Good day to all my friends on Hive and especially the OCD Community! Today I wanted to post about my return to Games Workshop's Warhammer 40,000. This is a tabletop wargame that has been around for 35 years and I have been playing it since the end of 3rd Edition!

I stopped playing towards the end of 5th edition. Life does what it does. I played one match of 6th edition and then nothing since! The game is now on its 9th edition of the core game rules. There have been a lot of changes. Every faction that I have ever played against has new units and new models. My own factions as well, they even have new characters I have never played with.

There are even completely new factions that I have never played with or against!

I post this to the OCD community first and foremost because there are two tiny communities that also do not seem to have much going on in them at the moment.

I am trying to convince more hobbyists in my area to join Hive and blog about their hobbies and events instead of posting them on web 2.0 social media and thus I need to expose this on the communities with the best chance of a successful post!

Additionally, I believe that it is VERY likely that there are far more people on Hive that know of and/or play Warhammer than those two small communities have.

So let me get into it!

What is Warhammer?

Warhammer 40,000 is the game that I play. It is a tabletop wargame that includes both and modeling and painting hobby, and a strategy board game that has a range of games from story scenarios to tournament competitive play.

A casual game of Warhammer 40k is meant to be enjoyed between friends and new acquaintances and generally ranges in game time from 40mins to 2.5 hours. The former is the "40k in 40mins" rule style where what you may play is limited to promote a quick game and the 2.5-hour format is generally the norm for competitive gameplay. Imagine taking part in a tournament where you need to play 5 games across a Saturday and Sunday!

Albeit, it is a lot of fun. Now that my kids are a bit older and even the youngest is now old enough to learn the rules it seems like a fine time for me to dust off the old minis and get back into it.

I actually have plenty of models I got second hand that I always wanted to repaint and even existing models that need some TLC before they are complete and whole again.

I am somewhat of a hoarder and thus... well... you will see...

This post has a lot of photos and it accounts for just a fraction of my collection.

I have boxes and boxes of miniatures and spinoff games. I actually collect mostly Warhammer 40,000 armies that are from the Imperium of Mankind. I do not collect an xenos (alien) armies or those that are human but have fallen to Chaos (corrupted evil peeps).

Although there is ONE brand new faction that is not Imperial which I will be collecting. They have been in the lore of the game for a long long time and have finally come out of obscurity to become a brand new playable faction: The Leagues of Votann.

The Leagues of Votann include what the Imperium call "Squats" and are basically Space Dwarves. They were in the game and disappeared from it long before I started playing in 3rd edition.

I play another game called Blood Bowl which is like fantasy football with actual fantasy teams. I play a Dwarf team - the Doom Anvils! When I would play Warhammer Quest with my friends, a dungeon crawler with a small band of heroes, I would play as the Dwarf.

So you must understand that Space Dwarves are exactly what I would have wanted all along if they had been there 20 odd years ago when I started playing.

My main Imperial faction is the Space Wolves Chapter of Space Marines. Space Marines are genetically enhanced super soldiers and the Space Wolves recruit and hail from a world where the natives are basically vikings. They keep this aesthetic and beliefs and lore by carrying on being both very viking and very wolfy in the game.

Let's get into my first rediscovery post!

Taking everything out of storage

I also have some other Space Marine armies that play differently and look differently. Please be warned, I own a lot of models that I did not paint myself, most of those are painted badly.

Here is a photo of all the boxes of my tabletop stuff... I think... Some army boxes at the bottom are for carrying your miniatures. I have not actually seen these are the local tournaments and this is probably because the company have not made or sold these in a decade or more. I see there are new boxes for sale but have not seen one in real life.

In the pink shopping bag I found a lot of paints. These days, these paints can go for $4.5 to $8 each. These are all old, most used up and dry. But there are still some that have paint in them or paint I can add water to and mix up again. Even paint that is beyond redemption I will keep for the jars when I want to mix paint etc.

You don't get these colors anymore haha.

Dry... but can I recondition it. Back in those days I did not own power tools or a working knowledge of chemistry in paints... we shall see.

A newer, fresher Chaos Black paint. Note the bottle is different.

