Adeptus Mechanicus

HQ
Epistolary (Tech Priest) - 175
frag
plasma pistol
master-crafted force weapon
psychic hood
terminator honors
fury of the ancients
fear of the darkness

Inquisitor Lord (Tech Priest) - 220
plasma pistol
purgatus
3x acolyte
2x sage
3x familiar
3x veteran guardsman w/plasma gun

ELITE
Venerable Dreadnought (Robot Maniple) - 150
venerable
multi-melta
storm bolter
extra armor
tank hunter

Terminator Squad (Astartes Tech-Adept Squad) - 240
2x assault cannon

Callidus Assassin - 120

TROOPS
Tactical Squad #1 (Techmarine Squad) (10) - 288
2x meltagun
veteran sgt
master-crafted power fist
plasma pistol
rhino
extra armor
smoke launchers

Tactical Squad #2 (Techmarine Squad) (10) - 273
2x meltagun
veteran sgt
master-crafted power fist
plasma pistol
rhino
extra armor
smoke launchers

Battle Sisters Squad (Gun Servitor Detachment) (15) - 214
2x meltagun
veteran sister superior
plasma pistol

HEAVY SUPPORT
Vindicator #1 (Heavy Robot Maniple) - 160
power of the machine spirit
dozer blade

Vindicator #2 (Heavy Robot Maniple) - 160
power of the machine spirit
dozer blade

Dark Angels

HQ:


Azrael - 225


Ezekiel - 170


Command Squad #1 (5) - 235
2 powerfists
standard bearer with chapter banner
apothecary
rhino


Command Squad #2 (5) - 175
2 flamers
apothecary
1 meltabombs
rhino


Elite:


Company Veterans (9) - 290
3 powerfists
rhino


Troops:


Tactical Squad #1 (10) - 280
powerfist
lascannon
plasmagun
razorback (heavy bolter and storm bolter)


Tactical Squad #2 (10) - 280
powerfist
lascannon
plasmagun
razorback (heavy bolter and storm bolter)


Heavy Support:


Vindicator #1 - 130
dozer blade


Vindicator #2 - 130
dozer blade


Whirlwind - 85

Chaos - Focus on Slaanesh

Alright, so I went a little bonkers with the release of the new Chaos codex. At least I didn't go and spend a whole bunch of money on new models... maybe fifty bucks, if that. The first thing that everyone notices in the troops section are the Khorne Berserkers because they're rather brutal. I did the math on them, and when 10 of them charge, they can kill like 7 MEQ models, and that's without upgrading with a Skull Champion. That's pretty good, but what about the other troop choices? As it turns out, the Noise Marines are really, really good.

HQ:

Sorcerer - 150
mark of slaanesh
lash of submission
jump pack
meltabombs

Daemon Prince - 155
mark of slaanesh
lash of submission
wings

Greater Daemon - 100

Troops:

Noise Marines Squad #1 (7) - 250
champion
powerfist
doom siren
4 sonic blasters
rhino

Noise Marines Squad #2 (7) - 250
champion
powerfist
doom siren
4 sonic blasters
rhino

Noise Marines Squad #3 (7) - 250
champion
powerfist
doom siren
4 sonic blasters
rhino

Noise Marines Squad #4 (5) - 140
blastmaster

Noise Marines Squad #5 (5) - 140
blastmaster

Noise Marines Squad #6 (7) - 190
champion

Heavy Support:

Defiler - 150

Obliterators (3) - 225

The Noise Marines are the mainstay of the army and they're very high quality troops. It's all thanks to that nasty little contraption called the Doom Siren. Talk about devastating. People thought that Wind of Chaos was good, but pount for pound, when you're facing off against regular troops (not monstrous creatures or crazy big stuff), this thing is much better and also requires no psychic test to use. It doesn't take the place of an extra attack (like a flamer would), and it has AP3...and here's the kicker: it ignores cover saves. Since the army strategy is to wipe large amounts of MEQ models off the table, I decided to take 3 close-assault units with Doom Sirens and Powerfists and back them with Rhino transports.

Noise Marine units equipped with Blastmasters are pretty decent too, and especially good at anti-MEQ at long range. It's debatable whether or not they're better than a Defiler (140 points for a 5-man unit with BM, as opposed to a Defiler's 150), but I think they'll shine out in a 2500 point army when your 3 heavy support choices are already filled up.

