Praetorian 500pts Army list for escalation campaign

My friends and I have been planning an escalation campaign for around a year and a half now. It's due to start in March so I'm planning out my armies to ensure I've got the right troops painted in advance as otherwise it might not happen during the campaign and I'll end up in trouble part way through! We've got a good mix of armies included, with two tau, one iron hands, one sisters of battle, one tempestus scions/inquisition, one dark eldar and one craftworld eldar/harlequins (awaiting full releases to find out quite what this will entail!)

The aim is to start with 500pts and increase by 250pts each month after the first. Here is my first 500pts. The aim is to have good lists rather than abusive power gamer lists so we have limits on forgeworld and 30k units. One flier every 1001 pts and a group veto system setup with list submission windows and time for feedback. As a result I chose my guard so I can have some powerful chimera vet action and use my fluffy ratlings, ogryns and the like for entertainment value. I've painted these models up ages ago and rarely do they make it to the table due to their awfulness!

The list contains a command squad in a chimera, two veteran squads in chimeras and three ratling snipers because they're cool.

He's the command squad. I need to think up a suitable name for the well bearded fellow. Its got a lascannon and two plasma guns to take it to tau crisis suits and the like. I've tried to design my squads to be able to have a go at most unit types and this is no exception.

The three ratling snipers. With scout and being able to claim objectives in 7th these chaps might actually not be completely useless for a change. They will probably still spend most of the game hiding and occasionally trying to pull off a unit pin.

Veteran squad one. I need to sort out a base for the autocannon team I realized. They're equipped with an autocannon to deal with long range transports and infantry as well as a melta gun and flamer if they get up close and personal with any targets.

Veteran squad two. Generally I group weapons so three melta or three flamer, however in such a small game I decided to mix them so that my opponents couldn't so easily target the unit and thus the weapons they are weakest against.

Each squad has a chimera, they will be armed with multi lazers and heavy flamers to be able to have a go at anything going. We had previously had an ork and tyranid player so perhaps now heavy bolters would be better but what can you do!

My models are on display here on my friend Arthur's lovely forgeworld board with the GW building kits scattered across which will represent two to three of the urban environments on 3 of the 9 planets we have in the system to play on. Pictures of the amazing campaign map he has had made and the planets backgrounds to come in the future.

Any thoughts, ideas, or advice on the smooth running of campaigns or on my army list would be very welcome!

'The Jokers' chimera with squad marking for my praetorian vets squad.

One more chimera for my Praetorians. Its pretty standard for my army, the usual army painter leather brown and bone sprayed cammo. Copious weathering in the form of fresh scratches, old corroded chips and drips of sepia from nus bolts and joints for the main body. Rust and dust for metal and tracks. Some squad markings on the left side help break up the fairly monotonous colour scheme that's made worse by the track guards. and a few kill count markings add a touch of character.

Which led me to the right side of the tank, A friend of mine had a drop trooper army commissioned and each sentinal had its own little marking like a classic WW2 plane or similar and they looked awesome. I also wanted something to add just a spot of colour to break up the side of the tank and stop the eye just being drawn to the underslung barrel so I thought I'd give a squad marking a go. I thought a playing card might make a good filler, having a little colour but not being too large. I'd also done the weathering first so wanted something small to fit at an odd angle between my work as I couldn't really be bothered to redo it! I felt a joker with a droopy multi coloured hat could be easier to do and more recognizable without looking to closely. Also it made quite a good sounding squad name 'the jokers'. I'm not convinced its amazing but is a start.

At some point I'd like to go back and add other markings to my older tanks to try and break up the wall of identical looking units. I'm thinking the classic swimsuit lady should probably feature, maybe a snake eyes dice roll, a raptor head and a top hat. I've got seven chimera's, three leman russ and three basilisk painted. My Vendetta has the angry eyes and teeth. I've got another two leman russ, three medusa mortas, three hellhounds, a manticore, two hydra, two more vendetta, three valkyrie and four more chimeras to do so um... could do with some more ideas please! What makes a good tank squad marking?

If I manage to get a few more done and like them enough I might match some banners to some of the designs and do something with the six or so pointless banner bearers I've got sitting around.

