Tale of More Warlords - Progress Diary #2

Finally some sunlight! Just yesterday the weather broke and finally I was able to get the spray cans out and get some priming done. "Why don't you just use an airbrush?" I hear you ask. Truth be told I'm incredibly lazy, and fussing around with getting the compressor out, cleaning the whole thing and all that carry on makes me break out in a case of bleagh so I don't bother with all that. I resign myself to the whims of fate and watch the weather as closely as I can so I know when I can start stuffing cold spray cans under my arms and making ready for the day!

1000pts of Crimson Fists ready for painting!

I like to build my Warhammer 40,000 armies around a solid core of Troops. I know, I know - they don't hit as hard as other units, they're 'only useful for holding objectives' and any number of other criticisms against them, but to my mind the basis of any army is the footslogging infantry that stick it out and finish the tough jobs. With Chapter Approved 2018 introducing expanded wargear options for the Intercessor Sergeants and changing the cost of a few weapons, there's a host of new potential for them. I've got three 5-man Intercessor squads, one with auto bolt rifles; two Sergeants with power fists and one with a power sword. I wouldn't usually have rated the power fist as a worthwhile choice due to its -1 to Hit and D3 damage, but with its points decrease and the fact an Intercessor Sergeant has 3 Attacks rather than just 2, it seemed like I could make the space for them and get a little bit punchier in combat for those squads I expect to be near the front. It just doesn't seem right having Crimson Fists without any power fists in the army, after all.

The Hellblasters are along for the ride because, well... it's a Primaris Space Marine army. Is it possible to run one without a unit of Hellblasters? My warlord will be the Librarian, but I'll drop the command points into taking this detachment as a Crimson Fists Liberator Strike Force from the Vigilus Defiant book. It gives me access to a couple of neat stratagems, as well as a nice relic I might drop on the Lieutenant. What's most handy is being able to drop another command point and take 'Field Commander' on the Lieutenant, giving him access to the ability Expert Instructor. Suddenly, all my units within 9" of him can re-roll hit rolls of 1, and anybody within 6" of him can re-roll wound rolls of 1 as well. That Lieutenant is pulling double duty! I expect he'll be a priority target for people that can find a way to pick out characters, so I'm torn between The Vengeful Arbiter replacing his bolt pistol or doing the smart thing and giving him the Armour Indomitus.

Here's the cunning bit, though. With the Crimson Fists rules in White Dwarf having dropped, 'No Matter the Odds' as a Chapter Trait means that anything in my army which has access to it

'adds 1 to hit rolls for attacks made by this unit that target an enemy unit that contains at least twice as many models as their own.' It makes special mention of Dreadnoughts counting as 5 miniatures for this rule, but doesn't single out those with the Character keyword specifically... so did my Lieutenant and Librarian both get +1 to hit against anything that isn't an enemy character?! I think so! It's also the reason that I opted not to take an Apothecary in the force - if my units get dinged up rather than killed outright, they're going to find they're at an advantage in shooting and fighting against larger units as a result. Nice little touch and very fluffy for the Crimson Fists.

The Inceptors, too, benefit from 'No Matter the Odds,' chosen deliberately since they'll drop with 18 shots and get +1 to hit against anything with more than 6 models in the unit, too. I know plenty of people like their plasma choices, but I much prefer the thought of points-heavy units like the Inceptors who are likely to drop outside the Lieutenant's re-roll bubble not falling out of the sky and exploding like a dying sun the moment they trigger their weaponry. The Redemptor Dreadnought is the Easy-to-Build option along for the ride purely because I like the look of the miniature, and you can't go wrong with a Dreadnought for sheer stompy, scary factor. The last drop in all this is the Scouts, here with their sniper rifles to try and pick out enemy characters where necessary and get rid of pesky Chapter Ancients or Painboyz, though I have in the past had them knock light vehicles to pieces with a few lucky mortal wounds. I always like to make sure a Crimson Fists force has some Scouts in it, given their continued need to look to the next generation of recruits, and I'm hoping most boards are going to have a spot for them to hang out of immediate danger and make the most of their camo cloaks.

