A decision has been reached.

And the winner is...

     My 30k army will be Thousand Sons. This presents some hurdles as their rules haven't been released, but I've done some heavy fluff reading the last few days and I just keep circling to them. As far as my 30k desires, there were quite a few heavy contenders, but once I brought them into the 40k lime-light, most quickly lost traction. Alpha Legion, as a good example, just doesn't appeal to me in the 40k fluff.

     The next few steps will be creating a 40k list first, amusingly, and then splicing into 30k as the money comes in (because it is quite expensive). Entry into 30k requires some books first, and I don't have any of them, but I still happen to have my 40k Chaos codices, so that makes things a bit easy. I grabbed 40 Pink Horrors and sorted through what I have left over of all the mounds of bits I own, and found a box of Morghast Archai to create some Tzeentch Daemon Princes from. Putting that with the Battle of Calth boxes and some Rhinos I grabbed at a swap meet leads to this list:

CSM CAD:

HQ - Daemon Prince, Tzeentch, Spell Familiar, Power Armour, Wings, ML 3

Troop - Chaos Space Marines x10, Melta Gun x2, /w Rhino

Troop - Chaos Space Marines x10, Melta Gun x2, /w Rhino

Elite - Thousand Sons x5, /w Rhino

Elite - Thousand Sons x5, /w Rhino

Chaos Daemons Allied Detachment:

HQ - Daemon Prince, Tzeentch, Armour, Wings, Lesser Reward, Greater Reward, ML 3

Troop - Pink Horrors x10

     A little 1,500 point list to get things rolling. It's not a ton to paint, so that's really nice. It leaves me with 30 Pink Horrors to spawn, and expanding the list will take some time since most of the next things to buy (Screamers and such) are really just powering the list as it currently stands to summon in things. Oh, trust me, it's hardly a great list, but that's not really the point. With all the rumors of a Tzeentch Daemonkin floating about, I'll be at the ready to make some serious purchases if it ever happens.

Horus Heresy: Betrayal of Calth

    

 I grabbed two boxes of this. When I first heard of it's release, like most in the 30k/40k community, the deal sounded fantastic. Netting 30 marines, 5 terminators, 2 characters, and a Dreadnought for $150? It's like a steal! But is it? If anything, GW isn't one to show off a loss, especially when they are already losing out. Even battle boxes and package deals aren't really deals - they are just a combination of specific units at a price that is generally the same as buying it all together. So why is this such a deal? Because it's costing them money to create fresh board game content with a ton of miniatures? No, of course not. They are making money off of it. They are making money off of selling 30 marines, 5 terminators, 2 characters, and a Dreadnought at $150. So, if anything, it's telling us that they are fully aware that the other stuff they sell doesn't need to be at the price it's at. If a Dreadnought is $25, characters would be about $10 each, with 10 marines to be about $25 each pack, and leaving a pack of 5 terminators to be about $30. But that's still being "high end", because the dice, tokens, cards, rules, and game development had to cost them something as well. So HH: Betrayal of Calth should really be called GW: What We Could Sell Stuff At If We Didn't Mind Betraying Our Customer's Wallets.