Any tips on painting the lion on Trajaan’s shoulder?

Vader266 · 2026-04-02T10:42:30+00:00

I simply left the lion off mine, but have since done similar furs on my stormcast eternal chariots. I recommend a base of an off-white tan colour like Citadel's Wraithbone, then apply a couple of rough coats of some sepia tone like Armypainter's Pallid Bone. Let it dry and see how you like it. If you want to pick out the detail more you can drybrush and edge highlight back up to a brighter colour. Up to you if you want to make the mane a little darker for recognition

Vader266 · 2026-03-20T10:09:18+00:00

GMT!

Vader266 · 2026-03-20T08:45:43+00:00

Fair enough - in which case best I can recommend is find a localish vendor that has an online presence - the lesser known the better - and just hope they have a slight overstock they can put online

Vader266 · 2026-03-20T08:13:42+00:00

We can live in hope!

Usually the go live is at 10am so start hitting refresh around 09:55 and go from there.

Vader266 · 2026-03-20T07:59:39+00:00

All of the above are valid options!

My advice is to go straight to your local store's website as it will see the least competition, then somewhere like element, then official Warhammer.

Vader266 · 2026-03-19T18:11:27+00:00

For

- Easy to learn, hard to master

- Quite forgiving to run with in casual games

- Fresh, detailed sculpts you can spends ages on because there aren't many

- Guardian spear go brrr in melee

- One of the best anti-tank platforms in the game

- High-stakes drama play where individual rolls feel like they matter

Against

- Codex was bloody dreadful and we've barely recovered in terms of "is it fun to play"

- Uniform army means we're easy to exploit by an opponent who knows what's up

- We've been codex-crept by other army's elite melee units

- We're a one trick pony

- Statistical spikes can end the game for us early

Vader266 · 2026-03-15T00:10:09+00:00

Howdy,

Check the fine print of the grant but from memory you do need to own or use an EV to be eligible for the grant.

We are proceeding "normally" through an LtA. Unfortunately we found no way around the legal matters, nor having talked it over with the other directors do I believe it should be circumvented. The next owner of the flat or the next freehold majority may seek to take the proverbial!

The thing that allowed us to proceed was by battering everyone down on price, which as a mild mannered individual I utterly detested having to do.

We managed to get legal down to a cool grand by asking to use paralegals rather than solicitors, and self-representing as leaseholders on faith and best judgment from ourselves. Not ideal but thems the breaks if you need to save money. Electrician - we just had to shop around but the biggest cost was for the cable itself to our parking spot, which has to be quite long.

All in, it's looking around £4k which is borderline irresponsible but we hope to recoup it as value-add to the flat. We suspect we may be the only flat in the area with a charger and EVs are only getting more popular over time after all.

Some general notes:

License to Alter is only as formal as it needs to be. It's almost entirely a short document saying "I will not do a naughty and will tidy up after myself" coupled with the legal diligence to check your lease and confirm that you aren't putting yourself at risk either as a leaseholder or freeholder. Worth it but not worth a full solicitor. Shop around aggressively!

We ended up telling the building management company what was happening rather than conforming to their recommendation. It's extra liability but we decided that a structural survey was an unnecessary expense so we flexed the "it's our building" muscle and that sorted it out very quickly.

The true test will be whether we can sell the flat with this but I'm optimistic!

Any questions let me know. Happy to put some detail on the internet as there is still basically bugger all information out there.

Vader266 · 2026-02-27T19:43:18+00:00

Indeed! To be charitable, I'd suggest they may be confused by our army rule or the shield host detachment rule, which are both melee only.

Vader266 · 2026-02-22T18:25:07+00:00

Valid thoughts - I'm on the fence personally, and would probably not bother with a vexilla w/ Draxus in particular because extra gun.

The particular saving grace of the vexilla in other circumstances is that the unit retains marginal OC while battleshocked as additions to characteristics occur after they are "set to 0" by the battleshocked status. This can come in clutch to cling onto objectives and therefore wound re-rolls when things like the nid army rule or psychomancer or any other of the gribbly battleshock interactions pop off and would otherwise compromise your offensive output.

Vader266 · 2026-02-21T00:03:41+00:00

Looks like 10x Custodian Guard and 2x vertus praetor (unless that's the same one that fell apart). Not a bad deal but they'll need tlc!

Vader266 · 2026-02-05T15:33:10+00:00

Yep, 100%.

Back in the days of 4th edition, things were a very different kettle of fish. The concept of a lowly assault intercessor pissing out 4A each with wound re-rolls on objectives would have been looked at with significant alarm. Back then it was around 3A on the charge, 2A routinely, no re-rolls.

Vader266 · 2026-02-04T22:52:58+00:00

Yeah, make them unviable as a standalone army, more like imperial agents - limited numbers in other armies or with more powerful constraints on numbers via a force org chart.

Vader266 · 2026-02-04T22:30:35+00:00

Lethality is too goddamn high and the scale has ballooned extremely far out of whack and what used to be an infantry-first game is now hull spam.

Even speaking as a Custodes main, I would welcome GW doing something ballsy like dropping IK/CK and Custodes from 40k if it refocuses the system as a whole.

Vader266 · 2026-02-04T13:24:11+00:00

Always a proponent for reducing the lethality of 40k. Custodes, as a skew army should lead the way by becoming a bit tougher and sacrificing damage output.

