Contemptor Pattern Dreadnought

All the bits for my contemptor pattern dreadnought finally arrived after Forgeworld kindly shipped me the missing shoulders! So today I put him together:

The quality was pretty good. Not too much flash, went together easily enough and only a few small bubbles to fill in. One slight issue is the fact that the shoulders come with the body rather than the arms. The simplest way to magnetise the arms is at the shoulder as I have done here:

But since you only get a set of shoulders when you buy the whole body there's a problem should you buy any new arms with the intention of magnetising them for swapping. You're missing the shoulders for your spare weapon arms. I'm not sure if this is a deliberate oversight on the part of GW. If it is then it seems a bit of an insult to customers. You could try and magnetise lower down the arm, but I think it would be a lot harder to pull off successfully.

Anyway, since there are no other contemptor pattern weapon arms at the moment it's not such an issue! I do want to try and convert a couple of autocannon arms for him at some point though.

My next decision is the colour scheme. I really want to paint him red, but don't fancy starting another space marine army to put him in! I'll have to come up with some fluff...

Imperial Fist Scouts

When I needed to make up a few point in my 2000 point list I thought I may as well add another scoring unit. I really like the sniper scouts too so I spent a fair bit of time painting them and thought I'd at least give them proper camo cloaks.

It turns out I perhaps shouldn't have made them quite so camouflaged. One game I left them standing in the trees for the first three turns. They merged in to the scenery just a little too well!

Imperial Fist Devastators

These guys have turned out to be one of my most effective units. Four missile launchers can be applied to most any situation.

The biggest problem is GWs reluctance to provide you with enough missile launchers in any of the kits! I was one short until I found this guy in a box in the loft:

He's just so sweet! Must be over 20 years old. They certainly don't make them like that any more...fortunately, some might say.

Imperial Fist Tactical Squads

I really don't get on that well with my space marine tactical squads. I don't think anyone does. You put them in a rhino and try really hard not to take them out or let them get shot at. My 2000 point list currently has two squads and for simplicity they are both the same with lascannon, meltagun and combi-melta/power-fist on the sergeant. Quite effective in a range of situations - if I didn't have to keep them safe for taking objectives!

Dreadnoughts and Drop-Pods

I did briefly consider the rather costly dread drop pod from Forgeworld, I even added it to my basket on the site. Then I saw that were still going to charge me a stupid amount of money for delivery. I find it offensive that they just slap a percentage of the item cost on for postage. The price they wanted to charge would have covered the cost of lead rather than very light resin. Anyway, I came to my senses and spent the weekend making a cut-out-and-keep version from a plan I found on the internet!

Does the job nicely I think, plus it's a lot cheaper. Having said that, if I was charging an hourly rate for making it the cost would be considerably higher than the Forgeworld version! The original plan was to make several, but I don't know if I'll go that far. It didn't help that I wanted to improve the original design which was never intended to open or actually hold a dreadnought.

Check that out! BS5 multi-melta dropping next to your big thing on turn one! So far it's proved quite effective, though I admit to regularly rolling 1 on the vehicle damage table.

Then at the back of the field we have the poor cousin of the venerable dread...

The TL autocannons are taken straight from the Aegis Defence Line set and the only conversion is the addition of magnets so they fit on the already magnetised dreadnought body.

Lysander's Elite

Thought it was about time I put up some images of my still-to-be-completed Imperial Fist. These are the terminators, though I usually only play with Lysander and the TH/SS termies.

There is also a Landraider, but I've yet to complete the paint-job on that.