What's On Your Table: To submit your work, please send up to 8 pics or short video to natfka@live.com
G’day Natfka,
You mentioned you’re running low on submissions and as I just finished
taking this years’ annual photos I thought I might as well share. I’ve
included the oldest army photo I have to show you the progress.
Let me take you back to 4th edition of 40k and the main armies you’d
see at my LFGS were marines, marines and very rarely Imperial Guard.
Having been in the hobby for a couples of years I owned approximately
3k of Space Wolves and another 2250pts of 13th Company. We had very
narrow view of the game back then, we thought marines were by far the
greatest around, we never played missions just keep going until
someone was tabled, it was the norm to tailor our army’s to our
opponent and the veterans at the LFGS who held sway hadn’t learned the
changes from 3rd to 4th edition. The Eldar codex had been around for
about a year or so and the models looked great. Hearing the vets’ talk
about this mysterious faction of specialists that required finesse and
skill to get the most out of intrigued me and I decided I would learn
how these specialist units worked and apply that knowledge to my Space
Wolves in order to improve my skill with the sons of Russ. So, one
evening in 2007 I made my first purchase. I wanted the fabled
Banshees, but the store only had Swooping Hawks on the shelf that
night (not the best unit in a marine heavy meta but I was determined).
By the time 5th edition landed Biel Tan had become my Craftworld of
choice as I totally loved the fluff and every battle I fought was to
restore the Eldar empire. Over time my Wolves were being shelved more
and more often as I declared war upon all the primitive usurpers that
plagued the galaxy. I had had enough of the old vets playing by their
own/out-dated rules so started to branch out playing at different
shops, with different groups and started playing in tournaments. I
became a bit of a rules nazi, I was so familiar with the rule book I
was often able to quote page numbers when people questioned a rule.
When the Space Wolves got an update in 5th edition, despite it being
one of the stronger books for that edition, I wasn’t playing my wolves
very much and the new codex had changed. They were no longer my
wolves. My very first big conversion, the Leman Russ exterminator, had
been removed from the codex and the 13th Company were no longer valid.
Because of this and some various rule changes I sold off my SW and
focused purely on my Eldar.
Fast forward to 2020 and I’m finally calling my army complete (model
wise, for now). I’ve had some other minor projects throughout the
years, a Dark Eldar wych cult (approx. 3k) that I’ve sold off,
Harlequins (2k) which don’t see much game time, an Imperial Fist army
that started off a single guy I wanted to paint that has since turned
in to a 12.5k army for my wife, and in the last couple of months 1k
points of Custodes to be used for 30k and 40k. Throughout all this
time however my Eldar have been my true passion to the point I’ve
converted models that exist in the lore but there’s no current rules
or models for (warlock titan, and the Void Spinner and Storm Serpent
super heavy tanks). Each year for a long time I’ve taken a photo of my
army to catalogue my painting progress and army growth. I’ve painted
everything by brush and have finally gotten everything to at least
tabletop standard with a list of things to finish off (most of which
is finishing off gemstones or fixing up white which has yellowed or
become dirty over time). For those wondering why some of the wave
serpents are different colours back in the day dedicated transports
could only be occupied by the unit that purchased it and originally
they were all spray painted a metallic green but I'd get confused who
was where so I differentiated them. There's lots of little nuances
throughout the army, squads are differentiated by either different
generations of sculpts or colours of gems on their weapons. So for
example the purple gem dire avengers ride in the wave serpent that has
a purple nebula, the red gem ride on the one with the red planet on
the hull etc. Aspect warriors have black under suits (this is also
reflected on the crimson hunters and dedicated wave serpents having
black on the lower half of the vehicle) whilst the civilians are
restricted to light grey/white.
To finish off the story of my gaming evolution I’ve become one of
those vets that gets a bit confused mixing up rules from previous
editions. I still play in tournaments but nowhere near as seriously
and I’m mostly interested in larger scare open play games.
Thanks for reading my story.