The units that bring the entire force together are the Sorcerer and the Daemon Prince, specifically for the Lash of Submission psychic power. In concert with the Doom Siren and the rest of the army's template weapons, it's the most deadly, versatile power ever...even more powerful than Fear of the Darkness and Fury of the Ancients. If there's a unit that can't be dealt with by the Prince, the Greater Daemon, long-range Obliterator firepower, or close-range Powerfist/DoomSiren units, then perhaps it can be pushed away by the lash. But what kinds of units fall into that category? Nothing comes to mind immediately with the exception of an army of Eldar grav tanks, but then again, nothing can really hurt them reliably to begin with except EMP grenades or maybe Swooping Hawks.

The only other nasty stuff in the army are the Defiler and Obliterators, and those units speak for themselves when it comes to how powerful they are...especially now that the Obliterators get Plasma Cannons!

Ultramarines

What better way to begin than with the purveyors of purity and Imperial justice. The Ultramarines' primarch, Roboute Guilliman, created and implemented the Codex Astartes, detailing a complex and extremely structured method for the Adeptus Astartes to follow as they wage everlasting war against the enemies of the Emperor. I began creating the army around a few key core units, chosen specifically for their stature within the Ultramarines chapter.

Here's the list:

HQ:

Marneus Calgar (in Artificer Armor) - 550
Honor Guard (7)
Chapter Champion
Ancient

Chief Librarian Tigurius - 419
Command Squad (5 with Infiltrate)
Epistolary (Might of Heroes and Fury of the Ancients)

Elite:

Tyranid Hunters Squad (10) - 221
Veteran with Lightning Claws
Flamer

Venerable Dreadnought - 130
Assault Cannon
Extra Armor

Troops:

Tactical Squad #1 (5) - 90
Lascannon

Tactical Squad #2 (5) - 90
Lascannon

Fast Attack:

Land Speeder #1 - 80
Assault Cannon
Heavy Bolter

Land Speeder #2 - 75
Multi-melta
Heavy Flamer

Land Speeder #3 - 85
Multi-melta
Typhoon Missile Launcher

Heavy Support:

Devastator Squad (8) - 260
4 Plasma Cannons

Honestly this army is based on a very high level of story involvement. I wanted an Ultramarines army that said "Hey we're the Ultramarines," and "Look, we can prove it because Calgar and Tigurius are right there!" And of course, I had to use those wacky Tyranid Hunters because nothing says Ultramarines like a healthy feud with an alien race that just doesn't care about said feud.

Due to the expensive cost of these core elements, and the debatable value of a 500+ point Honor Guard, I had to raise the power level of the army's other units to compensate. I included the three separate units of speeders and two 5-man lascannon squads, all backed up by some long-range big guns. However, the most powerful element to the force is Tigurius leading an infiltrating command squad. If facing an army that isn't fearless, he's most likely to use his Fear of the Darkness special ability to chase multiple units from the battle on the first or second turn.

The Five Double-Yoos

This will be the first in a series of articles detailing my various Warhammer 40,000 armies. It'll be a long list of articles that, written weekly, will take a year or more to complete. One thing I wish to focus on is the specific reasoning behind each army's construction. Why choose an army's specific makeup? What does the army have to offer? Is it strategically sound and tactically flexible, or is it simply a collection of models that share a story background?

The Year is 40,000 CE

First conceived by a British company named Games Workshop, Warhammer 40,000 grew from a small but interesting role-playing sci-fi story background into an entire universe of intricacy. It now stands as the backdrop for a small fleet of mass-produced tabletop strategy war games. While appealing to traditional game enthusiasts, the license also attracts hobbyists; its models are fully collectible, and require assembly and painting.

There are essentially two halves to the story behind the universe of Warhammer 40,000 (or WH40K for short), and they are divided chronologically. The first half, having been originally written as the only WH40K setting, takes place in the modern 41st millennium. Most books set in this time period begin with an introductory page that looks like this:

"It is the 41st millennium.

