40k Narrative: The Dark Templar – part 1

The Dark Templar were a broken chapter.

Constant war against a torrent of foes had brought them to the edge of extinction. Their homeworld destroyed, the survivors had been hiding out in deep space for centuries, gathering resources and rebuilding what they could.

Their fall from grace had been swift and out of nowhere. The reality was it had only been the 1st Company that had turned, but to the rest of the Imperium the entire chapter was tainted. They had been hunted down by the entire universe it seemed – other loyal chapters were dispatched to exterminate them and, once on the run, other races could smell blood and went in for the easy kill.

But they had not succumbed to the weight of hatred, they had endured a terrible trial and survived… just about. They lacked a lot of the resources that any other chapter would have. They also lacked numbers. Many of the chapter's veteran marines had been killed – a terrible loss indeed – but they were rebuilding and recruiting. Focus has shifted to sourcing and training initiates and the ranks were slowly being fleshed out again. It was now time to find a more permanent base of operations.

Scouts were sent out to recon a select number of planets. To see who else was about and the viability of a long-term stay. One such planet was #0204/211214… or Draa'san as the Dark Templar knew it in their native tongue. A small contingent, led by Sergeant Taal, made planetfall in the southern hemisphere and began their search.

Who, or what would they find…?




Illustration sourced from WH40k wiki and re-coloured by yours truly.


P.S. I've posted this at 7:45pm on Friday evening but Blogger is so useless you guys probably won't see it for another 5 hours if past experience is any indication!

40k Combat Patrol Escalation

In my last post I mentioned that myself and Bull are going to dip our toes back into the murky 40k waters, albeit in a low-key and retro fashion.

We're going to give 40k in 40 minutes - otherwise known as Combat Patrol - a go and we're going to use hallowed 4th Edition rules and codexes. This takes us back to our glory days of 40k and tournaments. Good times.

So the opening challenge is to create a 400pt combat patrol army to face Bull's (forgone conclusion) Orks. I managed to conjure up 4 chaos armies almost instantly, influenced heavily by former tournament army lists. However, as I hinted at previously, I wanted to take this opportunity to do something different. Given that I have almost no hobby time these days this is an insane road to go down - but I already have several unfinished hobby projects... what's one more right?!

I have never had a fully functioning loyal space marine army. I have my first incarnation Dark Templar back in the late 90s when I first started playing 40k tournaments, but they never felt like a cohesive army, rather a random collection of models I liked played under a Black Templar army list.

I already have an Imperial Fist project underway. This seemed like the perfect opportunity to kill two birds with one stone - get a new army together and finish my IF project. But that would be too obvious and straightforward.

I've made the decision to go back to my Dark Templar and show them a bit of love. Now, the idea for the DT was that they would all be in Mk VI armour. This inevitably involves a lot of grief in terms of collection specific bits, casting up bits in resin, sculpting icons onto shoulder pads, etc. - something I don't have a lot of time for.

With that in mind I've decided to start slowly, in the same way an Escalation league would. I've also decided to re-use a lot of models I already have - scouts!

I already have over 20 models with bolters/combat weapons. I also have my 4 snipers that have been an ongoing project forever.

My starting force will, of course, be 400 pts which seems a very achievable target (let's be honest if I can't manage that I might as well not bother, lol). I can then slowly add to the force as I try different lists for my 400 point games. Once I have a reasonable number of models we could up the game size, and so on.

Those of you who have been following the blog a while will know I've been here before many times - lots of great ideas without much coming to full fruition. Wonder how this one will go?

The Return Of 40k In 40 Minutes

Since the last post it's been 40k that's been on my mind. Never thought I'd see the day but there we are. However, I have no intention of getting stuck in again, but a little dabble here and there wouldn't go amiss – after all I have a cupboard full of GW plastics!

It was by pure accident that I came across a solution – 40k in 40 minutes!

Way back at what seems like the dawn of time this article, written by a guy running a school club with limited time, proposed some additional guidelines for playing small games of 40k. There are several sources on the net that have 'converted' the rules for 7th Edition but I'm not interested in that.

I want to go full retro.

So, with that in mind, I'm putting together a list or two using older codexes ready for 4th Edition 40k.
It'll be just like the old days – lots of theory crafting!

I have a lot of troops to choose from – more Chaos than I can count – but I also have plenty of stuff on sprues and in boxes so could, theoretically, build a new army (lol).

I guess we'll see which way this goes very soon!