Stormtrooper Test

Finished a stormtrooper test model today. Putting the squad number and insignia on the shoulderpads really breaks up the big stretches of black that otherwise make the model look too black. The detailing is still a bit sloppy at this stage--will look better after another pass of neatening.
Only 19 more of these guys to go...

Phase I Week 3

The holiday weekend made it possible for me to get the GK terminators about 95% done:
Still to do: painting the bases, the shoulder shields, and another round of highlights for the black areas.

In gameplay I found that the GK grandmaster is just too vulnerable to str8+ power weapon attacks like hidden powerfists. One shot and a bad invulnerable, and you lose a 200+ point character. A brother-captain, in contrast, is a cheap and effective extra attack with a psycannon. So I decided to ditch the grandmaster from my list and go instead with 2 Elite shooty GK terminator squads. They mesh really well with the guard/stormtrooper gunline, standing back as countercharge insurance and at the same time preserved from a lot of shooting by the shrouding.

So the change in the list leaves me with an open HQ slot.

Also in gameplay I noticed that, while the Culexus is worth his weight (last game he shot the crap out of an uber-expensive SM librarian while the librarian was still in a unit--if the unit hadn't broken and fallen back, he would have charged in and finished him off at initiative 11 with the Life Drain power) he does create a drawback in that he makes my stormtrooper squads leadership 7. It's a non-issue for the Ironwilled inquisitor squad and for the guard units that are LD7 anyway, but when pinning shots (like whirlwinds or fury of the ancients) come over the horizon, my stormtroopers tend to get pinned.

So a quick review of the witchunter rules reveals that the Book of St. Lucius is the answer to what I need. Although the culexus still makes the book-bearer leadership 7, everything within 6" of her--including the model herself--gets to test on her unmodified leadership.

I have an old Seraphim model that I got as part of an old grab-bag deal from GW mailorder years ago, and I always hung on to the model, and now it pays off. A bit of cutting and provision of a giant book, and we have a canoness (assembled and primed):


At 102 points with jump pack, blessed weapon (str5 master-crafted power weapon) and the book, she is also a solid countercharge unit. Best of all, though, she allows my Culexus to hang back around the area where he's needed to make fast-moving enemy army leadership 7, while both my guardsmen and stormtroopers are testing for pinning and panic against her leadership 10. Best of both worlds.

The bulk of my work this week--not shown because it's boring--was cleaning, assembling, basing and priming the 20 inquisitorial stormtroopers and their 2 rhinos. Hopefully I'll have a test model to show for next week.

I had thought about taking a week off from Dust Devils to paint another wave serpent and some more dire avengers for my 'ard boys semifinal round army, but I think I'll continue with my commitment not to paint any Eldar models for my 'ard boys army, but just to go with what I already have painted. It worked out really well for round one...

Phase I Week 2

I don't have as much actual painting progress this week as I would like to have shown, but I made some incremental steps:

Grey Knights Terminator character:

I originally got this model as a blister and started converting him for a chaos model that I had an idea for. But the model just wasn't working--I filed off most of the GK iconography, but he still just looked like a GK with his iconography filed off, and not like a chaos lord. So now that I'm using GK terminators, I refitted him for Imperial duty again.

So this guy has a greenstuff tabard and some extra gubbins to cover up the bits that were filed off. After I remembered a Black Gobbo article here that explained how to make greenstuff rope, I put in the obligatory bookmarks on his chest-book. It turned out to be ridiculously easy to sculpt rope from greenstuff, by the way.


These are the inquisitorial stormtroopers that I have cleaned and assembled so far. Not too impressive yet, but it's the kind of boring yet meticulous work that it's hard to get motivated on.

So since I don't have much painting to show this week, I'm taking Jarrett's suggestion and including the tentative version of the first army list in this blog update:

HQ:
-Inquisitor lord with inquisitorial firebase (3 gun servitors, 2 mystics, 2 sages, 3 familiars, 1 acolyte), psychic hood, null rod, psycannon
-GK Terminator captain/master with psycannon and retinue of 2 GK terminators, one with psycannon.

Elites:
-GK Terminator unit, 3 strong, with brother captain and 2 psycannons
-Culexus assassin
-Ordo Hereticus Inquisitor with incinerator (rides with stormtroopers)

Troops:
-Inquisitorial stormtroopers X8 with 2 Grenade Launchers
-Inquisitorial stormtroopers X6 with 2 flamers in a rhino
-Inquisitorial stormtroopers X6 with plasma & melta in a rhino
-Ash Waste Armored fist squad with autocannon, plasma & chimera
-Ash Waste Armored fist squad with autocannon, flamer & chimera

Heavy:
-Leman Russ MBT, hull HG & no sponsons
-GK dread with lascannon/ML
-GK dread with assault cannon, incinerator

Fast:
-Sentinel w/ heavy flamer & improved comms
-~6 Ash waste roughriders (on IG jetbikes) with hunting lances

That's probably more than 1850, but it's what I'm currently planning to paint. Some stuff will be tweaked in or out.

