Holidays

Dear Readers,

You will notice a slow down, and a halt in the number of postings to Warpstone Flux from now on and for the next few weeks. This is temporary and simply due to summer and the holiday season, wherein I'll be spending more time with family. My responses to comments (etc.) will be likely to be as slow as tectonic plate movements. Rest assured that more frequent postings and responses will resume after the festive season is over (1/Jan/2009).

I'd like to take this opportunity to thank my regular readers, co-bloggers and commentators - you've really helped me with painting hints, modelling (etc.) and very valuable feedback in the past few months since I set this site up and became a part of the FtW community. I'm looking forward to more interactions with you in 2009.

I wish you and your families a happy and safe holiday season.

Best wishes from Warpstone Flux.

Great Unclean One of Nurgle - Realms of Chaos Era

A Realms of Chaos era Great Unclean One. To be used in both a daemons army and chaos space marines / Death Guard (either as a generic greater daemon or an atypical daemon prince with the mark of Nurgle).

Model.
This miniature was another one that I bought when I was much, much younger in the 1980's. It has been repeatedly stripped down, re-painted, torn asunder and re-built over the years. Most of the model needed to be pinned together (especially the snaps at the wrists) with both superglue and milliput (greenstuff).

Painting.
Nurgle is the chaos power that I most enjoy painting. It really isn't too hard to get a good result from lots of green grossness with blood red seeping gore and pus yellow highlights. The model's sculpt has already done most of the hard work for you. For this particular miniature, a black undercoat was used followed by a goblin green base coat. The basecoat was inked dark green (green mixed with black) and then slowly highlighted brighter, but unevenly. The red in the open wounds was base coated in pink for the most part and inked dark red (red mixed with a tiny amount of black and brown). The innards were then slowly highlighted lighter - up to about pink once more. The areas around the open wounds on the skin were picked out in a more necrotic feeling shade of green and yellow to help the reds of the sores stand out. The maggots were then picked out in bleached bone.

The base of the miniature had milliput applied to make it look like the (dragging) footsteps of the Great Unclean One had torn up all the grass along the way. A vintage nurgling was also added at the front of the base. Finally, the entire model was coated in glossy varnish to finish off the slimy icky look.

Evaluation.
Positives: Definitely Nurgle. Icky. Yucky. Green. Pustules. Open wounds. Visible innards. Yep - unmistakably Nurgle from my personal check list.
Negatives: If I hadn't have been so keen on applying the gloss varnish all over, I might have paused and only applied it to the slimy bits - the visible innards and leaking bits.

Daemons of Lesser Powers - Part III: Fast Attack

Continuing a series of articles presenting experimental house rules for daemons of lesser powers, today: rules for fast attack daemons. When I was writing these up, I tried to think of what would be represent such models on the tabletop. For the Big Four powers of chaos, the "beasts" are flesh hounds of Khorne, fiends of Slaanesh (not classed as fast attack, though), screamers of Tzeentch and so forth. All bestial, and all able to move quickly (apart from the beast of Nurgle). For lesser powers, the simplest analogue creature would be a chaos hound. Indeed, chaos hounds are in excellent keeping with the Realms of Chaos / Lost and the Damned rules. The most recent rules for chaos hounds are to be found in the (out of production) previous chaos space marine codex. In there, they only had a 6+ armour save. So here, I'm modifying that to the (what seems standard) 5+ invulnerable daemon save and upping the points value a touch.

The squad size can go up to a massive 30 - this is intentional as the dogs of the lesser powers would likely be more inclined to stick together for common protection against the more powerful beasts of the Big Four (i.e. flesh hounds). The only thing that is not included here is the option to upgrade based on the HQ / herald choice (cf. preferred enemies in the troops entry) - I'm figuring that should be kept for the troops alone. Having said that, this entry includes a once-per-army upgrade of a large beast (an alpha male pack leader, or equivalent) that enables the squad to function as if they were troops, but at a suitably steep cost.

Daemonic Beasts of a Lesser Power (Fast Attack slot)
Cost: 13 points each

WS BS S T W I A Ld Sv
4  0  4 4 1 4 2 10 -/5+

Unit Type: Beast
Number per squad: 5 to 30

Special Rules: Daemon.
All are considered to be armed with a single close combat weapon (i.e. claws, teeth, horns, etc.).

