Neil Arthur Hotep

I am planning to play a game with 2-3 steam tanks later this month. Will update you when I do. Just from the armchair, I think running a Steam Tank and Commander pair at 500 is the sweet spot, because even at 3 tanks they start to warp your list building around them. A combined 24 wounds at a 2+ save is a great anvil that certain units will just not be able to break through. And the commander's ability to copy any command they use to a friendly steam tank means that you don't have to necessarily run any extra buff heroes with them. In my opinion, if you look at the steam tank as a unit to spam, they are not that good. Their damage is still kind of low and they can't play the capture game well. But as a unit of one or two they are great at supporting a combined arms list.

We will have to wait for base sizes, but if the new ones are big enough converter trays become an option.

Personally, I was too lazy to even slapchop and just glazed directly over a zenithal base coat. I'm really enjoying seeing people's homebrew schemes. It just gives you an appreciation of the models you don't get from the official paint jobs.

Mixing old Empire and new Freeguild kits has a lot of potential.

Another Cities dude

Got a little experimental with the Alchemite.

I like the warscroll, my concern is more about fitting it in a list with all the other cool stuff I also want to bring, haha.

I have been looking at the Questors Soulsworn from Warcry for Stormcast allies. Pros: Cool looking melee knight guys Deepstrike on warscroll Capture for 3 per model 3+ save/3 wounds The only problem for me is that they are kinda expensive at 230.

The command models and Alchemite are next. I need to restock on basing supplies.

Making progress on a unit of Steelhelms. Even though they are kind of fiddly, I think I can paint all 20 from the starter set without going insane.

Very cool stuff. I like the idea of doing bisected colours on the collar on the Steelhelms. I have been painting them solid in the interest of speed on my own guys for now, but the heraldry of my city nominally has a quartered design. I'm also really into the freehand you are doing. I have been leaving the diamonds on the shields and banners blank so far, because I don't want to use the transfers, but maybe I need to step up my game a bit, haha. You are definitely pulling it up super well.

I have not really kept up with their points/rules updates. Are they still good? I know a lot of lists switched to Fulminators instead for a while, but I think that had more to do with their interactions with the old Living City ambush rules.

Has anyone been putting any thought into interesting ally options for Cities? I want to maybe include a few Stormcast for the flavour, but I am unsure if any are actually worth it from a gameplay standpoint.

I'm also strongly in favour of adding keywords. I really wonder why GW introduced the keyword system at all when they continually refuse to actually make use of it beyond putting the grand alliance, faction name and unit name down as a keyword. I don't even think we would need compendiums to do it, just update the keywords in the app.

Man, these new FEC models are getting weird.

Steam Tanks are a hybrid unit and kind of benefit a litte bit from everything. For full tank spam my personal choice would be Hammerhal Aqsha so that you can keep both +3" movement and counter fire/suppressive fire up at the same time. Also consider a Hurricanum.

Sounds like something Nagash might do, but Sigmar would never play with our hearts like that.

I am somewhat expecting them to come out next edition. In this edition, the Dawnbringers are constructing their new strong points. In the next one, they should hopefully be finished.

I definitely prefer them releasing their terrain sets separately. It's cool to have a nice box with terrain and two warbands if you actually want everything in that bundle, but if you just want a certain warband or the terrain it's a bit of a hassle. The whole terrain section on the webstore looks kind of barren right now, by the way. Are Gnawholes just no longer a thing? It seems they are not available anymore.

For a second I thought they finally released those completed Dawnbringer houses. But new Seraphon/Warcry terrain is pretty neat, too.

I don't usually post work in progress shots, but I think my experience with speed-painting Steelhelms might be interesting to some people: I had previously painted the champion as a test model and have now set the goal to paint the remaining non-command group models of the unit (seven dudes). After abou 4 hours of work, they already look pretty decent, which surprised me. When these models were first revealed, I thought they would take a long time to paint and be very tedious. But that has not been my experience at all. I found that Steelhelms are not hard to paint, but they are kind of complex models and you need to understand their uniform before getting started or you will have to go back and forth between paints a lot. Steelhelms wear a breast plate over a cloth uniform, but that breast plate only covers their chest, not their backs. They also wear leather coverings over their legs and right arm, as well as a leather belt and collar. The collar, belt and leg covers are actually what stands out most from a tabletop angle: I recommend painting those in what you intend to be your primary army colour. I personally glued the shields on before painting. It works fine. As a general rule, it's fine to paint the back of shields really sketchy. You basically never see/pay attention to them. My advice would be to first drybrush the shield, then do the cloth and leather, then metals last. Buy good metallics though, not citadel, or you will have to base coat everything with a dark paint beforehand again. The shield decorations are easily the most fiddly details on these models, and the fewer coats you need for those, the better.

If it's like that, then I would say something like "Liberators in Thunderstrike Armour" is not off the table for AoS, even if it means bloating the warscroll count of Stormcast even more.

Does anyone know how GW handles unit updates in 40k? Do the 40k launch boxes always contain new Space Marine kits or are they sometimes new versions of old models?

I am hoping for that, too. I think it's kind of likely, as well. It's kind of weird: Most of the WHFb 8th edition stuff still looks really good, but some of the early AoS models are weirdly kind of weak. Thinking of first wave Fatcast and Fyreslayers here, for example. The Celestant Prime definitely deserves a new model (and a name), for example.

Since things are now heating up in Ghyran: Do we think the Phoenicium being destroyed is going to be a plot point of Dawnbringers? After all, "a great shadow has fallen over the city's future".