That's it for this week, except the teaser photo below. Now that I know how insanely easy it is to sculpt rope, I can fix up the look of the harness on my Ash Waste "demolizard charge" test model.

Phase I: Ash Waste Daemonhunters

The first phase of painting up my Ash Waste Guard army is going to be painting them as the inducted guard units in a daemonhunters army. There are two reasons for this convolution:

(1) I have 2 boxes of Cadian Kasrkins that I won at two different tournaments (Adepticon and the WM Cities of Death). It's obviously kismet that I should have to use these guys, and they'd make awesome inquisitorial stormtroopers.

(2) The Warmongers are having a Cities of Death campaign "Galaxy of War!" in November and I want to play guard, but the majority of the guard models won't be ready by then.

So a daemonhunter list will let me field an 1850 list using some of my key guard models as inducted guard. So here's what's new this week.

HQ: Lord Inquisitor Tireseus and retinue
The configuration of this squad is based on Alex "Kyoto" McLaren's tactical doctrine of the Inquisition fire base. The unit pictured above consists of Inquisitor Lord Tireseus, one veteran guardsman with heavy bolter, one mystic, and three servo skulls. The unit is fairly minimal at this point, but I have plans to add two more gun servitors (one with plasma cannon) another mystic, one or two sages, and a couple of acolytes--all according to Kyoto doctrine.


Inquisitor Lord Tireseus is modeled 90% from a fantasy chaos warrior with the chaosy bits cut off. His psycannon is a boltgun modified with bitz of an IG missile launcher.


Tireseus's mystic is a fantasy empire flagellant (plastic) with bitz from the fantasy empire wizard sprues and a 40K auspex. The flagellant sprues are the ones that inspired me to finally fulfill my dream of modeling inquisitorial henchmen. See the idea is that this guy is blind, but he rings the bell when he sees deepstrikers coming through the warp...

A gun "servitor" in the form of a Catachan guardsman holding a chaos heavy bolter. The original plan was to use the Catachan models as the basis for converted servitors, and I may still go through with that, but this guy came out pretty mean-looking.

HQ2 and Elite 1: Grey Knight Terminators

The Daemonhunter list allows you to take a GK terminator unit either as the retinue to a hero, or as an elite unit. My plan is to take one of each--the foreground unit of 3 is an HQ brother-captain IC with a 2-terminator retinue, and the background unit is an Elite 3-terminator unit including a brother captain upgrade. Because of the wonkiness of the rules, even though these units are otherwise identical, the brother-captain in the HQ unit counts as an independent character. Go figure.

Anyway the rationale for taking such small units is that you can get 2 psycannons per unit (one as a squad option, one as bro-captain wargear) for just a shade under 200 points. Because they can always move and shoot 36", this allows them to stand off and use the shrouding to minimize return fire while still being able to lay down psycannon shots out to maximum range. This is a doctrine I gleaned off of Dakka--if anybody knows who deserves credit for coming up with this one, let me know.

Elite 2: Culexus Assassin


The least popular assassin suffers from the tactical problem that he can be shot at by anybody who can see him (and can pass the required leadership test). So he's challenging to use.

But he's cheap and he's annoying. He's most valuable, I think, as a distractor who hides in the back of the opponent's army and makes everybody leadership 7. So you have to send somebody to get him--and then he makes them leadership 7 and they fail their Ld test to shoot or assault him, and so forth. Also he has a very interesting bag of tricks to pull on harlequin squads...

Troop 1: Inducted IG Armored Fist Squad
It's really just 10 Dust Devils with a flamer guy and an autocannon all assembled in front of the only painted chimera, but it feels like an accomplishment to actually be able to put the unit together.

Next week, more painted guys.

Could Use a Hand Here

So the biggest problem with converting my 11-man Necromunda Gang to a 90+ man IG regiment is getting them to look like WYSIWYG guard army. The picture above is a bog-standard Necromunda Ash Waste Ganger with no paint or modeling done on him yet. You might notice that he has no hands. The hands come on a separate sprue:


The sprue on the right is the necromunda hand weapon sprue. It has hands holding one-handed guns and knives. The center sprue is the necromunda longarm sprue, which has longarms, but no hands. The left sprue is the ash waste ganger weapon sprue, which has the double-bladed knife and various really cool-looking longarms, but no hands. For a Necromunda gang, it's not a problem: you just throw single-handed weapons onto the empty wrists with superglue. But for an IG army, it's more of a challenge. So I came up with a few solutions:


My early efforts involved sawing the arms off of models, which I don't do anymore. But since I had some guys with no arms from failed experiments, I made them into rocket launcher guys using Steel Legion rocket launcher arms.

