That Sound...

It's either junebugs buzzing at my back door, or it's an incoming Saim Hann warhost. Either way, my dog will probably eat them if given the chance, and then sick them back up in the middle of the night. I picked up a third fire prism at the tournament saturday so I figured I should just finish up their assembly, including the wave serpent. I only had to pin one of the prism crystal arms to the plastic axle piece, but I'll probably have to go back in the future when the other two break and reinforce them too.

I also put the warlocks together. They came out pretty much like I planned. After the bitz program shut down at GW I gave up on the idea of obtaining shining spears control pads for them. First I hollowed out a bit into the guardian jetbike leg pieces with just the tip of a 3/8" drill bit, then used a pin vice to drill a small hole into the bottom of the new guardian body as well as into the hollowed out bit in the legs. I actually had to trim a muscle off of the guardian jetbike left arm in order to fit the more forward-fitting warlock body. I still have to replace the lower piece of the one guy's sword handle; I think it was an early candidate for my farseer's right arm, and I had trimmed it down for some reason. A ribbed paperclip piece might work, plus a little rune on the bottom or something.

All I need is 5 dire avengers, get them all primed, and I'm set for my first 2000 point game.

Farseer - runes of warding, singing spear, spirit stones, mind war, doom, jetbike

4 Warlocks - 3 singing spears, 2 destructors, 1 enhance, 1 embolden, jetbikes

5 x 3 Guardian Jetbikes - 1 shuriken cannon

10 Dire Avengers, Exarch with 2 shuriken catapults, bladestorm
Wave Serpent - twin-linked shuriken cannon, shuriken cannon, spirit stones

2 Vypers - 2 starcannons, spirit stones, holofields

2 x 1 Vyper - bright lance, spirit stones, holofields

3 Fireprisms - spirit stones, holofields

Sea Wolf Decals

By request, here's some pictures of the new decals on my Space Wolves. Most of them came out intact, but there were a few with little dings and whatnot that I might try to touch up with black later.

This Blood Claw's Grey Hunter's decal came out fairly well.

and let me add...

Thinking about improving upon the Wolves: among a few other changes, against my better judgement I think I will try out jump packs on the blood claws, and take the squad down to 8 total including a wolf guard leader with lightning claws. The foot HQs will now run with the grey hunters in Rhinos (just need to find an old model rhino to match the one I have). I think this list will test a lot of my previously held notions about some of the Space Wolf units, and it'll be just about as competitive as I can make it for a while. Here's the Sea Wolves of the Near Future:

Hakr Varghoss (WGBL) - terminator armor, pair lightning claws, wolf pelt
4 Wolf Guard Bodyguards - terminator armor, 2 assault cannons, 2 bolter-plasmas, 3 power weapons, 1 power fist
Drop Pod

Dmitri Lutwig (Rune Priest) - frost blade, wolf pelt, runic staff, chooser of the slain, frag grenades

Lors Varghoss (WGBL) - frost blade, wolf pelt, bolt pistol, frag grenades

6 Wolf Scouts - 2 plasma pistols, 1 meltagun, 2 power weapons, frag grenades

8 Grey Hunters - 2 power fists, 1 plasma pistol/ccw, 6 bolters, 1 meltagun
Wolf Guard Leader - power fist, bolter, wolf pelt
Rhino - smoke launchers, extra armor

8 Grey Hunters - 2 power fists, 1 plasma pistol/ccw, 6 bolters, 1 meltagun
Wolf Guard Leader - power fist, bolter, wolf pelt
Rhino - smoke launchers, extra armor

7 Blood Claws - 2 power fists, flamer, jump packs
Wolf Guard Leader - lightning claws, wolf pelt, jump pack, frag grenades

Landspeeder - multimelta, heavy flamer

Landspeeder - multimelta, heavy flamer

Predator Annihilator - heavy bolter sponsons, extra armor, smoke launchers

Predator Annihilator - heavy bolter sponsons, extra armor, smoke launchers

Been Caught Stealing

Ok, please forgive the cheesy title, I've been listening to Jane's Addiction lately, and I couldn't think of anything better. My point is, I painted up 7 more genestealers to finish my first squad of 8 - the protypical "Pure" brood. Only 40 more to go, though theoretically they should take a little less time as there's less yellow to work on - each of the other five schemes has different black bodyparts. Before I crack into unit no. 2, though, I'm going to work on either the warriors or a big fex.

