By screams and bounds

I just thought I'd introduce you all to the newest member of the Saim Hann army. Say hello to my little friend.

First let me point out, that this is not the best picture in the world. Erik you will, of course, comment on the pink, which is, in fact, violet, and given that Harley here, is a harlaquin....well, he's sorta 'sposed to look like a space clown (with an axe and a gun, and some sort of fly mask). For scale purposes. That base he's standing on is the size of a quarter.

Anyways, I'm really happy to have painted Harley, but I have yet to find another 40k geek up here. I'm sure that's sort of a matter of time, but not yet. I did, however, find...or rather Lynn found, the Games Workshop Store up here. So, I guess I could play there, but it's in a mall, and they only play veteren 40k on Mondays and Wednesdays, so we'll see.

If you do not play 40k, stop reading here. The rest will just annoy you. Maybe click on the links.

I do have this to say, 40k fans, and then I'll stop talking for the rest of you. The new edition of the rules are out and supposedly they have NOT elimated the Tau, and they have NOT eliminated the Dark Eldar. They just recalled the boxes so that they could repack them (at 1/2 the number of miniatures in a box, and at double the resale price--sometimes it's really hard not to hate them). The new rules seems to be mainly focussed on force organization charts and a few minor points, which makes me wonder why I should spend $50 on the book, which is to say, $30 on ebay (eventually).

What really ticks me off is that they are organizing space marine armies for tournament play such that there is a single set of guidelines to describe your chapter. What this means is that you don't have to play Space Wolves to get Space Wolf powers. Before the game you just buy your space marines (regardless of their chapter) whatever power used to belong to Space Wolves alone, and voila... The problem was solved this way as an obvious short cut for people who don't have many space marines and don't want to have to be forced into a chapter once they've painted their miniatures.

The problem is that I don't have a few space marines. I have a few hundred space marines, and I can't paint half (or even a third of them) in Space Wolves colors and the half in Ultra Marine, that doesn't matter. Now it would be stupid for me not to paint them all in the same color scheme, which by simple "what color have I already painted" means Ultra Marine, but can you imagine Rune Priests and Veterens (miniatures literally dripping with wolf tails and wolf pelts) painted Ultra Marine, that's just stupid. Ultra marines are supposed to be like American GIs in powered armor, Space Wolves are supposed to be vikings in powered armor, and Dark Angels are supposed to be ancient England in powered armor. That's what the miniatures look like.

Personally, I liked the idea of dividing up the space marines into various chapters. It gave a certain personality and continuity to that army. Otherwise, you have vikings next to GIs next to miniatures wearing robes over their terminator suits. But oh well. At least there isn't much they can do to my beloved Eldar (except, you know, provide official rules for the Harlequins).