Thats not a Cannon..

Hey all. So yes I switched to the Drop pod. I just had to. Progress is slow because real life gets in the way as I'm sure we all know. SO hear is a door finished just to get an idea of the color scheme I'm going with.
It is for my Angels of Fury army. I will have to get at least one more Drop pod for the army proper but that is another story. It is going to be for my Sternguard (Which I am calling Interdiction squads) though. And the area around the aquila has been touched up so it looks better now. Its a simple color scheme.

The Kit for the pod is great. A little daunting to look at at first but its straightforward with the instructions. It comes with aquilas or chapter specific icons. Black Templars, Dark Angels, Blood Angels, Ultramarines, Space Wolves and Imperial Fists which could function as Crimson Fists no problem. And there is one for each door. So that is nice. And its made to be able to open and close the doors. Having it in person it is bigger then I would have thought. Not a bad thing just didn't expect it.

So more to come on the Drop pod. I also plan to do a segment look at Stubborn and Fearless. Not so much pitting them against each other but more looking at what they do. I love both of them and I think there both great. Yea even in massive ork armies that cant make the saves. Ill explain why in that segment whenever I do it. And don't worry I haven't forgotten about my Crusade Era Thousand Sons I just wanted do the Drop pod and take a little break from them.

That reminds me I will also do a Segment for the Army lists for both my Angels of Fury Dark Angels Succesor chapter (Using the new SM codex list) and for my Crusade Era Thousand Sons. When I dunno yet but I will and ill do a progressive paint log on them as I finish units or transports for units except for the crusade era thousand sons. Ill do shots of them as I finish batches of em and again with the army as a whole as I finish units to see the progression. Kind alike a checklist thing Anyways..

If you have the new Drop pod or Thunderfire Cannon tell me what you think of the kits.

The Beginning of a Thunderfire Cannon

Greetings. As I stated before ill be giving the Thunderfire Cannon a go and see how far I get on it.

These are the pieces of it. I am not doing the Techmarine Yet. He will be done after or if i get fed up ill switch to him. Its all pewter unfortunately which means assembly will be a bit of a nuisance.

A note on assembling it. I started a little bit or rather tried. The cannon part of this thing does line up right and I'm having trouble getting it to fit right. I ran out of ideas on it so I'm going to start work on this thing in reverse order and work on the treads and mount for it first. If the thunderfire cannon itself was plastic this would be a lot easier. I may switch gears and work on the drop pod first depending on if I give in to the drop pod calling to me.

Space Marine Spearhead plus help me!

Hey hey all. Got my Space Marine spearhead in earlier today but I had to head to work so here is the post on it now. Its just a small review of the contents. And I have to say I'm happy with it.

Here is the top of the box. The spearhead is designed to give you the codex and a splash of new models to wet your whistle so to speak. Some of the earlier spearheads like Dark Angels were different in that you got essentially like 1000 points of an army really.

The back of the box detailing whats included

This is the contents. Basically everything is taken out of there boxes and put into the spearhead box to save room so that it is not some giant box thing of doom. The pewter to the left and plastic to the right. The Drop pod is bigger then I expected. Also the Codex is under the drop pod.

The Picture above this one gave them away but they deserved a closer look. GW made bases for bikes! These are the bases that come with the scout bikers. Now I would imagine that GW will eventually put these bases out for sale by themselves like they do there other bases. I hope they do at least because I need em for my Ravenwing.

I didnt go into detail on the contents because we all know it and the website of GW has it there to see and all nicely painted too.

Ok so im putting the Thousand Sons on hold a bit. I will still work on them but not solely as I am going to make something out of the spearhead and post progress on them. I am starting with the Thunderfire Cannon because I think it looks cool. I will still base coat thousand son stuff and what not but the cannon will be my focus.