I heard Space Wolves is not on the radar for a 2008 release, hopefully not true. BOLS had some commentary from JJ that they were "high priority," but that's not precise enough language to truly inspire me.

Weekend Update

No real big news to speak of this week, other than the usual messing around with various conversions and army lists.

I thought modelling so many little identical bike squads in my SH army might be a little lame, so I've decided to ditch one of them for a 4-man squad of Warlocks with destructor, singing spears, and enhance. They'll all have panel steering left arms, dire avenger exarch right arms, new guardian bodies with greenstuff runes on the chestplates, and helmet-less eldar heads, with white kamikaze bandannas flapping in the wind behind them. I'm hoping they will really evoke the Wild Rider theme. And it's only right for a jetbike army to include Shining Spears as well, so I'm including them for now in my updated 2000 point list:

HQ

Farseer - jetbike, spirit stones, singing spear, doom, edritch storm, runes of warding

4 Warlocks - jetbikes, 3 destructors, 1 enhance, 4 singing spears

TROOPS

5 x 3 Guardian Jetbikes - 1 shuriken cannon

10 Dire Avengers - exarch with twin shuriken catapults and bladestorm
Wave Serpent - shuriken cannon, twin-linked shuriken cannon turret

FAST ATTACK

3 Shining Spears - exarch with star lance

2 Vypers - spirit stones, starcannons

2 Vypers - spirit stones, bright lances

HEAVY SUPPORT

3 Fire Prisms - holofields, spirit stones

I also did a little work on my bugs. I ripped all the guns off my tyranid warriors and replaced them with genestealer scything talon arms. I think they'll fit in pretty well in my newest tyranid 2000 point list:

HQ

Hive Tyrant - 2 twin-linked devourers, toxin sacs, enhanced senses, warp field, wings

Broodlord
6 Genestealers - extended carapace

ELITES

Lictor

Carnifex - 2 twin-linked devourers

TROOPS

5 x 6 Genestealers - extended carapace

FAST ATTACK

2 x 3 Tyranid Warriors - adrenal glands (+1 WS), toxin sacs, talons, rending claws, wings

HEAVY SUPPORT

2 x Carnifex - venom cannon, barbed strangler, enhanced senses, extended carapaces, reinforced chitin

3 Zoanthropes - psychic scream, warp blast

Cut and Paste

For some reason I glitched out and didn't realize there was a Saturday tourney at BFG this weekend; I hear there was a 3-monolith army there and no big bugs at all. Interesting shift in the meta, wish I'd been there.

Instead I was impatiently mucking about with jetbikes today, concentrating mainly on converting shuriken cannons to mount up to 6 jetbikes and 2 vypers. With the bikes, I first made a couple of cuts to the original weapon, sawed off the cone portions of the shuriken catapult mounts, and put the catapult barrel on one side and the ammo canister on the other. There were actually 2 different versions of the cannon but they both looked pretty cool underslung in this manner. For the Vypers, I put the cannon barrel in the place of the center stabilizer that normally barely pokes out from underneath the front canopy.

I also toyed around with an old cut up Eldrad model I had in the bitz box, sawing it up even further and attaching it to guardian rider legs to mount him on a bike. His sword arm was cut off and replaced with a guardian arm, and his staff top was replaced by the blade and handle-guard from the metal jetbike autarch model to make a singing spear. On the lower half of the staff I put the little power generator from the base of the bike autarch's laser lance. I cut in deep lines in his bike's wings to set his ride apart a little bit from the rest of the troops. I think he's going to look pretty cool, although I still have to dig out the dreaded greenstuff to clean up his robes.

So, yeah, I was thinking I'd put off the Wild Riders until I was done painting Tyranids, but it looks like that's going to be pretty difficult.

Here's the latest 1500 list I'm working with, updated after several helpful comments from visitors. It's got 11 scoring units, some good anti-vehicle and anti-horde, great on movement, and the big guns are generally resilient. At the very least it should be a lot of fun!

