So, he we are, jumping on the band wagon. The new deathwatch codex has been it and about for a few weeks and while I have the latest Battlescribe files and have eeen the codex, I have yet to get a, er, "copy" to look at. As talked about in a previous post, Battlescribe is not perfect and at present I can't see how to take a vet with boltgun and bolt pistol, in fact I dint see a bolt pistol listed at all. This seems a bit strange as boltgun and bolt pistol are the mainstay of a marine, and its pointless arming a marine with a ccw unless he has a pistol of some sorts. Anyway, hopefully I can get eyes on a codex and see what's right.

Ill post up a full list later, in another post and ill post up the fluff for it as well, again in another post. But I though I would put down some initial thoughts here.

The deathwatch will be fielded with my inquisitional force, to makes 2000 point list, as all my lists are. The current inquisition list is around 650 points, so I'm looking at around 1350 points, which should be easy to hit. In terms of setup, the inquisition list currently is heated towards taking out men's, with hotshot lasguns and power sword wielding death cult assassins and crusaders. The deathwatch will continue this theme, not only with the special issue ammo but in terms of wargear. None of my armies are particularly good, usually lacking in one area or another, such as the Hjaltland lacking any anti heavy armour, and the deathwatch will no doubt suffer the same fate, although there are a few chain fists and a dread ccw in there which will help.

In terms of teams, ill be going for a range to cover all the bases, using the Black Spear Strike Force, for universal deep strike, and then the Watch Company, to gain the additional reroll benefits, and finally ill be taking an Aquila killteam for general stuff, a Dominates killteam, a Furor kill team and a Purgatus killteam all for their special target types, (HQ, Elite and Troop). I haven bothered with heavy support or fast attack, as I figured the Aquila team can deal with fast attack and heavy support doesn't go far usually and can be dealt with by the the chain fisted termies in the Furor team.

I've got most of the bits I need to make this lot, as I'll be using the Betrayal at Calth boxset for the marines and the termies will come from my left over stock of metal bodies with BaC arms. I have pretty much got all the arms and weapons I need from the boxset and my bits box, the only questions are whether I have enough flamers to make the 3 Infurnus Heavy Bolters I want and whether I need jump packs for the vanguard vets, who are listed as jump troops but apparently don have jump packs listed in their wargear. I'm assuming this is an oversite and I'll need jump packs but it would be good if I could drop the packs, as I don't need them.

This army may well be on the drawing board for quite sometime as my priorities right now are to finish the Hjaltland LI, which only has a handful of models to paint including a Valkryie, and paint the rest of my Dagr Ormr MT force and that doesn't include the Eagle Knights, which are also on the list!

So, we're well in to 2016 and things are going well on the modeling front, but I though that I would look back at the new years resolutions and see what's happening.

The resolutions:

1) Try and model up all the missing models from the various army lists. So what needed doing?

Hjaltland LI needed their Valkyrie, which is now built but as usual is not painted
The Hrossey Yeomanry required a Primaris Psyker and purchase a Chimera. The psyker is complete, however the Chimera is still on the wish list.
The Dagr Ormr strike force is now complete, with the addition of a OotF and Standard from the command squad and 2 Sgts and a heavy flamer from the vets.

So part one is going well.

2) Sell models I don't need. Well, this is not going as well, I was planning on selling some metal termies and some of the heavy weapons team, but I've modelled up the termites and thought of a new way to use the heavy weapons teams. Have I mentioned I'm a bit of a horder? So as yet nothing been sold.

3) Try and base coat some of the models. Yep, still not happened, not likely to either with all the DiY work that the wife has lined up. However, she maybe going away to a conferance or two soon, so I may get to sneek in some painting time, just don't tell the wife!

4) Play some games! Well, I've played 2, so not going great on that front.

As for the marines. Well, the knights are modelled, the Disciples are in progress and the Guardians are back on track, well, kind of anyway. I've been planning and plotting for the Guardians and have come up with a viable list based around the fluff, without buying to many more models.

The Assassins Cadre is on hold, I'm collecting bits still, but at the moment, the Disciples are the main focus.

As for new models, I've got BoC and the models there and I'm still looking at getting the transports from anvil for the MT's alongside the new Chimera for the Hrossey Yeomanry. I'm also looking at the new models for the Guardians, namely a couple of Attack Bikes and Landspeeder Tempests, but I'm still not sure. Also there are still no new models that I want from GW, just the renegade game!

As for terrain, I'm going to try at some point to get hold of some foam board and some plans from Confessions of a 40k Addict and bash up some scenery for a table or two.

Well I've put my Christmas money together and forked out for Betrayal of Calth, mostly for the models for my DA Dark Guardians. I want a nice force of archaic looking marines, mixed with some newer stuff, to give a feel of a force that's been out hunting on the edges of the galaxy for a long time. Hopefully with the older chaos models and dreads along with the Calth box set should be able to do this. I might not end up using all the models for the DA force, some may find their way in to the Disciples army list as Sternguard vets, after all the Sternguard are supposed to be the best and oldest warriors in the chapter.

Getting this box set is going to mean that my Dark Guardians will need a slight rethink in terms of their list, as it 2000pts, adding in an extra squad of termies does cut down points, and I am hoping that I may be able to get hold of another squad of terminator bodies cheap, probably from eBay, to add another squad, using the extra arms from the box set. The main squad will be armed with lightning claws, with a heavy flamer on one model and the Sgt with  Sword and Strombolter, to give some shooting pre assault. This will leave at least 5 sets of weapons, including 2 sets of lightning claws which will go with the other flamer squad.

This doesn't leave a lot of space for troops in the rest of the list, so it will be a bit of a juggling contest to see where the other points are used. I will have to have a good look at the DA codex to see what I can use and where, but one option is to get hold of some more bikes or speeders but I will have to see, as I can't really justify more purchases at the moment.

However, one thing that I am pondering in painting up a minimum strength Demi-company or Lions Blade Force. This is mostly to keep current with the new DA codex more than anything else.

As you can tell, this force is very much up in the air at the moment, and I'm not entirely sure what I want. The other issue is that being 30k forces, do I want to keep these as playable in the 30k universe? At present, no one up here plays 30k, so is it worth it? Its something that I really haven't decided on yet. If I do keep them as 30k playable, I wont be doing DA though, so I'll have to pick a colour scheme from the Heresy, probably a traitor force using pre-heresy colour schemes, which at the moment are World Eaters or Word Bearers, the latter would be closer to my original colour scheme. One thing that I will have to look in to is the scope for alterations to the colour schemes, or are they very much set in stone for 30k?