Deathgaze, Overlord of the Deathmarque Guilds

Bit of a mea culpa here. I've actually had this model complete and ready for quite some time, and just never bothered to photograph him. 

I know, I'm sorry.

So anyway, yes, he's named after a Final fantasy 6 character, and yes, his sniper's shield cape comes from a Persona 3 character. A rather neat combination, wouldn't you say? 

I featured this scythe in a WIP post, and to be honest, it was ready far before the rest of the model was. It would've snapped into a million pieces had it been made of, say, plastic or resin, but thanks to the all-metal frame it survived quite a  bit of bending, drilling, and general manhandling. 

I always liked the design of the Thanatos from Persona 3, but never found a way to incorporate it into a character miniature before this one. The sarcophagus lids are from Reaper miniatures, bless their bits-friendly hearts. I had thought to give him horrible organic spreading wings to tie him more into Deathgaze, but this seemed the more Necron way to go.

I suppose I should have named him "Thanatokh" or something, but with that big cyclopean eye, "Deathgaze".

I suppose, like Grievous, in addition to just being used as a Transcendant C'Tan, he also deserves an entirely for funsies character profile: 

Deathgaze, Master of the Deathmarque Guilds, Lord of Death

679 points

BS   WS  S          T    W   I     A    LD      Sv

12     9     8 (16)  10   8   6     4    10     2+/2+

Wargear:

The Scythe Invictus Mors: Invictus Mors is the ultimate weapon of war, crafted by Death itself and given to Deathgaze just so he could show up General Grievous, because the wily son of a bitch keeps escaping his own certain demise through various schemes and generally cowardly acts. That he doesn't have such a great piece of kit honks the good general off like you wouldn't believe. This pleases Death, and makes Deathgaze very happy. It has two profiles. 

As a melee weapon it doubles Deathgaze's strength attribute, and may be used either against a single target for Deathgaze's maximum number of attacks, or Deathgaze may make a single attack against every model in base-to-base contact. If Deathgaze hits, remove these models from play. 

As a ranged weapon, Invictus Mors has the following profile:

Range    Strength        Special Rules                                                                      
 72"             D                Firing modes, Ignores Cover, Instant Death

Invictus Mors may be fired in one of two firing modes: Single and Death Ray.

- In single shot mode, Invictus Mors is is a Heavy 1 weapon. If you miss with a BS of 12     you have no business rolling dice. 

- For Death Ray mode, designate a point within 48" of Deathgaze. Roll 5D6, find something that long and 2" wide and lay it down on the table. evevything above or below the line is hit.

Necrodermis Mortis: Deathgaze has a 2+ armor save. Rolls of 1 must be rerolled.

The Bastion of the Dead: Given Deathgaze by the great death lord Nito, this immense shield was made from the sarcophagus lids of the nine previous Lords of Death, and grants Deathgaze admittance to their monthly card game. It also gives him a  2+ invulnerable save, and allows him to redeploy himself via Deep Strike once per turn, during either players turn, at the beginning of the movement phase. He may assault on the round he does this. Furthermore, it gives him the Shrouded and Stealth rules. 

The Blades of the Arkhanus: Deathgaze replaced his legs long ago with these because he felt they looked cool. He moves in a skating motion that crackles with cold energy, producing a high-pitched squeal that draws in his minions like carrion birds. Deathgaze may move 18" in a single turn, ignoring terrain and other models. If he does this, the nearest unit of Deathmarks (yes, even if it's 52" away) removed from the table and deployed within 6"of Deathgaze via Deep Strike. No buts.  

Master of the Deathmarque Guilds: For every maximum model number Deathmark unit you purchase, you may purchase an additional one at zero cost. Any Deathmark unit entering play via Deep Strike does not scatter. Deathgaze's presence makes the Deathmarks so anxious to please, that the Hunters From Hyperspace rule remains in effect for the entire game instead of just one turn. Furthermore, at the beginning of the Necron player's turn, a unit of Deathmarks at less than full strength may be removed from the table. During the movement phase, that unit must be returned to the table via Deep Strike at full strength. All Synaptic Distintegrator weapons gain the Armourbane rule, and their range increases to 36". 