Still with me? Alright good. You will notice the title of this post included a plea for help. A few friends and I are taking are first steps into the world of Battlefleet Gothic. We are going to tie it into our 40k games for fun and the ships look cool. The Help I need is if anyone has a link to a site with instructions on how to build the ships. I personally need a sight with assembly instruction of imperial and space marine stuff. But as of right now I just need instruction or a diagram on how to assembly an Apocalypse Class Battleship. If you have any info on this please link me to it in the comments section. Thanks and coming next will be part one of my Thunderfire Cannon. Until then.

Crusade Era Sergeants

Hey all. Its been a bit since I last updated. I have had as much time to paint so progress has been slow. But I did finish the 3 tactical sergeants. Oh I also got my spearhead earlier today (Thursday) so ill post a review of its contents after this. Lets dive right in!





Pretty standard stuff. those CCW's were from the tutorial prior to this post. I'm using scrolls to denote astartes of rank. basically sergeants, veterans, terminators and HQ's will have scrolls on them.

I like there poses as they add some life to the models. Not much to say on them really. Other then batch painting these guys works pretty well. Its not overly complicated where it does not work out. And again some crazy plumage but I like it.

What to do with all those bits? Another Khopesh Tutorial

Hey all. Through making my crusade era Thousand Sons I have used a variety of warhammer boxes: the Tomb Kings Chariot box, High Elf Archer box and the Warriors of Chaos box. Being that I do not play Warhammer fantasy i obvious have a lot of bits unused. So I thought I would show a use for some of em namely the warriors of chaos CCWs (Close combat weapons). I used 3 of them to make the sergeants power khopesh weapons so here is a tutorial on that:

Here are the weapons on the sprue. Now this can work for anyone wanting a variety in there melee weapons. The hammers work for Salamanders and the Mace for anyone really. You could do what I am doing and skip the whole make it a khopesh part.

Here are the hands I will be using for the khopesh and the arms ill be using to attach them to. I went with some chaos Chainswords because I have no real use for them as of now anyway. Any arm can work though.

The whole reason I'm doing this are for these 3 weapons. These are from the chariot box.

Alright so onto the meat and potatoes. What I did was cut the wrist off the chainsword arms and i cut the wrist free from the rest of the gauntlet for the warriors of chaos weapon hand. I also cut the khopesh blade off the chariot arm and the weapon heads off of the warriors of chaos hand.
Here they are complete. Basically just dry fit and file until they fit well enough and glue them all together. Now I know there is no powerpack on these weapons but they can still function as power weapons. Maybe the power generator is inside the weapon or maybe it is empowered by the wielders psychic might. They are Thousand Sons after all. Either way it doesn't matter they will function fine as power weapons.

The use of the warriors of chaos weapon hands were an example of utilizing bits as the khopesh was required. Other examples are the chariot and square bases that I turned into objectives or stratagems. Another example would be the high elf instrument being used as smoke launchers on my vindicator. When I do more examples of utilizing more bits that i essentially wouldn't have a use for i'll of course post it. Until next time.

Thousand Sons Librarian

Hey all here is my addition to my crusade era Thousand Sons. It is an HQ choice. For the army list itself it will count as Tigirius and be known as Ahriman. I know its not how he appears in the art but I think the huge plumage works well to distinguish him. Here he is:

He is essentially done barring a few touch ups. I used the high elf archer super plumage thing. Its large but I think it fits with the whole theme. The Khopesh weapon is from the tomb kings glaive bit from the chariot box cut and put onto a power axe arm. The head is actual a chaos terminator lord head and just a Dark Angels backpack and company champion shoulder pads to distinguish him apart.

Well I like him and I hope you all do too. I don't have as much time to paint as I used to so my progress will be slower. My next thousand son work will be either another HQ unit just cause i want one or the 3 sergeants I will need for the army. Progress and the like to come! Until next time.

Codex: Dark Angels Review

Warning! This is a long one

Company Master and Company Champion. 5th company

Hey everyone. After my praise of the new Space Marine codex I got the idea to put up my thoughts on the Dark Angels Codex. A little review if you will. Now its been out for a bit now but I think it deserves to be looked at again especially since the new Space Marine codex is coming out. Now to compare the two but because the new codex will have similarities in tactical load out for marines with this Codex. So here we go.

