Exilyth

That list is looking good. I'm not sure on mixing saws/cutters and flamers on acolytes, I'd run them with either or the other, but YMMV. Using the patriarch as a broodlord is a great idea - get's the most out of the model for this list and makes the 'stealers more useful. The brood brothers & HWTs are not completely useless btw: A BB infantry squad w/mortar could sit on & hold an objective while shelling the enemy without exposing themselves. They're the kind of cheap unit that's great to sit on the field to allow other parts of the list to go into ambush/reserves.

You may know of the different sets of brushes made by a few different manufacturers which are being sold at the FLGS which are taking up a single section on the wall. You may also know of the various brushes sold on a single aisle at the local art and craft store. The first time I went to a dedicated arts store I was really overwhelmed: they've had a whole wall full of brushes (and that store wasn't small). In other words: what's on offer is even more varied and plentyfull than you may realise. The thing is: Different brush types and sizes are good for different painting steps and/or models and/or techniques, e.g. trying to brushprime the large surfaces of a vehicle with a small brush will take much longer than just going over once or twice with a large brush, a brush with a pointy tip is better for details than a brush with a flat tip and so on. The best way to find out which brush is best for you is to experiment (or, to save time/money, ask others for their recomendations/experience). Like with most other tools, practise has a lot more influence on the outcome than tool quality. Great artists do not use the best equipment - they use what's best for them. While I still have a long way to go, here's what I'm currently using (mostly w/acrylic paints): a cheap, medium sized round noname brush for brush priming * a citadel starter brush (is round) from back in 3rd edition for basecoating a citadel fine detail brush (is round) from back in 3rd edition for rough detail work a 3/0 and a 10/0 brush by 'Lupri' (is sharp/pointy) for fine detail work (although I only use the 10/0 very rarely) another cheap, medium sized round noname brush for drybrushing (drybrushing kills brushes) a cheap, medium sized round noname brush for applying varnish * another set of cheap, large round noname brushes for vehicles and large surfaces (afaik, all synthetic except for the 10/0 which is a kolinsky) * not necessary, but since primer/varnish has a chemical composition different from acrylic paint, I like to use a separate brush I would like to second what was said above: Cleaning brushes properly and not getting paint onto the bristles near the metal part (ferrule) goes a long way towards making brushes live longer. Magnification and good lighting help a lot. btw: The current brush system by GW is relatively easy to understand: it has brushes which are a combination of sizes (xs, small, medium, large, xl) and types named after the technique (base, layer, shade, glaze, drybrush and so on). To start out with GW brushes, you could do with just a medium base brush and a medium layer brush, but tbh. GW brushes are a bit pricy. Hehe... just looked up what brushes are in the 'start painting' sets - ofc. there's just a starter brush in them. edit: nearly forgot to mention: various bits and pieces of sponge and foam for weathering

Iron Hands brigade gotta go fast: Such mobility would be more of a white scars thing, but would be interesting to explore nonetheless. I doubt I'd ever use such a large number of Landspeeders though.

Techmarine 3x Ven. Dread w/ML & TLAS for AT 2x Redemptor w/gatlings for hordes 1x Ironclad w/chainfist, hurricane bolter, 2x HKM for tac but also distraction carnifex a ~1k pts vanguard depending on upgrades. I'm playing that in a Raven Guard successor w/~1k pts of infantry as the other half of the army. Was contemplating trying out Iron Hands for calculated fury, which would enable this blob of boxes to be a lot more mobile resp. not suffer when moving.

Deathwatch: Overkill put an interesting spin on the 'astartes exploring a derelict place and encountering xenos' trope by pitting deathwatch against GSC. That aside, the rules weren't as good as space hulk. GW has been doing reprints of space hulk somewhat irregularly over the last decades and everytime the boxes sold out like oxygen on a spaceship with a hullbreach (at least around here). I'd guess they'll do another run eventually with slightly updated rules. Would tie in nicely with the rumored plastic zone mortalis kits. I doubt space hulk would get rules for primaris though - the current primaris units are not equipped for the short range environments encountered in a space hulk. Flamestormfist Aggressors or Reivers maybe, but they'd be harder to balance vs. the stealers. The great thing about classic termies is that they are heavily armoured, but still not invincible, which greatly adds to the dread of fighting on a derelict ship against endless hordes of xenos: they're not going down easily, but every loss hurts.

