NidMarines!

Another Update - Another Army. 


So a while back I started work on an Ork-themed chaos space marine army, and while that continues along on the backburner along with my treemarines I, as usual, can't resist making another chaos army.

So this time, instead of the Powers of Chaos, instead of Gork'n'Mork, these marines worship the Hive Mind!

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My inspiration for this army came along with the Crimson Slaughter book and the opportunity it brought to take possessed as troops. I've always like possessed so the chance to make them a useful part of an army list is really something! To that end, I converted up a squad using the limited bits I have available to me at the moment - Nids.

The marine bodies are those of  raptors/warp talons, the dynamic poses they offer go much better with the genestealers.

The genestealers I've used are a mix of newer models and the old 2nd edition ones, which are still decent sculpts. 

Given that I've already deviated totally from what CSM are meant to look like, let alone the 'slaughter, I tried out a totally different colour scheme.

There are actually 4 different blues going on for the skin here, and the bone armour is painted over a catachan green (or whatever the replacement for camo green is called). Suffice to say, it looks horrible with the green next to the blue, so I'm please with how well the bone and blue has come out. The yellow was chosen as a bright contrast as only the fleshtone was very different.

I really really hate highlighting black, so I've tried to keep it to a minimum, the black blades of weapons is simply given a coat of 'ard coat.

The black parts of the armour and skin (like the backs of legs/inner elbow) use the kngkngihghhth oxide technical paint, which is an odd one.

This was the first one I tried. The base uses mourn mountain snow to hold some white sand in place - snow went much better than any grass or rock effect I could think of. -----------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Leader

Leading my possessed I've got myself a sorceror of chaos - with the new 7th edition psychic powers, specifically daemonology, he's a real threat when using the 'Prophet of the Voices' gift from the crimson slaughter book - being a daemon sure is handy, and means that he won't run away at least! 

This guy is made from a Warriors of Chaos charioteer lord with a few 40k bits added. His 'spellcasting' arm has a hole drilled in the claw so that I can add some lightning or some such when I get round to it. 

The plan with the sorcerer is to run him with some possessed (given that he has prophet of the voices, I have no choice) and try and get as many summoning spells off as possible, hopefully swapping some possessed marines out for daemonic heralds, and if it all goes wrong, turning into a greater daemon. For daemons I'll be using genestealers, who are a handy stand in for either daemonettes or bloodletters, as they're not to far from either rule-wise. Of course there's always the cheese route of summoning more horrors who summon more horrors, but that won't really fit with the theme. plus it's pretty lame. 

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Transport

While the possessed from the Crimson Slaughter book have the virtue of being harder to kill and faster outside of a transport, they can only depend on the faster movement 1/3 of the time. With no apparent penalty to turning into beasts when inside a rhino, I figured I'd run one with a dirge caster - if it lives until I make a charge, preventing overwatch is a great little trick, especially when I have so little in the way of shooting with my infantry. 

 The cupola with the guns was more of necessity - the rhino was made from an immolator kit - it cost me the same (from GW no less!) and got me a whole load of heavy weapons, not to mention possible the only plastic sister of battle (who I'll no doubt use for something!

BOO!

Given that I used an immolator, I didn't have a proper rear door, so I had to get inventive. This isn't a great shot, but I've used a gaping maw spewing forth another genestealer. It was that or a vagina or asshole. I made the right choice.  

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Helbrutes!

Helfexes? Dreadfexes? I'm not really sure. Either way, they were fun to build, and I'm really looking forward to running them as some of the helbrute formations - specifically the trio of deepstriking nasties and cultist meatshield ones. 

TL Heavy Bolter and  Heavy Flamer - lots of STR5 AP4 might not be the most powerful but anti-infantry is what's needed here, he's a dreadnought remember, so pretty good at smashing up tanks, especially if he gets to deepstrike. 

This guy has the dubious honour of having the meatshield cultists. If he goes mad he's likely to destroy them all, but hey, being a cultist always sucks. 

You don't need to deepstrike right next to things to put the hurt on them, so a multi-melta and missile launcher should do nicely. I realise a lascannon would be a better and more complimentary range, but if I'm deepstriking then getting inside 24" isn't a problem. 

These guys are made of a lot of carnifex I had lying around, the heavy weapons from the immolator, their heads are the objective marker servo skulls trimmed down, and the tails and armour bits are leftovers from the maulerfiend/forgefiend kit that has become the thing below: 

I would have loved to have the exocrine or mutalith mouth, but this will have to do for now! 

I'm quite pleased with him, though having used all his actual lasher tendrils for tails, I had to get inventive with the claws. 

Next time, the final dread, the unlucky (meatshield) cultists, the hiveheldrakecrone and hopefully a few other bits of silly CSM nid stuff. Unless orks come out and distract me.  

  

Soooo, I haven't updated this in nearly a year! Oops.

Granted I have been fairly busy and haven't perhaps done as much 40k as I'd like to, but I've certainly remedied that over the last couple of months, I've created a brand new 2000pt army! Of Space Marines and Tau.

With a Dark Mechanicus theme.

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Dark Mechanicus - The Imperial Fist/Farsight Enclave way

Yeah, so this list uses the Imperial Fist chapter tactics in the Space Marine codex, rather than the 'Sentinels of Terra' Imperial Fist supplement, mainly because I wanted to get the shield eternal on my HQ, as he is essentially a wound-soak (though I might have to put an inquisitor in to take over warlord duties if I keep doing that!). This is along with a tiny allied contingent of Tau using the Farsight list, and the Vengeance Weapons Batteries.

