Contemptor Kevin's Combat Patrol Issue 34 Review

Happy holidays Combat Patrolers, and welcome to the review of Issue #34 of Combat Patrol magazine. Here, we take a look at the second half of the Legionaries kit, and the magazine support this unit gets. Like with the rest of the Chaos Space Marines Combat Patrol, the model issues come with a surprising amount of support. We also get a special treat that is invaluable to those of us who want to do Warhammer 40K trivia competitively. As always, thank you to Goonhammer and Hachette for the opportunity to review these models, magazines, and materials.

Narrative Materials

This issue has a few different narrative selections. First, we have a discussion of the Thirteen Black Crusades led by Abaddon the Despoiler. The article explains "Over thousands of years, citizens lived in fear of another, apparently unpredictable attack from deep in the Eye of Terror." However we then learn that "Each crusade weakened some vital objective throughout the galaxy, many of which were barely understood by even the wisest leaders in the Imperium." We also get a nifty spread of a full Chaos Army, with Abaddon the Despoiler leading a combined Black Legion/Iron Warriors army with Titans!

Credit: Robert "TheChirurgeon" Jones

The next page then gives us an extremely valuable piece of Warhammer 40K Lore, which is a full list of each Black Crusade, what year the Crusade took place, and what Abaddon was doing during the Crusade. This is actually a valuable piece of competitive information, as this is vital in-depth Warhammer 40K Lore used in competitive trivia events. So I need to get a copy of this page to J.D. and Craig, so we can all commit it to memory.

We then learn about Khorne, who he is (a being of pure wrath and violence, and it matters not whether it is his foes or his followers whose lifeblood is spilled to feed his unquenchable thirst and lust for death and battle." The next page contains a selection of Khorne models, all of which are AOS-compatible models.

Bloodcrusher of Khorne - Credit Beanith

Hobby Materials

We get the second half of the Legionaries kit, which means it's time to build and paint all ten Chaos Space Marines. There's a guide on how to paint Black Legionaries, which gets these guys up to a battle ready standard.

Credit: Robert "TheChirurgeon" Jones

I built these guys in accordance with the instructions to fit the Combat Patrol datasheets. But instead of painting them as Black Legion, I opted to paint them as Red Corsairs. Owing to the press of the holidays and a significant amount of illness, I was unable to complete the unit by the time this article needed to get to publication. But I did make significant progress on the unit, getting the Aspiring Champion *almost* done. So I have a recipe! The idea behind this is to be as effortless as possible for Chaos Space Marines without doing Iron Warriors. The trim and detailing make it difficult, but with some time and energy to focus they'll turn out great.

There's a ton of different greebles and textures on these miniatures, which take a bit of time to paint. Still, I think the challenge for me in getting these guys done was the trim: I'm used to metallic trims, not black trims, and trying to get them to look good quickly is challenging.

Gaming Materials

We get two big sections of gaming materials this issue. First, we have a list of 10th Edition's Weapon Abilities. This section has a nice picture of all sorts of Space Marine weapons.

Black Templars Devastators. Credit: SRM

We also get a new Scenario, Scenario 22: Servants of the Gods. This pits the Dark Apostle and his two schumucks and a unit of 10 Legionaries. They are up against four potential foe grouping: Terminator Librarian and 5 Infernus Marines (Khorne), Winged Tyranid Prime and 10 Termagants (Nurgle), 10 Guardians + Weapon Platform and Farseer (Slaanesh), and 5 Infernus Marines, 5 Guardians, 5 Termagants (Tzeentch). I think this is a relatively fun scenario with a fair bit of replayability. I think you could probably adapt this scenario to some of the future Combat Patrols (the battleline unit + a character unit) for even more fun.

The Final Verdict

Issue #33 and #34 are, combined, $30 and offer a $69 bread and butter unit. So on its face, they are good deals together. On it's own, Issue #34 doesn't have quite as much to recommend it. However, the Black Crusade list is pretty cool, useful for competitive 40K trivia, and thus makes Issue #34 a bit better of a stand-alone issue than Issue #33.

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Tags: reviews | combat patrol | Contemptor Kevin | Hachette