Codex Dark Angels:

length 88 pages

Before we talk rules I will talk briefly on what is in the codex. Background information and fluff. Pictures of the army throughout. The forces section has information for all the units in the codex. A new Wargear section with drawings. Information for weapons and armor and upgrades are there. Specific things like Rosarius are given a page number to there specific sections in the codex. I will not talk more about this as the codex has been around and this is primarily about the Dark Angels unit rules and the like so here we go.

First thing I will talk about is Deathwing Assault. (Note that the new Drop pod Assault for the codex space marine codex works essentially the same way). Deathwing Assault is based around the Deathwing Terminator squads and what it does is makes half of your terminator squads held in reserve, rounded up, to automatically teleport in on your first turn. Note that it is automatic so there is no reserve rolling needed on the first turn. You choose which squads come into play first turn. Also you can attach Independent characters in terminator to a terminator squad. So Interrogator chaplain attached to a squad counts as 1 unit. The reasoning for this is because if you make a pure deathwing force and hold them in reserve GW wants you to have something on the field turn 1 so you and your opponent don't just sit there as you fail reserve rolls. Lets move on to the Deathwing.

Deathwing are terminator squads. The Dark Angels first company is comprised only of terminators. Big difference here is that you can only get 5 man squads and only 1 special weapon (assault cannon, heavy flamer, cyclone missile launcher). The really nice thing is that you can mix assault and shooting terminators together in one squad. So a heavy flamer w/ powerfist can be with assault marines. So your assault terminators can have members of there squad shooting as they close in making the unit more effective overall. The biggest unique thing is that the cyclone missile launcher can go on any terminator type. This means you can have the missile launcher on a thunder hammer storm shield or on twin lightning claw. This is really nice because you can have a predominantly assault squad with anti tank punch or anti horde long range punch. There big thing is that they are fearless. Now I know fearless has hurt some larger units and I think that makes perfect sense but I will talk about that another time. Now with Deathwing fearless is great. Why? Because your only a 5 man squad. If you lose close combat chances are you are either already wiped out or its only going to be by at most 4 wounds. making four 2+ saves isn't hard. a squad of these with assault cannon and a chainfist is 250 pts. not that bad considering there terminators and average terminator cost is 40 pts a model.

Ravenwing. Now this is how you can make your deathwing assault really shine depending. Ravenwing squads are radically different from other marine bikers and speeders. They do not have attack bike squads and they cannot have 3 assault cannon land speeder squads. So this means they are broken up as thus: Attack squadrons and support squadrons. Attack Squadrons have up to 6 bikers an attack bike and a land speeder with assault cannon and heavy bolter. A full attack squad with power fist and 2 melta guns will run you over 400 points. Its expensive but worth it. The Support squadrons are Land Speeder squadrons. They can be a max of 5 speeders. Catch is you can only have 1 assault cannon and 1 typhoon missile launcher. Its unfortunate but what is nice is that you can have multi meltas with any configuration. Is a good support role unit hence its name. a 3 speeder squad with a typhoon launcher is a good anti horde unit. Now what makes the ravenwing worth this? All bikers are fearless and they have scout. So they can outflank or get a free 12 inch move before the game. Also every biker has a teleport homer meaning deathwing assaults can be very precise. That is a lot of stuff for bikers. Again fearless is good because you don't want them to ever fall back. The attack squads are good at tank hunting. Now understandably people are upset at the lack of attack bike squads but i like this new set up for my ravenwing. Now that attack squadron can also combat squad into 2 three bike squads the attack bike and the land speeder. Normally the attack bike and land speeder deploy and move on there own anyway. So what is combat squad?

Combat squads are something introduced in this codex and will be in the new space marine codex. It allows a full squad to break into two even halves at deployment basically. The units in this codex that can do that are: Company veterans, scouts, tactical squads, assault squads, ravenwing attack squadrons, and devastators.

