47 more nids into the pool. I’d like to hit that number at year’s end, and if possible do it by clearing the decks of old stuff. So this goal should be a win, but it has basically 2 different stretch goals.

Assuming I don’t buy a whole lot more stuff this should be OK. But another awesome box set and this could be sunk. We’ll see what the release schedule looks like.

I still have the jetseer and stormhawk looking at me. Need to paint them. Halfway through the year and 1/3 through the goal could be worse.

This is like my free square. Still blogging, still painting.

I’ve actually painted units for 5 armies, but only 2 of them with more than one unit. The chaos/GSC cultists help with these numbers, but are unlikely to get more support. They do let me tick the “not for an active army” box. Do I count my 30k stuff as a seperate faction? I probably should. Either way, doing good here.

100 challenges under my belt. Still going strong.

Nids are basically all done. The only serious mini left is the RT tyrant, who will play the role of a warrior prime in a squad. The flyrant doesn’t have magnets, but doesn’t fit in the boxes so is kinda a moot point. I should figure out something for the gargoyles as well. New paint and the primed box will need their bases done, as will everything I build new. The painted shelf will probably get that done when I move them from the YTD to general population. Might try to do the new/primed stuff in batches as well. As it involves GS, it’s best to do them in blocks on 25-30, so not something I am going to do on a squad levels as I build them.

--

So in general I’m doing OK. The big fail is the company marines. Which should be helped with the batch I managed to prime yesterday. Dread, pyros, and the champ (plus some scatter lasers). All of them are company assets. And I want to get the burners done for CP games.

Hope everyone is having a good weekend. Belated happy Canada Day for my northern neighbors.

Good work on the Rangers, Nev! I don't even know what to say about the size difference on the dreads. Always good to see how you are doing with your goals. Best of luck in the 2nd half of 2023!

You're certainly outdoing me on your output for the year, but that's easy. I should have some stuff coming across the line that will pad my numbers a bit though. You should be able to breeze through the bugs fairly quick with your method.

Need to get paint down, but built 2 barbgaunts. They went together pretty nicely.

So yesterday I played a small solo demo game just to wrap my brain around 10th. Still missed a lot of things, but I wanted to give it a shot.
500 point armies, of the scout/vanguard variety.




So I took more pictures (in my gallery) but I’m just going to hit the high points.

Oath of Moment is nasty. I think we all knew this. But it is very focused. One unit a turn is going to get mangled, but others will be OK. Marines went first, so I scout moved the stealers into cover. The entirety of the marine line lit them up and killed them, but it took everything. The marine fire was basically tons of bolter fire, which did a number on the light guys. Much better force projection on the move. Struggled with the bigger bugs, but were still putting wounds down. Termagaunts were tougher than I thought. Keep to cover, get saves, respawn more. Still died when focused on, but impressed me. I think a block of 20 would be better. Lictor was mean. Most of the second half of the game was it and a parasite rolling up marines, getting wounds chipped off them, and eventually going down. Used the start to fall back and still shoot a lot for the marines.

Little pissed at the GW formatting for the PDFs. Some backgrounds made them unreadable. Going to have to clean up and make my own cards, but probably not until after the codex drops. App would probably be fine, but I was flipping between nids/marines, so lot of extra steps.

If we count this as an actual game, victory to the marines. Not a steamroller, but a solid win.

Looks great man and sounds like a decent dip into 10th, looking forward to more

 Nevelon wrote:
100 challenges under my belt. Still going strong.

You are a machine Neve.

Cheers,

CB

So finished building the barbgaunts (which went together fine) and the psycophage (which needed a little gap filling) Time to switch back to the marine side: reinforcement incoming, clipped and ready for cleaning


Paint going down, slowly.

Fist blue on the dread, grey seer on the nids.

Hope everyone is having a great weekend

Progress grinds slowly forward. Dread needs about 3-4 more base colors added, and a chunk of detail picked out. Plus the arms. But getting there. Gaunts are ready for the red stage. Scatter lasers just got theirs. They need a silver drybrush and another red. Although I’m reminded that I do some eldar guns as silver with a black wash, not black with a silver drybrush. I’ll need to check their peers and see what I did.

Oh well.

Midway through the week. Hang in there.

Very nice work on those rangers.

Whoa, some of your paints look like they're old enough to drink!

Those Nids look brill

 Tigurius wrote:
Whoa, some of your paints look like they're old enough to drink!

Those Nids look brill

I don't think you should be drinking paint, no matter how old it is

But seriously Nev, good progress so far. I need to get more done on my own entry for this month. I'm barely started!