Options:
Gift one model with: Unholy Might (+5 pts)
Upgrade a different model to a "large alpha beast" (once per army) (+40 pts). The large alpha beast has the following statistics:

WS BS S T W I A Ld Sv
4  0  5 4 2 4 3 10 -/5+

Unit Type: Beast
Number per squad: unique (i.e. you may only ever take 1 large beast).

Special Rules: Daemon. Considered to be armed with a single close combat weapon. The large alpha beast enables the entire squad to not only contest objectives, but also to take and secure them in the same manner as troops. They still use a fast attack slot in the force organization chart.


Modelling.
There are many models out there that could be used to represent these beasts. The new chaos hounds in the fantasy chaos mortals range would be excellent for a starting point. As would the dire wolves from vampire counts.

For the large beast, the model should be noticeably bigger than the other models: a plastic chaos spawn would be cool. Or, forgeworld sells a number of large chaos spawn that would also look very neat as the alpha beast (albeit a mutated, large alpha beast!). I'm certain that readers could come up with other ideas on good models to use to represent them.

What constitutes "obvious concessions" in army lists?

In Australia, there is a long tradition in Games Workshop run tournaments to give a generous number of tournament points to so-called "soft" areas that are not related to battle outcomes; perhaps up to one third or even a higher fraction of all tournament points given out. That means things like painting, force composition and sportsmanship can directly contribute to determining the winner of a tournament. This system results in an environment that is both good fun & friendly, but remains competitive for those players that want it.

Take the example of the force composition category in GT2008. For maximum points in this category, players were encouraged to field miniatures that looked good or were well painted, rather than being game-beating. Additionally, players were encouraged to give "obvious concessions" in their force compositions. Clearly, those players taking three land raiders missed out on the majority of the points here.

But curiosity asks the question: what would readers consider to be "obvious concessions"? Here's some knee-jerk reactionary (and not very thought-through) thoughts that I had about the two kinds of army that I regularly field.

(a) Chaos Space Marines.
Chaos Spawn. They can look very cool, but: have no saving throw, have a random number of attacks, and are a slow & purposeful, mindless fast attack choice. They're fun to watch on the field, but they don't last very long!
Maybe Possessed Chaos Marines? They also look great but the random special ability that they get at the start of the game can be poorly timed.

(b) Daemons.
Furies of chaos. They're jump infantry that aren't as good as assault marines or raptors despite the comparable cost.
A pure Nurgle army lacking Epidemius.

What about other armies? I'd like to hear what other readers think constitutes "obvious concessions" in force compositions.

Death Guard Plasma Gunner

Usually plasma guns can be a potentially dangerous piece of kit: not least of all to the user! Blowing up your own trooper with a plasma gun can give away vital members of a squad. On the other hand, they've got a bolter-matching range (unlike melta-guns) and decent armour piercing.

A squad of infiltrating chosen chaos space marines all kitted out with plasma guns can be a bit of a shock to the enemy at the start of the game. Especially if supported with an icon that's primed to summon lesser daemons, terminators and obliterators. But rapid firing those plasma guns at close range increases the odds of a terrible plasma backfire.

Death Guard plague marines, conversely, are not as bothered by a little bit of plasma singeing a hole through their thigh. Although they cost more points-wise than standard chaos marines (meaning that the loss of one is more significant), they are also much more resilient to little plasma mishaps thanks to a lack of properly wired nervous systems (a.k.a. feel no pain). But rather than using them as chosen marines, I like to field a squad of 7 with two plasma guns and sit them near an objective (preferably in cover). I then don't move them for virtually the whole game. They're more than capable of taking care of themselves and are able to cause a headache to many opponents.

This particular miniature comes as part of the plague marines boxed set and is painted in a typical Death Guard fashion: greens, browns (etc.) with bleached bone trimmings, leaking joints, red sores and fleshy bits, a hand-painted "decay" on the shoulder pad, and blue plasma.

At first, I didn't know what colour the plasma gun should be: I've seen greens, reds, blues and many other shades. I decided on blue in the end as it provides a nice contrast to the greens and browns on the majority of the miniature. Red would have clashed a little but with the sores and green wouldn't stand out. Yellow might have worked, but I'm glad I selected blue.