Aha! Still liquid! Despite the price look at the quality and shelf life! I do not even think you get Chaos Black anymore. They now sell it as Abbadon Black. Abbadon is a bad guy.

Some Mephiston Red. Mephiston is the name of a good guy that is also a crazy guy. In the game he is a crazy good guy... for you. For your opponent he is a crazy bad guy.

Looks feasible as well.

Found ANOTHER bag of paints and...

... another box of paints that has basing kits in it as well as various models in between the paints! Poor guys probably got bashed up as I have moved them twice across the country and to about 4-5 different homes.

Here is a Kill Team box set that I got a year or two ago from my friend Ren. Ren, make a Hive account and show people how well you paint. Ren also does awesome 3D prints.

Anyway, Killteam is a stand alone spin-off game where you take a squad of elite commandoes and face off against one another.

This is the Space Wolf Kill Team the Fangs of Ulfrich. They are also Primaris Marines... I will explain more about that another day.

Inside the box there is some terrain...

... still on the sprue of course and ready to assemble.

There are rules and counters and such...

And then the models themselves. Still on the sprue. Now you see that a person has to clip off, assemble and glue these guys together, then you paint them and then you play with them.

The painting and modelling hobby side is huge with many people just in it for the painting.

There are some people who only want to play and do zero painting. Most people do a bit of both.

Looking at these sprues and what they could possibly represent in a standard 40k match, I will be investigating to see if I can build them in such a way I can use them in 40k as well as in Kill Team games.

Here are some Primaris Space Marines I got from @lex-zaiya's SO, my friend Nic. He and I have been friends for... ages. We literally bought our first warhammer stuff together.

He gifted me with these beautiful models. I will likely need to clean and repaint them for my army.

So I fished out all the models and components from this box.. let's see what I got!

Turns out that there were 19 Models in Power Armor, 4 Grey Knights, 6 more models in Power Armor with Heavy Weapons, a Techmarine with full servo harness, a Space Marine Scout, 3 Space Marine bikes, 3 Guardsmen, various bits and 4 little guys that come from another spin off game.

Let's check them out.

Original metal Space Marine Scout. Super old, definately not in circulation any more.

Techmarine, the guy that is both a Space Marine and a Tech Priest. He fixes the tanks and carries a big axe!

Space Marine Heavy Weapons. I will go over these in detail in the future.

Various Space Marines ready for assault!

No surprise here but this is an old Dwarf axe I took to make this Power Axe for a Space Wolf. It looks the part!

Origional Metal Space Marine Apothacary. Will fall right through the new finecast models and come out the other side.

Another rare model. Grey Hunter with Wolf Standard. i will need to make the banner myself. These days you get the banner sculpted out of plastic, Back then they put paper banners on the models. I have another idea...

Space Marine Vetran with a Terminator Honours shoulderpad. Not sure of this is relevant at all.

Various Marines with bolters. I definately do not paint Ultramarines! lol

Grey Knights - aka Daemonhunters

Imperial Guardsmen... well they were back in my day. Officially they are now known as the Astra Militarium.

Space Marine Bikes. In need of repair and riders...

These guys... I am sure they are from the Silver Tower stand alone game. I think there was a thought of turning them into ancillaries for a Blood Bowl team...

Space Wolf Scouts! So this was a squad I painted and custom built. back in those days there was just a regular Space Marine Scout squad and there was no box of Space Wolf stuff to make them more space wolf looking!

So I sculpted fur pelts, beards and hair from a modelling putty called green stuff.

This cloak and wolf claws over the hand was inspired by the artwork.

Here is the back of that cloak, trailing in the snow.

Check out that beard! Plenty subtle changes that made these into something unique!

In the cases there are many many more marines and other models. I reunited these couple of lost men with the rest of them in the case. (And took the blood bowl teams out.)

Here is an example of a Bits Box. Loads of leftovers or compartmentalized bits for future projects!

And that is all time I have for my 40k post today! I have a lot more to showcase and just rediscover. I need to find more stuff, repair and paint things... And start a Votann Army.

I have decided that whatever I do make out of my 40k and hobby posts, that I will use the HBD of these posts to fund my hobby! Incentive!

Until next time...

Cheers!
@zakludick

Hive South Africa