First off, the Nephilim. When it comes to the rules for the
Nephilim, I think it’s way overcosted for what it can do (which is basically
just kill light vehicles and rear armour). Sadly, I’d already bought one and
its alter-ego, the Dark Talon, is even worse, so I built it anyway. I was
actually really impressed with this kit, if not with the rules behind it. I
think the design of the fighter itself is rather nice. I was worried from the
front-on pictures that the hull would be really blocky, but this turned out not
to be the case.
One of the issues I often have with GW vehicle kits is that
there is inevitably some warping on large pieces, which can be a real pain to
deal with when constructing the hull. The Nephilim has an interesting way
around this though – the engine pieces are designed to fit tightly around the
assembled hull, holding them into place even with minor warping. Everything
else fit together well and the whole thing was a breeze to assemble. I know it’s
been a while since the last time I built a vehicle, but this was by far the
easiest to build kit I’ve ever seen.
As for the weapons, I have to disagree with Discordian – the
avenger megabolter is the way to go on the Nephilim. With the remainder of its
weapons at S6 or less, the Nephilim is relegated to hunting light vehicles and
rear armours (AV10-11). The volume of fire is much more valuable here, and the
megabolter set-up will glance an AV10 or 11 vehicle to death on an average
shot, if it doesn’t kill outright. It really isn’t worth firing at AV12 or
better even with the lascannon (~40%
chance of a single penetrating hit, all other shots wasted), so I say go with
what will do the best against AV10-11. If the Nephilim had S8 missiles, it
would be different, but it doesn’t.
When
it came to the terminators, I decided to build a new command squad. I really
like the new Deathwing Knights, but having AP4 apart from a single round of
combat means that they’ll be one-hit wonders most of the time. I think any
Deathwing army would benefit from having a squad as heavy-hitters (plus they’re
great against light vehicles and chaos), but I field a company list with only
one or two terminator squads and I need those to have more versatility.
I
really like the robed look for the terminators, which is why I got the kit in
the first place. The only issue I had with this set was that the robe torsos
were each designed to fit on only one of the leg poses comfortably, so if you
want your terminators to have different poses you’ll have to do some modifying.
There’s also only one thunder hammer in the kit, so I had to scavenge a second
one for the above squad. Be warned when building a terminator command squad
though – unlike every other apothecary in the game I’ve ever seen (even others
in the same book), the Deathwing apothecary MUST give up his melee weapon,
meaning no power weapon of any sort on your apothecary.
I’ve
started painting this squad, so I’ll leave off with a few pictures of the one
model I have finished. This is actually my first time painting Deathwing in a
bone color, in the past I’ve used white drybrushed over black to simulate
rubbed-on ashes based on one of the older stories for the origin of the color,
but I felt that this would look better in the end. As for the robes, I think in
the future I’m going to go a bit more extreme with the highlight colors, as I’m
not satisfied with how much it stands out on the top part. Next up, the
champion with halberd (or Sgt. McFartface as Gothmog would call him).
