Mandragola

This is really lovely work. Great job.

You're right. One option would be to cap off my Imperial Fists in their old-style mk3 armour. Some of them are so old they actually pre-date 30k as a game. But there are problems with that. Actually loads of the army is stuff like dreadnoughts and vehicles that aren't outdated at all. There's no reason to park up things like their Falchion and I don't honestly feel like making another one. The option I'm considering is taking the arms and maybe heads off my old models and sticking them on new bodies. That may be a fairly ludicrous idea but it has a bit of merit I think. For example I went to loads of trouble making a heavy bolter squad using converted 40k heavy bolters with ammo feeds and it would be annoying to lose those guys. I'd need to paint the bodies on their own, and ideally match their style to the old ones. I never actually painted any templar brethren though. Making entirely new ones from this kit wouldn't be going over old ground at all.

Hang on a minute. You're saying you have one Warlord currently for your loyalists and none for traitors? Ordering a plasma one was definitely not an error. Why only one? I speak as someone with nine Warlords. You could argue that I have too many. The Psi-titan I've had since release day and not completed is a bit embarrassing and I might not have needed that second GME I picked up recently, but it's such an awesome kit I'm absolutely not sorry at all.

There is certainly a loss of detail in the mk3s and I don’t like the newer helmets anything like as much. Overall I think the new set is a slight upgrade but there’s definitely a lot of negative in with the positive. One definite positive is the time it takes to build and paint the new designs, though again that’s arguable down to losing detail that needed to be painted. For the mk6 I think it’s less ambiguous and those are just really nice models for creating armies. I’m very happy with how my Raven Guard came out. I have slightly mixed feelings about whether I’d want to use the newer models to refurbish my Imperial Fists from 1.0. As I have the old models I might use their helmets and arms on the new bodies.

They’re easy, true. But I’m not a huge fan of them, I think several others will probably do them and I have some non-warhound engines to play with. I’ll do something else. Some progress to report on the warlord. I’ve added a dead Questoris to the base, along with some more ruins, for a result I’m pretty happy with so far. Since taking this I’ve also gone over the toe joints and a few other areas to fill gaps. Were ready for spraying now. I really like the LI ruin set but one issue is that the base is sort of hollow when you look at it from the back. More GS has gone into filling the overhanging bit you can see here. It’s probably necessary for some reason but it’s a bit annoying. I’m not sure what load-out this guy should have. I’ve got a Grav arm spare and I might paint up some laser blasters for it I guess, though I’m not sure they’d see much use. This set up will probably do fine I think.

I’ve made a start on a few engines for Legions Imperialis. My plan is to do some Ignatum engines. There might not be all that many for now. This Warlord is the engine I expect to use most. I actually got hold of this model in a Grand Master Edition box. You could argue that I didn’t strictly need this, but here we are anyway. It’ll let me build some smaller buildings for LI and Warlords are awesome. Some more of the ruin bits and perhaps a dead Questoris will be added to this guy’s base at some point soon. Also due to buying loads of LI stuff I find I now have tons of unbuilt Warhounds. I’ve no idea what I’ll do with them. Audax is the obvious choice but Solaria could also be good. Something a bit more unusual like Lysander might also be fun. I don’t know what to do with my other Warlord. I could use it in a Solaria Dominus maniple with some of my many unbuilt knights or maybe build some corrupted engines for my Mortis. I’ve also got a reaver and warbringer on sprue, though those might be good for LI. And there are also the new plastic dire wolves to consider… though they’re not my favourite so I might skip those for now.

It’s true that styles change but personally I prefer the newer stuff, most of the time. Having legs that are long enough is a good thing in my opinion, except that it makes all my old models look a bit weird in comparison. I can’t really complain about them making better models though. It’s not all positive. I find the oversized characters very strange. At this rate they’ll have to redo the Primarchs because Praetors will be bigger.

On the swarmer vs Vulcan thing, I find they’re pretty different once you stick them in maniples and get them on the board. I ran a Venator maniple with two hounds and Lucius Praetorian (Astorum reaver that’s good at repairs/heat). Each Warhound had a swarmer pod, one with shudder missiles and the other with conversion Beamer. It worked really well. I squadroned the warhounds and kept them on first fire. They brought shields down off things quite often, though the reaver only did moderate damage as a result. It had a melta and a Beamer on its roof so good options at close and long ranges when the opportunity came. So for stripping shields they’re great, and also for keeping your warhounds alive. But not for mobility, taking ground or denying it to the enemy. A Ferrox hound is almost like a melee engine. It projects a zone where you don’t want to go, because the scary hound will run inside your shields and murder you. Swarmer pods can’t perform that function. They won’t tend to have bonuses to hit or damage from close range, flanking and so on. As a result they are a bit more stuck in the shield-breaker role and much less useful as finishers.

My take on the helmets is that they’re designed to work with whatever armour mark you like. It’s tough to bridge the gap of 3-6 though and I’m not sure they’ve succeeded. Personally I think the Beakie helmet is so distinctive of mk6 that it’s weird to change it to anything else. They might look ok on Mk3s, or maybe a future release of 2s or 5s.

