40k 6th Edition and 1st Edition Marines

Well White Dwarf finally confirmed what everyone seemed to know anyway, 6th Edition of Warhammer 40,000 is due out - next week in fact.

So here's a look at the new rulebook.  Turns out its the picture that's been slowly building up on the spines of White Dwarf this year.  This edition is the turn of the Dark Angels to be the cover boy.  As the first legion, its been a long time coming frankly.

With this momentous event and the recent completion of a squad of marines that have been sitting 90% finished on my table for a while, its time for some 40k ramblings.

My first real army was Space Marines.  Like so many other people RTB01 was the start of this army but I hadn't picked a chapter.  I owned the Compendium and had randomly painted a squad in desert camo - it seemed in the Badab war this was allowed (apparently this is explained in the recent Forge World books).   

In White Dwarf 130 the Space Marine strike force was advertised and there were these really cool white marines.  From this point in I was collecting Dark Angels, specifically the first company "the Death Wing" - some of whom were lucky enough to wear terminator army.  Things have changed a lot since then, but on restarting 40k a few years ago I settled on Dark Angels again - but this time I'd do them green.

The completed squad, in Rogue Trader deployment formation

So then, my first proper 40k figures post on the blog and its a real nostalgia trip for me.  I noticed very quickly in the multi-part marine sets that you got a few Mark VI (beakie or womble) pieces. Unfortunately collecting a complete tactical squad of Mark VI marines was looking like I would need to wait a really long time, so I took care to assemble the pieces on the same figure, but didn't expect to get a complete squad.

The plastic half of the squad, plus resin missile launcher

Then last year Forge World started releasing resin early Marine Mark kits and I just had to get some.  They also released some classic weapon kits, so I was able to get the old cobra style missile launcher, a retro melta gun and even a low slung flamer.

The lanky combat squad

With some trades with my brother and spares from the Dark Angels veteran kit I was able to get 5 plastic Mk VI marines together which combined with the resin 5 gave me the complete 10.

Side detail, the lovely cobra missile launcher and retro Mk VI squad markings

Mark VI armour, as well as the beaky (or corvus) helmet, has one knobbly shoulder and one smooth.  This means the squad markings have to be combined on the right shoulder so a little bit of retro research was required to make sure I got this right.

Still not true scale

An interesting feature of the resin marines is that they are noticeably taller than the plastics.  I've tried to hide this a bit by using crouching legs, the missile launcher and the raised fist on the sergeant, but as you can see above there's a definite move to taller Adeptus Astartes from Forge World.

Ready for all eventualities

One thing I was keen to try and stick to with my new Dark Angels was "What you see is what you get" (or WYSIWYG) but I couldn't afford or spend the time to paint every option as a separate figure.  Instead I've been investing in magnets.  I'll post more experiments with these in future, but here you can see my special weapons approach.  Tiny round magnets in the fist of the marine and the gun means I can swap them around but they don't fall off mid game.  The only real sad thing is the low slung flamer requires the arms to be in a very different pose to hold it, so I didn't use them in the end.

Well that's done for now.  I'm getting quite interested in what 6 ed will bring.  It sounds like allies, new rapid fire rules and vehicle changes will really help my chosen play style.  The new mission objectives sound like they shake up the slightly stale approach currently being used and defined (and interesting!) scenery will help make my growing selection more entertaining to use.  More on this when I get the book.