Commander Dawnstar

It's in the footnote: Leaders can run around on their own if they like, but Support units must be attached to a bodyguard. Important distinction.

I've recently been playing some 40k (Combat Patrol specifically) for the first time in years and my group has also been talking about playing Deathwatch. Given that I've been borrowing minis thus far I considered picking up some Celestian Sacresants (so I'd have the full Sisters Patrol) or getting the Deathwatch kit so that I could have a figure ready for my character ahead of our first session. Seeing both kits were £40 for five models immediately killed any interest I had in either of those plans. I just took a quick look at the webstore and I can't imagine trying to build a new Sisters army (my current collection is pre-range refresh) when infantry units are £40-80 and lone characters are the better part of £30. It feels like everything's at the sort of prices now that left me feeling priced out of Forge World kits back in the day.

It's okay. Not blown away but I don't dislike it either. The one thing I'd consider a miss is that the "large rocket boosters" are actually quite small and hidden away rather than being a dominant part of its visual identity. They're easily missed if you're not actively looking for them.

I totally understand why they dropped it, but one of the 3rd Edition things I have a lot of nostalgia for is the idea of your Death Company actually being made up of Marines from your regular units who had fallen to the Black Rage on the eve of battle. That anxiety that you might end up losing Devastators or Veterans, counterbalanced by getting more Death Company Marines, was something really unique. There definitely were things back then (i.e. Phase Out for the Necrons) which felt like they were more closely integrating narrative into the game - for better or worse.

Funnily enough that's my first issue too. I have really fond memories of the ones from that time where they were doing the build for the Storm of Chaos over in Fantasy and giving a lot of shine to the followers of each of the Chaos Gods. I still think about the 40k batrep in that one now and then. The Emperor's Champion staggers out of a destroyed Land Raider Crusader (on Turn One!) and one-shots a Battlewagon in retaliation. Great stuff.

Little bit of headcanon, little bit of inference, but I feel like this is quite deliberate. As far as we know nobody's really inherited Farsight's "Master of Mont'ka" mantle since his secession centuries ago*, and what little we've heard of the Twin Lance so far suggests they're far more about personal battlefield prowess than leadership and command. I think it's likely that their coronation is a (necessary in these dark times) propaganda move seizing on their story to catapult them into celebrity as a symbol for the whole Empire. They're an image of T'au bloodied but unbowed by tragedy who can appear and strike back wherever they're needed, and acting as semi-independent executioners can cover for any of their shortfallings when set against more traditional commanders like Shadowsun. They haven't earned their title any more than any other T'au, they just have a story the Ethereals thought would sell - and they want them making headlines. *That is: GW's never told us about anyone doing it (so far).

Looks like it was the tail end of August 2023.

Did a bit of asking around and I believe that what you're looking for are Maelstrom dice.

Yeah, that torso is definitely from the Blood Angels MkIV set. It's the bottom-right one, which is particularly apparent from the painted version of that mini.

Big new patch out today with a wide range of changes, but most notably there have been major efforts to reign in the Thousand Sons in Ops. Seeing things like the maximum number of Tzaangors with shields and Cultist Snipers dropping from 10 to 4/3 respectively really puts in perspective how bad things could get. I've only played two rounds post-patch (both as Assault) and they couldn't have been more different. The first made Substantial almost feel like Average, while the second was just about worst game experience I've had so far with a team that failed to silence the first two sentries and paid accordingly XD

I would certainly be interested. I'm on PC, but it looks like that isn't too much of an issue through invite codes.

I believe so. I've only had it come up once so far (when someone had seemingly AFK'd on the Battle Barge). I really wish we could see our teammates' armour plates as well as their health bars. That'd make it a lot easier to appreciate when someone else badly needed the kills in situations like that.

Bring up the Edit Squad menu via the Y button (you'll need to go to the pause menu first if you're already in mission) then to scroll down to the relevant player and select the "X" icon to initiate a kick vote.

Yeah, I'm really not a fan of these redesigns. Might like them more with a different paint job, but on the whole the aesthetic they've gone with for the new Spyrers just doesn't do it for me.

So ... much-belated project update: Obviously I missed my target, but given that I had zero stakes riding on that I don't feel too bad about it. I've been going through it in a bunch of different ways for the last while, and taking on this undertaking has been a bit of an exercise in helping myself wrap my brain around things like time management and just generally staying on task. It's gone far from perfectly (for many, many reasons I won't get into) but I have at least got some things done. As I write this I'm ... probably something like halfway done (?). It's a lot of laborious repetitive work that really doesn't actually show much in the way of results. - At the moment everything looks more or less like this, which represents filling in all the black, cleaning that up across multiple coats of the blue and most recently getting the recess shading in and applying a second round of that in the places I want to emphasise. Naturally that's also going to need two-ish coats to clean up too. Really the whole thing's a very messy job redeemed by gong back to fix things time and again. I'll get it all done eventually anyway.