Overkill: A marauder bomber with the full four pairs of wing bombs can drop a total of 24 dice on one target (8 from the bomb bay + 4x 4 from the wing bombs) or 12 dice on up to 4 targets. I'm leaning towards skyfires for thunderbolts due to the strong short range firepower present on ork vessels - if the 2 dice on medium/long range can down a dakkajet before it gets into range, they already paid for the cost to take them. For orks, the only vessel with build in bombs is the eavy bommer. The kustom big shootas seem usefull as an all around upgrade, but I'm not yet sure whether more planes isn't a better choice over more upgrades for orks. E.g. 5 dakkajets with big shootas are one point less than 6 dakkajets without.

If we get a new version of BFG, it will probably use a different scale too.

If there's one thing that needs a change right now it's the 'does not apply to relic dreads'. That aside, we've seen the new meta, but we've not seen the new meta counters yet, e.g. Raven Guard could easily take apart many of thoose Iron Hands lists by taking out key characters. Thing is: Dreads have always been a favorite of many, so people have (most of) the models for an Iron Hands list already. Meanwhile, the counter units are new releases and/or not yet well enough received that people could field them in the required composition/amount.

Rummaging around in storage, I found some spacestations I made from wooden disks and random bits. I'll have to go take some pictures - could take a while though. Me too. I didn't even manage to grab any for building cruisers for my fleet before the game got shut down. edit: If anyone is interested, I uploaded pictures of my fleet: http://www.bolterandchainsword.com/gallery/album/15892-bfg-fleet/

TFC (& techmarine gunner) hiding behind a stalker/hunter - slowdown, repair, tough metal box & AA in one nice 3 model package. It's rather hard to justify using a whirlwind instead. In addition, maybe, but not instead.

Given the small scale, some sprue cut into shapes and glued together can do wonders, e.g. I've scratchbuild a custom battleship out of sprue and random bits back in the day, using f.e. the small figure from the top of a space marine banner pole as a gigantic statue on the bow of the ship.

Feirros is worth it for all the buffs - if you bring units benefitiing from said buffs, which is highly probable since any vehicle benefits. Now, the Leviathan on the other hand - too many eggs in one basket imho.

Landspeeders & attack bikes: A bit squishy, but relatively cheap & mobile heavy weapons.

With rouge psykers popping up in everyones backyard, make-up prices will fall and everyone will look fabulous.

Putting it cautiously - the emperor does have a strong presence in the warp. As for a 5th chaos god - there are multiple/many strong entities in the warp. The closest to the major 4 would be malice (see e.g. https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Gods_of_Chaos)

Don't have any planes yet and will probably leave off wing ordnance until I've got some games in, but loadouts I was considering to try out are: Maraudeur w/2 bombs and rest in hellstrikes to destroy ground targets (fire missiles while closing in and drop bombs once over the target). Maraudeur w/all skyfire missiles as a makeshift AA platform. That 1/2 skyfire + 1/2 hellfire loadout for Thunderbolts mentioned above sounds interesting too. As for Orks... no idea yet.

TITH I continued brush priming my 3 venerable dreadnoughts in white - takes longer that I thought it would, there's always some little corner or small nook where the primer needs another layer.

My current army list contains the following (along with some hq characters): scout squad w/heavy bolter (which I might replace with a TFC or something else) 5x tactical squad w/heavy bolter 2x devastator squad w/mixed loadouts 3x ven dread 1x ironclad 2x redemptor ... all of which would benefit greatly from calculated fury, e.g. moving heavy bolters into range T1 without modifiers. With the reveals so far, it is getting more and more tempting for me to pick up the 'iron hands' supplement instead of 'raven guard'. Thankfully my custom chapter is just a successor. Then again, I'm a bit worried about the FAQs said supplement(s) will get later on.

Since Aeronautica Imperialis is the same scale as AT, the stuff from the 'ground targets' box/sprue should be usefull for AT too. In before "war for armaggeddon" using scratch build stompers/gargants - in proper ork player tradition.