The special characters in this codex are fair. Azreal and Ezekial have artificer armor. There rules are essentially the same. Ezekial is the only 3 wound Ld 10 librarian in the codex. Belial the deathwing special character allows terminator troop choices and Sammael allows attack squads as troops. He is also the only thing to have a mantle. He also has his jet bike which has twin linked storm bolters and a plasma cannon on it. Or he can be in his land speeder which has twin linked assault cannons and twin linked heavy bolters. It also has front and side armor of 14 which is pretty great. All in all the special characters are all good. Belial is the least spectacular but he is also the cheapest and allows terminator troops which is a strong troop choice.

Company veterans are essentially veterans in power armor. They are from the battle companies instead of first company. What is nice is that you can have 4 combi weapons in the squad. (The FAQ states the Sergeant can take any upgrade allowed to the squad) So what I am working on is a squad of company veterans with 4 combi plasma and a plasmagun in drop pod. But yea they are your power armored veterans for the army.

Scouts are elite choices and other then that it is essentially the same.

Assault Squads are nearly the same but the big change is that they cannot take flamers only plasma pistols.

Tactical squads are different in that they need to be 10 man in order to get a heavy weapon. But they can take a razorback transport regardless of the size. other dedicated transport options are rhinos or drop pod.

Dreadnoughts are elite and roughly the same. they can be made venerable but cannot be given veteran skills.

Devastator squads are essentially the same stat and option wise. They do have combat squads

Chaplains and interrogator chaplains are different entries. The Difference is the Interrogator chaplain is the better of the two with 3 wounds and can take terminator armor.

Company Master comes standard with Iron halo. has weapon upgrade options. Can be given a jump pack but that is it. To get a captain on bike you must take Sammael and to get a terminator captain you must take Belial.

Techmarines come standard with a 2+ save. There servitors can have more then 1 plasma cannon per squad. Techmarine can be upgraded to have a servo harness.

Command squads are essentially the same but in order to take a company champion you need to have a Company Master.

Land Raider and Land Raider crusader are essentially the same as they are in other codices. The difference is that they are the only vehicle to have Power of the Machine Spirit (which is true in the new codex).

Predators are cheaper for 95 points you have a auto cannon and heavy bolter sponson predator. Lascannon upgrades are expensive but still is a decent cost for the tank.

Vindicator is essentially the same.

Whirlwinds are nearly the same. Difference is they don't have the mine missile instead they have a large blast template flamer. It ignores cover and has str 4 ap 5. But this new codex doesn't have the mine missile either.

Rhinos are 35 points Drop pods are 50.

The razorback is 50 points standard

Important! all power armored marines come with a bolter, bolt pistol, frag and krak grenades standard. That includes devastators so do not forget.

We are coming towards the end of my epic post. I want to make it clear though that I did not go into great detail with things like standards and what hey do and the subtle difference of things. The Lions Helm and Ezekiel's book function a little differently but I wont go into it. That is really something for people interested in playing Dark Angels to sit down sit down and read while reading the codex for themselves.

There are some differences but all in all the codex is really solid. the ability to actually make use of the heavy weapon in a tactical squad while advancing with the assault stuff is nice. Its a codex that you have to read a few times to see the little things that are changed and then utilize. Its not overpowered and it really isn't a weak codex is what I'm trying to convey in this epic post.

Hope those that read all the way to the end enjoyed a glimpse into the unforgiven. For those that already play Dark Angels and read the codex I'm sorry if you read all this.

Repent! For Tomorrow you die!

Until next time.

First Imperssions of the new Space Marine Codex

Hey all this one is a talkie as I don't have a picture to post or anything.

So anyway I was able to view a store copy of the new Space Marine Codex. All I have to say is I love it. Now yes its been said that my blessed Dark Angels wont be getting a FAQ to give them things like WS 6 captains and Chaptermasters or 3+ Storm Shields but that's alright. This makes the two codices different from each other and actually gives "Codex" chapters something that sets them apart.

