I say this all the time, but the months are hurtling by. We’re in May, now! In 2024… absolutely nuts. I’ve been drifting in and out the hobby recently, writing more in the evenings, and tending to take maybe one night out of seven to do something miniature-related.
On the back of this, I began reading into the skirmish game Kill Team, from the Warhammer 40k universe. This is centred around smaller bands of miniatures, some objective play, with each mini playing a bit more of a role than just being chunky or shooty (though these are still useful).
Having been a fan of the Inquisition from the early 2000s, back when I was a penniless schoolboy, I ended up missing out on getting really any of that range when they were doing the rounds, meaning I never got the autosavant, the cherub dragging the bolter, the psychotic monk with the boomstick, and the hulking mass that was the gun-toting servitor.
I got the Inquisitorial Agents box on a total whim, scratching that nostalgic itch and figuring it would be something I could take the Games Workshop around the corner from my office for the occasional blast of Kill Team. The models themselves are very cool, with loads of detail and a variety of weapons and build options. Some of the minis share a body though, so you have to choose between two types of agent in some cases; this leads you to opt whether to build the death-world veteran or the penal legionnaire, and the questkeeper or the pistolier agent), lending to that idea of customising your Inquisitorial team. This also means you’ll either need 2x boxes of the agents, or 1x box + a kit of ancillary troops in order to make the full kill team; Breachers, Veteran Guardsmen, Arbites and Tempestus Scions fall among these options.
In order: autosavant, gun-servitor, penal legionnaire, interrogator, tome-skull, pistolier, and mystic.
I’ll go through what each of the agents does in subsequent posts, rather than ramble on in this initial post. I think there’s a good mix of combat effectiveness and buffing in here though, along with some CP farming, thanks to the autosavant. The kit itself was simple enough to assemble too, and I expect the painting aspect to be fun despite the myriad of tiny, tiny details!
Thanks again for reading. I’m going to try and catch this rainless period of time to get them primed outside… We’ll see.
The kids are off for the April holidays, what a joy! In all seriousness, it’s an absolute endurance test, and the only thing that’s getting me through is being able to write/paint minis in the evening.
I have also managed to tidy up my cabinet of plastic, and have resumed work on some of my Lord of the Rings miniatures. This week, I’ve been painting the warriors of Minas Tirith again, some fairly neglected minis (on my part).
It’s been mostly armour, swords and spears, so nothing majorly exciting. The smaller details are where these minis shine, though it takes a sea of silver to get there. I have also been working on some citadel guard, and guard of the fountain court too for my Denethor warband, as well as rangers and Osgiliath veterans for my Boromir warband.
I’ve missed working on these troops, and it’s funny it took a cabinet reshuffle to make me realise. I’m determined to get this Minas Tirith army up and running shortly though, so hopefully I can finish the two main warbands with relative speed.
Looking back through my older posts, I realised it’s been nearly three years since I did a gaming post, and while these weren’t reviews by any stretch, I did at least enjoy getting my thoughts down on what I’ve been playing.
Lately, this has been a few Pokémon games as my kids have been diving into instalments from the last few years. Being an old gen 1 & 2 salt, I wanted to play alongside them (and teach them a lesson in training haha), as it’s been a while. Some months back, I did another playthrough of Leaf Green and Fire Red (which I would have argued to be the best games), but one of the cartridges decided to wipe my save file and left me with one of those existential crisis moments when you realise you’ve sunk 30+ hours into a video game when you could have done literally anything else.
So anyways, we’re out of my comfort zone with the remakes Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl, updated versions of the gen 4 games. I’ve been playing Pearl, while my lad has been on Diamond. Coming at this from the position of an older player, I found it quite a comfortable game, in a sense that you are doing a lot of what you did in the older titles; choose from fire, water or grass Pokémon, then start bludgeoning and capturing the local animal population. Some might argue this is what every Pokémon game is essentially like, and…. yes, that seems to be the formula.
After discovering a suitcase with three Pokéballs in the field, you are thrust into a journey of leaving home and wandering the world, as every 10-year-old seems to be set on. Your best buddy (I called mine Silver, as I was Gold) becomes over-excited at their new Pokémon and instantly becomes a dick, and your rival trainer in the process. Also, Team Galactic, an evil organisation, are trying their best to harness the power of ancient Pokémon in order to control the world. And Professor Rowan, whose suitcase you found in the field, wants you to catalogue the local beasties in Sinnoh. Sounds simple, right?
