Warps Fiend CSM - Noise Marines

Here are the latest fruits of my labour, a six strong squad of Noise marines.

I picked up these minis second hand on eBay mainly as all six had noise marine sonic backpacks, including one of the large doom siren packs from the emperors children Lord mini.

The picture wasn't great but at the end of the day I was getting five of the current design of metal sonic blasters, a blastmaster and the aforementioned backpacks at a reasonable price.

The second generation of noise marines were multi part metals with 'all-slaaneshi' parts, I have managed to pick up a couple of these for the cool bits, a champion body was used in the CSM squad in my previous post, and some bits I used in this squad.

Unfortunately the way games workshop packages noise marines these days is either a arm/weapon pack of sonic blasters and a blastmaster, or alternatively a bits pack with one paltry backpack to represent a doom siren, one of each sonic gun, a power sword, three heads and a torso. This, for me anyway, would be prohibitively expensive to create a squad with enough of the 'good stuff' to look how I wanted.

I decided to take the plunge, if the bodies were junk (there was no way of knowing from the fuzzy snap) I would still have a nice horde of slaaneshi bits, but when the box arrived I was in for a pleasant surprise...

The miniatures had been skilfully chopped about with some great conversion work seamlessly mixing chaos and loyalist bits but had not been painted. Each marine also had a nice touch in the form of an 'eye of horus' / black legion pauldron which doesnt really match the imagined fluff for this warband but who cares!

The champion had a cool left handed sonic blaster conversion, which unfortunately appears not to be a legal option in the current codex.

Of course to make them feel 'my own' I had to do a bit more conversion work, admittedly much more minor bits and bobs but hopefully enough to make something personal and slightly more in keeping with the look I had originally envisioned for the squad.

Sorry for the long preamble but I didn't feel right taking all the credit for some nice conversion work by someone with much more talent by me!

First up are two noise marines with sonic blasters that I left alone and just painted up as I received them, Im not sure which chaos mini the flayed skin face body is from (fabius biles enhanced bodyguard perhaps?) but I like it a lot, the other guy has the amusing gimp mask head.

Next is the champion, originally he was the squads icon bearer, with a well executed single handed pose for his sonic blaster, which I used on one of the following marines, and a weird blindfolded head. 

I tilted the model forward changing the pose from leaning backwards, supported by the pole to charging forwards, added the big doom siren pack, along with a doom siren head from the older generation mini, a bolt pistol arm and the tip from an old rogue trader grey knight terminator halberd to make a power lance out of the banner pole. 

The power lance seems like a particularly apt weapon for a slaaneshi warrior, both aesthetically and rules wise.

Next up the squads blastmaster, all I did with him was to change the backpack to the older generation version, the look I was going for being a specific backpack for each type of sonic weapon, it also helps to differentiate him from the regular dudes.

The first of the final two noise marines just received a different head from the older generation, needing a little ball of greenstuff to act as a neck. The second marine was the previous owners champion, with the doom siren pack and a cool if a little unbalanced looking left handed sonic blaster, held outstretched like a pistol, I removed these and I put on a different backpack and the converted sonic blaster arm from the standard bearer, along with a bolt pistol wielding lower left arm.

I was somewhat apprehensive when it came to painting these guys not only due to the sheer amount of trim and detail on the models but also in my ability to create a bright and contrasting colour scheme that didn't look an utter mess! 

It seems to me that when it comes to painting slaanesh there's a very fine line between what works and what looks frankly silly but In the end I chickened out and painted them in a very similar scheme to the rest of my Warp fiends, but with less black armour and lighter blues, purples and pinks, as a squad I'm pretty happy with the result but an unintended side effect is that at a gaming distance they have less obvious contrasting colours and actually look a lot less bright and colourful than my quickly and shoddily painted Havocs, which wasn't the idea at all.... Oh well, I'm not too annoyed about the warband lacking uniformity across different squads as, well, it's kinda fitting and chaotic isn't it?

"Right then brothers, we have decided to cast aside our vows to the emperor, and instead dedicate our lives to destroying all order wherever it can be found and worshipping pure, unbridled chaos.....Now everyone repaint your armour red and black..."

Anyway completing this squad also marks a milestone for the warp fiends... I now have a playable force, albeit only at a 750pt skirmish level, with a HQ, two troops and two heavy support; and to prove it I have a list (!) and a crappy flash group shot...

