The Tactical Auto Reliquary of Lord Tiberius

Having hit a bit of a hobby wall in terms of motivation with regards to my various projects over the holiday period I went back to basics and just decided to make something out of my bits box,

I love Servo skulls, plain and simple, they're also a great little thing to knock up if you just fancy five minutes with the superglue, and if you've got a skull in your bits box, you're pretty much there...

I came up with the idea of making a skull to represent one of the relics (heirlooms of conquest) in the new codex 'the Tactical auto reliquary of Lord Tiberius'. A servo skull containing the memory and personality of a foul tempered, patronising old general who floats along behind the senior officer blaring a endless succession of tactical 'suggestions' from its speakers and cutting into the vox net and countermanding anything it deems a mistake! 

Very 40k in my book, but to be honest any excuse to have a servo skull in my company command squad will do, it's also interesting to think that prehaps this particular relic was created to give a use to the nice servo skull that comes in the Cadian command box...

My 'Tiberius' was made from an undead skull with space marine backpack vents for the engine pods and vox grille, space marine decorative bits and bobs like a banner top, and some technical doodads shaved from a Cadian helmet - simples really - but better than Turning up with a list and saying 'oh he's got this' I suppose. Here he is WIP, pre painting, and lacking a few little details.

A group shot of all my servo skulls...

I haven't been completely idle otherwise, I have sub assembled a hydra for the Kaylan Lancers - just need a paint restock now and I can get cracking on that one.

I had been using two old metal 'vehicle crew on foot' miniatures as bodyguards in my company command squad but that option has been axed from the latest codex, wanting to put a use to two great sculpts I envisaged making up a remnant unit.

" As squads take casualties and are merged to bring them up to strength, inevitably there are leftover troopers forming an under strength section. In the lancers these are bolstered by the surviving crew of knocked out vehicles and formed into squads tasked with providing a protection detail to the more vulnerable support vehicles such as the griffons, wyverns and hydra. Thus allowing the 'regular' units to concentrate on archiving their objectives." 

I dug out the third miniature in the 'vehicle crew on foot' set, which I had never painted as he had 'the wrong type of lasgun' for the lancers, and converted up another crewman from a frateris miliaman I had tried and failed to use as a starting point for an Inq28 character. Add in a couple of spare guardsmen and I'm halfway there allready!

Lastly I also finished up a heavy Bolter team to add a bit more firepower to the veterans, here they are with the company command squad, but they'll probably end up in the remnants squad, with the company command squad getting the missile launcher team from one of my veteran squads and said squad getting an Autocannon as replacement.

Nuclear Renaissance- Gang 3 - Children of the apocalypse

Here is the third Gang I've completed for Nuclear renaissance, weighing in at 800pts. I'm going to need to add 200pts of reinforcements to the other gangs to balance things up...

A group of Feral cannibal fiends, the vanguard of the feared wasteland warlord Psymon Sezz.

First up we have the man himself...

A really simple conversion of an old plastic blood bowl human player, spikes added to the shoulder guard, a horse skull mask, a Forgeworld Cadian backpack and noise marine Claw. In game terms he is a close combat monster.

Psymons ride is his armoured steamroller 'fist of Psymon' an old corgi steamroller armoured up with chimera parts and other usefull junk.

Next if the 'Feral Skulltaker' one of Psymons warriors based on an old metal blood bowl elf with the bone back banner coming from an undead horse, the axe from a lizard man Saurus and some imperial guard pouches.

Third is the 'Feral Headhunter' based on another Bloodbowl elf, I added a bretonnian's lance as a spear with an IG lasgun sling, an empire thigh plate, a greenstuff knee pad and more spikes to the shoulder pads.

Together these three and the steamroller comprise the close combat half of the gang.

Next up are the Warriors with ranged weapons, firstly the 'Feral Stalker' a deadly sniper again built from a Bloodbowl elf with an imperial guard longlas and backpack.

Next up are the Feral Shaman, feral runt and their 'Technical' the 'voice of Psymon'

Voice of Psymon is an old Kellogg's promotional Citroen 2cv, up armoured in the usual fashion and with a gunnery platform on the back to operate the triple mortars crudely grafted on. In game terms its a mounted grenade launcher. Most of the bits here came from the IG heavy weapons team.

Feral runt is the driver (it's all he's good for as a stunted little goon) mostly skaven with a dark eldar head, a genestealer's claw and a greenstuff cloak.

Lastly is the Feral Shamen, gunner and the gangs technical expert, another Bloodbowl elf with a Cadian vox caster helmet, a lizardman Saurus scythe, a backpack from the sentinel kit, greenstuff knee pad, more spikes and lots and lots of ammo pouches along with a mortar round to link him with his role as bombardier.

Group shot of the shooters...

All in all I'm quite pleased how these guys turned out, considering the minis I was using as a starting point and the zero outlay needed to create the gang (bitz box special!)

In game terms this gang is has some very powerful ranged attacks and close combat fighters, plus some very tough and durable models in the form of Psymon and his steamroller, its disadvantages are a lack of speed and mobility in comparison with the other two gangs and a lack of specialists, no medic, bard or mechanic here! It's been designed to be an easy gang for someone to pick up and play to learn the game with simple character archetypes and skill sets - sniper snipes, axe dude chops etc etc.

Now all I need to do is sort out the reinforcements for the other gangs to balance things up!

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...