tdemayo

I've got some 2/3rd edition reapers. I clipped off the bunny ears with a hobby knife, and then shortened the cone into a flatter tops. They look less silly that way.. YMMV.

Glarg. I need to find something more to paint. I think I'be painted 1-3 squads of almost everything in the codex over the last two years.

The proper word is pauldrons. Next I suppose you'll want me to start using fancy words like "gorget" and "besagew" instead of "neck thingy" and "round doo-dad"? No! The line must be drawn here! This far and no farther! Shoulder pads, I say!

I use them pretty much the same as in previous editions. I'm partial to squads of 10, with bolters, two plasmas, in a rhino with a havok launcher. Maybe a cc weapon or combi for the champ. Yeah, it's sorta mediocre at everything, but it's cheap, fairly durable, has long and short range capablity, mobility and armored protection. Two or more squads jumping out and overlapping rapid fire onto something makes a reasonably effective counter strike against many units. Sometimes it's good just to have more power armored bodies on the field. Weight of numbers can win games. (Cultists are cheaper but they die a lot faster too. Sometimes you want squishy and sometimes you need crunchy.)

Yeah. If you want to make maximal use of its 10 man firing ports, Noise Marines are the way to go. They might be short ranged, but that bastion would make a hell of a deployment zone protector. Put it in the middle, and you coud Blaster almost the whole backfield. Otherwise, a 5 man Havok squad. Everybody needs lascannons. Plasma would be hilarious too. What about Obliterators? Or cultists?

The answer is "yes." It's not an "or." It's an "and." Your tanks and infantry are mutually supportive, and will serve alternately as sword and shield for each other depending on circumstances. Transports will keep the infantry safe at range and move them in close. Infantry will then disembark and defend the tanks.

I've not yet seen the Repulser on the table, but it seems to me that it's the sort of unit that needs to be run in pairs or with other vehicles. If you take only one tank, then no matter how tough it is, your opponent will target it with all his anti-tank weapons till it's dead. Really, all those weapons nothing else better to do. It's only when you present opponents with multiple vehicles (or other high T, multi-wound models) that they need to make descisions about where to target their high S, multi D weapons. And it's only by forcing them to make choices that you can induce them to make mistakes.

I've been enjoying the assault version. Moving and shooting 2 shots at 24" is disgustingly powerful.

Giant shoulder pads.

Is there any way to field my old Terminators and bikers as proper Death Guard units? Using the Imdex perhaps? Or am I stuck using them out of C:CSM?

Oh gods, I now realize that I had successfully repressed the memory of that awful story for decades. Why did you have to remind me of it ;)

The original STC systems were some kind of computer. We don't know what they looked like (a kind of big box, maybe), but the colonists could input a need and the machine would give them a customized plan for a machine they could build, based on patterns it had in its memory. An STC template or pattern is just a collection of data, a copy of one of those plans the machine produced. They can look like any kind of information storage technology from a computer to a book, I assume, as the downloads or printouts from the original system have been copied and recopied in a variety of formats.

IIRC both bolter and power armor are old STC designs, with the Order on Caliban having some clunky models. And at one point Horus encounters a planet where the troops have power armor and bolt variants. I think HH one says that bolters were simply easier to manufacture than Volkites, in part because they were simpler and less advanced than the rayguns.

If the Emperor has the knowledge needed to manufacture advanced tech, why didn't his Imperium immediately start to mass manufacture the stuff? Either on its own or in Martian forges? Why did his empire produce crappy Thunder warrior armor and clunky Mark II plate and inferior Malcador tanks, at first, then switched to Mark IV armor and Landraiders and Baneblades? Instead of waiting.for the Mechanicum to find plans and develop designs, he could just have told the tech-priests "No, the widget goes there, you fool. Let me show you!" His forces could have been rocking out flying Baneblades and jetpack terminators with Volkite machine guns and god knows what else on day one. Instead, he has to laboriously craft bespoke items for decades in his basement, and even then they seem not to work right. Whatever the Emperor knew or remembered, it hardly seems like he had all the expertise of the dark age of technology in his head or in a machine somewhere. Instead, it seems very much like he had to wait for his crusade servants to recover, process, and figure out how to manufacture lost and scattered STC templates, while he himself worked on a few critical projects that he had to figure out as he went.