-1- Chaos lord (65) w/ mark of slaanesh (15) terminator armour (40) combi melta (7) & lightning claw ( 5) - 132pts

-2- Noise Marines x6 (112) champion w/ gift of mutation (10) power lance (15) & doom siren (15) blast master (30) x3 sonic blasters (6) - 191pts

-3- Chaos Marines x6 (88) Meltagun (10) mark of slaanesh (12) - 110pts

-4- Havocs x6 (88) champion w/power sword (15) x3 Lascannon (60) Missile launcher (15) & x1 close combat weapon (2) - 180pts

-5- Havocs x6 (88) champion w/plasma pistol (15) x2 Heavy bolters (20) Autocannon (10) Plasma gun (15) -  148pts

Total - 761pts

Next stop Nuclear renaissance... 

Reinforcements inbound - Warp Fiends squad

Despite my lack of blog updates I've actually been doing quite a bit on the hobby front recently.... 

Half way through my third and most ambitious gang yet for nuclear renaissance I hit a bit of a wall in terms of motivation and so decided to move my attention over to the warp fiends, sat unloved for many moons with only two squads of Havocs and a basic Lord completed.

Rather pleased with myself after converting my post apocalyptic cannibals I thought I'd try and knock up a basic troop choice of chaos marines from the bits and bobs I had to hand.... Like the Havocs they're very rough and ready and definitely only 'tabletop' standard, but fill in one of my mandatory FOC selections.

Six strong (holy number) with a meltagun, when writing my final list I'll prob swap the aspiring champion with the power sword wielding champ from the Lascannon Havocs for obvious reasons.

Coming in at 125pts With the power sword, meltagun and mark of Slaanesh they're a fairly cheap little assault unit.

Champion and renegade

Traitor and melta gunner

Heretic reavers 

More nuclear renaissance and some noise marines coming up soon!

Nuclear Renaissance - Terrain - Holocaustian hovel

'Every wastelander's shack is his bunker'

Another quick and easy piece of post apocalyptic terrain, this time a generic wasteland shanty dwelling.

Made from a small cardboard box with wood stuck on top. Other bits used include undead skeletons and a warhammer quest rat for flavour, lego tyres, an inner chimera hatch for a front door, rhino front panel for a window and an toy X - wing's laser does duties as some sort of antenna or chimney.

Who knows what happened to the unfortunate occupants, killed by raiders, poisoned by bad moonshine or just the inevitable consequences of long term irradiation.

Nuclear Renaissance - Terrain - Modular Highway.

"On the roads it was a white-line nightmare. Only those mobile enough to scavenge, brutal enough to pillage would survive. The gangs took over the highways, ready to wage war for a tank of juice"

- The feral kid.

Another quick and easy piece of terrain for nuclear renaissance, a modular highway created from some leftover pieces of flooring... Nothing ground breaking really...but helps set the scene for our post apocalyptic skirmishes and only took about two hours total.

The odd bit of debris... Wooden planks, skeletons, car parts etc were scattered around for variety.

The whole shebang stacks up into a reasonably compact little pile.

Nuclear Renaissance - Terrain - Sweaty Bert's Roadkill Diner

A quick terrain piece for nuclear renaissance, a roadside diner for the hungry traveller.

Basically just a cardboard box with some holes cut in, mounted to a piece of wood, with a load of crap stuck on top. Not visible in the photo is the animal boneyard at the back, made from plastic undead mounts.

"Wishin' y'all a warm radback welcome to Sweaty Bert's infamous Roadkill diner, you kill it, we grill it, excludin' human flesh of course! Dingo, dawg, coyote, roo, possum, snake, mew-tater we do it all!"

Nuclear Renaissance starter gang 2. Road Warriors.

Here is my second starter gang for Nuclear Renaissance, a posse of loosely affiliated lawmen and mercenary adventurers known as 'The Road Warriors'.

First up is the Road Judge and his 'V8 Pursuit' car, this started out life as a 1:43 James Bond, diamonds are forever, Ford Mustang; a 1973 Mach 1 to be precise (stock photo shown below) this die cast came attached to a base shaped like a section of pavement, the reasons for this soon became apparent, it was a very fragile little car, definitely a display piece and never strong enough to be a real 'toy'.

I decided on a homage to the 'MFP' police cars of the first mad max film, as the shape of the mustang was broadly similar enough to the ford falcons used in the film; there are some obvious differences, the mustang lacks the rear doors and is a lot more svelte and 'coke bottle' than the stubby XA's and XB's of the movies...

Here's a couple of shots of 'Big Bopper'. Roop and Charlie's car that gets thoroughly trashed during the films opening sequence.

The mustang received mesh side windows, a front air dam made from a piece of imperial guard dozer blade smoothed out with greenstuff, a long range fuel tank (another IG bit) mounted in place of the rear window, larger exhausts and a roof bar with lights made from fuses and a siren.