For more than a hundred centuries the Emperor has sat immobile on the Golden Throne of Earth. He is the master of mankind by the will of the gods, and master of a million worlds by the might of his inexhaustible armies. He is a rotting carcass writhing invisibly with power from the Dark Age of Technology. He is the Carrion Lord of the Imperium for whom a thousand souls are sacrificed every day, so that he may never truly die.
Yet even in his deathless state, the Emperor continues his eternal vigilance. Mighty battlefleets cross the daemon-infested miasma of the warp, the only route between distant stars, their way lit by the Astronomican, the psychic manifestation of the Emperor’s will. Vast armies give battle in His name on uncounted worlds. Greatest amongst his soldiers are the Adeptus Astartes, the Space Marines, bio-engineered super-warriors. Their comrades in arms are legion: the Imperial Guard and countless planetary defence forces, the ever-vigilant Inquisition and the tech-priests of the Adeptus Mechanicus to name only a few. But for all their multitudes, they are barely enough to hold off the ever-present threat from aliens, heretics, mutants – and worse.
To be a man in such times is to be one amongst untold billions. It is to live in the cruelest and most bloody regime imaginable. These are the tales of those times. Forget the power of technology and science, for so much has been forgotten, never to be re-learned. Forget the promise of progress and understanding, for in the grim dark future there is only war. There is no peace amongst the starts, only an eternity of carnage and slaughter, and the laughter of thirsting gods."

It sets a rough stage for a bleak period in human history (or future history as the case may be). Humanity rules the stars, and a powerful half-dead psyker (psychic) is their god of choice. They worship him just as modern religions worship god. The million world-encompassing human empire is called The Imperium of Man, and it is held together by the ability to travel between worlds through warp space (simply called the warp). This is not too far from our concept of a wormhole, but the distinction is that there are evil, sentient beings that live there. Since humans don’t really understand the warp, they refer to these beings in a classic, gothic, and religious sense as daemons. While traveling in the warp there is no way to tell where you’re going. However, the half-dead god-emperor emits a psychic beacon and creates a futuristic version of the North Star, allowing deep space navigators to find their way.

Humanity is a race that is becoming psychic. Every psychic emits an aura that warp daemons feed on, and there is a real danger of daemonic possession. To complicate things further, the god-emperor absorbs the energy from psychic humans to keep him alive, keeping the warp beacon alive, allowing transit amongst the stars, allowing humanity to continue its Imperium. So essentially, the emperor is competing with daemons for psychic humans to prey on.

Another threat to mankind are the various alien races that roam the galaxy. They take all sorts of shapes and ideologies, and war with them is constant, threatening to dismantle imperial society one conquered world at a time.

The final threat to humanity is itself, and this comes in many forms. Some humans don’t like the Imperium and try to leave it. Whether the people of that world are attempting to annex themselves into an alien cluster of worlds, or they have devolved into a planetary daemon-worshipping cult, worlds occasionally declare their independence.

Plots to implement succession from the Imperium are ever present, and since the threat of losing a major imperial holding to a foreign power is intolerable to mankind’s single-mindedness, an organization called the Inquisition was formed. Patterned somewhat after the traditional inquisition of the medieval churches of Europe, this Inquisition is a three-fold operation run by free-thinking agents – inquisitors of the ordos Malleus, Hereticus and Xenos – each agency and its agents rooting out threats to imperial security in their own way.

Stories of the Inquisition, along with the Imperium’s fighting forces (the aforementioned Space Marines and Imperial Guard) make up the bulk of WH40K fiction. However, the second half of the background material takes place ten thousand years before the current story line era – in the year 30,000 – and in this more recently developed series of novels, it is introduced with the following passage:

