Thanks for the feedback so far!
As for units I have available - it's kind of tricky
Thing is, in the recent years I made a point of attending only those events that require armies to be painted to a relatively high quality standard. You know, just can't stand the mob of unwashed kids with untamed egos, bringing armies outcheesed beyond any reasonable limit and made of half-assembled bootleg-recast minis. Perhaps that's what getting old feels like, lol
Anyway, my own collection of models painted up to a sufficient quality is limited too. In addition to the units listed above, the only usable models I have ATM are:
- 6 more Fire Dragons
- 8 more Warp Spiders
- 3 more Scatter-bikes
- 10 Warlocks on foot
- Avatar of Khaine
There's a bunch of other stuff I have from the older days, but it's all painted in a crappy "3 colours minimum" style and won't be allowed.
Still, this list invariably has to be the starting point from which I'll have to expand towards something more cohesive and hopefully more efficient and competitive in the new 8th edition meta, so any thoughts and suggestions on where to take this army further are very welcome. And I already have quite a lot of stuff waiting to be painted (or re-painted), namely:
- 15 Dire Avengers;
- 20 or so Defender Guardians w/platforms
- 16 Storm Guardians
- 6 Windriders
- 1 box of Reapers
- 2 boxes of Scorpions
- 10 Wraithguard (5 of which are magnetised as Cannon/D-scythe and half-painted, the other 5 are untouched)
- 4 Wave Serpents
- 1 Falcon
- 1 Vyper
- 2 Flyer kits (which I plan to build as Hemlocks)
- 2 Prism/Nightspinner kits
I also already ordered 2 boxes of Banshees to replace those that I sold long ago
With their new rules and point cost they might actually be worth trying, for the first time ever
Also thinking of ordering some Shining Spears, which now look like a great value for points, at least on paper.
As a side-note, can't help mentioning that the new codex has put me before another tremendously tough question - what colour scheme should I go for with my new generic (i.e. non-Aspect) units? Problem is, while in one-off friendly games obviously everything works, some high-standard events that I usually attend have recently started to enforce certain colour schemes as part of WYSIWYG requirements. For example, an army of space marines led by Guilliman and using Ultramarine chapter tactics would not be allowed if it's painted in distinct colours of some other "standard" chapter like Raven Guard or White Scars. Similarly, with my army painted in distinct Saim-Hann colours, at certain events I won't be allowed to use anything but Saim-Hann trait. Thankfully, at least Aspects can be painted in their own colours and used with any Craftworld. The most reliable approach would obviously be to come up with some new colour scheme of my own, sufficiently different from any of the five "standard" ones - however, I suck at designing colour schemes
and have yet to see a single one that I would like more than my favourite Saim-Hann reds. Can't say I'm happy with the fact that my choice of "Craftworld allegiance" is now kind of enforcing a specific narrow army build on me.
@Partninja
Can you run multiples craftworld traits at once? I'm still waiting for my codex to ship so I'm not sure (I'm dieing to make some lists).
It only requires all units within one detachment to belong to one and the same Craftworld. In this case the detachment becomes a "Craftworld detachment" and benefits from one of the traits.
@faitherun
Air Detachment - If you can squeze the points to make one an Exarch, I would definitely do that. Re-rolling half of your misses with him will help a good bit. For their Trait, I'd lean towards Alatioc. A -2 to hit on them is nasty, especially vs things with degrading profiles. It will make them all but invincible to Orks, and even IG and Tau will really struggle with them
I thought of an Exarch too - in the new dex it's quite reasonably priced. My initial argument against it was that with than many units I'll be going second most of the time, and so my opponents would easily single-out the Exarch and kill him on their turn 1 anyway. However, with a WK working as a fire magnet, Exarch might indeed be a solid choice.