Daemons of Nurgle - Soul Grinder version 3.0 (W.I.P)

What-ho interwebz friends.  I have been busy making a third Soul Grinder of Nurgle in order to fill out the requirements of the Forge Host element of the Daemons formation from Curse of the Wulfen.

This is made from a Maggoth Lord (that I bought off Lee ages ago) and one of  those Ad Mech Kataphron battle servitors. Plus some green stuff cabling.

I think if I ever get my sorry self around to doing a Dark Mechanicus project, this could also adequately serve as an Iron Strider or whatever they are called.

Regardless, it shall now sit waiting forever to be undercoated, and then a further 73 aeons before being painted.

Inquisimunda: Archaeotech

I've been away from the blog, but not entirely idle.

I'll be putting up some more posts over the next couple of weeks, with any luck!

But for now, here's something I cobbled together, with no real purpose in mind, beyond being something that might act as an objective, or have a specific use in a campaign...

The tech Heresy of Lentonn Lannus IV: An Inquisimunda encounter

At the weekend, I went to Nottingham to visit my friend Tim (aka Fulgrim from the Tears of Isstvan blog - which is currently on hiatus). One of the things we got up to, asides from over-eating and enjoying a few drinks was to have a little tabletop encounter.  We'd booked the Zone Mortalis themed table at Warhammer World, and we quickly devised a simple encounter using the Necromunda rules as a rough basis, and playing in a narrative style.

The table was to represent the bowels of an allegedly abandoned Mechanicum facility, which my crew were to attempt to infiltrate in order to investigate reports of some form of tech heresy. However, unbeknownst to my own Inquisitor, there was another Inquisitorial presence in the area entering into negotiations with the resident Mechanicum Tech Priest...

My crew split into two smaller teams, and began their infiltration. One team was headed by Inquisitor Daubenton, and included a mystic, a beastman with a las pistol, a beastman with a flamer, a guardsman with a camo cape and sniper rifle, and lastly a guardsman with an auspex and las gun.  The other team consisted of a Tech Priest, a gun servitor and a guardsman with a pair of auto-pistols.

Tim was controlling the renegade Tech Priest, who was accompanied by slow moving battle robot, and two Mechanicum 'centaurs' (these models recently featured in a Blanchitsu article, by the way - very cool and very nice indeed!). Tim also had control of his own Inquisitor, who in a similar manner to Ravenor from the Dan Abnett books had psychically taken possession of another form, in this case a cherubim. The cherub was accompanied by a psyber-mastiff and three veteran guardsmen with las rifles.

The first few turns consisted of my crew infiltrating the complex in a two pronged attack, my Tech Priest broadcasting scrap code in an attempt to mask his movements, and override and sentry alarms and auto-defences, while my other little team infiltrated from the other flank, scanning for and avoiding sentry alarms and auto-defences.  In the meantime, Tim's inquisitor and the renegade tech priest continued their negotiations, making leadership tests to see if they trusted each other.

Soon enough I triggered an alarm, which led to some distrust between the renegade tech priest and Tim's inquisitor. After some nail-biting leadership tests, they'd convinced each other that neither were responsible for the disturbance... The renegade began to scan the facility for intruders. Around this time, my own tech priest's scrap code broadcasts were detected, and the centaurs moved off to investigate. Simultaneously, Tim's small inquisitorial team moved off to investigate the traces of other intruders.

All the while, my infiltration attempts continued until violent contact between the forces was finally made...

I had set my gun servitor to over-watch. It's heavy bolter  took down one of the centaurs, before jamming. The second centaur promptly ran down the servitor with it's explosive tipped lance, before proceeding to steamroller the guardsman with the paired auto-pistols.

