This is a break down of my Ultramarines Second Company that I am currently working upon. I started collecting this Company when I purchased the Armageddon Battle Company box set back in 2008. Unfortunately, due to time constraints back then, only one squad of marines was finished and another two squads were ready for paint. Everything was then packed up and put into the attic to gather dust!
So, 3 squads needed to be moved onto 32mm bases which I have purchased. I also have since found 1 plastic dreadnought, which I had “battle damaged” back then. I’m not entirely keen on it, but I shall keep on with it. I do seem to remember purchasing a bunch of Ultramarine shoulder pads, alongside doors for each of the 9 rhino vehicle and a FW dreadnought – the one with the awesome tyranid banner pole. I shall be doing my best to locate these things, as I hate to think of wasting the money!
For the other marines, I am currently removing arms and weaponry ready to get glued into position. I will be priming and painting in subassemblies, but also using a different paint scheme!! Something a bit brighter and with red gun casings.
So *hopefully* with both dreadnoughts, I do have 8 rhinos and one razorback – for the life of me I can’t find my old original razorback with the metal turret! Alongside those, I have my old Space Wolf predator annhilator as well to paint up in the Ultramarines scheme!
I will be be painting some of these up on my Twitch stream, so do make sure to swing by!
This post is on my Kill Team thoughts and musings. I wanted to do this post when I received the box set of Kill Team, however I had a few things going on that prevented that. This will not be a full in-depth review on game mechanics etc, as I don’t currently have enough experience in that to develop accurate thoughts on the matter. Instead, I will be looking at the contents of the box and give some immediate opinions on said items! In my previous post, I had mentioned that I had pre-ordered Kill Team: Rogue Trader which has since arrived. I will endeavour to do something similar for that next week. In this box set, you get two Kill Teams: the Genestealer Cult and the Skitarii teams. You also get: some scenery, a massive 208 soft back book, missions and tactics, die, tokens and a measure.
Kill Teams
The two Kill Teams contained are on different sprues, red for the Skitarii and grey for the Genestealer Cult. Miniatures available to be built are 10 Genestealer Cult Neophytes and 10 Skitarii Rangers or Vanguard. These will be enough to get you and a friend up and running, or it will leave you with two teams to play with. There is a bit of variation here, mixing and matching bodies which will enable you to have three specialists and the remainder as regular troopers.
Scenery
In this box set, you will find scenery to build up some sector Imperialis Kill Zone. Along with the plastic scenery, you will find a reversible play mat to play Kill Team upon. This is a step up from the scenery that came with Mordheim, certainly! You can acquire more sector Imperialis scenery from stores, as well as different Kill Zones. There are a variety of different sectors to both make and buy scenery for including: death worlds, sector Mechanicus and sector Munitorum.
Book
The book itself contains the meat of the content. The book is split into four main sections: Shadow War, Rules, Missions and Kill Teams. Shadow War is at the beginning with a basic introduction to the team types, theatres of war etc. The rules contain both the basic and advanced rules for the game. The list for the mission types is divided into the different phases, open, matched and narrative type missions. There are break downs for each individual Kill Team and everything to do with the teams. There are listings for squad specialists, the playable teams, team colours and listings for campaigns. You can obviously run individual missions as you see fit, however you can also run a series of interconnected missions that tell a narrative. Winning and losing missions will increase or decrease one of four resources: intelligence, materiel, morale and territory. Starting with a set amount of points, once you lose all of your points you are reduced to a guerrilla faction – where you have essentially lost. The last remaining team with points being the clear winner.
Extras
Along with the main parts of the set you will get some dice, various markers and a measuring device. The measuring device is just a strip of plastic with measurements on – this will be sufficient to get you up and running. I personally use an old tape measure that does the job just as well. There are faction specific dice available, included in the separate team box sets and available on their own. The counters I believe I generic and you could probably rustle up some faction specific counters. I don’t have an image, however there are two books or lore or backstory for the different teams and guidelines on sticking the miniatures together.
Summary
To sum up my Kill Team thoughts, personally, this would be a fun way to dip your toe into the 40K universe. I find that this is an excellent way to collect a few different miniatures from different factions. This keeps costs of collecting new armies to a minimum in a similar fashion to Shadespire or my beloved Mordheim. As long as Games Workshop continues to support it, I have high hopes for it. I am looking forward to running a Grey Knight Kill Team, Genestealer Cult and who knows what else! This will also give a good opportunity to make some interesting scenery and objectives to fight over. You will be able to purchase Kill Team from Element Games using this link here.
Kill Team Rogue Trader is on it’s way! Those two words: ‘Rogue Trader’ have been in my head for almost as long as I can remember. The initial release was in 1987, written by Rick Priestly. I didn’t personally come across it until I started playing Space Hulk a few years later. Unfortunately, I never played it myself, but I remember reading about it and the artwork is unforgettable. It certainly set a precident for me.