Death is Fickle: If an independent character is wounded by Deathgaze, roll 3D6. On a triple 6, that character is unharmed. 

Merry Christmas!

I teased these a while back and only recently got the free time to shoot them. This little group all happened to be assembled and painted at the same time. After seeing a vintage metal necron lot on ebay, I had to pick it up, and as a result added some much need scythe power to my army. 

Nehekhara here came from my wanting to use Anrakyr in a battle (not to mention my regret at never having purchased a WHF Tomb Queen) , but not having a mini for him. After experiencing the Failcast horror of Trazyn and Orikan, I wasn't about to go seeking out another rubbery horror. So I bought a PP Tomb Maiden (how apt!) and converted this imperious beauty. I shaved down the features of a stock Triarch Praetorian, narrowing the jaw a bit and accentuating the cheekbones. 

I don't mind that she's rather tall and lithe compared to other Necrons, because I imagine the Cryptek that crafted this shell for her was probably in love with her. Plus, being royalty she would've wanted to not only preserve her beauty, but look down on her subjects for all time. Imagine her anger when she woke up sheathed in cold metal. The poor fool that did this to her is probably scrap by now. 

She looks rather more like Imotekh in this pose. The PP base model took some reposing and a lot of pinning, and is terribly fiddly. Nonetheless I still prefer it to anything made out of that horrid resin. 

Those whip bits are courtesy of the Hive Tyrant that became my General Grievous. Combined with the skirt (which was almost bright blue) and an extra Destroyer spine, I think it lends the model a nice John Blanche-ian look. I found some of his Necron sketches recently, and in the future might attempt a model or two based on them. 

Speaking of Grievous...

Now mini-Grievous need not fight alone, thanks to his trusted Magnaguard. I didn't pose them with the Hive Tyrant C'tan sized version because they are, of course ridiculously small to be guarding him at all. Maybe if they were 30mm scale like the  Knight Models versions, but certainly not these. 

The original Pariah models were quite boring, and the capes help immensely. I thought about re-doing the heads with goggle-eyed robot ones and headscarves to match the movie droids, but then they wouldn't have gone with the Necrons. As you can see, these match up with mini-Grievous and the rest of the nobility quite well. They came out a bit too light blue, though, but oh well. 

Lastly, a stock overlord to serve as a lackey for Trollzyn Trazyn, and therefore painted with matching accents. Really, he could accompany any other nobility (like, say Nehekhara) that happens to need someone to kick around.

Next time, something much, much larger. 

Merry Christmas everyone!

WIP...

This week's theme is "warscythes".

Necrons: A little expansion of the ranks....

At some point, both the "to paint" and "done" piles on my desk looked like this. 

These days all the buzz is that the sky is falling, GW is in free-fall, 40k is collapsing, and lots of other doom and gloom that point to changes on the horizon, and not necessarily for the good. All fretting and wringing of the hands that has been, quite frankly, done to death. 

So of course, my group planned an Apoc game for which I dusted off some unassembled Necrons. The resulting frenzy of assembly was quite cathartic, considering the short hiatus I'd taken from hobby things lately. 

Orikan and his buddy Trazyn I bought for a song. There's no way I'd pay full price, ever, for this absolutely shitty resin. If anyone at GW reads this blog, please spearhead an initiative to get the characters either A) cast in metal, or B) out of some better resin. Whatever moron looked at the first samples of these things cast in this shit and stamped them "approved" should be boiled in his own pudding. I like the Orikan model, but I'm sure I'll be repairing that staff (which I already had to rebuild out of bits and green stuff) and tail soon. 

Wait, why the hell does he have a tail?

On the lighter side of things, in a game that will inevitably involve pie plate templates removing lots of things from the field, my hope is for Trazyn (or Trollzyn, as he's known) here to confound their efforts as long as possible with his body-swapping and empathic obliterating. We'll see if that combined with Orikan's hulking out will win the day. I'll just be happy if they both survive being transported intact. Necron characters, are of course, one of the good things to come from the First Great Revision, even if the Second Great Revision made them.... not as good as the first. Rest in piece, Fat Ward. 

