I have been, in the parlance of better players, “getting my reps in”. Normally this is something people do for competitive events, not Crusade or narrative ones, but I don’t want to get absolutely owned. This is also something people usually do while tuning their list, so this is really just a short way of saying I’m trying to figure out which units suck eggs or not. In other words, welcome to:
SRM’s Road to the Roadshow: US Open Seattle 2022: Part 2: Negative (Codex) Creep: Ah fuck this is a more obscure grunge pun isn’t it
In my first game with my Repulsor Executioner, it shot a unit of Necron Heavy Destroyers, killing 2.75 of them and failing to actually destroy the unit. Naturally this is after failing to heed the 168db scream in my head telling me not to split my fire, which only grew in pitch and amplitude after the whole unit got back up. My tank was then charged and immediately destroyed by a unit of Skorpekh Destroyers.
This is where the superstitious part of my brain can say that it was just Newly Painted Model Syndrome and that after that shameful showing, it’s easy street from here on out. Unfortunately, the rest of my army has also been suffering from extremely late-onset Newly Painted Model Syndrome. In my last game pretty much everything underperformed, so imagine my relief when I talked to Rob about the units in my painting que and heard they were, in no uncertain terms, bupkis. Regardless, at this point I was already about 60% done painting a unit of Primaris Hellblasters, and to quote one of the random Dawn of War barks, a task unfinished is a prayer unanswered.
The idea for how I’d build and paint these guys had been scratching away at the inside of my brain case for a couple weeks, and instead of medicating that particular issue I just got to cutting and building. Using the last of my Assault Intercessor sprues from Indomitus, I cut off the guideposts and stuck on a set of Hellblaster arms I’d been holding onto. At one point I had the plan to convert my second unit of Ultramarines Dark Imperium Inceptors to have the assault plasma doohickeys, as the box set plasma weapons look like Supersoakers. Instead I stuck with the assault bolters and held onto those plasma guns for actual factual years.
The sergeant/Sword Brother is the most inspired model of the bunch. I noticed the Primaris Lieutenant I got with my first issue of Imperium looked awful Sword Brother-y, and thought he’d be a great opportunity to use some of the spare bits I’ve had lying around and make something cool. My HQ cup also runneth over with this army, so I figured his body would be better used as a sergeant somewhere.
Using the spare head from my Primaris Techmarine, a spare bolt pistol, the bionic plasma pistol arm from the Hellblaster sergeant, a random straight arm, and the hand holding a plasma gun by the top grip, I’d made something uniquely mine. Converting models, especially when you have a deep bits box and an army with a strong visual identity, is one of the most joyful aspects of this hobby. It makes it easy to forgive when they overcharge and die on turn 1.
I’m definitely having my old grognard moment right now. I remember when Hellblasters were real nasty in early 8th edition and thought I’d manifest the memory of those halcyon days again in the midlife crisis years of 9th edition 40k. How are they on the tabletop in 2022? Less good, squishier given the damage treadmill of 9th edition, and not rerolling as many dice as they used to. I brought them out in their inaugural battle, in which Newly Painted Model Syndrome threatened to rear its ugly head once more. However, even after losing their source of rerolls on turn 1, they were able to blast the everloving hell out of some Drukhari Hellions and Warriors. The Repex followed up by destroying a Raider, unit of Incubi, and hilariously, dumped a whole turn of fire into an Archon. Said Archon failed their very first save against an errant Stormbolter shot and was summarily Laser Destroyed off the table.
It ruled.
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