Red planet board plans

I've always wanted to buy some of the forgeworld board tiles ever since they started making them and I've finally given in and bought a few. I recently read Mechanicum and I want a titan legion so badly! This would be silly as I'd spend all my money and then probably never stick or paint them let alone get to use them in a game. So I thought a red planet board was a better idea. It would feel sweet to chuck down my knights on it and have a game with them. (When I er... paint the second and third... or give up and play the one with my guard or BA...). I saw someones blog who used a very nice car paint spray for a great base colour... and if I can find it again I'll copy him... and link him... funtimes.

The plan is to use three realm of battle tiles for the rest. I'd like to have some smaller but taller line of sight blocking terrain for these to contrast the busy but low stuff on these. An imperial sector manufactorum built as a solid building rather than a ruin might fit the bill for one. I also like the idea of a couple of taller rock pieces that could be moved about and tie into the winding canyons in the mechanicum book. These would ideally look like the martian bute pieces the terranscapes boards use (or be them if I can source them). Any thoughts for alternate ideas or easy ways I can get or make some of these rock pieces would be appreciated!

More to come when I get some paint on them.

More Garden of Morr Regiment filler progress for Empire.

A bit more progress on the last two of my regiment fillers. One for my halberdiers and another that was to be for spearmen... but they're just not as good in game as the halberds I've found so maybe they need a rethink.

Heres the Halberd one...

...with a shot of one of the chaps. Man those white bits on his shoulder look messier close up...

This is the other guy.

I'm not convinced about the direction chap number two is facing but it means it'l be easier to transport without snapping his halberd off so he'll probably stay like that unless he happens to fall off and I feel strongly enough about it.

I love this statue.

It's a gorgeous model.

I might put greatswords on it instead, they're very expensive models, although I believe I already got a bit overzealous and ended up with loads of them after I decided to do some Reiksguard on foot, mainly awaiting paint of course. Given what the statues holding maybe this should have been the swordsmen... oh well!

I might go in and paint the plant up, but it doesn't really look real enough to be painted green and red/similar. Thoughts?

 What guys should I put on it? It would be cool to fill out the set so to speak and have spearmen, of course then it might just sit on the shelf forever. More thoughts?

I'm pleased with how these have come out, One day I might make some more to fill out some dogs of war regiments I own that could do with being a bit larger in the new ruleset. Hope you like them!

Codex Blood angels thoughts (rant) and my first1500k list ideas.

I've had some pretty strong feelings about the last cycle of codexes that have been released throughout 6th and 7th from the absurdly powerful eldar and farsight tau books to the money grabbing reprint without all your units so you have to buy more books that were grey knights and imperial guard, not to mention the disgrace that is supplements. So it was with a mixture of fear and excitement that I awaited the blood angels book, my favourite army of all time that I've played on and off for nearly two decades. That makes me feel old. Moving on...

HQ:
Flavour win: Captains can take artificer armour now. For some reason they couldn't last book even though being artisan armour guys was their thing... on the negative. They've still awfully bad value for your points.
Odd: Sanguinary priests are now an HQ with a points cost increase and further massive nerfs to their abilities. (That makes three separate nerfs and a points cost increase and a reduction in the number you can take since they were released in 5th edition. They can't take terminator armour anymore, this makes me very sad having converted two...) In short theyre now awful. Your army gets the +1 I and S on the charge they used to grant without them. the feel no pain is now only to the squad they're with and can through good placement be picked off mid phase suddenly denying your unit the buff. Bad.
Silly: Librarians got a point cost reduction. As if they weren't the top choice before. Librarian dreds are now HQ. this is cool. They don't seem bad for their points cost but its probably easier to protect your standard HQ in a transport.

I'm taking 1 lvl2 lib.

Troops:
WHY?: Assault troops are back to fast attack. time to redo our armies. Having said that razor spam with the now much cheaper tactical marines seems very strong, tactical sarges can now take an inferno pistol so the powerfist double melta squad in a razorback stays the same at actually a similar cost. Scouts are also alot cheaper but seem bad compared to the tactical squads.

I'd take four tacticals with vet sarge. Inferno pistol, powerfist, melta in razorback with laz plas.

Elites:
These are much the same, but with vanguard vets no longer able to deep strike then assault.
Honour Guard are now elites and called command squads. This doesn't make any sense flavourwise, there doesn't appear to be any limit in relation to HQ's so you can take up to four with the blood angels force organization chart list that gives you all +1 I on the charge so you want to. These are so undercosted. They're two attack marines, with a free FNP for the unit, free powersword and combat shield for the company champion that can take triple special weapons... so melta's. Nuts.

