The thought process of choosing an army.,,

As you may have noticed, I attended a campaign/tournament weekend a few weeks ago - enjoyed it immensly, even though I got a measly 2-0-3 (in the British system).

I realised that I have to work hard to get anywhere with all of my armies!

• Dark Angels /Deathwing: outdated codex, 1/5 points disadvantage against all of the 'modern' codices. Still the coolest chapter. And I'm stubborn enough to stick with the 'proper' rules.


• Eldar: Still strongish, but you have to think. Now I don't have anything against thinking per se, but sometimes you want to sit back and kick ass - you know?


• Tau: I can see why they're good, and with some work/practice/a few more suits I can see it becoming my best army. But again, takes alot of skill to know how, where, and when to do everything. I'm not there yet.


• Orks and IG - neither are in a playable state and to be honest I can't afford the hardware* to make either feasable any time soon.

So, whats 'good' right now? What can I paint that will be effective, be slightly unusual, and come out of my embarrasingly large selection of boxes and bits?

Marines.

I have a bajillion of them (ok a few thousand points). I have 20+ jumpers, dozens of tacticals, bikes, and unbranded** terminators, all sitting in boxes, all wanting purpose. Now I was intending them to be Dark Angels, but having obtained a few battleforces worth of robed guys (best deal EVAR - £70+ worth of models for what, £40?), I can use the excess none robe grunts.

Then I came across the Generi-Marines. I wish I could remember which blog has them, but the excellent idea is to have a space marine army that can be turned into any SM codex (found it - For the Throne).

Choo choo!

Whats that, is that the Band Wagon I hear approaching?

Why yes, I have marines, I love the new wolves and bloody angel codices, and I lament the current state of the Dark Angels (they deserve capitalisation) but refuse to use them as any of the lesser chaptors***.

So, what chaptor/legion can I use? While the idea of grey marines is excellent, I've had to paint way too much of it on the Tau to face doing it on another army.

• Sons of malice/malaal. I love the fluff/lack thereof. I love the highly tenuous links to Malaal, the black sheep of the Chaos family. Black and white isn't too hard to paint. I can use everything as if they're still loyal/just gone bad.

• Night Lords. Ok, so I've just read Lord of the Night, but I liked them before, honest? They were the first chapter to use large scale jump packs, they work through creating fear and terror throughout the populace, they have friggin lightning flickering on their armour! They also (at least in some of the fluff) are averse to Choas. Given that the majority of the stuff I have is 'non-evil' I could call it Heresy age (Mark VII armour), mix in a few chaosy bits for the fear factor. Ah, the painting. I've done half a test mini, and the hard part will be adding some lightning that doesn't look like it was done at 4am by a caffeine addict. And making it look 'midnight blue'. And adding brass/brinze that matches. Ummm... It's nice that I'll have 2 green armies (gobbo's and DA), 1 red army(Eldar), 1 blue army (NL)? Vague batman correlations FTW!

• Pre-heresy Emperor's Children. Love the idea, have enough fluffy bits to make a couple of squads, but no more. By fluffy bits I mean beaky helmets and aquilla breast plates. I'm not usually a fluff monster, but I'd like to get it right. Maybe a killteam at a later date then.

• Homebru. All of the colours are taken, and I'd feel the need to create a small backround piece, names, fluff etc etc.


• Codex. I tried painting blood angels, and found that I just can't get a bright, true red. Either it goes orange or too grimdark - and that base is already covered by my eldar. I like the imagery of the space wolves, but it wouldn't look very wolfy without all the bits.






• Rainbow Warriors. Naa - just kidding. But come on, how many Rainbow marine armies have you seen?






• Deathwatch. Oooh... Now this is an interesting. Black, with just the shoulder pads in the chapter colours. Cool fluff, cool imagery (I like me some imagery). Vague possibility of a codex sometime in the next 5 years. Unfortunatly not known for hanging around in groups of more than 10. And not an army I can think would bend into the BA codex very eaily. Plus I was looking at the kit that GW makes (granted - it makes them look 'proper') and that would cost £30 per squad... No thanks. Again, something I'd love to do for a kill team.

Hmmm, I had talked myself into Night Lords, but to be honest writing all this down has added a few possibilities that I hadn't considered. Bah! Decisions decisions.... None Chaosy Night Lords it is then. No, Sons of Malaal! No, Night.... Oh crap. Two Face coin flip?

Dominus Nox!

* 6 inch thick armour, unfeasably large guns, tracks... Etc etc etc.

** Without any Deathwing symbology. Yes, I have a bunch of them sitting waiting to be stripped and repainted. Ah, Ebay, my friend.

*** It's a 3rd ed rule called Stubborn, at least half of DA players have it.