Musings of a Green Man

A friend, who's only been playing tabletop games for about 6 years, recently decided to start an Imperial Guard army for 40k. He's used to playing Space Wolves or World Eaters, and so is struggling to adjust to the quantity rather than quality. We were discussing this and the limitations that the organised play restrictions that can really hamper the Guard: whereas in third edition you could have 5 heavy weapons squads as part of a HQ slot, and in 4th could have another 15 in the Heavy Support slots, you're now limited to 3 in a 2,000 point force, etc. The discussion shifted to maximal playing: getting the most models and Command Points possible. He's often faced a Tyranid swarm with his marines, and was in disbelief when I said that the Guard could out swarm the 'nids, because Guard have cheaper HQ. What followed was my obsessively perusing the Codex, Chapter Approved 2018 and Imperial Armour: Index: Forces of the Astra Militarum for 5 hours, determined to pull to...

No, this isn't a post about the inclusive representation of alternative lifestyles in the hobby. That'd be a very long and involved post. Nor is it about alternative models to represent factions within major intellectual properties. It's instead about the opportunity to use a bit of lateral thinking with how to depict special rules or ways to have units in a style that fits the army. My specific examples are 40k, Imperial Guard, since they're ones I'm actively working with. The Vostroyan relic, The Armour of Graf Toschenko, gives a boost to toughness and a 2+ save. This is essentially Guard Terminator armour, especially combined with the Invulnerable save most officers have as standard. That Invulnerable save is much the same as the save Space Marines get from Combat Shields, so, why not have an officer with a Combat Shield? On the subject of shields, the Mordian relic, Order of the Iron Star of Mordian, gives a uniform save against any wound. Sounds like a dec...

The idea of priests in the midst of conflict has fascinated me for many, many years. Maybe it's a Northern Irish thing. After all, i grew up with images of clergymen caught up in Bloody Sunday and numerous other violent events. I grew up with Presbyterian firebrand Ian Paisley often seen on the news manning barricades, attending twelfth night bonfires, etc. Maybe it's the result of growing up watching MASH, with Fr. Mulcahy an integral part of the 4077th. Maybe it's something else altogether, like my starting into the hobby with the Genestealer Cult. I noticed recently that I have a bit of a habit of having clergy in my forces. My 17th century Berlin force had 5 priests among 200 or so models. When it became the basis for my Empire army for Warhammer Fantasy, i added a few more. My Imperial Guard from 1999-2003, which was about 200 strong, again had 5 priests. My space marines have over a dozen chaplains, including 2 on bikes and 3 in Terminator armour. And so it go...

...this is completely unrelated to yesterday's post. I first encountered the term Primaris in 40k when the second edition Codex Imperial Guard rebranded the Sanctioned Psykers from first edition, that had been dubbed Astra Telepathica Prime Psykers inthe Black Codex as Primaris Psykers. The model that came out to represent the option was, in 'Eavy Metal at least, wearing a snazzy, purple, ankle length coat, much like those i have worn myself for 16 years. For years this was about the only use of the term in-game, even when, in the first half of third edition, when there were no Sanctioned Psykers in Imperial forces, apart from Librarians. Then we got the Rhino Primaris, a command Rhino available only from Warhammer World (and now, presumably, the Citadel in the USA). So, 2 uses. Then eighth edition came around. Suddenly we were bombarded with an ever increasing number of Primaris Space Marine units. Having been used to using the term "Primaris" as short hand fo...

Something that I love about the current edition of Warhammer 40,000 is the variable detachment system. I'm not that fussed about Command Points, and, playing Guard or Genestealer, I've yet to run out, and, no, i don't have a system that ensures I regain them, i just forget to use them. That being said, i found it fascinating watching the meta go mental over how many CP the different factions could get. By now, the Blessed 32 Guard Battalion detachment, or CP-battery has become ubiquitous. For those not familiar, this is 3 Infantry squads and 2 HQ, coming in at a little over 180 points, depending on options, generally with a way to recoup CP, whether an artifact or a Warlord Trait, that brings 5 CP to bolster the rest of the force, say a single Super Heavy Detachment of 3 Dominus/Questoris Knights. That bolster, for 180 points, gives 5CP, while the detachment that takes up the rest of the points In this 2000 point force brings 3. Before the Rule of 3, restricting access t...

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...

There was a time, in the not too distant past, when the Imperial Guard of Warhammer 40,000 used Rhinos as transports. Later these were replaced by the now ubiquitous Chimera. The Chimera had significantly more guns than a Rhino (back then, a multilaser, a heavy bolter, 6 lasguns and a storm bolter, compared to a simple pair of bolters), and so could function as a light tank, and, at the time, could be taken as such. The weapons fit back then was fixed. All Chimerae had the same basic armament. You could upgrade the heavy bolter to a heavy flamer, but that got you into the weird realm of Vehicle Cards, and was expensive in points. Over time, the Chimera evolved. First we got the Hellhound, then the hull weapon became an either/or, the storm bolter became optional and the multilaser could be swapped for a heavy bolter or heavy flamer. The model didn't accomodate the alternative turret weapons, so Forgeworld filled the gap. Forgeworld gave us turrets with autocannon and twin heavy ...