I didn’t bother to read into these games much beforehand, other than the version exclusive creatures. I was pleasantly surprised to find quite a traditional Pokémon experience hidden under the layers of new paint; these are remakes of games from 2006/07, which were out long after I’d stopped playing the series or attending tournaments etc. You set out from home, going from town to town and battling the eight gym leaders, all of whom use a particular type of Pokémon, which can either spell disaster or make for an easy battle, depending on the elemental type of the creatures involved. Travels between towns involve exploration, battling trainers and wild monsters, and capturing more creatures for your own team.
There are obviously quality of life improvements (again, I’m talking as an older player), such as being able to access your storage boxes anywhere; as you can only carry 6 Pokémon at a time, you used to have to attend the PC in the Poké Centres to get a creature out of storage, which seems pretty archaic by today’s standards, so this was handy. There are also heaps of different Pokéballs to help your collection efforts, such as quick balls for swift capturing, dusk balls for catching at night or in caves, or net balls to help with catching bugs or water types.
There is also a gadget called the Poketch, which is a watch with several apps to help you on your way. One of these stores hidden moves, which, in the older titles, you needed to navigate the world, by cutting down path-blocking trees or illuminating dark caves, or by flying to and from previously visited towns. This in itself is useful as there is no need for each of these moves to take up one of your Pokémon’s valuable moves, of which there are four slots per creature.
In terms of gameplay, it’s standard RPG fare, as before. Combat is turn-based and useful for levelling your Pokémon, and they will learn new moves at various levels, and can be taught optional moves through the use of technical machines (or TMs) in-game. Healing items for health points and statuses are kept in your inventory, along with treasures and key items, and each town and gym leader bestows new challenges and discoveries on the player as you progress.
Some of the aspects I enjoy are the trading; I like being able to trade Pokémon with my kids so we can either evolve certain creatures, or I can help them if I have managed to catch a creature that was proving difficult for them to. I enjoy how Shining Pearl still feels like an older title, giving me that hit of nostalgia. Even as a player who was mortified they ever dared to introduce more than 151 Pokémon in the early 2000s, I really enjoyed getting back into the swing of things with this instalment.
The art style in these remakes is pleasant too, with my eldest initially thinking the game was Animal Crossing. The Pokémon themselves look great with their 3D models, and the battle animations are either hard-hitting or humorous, depending on the move. Saying that, some Pokémon look better than others, with varying levels of detail, and there are a couple of monsters that look as if they have had their eyes painted on.
A couple of things I didn’t enjoy: first, the difficulty. This seems to be a bugbear for many players, and while these are generally meant to be kids’ games, I feel they could have benefitted from adding a hard mode. Pokémon has been around for nearly 30 years, and there is a fanbase that grew up with the franchise, who still play the games. Even adding a level-scaling feature so the wild Pokémon maintain a level to match the average of your team would do something, because after maybe five gym badges, it becomes easy to feel like an overpowered god.
I thought the story was alright, starting with two friends looking for a rare red Gyarados in the local lake, and eventually becoming entangled in the apocalyptic plot of Team Galactic. The antagonists felt genuinely threatening this time around (to an extent), though I wish the creators would move away from the whole ‘Team ____’ dynamic and just introduce a brand new catastrophic death cult, instead of trying to replicate Team Rocket over and over.
At the end of the day though, Pokémon is still a kids’ game, and it keeps the kids entertained. I enjoyed getting back into a world I hadn’t spent much time in since the early 2000s, and being able to experience that with my own children this time around has been great fun. Catching and levelling a team of badasses has never felt more addictive, and I would be keen to try other games in the series that I’ve missed throughout my late teens/20s.
I recently finished off a few heavy weapons cultists for one of my Neophyte Hybrid squads. I’ve been rearranging my cult squads based on weapons, and thought I would post (half-repost) this squad, which is now carrying 2x heavy stubbers and 2x flamers.
The loadout of these guys is pretty standard: all culty boys & girls now have a standard hybrid firearm, so what is essentially a 24″, S3 popgun (regardless of whether they are modelled with an autogun or shotgun), and the leader has their leader pistol (same stat, shorter range) and a power weapon.
I’m also going to keep these guys as a 10-man unit, more like a harassment squad than anything. They also carry a cult icon into battle, allowing for the return of up to 3 destroyed cultists per Reinforcement phase, adding a little survivability.
I really enjoy building and painting the core troops of the Genestealer Cult. I feel there’s lots of customising options, and you can end up with a mixed unit that appears partially human, partially mutated as well. The paint scheme I’m using is also decent for getting lots of bodies done at a time; I mainly batch-paint in sets of 5, so there is always something to be working on, even while one or two of the guys are drying in the background. It also makes use of the grey primer, relying on that basecoat to fill in the miscellaneous fabrics and cloth under the armour while still taking the black ink wash really well.
