LameBeard

I think you are onto something. I sometimes see tyranids painted light brown flesh / dark brown carapace and they look a lot more like they belong in our galaxy. Removing the guns (separate but related organisms signifies the tyranid “tech”) will also go a long way to help sell the look of a Milky Way species that was encountered during the great crusade. Or do you want them to be literally daemons? Ie nightmares made flesh? In which case, a ghost colour scheme might work, could even try some headswaps e.g. the Genestealer skulls that someone must have lying about.

I’m not 100% sure what’s going on here. I think you want to model them as a weapons team with jump packs but “count as” either heavy support squad or rapier on the table. Rapier seems better if using 60mm bases. Rapiers don’t take assault cannons, so what are they proxying for? And are the lascannons meant to be proxying for a laser destroyer? I’d be more temped to choose a more unique rapier weapon (e.g. the graviton) as the “counts as” and then m odel with some weird weapon (or 40k heavy grav) so that it can’t be mistaken for another 30k weapon. The mortars would be great proxies for quad launcher. I’d love to see that. Post pictures.

The blade with the lightning looks amazing. It does not look green.

If you are worried about painting actual flames, I think the solution is: cut them off. I’m always a bit sceptical of modelled smoke/fire/fumes … grumble grumble … we didn’t have them in my day. There is no shame in being a Salamander without a brazier stuck on your jump pack. if you are worried about painting flame markings, then remember, a little goes a long way. Decals may be an option for a big space. Otherwise the trick is to choose a panel that can be black. First paint a sort of rainbow: yellow stripe at the bottom, then orange, then red at the top. Then take your black and paint the negative space between the flames. See the knee pad here (ignore the not very Salamanders green)

Well I know it’s months late but I finished a few Tau. Spoiler shows the alternative weapon load outs on the Crisis suit. Finally, I Lamebeard, return to the call of the 12 months of hobby for November, and vow to finish my Dark Angels Secret Santa (no pic because secret) and this kroot kit bash.

Well I found my guys, but can’t actually remember if I carved the shoulder or switched at the wrist - but as above, standard pads only fit over the left shoulder, the right shoulder pad is built in and needs to be modified.

I’m sorry to be broken record here, but in case any of the designers are reading: For me 3.0 was a failure simply because it arrived too soon. I’ve not bought it because I feel burned I didn’t get the value I expected out of £100 of 2.0 books. Looking from the outside, there are loads of ideas in 3.0 I like the look of. But I won’t be trying them, maybe I’ll come back for 4.0, maybe not.

Iron Hands vs Emperor’s Children would have been classic though!

Absolutely, I am on the record surely saying this? Two pistols looks cool, but destroyers are meant to have access to forbidden weapons, so why just more bolt weapons? They missed a trick: unit-wide disintegrators should have been restricted to Destroyers. Then you can make a destroyer squad from your Heresy box and no need to move them to legends or cram the guns into other units. Saturnine with disintegrators would be classed as “heavy destroyers”.

Isn’t Hearthguard split over two issues?

I see the author is Casey Garske, known to me as the author of Space Weirdos (and Sword Weirdos), my current skirmish games of choice.

Possibly it’s a duplicate of a sprue of 3?

I like your idea of the accessory: put the cardboard quarter circle marker down to signify overwatch status and confirm the LOS, no need to mark your model. A little bit like the Titanicus accessories.

As it’s a shortening of Adeptus Astartes (like Adeptus Custodes or Adeptus Titanicus), in High Gothic it must be an adjective (that then gets used as a noun because the full phrase too cumbersome). I always assumed it was a corruption of Latin “Astra/astrum etc” to mean “of the stars” since High Gothic isn’t perfect Latin, but maybe that’s not close enough? But Custodes does mean ‘guards’ and titanic does mean ‘really big’ so that seemed enough for me…