Upgrading the Space Marine tournament army for Armies on Parade
- February 20th, 2011
- By Bucho
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The recent Armies on Parade has me thinking about refining my tournament army into a much better looking force. To be honest it has been a while since the tournament force has hit the table, as it needs a few adjustments due to the last codex release. (moving house and holidays with the kids mean tournaments took a backseat for a while as the miniatures were boxed up for the move early on.
So what do I intend to change? Well aside from a few weapon changes in some of the units, I am going to push the army up from it’s 1500 point mark to the 2000 mark. Which means some new units to be added to the force. Currently the force is my own chapter with a focus on ‘stealer hunting’ (which means lots of bolters, heavy bolters and assault cannon).
The first additional inclusion will be another tactical squad which is built to function in kill team games so will have a lot of attention and conversion done to it. This may replace one of the squads in the force already. Adding another dreadnought has been on my list for a while, and I have been looking at making a much more brutally armed version by swapping out the dreadnought fist with some sort of saw contraption built from ork dredd parts. But with fliers becoming the flavour of the month I may include a mortis pattern dread instead. That would match my army style quite well and be useful on the tabletop. Neat looking conversions are what I am wanting to add to the force. I have an old rhino waiting on a few extra pieces before it gets a coat of paint.
Mostly the army was put aside as I didn’t have time to sculpt up all the tyranid hunter sigils and trophies that I wanted to add to the army. Yes I did fall for the whole preferred enemy chapter trait from the old custom chapter codex rules. As I was facing a genestealer coven list a lot it made a lot of sense to me to go for tyranids and not the orks or eldar. These days eldar would have been a better pick to gain a bonus against the dark eldar!
I have avoided the thunder hammer and storm shield terminator squad in my tournament list as I feel that my assault squad does just as well and I can use the terminators to advance guns blazing to take and hold objectives and survive any attempts to dislodge them. With no rules for deathwatch with the latest marine books and no idea when a xenos inquisition book may be done, I am toting with the idea of swapping out the terminators for a sternguard squad (dressed as a deathwatch unit) as both the sternguard and deathwatch have similar weapons. And I like the look of the deathwatch and want to include a unit for myself.
Adding a bit more punch via another predator may help boost the longevity of the current one I have.
Which just leaves the command choices. I currently run a captain with a powersword and bolt pistol and a conversion field to keep points down and help protect my tactical units from enemy assault units by drawing in the assaulters to himself rather than the weaker tactical troops. The real powerhouse is the fully kitted chaplain with jump pack who joins the assault squad to put a big dent in enemy ground troops or to put the frighteners on enemy armour. (I have seen people move their armour away from the squad to avoid close assault by them only to pass into the fields of fire of my units and be destroyed by them instead. It is tempting to swap the captain for the ultramarines chaplain to gain some of the anti tyranid special rules he brings to the force.
You will notice a distinct lack of special characters as I was never one to rely on Marnues Cowpat or Tigurius and his rod of bullshit when they first appeared. The special character models are nice and fun to paint but I don’t see them adding much to my force. Yes it was tempting to swap around some units and heavy weapons to make full use of the special vulkan rules, or to go for a Lysander focused force but the idea of having named characters everyone else does is too much of a downside for me. Not that I don’t have enough miniatures to field such armies, I just wouldn’t enjoy it. (not to say that I don’t field a deathwing force built from my terminator units from time to time as a change against the normal opponents I face)
So if anyone has good tips on what units would look good added to a tyranid hunter force, let me know. Tips on how to add the tyranid hunter symbols would be greatly appreciated, as I am tempted to do transfers to make the symbols a bit easier to add rather than sculpting them on each model. I am less worried about on table effectiveness as I am with building a cohesive looking force that matches the theme of my chapter and can convey the hunter aspect.
As an aside I have been looking at creating an apocalypse datasheet for the tyranid hunter force, basically it will be the tournament army itself with maybe one or two special rules added to reflect the tyranid hunting aspect, anyone built their own infantry datasheets?
