Hobby update (Lizardmen, Marines, Assassin) and mini rant about Gutenburg

Warning – will contain expletives!

It’s happened, I’ve finally been forced onto the new editor and my god it’s fucking shite. I cannot comprehend how anyone outside of a developer could think the new editor was intuitive. You press return and it adds a new block rather than a new line. I still haven’t worked out how to insert more than one picture at a time to a post! (edit just worked this out).

Thankfully I’ve managed to switch back to classic editor in the phone app. I can’t seem to on the desktop though. You need a business account to install the classic editor plugin.

If anyone has any ideas on how to change the desktop I’d love to know.

If anyone has also found any simple ‘idiots guides’ to the new block editor, again please share!

Anyway, now that unpleasantness is out of the way, back to the hobby.

Lizardmen

It’s funny that one of the reasons I started this blog was both, to document getting back into the hobby and clearing some of the huge backlog of early miniatures. In all this time, I’ve barely done the second aim, so I’m quite pleased that I’ve finally made some inroads into the early pile. These aren’t, by any means, my earliest models but they were in the 5th ed box from 1996 so it’s a start.

It’s also my first foyer into using contrast paints and I have to say it did make the initial stages very quick. It was also helped that I was able to draft in some child labour and because of her eagerness to paint them, letting her lose with contrast over the undercoat, meant I really didn’t have to worry about what she was doing (bar ensuring the paint went on the minis and not the floor/sofa/tv/ceiling etc).

Despite the help, I have to say that these were some of the least enjoyable minis that I’ve painted in a long time. I really struggled with them and even the inclusion of 12 of the more recent Saurus sculpts didn’t make a difference. It wasn’t because I batch painted 30 of them either, I don’t mind batch painting bulk units. I’m not sure what it was but even by my normal standards they ended up as bare tabletop.

They are mainly armed with hand weapons and shields (as that was the only option in the 5th box, though with the more recent sculpts I split them, so around half had spears and shields. This was purely so I had the option of fielding the unit that way and when I did I could put them all at the front to make it more obvious (in Garagehammer, there is no need to have the unit fully what you see is what you get. Doing it this way makes it, visually, less confusing. I thought it a fair compromise).

How they play.

On paper Saurus warriors look pretty good with a default strength and toughness of 4. Leadership 8 appears very slightly above average but when you take all tests on 3 dice (discarding the highest) they tend not to run away.

They also get 2 attacks with the potential of generating an extra attack on hit rolls of 6. This combined with a 4+ save makes it, again, appear that they are decent in combat and defence.

There are a couple of things that let them down. Their weapon skill of 3 means they are rarely hitting on less than a 4+ and with their awful initiative of a paltry 1, the only the only thing they are striking before is a foe armed with a great weapon. It was also here that the writers really missed a trick. The initiative is so poor (worse than dwarves!) that you really want to give them great weapons and that is the option missing. This single change would have made them a really viable option. Not that they aren’t but they are somewhat meh in effect and this would have elevated them to a good choice.

It is telling how limited the 8th edition Lizardmen core army choices are, that you see Saurus warriors so often.

Imperial Assassin

This 40K model was very much a procrastination piece, done as a break from the above Lizards.

I’ve always had a soft spot for assassins in 40K. Their fluff is really good, especially the main 4 ‘branches’ of assassin: I think that this one in particular is a great model*. Who doesn’t like a f*ck off massive sniper rifle?

* When you can see it. I’m going with the assassin is lurking in the shadows rather than the photos are terrible…).

I’d love to tell you how they play but I’m a total 40K novice. Likely their best targets are the supporting models rather than the main characters. Things like apothecaries have to be a prime option.

Assault Intercessors

Continuing the 40K theme, I also started working on more of the models that came in the Indomitus box, the Assault Intercessors.

With scouts having moved from core choices to elite, I needed to paint up some new options so I could field a legal army (in the event I actually get round to playing the game again!).

I really like these new primaris in general, if only because their poses are quite fluid and they actually look like the are storming toward the foe.

Paint wise they were kept with the same simple scheme the rest of the Shadow Sentinels chapter have. Green spray undercoat, Caliban green base & green wash for half and the other half had the dark angels green contrast instead, in order to test it out. It didn’t make a great deal of difference, bar saving a step and for that reason alone, you have to love contrasts.

The rest was silver highlights and details bar the chapter pattern on the pauldron. Again that was a layered white base. Much as I hate having to paint layers (and I admit that this is entirely down to laziness) it’s required to cover the green base. On top of that I used the old hex pot, blazing orange. I purposely only used a single layer of orange over the white, as I really like the more mottled orange effect it gives.