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Our Combat Patrols 4: Patrol Harder

Combat Patrol gives you a way to play quick games of Warhammer 40,000 with small forces – perfect for painting something different, trying out some new units or just getting more games in! We’ve brought you not one, not two, but three articles showing off some of our patrols – so why not a fourth, eh? Read on to check them out.

Shas’o Sarah

I’ve had most of a T’au Empire army sitting around for all three iterations of Shadowsun, but have taken this opportunity to finish basing enough of them to make a Combat Patrol to celebrate the new edition! 

I’d love to be able to tell you how I painted the main colour of their armour, but I have a somewhat laissez-faire approach to painting models, and I don’t really know… I took my inspiration from shark skin, so I started with something silvery on my palette (whichever silver one was closest during that particular painting session) and mixed in a few drops of various blues, greens, and greys each time to bring the shine down and (hopefully) come across as an alien alloy with slightly organic characteristics. Alongside a dark blue alternate colour and shiny brass accents, I had myself a colour… well, theme at least. 

Having taken no note of the exact measurements in my mixes, I’ve unsurprisingly ended up with a variety of similar, but different, shades throughout the force. I’ve since decided that I did it that way intentionally and no one will convince me otherwise. The Stealth Suits are just a remix of the same theme, and I was going for a kind of crackly look to represent them going into ‘night mode’.*

These relatively bright colours had me leaning towards dark bases to help them stand out, but I was stumped after that. Middenland Tufts looked too ‘normal’, but I didn’t just want them on a black gravel parking lot. I eventually decided to see what happened if I sprayed them, so I gave a sheet of tufts a very, very light frosting of Corax White spray, and was delighted with the results – it gave them just the hint of xenos flora I was hoping for! 

And with that, they were all ready to fight their first game of the new edition against Wade’s Flesh Tearers

They lost, sadly, but the margins were very slim. Despite its resilience against the Reivers, I’m thinking of switching the Piranha out for a Sniper Drone Squad for their next outing. 

For the Greater Good!

Phaeron Rhuairidh

I am a serial hobby butterfly, which is, if you’re unfamiliar, a whimsical way of describing a hobbyist who is pathologically unable to make up their mind. As such, Combat Patrol is a blessing for me. No longer will the dozen or so stubs of armies I have bring me shame – they’re Combat Patrols, innit? Much like the many others who opened Indomitus for the Space Marines only to fall in love with the robot skeletons, I’ve turned into a Necron fan overnight – Combat Patrol is my chance to kick off that collection.

As a dyspraxic, I’ve always really struggled with painting. I tend to rely on tricks and techniques rather than flawless brushwork, so here, I used a combination of textured paint and Ardcoat to create the hideous ferric nano-goo that adorns all of my Necrons. By spraying the models with Leadbelcher, shading with Basilicanum Grey Contrast paint, and drybrushing with Iron Hands Steel, I was able to get a rich, dark, battered-looking basecoat on my models with minimal effort. 

These first tests led me to convert a Purple Sun into a Transcendent C’tan – from there, the story for my Combat Patrol took shape. My dynasty was a forsaken one, assigned to guard a C’tan who never truly made the transfer from ‘terrifying paradimensional star vampire’ to ‘even more terrifying necrodermis god-surrogate’, and instead is trapped as a churning sphere of defective necrodermis. This malevolent substance has infected the dynasty, offering them strange new abilities. With a terrible cost, of course – this is Warhammer 40,000 after all. 

The idea is that this Combat Patrol will tell a story about my forces. I’m going to add more conversions and weird, goo-covered monstrosities to the force as it expands using this as a framework – I’m hoping to do so organically with Crusade once the list gets to 50 Power! For example, Canoptek constructs might create more goo, while the leaders are capable of shaping it into strange new forms – while also being ravaged by more developed infections. 

For more lore inspiration, I’ve been reading Nate Crowley’s Severed, which is wonderful. If you’ve just started a Necron force and want to learn more about their byzantine dynastic antics I cannot recommend it enough! 

Jarl Simon

Anyone who’s read the Road to Apocalypse article on my Space Wolves last year will know that my collection of the mighty sons of Russ is already fairly sizable to say the least…

I guess I have something of a soft spot for axe-wielding heroes who fight hard and play harder!** However, despite having painted at least one of almost every unit available to the Space Wolves, I’d barely scratched the surface of their Primaris units beyond a kill team and a few other additions. After reading the awesome Crusade rules, I knew it was the perfect excuse to expand this side of my collection. What I needed first was a suitably heroic leader to be my Warlord, so I was naturally drawn towards the newest addition to the Space Wolves Primaris roster – Ragnar Blackmane.

Yet as much as Ragnar is clearly all kinds of awesome, it didn’t quite feel right for a named Character to lead my nascent Crusade force. So, up stepped the third and newly Primarised version of my long-serving battlefield avatar, Jarl Sigvald Deathgranter, the Axeman of Russ.***  Here he is, along with his two previous incarnations from over the years.

To accompany my heroic representative (he says modestly) on the battlefield, I needed a suitably badass bunch of Wolf Guard to serve as his bodyguards (and drinking buddies). Primaris Lieutenant Kalf Wyrmblade is Sigvald’s huskarl and Battle Leader who, along with the Jarlsguard, forms an impenetrable shield wall around his lord. I made the Bladeguard Veterans of the Jarlsguard from standard Intercessor bodies to help achieve more static, defensive poses. I equipped Sigvald and his retainers with Wulfen storm shields, as the scale felt right on their Primaris frames, and painted the master-crafted power swords of the Jarlsguard to appear as stylised frost blades.

The rest of my Combat Patrol is a bit haphazard, formed from a few of the other Primaris units I’ve managed to paint so far, including a unit of Intercessors with stalker bolt rifles and an axe-wielding conversion of an Invictor Tactical Warsuit.****

I’ll soon be adding some Assault Intercessors and Intercessors with bolt rifles to offer some close/mid-range options to my Combat Patrol, as well as providing my budding Crusade force with enough Troops units to enable me to field a Battalion Detachment in Incursion-sized games. In fact, I’d better crack on with them now, as the Invictor jumped a few Power in Monday’s update, so I’ll no longer be able to squeeze it into my Combat Patrol!

Thanks to all our contributors. We’d love to see your Combat Patrols – use #New40K on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram to bring them to our attention!


* I don’t know what ‘night mode’ is, but I bet they have one.

** I mean, what’s not to love about celebrating a glorious victory with plenty of mjød while recounting stories of derring-do and general awesomeness?

*** I use the Primaris Captain datasheet from Indomitus to represent him, with the master-crafted power sword profile representing his fancy axe. After all, I figured that if I was a mighty warrior of the Space Wolves, I’d go into battle old-school-style – with an axe and shield (or two axes, for that matter)!

**** You may have noticed a theme here…