HQ

Farseer - jetbike, singing spear, guide, doom, runes of warding, spirit stones

TROOPS

3 Guardian Jetbikes - 1 shuriken cannon
Warlock - jetbike, destructor, singing spear

3 Guardian Jetbikes - 1 shuriken cannon

3 Guardian Jetbikes - 1 shuriken cannon

3 Guardian Jetbikes - 1 shuriken cannon

3 Guardian Jetbikes - 1 shuriken cannon

3 Guardian Jetbikes - 1 shuriken cannon

FAST ATTACK

2 Vypers - 2 starcannons, 2 spirit stones

2 Vypers - 2 bright lances, 2 spirit stones

HEAVY SUPPORT

Fire Prism - holofields, spirit stones

Fire Prism - holofields, spirit stones

Fire Prism - holofields, spirit stones

Eldar Jetbag

Today I finally got my first Apocalypse formation together: the Eldar Jetbag. GW is still putting the final touches on the formal datasheet, but from what I understand, deploying a full Jetbag lets you scatter all the pieces out across the entire board, and any model it touches is immediately dipped in brake fluid and scrubbed to its original pre-painted state. How cruel the arcane magicks of the Eldar are!

Obviously I kid. This is what 2 Windrider Hosts look like cut out of the sprues. Reassembled (over the next several months) they will constitute the larger part of my next project: Saim Hann. Below is my initial 1500 list that I will use to cut my teeth. I anticipate the learning curve will be fairly steep with such a small and delicate army, but I've always wanted to field a bike force and finally decided to go with an Eldar version. The 2000 list will most likely add Wave Serpent-ed Dire Avengers along with either Warp Spiders or possibly a small but expensive Warlock bike squad with enhance, multiple destructors, and singing spears. As an aside, I have a great T-shirt idea that I really need to put together on Cafepress. More on that later. Also let me point your attention to an interesting Saim Hann blog that I recently found and added to my links section in the sidebar. Nice guy, cool army, and great pictures from the Baltimore GT.

HQ

Farseer - jetbike, singing spear, spirit stones, runes of warding and witnessing, guide, mind war

TROOPS

6 Guardian Jetbikes - 2 shuriken cannons
1 Warlock - jetbike, singing spear, destructor

6 Guardian Jetbikes - 2 shuriken cannons

6 Guardian Jetbikes - 2 shuriken cannons

FAST ATTACK

2 Vypers - 2 scatter lasers, 2 shuriken cannons, holofields, spirit stones

2 Vypers - 2 bright lances, 2 shuriken cannons, holofields, spirit stones

HEAVY SUPPORT

Fire Prism - holofields, spirit stones

Fire Prism - holofields, spirit stones

Some WIP

Recently I broke apart my exorcist and immolator and changed around some parts, putting the missile launchers on the immolator turrets and gothic top armor. After a day or two of pondering my leftovers, I used the old whirlwind launcher axle to hold two heavy bolters to remake the immolator. So above we see the final Exorcist. Here's what they used to look like. Still gotta find a way to bring that banner pole back in. I'm probably going to ditch the immolator entirely when I can get my hands on another set of whirlwind and immolator bits and make a second exorcist similar to this one.

I finally decided to add wings to my hive tyrant, so I broke apart two smaller fex scything talons and stuck them on his back where the two double fin thingies used to be. I think it came out looking pretty insect-like, which is great since I designed the army's look around yellowjackets. I took away his psychic scream and gave him warp field instead to keep the 2+ save. He's expensive but I think more ded kunning overall (this new orks madness is getting to me). Here's another yellow bug army that I found on the nets. I like shiny black armor better but the shaded grey is cool too!

You just can't keep an old fex down, and this guy's proof. Probably the first tyranid model I ever bought, only now he's articulated in something of a running pose, with new fex devourers and armor plates above the arms (without them the new segmented arms looked a little goofy coming out of the fat old body). I kept the tusks I had added to him the last time around, but I won't actually equip him with it in the game. He's just a cheap elite dakkafex to soak up wounds, sit on objectives, and maybe squeeze off a few corrosive larvae himself a time or two.

I also put together my new second sniperfex, dabbed various colors of paint on some genestealer carapaces to differentiate squads, and took a 2000 point mess up to Dragon's Lair on Sunday to have a go at their advertised tournament. Only two other guys showed up about 30 minutes late, and it seemed more like they were just friends coming in to play a casual game. Soooo I took a rain check on the whole shebang. The new 40k coordinator at DL, Kurt, said the Sunday tourney was more like an experiment to see if people would show up, so maybe next time more folks will show up on a Saturday. Whathaveyou. I did see their new drop-down game board, and it was quite an impressive piece of lumber - I think they used like 5 sequoias to make the cabinet. The board itself is a cool ruined highway with two sides perfect to scatter buildings on, which they also had handy.

Project Updates...

