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Well, my Nurgle army is pretty much done and as you can see it features a metric crap-tonne of zombies (70 models). I originally did not intend for this army to become a huge zombie host but Nurgle must've guided my thoughts and that's where I ended up.

It all started when Rix and I were driving back from a tourney a little over a month ago. I was starting to yearn for a more H2H army that I couldn't really get with my Dark Angel Battle Company. So Rix and I starting having a discussion about me starting my Nurgle Black Legion Army back up (it had been on hiatus for many years). We came up with a preliminary list and I got to work pulling my old models out and modeling new ones. At that time, the list featured a squad or two of lesser daemons but they were almost an afterthought.

As my modeling and painting went along, I finally got to the point where I needed to stand up those lesser daemon squads. I needed 21 daemons total and I only had 10 plague bearers in my bits-rumaging box. Now I'm not a big fan of metal models and I did not want to have to drop a bunch of money for 2 more boxes of plague bearers so I decided to use some zombies in a counts-as fashion from a left over zombie regiment box and old cadian squad box.

Now, I've never been much of a speed painter and I was always perplexed by how people stood up horde armies under any sort of timetable but these zombies sure enlightened me. In fact, I daresay I went a little overboard and was borderline addicted. You see, I gave myself a whole weekend to model and paint the 3 squads I needed for my army. After the first half of the first day I worked on them they were done. The sense of productivity I felt was intoxicating, so like any sort of drugged-up junkie I went and bought another box of zombies. Rix also supplied the habit with his leftovers from another zombie regiment box he had. At the end of this frenzy and 1 full days work I had another 7 squads of zombies bringing my total to 10 7-man squads.

Here's the results of my 1 month bender:

Full Army


Zombies


Plague Marines and Transports


HQ's and Wound Counters

At some point along the way, I did the maths and figured out that I'd have to run a 2000 point list just to fit in all the zombies I wanted. So, that's exactly what I played against Rix when he next came over to my house. It was an objective based game and the details of the game may or may not be covered in a different post because I don't have the time to post them here. However, I will say Rix got donkey punched by the zombie horde. After playing and list-tailoring against my Dark Angels for so long, he simply didn't bring enough guns or bullets to deal with the endless tide of dead.

All-in-all, this army was a blast to paint and I'm sure I will have a lot of fun playing it more in the future. I learned a lot more about the usage and effects of washes but most importantly I learned how to turn out a horde quickly.

Next Project: Thousand Sons Strike Force or Finish the Cathedral Board

More Ramblings on Dual Use

I had another idea that I had to put up here. A friend of mine was investigating putting together a Thousand Son army. In conversation about how to create the army we came up with idea of painting up alot of sorcerers and using them as special and heavy weapon troopers. I just think that's a great idea from a fluff perspective, but from a modeling perspective it would make all your troopers a kind of internal dual use. You wouldn't need to worry about modeling missile launchers, lascannons, and meltaguns and swapping them out if you want to change out weapons. Just give them different sets of posses so that you can distinguish them on the battlefield and you can write as many different lists with them as you want.

Dual Use Armies

I am often very interested in creating an army that can be "Dual Use." The idea is that you create an army that can be used for two different codices. Often my ideas have centered around adding an imperial guard contingent to space marine forces. In a perfect world I would have enough money to create a steel legion army.


They look great. They are darkly Gothic. Organized enough to work as regular gaurdsman but menacing enough to look like they could be chaos. I would play them as auxiliary units to both my Wolves and Alpha Legionaries. But then I realize that forgeworld is ass-expensive and I would probably pay more in shiping than a normal army costs.

A friend of mine beat me to the punch on this though, he used warhammer zombies to create A LOT of "counts as" lesser demons (like 70 of them). After creating so many he decided to try them out as plaguebearers in a codex demon army. I haven't played against it yet, I will be interested to play against it.

Some other interesting ideas have been popping into my head, though, about how to get more out of some of my units. I recently purchased a renegade militia conversion pack to make a squad of cultists.



