Not that there's been much traffic on this blog thus far, but posts may be a little erratic for a few weeks as there's been another death in the family.
There's been a lot of fuss made over the past couple of years about 40k's new Primaris marines, about existing characters being upgraded and the doom of the traditional space marines. There's some validity to it all, but, something most people forget, or simply don't know, is that a similar change happened almost 30 years ago. Back in first edition, in Rogue Trader, marines started with profiles barely advanced from the humble Guardsman, with power armour that gave a 4+ save. A 4+ save was a big thing back then, and the other means of getting it - Carapace armour or layers, such as mesh and flak - came with movement penalties and other downsides. Back then, the S4 of the bolter made it an enviable weapon. Marines were a powerful force. The miniatures, dating from before or around the time that marines became superhuman giants, were small by modern standards, about shoulder height to a modern traditional marine, mostly single-piece (except for backpack) and wearin...
It's a bank holiday in most of the UK today, but not here in Scotland, where it was 3 weeks ago. It's very hot and very sunny, and most of my neighbours have taken the day off. As such, I'm finding it hard to get motivated. My mind keeps drifting back to Saturday's post on reclaiming the Land Speeder for the Imperial Guard of 40k. The biggest issue, beyond getting the relevant guns (multilaser, lascannon, plasma cannon), is the crew. The majority of surplus crew that collecting Guard produces are designed to be poking their heads out of or standing in tank cupolae. There are 8 that i can think of that aren't: the artillery deck crew from the Accessories sprue/Basilisk, the 2 deck crew from the Hydra/Wyvern, the commander from the Baneblade, who has legs allowing them to be assembled as a separate model, the commander for the Deathstrike/Manticore, the 2 crew in a Taurox and the crew of the Sentinels. The 3 standing models and the squatting one are completely unsui...
The idea of the 40k Imperial Guard/Astra Militarum having dedicated assault troops seems ridiculous nowadays. Since 1996, the basic structure for the Guard has been well established as the 10-man rifle sections, 5-man command sections (now 4-man with the officers split off), and 6-man support units. This makes active sense, and has strong real-world parallels: in modern military, few units are armed primarily for hand-to-hand combat, and such has been the case for nearly 300 years. Despite this, close combat has always been a significant part of 40k. Back in first edition, the game launched with the assumption that ranged combat would be the norm, as can be seen in the early army lists, but, over time, some time around the start of the 1990s, that shifted. Close combat had moved out of the shadows, and the Craftworld Eldar had the cutting edge of this, with Guardian Storm squads (with laspistols and powerswords), and Howling Banshee and Striking Scorpion Aspect warriors. On ...
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