In the foreground is the best solution to the need for special weapons as longarms in particular. The pistol grip on a plasma (or melta) gun allows one of the standard models to wield it true-grit-style in his right hand. Probably most of the special weapons will get this treatment.

The slung-rifle solution pictured above is another idea that seems to be working. On the left is the unmodified model. The center is a model with a plastic (kroot) backpack and the rifle attached next to it. On the right is the same model with the rifle slung directly to the soldier's back with greenstuff and primed. With the addition of straps, these solutions look feasible and allow me to put whatever into the hands of the models and be WYSIWYG.

The guys above are demonstrating three different solutions to the hand problem. The green-colored right hands are Panzergrenadier hands from the Tamiya kits pictured in the background. Each of these kits costs only a couple of bucks and comes with dozens of green plastic hands that are a bit large, but feasible if you paint 'em as gloves. The open grip of the Tamiya hands, unlike the GW models, allows you to put pretty much anything into them and get creative.

These Tamiya kits also come with backpacks and ammo packs and messcans that can be used with the slung-rifle models to hide the fact that the rifle is just basically stuck to the back of the model., and make the nomads look more nomadic.

The model on the left has a plastic Cadian lasgun in his left hand--the right hand gripping the handgrip of the lasgun has been cut away and replaced with a handless handgrip. The model on the right has a beastman left hand with the double horn--an idea lifted from the original Troll magazine ad for this army that looked really cool.

Finally, a full 2/7 of the Ash Waste models already have autoguns or Nomad longrifles posed a high carry. So these guys just need cleaning and painting, and they're good to go.

The Dust Devils

The Dust Devils, pictured above, had a good run in the short buy enjoyable Warmonger Necromunda Campaign I. They lost Torque, their leader, to flamer fire in the very first game, but actually benefited in the long run as his successor, Piston (Far left, rear) took over and led the gang on several successful missions.

Highlights in the group above: you'll notice the heavy stubber heavy in the center rear row, the nomad long rifle (range 48, str4) in the rear row, and the center front guy, Camshaft, whose horrible scars, incurred in another flamer incident, are faintly visible.

The double-bladed knife, which counts as a sword in Necromunda rules, turned out to be a really good hand-to-hand weapon, and I had pretty much given up using knives by the end of the campaign. Overall the ash nomads are a good gang, their lack of access to flamers balanced out by their worse-than-usual ammo rolls.

The biggest advantage of playing the Dust Devils first as a Necromunda gang, though, is that it gave me the chance to work out the specifics of the color scheme and the modeling obstacles surrounding these models. By the end of the campaign, I was finally ready to start painting up this gang as a fullsized IG army.

2. Fluff

House Catullus (Summarized from GW Fluff)

Although most hive-dwellers do not remember the name, House Catullus was reportedly once the second-greatest of the great houses of Necromunda. For reasons that remain obscure, the house suffered a great fall and the survivors of the struggle were outlawed and exiled to the Ash Wastes--vast, barren ecological ruins of the once-fertile surface of Necromunda. The remaining members of House Catullus were supposed to die, but somehow they survived and transformed over time into the Ash Nomads. It isn't known how much the Nomads remember of their history, but it is known that they retain a deep resentment of all hive-dwellers. Only the unique double-bladed knife, trademark fighting weapon of Catullus, remains as an important part of Nomad culture, suggesting that perhaps the Nomads have not entirely forgotten.

Nomad Culture (Original Material)

Outsiders have very little opportunity to learn much about how Ash Nomads live. They are both secretive and elusive, and the most likely situation in which a hive-dweller will encounter an Ash Nomad is when his caravan is being raided by them in the wastes. But it is known that they are generally organized into tightly-knit clans built on mutual obligation and strong loyalties. They greatly prize self-discipline and value individuals who are skilled raiders and scavengers. Survival in the wastes makes it necessary that they be able to depend on each other and endure great hardships, so it is likely that most of their culture is built around encouraging these traits.

The Machine Cult of the Argearia Wastes

According to the best available records, it was only a few generations after the exile that a group of ragged, half-starved wanderers staggered into an Ash Nomad camp at the edge of the Argearia wastes. They were lay brothers of the Ordo Frateris Technarius, or "Clackfriars" as they were commonly called because of the noise made by the ornamental machine parts they hung about themselves. They had come into the wastes to teach the heathens their own version of the Cult of the Machine God. Whether the Nomads really believed in what the friars taught, or whether they just saw the practical value of the rites of operation and maintenance that the brothers were willing to teach them, the cult spread quickly through the Argearia Nomad clans. Even after the Frateris had gone on to join the works of the great cosmic machine in the sky, their teachings persisted and gradually adapted into the form they take at the present time.