I've mentioned these a few times already. I'm in the middle of converting some space marine land speeders to Tauros assault and Venator jeeps for my Guard (since Forgeworld has discontinued the official models). With all of that, it's probably only a matter of time until I decide to convert some Imperial Guard Landspeeders. The thing is, they haven't any rules, or any equivalent vehicle to base them on, so, how would i handle them, rules-wise? In first edition, if you somehow managed to roll enough tech priests (you could take 0-D6, per 3,000 points, and needed one per speeder), you could mount a platoon on Landspeeders. This meant that, between an officer, a 5 model command section and a minimum of 1 infantry squad (16 models, minimum), you'd need 8 speeders, and so would need 8 tech priests, and so this would only be available in very large games. These Landspeeders came with a heavy plasma gun on a dorsal mount and a heavy bolter on a fixed, underslung mount. T...

I decided in the latter half of last year, that the models i was working on at that stage, since they all had large bases, deserved scenic bases. My first thought was to have them standing over wrecks from armies that other players in my regular gaming group played. In the end, i decided against that, as it'd involve trying to colour match a different scheme on each of the 6 bases, while still tying them together. Instead the idea came to me to do them in something entirely different, like swamp/marsh, since, while they could be used with other forces, they could be used as a force on their own,  so, that's what I did. My Imperial Knights, House-Emeritus Johann, formerly of Elmo, were mounted on bases showing industrial construction slowly sinking into swamp waters. Since then, I've been slowly working on working out what an accompanying set of terrain would be like. A month or so back, the idea of an accompanying Guard division cropped up, hardened forest/swamp dwellers,...

As I've said before, I'm building a squat army for 40k. They haven't had a new, official army list since 1993, and that was a fragmentary one. As such, squats are one of the factions that get the most home brew army lists. Over the years, I've downloaded a few. As such, when I say that I'm building a squat army, it's a common assumption that I'll be developing my own custom army list. This, however, isn't the case. When I started my squats, i had the goal of being able to field them in a GW store or official event, so, an extant Codex and Citadel miniatures. On the latter point, i could trawl Ebay for the original squat models, but they are now 30 years old and expensive, so i chose to convert dwarfs/duardin from Age of Sigmar. As for an army list, I've seen numerous people use a marine list, but that just didn't feel right. Others have made the connection of squats being miners and the modern Genestealer Cult being miners, but i have a soft s...

No, this isn't a dyslexic post about the glories of video cassette recorders. It's a post about a much overlooked element in many games, often referred to as vehicle design rules. Within the hobby, we rely on army lists and points to try to ensure that the game is fair on a competitive front. As such, we constrain ourselves to vehicles and units that have preset rules and stats when building our forces. Turning up to an organised event with something with home brew rules and stats rarely goes down well. That being said, the diversity of vehicles that exist in the real world is huge, even before we start adding alternative weapons to existing tanks and such. During wartime, most countries have developed new technologies to try to outdo the enemy. Even the "tank" name we use to refer to a wide range of fighting vehicles has its origin in wartime counter espionage. These new vehicles often would see little action due to flaws in design that manifested only when they w...

Yesterday I rambled on incessantly about what units/periods work best on an open field gaming table, where scenery is scarce. Rather than slowly build up the terrain, today I'm going to jump to the other extreme, where there's little of the table that isn't covered in terrain. There's a huge middle ground, where most games will fit, and most games tables too. Hyper-dense Terrain This extreme of terrain is something most associated with small skirmish level games, like Games Workshop's Necromunda, Space Hulk , Shadow War and Kill Team, and other games that limit floorspace to a much smaller table than most company level games require . Infinity is also famous for dense terrain, but the actual density seems to vary between Europe and the America. For the purposes of this article, when i talk about hyper-dense terrain, I'm referring to the density of terrain in an American game of Infinity. I have always liked the challenge of a table absolutely crammed with...

Yes, the title is a quote from Stalin, on how the Soviet Union repelled the Nazi invasion and won the Second World War. This, however isn't about Stalin or WWII. I've been playing 40k, Warh ammer 40,000, for the one reader unfamiliar with the the abbreviation, for far too long. I was sold on the idea of the Genestealer Cult, these groups who mixed alien and human, who were desperately ill equipped for war, and yet who rose up in armed rebellion to overthrow the Fascist government that is pretty much every Imperial world. It was a force that relied on a small, random, compulsory core of a Patriarch, Magus, D6 genestealers and hybrids, supported by huge swathes of normal people. It was truly a numbers game. That was all the way back in first edition. In seventh, they returned, still numerous, but now filled out, not with humans, although they can take such, but with a huge spectrum of hybrids. This, and the addition of mining tools and such, has made them a close combat army ...

Let me take you on a trip back through time... In Rogue Trader, 40k's first edition, the Grimdark was new, and finding itself. Back then, the Imperial Guard had access to Rhinos, Predators, Land Raiders, even bikes, jetbikes and Land Speeders. They got a proper army list in White Dwarf 107. The list was riddled with problems, foremost amongst them, the profusion  of lascannon. Every command squad had 2, every infantry squad and conscript squad had one, and every support squad, back then squads of 10, had 4 and a missile launcher. They could be swapped out for Conversion Beamers for free, but those heavy weapons were compulsory, and had a movement penalty. It made little sense to have so many, and they were next to useless in Assault platoons - platoons whose squads had pistols as standard, and could have jump-packs - and Beastmen Attack platoons - where squads of beastmen were the squads. There were, as i said, a lot of problems, but that's a rant for another post. One thing ...