I used them as "counts as" for lesser demons. Works great with the fluff as Alpha Legion are alot more likely to utilize cultists than demons (I gotta give credit, though, it was a random guy at a tournament that gave me the idea). While doing it I wondered if I couldn't expand the force and create a renegade guard army and supped them as cultists for my larger Alpha Legion force. I might have to do more investigation to see what that army would like.

Rix

Painting at the Ragged Edge

I have always waxed and waned in my 40k habit. I started playing 15 some years ago and have probably picked up and put down the hobby 5 distinct times. It is what I love about the hobby because it always has something to come back to and my models are relatively timeless. I think I might be on my last legs of this run. I am just having a tough time staying interested in painting.

This current push started when I closed my Warhammer Online account early in the year. I made a conscious effort to improve on my Chaos army. In that time I have accomplished the following tasks:

• Finished painting two noise marine squads
• Painted two chosen squads (one heavily converted CC squad and one all melta squad)
• Painted a possessed squad
• Expanded my 'nilla CSM squads from one squad and some change to two full ten man squads
• Added two rhinos and a vindicator (previous incarnation of this army had no vehicles)
• Modeled and painted 2 out of 3 objective markers
• Painted a squad of plaguebearers
  
• Touched up and sealed all of the army

Quite an impressive feat if I do say so myself. On top of everything mentioned above I am currently working on the following items:

• My 3rd objective marker
  
• A terminator squad modeled and based
• A cultist squad modeled and based
• A squad of demonettes modeled and based
  

The issue now is that I am just having a tough time finding the motivation to finish the army. My goal is to push through the cultists and maybe the terminators and put down the paintbrush for a while.

Rix

Armies that make Me Hate 40k

Continuing.......

These are the top five armies that, because of the fluff, I really don't like or plain hate

5 - Space Marines

Its not the idea of marines that I don't like, or even the history behind them. I just hate the chapter organization. Also, I don't really like the fact that what should be an army of supermen is really nerfed down to just a little above average guys so that the model count is right for buying an army. Read about Priad to find out what a marine is really supposed to be like.

4 - Tau

They just don't feel right. Generally I like the idea, a caste system society that is expanding by bringing bringing other races under the banner of a central semi-religious ideal "the greater good." But I think the whole concept about the greater good is weak. I would like to know a whole lot more about the "greater good" and what about it makes them so expansive. If I could reload this army I would have a very solid HQ choices being religious leaders, some very elite tau in their robotech suits, and a lot more other races as the basic troop choices.

3 - Dark Eldar

So we know the starting point of this army, normal eldar that didn't give a shit about those hoity-toity craftworld bitches (OK maybe looking back they might have had a valid point...). And we know where they end up, sado-masochistic slave trading pirates. But I am just unclear of how you draw the strait line between those points. How did they hold a society together when the rest of the eldar are so close to the brink? What do they do with all of the human cargo? It is easy to imagine what they would do with some, but the fluff suggests that they use slaves like currency. Also, how is it that they basically venerate Slaanesh in every way possible with their actions, yet still do not worship him? Maybe I haven't read enough about them, but I just feel like there are a lot of holes.

2 - Necrons

I get what they wanted to do, add undead to a futuristic universe. But I am not sure I really like what they did with this army. First of all I just don't by into the ideal of a basic human body type being the blueprint for an entire mechanical army. Not saying that it would have been easy to model, but I think they could have added a couple of extras limbs at least. Lastly the idea of playing alongside your demi-gods? By all accounts the C-tan are roughly the equivalent of the primarchs (close to the emperors strength but not quite), why would they ever be on the battlefield with some 1500 pt army, its a little bit of a reach for me. I like the whole Old Ones vs. Necrontyr concept but they have always shrouded that in enough mystery that there is just not enough to really draw me in.