I went for a simplified version of big bopper and March hare's paint scheme, albeit a lot more worn and dirty; the yellow was a sod to paint, using averland sunset as a base with bad moon yellow on top. 

I really wished I'd gone for a copy of the films famous black car about half way through the umpteenth coat of yellow!

 I also renamed my fictional police force from the MFP (main force patrol) to the MRP (main road patrol)

When it came to painting Road Judge i decided against copying the black leather uniforms of Mad Max's police, and went for a brighter, more cartoonish look, trying to evoke both 2000AD and the flashy Op's of dark future. Yellow armour and gauntlets tie him in to his car, with a helmet stripe to reinforce the point.

Next up is the post apocalyptic Englishman seen in an earlier post, the rather overblown background dicarded and boiled down to a bare name 'The Limey' driving his heavily modified Morris Minor Hot Rod 'Diana'.

Diana started out as a corgi Morris, as seen below, part of a Kellogg's promotion in the late 80's or early nineties.

I fitted larger wheels and a supercharged engine block, plus armoured panels (track guards) exhausts and stowage.

Together I think these two make quite an amusing post apocalyptic caricature.

Last up is Stobart the courier and his 7.5t truck 'Roadrunner'.

In my opinion EM4's Thug miniature really looks the part as a stereotypical sweaty lorry driver (although possibly more of a Brit HGV driver than an American trucker) 

I didn't take a before photo of the truck, suffice to say its on a much smaller scale than the rest, and was originally meant to be an articulated truck cab, with a bit of imagination though, it can pass as a light '7.5'ton truck.

The dozer blade, exhausts and rear deck were built from yet more leftovers from the ever useful imperial guard vehicle accessory and chimera sprues, the rear wheels were removed and larger wheels were doubled up in their place; Ben Hur style wheelhub spikes and various junk representing the armour and blast shielding were made from various bits of sprue and rubbish.

My favourite little touch is the roof vent, cut off a matchbox scale VW.

So that's the foundation for gang number two for Nuclear Renaissance, it comes in a little short points wise compared with the sons of Simius, but that just gives me more room to grow! At the bottom of the post is my gang roster.... 

Soon I'll have more terrain to post up and hopefully at some point in the not too distant future a battle report, we have had a couple of games already but not bothered to take any photos due to some horribly crude terrain proxies i.e. Beers cans and fag packets!

We had a good laugh, the game was very easy to pick up although I don't think we were using the full depth of the rules, house rules and friendly compromises were the order of the day.

Both matches ended up lasting about 45mins to an hour with both ending as victories for the road warriors, the first a whitewash, the second a much more close run thing as my friend got to grips with his characters and the gist of the game. There were plenty of cool cinematic moments....and several WTF moments as well!

For example....With a heavy truck bearing down on him, and nowhere to hide, Limey made an incredibly lucky pistol shot, killing the driver behind the wheel and causing the truck to flip out, missing him by a centimetre and hitting terrain instead, destroying the truck and killing the unfortunate passenger Krump.....

By contrast, by dint of some appallingly bad dice rolls, Krump spent both games firing off his powerful shotgun at anything within range without managing to do anything more than dish out the odd shock token and repeatedly jam his gun.

I might have to do a little bit of rebalancing of the lists, roadrunner seems a little too all powerful at the moment, I might downgrade the armour to make him a little more vulnerable to small arms fire. 

Road judge is also a very dangerous character being able to use the speed of his car and his powerful long ranged rifle to make reliable kills on the first turn, which can be a bit of a downer for the other player. The marauders are very focused on getting into ramming range and melee as quickly as possible and some longer ranged firepower might help even things up.

Gang 2 road warriors - convoy

Road Judge (hero) - 30

Driver - 7

Fighter - 10

Lucky - 20

Marksman - 6

Skilled - 20

Rifle - 90

Large weapon - 10

Total - 193

V8 Pursuit (buggy) - 20

Supercharger - 25

Race tuned - 15

Total - 60

Limey (soldier) - 20

Action man - 12

Driver - 6

Fighter - 8

Marksman - 4

Dodge - 10

Pistol - 70

x1 grenade - 10

Total - 140

Diana (buggy) - 20

Supercharger - 25

Reinforced armour - 10

Total - 55

Stobart (driver) - 15

Driver - free

Rammer - 5

Strong - 4

Mechanic - 5

Knife - 5

Total - 34

Roadrunner 7.5t (truck) - 30

Extra armour - 30

Plough - 15

Blast shielding - 15

Total - 90

Judge & pursuit - 253

Limey & Diana - 195

Stobart & roadrunner - 124

Total - 582

Needs Must

I was hoping that my next post would be more nuclear renaissance stuff, my second gang has been painted, but some rather tight financial circumstances mean my unfinished armoured engineers guard army, my daemon hunters inquisitor and buddies and some other assorted bits have gone up on eBay.

