With the initial Guardian squad and HQ’s completed, I turned my attention to Howling Banshees. (Is anyone shocked at this point?) As a staple of my armies old and new alike I wanted to make sure to include a couple squads of these, and I had some old pewter Banshees that were in pretty sore need of maintenance and repair. I’ve painted them up with an Autarch, a fellow named Keltharal, in the same white armour that the rest of my army is going to be using, and the same blue-black monochrome applied to their shading and to their manes, but I’ve also used some purples and grays to set them apart just a little from the Guardians, and applied greens to Keltharal to make him stand out as well.

The Exarch here is carrying an Executioner, and the Autarch is carrying what I will probably be using as either a Banshee Blade or Scorpion Chainsword situationally, while keeping up the Tyranid-homage theme of the army. The neon pinks and blue metallics from Green Stuff World and the neon tufts I picked up also put in some real work on these, and I’m happy with the results. I wish I’d had more of the basing stones to work with – I picked these up on a beach ages ago on a camping/day trip with some good friends and I’m kicking myself for not bringing along a bigger bag.

I am going to be making one change to these Banshees compared to my usual build on them, for 10th Edition: Not all Banshees get a party bus, this time. This time, Keltharal and his retinue of Aspect Warriors are going into Deep Strike, so that I can pop them onto the table in the late game, hit something with the free hit or free wound that the Aspect Token grants, deal Fire Dragon Fusion Gun damage, and then slip away with Fire and Fade, to harass the enemy on their following turn. My losing streak in Warhammer has gone on long enough, and this year I intend to either turn that around, or do some damage trying!

Very happy with how these turned out and I’m very eager to see how a Deep Strike approach is going to change things for my favorite sword girls this season. My excitement is also unseemly that we have Flitting Shadows as an Agile Manoeuver, since Howling Banshees can once more shut down Overwatch – it was definitely the aspect of them that I missed the most in the change from 9th to 10th edition. These aren’t the only Banshees that I’ll be running, though, and I’ve got a plan for the next squad too – more on that to follow!