I'm back and thinking about 40K characters

It's the time of year now when I can get back to some more serious hobbying.  My dark, cold shed is not the best place for building or painting over the winter months, so my projects tend to get put on hold.  But now that Quinn is recruiting for Invasion at Warhammer World in April again, it's time to get cracking again.

Not that I have been away really, as I have still been playing.  Not only is the School Club live and well, with the kids agitating to get involved in the School League, but Quinn has also set up the Newbury Gaming Club on a Monday Evening at the Royal British Legion.  I have managed to get in a couple of games there, although it clashes with my son's football training.  50p for the food (a buffet of pizza / sandwiches plus chips) is also great value.

I finally got Dark Vengeance for Christmas, and the mini rulebook is very handy.  I haven't made any of the figures yet, but I was flicking through the new Chaos codex and spotted the rules for Plague Zombies.  A Fearless tar-pit unit has many uses, so I have assembled and basecoated 20 so far with a mix of Catachan and Zombie bits.  I am not sure whether to extend my current Chaos army, which was all done in the old Brazen Brass, or start a new one with an new colour scheme or theme.  For the Plague Zombies I of course had to pick up Typhus, so I may do a Nurgle force.  I suppose I could re-use my T6 Nurgle bikers plus Sorceror, which are always fun.

On the other hand, I am currently reading the Word Bearers trilogy, with Marduk and the brilliant Possessed Burias, so that is another interesting idea.  And whilst I have a lot of the new red paints, do I want more to do more red power-armour?

I have never been a great fan of using special characters.  I think this goes back to my Warhammer Fantasy days about 10 years ago, when a ranked up unit always seemed to me to be more useful than a particular character.  However, now with the challenges in 40K, special characters seem to represent much better value than generic HQs.  Indeed, my best gaming success was with one such character at Carnage last year, when I used Chenkov for the Send in the Next Wave rule in my 800pts guard list.

Perhaps this is a natural progression?  I am still not going for the Über one-man-army type character, but rather looking at characters who can bring the best out of other units in the army.

As well as Typhus, I have been looking at the Vulkan rules my Howling Griffons.  Even though my first SM army were Salamanders, I was never a fan of the Vulkan model, which just seemed to me a bit too over-dressed.

So I have now converted my own Howling Griffon version, using the SM Commander model, a GK halberd and bits from a BA flamer pistol for the Gauntlet of the Forge.

Finally on the characters front, I finally found the Games Day Runepriest model I had been looking for at the Call to Arms show in Theale last week.  As always, too many armies, too little time!