Just before I stopped working at GW, I had this moment where I was fed up with being a melee army. I desperately wanted to shoot things again. But I wasn't ready to buy a whole Imperial Guard army. I wanted the elite feel and power of bolters, but without having to just buy more marines. For a moment I considered buying more space marines and just adding heavy weapons to my squads and play them as vanilla space marines. But they were a bit furry for that.

That's when I got the idea to try Sisters of Battle. And I mean, pure Sisters. I loved their lore, their fanaticism, and their codex. I loved the idea of having bad-ass women shooting the crap out of things. So just before I left I bought 1000 pts worth of metal Sisters and vehicles. I painted just one Sister — the Canoness — before my enjoyment of the hobby dissipated.

I'd chosen a rich palette of black armour with a gold accent, and purple for cloth with bleached bone as its accent. I had made a sort of background for them; all of them would be bleached blonde sisters, like an army of Sixes.

Playing the Sisters of Battle in Dawn of War only propelled me more to want to flesh out my Sisters army. I never got around to playing a single battle with them, but from watching them, I found out that they weren't actually as shooty as I had expected. With a few exceptions, they were actually a short- or medium-ranged army, which I was a bit skeptical about. One day I'll return to them, I'm sure. A couple more pictures after the break.

PS: Oh, and I should mention that I realized after I'd finished the model that fire should actually be painted the opposite way — bright on the inside, dark on the outside. D'oh!

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The venerable dreadnought has the honour of being the only piece I've ordered from Forge World. And I bought it despite the fact that it was entirely not feral, fanged, crazed or otherwise Space Wolfy. It was just too good a model.

I chose the plasma cannon as its weapon, but I'm not quite sure why. It's deathly expensive, and I'd probably say that the new rules for Plasma Cannons are actually worse off when you have BS 5. Maybe I just chose it for the look — it's undisputeably one of the most bestial plasma cannons out there. And it absolutely dwarfs the plasma cannons on the sponsons of the Leman Russ Demolisher to the point where it makes me weep a bit to think that in game terms, they spit out the same stuff. In fact, it's probably big enough to compete with the Executioner plasma cannon in the new IG codex. Too bad mine's not Heavy 3.

There isn't much to say about the claw, except that it was a bit of a pain to put together and position. It also has a paint chip just off the edge of the photo. Standard fare though.

To make things easier (and more fun!) I've kept the Venny in four pieces: you can see the legs with the torso mount and pin for rotating around — there may be arguable game advantages to have a torso that can actually spin around (ie. when the poor bugger's immobilized). I also never glued his arms in place, so they could be pulled off for Weapon Destroyed! results or exchanged for other arms (which I definitely don't have).

I should take a moment to explain something. I have the models for the Space Wolves' special characters, but they're all lying in my bitz box, unpainted. Back in the day, when I played 40K (hey, that rhymes!) special characters were one of those things that was ... discouraged. You could see it in each codex, where said special dudes were jammed into the back of the book after the entire army list. They were realistically fluff with stats, as opposed to actual gaming pieces.

So when I peaked into the 5th edition codex for Space Marines - and soon after Imperial Guard - I have to admit that I was shocked. They were right there next to the rest of the army list entries! Blasphemy! The bottom line is that right now, I just don't have any HQ models that are beyond a pimped out plastic dude.

Take for example this guy:

We're talking about a mini made from a combination of bitz I had lying around. Legs from an assault marine, the helmet strapped to his waist (we'll say that he thinks people who wear helmets are wimps) is from a Chaos space marines box, most of the accessories are from the Space Wolves sprue ... the list goes on.

For weapons, he's got a bolt pistol and frost blade. 90 percent of the time, he's a Wolf Guard Battle Leader with those and frag grenades. He weighs in at just 88 points, and gets me six S5 power weapon attacks on the charge. If he dies? So what, he's 88 points.

The other battle leader I have a bit of a mystery to me. If I could go back five, maybe six years, I'd ask my former self, “what on earth is this guy???” Let's be real here: he's a Space Wolf with an inquisitorial shoulderpad (I concede that I liked the gold shiny bit on the top). Because feral, fanged, ass-backwards deviant space marines aren't suspect to the Inquisition ... Moving along, I find his weapon load out to be ... intriguing. A combi-melta and a lightning claw? Most intriguing.

Looking ahead to 5th edition, I asked the manager at the local GW (the one I used to work at) how many players these days use special characters. “A fair number,” said he. Given that I'm the kind of player who hated gooby play, I suppose I'll need to adjust my game strategy to suit this evolution. I admit that even looking at my own army list, I could upgrade these sub-100 pt Battle Leaders into 125+ point monsters (15 pts for the extra wound is probably worth it, compared to taking one more space marine).

And I'd be lying if I said that I didn't like the 5th edition Storm Shields. Extra pictures after the break.

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