Mantis Warriors Update

Hipster filter! I liked Mantis Warriors before they were cool.

We're in Week 2 of Scott's campaign at Gamers Sanctuary and I've painted some models, purchased some hobby upgrades for the army, and come to an epiphany.

I decided to paint my sniper scouts first because I imagine I'll be using them in every game. I like scouts a ton, I like how they can infiltrate and they can get a 3+ cover save. Mantis Warriors are also known for their stealth skills so they'll be one of the main elements of my army most of the time. They have performed admirably in most of the games I've played so far.

Shots of the two units (2x sergeant with sniper rifle, 3 scouts with sniper rifles, missile launcher). I have to finish painting their bases black.

I also purchased some custom dice for my Mantis Warrior army from Chessex. You may recall that I had these done for Tyranids as well. I think having sweet dice that tie into your army and a nice display board just makes everything really cool package that impresses people.

My Tyranid dice design

The last thing that happened this week with Mantis Warriors was that I had an epiphany. I've been a grognard for a while about special characters. I hated how they changed the game, introduced dozens of special rules that I had to learn, and encouraged players to be as non-creative as possible.

This pretty well illustrates how I view myself in my mind's eye

It is pretty clear with 5th Edition coming to a close that in 6th Edition special characters will be even bigger than they were in 5th. If you can't beat 'em, join 'em. I feel like special characters have been created to encourage you to use them and their dozens of special rules and the codexes are built with them as the centerpiece.

The other thing is that I always always always encourage people to play their game differently than they usually do, and special characters open up those differences everywhere. I was being a hypocrite!

The first special character I'll be using will be Telion. He'll be the dude with the scope in hand in my scout sniper squad. He'll be sweet for making a missile launcher BS 6 or picking out sergeants. After that, I'm looking at Captain Muggario Khan with a command squad on bikes with storm shields and thunder hammers depending on the points limit for week 3. I'll write up some fluff for Muggario to protect my wounded pride.

Keep watching the blog for more news on FOODHAMMER!