The Martian Civil War: Overall Impressions

Warpstone Flux Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

4/5 stars. An essential read for mechanicum fans, especially those of you wanting to have access to the Dark Mechanicum side of things. Moderately skippable for other factions, but the lore expansion is impressive. 

The book itself covers the conflict to recover new mark power armour from the forges in the early stages of the Heresy. It goes into detail then about the assassination attempts, and then in the latter phases the fight against the scrap code. I would have liked a bit more on the civil war itself, but you know what, its so good that it doesn't matter. 

The new campaigns are good, but the apex missions are a bit hit and miss along the way. Not sure you'd expect otherwise. The terrain and scrap code are stand outs here for me. The relic hunt standard missions are cool enough to carry the rest. 

Whilst the chaos knights are good to have, the star of the show is certainly the daemon engines that are now available. Welcome to the dark mechanicum! On top of this we also get techno-heresies which are great. 

This is all rounded out by some new space marine characters. Overall then, its basically a dark mechanicum and chaos knights book with more lore than you can shake a stick at. Seriously: I've read and re-read the lore here and am impressed. The main negative is that the book is shorter than the other predecessors, but at least it was printed correctly (cf., Beta-Garmon). I like what I have purchased and I think it makes sense for mechanicum fans to also have a look at it, but beyond that, its certainly mainly one for the lore lovers out there. 

Overseer Conversion Fully Constructed

Hey readers, the Overseer conversion has now been completed - including the nemesis bolt gun! And it is massive!

But to be honest, I regret nothing! The barrel if it were to be slung across the marine's chest would actually be absolutely fine and appropriate for a sniper. With this pose however, the marine really looks dynamic and a little bit like he just doesn't care how he snipes his targets. 

This is good, because I'm thinking this is either going to be Alpha Legion or World Eaters. I'm tilting toward the latter right now. 

The miniature itself was easy to construct, but as I thought, the back banner is a little fiddly to get sitting right on the backpack itself. The join it just a little too thin for my tastes, but I can live with it. I need to also tidy up the scepter a little bit, but its basically done at this point. 

Wargames Gallery: World Eaters Terminators

The World Eaters materialize via teleportation on to the battle field thanks to the warmonger consul leading the charge with his handy (and risky) device. They advance accordingly!

I think this is also the first image that I've managed to get with them all together on the playing surface. They look rather good in the white, blue, and (ahem) red even if I say so myself. 

Unboxing: Overseer

I bought the Overseer loyalist model on pre-order when it was available to fulfill a critical part of my miniatures aims for the year: a unit of Auxilia lead by a marine. Here are the bits directly out of the box!

Clearly there's going to be some clean up required on the bits with all the flash and so forth needing to be removed. The banner on the back of the back pack in particular looks to have almost a stake that goes directly into the backpack. I don't like the look of the thin joint, but it should work.

My plan here though is to replace the plasma pistol with the nemesis bolt gun that I converted earlier in the week. Given that Auxilia are mainly ranged shots (or at least mine will be), it makes more sense for the Overseer to have a long range weapons as well, rather than a short ranged plasma shot. More on this in the near future!

Warsmith - Built

An assembled Iron Warriors Warsmith!

Assorted thoughts.

This character is a beast. The sheer level of detail in the parts is incredibly high. This said, there are several points that I think others should keep in mind when assembling him. 

Firstly, the tabard at the front is hard to get to sit flush with the legs and waist. This is, in part, due to where the sprue attached to the resin. It needs a bit of shaping, but you can get there. 

The major problem I had was making the mistake of gluing the pistol hand in place before adding on the ammo belt. Don't be me. Do it the other way. Add on the ammo belt first. Secondly, I actually glued the ammo feed in slightly the wrong place. It is supposed, I think, to be fed in through the gap in the weapon before the trigger. Instead, I have glued it to the side where there seemed to be an ideal slot that dry fitted the joint. It wasn't a joint though. Rookie mistake by me after so many years. Oh well. I think it can easily be got away with. The other thing I tried to do was to bend one of the tendrils to touch the graviton part of the weapon. Seemed like the thing to do, in the absence of a construction guide. But looking at how others have done this, I now realise it is meant to be free floating. I also glued the pointy ended tendril to the side of the weapon where the ammo feed should have gone. I regret nothing because it will make the model much less prone to breakage. A win, even if it looks a bit odd upon close inspection. 

Everything else is pretty standard. The only other thing I can think of would be to attached the claw at the top before gluing the shoulder pad / hammer arm into place. Didn't matter in the end for me, but it might be a tight fit for others. 

I wish this came with assembly suggestions or instructions, but I made it work. 

Nemesis Bolter Conversion Concept

Following on from my Alpha Legion recon squad that were armed with Necron weaponry, I had a bit of an idea about a Nemesis Bolter conversion...

The basis of the nemesis bolt gun is a Mark III bolter. I have shaved off the original barrel from the weapon and glued on instead a long length of the Necron weapon. This is rounded out by a scope on the top from the modern space marine range. 

Admittedly, the weapon is long. Very long. It rivals Exodus' weapon even. However, it certainly has a certain something about it which is hard to mistake for anything other than a long range sniper rifle in my personal opinion. I'm intending to use this on my new acquisition of the resin Overseer loyalist model that recently arrived. More on that project soon no doubt!