It's like waiting for buses.

 

 Y'know, you're there for ages and then two or three turn up at once*.

So GW have decided to expand their plastic DKK line and also launch plastic warp spiders and pheonix lords at around the same time.  And there are plastic striking scorpions I havn't bought yet.  

It does make me think that I should just not ever look at the interwebs at all for anything.

Another couple of hundred quid to sit in the garage for years just at the time I'll be paying for Christmas, probably.  

I'm gonna see if I can't just 'not buy any more'.  These things fall outside of my usual rules of aquisition (ie they are not bits to finish existing projects) so they shouldn't be bought.  

And no-one needs a Valdor with Leman Russ tracks conversion, do they ? Not that I've been thinking about that for twenty years.

 *for context, for those who have genuinely never see this, it happens in London when the traffic patterns are distrupted (by traffic light failures, roadworks, other distruptive vehicles and/or deliveries on bus routes).  The buses cannot pull out for whatever reason until someone lets them out, and sometimes this is the next bus.  So you end up with a little packet of two to four buses all arriving at the same time. 

 

Dark Eldar leaders

The Archeon.  Dark Eldar.  Not "Drukarhi" and definately not Ynnari.

This is a Raging Heroes.

All of these were painted by Priate Viking Painting

And two loyal lieutenants.  Because the Dark Eldar are known for their loyalty.

Two people who take quite different approaches to the same challenges.

I did send the rest of the Dark Eldar army to a friend in Kent, but kept these three.

 

Pre-Codex RT era Space Elves

 

I'm one of those kids all of whose Player Characters were elves.  No matter what gaming system.

So these were my first 40K figures.  Not an "army", not in those days.  Army lists wouldn't appear until the first codices came out. 

These guys were RT BRB space pirates.  So, in keeping with the rules, here's a Space Elf pirate leader with a power fist and bolter.

There wouldn't be Dark Eldar for years.  So I suppose in a way these are proto Ynnari.

This is musician, twin linked keyboards.

This is the woodwind/brass section/choir guy.  WIth a view of the pipework on his back.

And a hand flamer and a sword. 

And this is the string fella, 

Twang

And there's a harliquinn dummer too !  We're getting the band back together.

And Space Elf banner bearers. 

Shuriken catapult with space marine style combat accessory.

An actual plasma gun.  Not a star cannon, you'll note, an actual plasma gun.

And a melta gun with a combat accessory.

It's almost as if the pirates nicked the armouries of the victims of their ravages.

Two weapon combos were very popular with the Space Elves.

No, the one on the left does not have a space marine backpack and shoulder blades and is totally not toting an MG42.

Mostly orginial with the exception of the one with a bolter.  You'll note the one in the centre has a power fist and hand flamer.  This is orginal.

Group shot.  These were probably bought and painted (in humbrol enamels) in 1989(ish).  So around 35 years old. 

Inquisitoral Conclave 2022

Well, following the maxim that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, this would appear to be a factionless warlock or seer of some kind with a retinue of equally disparate assorted Eldar.

The leader.  Impassive in his (her ?) wraith helm.  Looking stern with a witchblade.

There are two swordsmen/women with convential weapons and two swordsmen/women with chainblades.

This individual is possibly the pilot of their grav-tank.

Two more individuals with hafted weapons.

So these are people who at the climax of the final battle for Xyphonica, when it looked like the Imperial Guard were over extended, appeared at XVII Korps HQ and negotiated. 

 

The Eagle has Landed

 You may remember that the mission for the German Commandos in the book was to eliminate Churchill and that in the end, the man they were aiming at turned out to be a decoy. 

So as the Eldar can foresee what might happen, it doesn't seem too far fetched that they might employ decoys for their leaders.  

Of course, it might simply be the thirty year old Eldrad meeting his younger, plastic, self.  This episode of Dr Who has been brought to you by Keela Mensha Kaine.  

I think this shows that the new figure is an homage to the old Jes Goodwin Eldrad.  And that the original Eldrad Sculpt was outstanding and, IMHO, still doesn't look too bad today. 

Old Eldrad was the first ever figure I had pro-painted.  but that was a llooonnngggg time ago. 

 

The new Eldrad was painted by Raven's Nest Painting.

A new wave of dance and mime

 "I have come to dance the dance of death."  The tag line for the harlequin from DOW.  

 Fast skimmers.  Well, like light cavalry throughout history, they're good at the beginning of the battle, finding openings in the opposition formation and perhaps prising it open a little more for exploitation by actual battle winners.  

And at the end, when the enemy are scattered and disorganised, light cavalry are the ideal troop choice for preventing them rallying and re-consolidating.

And of course your army needs someone willing to carry the fight to the enemy, someone to go toe to ballet-shoed toe with the opposition.  