Kill Team was released quite recently and Kill Team Rogue Trader is an expansion for it. It will be available on the 15th of September, with pre-orders available from today! You can pre-order from Element Games here, if you are in Europe, at a cheaper price than from Games Workshop. It brings with it two new Kill Team factions: Rogue Traders in the form of the Elucidian Starstriders and the Gellerpox Infected. The former contains a mix of dodgy characters and bodyguards for the Rogue Traders, the latter are various mutants of Nurgle. Along with the two new factions, we are getting eleven new missions, two new terrains and two codices! This is a lot of new stuff incoming and a change for me to play around with some Rogue Traders finally!
Fluff
The original Warhammer 40000 : Rogue Trader book is well worth hunting down as it contains a lot of lore, or ‘fluff’.
The Imperium only fills a fraction of the galaxy and even some parts of the known galaxy remain unexplored, for example the Eastern Fringe. This led to Imperial Agents, known as Rogue Traders, to develop and have free range of exploration. Quite often, they act out of Astropath communication and must make decisions on how to interact on the spot. If a new alien culture is found, they can attempt to purge them if deemed too dangerous, or bring them into the Imperium. The Traders also plundered planets for ancient artifacts and materials. While licensed by the Priesthood, once out of Astropath range they were essentially independent.
Rogue Traders came from either wealthy and influential families, the army or navy, the Inquisition or other such bodies of the Imperium. Well kitted out with various spacecraft and with the finest of armour and weaponry, be it Imperial or alien!
New Factions
When the Great Rift in the Warp opened, parts of the Imperium were shrouded, however this also meant that paths to new space opened up. This meant the possibility of new worlds to explore and old worlds to reacquaint with the Imperium. To this end, Gulliman brought together a mass of Rogue Traders and charged them with the mission to explore new worlds and routes them. Elucia Vhane is one such Rogue Trader.
The Elucidian Starstriders are a great looking bunch of characters. They are definitely of the Imperium, but far more jazzy and unique than regular Imperial Guard etc. The Rogue Traders are rich and can afford the finest of clothes and weaponry and the best bodyguards and officers.
To break the set down, we a have the leader, her loyal officers and the small cadre of bodyguards. The bodyguards are Voidsmen-at-arms, led by their officer and accompanied by a dog – which is very important. The officers are all individual characters in their own right, including a Death Cult Executioner and medic. They are led by the Rogue Trader Elucia Vhane.
Elucia Vhane
These all look like fantastic miniatures, and I look forward to the line being expanded further on in time. Without more miniatures being put out later, it would be possible to convert other Imperium miniatures. However, I imagine to get them to fit in, you would need to do a fair amount of conversion work!
Gellerpox Infected
The Gellerpox Infected are the unfortunate mutations that are form when a spacecraft’s Geller Field starts to fail. The Geller Field is something that protects the ship when in the Warp from all of the various Bad Things in the Warp. Somehow, the forces of Nurgle have managed to crack this ancient technology and created the Gellerpox. This infects the Geller generator and causes the human operators to slowly weaken it’s defences against the warp. Once the pox reaches critical levels, flesh and machine fuse together to create the Gellerpox Infected. This means they tend to start down in the depths of the ship, in places like the engine room.
The Nurgle aligned Gellerpox Infected contain some fantastic looking miniatures. This Kill Team is all about the close combat melee damage. They do not have long range weaponry of any sort, instead relying on their resilience to close the gap and do damage up close. It can consist of just a few of the the larger Nightmare Hulks or you can flesh it out (so to speak) with more of the smaller mutants and bugs. They will be a good chance to flex any sculpting and converting muscles!
The leader,Vulgrar Thrice-curse, can be kitted out in different forms, depending on your playstyle!
Vulgrar Thrice-Cursed
Killzones
The killzones in the Rogue Trader expansion are set in great starships. The first thought that bubbled into my head was of Space Hulk and Space Crusade. This will be a lot of fun, with room to up come with your own space craft terrains to fight through! The Gellerpox Kill Team beings life aboard spacecraft however seeing them on other killzones wouldn’t be out of the question. The general theme for them is ‘ultra-close confines’ – the two zones included are aboard spacecraft and in a shrine. These are very much like how I remember Space Hulk. You can’t see through walls and closed doors, meaning much narrower sight lines. Long distance specialists will likely find themselves useless and will be a time for close combat troops to shine! This has made me really happy with the potential possibilities!
