Nate Paints 40k

This week is one of my favourite overall blocks of models that I have painted – My Outriders Squad with ATV and Chaplain on Bike!

These models were probably the first models that I bought because of how they played in game specifically, rather than their actual looks. By the time I bought these I’d played a couple of small (500-1000 point) space marine games and had come away with two main points

• They were far far too slow for what I wanted to do
• They were nowhere near as good in melee as I wanted them to be

With those two things in mind, I did a bit of reading and settled pretty quickly on an outrider squad with a chaplain on bike – they’re fast, with the chaplain they hit pretty hard, and also they’re big chunky boys on big chunky bikes, what is there not to love?!

Well.. It turns out that building them is one thing to not love. The outriders plastic kit is potentially one of the worst kits I have ever built. It’s fragile, it doesn’t fit together right, the seams where the two halves of the bikes meet is super visible and obvious. I got through two bikes before seriously considering just giving up on these purely based on how god-awful they were to build.

Luckily though, I persevered and got these all done. The bikes are all built mostly as instructed, but my ATV is very heavily modified. Taking inspiration from Off Beat Builds and his beautiful ATV Kitbash (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_V-lUtTh1U) I decided to make mine much more like a jerry-rigged pickup truck than the original ATV, and I am really happy with how it turned out!

Overall I really enjoyed painting and basing these models, and I think they turned out fantastic. In game they’re pretty good, and they certainly gave my friend’s Custodes a seconds pause when they first went up against one another (although I still got absolutely thrashed). With the chaplain attached these bikes hit real hard in melee, and with the right detachment and enhancements they can be a real menace with advance and charge or stealth to get them right in the action or keep them unharmed.

I do have a couple of models that I would like to add to these in the future – somewhere in my pile of shame is an old attack bike from the pre-primaris times; a model that I think looks 10x cooler than the ATV and I will absolutely be building and basing to proxy as a second ATV when I finally get around to it. I also have all the bits to kit bash an Apothecary on Bike, which although in legends, still has some pretty powerful rules (essentially acting like a regular apothecary, but able to be attached to outriders!).