I'm taking one honour guard with triple melta in a razorback with laz plaz.

Heavy Support:
Vindicators are still able to gain fast. with the weird fast-ordinance rules these can move 12 and fire and are really silly vs vehicles and infantry alike.

Three please (in larger point games I'd take a stormraven... you know... when I build and stick the one I bought 4 years ago... so in another 4 years maybe?)

The list has a problem with fliers which won't matter in my playgroup but having a stormraven seems like a good idea. I'll have to get around to painting mine. For goodness knows what reason GW didn't see fit to give the blood angels the new marine flier, or the pretty terrible marine anti flier tanks, which won't help their model sales so seems strange meaning its storm ravens or aegis defense lines for AA in the book which is lame. All part of GW giving up on bothering with balance hoping you'l play unbound and buy even more of their books I guess.

My gaming group certainly is getting pretty close to simply writing our own rulesset for the sweet models with increasingly lazy book support GW make. The fluff text in the book is so copy and paste from the old one it mentions how the Blood angels for some reason have so many Land raiders they can use them as line transports however in the list they are no longer dedicated tranports for anything but terminators. This sort of laziness is pretty inexcusable. Did they really not even read the text they were copy pasting to check if it worked?

All in all they've taken out alot of the character of the book and vastly reduced the number of different lists you can play. The power level of the book has probably increased slightly with the flavourless undercosted honour guard spam being possible. I fully anticipate them putting back the assault troops list and possibly the death company list in supplements that will make me angry by rudely charging me another £30 to play the same lists my old book allowed me.

Imperial Knight (Complete!) part 5 Cannon arm and helmet.

Painting is finished! I may go in and use some weathering powders at some point to add more colour to the shadows of this huge model and to tie it into the base more but for now I'm going to give him a little rest time and try and get in a game or two with the beastie. Having had the model knocking around for so long helmetless I actually didn't like it with it on at first but now I'm sold. I think some lights in the eye pieces would work very well for someone who likes doing that sort of thing as the shade means you can't really see inside the helm to the eye lights I painted.

For some reason my camera wanted to focus on his kneecap... might try again sometime!

And here he stands in all his glory. I've never painted anything this big before and it was quite a challenge. I've got another couple of Imperial Knight models to do and would like to buy some of the amazing forgeworld models somewhere down the line but due to the immense time they take having my own knight house isn't going to happen anytime too soon! I want to try and switch up the leg poses on my other two to be a bit more dynamic than this one and so that all three don't look identical! Sadly the kits legs are really lacking in posability which is a shame as the rest of the kit is fantastically mobile. The arms are also swappable so I'll be giving that a go too! Pictures of number two's pose to come! Thoughts and comments welcome. Particularly in regards to powder weathering I might do. I have most of the Forgeworld powders and can buy others. My basing scheme has been this pale earth colour but I'm tempted to go back and red them up for a mechanicum world as I'm very tempted to do a Mars/Industrial red planet board and it would be nice if my army actually fit on it! However... I felt this guy would look better with a pale sand colour rather than rust red dust... help me sort this one out please!

Imperial Knight part 4 Combat Weapon and head.

HAZARD STRIPES! I love them, I thought about doing them over the top of the main hull or on part of the shoulder pads but with their curved shapes felt this might be a bit ambitious and was so happy with the subtle shading my sprayed on base colours left that I didn't want to mess it up! I actually nearly gave up half way through and took a break before I could face carrying on another day.

Here the stripes have been blocked out and some shading has been done with bloodletter to tint the edges of the sword in orange and into the cracks between armour panels details as well as around rivets. (You can also see I've weathered the hull with chips and scratches as well as added more detail, as well as blacked the exhausts).

I weathered the weapon up using my chip and scratch methods over the flat areas and exposed edges respectively. I added seraphim sepia to the cracks and areas I felt would be in deeper shadow. I also painted the eyes and silvered the piping on the head as well as drybrushed over the head to bring out detail. Most of this will be obscured by the helmet face but its nice to be thorough!

Here's a close up of the other side of the sword arm. The stripes are not perfectly parallel OR of exactly equal size but I did do my best! The weathering helps to hide these imperfections and tie in the different stripe colours particularly where weathering crosses areas of different colours so I'm happy with the general effect. (You can also see some of the basing details, such as the skeletal remains of an emperor's children space marine behind the foot and the large slate piece who helps way down the base.) Thoughts and comments welcome!