Prior to the start of the game, we'd agreed that my scrap-code emitting tech priest would have a sphere of influence limited to the tile he was occupying, and that enemy mechanicum constructs would need to pass a leadership test or be forced to withdraw from that tile. If they passed, they would become frenzied.  This led to some interesting behaviours for the centaurs, who were alternating between being overcome by scrap-code, or being enraged by it.  This did result in my tech priest leading them a merry chase around the board until the renegade tech priest interfaced with the complex and ensnared my own priest with mechandendrites. We then commenced an epic battle of wills (using opposed leadership tests), as the two tech-priests tried to overcome each other through the network. Scrap-code and tech viruses were pushed back and forth until several consecutive failed leadership rolls from Tim's priest saw my scrap-code attack push through into his priest...

In the mean time, the inquisitorial forces had joined battle at a junction of corridors, and a fierce fire fight developed from a Mexican standoff scenario. The psyber-mastiff attacked the flamer wielding beastman, and a grueling contest of strength ensued, the raging hound eventually proving victorius.
My camouflaged sniper managed to knockdown one of the veterans, before  the remaining beastman was iced.  In the confusion, the cherub failed to control the mind of my sniper and suffered a perils of the warp attack.

The guard with the auspex knocked down another veteran with a well-placed shot from behind, and advanced up the corridor. The sniper knocked down the remaining veteran, and the cherub made a strategic withdrawal, leaving the veterans to bleed out or escape on their own. Life is cheap in the grim darkness of the 41st millenium, dontcha know...

Meanwhile, the robotic construct went into bodyguard mode, protecting Tim's priest and taking down my auspex carrying guardsman (who had just given coupe de grace to one of Tim's fallen vets). My sniper moved up to a key vantage point and drew a bead on the robot.

Whilst all this action was taking place, my Inquisitor and mystic crept up on the interfacing renegade priest from another direction, causing confusion in the robot's defensive programming. It eventually decided these two new threats were greater and moved to engage, leaving my sniper free to take aim at the renegade priest...

The mystic soon met a grizzly end at the hands of the robot, who consecutively ended up being reduced to sparking scrap by my inquisitor's power sword. All the while, the renegade priest tried to purge his system of the infectious scrap-code, as my sniper repeatedly tried (and failed!) to take him down. As this was happening, the centaurs were steadily encroaching on my own tech priest. Would they reach him in time to save their master? They were only inches away from doing so, when Daubenton finally reached and struck down the renegade, bringing the tech heresy to an end.

Nail biting tense action!

Here's a few pics that turned out well:

A brave guardsman tries (& fails) to gun down a charging centaur!

A Mexican standoff in the depths of the complex.

Sometimes it pays to watch your back down in the tunnels...

The mystic skulks, searching the entrails of dying rodents for fortuitous portents

The Inquisi-Cherub considers a strategic withdrawal

The renegade Tech Priest engages in a scrapcode battle through the network

Centauri-Alpha regains partial functionality and finally achieves reboot

Inquisitor Daubenton brings the tech heresy to an end.

Inquisitor war band update: Mechanicum Adept

I've been quietly beavering away (norf!) whenever I've had a bit of spare time to do so, and I've managed to finish off another model that will slot nicely into Inquisitor Daubenton's merry band of Ordo Malleus nasties. Or even into a mechanicum war band, which I'm starting to have ideas for.

I made this conversion quite some months back, and thankfully I finally got around to it...

I wanted to try and do something with different types of metals. It seemed reasonable to me that highly modified members of the machine cult would consider certain cheaper metals suitable for use in expendable throw-away bits of kit (e.g. the power plant on it's back), and others, such as the more integral parts of their systems to be made to last in a more permanent capacity, and more exotic, rare metals might be used (e.g. the face plate and re-engineered weapon, which is based around a xenos design, incorporating some bits of xenos and imperial tech).

Inquisitor war band update

Life's been kind of hectic recently, but I have managed to squeeze in a bit of time at my hobby table.

About all I've managed to do is paint up a henchman type character, who is carrying a sniper rifle, and to put together a minor conversion based around the Tech Priest Dominus clam pack character (or whatever it's called).

Not really too much to say on the sniper rifle toting fellow, apart from I gave him a red mask. Not really sure why, but he reminded me in some ways of the Red Skull villainous character from the Captain America comics. I think maybe the way the mask lay against the top of his head? It's not really too important though.

