Years ago, when I kicked off a long line of Warhammer with @kinpatsusamurai, we were slogging it out with footslogging Space Marines and Aeldari, namely Deathwatch and Ulthwe. We both took on new armies at the start of this year, but the more things change the more they stay the same. This was a nice chance for me to get the pile I’d accumulated when Noble Miniatures closed all cleared out, as well as to use some other models that had sat on the shame or repaint piles for a long while, but also let me play with some new concepts and integrate little headcanons that I’ve been throwing around for a while and come up with a whole new paint scheme.

There’s more differences between these and our old armies than the paint scheme – @kinpatsusamurai has leaned hard not only into kitbashing and 3D printing but specifically into printing truescale versions of classic models. The bulk of his new Dreadnoughts is something to be feared. His Marines Malevolent also integrate a very cool bloody-smiley motif across a lot of the vehicles, fitting because these Space Marines are basically the Imperium’s perfect murder-hobos. For my part, I wanted to do something that was kind of the polar opposite of my Ulthwe army, where I got to use brighter, bolder colours but where I also got to break a few rules.

My Aeldari are a mix of “infected” Craftworlders and hybrid descendants, with the Farseer themselves sporting a Tyranid icon pilfered from a Brood Brother squad. I swapped out a lot of the weapons from bits that were left over from @brittneystucklessart‘s most recent Tyranids, and I used up the last of my Evan Designs LEDs. I can’t say enough good things about their quality or customer service over the years, but we remain in a trade war/boycott and the exchange rate to USD is pretty untenable right now. When this all blows over, I will celebrate with boxes of LEDs.

Anyway, how did the game go? About the same way games always go – @kinpatsusamurai built up an immaculate table, some dreadnoughts did parkour, I made some very bad decisions on moving my Eldar, and in the end the Aeldari wept over a 3-0 loss, thanks to how the scoring works in One Page Rules. OPR has definitely become a staple recently of our casual games just because of how much more customizeable units remain than in 10th edition, and alternating activations has really grown on me.

Glad with how the army turned out and with how the game turned out, and I look forward as well to showing off this army in greater detail soon. I don’t plan for this to be as big a force as my Ulthwe army, which remains my ride-or-die Craftworld, but the more I play around with this the more I fall in love with the concept and the paint scheme, so I might just get a little carried away.