What I'm most pleased about, though, is the fact that from this point I could add whatever I like and leave the core of the force intact. With four Troops choices it'll easily work with a couple of extra cool toys thrown in at 1500pts, though I'd probably want to bulk out one or two of the Intercessor units up to ten men if I were to hit 2000pts with it. That's a thought for another day, though! Epistolary Ortega and Lieutenant Freiberg have a date with Destiny. Destiny is the name of my extra large base painting brush...

Tale of More Warlords - Progress Diary #1

Finally!

It'd been an interesting start to the New Year. 2019 opened with me on the opposite side of Germany to all my paints and miniatures, and when you've got a deadline looming - two months out, of course - of your own making, those stray hours without brush in hand start to really drag on. Once I got back to the warm, toasty little space where I do most of my painting nestled up against the radiator, as luck would have it there's been scarcely a day spare where I could actually get any priming done; the spray would go absolutely bonk if I tried it in these cold, humid conditions.

Not the auspicious start to the month I'd hoped!

There have been a couple of bright spots though, and I've been making progress with my pledge. Almost all of my Crimson Fists have been assembled and my Sisters of Battle are eagerly awaiting a day in which I can get some spray priming done. Progress, then, but not much to show off. I could take a couple snaps of my growing little pile of Space Marines, but I don't think it'd be the most exciting thing!

What I did want to share was something else that got tacked on to the pledge at the last moment which has turned into a really exciting part of the entire experience. With some Christmas cash I decided at last to take the plunge and pick up some of the excellent shieldmaidens from Bad Squiddo Games and could not have been more surprised by the quality of the product. Feel free to follow along with my excited shrieking over on Twitter if you want some initial thoughts on what arrived in the post for me. I've started down the path of SAGA, and with the shieldmaidens making up the core of a 6pt Viking force, I also got a bunch of Saxons from Black Tree Design as an opposing force and an excuse to really dive into the period with some research. No surprises which of them showed up first!

Mentioning early on with Tale of More Warlords that I would like to be able to share either little blurbs of fiction or historical discoveries when getting into our projects, I could now ramble at length about the interesting stuff I've discovered about the so-called Dark Ages! In particular, the sheer length of the Anglo-Saxon dominance over England and how their culture changed and adapted over time has been really interesting to me, along with the Viking Age - widely regarded as beginning with the sacking of Lindisfarne in 793 - all the way through to the Norman invasion and the fated Battle of Hastings in 1066. Fascinating stuff! Calling it the 'Dark Ages' seems a total misnomer now by comparison, as continued research by historians and archaeologists seems to suggest things were much more vibrant and even relatively progressive compared to what's been widely propagated in the 18th and 19th Centuries. Aah, Victorian historians; the lingering hangover of your malingering... but I digress!

In particular, one thing that has stood out during my research into the Vikings has been the design of their shields. It's been interesting reading the back and forth between different historians and accepted fact, but by far the most useful thing to me as someone trying to finish a force of Vikings for the tabletop as quickly as possible is the fact that while they were demonstrated to have been painted, they would likely not have had particularly elaborate designs in the main. Spirals and flared crosses were common, believed to be a method of throwing your opponent's aim off - spirals curving against the grain of the wooden planks used to build the shield would make it more difficult for them to strike a telling blow and splinter the shield entirely.

Here's the first test piece of the shieldmaidens, though! Deliberately finished as quickly as possible, she's been given a spray of Army Painter Skeleton Bone and then painted in simple block colours, gone under a Quickshade Strong Tone Dip, then some block colours over the top for simple highlights. I've been challenged to get the lot of them finished by the end of January, which I'm certainly going to try! Corners have to be cut, then, but once I've got the basics done I can go back and finish in any extra details at leisure.

Hildur doesn't take kindly to historians telling her that her shield wouldn't likely have been iron-rimmed!

That's it for this week! A quick update and a couple of neat discoveries to let folks know what I'm doing, and how interesting this little project quickly turned when someone suggested stepping outside what I know and trying something new. In particular, the Extra Credits series on the Danelaw has been a fascinating introduction to the personalities of Alfred and Guthrum - definitely worth checking it out!