If you go back a decade or two, I was primarily a Games Workshop games player. Mainly Warhammer Fantasy Battles, but I did play some Warhammer 40,000 too. Since, I have switched to mostly skirmish games, requiring fewer models and playing space, but once in a while, I jump back in. It happened last year with Fantasy and my zombie pirates army, but the most recent occurrence is with 40k and its new 10th edition.
It’s getting talked a lot in our gaming group, and I do like the blank slate that comes with all new simplified armies when they fully reboot their systems. I already had some Death Guards painted from the Conquest magazine subscription we got for my son (he took the Ultramarines side), and the small new format Combat Patrol made for a good target to get playing fast and try out the new system. It was the time to get some more baddies painted.
The new Death Guard models are fantastic. I say new, but if I’m most mistaken, most of the batch I’m painting goes back two full editions. I mean new compared to the ones I had back in 2nd and 3rd edition: the old single pose static plastic Plague Marines, or the slightly better metal ones that followed them. The new ones are chunky, full of details, and really fun to paint. Sure, converting them isn’t as easy, but they already look amazing, and as I only want a small force, I don’t have much repetition. The style is also forgiving and paints fast, as you can be a bit sloppy and it still fits the look.
In the past couple of months, I painted up what I was missing to play the Combat Patrol format. That was mainly Typhus and a lot more Poxwalkers. As we didn’t get the Conquest magazine up to the end, I do not have all the right Plague Marines weapons, but with some trade, I was only missing some options that were easily proxied.
Death Guard Combat Patrol
After a couple of games with that format and wanting to try bigger, I realized that I wasn’t missing much to get to a 1000pts, the smaller “official” game size. A part of what I had painted from Conquest wasn’t used, so I was only missing some extra Blightlord terminators to complete the trio that came in the Tainted Cohort set to get to that milestone. I usually prefer having the real models, but a new box comes with the full 5 models, while I needed only two. I tried to find them on the used market, but getting only what I was missing proved to be difficult, so 3d printing came to the rescue. At close inspection, they don’t have the same crazy level of detail, but mixed in the squad, they don’t look out of place on the table.
Full 1000pts force
Sadly, that 1000pts isn’t playable anymore since the latest point adjustment. My whole painted force is now worth at least 15% less, and the extra characters I have aren’t enough to fill up. I’ll have to finish painting another squad of Plague Marines to get back to a playable level eventually, but I at least got to play them once. I almost have enough left to paint to get to the next game size, but the problem there is less the painting, but the game length. We’ll see if I can find enough free time in a single chunk for that. 😉