I wanted to use the rules for Centurions, and with them, make a footslogging list; I chose IF for the chapter tactic as it not only buffs my Centurions and Devastators, but helps to mitigate the poor BS of the rank-and-file troops I've chosen (scouts). Sentinels of Terra would be better for that at close range, but I don't really want them to be in close range!

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First up, the commander.

Not a whole lot of GW parts going on here...

 This guy is one I may revisit to tidy up a bit, he doesn't look quite 'finished' enough to me, but I got fed up trying to fix him so he's just going to fight as is for now! He's made out of a Warmachine (traitors!) Battle Mechanik Officer from the Khador range, with a mantic forgefather head with horns attached, a beastmen minotaur shield and a bloodletter's sword from the juggernaut box!

Behind him we can see these guys

Assault Centurions

The drillbits are made from a plasterboard wrawl plug thing trimmed slightly, I feel they capture the oversize nature of 40k weaponry nicely!

The glowing cables are a piece of a children's craft set, I don't know what it's meant to be for but it sure brings the early-90s-action-figure feel to the table!

I'm pretty pleased with these guys, especially as they are made from none other than the much-maligned Minotaur kit, which is actually a decent scuplt. Except for the feet; whoever made the feet needs to be slapped with a cloven hoof, because they look so much better when they match the rest of the model's aesthetic. I gave it a shot, but I'm no sculptor! If someone put out a set of feet for the minotaur kit, they'd be a great set of models.

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So those were the Assault Centurions, logically we now go to...

Centurion Devestators

Yeah, it's a cow made out of a juggernaut. 

Gun cows! With grav cannons and hurricane bolters obviously. Their guns are made from necron bits, and the sergeant of each squad has the ML/twin-linked lascannon option instead. 

2 squads of three is what I've got. Huge points sink, but should be a laugh.

These were the models that kicked off the whole thing, I wanted to make a gunbeast type thing, and a backwards juggernaut is what I used! The rest of the army followed suit (largely) with the bovine feel.

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Devastators

These are the only guys in power armour in the whole list, and they aren't wearing any. Instead they're bestigors with forgefather heads and guns!

Not the smoothest conversion on the rocket launchers, but close enough. Lots of flakk anyhow!

Carried on the purple flesh so they look like the same force, but kept their heads helmeted to keep the daemon faces on the more 'monstrous' elements of the army. 

In game these guys will generally split into two combat squads and sit there firing out flakk missiles to keep the heldrakes and vendettas away.

If they decide to stay as a 10 man unit they'll almost certainly be joined by the Ethereal from the allied Tau detachment, who will hand out night vision goggles (blacksun filter!)

Ethereal > Charioteer? Who's to say what the better career is. 

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The Troops - scouts

To keep it cheap, and because the models I wanted to use didn't quite qualify for power armour in my book, I've taken 3 squads of 8 scouts as troops (8 for Khorne... purple... ranged combat Khorne). 

This is the close combat squad, 8 scouts with a sergeant with power lance (he'll be dead in round 2 of combat anyway, he might as well be good for the first one!).

And two squads of bolter scouts with a heavy bolter, all hoping that the Imperial Fist reroll will make them slightly less awful than they are. 

I have to say though that the Mantic Forgefather models are far better than I expected them to be. I still think privateer press are lame, but Mantic have gone up in my estimation. 

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Allies & Extras - 

Crisis Suits 

Yup, crisis suits.

These guys are made from Vargheists/crypt horrors with minotaur arms with a bit of tubing on the end to resemble their flamers. That's right, these three crisis suits are equipped only with 2 flamers each and the hit and run thingy. They drop in, burn something and run away, that is their job! 

Vengeance Weapons

I didn't think 4 rocket launchers would be enough AA at 2000pts, so I make these out of a laser-quest target and a head-lamp (that you wear on your head, not for the car, duh). 

The guns are magnetised if I feel like switching them out for something, but I think I'll probably be keeping the lascannons!

Last but not least, the reason I brought the Tau along in the first place was to get a Riptide in the list! 

Beast Riptide

Basically he's fucking huge. 

Definitely got that action figure feel again! His breastplate and thigh greaves (are they greaves? I don't know...) are actually from an action figure, as is the big cannon. 

Lots of Juggernaut, Ghorgon (obviously) and chaos chariot parts in here.

I'm really pleased with this guy, he's a great centerpiece. I expect everyone to try and kill him immediately though!

The riptide took forever, purely on trying to find bits that fitted (his 'jetpack' is part of a model plane). Its been a long time since I painted anything that large, he does feel a bit toy like. I look forward to getting my hands on an Imperial Knight soon enough (hell, he could stand in for one in the meantime). 

I've still got to finish the bases off, putting some finer sand in the gaps left by the chunky gravel I've used, and begin the thankless task of finding a way of transporting them that isn't a shoebox they'll break to pieces inside. 

Still experimenting with the photography, there may be a return to previous styles next time, need to see what works best with new gear. 

So that's it, that's what I've done so far in 2014! 

Next time, Genestealer Cult Space Marines - Crimson Slaughter Edition!