Army Progress

It's been a while since I posted, between the busy nature of work in April and spending my out of hours BBQ-ing in the sun, every spare minute has been given over to trying to get my Grey Knights put together. I'm just over half way there, having put together 15 purifiers, 2 dreadnoughts, 2 transports and the dreadknight's legs.

Even though I've only done the Dreadknight's legs he's already by far the tallest model in the army. It's insane. Anyway, through putting several boxes of the men together, I've discovered some points which may be useful to anyone thinking of putting together a new Grey Knights army.



As a pre-cursor to this, it's probably pretty obvious, but I haven't bought any basic space marine troops in over 5 years, so the current dynamic model sprues are new to me. The first box I opened, I got far too excited and cut out all of the arms and weapons and bodies, legs guns etc. HUGE mistake!

In the new GK box set, all of the weapons are detached at the wrist. In White Dwarf Mat Ward stated that this was so the models and weapons could be dynamically positioned in different ways to make really unique models. What a load of crock. Almost all of the weapons are held in two hands, and because of the angels, each weapon is intended to be used with a defined set of arms, so that all 4 joins line up nicely (both shoulders and wrists). This is why it is a baaad idea to pop all of the bits out of the sprue at the start. I had no idea which arm went with which weapon, and as there are about 10 sets of arms/weapons for 5 models, it took me an entire evening to piece together one 5 man squad.

Back to this dynamic idea, horsepoop. As there are set arms/weapons at pre defined angles in order to fit together (without the use of green stuff) the only option you get is the elevation of the weapon. You know why I think they made them two-handed and jointed at the wrist? To put off magnetisers. As the power armoured GK box can make 4 different types of squad. If the plastic models were only joined at the shoulder, you could magnetise each different type of weapon and only need to buy a fraction of the models you would have to in order to run different types of troops.

Anyway, with that little rant out of the way, my advice is take each model at a time, only pop out the arms and weapons for each model as you're doing them, making sure to pop out the right ones numbered in the guide. This will make your life a lot easier. As I said; maybe obvious, but it got me and might well get new hobbyists too.

Obviously you can make more dynamic models by way of minor conversions and green stuff, like this one.

The only change I made to this model was to cut and reverse the direction of his halberd, inserting it into the head of an old giant wolf I had lying around (Just to goad my Space Wolf playing friends ;)).

Even without the "individual" touch, I think the models look great. I'm looking forward to finishing putting them together so I can start painting them!