"…10,000 Years Earlier

The Horus Heresy

It is a time of Legend.
Mighty heroes battle for the right to rule the galaxy. The vast armies of the Emperor of Earth have conquered the galaxy in a Great Crusade – the myriad alien races have been smashed by the Emperor’s elite warriors and wiped from the face of history.
The dawn of a new age of supremacy for humanity beckons.
Gleaming citadels of marble and gold celebrate the many victories of the Emperor. Triumphs are raised on a million worlds to record the epic deeds of his most powerful and deadly warriors.
First and foremost amongst these are the Primarchs, superheroic beings who have led the Emperor’s armies of Space Marines in victory after victory. They are unstoppable and magnificent, the pinnacle of the Emperor’s genetic experimentation. The Space Marines are the mightiest human warriors the galaxy has ever known, each capable of besting a hundred normal men or more in combat.
Organised into vast armies of tens of thousands called Legions, the Space Marines and their Primarch leaders conquer the galaxy in the name of the Emperor.
Chief amongst the Primarchs is Horus, called the Glorious, the Brightest Star, favourite of the Emperor, and like a son unto him. He is the Warmaster, the commander-in-chief of the Emperor’s military might, subjugator of a thousand thousand worlds and conqueror of the galaxy. He is a warrior without peer, a diplomat supreme.
As the flames of war spread through the Imperium, mankind’s champions will all be put to the ultimate test."

This prequel story arc tells the story of the schism between the brothers of the Space Marine Legions, and is currently in the process of giving a very complete and detailed account of what happened ten thousand years previous to the current timeline. The thing that makes this historical account interesting is its ability to inspire my sense of wonder about Earth history. What if we all of a sudden had a written account of what happened throughout all of human history? It would be rather amazing.

To avoid inducing narcoleptic tendencies in my readers, I’ll simply say “If you want to read further into the background of the WH40K universe, check out the following links:”

http://www.criticalhit.co.uk/component/option,com_wrapper/Itemid,55/

http://warhammer40k.wikia.com/wiki/Timeline

In addition there are an unlimited number of online resources dedicated to this all-encompassing storyline, most of which can be found linked to a simple Wikipedia search for Warhammer 40k.

Authors of Note

If you’re considering reading any WH40K related novels, there are two authors whose works can’t be ignored. The first of these is Sandy Mitchell, who is known for his daring and delightful (never thought I’d describe them that way but it fits) stories about an Imperial Guard political officer (Commissar Cain). In such a morbid time period, where a career army officer is likely to go insane while witnessing the horrors of combat with aliens, mutant psykers and daemons, Commissar Cain plays it cool and just tries to get by. He’s a light-hearted sitcom character stuck in a dreadful world of laser guns and daemonic plague, and it’s fun to see someone like Buck Rogers make a reappearance in sci-fi. Mitchell is a fine author, but deserves most of his writing credits as his real-life persona of Alex Stewart.
The second author is the much lauded Dan Abnett. Dan is a comic book, graphic novel, and all-around sci-fi writer that’s been in the business for a long, long period of time. His main contributions to WH40K come in four sets of novels. The first is a trilogy named for the three branches of the Imperial Inquisition, of which their main character is an agent. Inquisitor Gregor Eisenhorn of the Ordo Xenos travels about, from world to world, uncovering evil cults, rogue psykers, and warp-infested dens of evil. Throughout the trilogy of books (Xenos, Malleus and Hereticus) we follow his career and his life (he lives to be somewhere around eight hundred years old) of chasing daemons both external and internal. The books give a great account of what it must be like to be an agent of the emperor’s Inquisition, backed with unlimited power and resources, and able to destroy a planet overrun by evil with the touch of a button.
Abnett’s second trilogy is a spin-off of the Eisenhorn series, in which the Inquisitor’s premier pupil and interrogator, Gideon Ravenor, sets off to pursue his own inquisitorial career. It’s pretty much the same stuff as the Eisenhorn books, but with a new twist here and there.
The third, and most popular of his works tell tale (now twelve novels long) of a regiment in the Imperial Guard called Gaunt’s Ghosts. The series being named after the regiment, they make a fine collection of volumes detailing the brutality of futuristic warfare seen through the eyes of the common man. Another Commissar, Ibram Gaunt, leads his men (he calls them ghosts) through book after book of the absolute worst that any human being could possibly endure.
Finally, Abnett is just beginning his foray into writing novels about the powerful and terrifying Space Marine legions. Actually they aren’t so powerful and terrifying because not a single author that’s written about them has done them justice…until Dan Abnett came along and wrote the introductory book to the Horus Heresy series (the prequels). The series is penned by multiple authors in the employ of a U.K. based publisher, a subsidiary of Games Workshop called The Black Library. Occasionally Abnett will step in to give the books a much needed shot of adrenaline, fading into the background after a while to work on other projects.