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2024 - YEAR IN REVIEW KY'VASH RECON CADRE A whole lot of Tau. So, my first Call to Arms was productive! Pictured here are all the Tau I painted in 2024, all but the pathfinders and sniper teams being painted during CtA 2024. That's 1,550 points, and 63 models, including the first tanks I've painted since returning to the hobby in 2020. I'm quite happy with them. While most of these models have shown up on the B&C either elsewhere in my blog or on the CtA, I've pulled out a few that photographed nicely when I got them all out. Shas'El Ay'Va and her Breachers. Tabletop gaming is about infantry. Much about with tanks and walkers if you must - I've done a little - but it always comes back to some poor, doomed idiots with rifles. This army was designed infantry first, with a scheme I wanted to see on Pathfinders and Fire Warriors, which was later adapted for the bigger guns. 20 fire warriors, 10 pathfinders, three characters, and three sniper teams, and I think they look pretty OK. Painting Tau faces is interesting, though I've not entirely sold on doing their eyes in white. Shas'Els Ay'Va and Yr'Anto. Not a lot of conversion in this army. It was more about the scheme, but ultimately, I am a creature of habit, and that habit is kitbashing. It's mostly been kept to these two, and the snipers, at least for now. I have plans for some weird battlesuits some time in the future, but for now it's these 5. The big guns. Battlesuits and tanks. As fun as it would have been to just rattle off endless waves of pulse-rifle infantry I did want to try out something new. Shas'O Vioraan with his nifty little drone shield, and all the magnets I could find to future-proof these idiots for when they bring back points costs. Wahey. That Hammerhead was fun, too, and put in some WORK in the first game of our 2025 Crusade, of which I'll be posting soon. The camo pattern isn't QUITE as effective on the suits, but it works OK. I do like how the yellow pops on the missile racks and other weapons. I'm quite proud of how these all came together, and have already painted a pair of new models - tokens, but extra ones - in 2025!

2024 - YEAR IN REVIEW THE SIN EATERS My first major project on returning to the hobby - well, the first once I liked enough to stick with properly - finally hit that all-important 2,000 point mark earlier this year. It's currently 2,070, meaning I can swap out a character as required, as I did this last weekend in a final spurt of tabletop play for the year. I'll go into the individual units in a moment, but just at a top-level, I'm very happy with these chaps. The Crusade, though shortened, was a blast. Killed a lot of Tyranids, was killed MORE by Tyranids, and generally had fun marching up and down the board and blasting away in Firestorm. I have now played two games with the new Grotmas BA detachment, which... Would have been way, way better with my heavily character-focused Crusade army. Ah well. I'm happy with the scheme, and they look nice as an army, which is what really counts. Fallen Martos, and the Firestrike Servo-Turrets. My second Ballistus - chosen mostly for availability, and because I did need some more anti-monster blasting - was a delight to paint, and a cleaner job than I managed with the first one. Much of my 2024 painting on the Sin Eaters came out nicer than 2023, though not all, and I'm egnerally quite happy with how the scheme applies to this big, flat-panel models. Gives me a lot of room to freehand those checkmarks. The turrets were oddly compelling, too. They did good work in Crusade, mostly in keeping some monsters wary with that 4+ overwatch. I'm glad I cut off the Techmarines, they look so much nicer as fully automatic blasters. Said techmarines saw some new life a little later, too... Headtaker of the 3rd, Techmarine Stahl, and Primus Medicae Malcos. I did say the army was character heavy. Where 2023 was spent building and converting Chaplains, I branched out a little in 2024. The techmarine is made from some printed bits and a body and head cut from the turrets. Headtaker - a Judiciar - is a mashup of bits from all over, and the Apothecary is mostly spare parts from Leviathan and an ancient metal servitor arm. I'm most happy with the paint on Stahl, the green really pops, and I almost wish I had managed to fit more of it into the greater army. Maybe when I finally get some hellblasters as I slowly get this force to 3,000 points. Headtaker is a killer, though, he put in some work in the final few Crusade games. Captain Cominius, and 3rd Company Command Squad. Now, I know what you're thinking: 'Wormwoods, buddy, it's a Crusade, why did you only finish your general with like 3 games to go, ensuring he would be WAY behind on XP?' Look. The Command Squad wasn't out yet, and I didn't have the parts. Whatever. He's proven to be absolutely useless, and his friends even more-so, but who cares? It's a lovely kit, and a fine excuse to go even more ornate and over-the-top. Quite happy with the stolen Custodes banner, and the headswap on Cominius. Minimal other conversion work, just head swaps, and the sneaking suspicion that the Company Champion really is just short, and not just unfortunately posed. Immortals of The Plate. The final addition to the army in 2024 was this charming little gang of psychos. An easy arm-swap with some spare claws from a fellow hobbyist who prefers the hammers, I like how they came together on Leviathan bodies. They're even a little cleaner than the normal terminators, and slightly less garbage! They didn't get to join any real games for the Crusade, but put in some work over the weekend, buzzing through Khorne Berserker and having a wonderful time. That's it for the Sin Eaters for now. I'm taking a break from them to focus on my next summary topic, and army for an upcoming Crusade starting in 2025, along with some non-40K work in The Old World. Painting Empire State Troops is like eating popcorn chicken, I can't stop! Still, I'll be adding more Sin Eaters at some point, likely some Hellblasters, some Death Company, more Jump Intercessors, and maybe even - horror of horrors - a tank! We'll see what happens.

2024 - YEAR IN REVIEW SUMMARY - ALL FINISHED MODELS Oh, hi Goose! I’ve had a pretty good year for painting, and a decent one for actually playing some 40k! The Sin Eaters hit 2,000 points and finished up their Crusade, I started – and eventually completed about 1,500 points worth of – Tau, largely thanks to the Call to Arms, painted up a large BFG fleet, and started work on a second Xenos Army with my Eldar bikes. That is, for me, a LOT of models. 151, at current count, that’s a whole first-gen Pokemon game worth of little guys, girls, and robots. Mochi, too! You are all truly blessed. Yes, some of the stands for my Chaos fleet have melted in this unreasonably hot summer. I'm fixing them. I got some play in, but not quite as much as I would have liked. We had to end the Crusade a little early due to a baby happening – not mine, but our group doesn’t deal so well with a missing player due to numbers – and after that only actually got 3 regular games of 40K in through the year, which... I didn’t love? I’ve found that while I don’t mind 10th Edition, I strongly prefer the way Crusade missions work over the card nonsense. Anyway, it’s me, so I lost most of those games, but that’s fine. I had a good showing, and fully painted armies, which is what really matters. On the subject of painting, which will be the focus of following blog posts, I think I continued my steady development through the year. The Sin Eaters are basically a solved problem, I know how I would paint whatever new models eventually get added – probably some scouts, maybe some firstborn schlubs – and can now paint checkmarks like a pro. My freehanding continues apace, though I’m going to need to do a better job of brush maintenance, as I have a few models this year that probably deserved to come out better if I hadn’t been flailing around with a half-ruined detail brush. So it goes. I’ll be putting together more in-depth posts about the Sin Eaters and Ky’Vash Recon Cadre over the next few days, but for now, enjoy some photographs of the silly animals I share a house with. Unimpressed by the Sin Eaters. Dismissive of the Ky'Vash Recon Cadre. Need to actually upload the nice pictures of my other Badab nerds, huh?