I finished converting a bike for my half-a-sorcerer and applied some Citadel black spray primer. Unfortunately it came out wet as hell and gloppy. I had to do some emergency toothbrush action to get most of it out of the cracks before it set. It may not make too much of a difference in the end (at least I hope not), but annoying nonenetheless. Their white spray seems more powdery but the black one came out too wet and thick. It was difficult to get even coverage without applying it too thick and losing details. I'm undecided on how my Thousand Sons will end up but I think I'm going to give them a white base to be sure. Those models are too interesting to glop up with that shitty black.

In the rulebook, I can't find any reason that a biker wouldn't get +1 for 2 close combat weapons in assault. Maybe I'm crazy and that was a 3rd edition thing, and they just haven't equipped bikers with bolt pistols and close combat weapons before the upcoming chaos book. That means that my champion will get 5 power weapon attacks charging, one other biker will get 4, and the two with meltaguns will get 3 each. Not too bad for a screen/mobile teleport homer.

My Eversor is all painted up and just needs basing, and the last of my Inquisitor retinue is coming in soon. I also got a bird to serve as my Space Wolf Rune Priest's Chooser of the Slain. A great piece of wargear and it's a vulture to boot. Thanks to Aventine for helping me out with that.

Hoggers

I'll be taking the first step this week in a project to create what will hopefully be a centerpiece for my guard army: 8 rough riders on giant boars. I figure since the Tiefwalders are more of a forest/jungle theme, the big swine would be more appropriate than horses. I've gathered a selection of bits for conversions: their hunting lances will be wooden staves with combat knives and grenade packs tied on one end, and the vet sergeant will have some choice trophies - ork, genestealer, chaos marine helmet - to help him stand out. The biggest challenge will be actually mounting the men on the boars. I don't actually have any in front of me yet, but from pictures it looks like the ork rider legs seem a little too big for a catachan body, arms, and head. I may have to resort to whittling in the end.

For all the work it will take me, the value of the unit is honestly debatable. They'll be highly fragile one trick ponies (or piggies, as it were), but they only cost 94 points and they're good for a far-reaching counterassault, killing 4-5 MEQs on the charge before they get swung back on. They're basically one more finger in the leaking dam, hopefully granting a bit more time for the big guns to do their work. Overall though they're more about bringing in a unique unit and giving me some fun modelling opportunities.

To work them into my current list, I'll have to consolidate two of the sentinels into a single unit and drop one of the chimeras; no big whoop. There's no way I'm giving up that hellhound. He's just too sweet a killer and many seem to fear him more than the demolisher.

Some weekend work

I made a few conversions today after tweaking my 14th Tiefwalder Combined Arms regiment list. The main list change was replacing both the 3 sentinels' lascannons and the fire support team's heavy bolters with autocannons. I switched out the storm bolters on the Chimeras for hunter killer missiles, added a heavy stubber gunner to the hellhound, and switched out the meltagun in the command HQ for a grenade launcher.

I adapted a few backpacks for my veteran squad and created a vet sergeant with the legs and torso from a vehicle sprue, catachan arms, and genestealer upgrade sprue (extended carapace shoulder pads and scything talon knife). He also has a genestealer skull on his belt and a toothed bolter (from a Space Wolves accessory sprue). I envision him as the sole survivor of a different Tiefwalder regiment wiped out by an encounter with my own splinter fleet. The 14th itself has not yet faced tyranids and hopefully "Patch" will give me some good juju going into such a battle.

I've also been working on the hive tyrant's paint job. He's in the final highlighting stages now. I finished the lictor and after going over lightly with 90:10 white:yellow highlights, I went back and applied the same look to the prototype genestealer and gaunt. It improved their appearance quite a bit so I continued on with the tyrant. Now I'm considering using some ultra-thin ink pens to add scores of tiny black spots in the yellow just around the solid black armored areas. I need to go pick up the pens this week.

Podiatrician

Here's the drop-pod contingent from my Space Wolves army. Lately I've heard various rumors about plastic drop pod kits to be released in coordination with some kind of 40k variant based on extra large games. But I got impatient some time last year and built three based on tips found here. I would probably still buy a plastic pod kit, assuming they look like the ones on this Forge World page. The best thing about drop pods is that they won't ever be destroyed by scattering on terrain or other units. The second-best thing is how they create instant cover for the passengers and can change the firing lanes of the battlefield suddenly and significantly. Sure, they can be destroyed pretty easily but most folks are more concerned with the squads that just disembarked - in my case, a Wolf Guard terminators or Grey Hunters.

