The 2017/18 Hobby Season ‘Call to Arms’

Dave Weston, of 40kaddict fame , has once more issued his annual ‘call to painting and modeling arms’, encouraging all of us harbouring a grey tide of embarrassment to get a move on and start making some headway with a proper ‘To Do’ list. You can see Dave’s original post at his blog here .

With my recent inventory complete, I have been able to get a better idea of where I am with the hobby and think I can now have a good stab at planning my way forward.  As such, I am going to have a go at posting my ‘To Do list’ for the coming year – but before that, I should probably have a quick review of the last one.

2016/17 Hobby Season Goals

On reflection I actually didn’t do too badly last year despite the months off due to moving country and a bad case of hobby burn out. The big tournament in Hong Kong last November was a great motivator (if also eventual killer) and I managed to get quite a bit of the Dark Angles Battle Company done to a basic tabletop standard. I also managed to do the mysterious sounding ‘terrain project’ at the time (but never got round to posting it on here), and I also built the Tau Razorfish conversion (meaning it should be easy to paint and bump up into the done category for an easy win!)

For this year, the main focus for me will be on building. As I highlighted in my inventory, I have a very large pile of stuff on sprues and in boxes, so it makes sense to just get on and build as much stuff as possible. I have also arrived at my final list of factions for retention, having decided to reduce it to five overall (although some are a bit broad). The ones to make the cut are:

• Space Marines (Dark Angels & Imperial Fists)
• Tau
• Chaos Undivided
• Orks
• Tyranids (Genestealers Horde only)

Everything else will be given away to people I know looking to start, sold or put in a box for the kids to practice painting on when they are old enough (and if interested!)

With that in mind, I have divided my list into two sections – the Great Build section, and the Great Painting section. The Build Part will be the far greater of the two, but I do want to get some painting done when the mood takes me and so I will be putting a fair amount in there too.

As such, the list is going to be pretty massive, but I don’t really intend to strike everything off in one year – rather it is an aspirational list that I can cherry pick from, with the remainder going on to the next hobby season (and the next five afterwards too probably!).

The Great build

Dark Angels

Battle Company

• Tactical squads to full strength, all Plasma Gun & Plasma Cannon fitout
• 12 spare bolter marines to replace the Plasma weapons if required
• Devastators squads to full strength, all Plasma Cannon
• Assault squad x 10 with jump packs, 2 x plasma pistols & 1 x eviscerator.
• Assault squad x 10 on foot, 2 x flamers & 1 x eviscerator
• Sniper scouts x 4 & Missile Launcher
• Apothecary
• Ancient
• Champion
• 10 x Veterans – power swords & bolters
• 10 x Veterans – mixed pistol & CCW loadouts

Deathwing

• 4 x Dark Vengeance (DV) squads
• 5 x Deathwing Knights
• Champion with halberd
• Apothecary
• Plasma cannon Terminator (on older or DV chassis)
• 2 x Thunder Hammer & Storm Shield (on older or DV chassis)
• 3 x Lightning Claws (on older or DV chassis)
• Ancient (conversion – holding banner)

Ravenwing

• Ravenwing bikers x 10
• Black knights x 5
• Attack bike
• 3 x Command Squad bikes
• Speeders x 3

HQs

• Azrael (counts as / conversion)
• Asmodai (counts as / conversion)
• Ezekiel (counts as / conversion)
• Cypher (counts as / conversion)
• Company Master
• Chaplain
• Interrogator Chaplain
• Librarian
• Techmarine

Deathwing HQs

• Belial – (counts as / conversion)
• Company Master
• Interrogator Chaplain (counts as / conversion)
• Librarian

Ravenwing HQs

• Sammael Corvex  (counts as / conversion)
• Company Master
• Chaplain (counts as / conversion)
• Librarian (counts as / conversion)
• Techmarine (counts as / conversion)

 

Tau

• Stormsurge
• Carbine fire warriors x 12
• Breachers conversions x 12
• Magnetised Crisis x 6
• Commander Farsight conversion
• Burst Cannon riptide
• 10 x Vespid conversion
• Sniper drone conversion x 3
• Marksman conversion x 2
• Remora conversion x 1
• R’varna conversion (gundam model)
• Ghostkeel conversion (gundam model)
• Long strike conversion
• Dark strider conversion
• Coldstar Commander conversion
• Tau Knight conversion (gundam model)
• Ion rifle pathfinders x 5
• Rail rifle pathfinders x 5

 

Boxed Games

• Knights x 2 from Renegade
• Betrayal at Calth sets x 2 (as Alpha Legion)
• Deathwatch Overkill box

Terrain

• Tau Tidewall Terrain
• Scratch built terrain (lots!)
• Terrain from Renegade

 

The (slightly less) Great Paint

• Dark Angels 5th company – all of it (to 2 stage highlights)
• Terrain (as I currently have very little)
• Tau Breachers & carbine firewarriors
• Tau Razorfish conversion
• Dark Strider
• Crisis x 3
• Ion/rail rifle pathfinders
• Broadsides & Riptide brought up to scratch (very basic atm)

So there we have it – a maaaaaaaa-hussive list of stuff, but it is intended to be so I don’t get too bored stuck on a narrow track. If I get 50% of this list done by this time next year I will be seriously impressed, and may even treat myself to the Adeptus Titanicus Game as a reward (if it ever comes out…)