Argearian Ash Nomads pray to the Machine God, whom they call "Cog," for help and aid in coaxing their various vehicles, weapons and devices into functionality. The religion, perhaps influenced by the totemistic religion of the native Ratskins, is highly animistic, based on a belief that all technological devices are inhabited by mischievous spirits, each a splinter of the consciousness of Almighty Cog who inhabits all machines, but often expressed as fickle or uncooperative in nature. In addition to the standard rites of operation and maintenance, these spirits can be appeased with magical charms, fetishes, or even an especially persuasive argument. As a last extremity, a shaman can be called in for a ceremony to bring the errant spirit back into accord with the will of Cog for the benefit of the Ash Nomad operators.

Accordingly, the Nomads of the Argearia wastes name their children and clans after machine parts, just as people in other cultures might name their children after saints or gods. So, for example, the Bearing clan might have members with names such as Roller, Tapered and Frictionless ("Fric" to his friends). The Capacitor clan had a particularly illustrious historical period under the successive chieftanships of the three brothers Ceramic, Tantalum and Through-Hole Electrolytic.

The Dust Devils

Although the Argearia Waste is an area relatively abundant in lost, forgotten and buried settlement ruins the lure of the Hives as sources of technical machinery and skill is irresistable. To scavenge a valuable and rare machine, bring it back to the camp while keeping it safe from raiders and the attacks of hostile creatures, and convince its spirits to function again is the achievement of a great clansman or chief, a reflection of Cog's favor. So it's only natural that some clansmen should band together to seek their fortunes in the regions of Necromunda closer to, and even within, the technical riches of the Underhive.

The Dust Devils are such a band, determined Nomads willing to venture far from their home wastes and set up a raiding camp in the ash dunes outside of Hive Primus, to crack the walls of the Hive, take on the ruthless hiver gangs and dig for the riches of the Underhive.

1. Tale of a Deal

The story of this Necromunda gang begins back at the turn of the century when GW's now-defunct "Troll" direct-order magazine offered an army deal. A complete Ash Waste Nomad army in a box, consisting of Ash Nomad infantry from Necromunda, some Tallarn rough rider bodies with old IG jetbikes, and some tanks with double-wide tread parts. I immediately fell in love with the look of the army and spent a bunch of money that I probably shouldn't have, but I was really happy with what I got. About a hundred Ash Waste gangers, 2 russes, 2 chimeras, a ton of track & wheel sprues, plus rough riders and some weapon sprues.

I started planning my 40K IG army, but for years I was stymied by the problem of how to make the models WYSIWYG. These are old school GW models with their arms extended directly outward from their torsos, not at all suitable for holding lasguns at high carry. The only IG models available at the time were metals and plastic Catachans, so arm swaps were not feasible. This was way before the current IG codex, so Warrior Weapons doctrine was not an option (and it still isn't a particularly good one). So I boxed up my Ash Waste Guard models in the closet and worked on other armies for the next several years.

Then, in 2006, I went back to the Ash Nomad army and started experimenting with paint schemes. The problem with an ash waste army is that the wastes are predominantly gray. If you want a camo-schemed army as I do, there has to be a lot of gray. Most IG armies are also gray, and it's hard to make a gray army look not-drab on the tabletop. So I painted up a bunch of test models, of which these tallarns are two:

The nice thing about these guys is that the warm brown tones offset the coolness of the grey tones and create a contrast that makes them pop a little more than an all-grey army, but still breaks up the visual pattern enough to hopefully be a convincing camoflage.

Eventually I went with a variation on version B, using an ash waste toned revision of a camo scheme called "Mars Plasma Blast" pattern, that used to be in the Black Gobbo archives on the GW site (but is now apparently gone, or I'd link to it). It essentially is a base color, with big contrasting patches of stippled color that are worked up from dark tones to brighter tones at the center. I found it was easier to work up the scheme on a tank first, as on this chimera hull part:

Then, once I had worked out how to do it on a tank, the next job would be to try to reproduce it on an infantry figure:

You can also see from this figure that I started experimenting with giving some nomads plastic Cadian parts. This actually worked pretty well in limited cases particular figures, like this Nomad heavy who was easily equipped with a cadian flamer bit without having to make any kind of permanent alteration to the original model.

Eventually, I decided that what I had been thinking about--cutting the arms off all the models and giving them Cadian arms--would mar them too much. This turned out to be a really good decision, since I found out that the classic Ash Nomad molds were burned out, so the models were officially OOP.

In the end I was already deciding to take some liberties with the WYSIWYG requirements for the eventual IG army and just outfit the majority of the models with two hand weapons when the chance for a Necromunda campaign cropped up at the club.