I'm sure I'd had a plan to turn these two into something else. Why else would these two lone fellows just be sitting by themselves for so long? Also, you'll notice the heavy destroyer is the only thing in this mob of 'crons with glowy green rods. GW, these are what made the Necron line look really, really distinctive on the tabletop. What idiot convinced you to do away with them in favor of these:

Those plastic rods are absolutely wretched. Yes, you can paint them up to look nice, but they don't catch the light and glow like the old mk.1's did. This is indicative of the larger trend coming out their minis design shop: over detailed with zero character. You know what had character? All the things they did in 1983.

Yes, those Immortals do have Warrior chests and transplanted spines, as what I'd bought the two boxes for in the first place were these:

In a game about 3 weeks ago, two of them held up an entire space marine assault squad for 3 turns by refusing to die. It was quite amazing. Yes, I'd proxied them while having the unassembled kits all along. I didn't green the barrel inserts because they aren't gauss weakens, even though I did give them the obligatory green energy vents. 

You know what even Bandai is doing now GW? Option packages. If you were smart, and wanted to make money, you'd put out option kits containing what the dual boxes were missing, so all people would have to do is buy the kit box and the option box and they have both units. This is why eBay resellers are making money and you're not. 

Remember way back when I posted about how Ghost Arks were an excellent paragon of a kit? Well, the Tomb Blade is quite the opposite. I'd planned a separate post on these, but instead, I'll just get my rant out of the way here. 

On the one hand, I quite like the radiating spines with spikes motif the top 2/3 of this has, but on the other hand, the tacked-on cannons are like a hasty finish to a promising drawing. It's like the guy had this orb, and it was great, but he then didn't know how to finish it off or what it, in fact was, until Fat Ward came trundling up behind him to say "Whatcha coin? Oooooh can it be a jet bike? Put some guns on it!"

In practice, it's in infuriating piece of shit that embodies all of the worst things about the new design philosophy. It's covered in detail which you then further cover in detail. (an offense to be further repeated in the new Ironstrider kit) No glowy rods were some should be, overly fiddly small bits (separate spinal cables? Are you mad, GW designers?) that just plain are poorly designed (shield vanes with tiny, tiny contact points, and they're in 2 even tinier parts!). The end result looks like a chunk of a larger kit they just couldn't be bothered to finish. Here's your insanely delicate spiny cockpit orb for your...thing. (a 5-man Ghost Ark? A Triarch Stalker? Who knows?) Oh wait, let's put some cannons on it. (sigh) I may just sell these three and go make some different mecha-bugs. Or more of other mecha-bugs. God knows more of these kits would just be flogging myself.

To boot, it badly fills a role that the old mk1 Destroyer did quite well. Really, all they had to do was keep the mk1  stats (jet bike, S6 AP3 Heavy 3 gun) and add the Tomb Blade's options (especially nebuloscopes. Mmmm!) and you'd have had an excellent unit. The Second Great Revision requires you take a squad of these to get the good Decurion, which seems to be The Great Plan to Sell Models 2.0, subsection Everyone Has Destroyers, Here's How We Sell Them Something Else.

Make no mistake, these trends are bad, and they're not just limited to the Necrons. 

Maybe the sky really is falling. Maybe it's time to throw in the towel and evolve to another hobby. 

Maybe I'll just keep making things. 

Happy Wednesday, people. 

Bring on the Big Boys: The Heresy-Era Thanatar Siege Automata

So, time to put on our Jeremy Clarkson hat and take a look at the FW Thanatar. Though fiddly, this model, when you finally manage to get it together, is a great piece. I only wish it were hollow plastic, because it begs to have LED light stuffed into it to illuminate the plasma mortar. 

Look at that thing. How is it this came from basically the same place as those revolting robots they put out for the CultMech books? There's some real artistic schizophrenia going on over there.

If the Mechanicum are such tech-hoarders and so reverent about their machines, then a great deal of these and other automata should have feasibly survived the heresy era. Sure half of them went to Horus, but for pete's sake, half didn't. Also, if the AdMech do anything, it's stuff things in vaults. Where'd all those crab tanks and walker cavalry units come from? They weren't stuffed in turkeys, you know. 

Or maybe they were. Who knows how big turkeys got at the height of the Imperium. 

