Thursday, July 3, 2025

Warhammer 40,000: Boarding Actions (and a White Dwarf)

I picked up a copy of Warhammer 40,000: Boarding Actions yesterday. It contains rules and scenarios for playing battles aboard voidships and space hulks in the 41st millennium! I have a PILE of the spaceship interior terrain from that year of buying all the Kill Team sets (which I never got around to playing - or even assembling!) 

I figured I have it, I might as well paint it up and use it. 

One thing that is surprising about this book is that it is almost ALL rules and scenarios... like, almost 300 pages of it. There are over fifty scenarios, rules amendments for fighting shipboard battles and rules for building boarding parties for all the factions - with a minimal background fluff!!

While I was at my FLGS, I also picked up White Dwarf #511 from April. It is a special issue focusing on the Emperor's Children... since I'm playing Emperor's children, I figured it might be handy - if only for painting inspiration. 

There I did know that it included the rules for using Emperor's Children in Boarding Actions (as the Boarding Actions rules do not include them as it was published before there even was an Emperor's Children faction - other than just using the generic Chaos Space Marines rules and calling them Emperor's Children).

I was delighted to find the magazine also included and alternate Emperor's Children Combat Patrol. The standard Combat Patrol - which is available as a box set - includes units which I do not own (like, $140 worth of units!). At some point I was resigned to buying it at some point... but the Emperor's Children Combat Patrol included in the magazine is made up of THINGS I ALREADY OWN!? YAY!! Mind you, half of it is things I still need to paint... but both units were on the painting priority list, already, so... 

The disappointing thing about the magazine was the Emperor's Children in Boarding Party rules... there are only two FOUR units you are allowed to take!? Two characters; Lucious the Eternal (an Epic Hero) and a Lord Kakophonist (both of which I do not have and wasn't planning to pick up any time soon!?). No Lord Exultant... No Sorcerers... and Two Infantry Units; Flawless Blades and Terminiator Squads.  No Infractors... No Tormentors... (the core troops) Not even Noise Marines...!? WTF!? 

Ah well... It's not like I have any of the terrain painted yet. It's not like I have a shortage of other armies I'll be able to field in Boarding Actions... 

Guess maybe I might be picking up that Combat Patrol after all.. (to get the Flawless Blades!) 

This month's White Dwarf is another special focused on Khorne... so... maybe I'll be buying that one too... 

4 comments:

  1. The kid and I have been eyeing the boarding actions book for a while now, since it is supposedly all self contained (and of course the concept is cool).

    Do you actually need the codexes to play Boarding action, or does the book itself have profiles?

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    1. It does not have the profiles for the models used... which is a major bummer. The Boarding Parites are only 500 points. I have a smattering of all sorts of things and could put together a LOT of different boarding parties... If I wanted to play with up-to-date rules, I'd have to buy a lot of codexes... and I'm just not going to do that!!

      When 10th edition came out I DID download ALL the PDF index cards, so I have those i could use... though they aren't as up-to-date as the stuff in the codexes and the point values might thus be way off... but if I'm just playing for funsies with family or friends... Maybe that will work...?

      I like the scale of it - playing with 500 points was my favourite level of play - a bit more stuff that Kill Team, but not huge armies and games that take hours and hours to play. I liked that 9th edition actually incorporated smaller levels of play... and the only equivalent in the current edition is Combat Patrol with fixed lists!

      Now I just need to PAINT all that terrain I bought!?

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    2. Ah that's a bummer about the profiles.

      Fortunately 95% of the terrain could be metal with a heavy wash and drybrush, so that would make the painting pretty quick...

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    3. Yeah, I tried to do this over complex rusted look then picking out all the crazy little detailsl cables, lights, computer screens, knobs, skulls, etc, etc, etc... and it got a little overwhelming, so I abandoned it for a bit. I kind of want to get back to it... but I have WAY TOO MANY other things that I ALSO want to do RIGHT NOW!!?!?

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