If things get much tighter my hive militia / orlocks may be going on as well.

Items ending on Friday and Saturday evening.... Shameless plug over...normal service scheduled to resume soon.

Nuclear Renaissance - Marauders 600pt Starter gang, the 'Sons of Simius'

Here is my first completed gang for Nuclear Renaissance, a savage band of depraved marauders that go by the name of the 'Sons of Simius'

This gang was put together as a gift for a friend and I'm really chuffed with how they turned out, especially the vehicles. Painting each mini as an individual rather than a uniform squad or army was refreshing and helped to keep my interest up.

This is Simius, the gangs fearsome leader and his wasteland steed; Cheryl the saab 93.

 As with all the miniatures Simius is from em4 miniature's 'savages' range and were it not for the long hair and the fact he's kept his trousers on, he could easily pass for the road warriors 'lord humongous'.

The saab 93 started out like this, unfortunately I didn't take a proper 'before' shot.

And ended up a little more 'used'! 

The speakers and subwoofers bolted to the roof and poking through the rear hatch were made from several old pairs of mobile phone earphones and other various electronic bits and pieces to serve as amps and crossovers.

Not just for show they also have an in game effect as the 'sound system' upgrade, which in turn boosts the range of the inspirational 'bard' skill.

In game This car has the 'turbo' and 'race tuned' upgrades and although saabs of this era are generally turbocharged to begin with, I wanted to do something to represent the car being tuned up, so I also added a front mount intercooler.

Next up is 'Wibber' and his truck 'Redneck'. 

Redneck started out as a corgi classic renault, not the most promising base for a mad max machine you might think, but this truck is perhaps my favourite of the six vehicles I've built so far for this project. The idea was to end up with a real ramshackle 'outback' style vintage truck.

The rear wheels were removed and doubled up on the front, and a wider set of wheels were doubled up at the rear along with some homemade rear arches.

An old chimera dozer blade mount was turned into a pick up bed, and the engine block (Lascannon power cell) and blower scoop were added along with smoke belching exhaust pipes and a feed pipe leading to nitrous oxide bottles mounted on the rear of the cab. 

The ram bars are various swords and blade from plastic guardsmen and a cut down piece of sprue.

Last up is the gangs heavy vehicle 'knock knock' together with driver Ziggy and Simius's right hand man; Krump the Ape'prentice.

Ziggy is the slightly flamboyant fellow armed with a sword and Krump (definitely inspired by beyond thunderdome bad dude 'ironbar') is entrusted with a deadly double barrelled shotgun.

'Knock Knock' stared out as a an old corgi bread van (a Bedford?) like this one, though sadly not with the lucozade markings which I might have tried to keep somehow.

The van was heavily knocked about, dented and bullet holed, the plough was made from chimera track guards mounted on hunter killer missile rails. 

Other leftover chimera parts (my best friend in this project) became armour panels and firing ports and a whole mess of stowage was added to the roof.

So that's the first 'starter gang' complete. Next up the 'good guys'

At 600 points (the rule books sample gangs are 650) theres room to expand the crew with a new member or two without slowing gameplay down too much.

For anyone that's interested below is the gang roster for the sons....

Gang 1 - Marauders 'Sons of Simius'

Simius the invincible (hero) - 30

Bard - 15

Driver - 7

Fighter - 10

Mechanic - 15

Strong - 6

Skilled - 20

Pistol - 70

Large weapon (punch dagger) - 10

x1 hand grenade - 10

Total - 193

'Cheryl' (buggy) - 20 (driven by Simius) 

Race tuned - 15

Turbo - 15

Safety features - 10

Sound system - 10

Total - 70 

Wibber (goon) - 10

Driver - 5

Rammer - 5

Fighter - 6

Large weapon (chain) - 10

Total - 36

Redneck (Truck) - 30

Ram bars - 15

Nitro x2 - 20

Supercharger - 25

Total - 70

Ziggy (driver) - 15

Driver - free

Fighter - 6

Sword - 5

Total - 26

'Knock Knock' (truck) - 30 (driven by ziggy)

Extra armour - 30

Plough - 15

Total - 75

Ape'prentice Krump (soldier) - 20

Marksman - 4

Fighter - 8

Strong - 5

Shotgun - 80

Knife- 5

Total - 122

Simius and Cheryl - 263

Wibber and redneck - 106

Krump, ziggy and knock knock - 223

Total - 592