Codices and tactics
You will find codices for both the Elucidian Starstriders and the Gellerpox Infected in the expansion. Tactics for the Elucidian Starstriders are: Killing Strikes, Combat Medicine and Executioner Shell. Knosso Prond, the Executioner, uses the first tactic and it increases the Damage of the power blade to D3. Combat medicine allows the medic the chance to heal up to two wounds on a character! Use the final one on the Voidmaster officer and adds 3 to the result of a single hit roll – if there is success, the enemy suffers a mortal wound and the phase ends. There are some new tactics for the Gellerpox: Gellershift, Verminoid Infestation and Twisted Blessings. Gellershift allows you to essentially telelport a model to four inches from an enemy. Verminoid infestation allows you to summon a vermin model to with six inches of a Gellerpox, but it has to be more than six inches away from your enemy. Use the last tactic on a Nightmare hulk that has wounds. On a D6 roll of 4+, it loses one flesh wound!
You will be able to pre-order Kill Team Rogue Trader on the 8th of September and the release is the following Saturday, the 15th of September.
In this post I will be touching on my oldhammer Space Wolves collecting! When I moved to my secondary school, another chap was into 40k and we swiftly became friends. I acquired a couple of miniatures to start painting before stumbling onto the Space Wolves. Unfortunately, the early days of my Games Workshop painting is very, very patchy. All I know, is that I painted these two Wolf Guard terminators very early on.
By the looks of it, I had literally just painted them only Space Wolves Grey. It looks like that back then, I knew nothing about primer, as I can’t find any evidence of it. I painted each colour in one layer as well, probably going over it again if it was patchy. I looked here and found some images over on this excellent blog for oldhammer. Looking at this post, I believe I would have purchased the Space Marine box set (image from that blog):
Funnily enough, I still own all of the inks from the Expert paint set. The few paints that I own from his era still work fantastically, certainly much more so than the more recent paints. As mentioned in that post, I will be ordering more paints from the original creators of the paint, Coat d’Arms.
Sometime after I had purchased the Expert Paint set, I painted this Space Wolf scout:
Here, I moved on from using Space Wolf grey as the base colour. Here, I only used Blue Grey as a base and somehow neglected to use Space Wolf grey at all! I went around with inks and shaded the majority of the lines with black ink(?). I hadn’t learned about layering and highlighting by the looks of it, or even much tidying up after inking, for that matter! The hair and Aquila were probably done with Fiery Orange and then inked with Lava Orange ink. Back then, skin for me was always Bronzed Flesh and then either Rust Brown or Flesh Wash!
In the Summer of 1996, I painted Ragnar Blackmane (with orange hair!) and Njal the Stormcaller. I had previously painted Ulrik the Slayer but unfortunately I can’t find the mini for him!
My painting had progressed, base coating in Blue Grey and some sort of edge highlighting with Space Wolves Grey. The mini was inked and tidied up, although could certainly have been improved, especially on the face. The basing remains the standard Goblin Green and flock which seems to be the way everyone, or the majority, based minis back then!
Further collecting
I know that somewhere in my collection I have an original set of metal Blood Claws, Grey Hunters and Long Fangs. I had painted the first two and the Long Fangs definitely remain unpainted. These Long Fangs had the heavy weapons resting on their shoulders, personally, I dislike these heavy weapons, they just don’t look correct. Oldhammer, which is what these models fall into, is not always a hit for me and these models are not a hit. I will be stripping all of my Space Wolves, except for maybe Ragnar and Njal, and repainting them. To re-ignite my oldhammer Space Wolves collecting, I would have to locate an original Ulrik. If this were to happen, I may strip the lot and have a small Space Wolves Force. All I would need to do, is round out the Wolf Guard, find Bjorn the Fellhanded and get some more scouts!
I shall probably have to revisit this post in the future, or maybe do a second part to it as and when the time happens!
The miniatures are returning to my life! Having spent the last twenty years or so of my life playing PC games, I am extremely happy to be returning to the hobby. I last picked up a paint brush probably back in 2008, right before I had quit my job. Packing everything up and storing it in the attic was the next step and frankly forgot about everything for a while. I was rummaging through the attic the other week and stumbled over all of my old miniatures. After stumbling from the Games section to Creative over on Twitch, I noticed there were a lot of excellent artists. This made me decide to return to the hobby and use Twitch as a method of recording my progression.
One Adeptus Astartes (Space Marine) Battle Company
The miniatures that I paint are currently mostly Games Workshop. Work is underway on painting the 2nd Company of the Ultramarines, along with collecting the 1st Company. To offset all of the blue, I have decided to get some Genestealers and Death Guard. In the Age of Sigmar game, I am collecting a Tzeentch army. I have also located my old Morheim boxed set, so no doubt I will be putting together some more warbands in the future. Speaking of warbands, I also purchased Kill Team – I will be running some Genestealer Cults, Death Guard and Orks.
Mordheim boxed set
Kill Team boxed set
Social media links
Social media has been set up, to an extent. I rarely use Facebook these days, although I shall be posting blog posts etc and images there soon. Twitter is probably the quickest way to get in touch with me currently.