The conversion was kind of fun.  I did away with the walking stick as I didn't really like it, and it seemed a bit unnecessary. The model is being ambulated by a series of mechanical legs, after all! I also got rid of the pointy finger on the pole-axe holding hand.Once again, I didn't like it.  The axe had itself didn't feel quite right to me either. After a bit of rooting through my bitz box, and a good think, I came up with an idea for him to be carrying a pole-mounted loud speaker. The thought behind this is that it would broadcast binary transmissions, either in the form of commands and/or a call of the faithful to prayer (kind of inspired by the call to prayer you hear several times a day if you live near a Mosque).  I'll leave it to the reader to decide whether or not this idea works...

More Ad Mech madness

The bits box took a mild leathering.

Firstly, I scratch-built some kind of anti-grav weapons platform thingy.

Had to crank up the levels using Photoshop a bit, black undercoat doesn't like to be photographed apparently...

The weapons platform consists of 2 heavy bolters from a Sisters of Battle tank sprue, the anti-grav/hover plate doobery underneath is an old Rhino hatch I think, the other stuff I honestly couldn't say... not sure if this fits into an Ad Mech army, but it was good practice for me to build it!

The servitor crew are Void miniatures (Junkers, I think?) with extra mechanicalness added. I bought them originally to use as Adeptus Arbites in my Witch Hunters army many moons ago.

I also painted up a couple of Servo Skulls and made another one from various shiznit I had laying around. These will mainly be used as objective markers I think.

Blood Angel, skull split with his own combat knife. Unlucky.

This one was cobbled together using skulls from a Lizardmen sprue, 2 administrators still hot-desking for the Machine God after death? Needs more work, skulls look flat and the tubes need tidying up a bit.

Next on the agenda is to paint up the weapons platform and servitors, then I need to finish converting a Tech-Priest/Enginseer I started...

Loving it!

Also, for your information and piece of mind, I have been mainly listening to Rust in Peace by Megadeth and Roots and Crowns by Califone. Also, I have been eating waffles.

Techmarine conversion

Ok, Tony has asked me if I'd like to contribute to his blog, so here I am, contributing... I'd like to point out straight away that I'm a brush licker. I can't help it. Sorry.

I've had a 'start-stop-start' few years of painting and gaming, I actually managed to put together a 5000pt Witch Hunters army once, never won a battle.... sold 'em, stupid Nuns with guns. Anyway, I appear to be back into the hobby again with a vengeance, probably spurred on by combination of a stack of free stuff from Tony, finding my old bits box and my eldest son starting a Lizardmen army.

So, what army(ies) am I going to work on? Well, Fantasy wise I've inherited a metric ton of Empire and Brettonian stuff so I'm putting together something along those lines, but for 40K I was a bit stuck.

I've done Marines, Witch Hunters and faffed around with Eldar. Unfortunately Orks, Tyranids, Necrons and Tau interest me less than zero, I thought about Imperial Guard but I'd probably need about 20 army cases to carry them round and Tony is doing Chaos. Choices were limited... I sighed and wept softly into my cup of tea.

A few days ago I stumbled on Tim Huckleberrys rough Adeptus Mechanicus list, this was it, I got obsessed. From a hobby/makey/painty standpoint and the amount of fluff to work from it's perfect. It's 10 years old or so and I know its not legal in a gaming sense, but then I don't intend on taking part in tournies or campaigns or owt like that just yet. 

I've got a load of Inquisitor henchmen that look suitable, a couple of old style techmarines and a bunch of other stuff that I can work with. Conversions will be done, fingers will be superglued, kitchen tables will be overrun.

First one done-ish, still need to tidy bits up and do some more work on the base. Old Techmarine, Empire head swap, IG comms backpack, auspex changed and a servo arm added in place of his, err, arm. 

I'll be keeping a record of my successes and inevitable failures on here. If I get good you can look on in awe and wonderment, if I suck badly please pretend you never saw any of this.... move along, move along.