I will not go into specifics but there are some weapon type changes like cyclone missile launcher shooting twice which is cool. I mean I use em in my Deathwing squad and they only shoot once for my Dark Angels. There is other things too like rhinos and Drop pods costing 35 points.. yep that's right.

But back to the codex as a whole. Its beefy stuffed to the brim with fantastic art, cool pictures, fluff and of course rules.

Now I have heard talk over this interweb and of course there are the negative people who hate any change that comes out. And really that is a shame. I am not saying this codex is perfect but it is awesome. Any codex is going to have its flaws and things that are annoying to someone but the proportion of goodness in this book is much much higher then the bad in my opinion.

The special characters are all great in terms of there fluff page and what they do as I'm sure most of us heard through the rumor mills. Cpatains and Company Masters have so many upgrade options and that is col for having diversity.

Point costs for things really are fair. Yea stern guard with combi weaponry are 30 points a pop but that's a veteran unit stats with combi weapon and special ammunition so its fair. Vanguard are expensive and that is also fair. 2 attacks base before counting there +1 for two one handed weapons not to mention the +1 for the charge so honestly its fair.

Now don't get me wrong I love my Dark Angels and they will always be my main army regardless of faq or not faq update because I get my own special stuff. I think the new DA codex is great. But oh man my Angels of Fury (Which are a DA successor) are going to have fun with this codex and my crusade era Thousand Sons will too.

Now I don't want to over hype the codex due to the fact that I really like it so I wont say much more on it. What I will say is check it out if your can.

What I will say is to non space marine players you have nothing to be sore or gripe about other then the fact that GW will always give there poster child first dibs.. but that is just good tactics. Anti space marine tactics will still be as effective in theory as they are now and Space Marine players will not really have to shift gears too much if at all to relearn how to cope.

When I get my Spearhead box I will do a review of it but coming up before that I hope will be my finished Crusade era Thousand Sons HQ (Its gonna count as Tigiruis army list wise).

If anyone else had time to sit down with the codex and look it over they are welcome to comment with there thoughts. I didn't touch on the codex in depth I will do that when i get the spear head. Also mature thoughtful comments. Things like "omg space marines are cheap i hate blah blah blah" is not what this is meant for. Weve all heard that and heard enough of it on forums and the like.

Till next time.

Khopesh Tutorial for power armor

Alright here it is. Its a simple tutorial again on making a khopesh. This time however it is for power armor. This type of conversion is best done with a non-sword weapon. If it has a shaft then its ideal for this. Swords are possible but involve a lot more work.

Here are the bits I used for this. The Khopesh/ glaive is from a tomb kings chariot box. The power axe is from an assault marine box.

Here is essentially how I cut the weapons up. I then trimmed the shaft of the power axe down to the grip for a better look.

And there it is! Simple but effective. Again you can do this for any type of weapon that you want. Its just like the terminator weapon but I figured id post it anyway since it helps to have a visual.

Angels of Fury Heavy weapon

Hey here is my final model that I needed to finish.

I really need to make a photo diffuser or whatever its called so i can take decent pictures. Anyway he is for my Angels of Fury chapter which is a successor of the unforgiven. I have plans for the left arm that is supposed to be a part of the missile launcher and its not the whole afraid to use plasma look either.

Anyways now its back to my Crusade era Thousand sons. Before i try and assembly line the rest of the terminators and the tactical marines I am going to make my HQ unit a Librarian of course. I have to make a Khopesh for him so ill show a tutorial for power armor khopesh making when I get to making it. Until then

Dark Angel Company Veteran

Hey all. I decided that prior to getting back to work on my Crusade era Thousand Sons army that I would finish up some models I had partially started. One such model was this Dark Angel company veteran. I have an army list idea that would incorporate a company veteran squad in drop pod. It was a pure battle company list and the veteran squad is equipped for shooting and as such has 4 combi plasma in it. Not as impressive as a sternguard squad but still effective. The rest would have bolters. Now I may also sub out one combi plasma for a power weapon just in case not sure yet though.

Anyway I have one more model to do before going back to my Thousand Sons. Until then.