Urauloth

Yeah, there's a picture of the planet in Tempest, but that's the closest we've ever gotten. I'd love to see maps like they made for Siege of Cthonia - maybe we'll get some if/when there's a Journal Tactica focussed on Calth.

No idea why space dwarfs are making hats out of tyranids now, but as someone with fond memories of epic squats, I really appreciate that they resurrected the mole mortar.

Upscaled Mk.IV is going to to awful things to my brain, because I know I'm going to want to repopulate Betrayal at Calth (terrific boxed game, one of the best GW ever made) with new scale models. We might have new Cataphractii by then as well, and we already have a multi-pose Contemptor. Big project, but probably a really cool one.

Magnets are a good idea, it's pretty easy to mag the various tactical kits at the shoulder. I'll fix up a chainsword that way for aesthetics and swap it out if I ever find myself terminally short on points. I can see a combi-weapon being fun, makes him stand out and gives him a little extra something to do. I wasn't actually sure if you could still take them - I don't have my Liber yet, and they're not in the tac squad box, so I didn't know if they'd been cut. I suppose there's one in the old Mk IV kit though. There's a boltgun slung on a strap in the melee weapon kit, but I can't think of anywhere to get one being held one-handed. If I find one I'll make a classic shouty pointing guy sergeant.

That is absolutely a Warp Talon. I think the flicker of lightning might be actual lightning (either residue from its warp jump or discharge from its claws) and not NL heraldry. It does seem to be blue, admittedly, but I think they painted the Warp Talons like that when the kit first came out. With Raptors and Talons being one of the only CSM units to get passed over for rescaling, it makes a lot of sense to drop a new kit for them into Kill Team if there isn't a bigger CSM release happening.

The nostalgia of seeing those board sections is always incredible. Like you say, the bespoke dice being 6-sided means they can be digitally substituted with a d6 chart. The rules are all pretty simple, so if you wanted to adapt it to PBP "as-is" the only stumbling block I can see is the cards - there used to be a German fan site that had scans of them iirc, but I don't think it's up any more. John Liu still hosts all the other stuff on his website.

The gorgets on the dread seem to get it the worst, mine are like that too.

I have a couple of tac squads to build now that my Saturnine box is here (and a Mk III squad on the desk as well) so I'm wondering what the best way to kit them out is. I'm not really optimising my army, I'll build something inefficient if I like the vibes, but if I do get around to playing any games with these guys I'd like to know what the general good and bad ideas are. I like the look of power swords, but I can't imagine they're a very good idea in tactical squads. I'll probably save these to stack them on assault veterans. Similarly, a chainsword looks good, but ideally a tac sarge isn't going to be doing much with it, right? Is the best idea just to keep his boltgun? If so, maybe I can get a basic close combat weapon from somewhere. I swear there used to be knife arms all over the place, but I don't have any in my bitz box. Anyway, what are the rest of you doing with your squad leaders and why?

I really like these dice, but where is my Legacies pdf?

Ultramar has 5/6 legions present, yeah. Dark Angels, Blood angels and Ultramarines are a natural alliance in Imperium Secundus. A large part of the Night Lords fleet that survived Thramas went to Ultramar to attack the Pharos, while the World Eaters were all over the 500 worlds because of the Shadow Crusade (Some fragmented into wandering "butcher fleets" that attacked everything they saw, others at least tried to stay on-mission). Death Guard are the only oddity there. You could always explain them away as an atrefact of the Ruinstorm or something - maybe a company got displaced by the warp storms and spat out in Ultramar? That kind of thing happened, warp travel was never 100% reliable even for the traitors. They might not even have been from the main fleet, as the Barbaran garrison was sending out ships to raid resource-rich worlds at the time, if one of those went missing and turned up somewhere it didn't intend then there might not be any surviving record of it at all.

Man, some people have all the luck.

I paint historical Soviets and I recommend the Vallejo colours too. They're nice to work with and a very good match to what you'll find in reference books.

I used to buy WD digitally exclusively, then they stopped offering it in that format (because they were putting digital back-issues in the WH+ vault where you can only access them with their horrible on-side reader and not the pdf program of your choice) so if they switch back to digital... it'll be the worst of both worlds, probably. You won't own your magazines, and you'll have to use the WH+ software to read them. It'll mean another WH+ subscription price hike, too, more than likely.

It's true that the quality of sable is trending downwards, but so is the quality of W&N brushes in general. They moved their factory a few years ago, and their quality (or at least their quality control) took a hit it's never recovered from. I suspect the classic trick of cheapening the product and continuing to sell it at the same price once it's established a reputation as a market leader, investment groups love this because it delivers "growth" in the short term despite the obvious consequence of annoying customers and detroying the brand reputation.

I would guess they're merging WD into another department's manegerial jurisdiction rather than abandoning it.