Epic: Space Marine Dreadnoughts

Here is the next in my series showing what you actually get with GW Epic scale purchases compared to what they show you. Today we look at my Space Marine Dreadnoughts which I picked up last month before their price increase. Epic being already overpriced on a per blister basis but not on a army basis 200 dollars gets you a solid army at the standard 3000 point level from GW direct and a real big one from ebay). These 3 dreads clock in at 150 points so like 10 points per dollar compared to 40K Dreadnoughts which are like 3 points per dollar spent.

Starting with the weapons. They come equipped with 1 assault cannon, 1 multimelta, 1 twinlinked lascannon, and 1 missile launcher total for the 3. So you can make 1 of each of these types.

The dreads themselves. Two have built in dreadnought close combat weapons while the last has the mounting points for 2 weapons. Based on the rules this guy gets the lascannon and missiles.


Quick pick of the back sides. These Dreads are probably going to go in my pod unit. Check pack later for assembled pics and pics of the current space marine drop pods.

Barter Bucket: Looking for Epic Stuff

To feed my new fascination with Epic scale warfare, I have placed a general call on the Barter Bucket for epic stuff. Specifically I am looking for Epic Space Marines, Squats, and Eldar plus everyone loves Titans. I have put up to offer some stuff I bought to start fantasy (skull pass, army books and some metal dwarves) that never quite got going plus access to my bits bins.

Here is my listing:

Generally Epic items: Space Marines, Eldar, Squats, Titans

Specifics:

• Epic Eldar Phoenix Bomber
• Epic Eldar Cobra Super Heavy Tank (Old Style)
• Epic Squat Gyrocopters (2)
• Epic Squat Leviathan

Available for trade:

• Blood Bowl Nurgle's Rotter Team (NIB)
• Blood Bowl Individuals: Chaos Beastmen, Nurgle Beastmen, Nurgle Rotter, Khemri Mummies, Khemri Skeletons, High Elf Linemen, High Elf Blitzers
• Blood Bowl 2ed Miniatures: *Lots* Just ask about what you are looking for.
• assorted Space Marine Bits (Plain, Black Templars, Dark Angels, older SW, and Chaos Marine backpacks)
• Assault on Black Reach Orcs
• WHFB Battle for Skull Pass (Whole Set): Most Models Primed Black
• WHFB Orcs and Goblin Army Book
• Dwarves Army Book
• assorted Metal WHFB Minis (year on model) as follows:
• x2 Witch Elves ('99, '00)
• x2 Metal Goblin Fanatics ('91)
• Dwarf Rune Priest ('96)
• Dwarf Engineer ('05)
• Troll Slayer Banner ('96)
• Troll Slayer Musician ('96)
• Troll Slayer Daemon Slayer ('96)
• x8 Troll Slayers
• Dwarf Character: The White Dwarf ('96)
• Deathwing assault cannon
• Terminator heavy flamer
• SM meltaguns
• Ravenwing TL assault cannons

Even if none of this stuff interests you go by the bucket (button on the upper left) to see what people are looking for.

Epic: Space Marine Razorbacks

More looks at GW's current Epic products. Today we open up an Space Marine Razorback set. I am disappointed with the contents here.



You get 4 razorbacks and 4 turrets but since the heavy bolter and lascannon turrets are different you can essential only make 2 of each.
This differs from the GW website picture where they show you 4 heavy bolter razorbacks. So if you assume you get what you need to make the picture you are wrong. For as much as they charge for these now they should include 4 turret sets.

Here they are assembled. One thing that is interesting is that the turrets are forward mounted compared to the more back position in 40K. This is interesting since the whirlwinds are back so they essentially had to do a different mold for this arrangement (might be standard predator mold I have yet to get any of those).

Some people might be wondering why anyone would be posting the contents of old blister packs on a blog. One of the reasons we can see is right here as what you might think you get and what you actually get are different. You cannot ask GW what is in these packs as the customer service people have no idea. I tried that with the space marine character pack. It took warseer like 1 hour to tell me exactly what was in it while GW via email never got the correct answer.

Help Needed: Epic Scale Painting White

I need your help. Anyone know a good way to paint epic scale white. Painting white then washing makes everything look horrible. Should I do it gray then dry brush the white on.

Epic Whirlwind Blister

As part of my on going series of showing exact contents of my epic stuff as I get it I have for you today the Epic Spacemarine Whirlwinds and Hunters. If you are unfamiliar with Epic, Hunters are Anti Armor missile units for the marines since all armies need air defense. They can also fire their missiles as anti armor units. They are generally added as upgrades to other units to allow you to spread anti air across the board.

GW is nice enough to provide in this set 4 tanks and 8 turrets with 4 whirlwind and 4 hunter turrets.

So I assembled the 4 whirlwinds on the included rhinos.

Here is a close up. The details are not bad but I have notice consistent rough areas on the these rhinos so maybe the molds are getting worn.

This is what I am going to do with the Hunter turrets. Attach them to some of my old rhinos since I have a good number, 32 I think.

