The Banstick

Hudson again. 2nd article this week something must have gotten me fired up. The past few weeks have seen a flurry of activity on my end regarding finding old links, getting back up to speed with the local hobby scene and trying to get my army painted and ready for some weekend play next month.

Although I have an Eldar army there is no secret being withheld that I was also a Imperial Guard lover at heart. I am a huge mechanized army fan which is why I play Panzergrenadiers in Flames of War. I also wanted to start a “horde” type army (in 40k terms this means an army with a ton of models on the board rather than a few really point expensive models) and that was going to be Imperial Guard.

I had sold my old army back 4 years ago but then I hated the codex and I hated the models I had and the second hand crappy tanks I had gotten on EBAY. This time around, with the 40k scene exploding on EBAY and YouTube, I could actually order bits (small modeling pieces that can be used to expand a unit or add to a figure) and start my vehicle collection fresh with new rereleases GW had put out. I also did not like my old color scheme. This time around I am going to go easier to paint but more bland and earthy. When you have over 80 little faces to paint the Cadian army is not fun.

An Imperial Guard Cadian army is big and a huge time sink (Cadia is the the homeworld of the priemier Imperial Guard battle unit) so collecting this will take months. I will start by sniping good deals on EBAY and just tossing the stuff on a shelf until I finish my Eldar. I cannot wait though as it will provide me a chance to model tanks and attack aircraft like I have never gotten to do before.

On the GW Website front they have released a PDF of a downloadable mission to add to your Battle Missions book if you have picked that up.

The mission is a Close Quarters Action mission and can be found here:

http://www.games-workshop.com/gws/content/article.jsp?categoryId=cat1310001&aId=6900023a

The attacker gets one HQ unit, one Elite and one troop and must clear the defender off the board. Well that is my update for today. Need to go get my taxes done and then it is a day off for me and the lady.

Hudson here. Just a small update on my Eldar army thus far. I have hit EBAY hard and come across a few good deals where I have saved at least 15 dollars on entire units so my army has grown by leaps and bounds.

Recently I have picked up a unit of Howling Banshees which are Eldar female hand to hand warriors that really excel at what they do. They charge into battle wearing these banshee masks that lower the fighting ability of an enemy unit and also give them a high initiative of 10. The higher the initiative in hand to hand combat the better, and 10 is as good as it gets. This means they will always attack first and just slice and dice the enemy unit they slam into. I managed to get an entire unit in the box almost brand new for HALF of what I would have paid retail.

I have also ordered off EBAY another Falcon Grav Tank (assembled but not painted and in perfect shape), two squads of the “grunts” of the Eldar army the Guardians, a couple of heavy weapons platforms and some Wraithguard. Wraithguard are slow plodding Eldar infantry that encase the souls of dead warriors in them and they sport one of the nastiest weapons in the army the dreaded Wraithcannon. These units are very expensive at 15 dollars a MODEL and I managed to get for around 12 bucks. Go me! I need more though because I want to field a big unit.

Elsewhere I spent some cash at the local GW Store in Naperville, IL and I want to give a shout out to the store manager there that helped me with some painting tips and turned me on to an awesome deal they had there for the new GW templates and in game token counters.

MORE AFTER THE BREAK

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Hicks here! It had been a while so I decided to post up my thoughts on Warhammer 40k since everyone seemed to be playing again.

Over the last few months I’ve been getting back into the Warhammer 40,000 hobby.  I took a good 8 month hiatus, where I didn’t even want to look at a model. I packed up all my codecies, boxed up all the models, sold off more than half my collection; I was determined to walk away for good. It’s a long story…

Anyway, I’ve gotten the urge to play again, primarily because my buddy is also getting back into it and we’d actually get together and have some fun after many years of wandering various MMO worlds.  So looking at my remaining collection, I had to decide which army I wanted to play.  I had the choice of Tau, Space Wolves, Imperial Guard, Orks and Tyranids.  Well, another in the group was already going to play the bugs, so I put them aside – even though it’s my largest painted force.  They also have a new book out, which I was hesitant to pick up – again, long story.

After taking out the bugs, snapping a few pics (which should be up on the Banstick Flickr page soon), I thought “Why not take em out? It’s not like they’re useless now…”.  So I decided to just bite the bullet and pick up the book. Afterall, I have the army, I have roughly half of the models I own built and painted (and that was around 2000 points in the last book), so why not see what I could do with them?

I’ll tell you what I can do with them now that I’ve read through the codex – Put em back in storage and wait for the next edition of the codex, because frankly – this one SUCKS.  I’ve been playing these guys since 3rd edition (it’s now 5th) and I am disgusted. (more after the break)

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