Armies on parade

Pootle here! Stylus has been gently suggesting I update my army pages, partly so that when I host a game over Skype my opposing general can see what models he can choose from, but mostly so he can get a look at what I've been up to as I'm not at all as assiduous in posting pics of all the miniatures I paint as he and Kraken are. So here's a quick summary and links to each of my armies where I’ve got pics of (almost) everything I’ve painted.

Death Guard: The Second Law (link here for the full army) (4,000 points)

This army is my pride and joy, and what brought me back to 40k in 8th edition after dropping out in the early 90s after only playing Rogue Trader (which was a very different game).

I was very pleased when Stylus told me that one person on Reddit had spotted the bad physics joke inherent in the name of the warband and its characters. It was inspired by Winters and his Death Guard army The End of All Things: ahead of my first games at Woffboot against Stylus, Kraken and Kasfunatu, I knew I needed my own identity and this seemed to work well.

Nurgle Daemons (link here for the full army) (1,500 points)

My first game after Woffboot XIII was my introduction to Skypehammer, with Kraken hosting a game against his Nids. I wanted to keep the Nurgle theme but switched to Nurgle Daemons and have loved building up this army of my own, which really isn’t terribly effective but is great fun (and disgustingly resilient of course). I recently played a couple of 1,500 games at Monkey’s Wild West event with this army, which I loved.

The Purge (link here for the full army) (2,500 points)

It quickly became apparent to me that my Death Guard didn’t have much in the way of ranged firepower, so I looked around for options for allies and found The Purge. CSM aren’t massively scary just at the moment, but the Purge’s signature trait of rerolling all hits on an enemy unit if that unit has lost a wound that turn can be pretty effective at times. 

A unit of Havocs and a couple of Obliterators later and I had the core of what has now grown to be a fairly sizeable army. I played four games with a 1,500 point list at Kasfunatu’s in September and had great fun with them, but my absolute favourite games with the Purge were in Stylus's Skypehammer Averment campaign (not even using my models).

Ultramarines (link here for the full army) (6,000 points)

Like many people, I started off with Space Marines. In my case a box of RTB01 classic beakies for Christmas in 1989. I painted the very first few as Blood Angels but moved on to Ultramarines (waaaaay before they were hated Smurfs).

Despite building these guys up so they're now my largest army (unless Nurgle forces are combined), I've not played them all that much (my favourite one was a narrative game against Kraken where I shoehorned all my vehicles in), though my son is very fond of them and tends to play as Marines when we play each other.

Orks: Waaagh Bludteef (link here for the full army) 3,000+ points)

If we’re talking fun armies (and I think we are), you can’t get much better than Orks. Very soon after I started 40k, GW launched Orks properly and I was hooked. I chose Evil Sunz as the idea of red-painted buggies flying around the battlefield appealed and didn’t look back.

Although I built up quite a substantial army in the early 90s it was all packed away in my parents’ attic for decades and when I got back into the hobby I discounted the few models I imagined had. However I eventually dug them out and sent a pic of the 180-or-so models (and over 2,000 points) to Kraken (a box with larger vehicles had gone AWOL) and he pointed out that in this universe that’s a pretty decent basis for an army, so what was I waiting for?!? As always, he was quite right… The highlight of playing these Orks again was a 2k battle against Kasfunatu's Daemons recently.

Necrons (link here for the full army) (3,500+ points)

So, Indomitus. And then the Eradication Legion. And then Monkey spotted someone selling an unbuilt copy of Forgebane on Gumtree. I really didn’t intend to buy another army, but who does?

Tally for 2021

Whilst I'm publishing something at the end of the year, I might as well give a Stylus-like update on my painting progress. I too have had a record year in that I painted more than I bought: overall I painted 208 models against 73 bought for a net reduction of 135. Compared to net increases of 76 in 2018, 118 in 2019 and 16 in 2020 (despite painting 233 last year I bought 249), that's something I'm pretty proud of.