Assembled Epic Vindicators

I got my Epic Vindicators assembled. These are old models that I talked about getting off of ebay in an early post. I did not use one of the Dozer Blades and also modified the pintle mounted stormbolter on one so it did not stick out so far. I cannot do much about how out of scale the storm bolter looks though but it looks that way on the 40K verison like this also.

Vindicators are not highly in demand do to their formation usage and cost but GROOV3R at Bell of Lost Souls has some ideas about improving marine tank usage compared to the Thunderhawk strike forces that current are the preferred builds for Marines.

I planned on spending last night working on taking mold likes of 6 mm marines but was interrupted to provide tech support for my wife's new phone. She is a more dedicated blogger than I so got a text and data plan and needed me to set up mobile twitter for her.

Forgeworld Warhounds

So my Forgeworld Warhound Titans arrived. Ofcourse these are Epic scale. I would not dare buy 2 40K scale ones given my lack of painting abilities. I talked about how to find these on the forgeworld website in another post since they do not show up unless you know what to do. While like all things Epic they are pretty pricey for the amount of product you get this is sort of canceled by the fact that 20 dollars worth of marines is like half an army. These Forgeworld Titans are also cheaper than the less interesting looking GW one since you get 2 in the pack.

They are Lucius Wolf Patterns with Plasma Blastguns and Vulcan Megabolters which is the standard warhound weapons in Epic Armageddon Lists. Titan Legion lists exist which have other options but these are still the weapons available for Allied Titans for NetEA Approved Tournament style games.

Components for 2 identical titans.

Here is the top front of the carapace. Detailing looks pretty good.

Back of the carapace. I like the ad mech logos on the sides.

Wolf Warhound Head.

Front of Leg with armor plating and some pistons.

More nice looking pistons on the back of the leg.

Plasma Blastgun with what looks like some sort of sighting array on the top.

Bottom of Plasma Blastgun. Looks like structural reinforcement.

The vulcan megabolter. This is probably the part of the kit that I would be least happy with. This looks very much like a stormbolter. There do not seems to be rotary barrels like you see at the 40K scale.

Other than that it seems to be a pretty good kit. Need to wash it up and take it outside for mold lines cleaning as I do not want the dust around my daughter.

Epic 40K: Attack of the Beakies

More on my current Epic fascination. Just a little system variety to try to keep things fresh after the disappointment of the Nid Codex. I am working on getting my infantry together. These are all old models who pretty much had nothing done to then other than clipping of the sprue and inserting into the 20 by 20 mm square bases. The current base standard is 40 by 10 but GW wants like 9 dollars for 16 bases while you can get like 32 bases plus all the marines to fill them for 20 dollars. I am working on rebasing the assault marines since they are just to compacted on the 20 by 20 s with some home built verisons. We will see how that goes.

Since Epic is a more abstract game I set up my units as such. Every other Tactical unit has a sergeant but none have any heavy weapon models. So Tacticals are either just 5 normal marines, or 4 normal marines and the helmetless sergeant. Every devastator unit has 1 heavy weapon model. Should make it pretty easy to identify who is who without using up all 20 of my heavy weapon models since I have a ton of normal marines to spread them out in. In my original space marine game different unit types were identified by different base colors so I have a ton of the same normal marine from that.

The interesting thing is other than the rhino not shown what is pictured above comes out to 2600 points so probably more infantry than I would use in most games since the standard games are 3-5K and you need war engines and aircraft and all the other things in a balanced list. This pile here only represents about 40% of my space marine infantry, but is what I am dedicating to this force made up of all beakies except for the officers.



Close up of Devastator Unit. All Beakies, all the time.

Epic Mark III Vindicator

Recently picked up a pack of Vindicators for my fledgling Space Marine Epic Armageddon force. Vindicators are not very popular in marine lists it seems so they were pretty cheap coming in at like 8 dollars in blister with shipping.

I only got 3 tanks so I cannot form them into a formation of 4 but can attach them to some other units like landraiders or devastators if I feel like or I might just model them up as part of the larger display force. In Epic these are MkIII vindicators but would be called MkI in 40K styling. The older styling fits in nicely with the Heresy era other components.

Each of the three comes with slightly different hulls through the placement of gear on the model.

Similarly they have different side options. Mixing sides and hulls would give you lots of options for slight variance if you had many of these compared to the cookie cutter nature of the current models.

All also have different blades and top accessories. I hate the scale of that stormbolter and will probably cut it off and remount it centered on top of the hatch.

Single Chaos Warrior Player in Blister?

So about a month and a half ago I ordered 2 blood bowl items from GW Direct. I got a vampire team booster to fill out that roster to 16 players and a single chaos warrior to finish my Nurgle team. The price is just outrageous but I did not feel like camping ebay for one or buying a larger set and selling the pieces. Previously when I ordered single players they were as bits and shipped in a little baggie. This guy they actually packaged into a lonesome looking blister.


Nothing really interesting but it just surprised me when I opened the box. This might be better in case a customer orders something like this to a store but never picks it up.