I recently bought some medium bases and switched all the bases out on my Space Wolf and Chaos terminators. I think it makes the models look larger and more imposing, even though the actual models of the new plastic terminators are still a bit larger.

Vivax Paint Scheme

I really hate yellowjackets, but I think they look pretty cool. At the very least I want my tyranids to inspire fear in me, so I'm going to try and give them a yellow paint scheme with black markings like the bastards pictured above. I plan on shading the ridged areas with some kind of wash, maybe a darker yellow or light brown. I'm also going to use some kind of gloss at the end to shine them up a bit. Eugh, I get the skeevies just thinking about those little turds.

Vivax Unpainted

Here we have my next project. I finally decided to strip all my old tyranids, add a few new broods, and voila another 2000 point army to paint. Thankfully, cheap sets of genestealers and fleshborer gaunts from the Battle for Macragge set can be found in abundance on Ebay. I also got some of the new style warrior devourer arms from a bits dealer to use on my old warrior bodies. They look much better than the old metal ones, with the added bonus of looking better fitted on the lower arm sockets, which allows me to move the rending claws to the top sockets to better match my genestealers. I'm also going to move the lictor's scything talons to the middle sockets.

GW Love/Hate Session #1

Despite the fact that 40k is probably my all-time favorite game, or perhaps because of it, there will always be things that piss me off about Games Workshop and the strange business and content decisions they make. I won't pretend to have any experience running a business myself - in the end all I have is observations made from the point of view of a fervent consumer of their product.

As a show of good faith, I'll begin with a positive. The plastic kits that have been coming out of GW for the past couple of years are a great innovation. A while back I read that they started some sophisticated computer modelling where all the sculpts are first done in virtual 3-D. Armies in the past were really quite disparate in the quality and variety of the models in their respective ranges, with bland plastic sets mixed in with the old squat (no pun intended), clubby pewter models. Nowadays everything's looking much more consistent in scale and level of detail. Another benefit of the multipart plastic sets has been increased ease of conversion. There's still plenty of opportunities for all the human sawmills and greenstuff buffs out there, but newcomers to the hobby can personalize their force with simple cuts and swaps.

Now, onto something bad. My first and oldest problem with GW might sound strange, but here it is anyway: screaming anglocentrism. Apparently, in the grim darkness of the far future, there is only white people. Three of the armies, including the far-and-away most popular one, are supposed to represent mankind in the 41st century. Space Marines are the supermen, created by the Emperor to be the best of the best through genetic engineering and extreme training and conditioning. Imperial Guard is made up of average joes, your basic human males (except, for some reason, grenade launcher specialists from Catachan). Battle Sisters are female humans, highly trained and maybe a little amazonian in appearance but normal for the most part. And they're all crackers, every last one of them. In all my years (since 2nd edition) perusing the above-mentioned miniature ranges in White Dwarfs and Citadel catalogs, I don't remember a single non-caucasian humanoid in either company's collection.

The only person of color I ever saw in the 40k universe was Inquisitor Mordecai Toth in the Dawn of War video game, and I think he turned out to be possessed by a demon. Next closest would have to be the only mildly Mongolian White Scars chapter of Space Marines. With their anime-style vehicles and mecha suits, the Tau could be weakly disguised Asians (unmasked they look just like the engrish-speaking Trade Federation from Star Wars Episode 1 - strange coincidence?), but even if it were true it wouldn't exactly be a respectful inclusion to have them just be aliens. As far as other kinds of diversity, GW killed off the popular Squats, leaving only Ratlings scurrying about (and they're called Ratlings, fer chrissakes!). I assume the orcs of 40k are simply a extension of the fantasy creatures, kin of goblin and troll, but that's probably some old racial stereotype monsterization anyway. I remember in particular GW's gleeful recreation of the Battle of Rorke's Drift (as seen in Zulu) in a White Dwarf battle report between Praetorian Imperial Guard and Orcs.

I'm just saying, is all.

Demon Prince

Here is my Daemon Prince. The most obvious thing about him is that he's basically the old Bloodthirster (Greater Daemon) model. Not so obvious is the fact that this is the second paint job he's seen in his time in my collection, which is substantial given that he was probably the seventh model I ever bought, just after the squad of old metal Khorne Berzerkers (who have themselves gone on to a more badass reincarnation as my Khorne Possessed). Also not obvious is the enormous number of skulls he's harvested over that period of time. I'd need a ton of those old fantasy skeleton sprues to model an accurate pile for him.

