Progress Update, Forge World Open Day & Astra Militarum Thoughts

I have been very neglectful in posting things of late... but a couple of fun things have happened and significant progress has been made.

My March commitment for the Independent Characters Hobby Progress Challenge was completed:

7th Platoon Command Squad

7th Platoon Meltagun Specialist Squad

This month I'll be working on painting a large batch of infantry for the HPC. It's going to be a challenge but I need to get a lot done in April and May if I'm to get through everything as June is going to be too hectic with birthdays, holidays etc.

Also currently working on a little side project to build all of the autocannon teams that I'll ever need. I'm just getting started but they're taking shape nicely:

Lots of dakka.

I attended the Forge World Open Day again this year. It's a really cool event and I would encourage any fan of FW stuff to go along at least once. It's great to be able to just chat with the people actually designing all these amazing miniatures. By now there are many pictures floating around and none of this will be new but here are a few pictures that I took anyway:

New Tyranid monstrous creature that will be included in the second edition of the Anphelion Project.

Mechanicum Siege Automata with rules in HH book 3.

Alternative Knight weapons - I suspected these would be coming... going to wait for these before I build my Knights.

Last but not least... the Knight Lancer. Yes please.

Astra Mili... SPACE ARMY!?
So... the Astra Militarum, eh? Having read the latest White Dwarf I can't say I'm too offended by the name change, or rather, the additional alternate official designation... The fact that all other Imperial agencies have a formal "high gothic" title seems like a fair enough justification for adding one for the Imperial Guard. They seem to be making it clear that it would be referred to as the Imperial Guard under normal circumstances and by most people, with the two names being interchangeable. But, that said, I think we all know that there's a much more cynical reason behind the name change... pretty hard to copyright 'Imperial Guard', was it GW? Anyway, let's accept it and move on. Expect to see your next book in 7th edition be called "Codex: Adeptus Astartes", Space Marine players!

I ordered a limited edition codex because I have a problem like that but since it won't be released until next week, all of what I'm about to say is based on the past two weeks of releases and the recent rumours that we've been hearing.

New Models
Ah the Taurox... in my view it's a classic example of a model that's almost... ALMOST cool. Oh well. Fortunately it should be fairly easy to replace those stupid goddamned tracks with wheels. Forgetting entirely about the Prime version (for now...), I'm not really sure that I see much of a niche for this thing in the actual game though... maybe if it had side armour 11? And if you could issue orders out of it... I don't know. In any case, I'll probably pick up a couple of these in a month or two and do some conversion work on them so they appear more pleasing to the eye!

Ogryns... Bullgryns, whatever. They really don't fit with either the theme or aesthetic of my army, built mostly on FW and 3rd party conversion bits such as it is, so I'll be giving these a wide berth. I may play against them though as a lot of people at the club play IG... so I suppose I'm interested in the rules for Bullgryns. They seem pretty expensive and not all that good in combat though... so I doubt they'll really take off. Have to wait and see if the rumours about some kind of mobile cover save / Aegis defence line rule prove to be true.

Sigh. It's about time we got a plastic Hydra but why is it open topped? You wanted to model some crew? Ugh. I'm actually more tempted to get the FW version now... maybe that was the plan, sell more resin. The FW version in Imperial Armour 1 is also NOT open topped... so unless they FAQ that (which would be retarded since the it fits the model) it will remain slightly better in-game, too. There are a couple of really cool 3rd party enclosed Hydra turrets out there now too.

What's going on with the Wyvern? Seems to be just another artillery vehicle in a crowded market, and a weak one at that. What does it matter that it ignores cover if it's only S4 (they tried to suggest that it would be good because it can deny jink saves...) and everything will get a normal armour save anyway? :/ I was hoping for a Griffon, as I'm sure many people were...

In general it seems like a wave of non-releases. An unnecessary transport vehicle, plastic (presumably still terrible) Ogryns with an assault variant that's bad in combat, a plastic but worse Hydra and Chimera chassis artillery tank number... what?... 5... 6 if you count the Deathstrike I think?

Deleted Units
A lot of people seem to be up in arms about the supposedly missing units, such as Harker, Marbo, the Colossus and the Griffon. Personally, I don't use Marbo and I find him annoying to play against so I won't be losing any sleep over that one - in principal it would be nice if they added a new character or two, rather than just removing them... and I do think it would be good to see a separate Catachan supplement with Harker, Marbo and Straken confined to that book.

The artillery vehicles... they're not gone anywhere really, they're still in Imperial Armour 1: Second Edition.

I'll be getting the codex next weekend so I'll offer some further thoughts once I've processed it.

Finally, Salute next weekend which should be fun!