I also have mixed feelings about this set. On the plus side it all seems pretty nicely done, for what it is. They've clearly had a brief of making the set work with existing (and perhaps future) armour sets. It does that by being pretty sparing with the details and that's a bit jarring as we're used to very fancy armour on command squads. They seem generic. It's also a real shame they've gone for just a bunch of power swords rather than other weapons. This is a missed opportunity to create a sergeant/character upgrade set with axes, paired lightning claws, volkite pistols and so on. Apparently they're happy to leave that to third parties. Actually the result is that I might end up buying several of these sets. I'd like to do a Templar force for my Imperial Fists and I think I can use these as the basis for Templar Brethren. I do have some of the old resin ones but it's a bit of a pain to merge them with the new Mk3s. Between this set, a few Fist and BT accessories and maybe some greenstuff caparisons I think I could have some very good templars. And I'd have plenty of nice flags and helmets to accessorise other models or maybe stick on ebay.

The awkward thing about the BBC is that it's not a commercial enterprise. It's paid for by a "license fee", which is effectively a compulsory subscription, without which you aren't allowed to watch terrestrial TV in the UK, or BBC content online. There's content that the BBC does better than commercial broadcasters. It's probably the best respected news organisation globally, though currently that reputation is under attack from all sides. It also produces the best wildlife programs. British people are raised watching incredible footage of the inside of termite colonies, fast-growing plants and orcas torturing seals to death, narrated by David Attenborough. Then we watch the "making of" bit where bearded men with massive cameras lie on mountainsides or crawl through jungles for months, waiting to shoot never before seen footage of rare animals. I'm not quite sure why they do this so well but they really do.

You still need either the traitor or loyalist Astartes book. I’m pretty sure either would do as you don’t use much of the legion-specific stuff. There is an oath that lets you use a legion’s equipment so for that you’d need whichever book that gear was in. Essentially though the blackshield rules are an add-on for the ebook list. They are the equivalent of the rules for the blood angels or sons of Horus but you use all the same base units. In the book they suggest the list is intended to be used as small-ish allied contingents. Actually I can’t see why you couldn’t make a full 3k list of them if you wanted, though doing that with the more extreme lists would require a lot of work on the models. They actually give you warlord traits and an advanced reaction, which is ideal for running a primary detachment. They don’t do that for shattered legion, which can *only* be run as a line, primary detachment.

There’s no picture of little Horus. Theres also none of this command squad they’ve just previewed though, so it doesn’t necessarily mean that Aximand is a long way off.

I might pick up a few of these things. Definitely the land raiders and possibly some dire wolves, mainly for the AT terminals. I've got a vague idea of making a Solaria force with all the spare Warhounds I accidentally seem to own. I don't know how well the LI release is going. Most stuff seems to be in stock right now at least. The support box and book I ordered direct from GW finally arrived last week, having been delayed by me including the WH+ mini in the order - which they don't actually have in stock. It took them quite a while to fix that one and send me my stuff. I could probably afford a couple of drop pod boxes but the idea of building them scares me a bit. Are those five individually opening doors? I don't want to know how many pieces those kits have but I'm sure they could have saved us some time and effort by just having the doors open flat, as a single piece on maybe 2 pods, then have a third on the sprue with opening doors if they really wanted.

Having written the review on goonhammer I thought I’d explain why I think the shattered legion rules are such a problem. It’s emphatically nothing to do with tournaments. I don’t think 30k tournaments exist and I’d never go to one. The game is not remotely suitable for tournament play. Even if some mad person did run a 30k tournament the Shattered legion rules explicitly say they aren’t suitable for those events. Let’s all stop talking about tournaments. These rules are not suitable for narrative events or club nights because they will take too long. Counting takes time, though maybe not much. But *choosing* does take time and there are many choices to make. Which casualties do you take off, where do you position models, what does your opponent snipe and what rules do you choose to use. Because you will very often get to decide what rules you use and that has some weird effects. But basically it means you will often get the benefits of multiple legions and none of the flaws. Any unit that has an equal number of models in either the majority or minority gets to pick whose rules to use, every phase. A 5-model unit will always have either 2, 2 and 1 models or 3, 1 and 1, so they’ll get to pick who has the majority or the minority throughout the game. A 3-model unit like a bike squad will have complete freedom of choice for majority and minority. Most of the traits are only relevant some of the time so they can easily be ignored in phases where they don’t apply. Don’t like your blood angels flaw that makes you have to charge something you don’t want to? Swap to the iron hands one that says you can’t run - which is irrelevant in the assault phase. Or if you prefer, have two (or three) equal majorities. Get a bonus to your shooting in the shooting phase and to melee in the assault phase. The traits themselves are characterful, but that’s the easy bit. Any of us could have given Fists a bonus of some sort with their bolters and so on, to tick those boxes. That part is easy. The hard bit is taking the thematic stuff and writing fun, practical rules that work on gaming tables. They haven’t done that, in my opinion. There are other issues, like having given no thought to what happens if these traits are applied to single-model units like dreadnoughts and vehicles. The result is nonsense like night lords dreadnoughts that are never allowed to declare a charge. Personally, I don’t find the idea of constantly changing traits thematic for shattered legions. A unit could have a mixture of benefits and flaws based on how well the legionaries get on but I don’t think they’d keep holding votes on how they should behave. That said, opinions can reasonably vary on this point. Maybe if all of the members of a particular legion are gone their bonuses should go. I think players deserve better than this in a book we’re being asked to pay for. The rest of the book is a lot better than this section. This is a mess.