1 - Chaos Demons

I despise this army. It is the biggest example of GW making a mockery of their own fluff to make some extra money. They stripped out demons in their very comfortable place in the Chaos Space Marine codex to "expand" their number of armies. Lets start with the obvious, where are we expecting these demons to have come from? They just randomly appear? good thing their just so happened to be another army there so they could fight. Why not include at least some cultists, or beastmen, or anything to summon them. Then to make matters worse, they made the codex such that to make a usable army you need to include two chaos god's units.........argh this army just makes me mad talking about it.

Rix

Armies That Make Me Love 40K

I have a love hate relationship with the 40k fluff. Most of it is just amazing, I read almost every book that comes out of the black library. Unfortunately Games Workshop is run by humans and run like a business, so sometimes the shit that they put on the shelves is just awful. To be fair I probably hold them up to a higher standard, but some businesses should be so lucky to have such devoted followers.

Lets start with the good. The following is my top five favorite armies according to the fluff. How they feel, their back story, and how much they intrigue me. I won't go into how they play, imo any army can play well given the right circumstances. These are the armies that make me excited or happy when I read about them or play against them.

5 - Orks

Yes they play the role of comic relief in a very serious future, but surprisingly their back story supports it. They tell an interesting story of what it takes to survive and thrive in war torn galaxy. Intelligence, cunning, and technology can take you far but never underestimate the power of strength, fury and an effective breeding scheme. For those of you who don't know the Orks were genetically engineered as a slave race (apparently by what later became snotlings) and were given enough genetically ingrained knowledge to proliferate. They eventually became the dominant race in the relationship.

I likei them cause they always fit the fluff, fit into the universe, and are generally fun to play against.

4 - Imperial Guard

As an Army veteran I am a little partial, but I can say GW did right by the lowly trooper. They feel like an army for a massive bureaucracy should: cumbersome, faceless, and powerful. I really get the sense that as a trooper you always know you will win, but you and all your friends might be thrown into the meat grinder to achieve that victory.

As a little aside, they even move like a real army does. When leading infantry there is a natural tendency for the men to heard together, SGTs have to enforce discipline to get the men to stay spread out. Watch the next time you play against IG, watch the player start to move his guys closer together to save time. Its small but for some reason it makes it more realistic to me.

Overall I just like the way the army feels.

3 - Eldar

I will get this right out and say it, I despise the fanboy pretty space elf aspect of the army. You will be hard pressed to ever see me field an army of dancing, yellow and white painted, prissies. What I do like is The Fall. The idea of a race becoming so hedonistic that they actually create a god. It's great. And now, they are forced to live out a shallow existence running from a gruesome afterlife. They even feel like that army when you play against them. All of the aspects feel like thrown together remnants of a once great society. And the guardians feel like citizens, their guns hit hard (even against Space Marines) but they crumble when actually hit by a bolter round.

2 - Chaos Space Marines

Entropy, its what the destiny of the universe is, these guys are just the champions of it. They are dark, sinister and just plain don't give a fuck. Its not that I believe that the bad guys are right, its just that I feel that they are more natural. What makes more sense: a bunch of genetically bred supermen fighting for the betterment of humanity, or the same group of supermen roving around slaughtering everything in their path because they feel like it. I like the baseness of it. I also like the fact that they are tragic villains. They know that to win is to destroy everything including themselves, but they are cool with that.

1 - Tyranids

The apex predators. 'Nids just slightly eek out the CSM in coolness for me cause they are just so damn devoted to what they do: survive. They are a study in genetic imperative. There is not alot about them to say, they are mostly mindless killing machines, but that's all that they really need to be. A shark did not become a shark by contemplating what it is to be a shark, it just continued eating. On a galactic scale it speaks to what is really important, the winner will be the one who puts everything he has into fighting. The nids are there to do one thing eat. I spoke about the baseness of the CSM but it doesn't get more base then expanding for the purposes of hunger.

Non-coincidentally they get my vote for the "winner" in the 40k universe.

Next post, the 5 worst,

Rix