Updating for 6th edition

With the advent of 6th edition I have taken some time to consider my 40k path going forward. In the wake of this I have come to several decisions, most of which stem from a single realization - I do not have the hobby or game time to field more than two primary armies.


I have today three full armies. The full armies are a DIY space marine chapter, a Tau sept, and a dark eldar kabal. The question therefore becomes "what do I keep?"

Well I have the most time and resources invested in my dark angel successor chapter of space marines. Frustrated with the Dark Angel codex and how it compared with the vanilla codex I started running them as Vanilla marines to make the bikes work properly. Then with each successive SM codex released I would add bits and pieces to allow me to run different iterations of lists I found interesting. Today this giant collection can be run as bike marines, a DOA blood angels list, MSU mech, Land Raider based rock army and every iteration in between. Thanks to the addition of a Fellblade this is now also my primary Apocalypse army.

My Tau are much smaller, somewhere around 2500 some points worth of Tau. They frankly also possess the worst paint job of any of my armies. However, they are the play style I enjoy the most, the models (specifically battlesuits) that I love to convert, and frankly given that they are less often played, the ones that I enjoy the most.

So the Dark Eldar, which also happen to be my most recent acquisition, are the ones left out in the cold. Goodbye to the time spent buying and assembling (and lazily getting someone to paint them). They are today being traded away on Bartertown (although if someone wants a pretty army cheap let me know).

My next decision was what to do with my old Daemonhunters force. I was at first excited by the prospect of the Gray Knights codex breathing new life into my old models, but all the band jumpers coupled with the lack of a challenge presented when playing Gray Knights, quickly bored me.

Sixth edition's addition of allies made me consider incorporating them into my other armies. However, I felt that it was too much of a fluff travesty to play them with my Tau. Even though I used multiple SM codices to play my marines I still thought of their fluff as members of the Dark Angel family and the distrust with which the DA view the inquisition soured me on that aspect as well. So they have to go as well.

So where do I end up? Well the picture below should give you some idea... Fleshing out my Tau and building a small Eldar force to ally with them. I also bought half of a Dark Vengeance box and will spiff up my marines. Sixth edition here I come.