Deus de Mortalis

The only thing new that you mentioned is the saturnine dreadnought. They are just making plastic versions of old forgeworld kits or reaching back to 1st and 2nd edition 40k for things to copy. I actually like this a lot vs them coming up with new ideas, because I don't like a lot of their new ideas for things in their "other" games.

I love the older Mk III and the Mk IV. To me they are they are better in every way compared to the newer marks besides the scale. I have 60 Mk IV but only 10 of the old Mk III.

Wow, these are so cool! I love your conversions!

Oh, I just want to add one more thing. I remember about ten years ago or so people were so annoyed and fed up with how broken many rules for units, armies, or army lists had become, and the excuse was "Games Workshop isn't a game company, it is a model company!" Someone at the company made a comment like that and lots of 40k players just ran with it instead of thinking critically about what that meant. Of course Games Workshop was a game company. People bought the models because of the game!!!!!! Back then there was a lot of stress and anger at GW for not having clean, balanced rules. "Make up your own house rules" was always something I heard a lot too. I am glad we have been distancing ourselves from that time.

I like narrative-style play and I like being competitive, but I don't like silly broken rules and lopsided battles in which either I or the opponent has no hope of winning (unless that is part of the narrative). My least favorite games of 40k have usually fallen into four groups: 1. Group or event sets some rules that everyone has to follow to help balance things or make things more narrative based, but then some people don't follow the rules and are not penalized for it. 2. People just do everything possible to take advantage of the rules and mechanics to win every game by any means necessary. 3. People bend GW's complicated rules and hope you don't notice. 4. Completely by accident, some rules just made the matchup between me and my opponent completely lopsided, knowing who the winner would be as soon as we figured out what we would be playing. I think that GW has tried to make things better lately. For me, narrative isn't dictated by some special silly rules or stuff like that. It is what we create in our own head. I feel that more balanced rules make casual play a lot more fun. I'm not a competitive player, but I want the possibility to win every now and then. Most of my games are between me and a person I have never played before.

The project isn't starting with painting, but de-painting and un-painting! I have never stripped paint from old models before. With old vehicles I either sold them or painted over them. Because most castraferrum dreadnoughts are out of production, they cost a lot and are hard to find, so I need to conserve them. I also am not very happy with the results of adding more layers of paint. I also bought an old painted dreadnought to strip. I have tried 99.9% alcohol, Dettol, a toothbrush, wooden toothpick, and a sonic cleaner. Here are my thoughts: Rubbing alcohol / methanol, works well on most paint. Citadel paints On some primers it just isn't strong enough. You don't want it to touch your bare skin as it dries your skin out instantly removing oils and moisture. The smell can get pretty bad though and you need good ventilation. The smell goes away very quickly and doesn't linger on the parts. For me, the biggest problem is that it dries too quickly, meaning you have to work quickly and wet it again with rubbing alcohol. Dettol is able to remove primer that alcohol cannot affect. It costs more than rubbing alcohol, but seems more re-usable. It also has a strong smell and you don't want it on your hands, but it isn't nearly as bad as alcohol. The smell lingers for a long time on your hands and the parts, and this smell can be difficult to get rid of entirely. If all the paint is gone, putting the plastic in a sonic cleaner with water can remove the smell. A toothbrush is great for getting surfaces clean, but the deeper the detail, the more difficult it is for the toothbrush. A wooden toothpick is good for picking out detail. It doesn't seem to damage the plastic. A sonic cleaner is good for removing the final traces of paint. If the alcohol or detail has done its job, sonic cleaner can remove it. The problem is that dettol is not compatible with water. The detail-infused paint will just turn into sticky goop. I haven't tried alcohol or dettol inside the sonic cleaner yet. Here are some photos: One time I had the great idea of first painting on the sprue and then putting the model together. Once I realized that it wasn't a good idea, I stopped it entirely, but I was left with a number of models on the sprue in various stages of paint. I have bought some OOP models too. I need to break them down and remove the paint. Luckily most people don't glue their models as strongly as I do! These are my own models I painted before. Alcohol was able to remove all the paint besides some suck in some deep recesses from the regular dreadnought. A few hours with alcohol, a toothbrush, and then a toothpick only got the venerable dreadnought to the point you see here. Now they are in dettol, which removed almost all remaining paint. The sonic cleaner putting the finish touches on cleaning up a blood angels dreadnought sprue I painted 7 years ago!

I have finally committed to a new hobby project since my last DIY marine chapter from 2019-2021. This is the logical conclusion of what has been brewing in my mind for several years now. I will try to make a 30k army of Salamanders using a lot of stuff mixing both current and older 30k models and older pre-primaris 40k models. It will feature lots of castraferrum dreadnoughts and lots of MkVI beakies. As far as units go, I will be sticking pretty closely to things that were available to Space Marines in the 3rd edition of 40k. Space Marine lore and units at the end of 3rd edition was my favorite. Click if you want to read a little backstory about how I ended up at this point in 2026: The aesthetic I'm going for is late-heresy, early post-heresy period. I want to make the Salamanders have a semi-codex compliant paint-scheme. I really like blue librarians, black chaplains, white apothecaries, red techmarines, and different helmet colors and helmet stripes! I also heavily favor plastic over resin, and decals for symbols. I also need to be careful with not showing the crux terminatus, purity seals, or 40k aquila from any models that have them. We should show some stuff that is pro-Emperor and pro-Vulkan. The lore is that they were obviously not present at Istvaan. Some of them missed out for whatever reason either being preoccupied, stuck in transit, or didn't hear the message soon enough. The other half are newly recruited. The army should be heavy on infantry mostly in Mk VI armor, light on tanks, with also a significant number of veterans and castraferrum dreadnoughts. I haven't painted anything yet, but am in the planning and model prep stage for some dreadnoughts. Those will be the first things I post within the next couple of days. I just wanted to get this post up here ASAP before I get any further along and keep putting off sharing it.

Today I got my set of Space Marine Heroes Series 2. All 7 of them. Looks pretty next to my other red plastic terminators. I also got the complete set of 13 Space Marine Heroes Series 1! These models are fantastic. I plan on doing some conversions and making half deathwatch, half my own marine chapter. As far as hobbywork, this weekend I've been working on some Mk IV power armor. Here are 66 sets of legs and torsos that have been trimmed, filed, and glued. Ready for spraying primer. I'm working on a new marine army that will be all infantry plus bikes and dreads. Only armor Mark II - VI. I have 5 Mark II, 15 Mark III, 66 Mark IV, 5 Mark V, and 30 Mark VI. Mark VII and VIII are reserved for the deathwatch. My biggest problem now is finding more Mark VI torsos and shoulder pads from the tactical squad set.

This old 2nd Edition Landspeeder arrived in the mail yesterday. I was planning on building it, but now I can't stand the thought of opening the package. The styrofoam inside must have broken because the metal bits are rattling around inside.

I really, really like your power weapons!

I myself live in Hockessin.