2019 in Review

A quick post to sum up my year, something to look back on next year.

Games

I managed 39 games and won about 2/3rds of them.  I’m pretty happy with that.  The games I lost were usually one involving super heavies (Knights and Tanks), so I still have a real problem there that I need to work on.  You can see the full list of games here.

Painting

I painted up 63 models this year for a total of about 2,391 points.  The Nurgle Daemon Battalion was the biggest single faction I worked on but the Death Guard weren’t far behind.

Death Guard (906 points)

• 2 Chaos Lords (here and here)
• Necrosius the Undying
• 2 Hellforged Contemptor Dreadnoughts
• 2 Chaos Spawn
• Chaos Land Raider

Chaos Knights (314 points)

• 2 War Dogs

Chaos Daemons (948 points)

• Epidemius
• Poxbringer
• Rotigus 
• Sloppity Bilepiper
• Spoilpox Scrivener
• 6 units of Nurglings
• 30 Plaguebearers

Servants of the Abyss – Blackstone Fortress (223 points)

• Obsidius Mallex
• 2 Black Legionnaires
• 2 Rogue Psykers
• 7 Traitor Guardsmen

Aims for 2020

• I think I’ll aim to continue to grow my Death Guard and Chaos Daemon armies, probably more with quality rather than quantity.  So some more Forge World stuff and armour might appear.
• Another unit of 30 Plaguebearers is tempting, but they’ve just gone up in points, we’ll see.
• More Poxwalkers is also tempting, they’ve had a points drop and being small models would easily fit into my carry case.  However getting up to 20 is hard, you can only buy them in groups of six.  However I currently have about 24 of them, so I could buy 18, strip the paint from 2 of them and then paint them all up in a different colour to the rest (green?).
• Really work on my airbrushing, if I do get more Forge World stuff and armour then that should help get nice smooth paint jobs on them.  I’m still not happy with my Rhinos and Land Raider that were brush painted.
• Tackle Mortarion?  He’s the one obviously missing part of my Death Guard.  If can crack the airbrush then it might help me make some nicely blended painting for his wings.
• I still need to work on my problems playing against super heavies such as Knights and Baneblades.  I know that Cadian Shock has one in progress, so I’ll be seeing more of them on the table.

Cadia Stands – Book Review

A few quick words about this book.  Let me get the obvious out of the way first, yes it’s clearly Imperial Propaganda and there’s a printing error on the front cover where the “No More” suffix was left off of the title.

On the whole it’s an entertaining read but it felt strangely “bitty”, as if bits of the story weren’t being told.  Things are hinted at and then never properly explained.  For example what happened to Creed?  Exactly what was the aftermath after Abaddon used the planet as a park and ride for his Blackstone Fortress?  Maybe these things are covered in other books, maybe I’m meant to just know them.  But, to be honest, I don’t.  So I did find the book a touch frustrating at times.

Are there any Death Guard or Nurgle connections?  At one point in the book some of the characters encounter some “Zombies” that are, I presume, Poxwalkers.  But that’s about it.

So, all things told, I think it’s fun but non essential, especially from a Death Guard or Nurgle point of view.

Death Guard vs Astra Militarum (1,750 pts) – Battle Report

List Theory

It’s all about the Poxwalkers.  I’ve only played one game with Necrosius, which was an utter disaster, and I needed to try him again.  As a coincidence it then happened that Chapter Approved 2019 came out which dropped the points cost for Poxwalkers and Typhus.  So my course was set.

Epidemius

Epidemius is the latest addition to my Nurgle Chaos Daemons army.  He’s a resin model and an update of an old metal model.  I’d heard stories that he was a bit of a handful, and I’m pleased to say that he wasn’t as bad as I feared that he might be.

Sloppity Bilepiper

Oh boy, that name… Anyway he buffs Rotigus (well Great Unclean Ones in general) and has a nice bit of interplay with Plaguebearers and the banner that brings models back on a roll of 1 when making a morale check so he seemed like a good idea.

Assembled

Athonian Camoshade

Complete

He was a fun model to build, he’s got a lot of character.  I painted him with the same technique as used for my Plaguebearers so that he fits right in.

• Green Flesh – Two washes of Athonian Camoshade followed by a highlight of Nurgling Green
• Red cloth – A base of Screamer Pink, a wash of Agrax Earthshade and a highlight of Changing Pink.
• Stick – A base of Dryad Bark, a wash of Nuln Oil and then a highlight of Ushabti Bone.
• Dancing Nurgling – Painted up as I did with Rotigus.

800 Days of 8th

800 days ago I bought the Dark Imperium box set and my journey back into tabletop Warhammer 40k began.  Because “reasons” I thought it would be a good idea to step back and look at how that’s gone and to see how far I’ve come.

September 2017

There’s the big box, and the photo that I took that night of the two rule books that I have side by side.  The Dark Imperium box set was a really quite lovely product and presented very nicely.  It would take me a while to get everything assembled but I knew that I was going for the Death Guard as “my” army.  I had never quite stepped away from Warhammer 40,000 having Games Mastered the Dark Heresy RPG and bought the re-release of Space Hulk when it came out a year or two before this.  So I was aware of what Games Workshop were getting up to.  I’d seen the concept art and then the miniatures for the new Death Guard models, I had taken quite a fancy to them.