Guest Writer: John Paul
I have never played in a Warhammer 40,000 tournament despite playing the game for the better part of twenty years. So, when a friend of mine reached out and asked if I’d like to take part in one in late May, I decided to say, “Why not?!” On May 28th, I’ll be participating in a 2,000 point tournament using my Salamanders army.
I know that they’re not currently viewed as an upper-echelon army, but I feel the Armour of Contempt rule and their slightly altered Chapter Trait gives them a bit more play. Likewise, I’m not really a “competitive” gamer. Plus, they’re the only army I’ve got with over 2,000 points painted. Despite that, I decided to cobble together a list featuring a number of currently unpainted or partially painted model as much as a motivation for me to knock out some exciting projects as it is to enjoy my first tournament. If I’m gonna get my butt kicked by strangers, I’d at least like my army to look pretty damned good. I thought that the process of preparing for the tournament and challenging myself to paint a significant portion of my army in a fairly narrow window (it’s April 24th at the time of writing this article) would make for an interesting project log for readers to follow along with.
Here’s the actual list: JP’s Salamanders Tournament List.
The premise is fairly simple: rely on the weight of tough targets bolstered by the new Armour of Contempt rule–like my Redemptor Dreadnoughts, Heavy Intercessors, and Primaris Gladiators–to take the mid-table and hold objectives while delivering pain. The Primaris Librarian’s Flame Shield and Drakeskin powers should enhance some of the intrinsic toughness of those models while the Primaris Techmarine can travel upfield with the Redemptors, providing repairs and bonuses to their firepower. Five Bladeguard Veterans and Adrax make up the melee hammer of my force, traveling in a shield domed Impulsor to preserve them as they head wherever they’re most needed. His +1 to wound on melee attacks syncs very nicely with their already impressive melee output, and stratagems can bolster that even further. There are two “odd ball” choices in my list: the Eliminators and the Hammerstrike Stormspeeder. The rationale here is one that will make competitive gamers cringe: I love these models, want to paint them, and think they’ll look awesome on the tabletop. I looked at putting a large unit of Eradicators (which are already mostly painted) into the list, but I felt I had enough anti-tank elsewhere.
My relative lack of troops means that my objective game might suffer a bit. The Hammerstrike lets me get to distant objectives with speed while the Eliminators offer another dangerous infiltration unit that can either camp a home objective or sneak onto one further afield. I did debate switching out the Hammerstrike for a 2nd unit of Heavy Intercessors, and I’m still debating it. The second squad will be a sort of “bonus” squad when it comes to the hobbying end of things. If I can find time to paint it along with the other items, then I can make some decisions when it comes to army composition. For now, however, the Hammerstrike will be my chief priority.
As for the hobby end of things? I’ve got some painting to do. I am not a very speedy painter, unfortunately, as I tend to be a bit of a perfectionist and lean towards a style that is more about quality results than rapid results. But, I am very familiar with the scheme, and I’m excited to take on the challenge. I do have some fully painted models and squads that I can sub in if needed, but I’m really happy with the list as is. I decided to sort of “tier out” my painting obligations in preparation for the tournament. The first is the “completely unpainted” tier. This includes the 2nd Gladiator, the Hammerstrike Stormspeeder, the Heavy Intercessors, and two of the character choices: Adrax Agatone and the Primaris Librarian. My goal will be to start with the stuff that I can go airbrush heavy on in my first week of painting, so the vehicles and intercessors will be my early focus. I took some time to break them up into sub assemblies to save me time during the process.
The next tier is the characters. Adrax and the Librarian are models that I’m extremely excited to paint. The hang-up, though, is that I tend to invest a lot of time into painting my character models. It makes sense, they deserve a lot of focus and also tend to simply be “busier” models than stock troops. These are going to serve as my palette cleansers for when I am struggling with motivation to churn and burn through the same familiar recipes. I’ll be able to turn to my librarian and mess with his blue armor or fool around with flames on Adrax.
Finally, I have the “work in progress” tier. These are Salamanders models/units that I started but simply never got around to finishing. This tournament will hopefully light a bit of a fire under my rear to finally complete some of these wayward projects. In this category, I have the Bladeguard Veterans, which I’m excited to complete since I have a pretty wicked molten blade recipe (don’t worry, I’ll do a Hobby Hangout on that in the future).
I also have the Eliminators (I’ll be sharing my approach to camo cloaks) and my second Redemptor Dread in this category.
My goal for next week is to have all of my basecoats laid down and decals completed on everything except for Adrax and the Librarian. I’ll let you know how it goes while sharing the occasional tutorial along the way! Thanks for giving this a read. If you have any comments or suggestions, please share them in the comments below.
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