After C. adopted the chaos army and fell in love with Khorne's insanity, she fielded him as a Bloodthirster with generally weak results, IIRC. It didn't help that we were getting his instability rules wrong, but he rarely earned his points back. My main reason to switch him over to a DP was confirming that daemonic stature really did make his base toughness to 5 rather than just boost it. This left only Tau railguns and demolishers as a instant-kill threat and gave him the ability to start directly on the table, at a cheaper price to boot.

When I disassembled him and stripped off his old paint, I noticed his hooves were a little uneven on the bottom, as the foot without the post never met the base at a flat angle. This is what gave me the idea to have him pinning down a hapless victim. I just happened to have an extra plastic marine body lying around, and since my chaos terminators already featured Space Wolves helmets in their spiky bits (ostensibly from fighting them all the time), his prey's identity was a gimme. He gets his stability from pins that run from inside his hooves (one through the marine) down into the plastic base below the foam rubble (which is just tall enough to make him 15cm, as required to reflect daemonic stature). I also raised his head a bit and gave him a green stuff neck, so he'd be looking forward instead of straight down.

Here are his vitals:

Daemon Prince (187)

WS	BS	S	T	W	I	A	Ld	Sv
6	3	6	5	3	5	4/5	10	2+/5+

Mark of Khorne
Axe of Khorne
Close combat weapon
Frag grenades (I like to think the whip takes care of this)
Daemonic Aura
Daemonic Flight
Daemonic Stature
Daemonic Strength
Daemonic Visage
Daemon Armor
Feel no pain

Lately, especially since I've been playing guard, this guy is the fucking bane of my existence. Just last night he tore through three different infantry squads, a basilisk and a Leman Russ. Other than a few random anti-tank shots from her obliterators, C. took my whole 1500 army apart with the DP and 5 berzerkers. I hit him once with the demolisher but rolled a '1' to wound. Sigh.

Once he reaches my lines, no amount of shifting can keep the big dog at bay. Lascannons? He pees on your lascannons. So what if he fails his 5+ invulnerable (and he usually passes it)? He's still got a 50% chance to shrug it off, and it only inflicts one wound anyway! A buried commissar powerfist is a possibility, but normally his squad is nested in the center of my infantry and with daemonic flight the DP can bounce around wherever he wants. I guess I'll continue to experiment with squad placement, attempt to disallow those sweeping advances, and hope to catch him stranded with everything I got.

First Post

I plan to use this blog to get out all the 40k junk that bounces around in my head. Good luck! to, uh... myself. Great.

First my thoughts about possibly hosting a little tournament. I'll need to borrow or buy three more MDF boards for a second table, plus find something to set them on. I'm working to finish at least a couple of the cityfight pieces I've been putting off for so long, to supplement my already decent supply of ruins/craters/roads. Also I may try to get some hills flocked and maybe get some trees to represent forested areas for a green table. That shouldn't be too much. C will be running Chaos, a pretty intense 1500 point force that is maybe a little unbalanced on the elites side but not overall abusive... destroy the right units and it can fall hard. But she's gotten pretty wise about cover and timing with her deep-strikers and wiping out the small summoning units out is way easier said than done. Anyway, it's chaos, it's supposed to be elite. Last game they ate my guard's lunch. The demon prince (stature, flight, khorne, visage, axe of khorne, armor, aura) has more than enough power to go from one end of my army to another. Only once was I able to wipe it out before it reached my infantry... the trick, then, is to try and strand it, catch it out of assault in my shooting phase and let fly with everything I have. But meanwhile the folks bringing bloodletters have moved up... one good scatter and the demons are all over me too.

My guard 1500 is just my 2000 minus the demolisher, fire support, anti-tank, and special weapon squads. With a basilisk, hellhound, leman russ, and two chimeras, it still packs a tanky punch. Then on top, a shitload of infiltrating infantry with missile launchers and special weapons. The company banner has worked pretty well for leadership, plus I really like how the model came out. I had just one more plastic catachan left, from a flamer trooper that had come with the big special weapon deal I got on Ebay. He was primed black, but it was pretty thin coat so I ripped both of his arms off, replaced the head, and attached new arms. One is the outstretched pistol hand, which I changed to a lasgun, and in the other arm I drilled a hole and inserted a large paperclip for the banner pole. With some wire I made a cord for the flag. I printed out a little design I made on MS Paint first just to serve as a placeholder, but after painting it up a little bit, it looked perfect. Here he is, inspiring the Red Rifles onto glory.