Landraider might well be the most stylish way to deliver this lot into the fight.  Perhaps not the most elegant, but certainly the most stylish.  

These jovial minstrels were all painted by Raven's Nest Painting.   So there's a modest build up of Eldar forces going on as well. 
 

All possible futures, all woven together and jumbled up.

 

paint by Raven's Nest Painting. 

There is a place for Physical Comdey on Devos IV

 

But the appearance of a Masque would be more than an excuse for a bit of slapstick.

It's an indication that the Eldar as a whole think there is something going on here which requires intervention.  So they are sort of tumbling, leaping and froliking litmus of likely Elder intervention.

Paint by PVP.

World Book Day

It's world book day, so here we go again.  I blew ~£30 on this.  And I'm not too sure about it being VFM or not.

Let's address the production values bit first:  The Horus Heresy books are being knocked out for anything from £70 to £90ish.  These are high end art.  If you go to a a bookshop which does High End fine arts books and find something with comparable production values then the FW books actually don't seem too bad in terms of cash price.

But the hardbacked mainstream GW Codices, whilst lavishly illustrated on quality paperstock etc do seem to be a slightly cynical way of cashing in.  The older softbacked books were perfectly adequate for a table top wargame.  And quite frankly, if the rate of issue and re-issue is just going to continue to rise then surely going the other way, making the product more accessible as the rate of refresh accelerates would be better for the customer (and hence long term better for the producer ?)

I'll point you to Bolt Action - Admiral Drax recently showed me a book he'd picked up which seemed beautifully produced, illustrated and laid out and was immediately engaging and certainly up to the job of being a wargaming rule book.  Like the older codices.  Go figure.

So from 2003 I reveal this:

                                              

So we are supposed to accept that the events in the new book run directly on from the events in the 2003 book.  And to fair, all of the elements are there: the various SM Chapters are represented; the Imperial Guard appear to have been thinned down to a few Cadian formations, which is disappointing.  Name checking different Guard formations always raises a smile here, one of the best bits of EoT is the list of units on each side, which in itself spawned more then one thread of fluff which we all now know and love etc.

In the new book the writing centres around the three new character pieces which, in as much as any 40K character ever can be, are adequately brought to life in furtherance of the narrative.  A diminishing cast of SM Characters are given bit roles.  Which is a subject for a whole new post.  The narrative itself is obviously a scene setter for some future development in the 40K canon (I hope that wasn't a spoiler).

Did I enjoy it ?  Not really - the battles are all huge cataclysmic events where no one on either side ever seems to need to reload, run out of loo roll, catch 40 winks or display any other Maslowian frailty, the like of which we know actually wins and looses wars.  I know that that its just a game and that that game is a piece exchange table top game of over the top heroes and gribbly beasts.  But.  It's contextual basis is a human society, albeit hopelessly distopian.

So one or two lines where the defenders retreat to the under ground, sub pylon catacombs where they rest and re-arm and behave like a beleaguered army would have that little bit of depth - similarly having a line about the vast hordes of renegades scavenging the ruins for food (which the Black Crusade did not bring with them because they don't care that their minions starve) instead of actually assaulting the Imperial positions would also have added depth, character and believablity to what is otherwise quite a dry account of events.

That the Eldar wait until the last Imperial Forces are not a threat to them before effecting a rescue is entirely consistent, bravo !

There is a clear purpose and intent to both of these books - the EoT book introduced the Cadian Shock Troops and Kasarkin AND gave a background and reason d'etre for people to use their existing Imperial, chaos and Eldar armies - it provided a pattern for the few years of 'world campaigns' which followed on from this, Medusa V et al.  What it left out was as important as what it included.  It was clearly inspiration for gamers and hobbyists.  Inspiration derived from a few lists and half a dozen tenuously connected pieces of prose which might not have written specifically for this publication, just include because they were good (?)

The fall of Cadia book does more and different things - it advances the entire 40K narrative - the Eldar get a new god, the Imperium get a Primarch and Chaos actually win something.  Making all of those previously random Black Crusades be about destroying the pylons is an interesting maguffin to explain the apparent waste of the last 10000 years by Abaddon and his homies.  And of course it promotes sales of the three new Character models as well as the armies mentioned therein.  And I think that's how the book reads - it was written with these purposes in mind - if you have a Dark Angel, Imperial Fist or Black Templar army then this book gives you immediate licence to be involved.  If you wanted an excuse to start a Mechanicum army, here it is.  Excetera for the other armies mentioned.

So I think this is reason that the book is a bit flat, ever so slightly missing the viscerality of that piece from EoT where the Commissar is talking about training with a Cadian Youth Army Platoon or the Aspect Warrior goes into the Avatar Chamber and does not come out again.  The 'whole narrative' thingy feels forced in a way that the previously stand alone articles within the older books did not.