Hobby: What's next for the Vilniaus 39th?

What the rest of 2023 holds…

As I’m currently on holiday - and dislocated from the Vilniaus 39th - it seemed like a good inflection point on what’s next? Since the start of the year, focusing on the collection with this blog has helped me really ramp up the army, and tick off a few key things, including:

• Being able to field 1000 pt games comfortably and played in a reasonable time span.

• Able to play reasonably, having gone back and learned the rules at the tail end of 9th edition.

This is the first time I’ve done this in at least 15 years, and it’s been great to dive back into things with a fully painted collection.

So, what’s next for the Vilniaus 39th?

Goals

For the rest of the year, I break my goals for the Vilniaus 39th into three main areas:

• Focus on the Rule of Cool. This is the overriding imperative. With the Astra Militarum there’s a smorgasbord of cool units, plenty of which I haven’t even touched. And that’s not to mention potential allied units like Inquisitors, Knights, etc… Whatever I do is primarily guided by what units I think will be fun to assemble and paint, not on the particularities of the meta.

• Play 1500 pt games. Right now I technically probably do have at least 1500 pt games, and this affords me a decent tactical flexibility re what forces I bring to a particular game. As I look towards playing larger games, I will need at least 2000 pts on paper, to provide me more flexibility when picking my forces. See below for my hobby backlog.

• Play a tournament. I am a person best motivated by goals - I mean I’m writing goals right not for my hobby project! Whether that’s work deadlines, or giving myself a race to train towards, I always work best with goals. Doing my first ever tournament - not just with the Guard, but any miniature game - sounds like a great next step. If you have any good ideas for good ideas in the London area, please do give me a shout!

The Vilniaus 39th roadmap

TLDR: Visual roadmap below, with commentary underneath.

With the Vilniaus 39th, I see it as having a good bedrock of units now, comprising a variety of units that provide me a good degree of tactical flexibility. For example at 1000 pts I can lean heavily into infantry heavy or even pure infantry, or a heavy armour component, a mix, or some mechanised elements.

The below roadmap will help me progress towards larger games of up to 1500 pts, while providing more tactical flexibility by providing gaps, too. For example adding a basilisk and maybe a manticore will provide some much-needed indirect fire, and Gaunt’s Ghosts will provide some interesting capabilities to snag secondary objectives and to just experiment with. It also may be related to me reading that series of books for the first time right now…

I’m also very much interested in having 10 Rough Riders. What’s better than traditional horseback cavalry on battlefields dominated by tanks, energy weapons, and impossible technologies?

And of course, the roadmap is dominated by the rule of cool. Focus areas right now are finishing up two Castellans, which are actually old Tallern officer models from the 1990’s - they are almost as old as I am. They are brilliant old metal models, and could fit a variety of roles. And I’m also looking to finish Minka Leask soon, too, as she fits into the Rule of Cool very well.

Apart from that it’s looking to provide tactical options in other areas, for example a second Chimera so I can have a more serious mechanised contingent, and some elite - and very cool! - infantry with the Kasrkin.

That’s it from me this time, I’ll have updates soon as I return back to London. It’s been a nice break but looking forward to getting back to painting and a few games!