Rhino or Impulsor? A Small Army-Building Dilemma, Plus Necromunda and Tray-Induced Mission Creep
Sometimes army-building starts with grand strategy. Sometimes it starts with spotting a nicely painted second-hand transport online and thinking: honestly, this is cheaper than the box, and someone else already did the hard part. This week was definitely more of the second kind.
end3r has been slowly warming up to the idea of picking up a Salamanders Rhino from Battle Stock. The logic is very relatable: a used, converted, painted vehicle for less than a fresh box from the shop, and without sacrificing the next six months to assembly and painting, is a very tempting proposition.
On paper, it made a lot of sense for smaller games. A painted Rhino for around 140 PLN is just solid value if it actually sees table time. The problem, as always, is that Warhammer list-building likes to punish us the moment we start feeling clever.
At first the discussion went in the classic Salamanders direction: sure, a Rhino is neat, but if we start thinking about bigger games, wouldn’t a Land Raider Redeemer be the more thematic long-term choice? After all, it has two flamestorm cannons, and if there is one thing Salamanders enjoy, it is setting the battlefield on fire in a dignified, Vulkan-approved manner.
But then reality hit again: the Land Raider is an absolute brick. Not just in points and money, but also physically. Where do you even put the thing at home? As usual, our hobby planning immediately drifted from list design into storage logistics, which is probably the most honest version of army-building there is. The proposed solution was, naturally, an IKEA cabinet. The less practical solution was to get rid of the bed, because clearly miniature storage is the real priority.
And yes, that is exactly the kind of serious strategic discussion we have.
The awkward transport truth
The real twist came later, when end3r checked what he could actually put into the Rhino from his current Codex-compliant Space Marines collection. And… not much.
- Assault Intercessors and Infernus Marines are Tacticus
- Eradicators are Gravis
- so the Rhino basically doesn’t help the units he actually wants to move around
Which means the romantic vision of a cheap Salamanders Rhino ran into the cold, hard wall of keywords. At that point the conclusion became much less “buy the cool second-hand Rhino” and much more “okay, so we should probably be looking for an Impulsor instead.”
That still leaves room for casual play and proxying, of course. In laid-back games, a Rhino standing in as an Impulsor is the kind of thing most reasonable people can live with. But as an actual army-building decision, this was a good reminder that a bargain is only a bargain if it fits the list.
Meanwhile: league results are league results
In the middle of all this, end3r also dropped a small league update. The event had 20 players, but only 2 league matches, so the standings were a bit random — still, two wins are two wins, and we absolutely respect taking the W when it appears.
Not every result needs a giant statistical breakdown. Sometimes “two wins are two wins” is the whole story.
Necromunda keeps sounding better and better
The conversation also took a detour into Necromunda, because apparently one good campaign report is enough to get everyone talking about dramatic underhive nonsense again. wilini had just read the writeup and especially appreciated the bit where a guy jumped over a gap, fell into a river, and died. Which, honestly, is an extremely Necromunda sentence.
What we keep liking about Necromunda is that it has that skirmish-scale immediacy a bit like Kill Team, but with an extra campaign layer on top. Running a gang, hiring new fighters, upgrading gear, and watching your little disaster-crew slowly evolve is exactly the kind of secondary progression system that hooks us every time.
end3r is already hoping the campaign organiser launches a second season after the current one, ideally with enough time to finish assembling and painting Squats. And from the sound of it, tough shooty stunties do pretty well in Necromunda — even if handling dwarfs in Warhammer: The Old World remains a somewhat more mysterious art.
Different people, different instincts
One of the fun things in our group is how obviously different our tastes are once we start talking about actual gameplay.
wilini, for example, is happiest when everything turns into a melee brawl. That explains both Black Templars in 40k and Bretonnia in The Old World. In both cases, the appeal is pretty clear: get in, hit hard, and make it dramatic.
Shooting exists, sure, but more as a practical necessity than a life philosophy. In Black Templars, some anti-armour tools still have to appear at higher points levels — dreadnoughts being the obvious example. In Bretonnia, ranged support is… let’s say situational. Archers are there, they do shoot, but against tougher targets like Orcs or Dwarfs their output is not exactly terrifying. The long-term dream, therefore, is artillery. Specifically, the deeply noble aspiration to launch rocks from a trebuchet and ruin someone’s day from across the table.
And honestly, fair enough.
Also: movement trays. So many movement trays.
Speaking of Bretonnia and larger ranked-up ambitions, wilini went ahead and bought movement trays.
A lot of movement trays.
Thirty-one trays in total, which feels like one of those hobby purchases that starts out sensible and then suddenly becomes a statement of intent. Once you have that many trays, you are no longer just planning an army. You are planning a lifestyle.
Cinquecento keeps rolling
We also got a reminder that the full Cinquecento story is collected in one place now, which is handy if you want the whole ongoing chronicle instead of piecing it together post by post.
Final verdict: the Rhino was a good idea right up until it wasn’t
So where did we land?
The second-hand Salamanders Rhino was a genuinely tempting find, and for a moment it looked like a very efficient little army-building pickup: cheap, painted, thematic, ready to play. But once the actual transport restrictions entered the chat, the plan stopped making sense for the units currently on hand.
Which is a very normal Warhammer experience, really. We start with vibes, aesthetics, and a bargain hunt; then the rules show up and remind us that keywords are forever.
So the likely next step is hunting for an Impulsor instead. The Land Raider Redeemer dream can wait until there is both more table space and more shelf space — or until one of us finally accepts that the bed has to go.