Ork Hybrid

Not too far removed from Octavius, there is a remote M-class star, around which orbits a solitary Jovian type planet. In turn, a large natural Moon supporting its own atmosphere and biosphere orbits said Jovian. For millennia, little had disturbed the Moon. Little that is, until the arrival of a battered and stolen rogue trader's vessel. On board were chaos renegades, both astartes and humans fleeing from imperial space. It was on this Moon that their vessel set-down to carry out essential and critical repairs. And to evade both the chasing agents of the false emperor and the true owners of the vessel for a time.

Sadly for the unwitting renegades, they carried with them dormant ork spores: in the airlocks, under the soles of their shoes, and in a plethora of other nooks and crannies of the rogue trader's ship. They either had no time to follow standard biosecurity procedures or didn't know how to fully operate the vessel - no surprise given their lack of techpriests. The result was the same in either case.

On the Moon, the renegades were forced to stay marooned for weeks as repairs progressed painfully slowly. The weeks developed in to months. And the vessel came no closer to getting fixed despite the beseeching of the pantheon of chaos. The renegades had truly lost track of the amount of time they'd been there when they sighted the first ork and took their first casualties.

Resources were redirected into defending the stricken vessel; their home. Scouting parties were sent out. Repairs were halted. But it wasn't enough. The time between each wave of greenskin raid was perhaps over a year to begin with. Then months. Then days. They didn't hold out long after that.

In control of the Moon, the orks set about the old vessel with a new waaaaaaa in mind. With a more intuitive feel for the vessel's systems, they made quicker progress to repairing it than the humies ever did. It was then that the Great Devourer came.

A tiny splinter fleet, possibly from Octavius, perhaps elsewhere hungered for the biomass of the Moon. A remarkable thing happened, though. The orks repulsed the invading species. But somewhere along the line, a new species was created. Part ork, part tyranid. New orks emerged from the flora. The older orks saw them for the unorky creatures that they were and set about exterminating them. But no new purebreed orks were being created. All their spores were turning into hybrids. The hybrids came to replace the old order of the orks. They took over the repairs of the vessel and succeeded.

Aims and Model.
Rummaging around my bits box, I came across a very old plastic ork body and head. Originally, I had thought to create an ork-genestealer hybrid as I had also found an old space hulk plastic genestealer arm that had long since snapped off its original model. But I also found an old tyranid bone sword arm. Could I possibly use all of them in one model? You bet. Add in to the mix a chaos marine bolter (slugga?!), a khorne berzerker scabbard, a space marine shoulder pad, and I had all the parts for an interesting conversion!

The only parts that needed a bit of greenstuff was where the arms attached to the shoulder parts - they were the wrong size. The marine shoulder pad disguises this on one side of the miniature, but on the other side pure greenstuff was used to bulk out the shoulder joint.

Painting.
There was one rule here: the skin was to be something other than green! I chose purple in the end as it seemed fitting for a hybrid model. After undercoating in black, the basecoat was worm purple over the exposed ork and tyranid flesh areas. This was followed up with a purple ink and highlighting by mixing the purple with bleached bone in a number of layers.

The leather armour was coated in brown, inked brown / black, and highlighted with bleach bone. The bolter (slugga) was drybrushed in silver along with the shoulder pad and the scabbard on the ork's back. Red was applied on the lower portions of the scabbard, the bolter, and across the shoulder pad. However, when I painted this miniature it was a very warm day (some 30 deg C with high humidity) and the red didn't dry evenly on the shoulder pad. As it dried, it cracked over. At first I was very bothered by this. But then I thought: wouldn't the original renegade's equipment be remarkably damaged by this point in the narrative? More than likely. So, I left it as is and painted Khorne's symbol over the top of it.

The bone sword was painted in sunburst yellow, progressing to white toward the tip. Brown and bleached bone was applied to the lower portions of the sword and a similar prescription was done with the genestealer claw arm. Several streaks of brown were carefully drawn upward on the bonesword to make it look old and well used. Final details (eyes, teeth) were completed in bleached bone and white.

Evaluation:
Positives: A most unusual miniature! I like how this has turned out on the whole; especially given how many different spare parts make up the creature and the various painting styles (genestealer, Khorne, ork) that were used.
Negatives: I got worried by the cracked red paint on the shoulder pad, but grew to like it. Further, I'm genuinely worried I might start a chaos-worshipping ork-hyrbid army now. Can I resist?