In upcoming weeks, I’ll be looking to get pics of everything I’ve done so far with the Genestealer Cults, as there are some units I’ve flat-out forgotten to post. There’s just so many of these little buggers, I’m actually losing track now. Maybe a large group picture, if I can fit them all in to the same shot.
I posted a little while ago about my Acolyte Hybrids, the unit with the throwing bombs. I mentioned in that post I was working on a more melee-focused unit too, this one being equipped with culty knives and hand flamers, as well as some heavy mining weapons. The other day I managed to find some time to get the last few of these cultists over the finish line, and here they are.
These boys & girls are painted in the same scheme as the others, that of the Blessed Wormlings. The leader is equipped with “leader’s cult weapons”, which replaces their knife and claws as a melee weapon, and is a S5 weapon with 5 attacks; this is represented by this writhing whip in their grasp.
The two at the front are wielding heavy mining tools, which is the blanket name for the Acolyte’s special melee toys. They used to have their own separate profiles, but were recently rolled into one S10, -2AP profile when the indexes came out. I’ve always preferred the heavy rock drill myself, as it conjures memories of the large machinery from Total Recall.
There’s not much additionally to say about the Acolytes I didn’t put in the previous post. I would like to grab another box or two to maybe increase both of these 5-body units into 10s, slap a banner in there as well, but we’ll see. I’m trying not to buy anything additional until I have painted up what I have (I’m genuinely making the effort on this resolution- for once!)
This last month has been a bit of a write-off for me (pun perhaps intended; I spent the better part of the last few weeks drafting a novella to send to a publisher), so I didn’t square away much time for hobbying. I aimed at least to finish off three little odd models, as they would ultimately mean three units would be finished when they were. The first is my Genestealer Cult vehicle, the Achilles Ridgerunner.
In terms of colours, I stuck with my limited palette for the cult. The grey prime ate up a lot of the open space, and the cultist’s fatigues. I gave the whole model a black ink wash, leaving some of the streaks to give it a grimy, oily appearance. Astrogranite was used on the base.
This all-terrain buggy is equipped with a heavy mining laser, a S12 weapon for taking care of tougher targets. While the cults get access to most of the tanks from the Imperial Guard codex, they don’t have much in the way of their ‘own’ heavy support platforms. The Ridgerunner has the Scout rule, so it can move before the first battle round, and is equipped with flare launcher, twin heavy stubbers, Ridgerunner wheels, and the aforementioned heavy mining laser.
I also selected to equip the Ridgerunner with the spotter, which is the cultist peering from the hatch. This improves the vehicle’s ballistic skill, changing it from 4+ to 3+.
The Ridgerunner also gets the rule ‘Crossfire’, which basically means that any enemy unit this vehicle has hit in this battle phase, if a friendly GSC unit then goes to attack that same enemy unit, their armour penetration characteristic is improved by 1 for that attack. This syncs quite well with the spotter, as any means of improving culty accuracy for attacks is only a good thing, and it makes the Ridgerunner not just a heavy weapons platform, but also a decent support piece too.
Its basic stats include a movement of 12″, 3+ saves at toughness 7, and 8 wounds. It might not take the enemy much to dislodge it from the battlefield, but I reckon it’ll make a useful annoyance.
My most recent efforts at painting what’s in my cabinet has been due to the fact that the weather in the UK is abysmal (worse than usual, actually), with brutal winds whipping the streets, or ice rain. Or a mix of both, and this seems to have been the case since Christmas because in all honesty I haven’t found a single day since December 2023 I’ve felt comfortable enough to put one of my new minis outside for a spray prime. So, we are painting what’s been primed pre-December!
Firstly is the Achilles Ridgerunner, one of the cult’s trusty vehicles. As you can see, this is still being worked on; I gave the whole thing a black ink wash to enhance all those lovely details, and have just finished the flesh on the spotter and the gunner. I have work to do on the vehicle’s body, and maybe even freehand a GSC logo on there if I’m feeling brave, but it’s gradually taking shape.
I’ve also been working on the last two heavy weapons specialists for my 10-man Neophyte squad. These guys are heavy stubber-wielders, giving the unit a few more shots to their shooting phase. While they look like the other cultists I’ve been painting, their backpacks have caused me some hassle, which is maybe why they are taking so long. I’ll show them next time, you’ll see what I mean.
