After watching some of GMGs recent 3rd Ed games I thought I'd have a bit of a go myself. Now I know some say it's the best version of 40k but...I dunno. I started with RT 1.5 and played through to 7th Ed, which kinda killed 40k at my LGC. I definitely enjoyed 2nd before the bloat set in but honestly I think I preferred 5th Ed with the basic Kill Team rules and 40k in 40mins / Patrol Clash / Combat Patrol. They were much more my scale of game.
Anyway, I think 3rd appeals to me because it's a complete game in a book. So at the moment all I want to add to this is the 40k in 40mins rules from WD274. Aside from this I want to start with the basic forces from the boxed game, 10 marines and a landspeeder vs. 20 Dark Eldar.
I managed to get a great deal on some old DE warriors, I suspect they are from the Made to Order that GW did fairly recently...ish. For the marines I already have some of the HH mk6s and some classic RT plastics. I also liked the look of the new Space Wolves so ordered a single Grey Hunter to check out.
First up the Dark Eldar... though I like the classic plastics, probably more so than the new ones, they are dripping with spikes and end up looking a bit dorky so I trimmed them off. I built the chap on the left first but wasn't really convinced about the overly tall helmet. Luckily I already had one of the new guardians and though the head from that looked good so built the lady on the right. I think the two kits mix pretty well so ordered a bunch of heads to complete the force and give me a few choices; I'll use the plumed heads for the squad leaders.
Next the marines...so I built this mk6 marine when they were first released; I was quite pumped for the set and I think I have 20 or 30 of them (that is A LOT of marines for me as I much prefer to take my painting slowly). I built him and then just lost interest. I'm not quite sure what it was or is, but he just looks wrong. I'd actually say the primaris proportions are much better. Anyway I dug him out to see if my opinion has changed much...not really. Then I built the new Grey Hunter and...he's bloody huge! Honestly he looks like he's from a different scale of game. The detail and everything is spot on but damn he's big, too much so for my tastes which is a shame. Finally I built a classic RT marine with a little subtle conversion work around his bolter, bringing the gun forwards in his hand but bringing the magazine back inline with the ejection port. He's scaled much better with the eldar than the other marines but the kit is definitely showing it's age. I think I'm actually tempted to offload both kits and go with some classic Tactical marines (GW still sell them too).
Just a quick aside, having built a few of the new minis recently (marines, eldar & orks) I can't help but notice that almost all of them have ridiculously wide stances, honestly if I stood like that I'd find it difficult to move let alone run around a battlefield. I can only assume the sculptors have done this so the model's feet still touch the sides of the base, thus justifying the change in base sizes. They put me in mind of that Blackadder episodes where the prince gets lessons in delivering speaches
So, the plan is to build the DE first with 4 squads of 5 minis, each with a sybarite to lead them; 3 of the squads will have splinter cannons and the 4th will have a converted lascannon. For the paint scheme I'm looking to go with Xian's Black Raiders from RT...
26 May 2018, 06:06:32 PM