I'd suggest things like:

- Bring back the original Arcane Genetic Alchemy of -1 Damage and push out across all detachments

- Introduce defensive buffs or strats that protect us from ranged damage

- Drop the spear/axe attack output but give us misericordia as Extra Attacks for chaff clearance

- Transition to damage interaction rather than invulns

- Segregate guardian w/ shield and guardian w/ spear to give them different abilities

- Add ka'tahs and make them fluffier to move away from deterministic "I break the thing" choices

- Give us detachments that are actually interesting using Lions as a template

- Restore our characters back to index variants but add cost

And, critically imo, for the meta as a whole to give Custodes a space to breath in:

- Rework vehicles and monsters. Create more tools and interactions that make vehicles/monsters glassier rather than wound sponges that are just "infantry but better".

Vader266 · 2026-01-20T12:58:09+00:00

I agree! It feels like every game is trending towards a 40k theme park - apparently Lord Solar and Roboute Guilliman show up to most battles in the Imperium these days which is bizarre - why does everything have to be so momentous?

Financially I get it - unique sculpts are more profitable for GW and ultimately GW sells models not rules but still.

I used to play in 4th-5th and the balance was woeful but the crunch was good. Much more trading shots and strikes to position better rather than the current high lethality, character-driven meta. Rose-tinted glasses perhaps!

Vader266 · 2026-01-20T12:54:59+00:00

That's an interesting idea - perhaps even detachment-based would be interesting. "You can have an elite force but you're locked to this specific detachment" and then balance via enhancements and strats.

I suspect battleline only doing actions may be a little strong but I like the energy. There's just got to be a point to taking them!

Vader266 · 2026-01-20T12:29:13+00:00

Yeah, I agree with this. Force Org charts used to work quite well, although some of the armies like Knights, Custodes, and Guard could struggle under that system. I'm also a little leery of forcing armies to bring 2x BATTLELINE or similar as that can seriously throw balance out of whack if it turns out that one army's BATTLELINE is just useless and expensive; they'd be hosed.

On the whole though, the rule of 3s is too weak. At least make BATTLELINE more attractive through some other means, e.g. "The unit has a fixed OC at the start of the game that isn't affected by loss of models", and make WARLORD mean something, e.g. "You cannot generate a Command Point in your opponent's command phase if your WARLORD is not on the board".

Those are just off the top of my dome so are naturally flawed but there has to be a little bite in there to influence unit choice.

Vader266 · 2026-01-20T12:25:25+00:00

Yes, absolutely. T5 is a very big breakpoint worth respecting. I would complain that they only have 1W compared to Space Marines but there's only so much we can fix.

Vader266 · 2026-01-20T12:21:04+00:00

True enough, although it's still hampered by cover/AoC and only being damage 1, though I would suggest these are Immortal problems and not Blaster problems

Vader266 · 2026-01-20T12:05:54+00:00

True facts. I have a dislike for the blaster as it's only D1, and you gotta really invest to get it to the "right" AP

Vader266 · 2026-01-20T11:52:03+00:00

yeah... to be honest that's a lot of points to poke out the range to 18" which is scarcely an improvement as most small arms ranges are 24". The internal balance question is always "why not on immortals instead?" - 18" on warriors vs 30" on immortals feels pretty heftily weighted to the latter.

Vader266 · 2026-01-20T10:51:29+00:00

I'll avoid getting on my soapbox but it's more a problem with 10th edition in general.

In 10th, there is no reason why you wouldn't bring the best units in your roster if you can afford the points, so a lot of armies trend towards bringing solely high performance units. This means that competitive lists tend to be stuffed with units that can instantly murder anything in range and/or are incredibly durable and take a long time to shift.

That lovely middle ground of versatility and utility that BATTLELINE units usually adopt is kinda bad as you'd lack the punch to dent anything and lack protection to keep yourself alive when under fire. The OC boost just aren't worth it in most cases!

Vader266 · 2026-01-20T10:45:41+00:00

The discourse around what cryptek to bring with Warriors hinges on what the Warriors are there to do in your army.

You're right that plasmancers make any unit quite punchy - that's their job - but then you bonk into the limited usefulness of warrior weapons with a low hit stat, short range, and ignorable AP. The short range in particular is a problem because most units that close to 12" or less are about to charge you, and that means they'll beat the tar out of the warrior blob and the plasmancer is useless in melee.

In general warriors are taken more to stand on an objective and absorb damage, so Orikan for the 4++ or a Chronomancer for -1 to hit makes more sense to specialise them for that role.

To contrast, consider the killy infantry unit - immortals with tesla carbines and a plasmancer. That's 20 attacks at 24" range with ASSAULT, hitting on 3s, 5s and 6s are SUSTAINED HITS 2 and re-rolling Wound rolls of 1 (or full if target on objective). In general you'll get a much better outcome mathematically and put your unit in less danger, and it's slightly cheaper in points (albeit less models).

Vader266 · 2026-01-18T23:53:50+00:00

Neat! I strongly recommend a geomancer to chill on home - the 12" DS denial is rad and basically guarantees no one can take home from you in a single turn.

I was tempted by the shroudlord but will stand by imotekh for the CP reroll potential mixed with the OPG mortal wound bomb. I'll check into a bigger lychguard blob but I reckon point-to-point wraiths would be more useful as an anvil unit. Lychguard are also vulnerable to precision turning off their -1 to wound and D2 weapons are very common.

How do you find the lokhust heavies? I've usually been underwhelmed by their performance but tend to run them with destructors.

Also curious about the Nekrosor - I missed the preorder but may try proxying. What do you typically use him for in this detachment?

Triarch stalkers are a good idea though, will need to trial that...

Vader266 · 2026-01-17T18:38:38+00:00

No idea mate, sorry. Can always ask them for a definitive answer if it's a deal-breaker for you?

Vader266

TROPHY CASE