Finally, there is this fellow: the Abominant. He is a mound of gibbering flesh with a fun hammer and his own gibbering familiar clinging to his leg. I’ve been painting him in the same manner as the Aborrants before: Rakarth Flesh, followed by a purple ink wash, then bringing the flesh back up to that pallid pink/grey tone that I love so much. The Abominant is a pretty interesting model to work on, mainly because of all the freaky detail, like shackles, odd bone formations in their skin, and additional limbs. I’ll be sure to post a few pics from around the mini as I go, as it is a very busy model.
Anyways, thanks for reading. Let me know if your hobby plans are also being thrown off course by the gales!
While the little one has her morning nap, I decided to use the time to get these guys completed. This included checking the decals (they were surprisingly fine), and finishing the bases.
I really like the idea of the two-man heavy weapons platforms, and used to enjoy building these teams when I primarily collected Imperial Guard. Modelling them to be corrupted Guardsmen was good fun, and they started to take on a character of their own after a while. For this, I just used what leftovers I had from the old Brood Brothers upgrade sprue; the newer Guard bodies are a little smaller than the previous iteration, so the heads took a little convincing to stay in place.
These guys were painted with a limited palette, many of the colours overlapping with that of the main culty boys’. I painted these Brood Brothers as being in Cadian uniform, while keeping a few colours from the Neophytes in the scheme to tie them into the main force.
In gaming terms, the mortars are S5 weapons with the Indirect Fire rule, so while they can target enemy units that are not visible, it comes at the cost of -1 to the Hit roll. These are BS 5+ anyway, so it’s not ideal, though they have D6 attacks and fire at a range of 48″, so they can be kept relatively out of harm’s way.
That’s all for this installment. I hope you had a restful new year’s, and take care.
I hope you all enjoyed the festive season, and any hobby opportunities they might have brought. I was lucky enough to get a couple of kits from my family, in the form of a box of Atalan Jackals, and a box of Neophyte Hybrids.
The Jackals are the ‘fast attack’ choice of the cult. They can be built to be either shooty or melee-oriented, and they have a cute quad bike buddy who can take a heavy armament to help out (flamer/stubber/laser). I want to use these guys as mobile annoyances, so I’m building them with shotguns/autoguns/popguns and a mining laser on the quad. There are also explosive-based shenanigans the Jackals can engage in, but I’ll go into that in a future post.
As for the Neophytes, you can never have enough infantry, so I am adding this 10 to one of my painted units and bringing them up to max numbers. Having 20 cultists with 4x heavy weapons and 4x special weapons is a fun thought, even if they are hitting on a 4+.
In my last post I mentioned the Cadian Shock Troop unit I have been modelling as Brood Brothers; these guys are now all built, with a plasma gun and grenade launcher in the squad, and a drum-fed autogun on the serge (will get a pic for next time). I built the last two of them tonight, as well as the last two Neophytes from that kit, and the quad bike from the Jackals. The past few days have been a blur (as one expects during Christmas) so I used tonight to mop up the last few models from each kit and just get them all marked off as built.
This other charming fella in the pic is the Abominant… But I’ll save him for another post. Out of the culty boys & girls, he’s one of the toughest, with a S12 hammer and the chance to regenerate after his first death. But I’ve said too much!
Thanks to you all for reading throughout this past year. If nothing else, I’m pleased to say I got my Angmar army completed for the Lord of the Rings Middle-Earth Strategy Battle Game, and my Genestealer Cult combat patrol box bought, built and painted in 2023- a small achievement for a slow, neurotic painting like myself haha!
I hope to catch you all in 2024 for more of the same hobbying! Happy New Year when it comes, and take care.
I’ve been finishing up the last five neophytes for my mob of 20. Thankfully this week has been quite quiet so I have found the time to finish off their little details and base them. I’ll get a pic of the full 20 when I can.
I also managed to make a few leaps with the heavy weapons squad, getting to the basing stage with these guys too. They have been hugely awkward to paint (more so to build), and I didn’t fancy doing it in subassemblies, which in hindsight might have been the smarter move! I do miss painting Imperial Guard though, and have stayed with the colour palette I use for the neophytes, to keep them somewhat tied in with the main army.
Finally, I also got word recently that I passed my Master’s with merit. Because I’ve done all my Christmas shopping now too (and 99% of the items have arrived), I grabbed myself a box of minis from my wishlist. I’d been toying with the idea of building some of the new Cadian shock troops as Brood Brothers, so have built the first five of them here. The kit is super slick, and the Brood Brothers’ heads fit reasonably well; the main draw of these guys is their ability to capture objectives in-game, which actually lends itself well to the sneaky tactics of the cult!
Anyways, this will likely be my last post before Christmas, so wishing you all a happy holiday and hoping the hobby elves are good to you. Thanks for reading, and I’ll likely have another post up within the week.
Dreadaxe Games 