Greetings, Fellow Wargamers! IG Fanatic here, and this is the first post of my contribution to A Tale of Four Gamers.
Lets start with being clear about something from the gate: I love competitive play, tournaments are my happy, Zen place. All the troubles of real life melt away, and there's just me and the guy across from me (okay, and my wife rooting me on via text messages). Some people like the hobby aspect of the game (building, painting, converting), some love forging a story while they play. Heck, some people just love buying every new model and stacking the boxes 12' feet high in their game room, never really touching them. I love all these aspects of the hobby as well. But... for me, its all about the Grand Tournament. I'm not a top-notch competitor, but I hold my own and have a blast doing it. Look for more on that topic in a later post, coming soon.
Oh, and I'll just get the elitist comment out of the way now: if its not fully painted and based, I don't play with it. Period. Same goes for WYSIWYG. My army on the table is EXACTLY what it says on my Army List. It's a pride thing, I guess.
So without further digression....
We all love Space Marines, right? They have cool armor, the models are cheap, and given enough time, they can chew their way out of a prison due to their acidic saliva. What's not to like? I own a Blood Angels and a Dark Angels army, and they preform well enough. "If you own two Power Armor armies already, why would you start a 3rd?" I hear you say. Well, I'll tell you.
My BA 'jumper' list (also known as a Descent of Angels army list; every unit reserved, and you deep striked into the midst of your opponents battleline) got nerfed due to the changes to reserves in 6th edition (you can only reserve 50% of your units now), and my DA list is very one dimensional (Azrael and friends come down in a drop pod turn 1, along with 2x units of Deathwing. Tactical squads and rifleman dreadnoughts follow behind). That's the way the armies run, that's it, that's all. I could buy new units to try and make them work, and heck, I might even do that one day. But its so much more fun to start fresh. And I'll be honest, I started DA because they were the new hotness. I could care less about their fluff, and really, the color scheme is pretty dull as well. "Oh, half your Chapter turned rebel and stabbed you in the back?" Cry me a river, you pansies.
So there it is. One army that doesn't work anymore, and another whose play style I don't really care for. With the eminent release of Codex: Space Marines (Here after known as Codex: 31 Flavors), I find myself putting my much vaunted Dark Eldar (well, I think their vaunted) on the shelf and returning to my roots: fighting for the Emperor as a super human, acid spitting, quad-lunged donkey-kicker.
(Disclaimer: I would never kick a donkey, but think about it: donkeys are pretty heavy and solidly built animals. Anyone who kicks them for a living would have to be pretty tough, right? Or at least have really cool boots. I mean, the average person would probably cause more harm to themselves, then the donkey. Or it could mean that they kick like donkeys, which the Lore says is very well. Anyways...)
So which chapter? So many choices... I could spend a whole article explaining why I didn't pick uncivilized White Scars, or the cowardly Raven Guard (mostly I just don't want to paint black or white, we'll leave it at that). So, I would like to point your attention to this Youtube video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4AP7XCCUcug&list=FLjm6_OsepA3z831_cQlcFpw&index=16
I haven't figured out how to embed the video, my apology's. When I do, I'll come back and fix it.
If you haven't clicked it, I'll just let you know here. Its the opening battle scene from the movie "Gladiator". In it, a Roman General masterminds a battle with his Roman Legion against some Germanic barbarians. Through superior tactics, equipment and discipline, he defeats them after what is alluded to as a fierce campaign. Great shots of lines of Legionnaires marching in formation towards the foe, their massed artillery covering their advance and weakening the enemy until they can close and shove their gladius's into their faces. What could be cooler, right? So there it is: Ultramarines.
I'll save the exact ideas behind the army for later posts after we have the new Codex: Space Marines in our paint-stained hands, but lets look at what they offer that my more combat role-specific marine armies lack. And that my dice-rolling brethren, is this: flexibility.
This is what allows Space Marines to hold their own against a galaxy of giant bugs, technologically advanced aliens, magic-wielding Elves and their own evil brothers. Take the humble Tactical Marine: He can shoot very well, and swing a knife fairly well. He can threaten most vehicles and Monstrous Creatures in assault (krak grenades), and can take a plethora of wargear options that help mitigate what he can't already do. To top it off, his armor allows him to shrug off damage that would cripple, if not destroy, an entire Imperial Guard Platoon. He can assault the enemy, no matter where they are hiding, and fire a shot off before he does (Frag Grenades and Bolt Pistol, respectively). True, other SM armies have these same abilities, but their more elite, chapter specific units aren't geared to versatility, or are so point-costly that their versatility is lost. Example: Death Company can theoretically be used to form a fire base. But that'd be a waste of the other abilities you spent points to acquire. You may disagree with this, but its how I see it.
And here's the clincher: he's your basic Troop Choice. Now expand those abilities to the entire army. What makes Vanilla SM powerful is the very thing that steers many players away from the army.
I plan to copy the template given on page 18-19 of the 5th edition Space Marine codex for the 2nd Battle Company of the Ultramarines. I've built my own chapter with their own unique color scheme, and named my own characters, all that jazz. Blah-blah-blah. I want to take something that's already in the fluff, and bring it to life. Note: there are 3 different Captains leading the Ultramarines 2nd company in the 'fluff'. Cato Sicarius in the codex's. That dude from the video game (I won't respect that garbage by properly citing his name), and that weak-ass Captain from the Ultramarines movie (which was a classic, mind you; but it'd be blasphemy to mention that daemon-prince-turning traitor by name). The one true lord of the 2nd is Sicarius. End of story.
Over the coming months, as I buy, build, and paint the army and take it to tournaments, all the while posting entries and photos about the armies construction, its victories and its defeats. Along the way, hofefully, we'll examine the new codex.
So far I have:
-1x each: New Sternguard, Vanguard, and Tactical squad on pre-order from GW.
- Sicarius and an Apothecary built and painted (that article will be up in a day or two, as school work allows).
- An Ironclad Dreadnought from my aborted attempt to convert my BA list into a Vanilla Army.
-A metric feth-ton of spare SM bitz from my previous 2x SM armies.
To wrap this up, I'd like to make a vow to kick this project off in true Adeptus Astartes fashion. Each Marine will have a different head. I will use NO duplicates. It'll just be cool, you know?
Thanks for reading and see you next time!
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