Three things about it are shit, however. The first is FW's insistence on "heat and twist" ammo belts. They're awful. They never bend and flex properly. If someone over there had half a brain they'd cast the belts in pewter so you bend and shape the hell out of them, or better yet, make them actual plastic belt-link chain feeds, like these. Note the price of those kits, by the way.

In retrospect, I went a little overboard on the source lighting.

The second thing is the Hellex plasma mortar support mechanism. This flimsy bit of resin just does not have the strength to support this immense block of resin, and quite honestly, needs a set of hydraulics to elevate and  stabilize the thing. Sorry, FW designers, but you need to step it up and stop phoning it in like this. It's the details that make your models and stuff like this just won't do. 

Yes, there were wee pistons that go dead on the backs of the legs.
Yes, I left them off, because I lost one, and frankly, he looks just fine anyway. 

Third, the unnecessarily complicated hips. Why are they jointed in the middle instead of the more dynamic and more sensible ball joint? Quite honestly, posing has been FW (and GW's) biggest problem as they don't seem have a grasp on the basics of composition and dynamic form at all. Never mind the over-produced look everything has been getting on the GW side nowadays. Have you seen the Terminator Captain and Librarian? They're utter shit. Boring, under-detailed models in boring poses. The previous models were ten times better. Who quit or was fired from their models department? 

The base is from Secret Weapon Miniatures, and has this dreadful rut on one side. I was obliged to fill it with sprue to give the model more contact area and stability. SWM is really stepping up their game nowadays, and giving the Dragon Forge stuff a run for its money. This didn't stop me from investing in their kickstarted, though, and you should too. Especially if you have a machine-y army like, say, Admech or Iron Warriors. 

Assassin's Creed: 40k Ed Part 2: the Bad and the Ugly....

Honestly, I'll probably never have a Chaos army, as much as I like the pre-Heresy Death Guard and some of the models, like the Forgefiend, so this is pretty much as close as we're going to get to anything like Chaos, ever. Also, the fluff text talks about the boss as a sorcerer, so I decided to go Thousand Sons with these guys because I didn't see Khorne worshippers staying calm long enough to get any serious sorcery accomplished. With that detail out of the way, the entire adversary war band just sort of fell into place. 

That said, working on these was a treat, especially Zehket-Ka the Inscrutably (and some might say unnecessarily) Obtuse. Word to the wise: never ask this guy for directions to the can. As I was futzing with the parts to assemble him, I almost said "fuck it" and made a better Abaddon, but the lure of the Changer of Ways is strong. 

How is he supposed to go plundering space hulks and outlet malls with that wildly impractical helmet? Only Tzeentch knows. Maybe all the little eyeballs adorning his armor give him 360 degree sight, or he has magic rearview mirrors or something. 

I'm very satisfied with the way his blue crystal Chaos spike came out. I suppose it's a hellish torture to inflict on your followers to make their chiefs be perpetually climbing slightly uphill. I imagine they all have calf muscles like steam pistons. 

Instead of using the stock Chaos familiar from the box set (man, how boring is that little robed guy compared to the old models from the RT days?) I opted instead to use this rather sinister cat mascot from the Raging Heroes Toughest Girls of the Galaxy Kickstarter. He's covered in weird jewelry, and suitably Egyptian enough to be little Tzeentch fiend. 

A big thanks to the prolific Joel of Mordian 7th fame for the Thousand Sons bits that adorn Aknot, Akenet, and Aknehmet. While the catastrophe mentioned last post killed their sapphire paint jobs a bit, I think they held up rather well. They still need to some shoulder iconography, though. When I have time, I suppose. 

GW could have hit one out of the park by making this game more modular (like Space Hulk) and introducing more missions, and more of a weird mix, but they didn't. I guess they felt like they were floating a trial balloon, or that it wasn't worth the effort to begin with, or something, but despite that the art direction is very good and everything is generally very well-produced. The whole business is a bit confusing. Maybe they plan to expand with an Inquisition tack, or something? A series of games along the lines of a campaign might be a great way to revive, say, Necromunda. 

Or do they think that far? I wish we knew. Anyway, more models.

As cultists go, the Order of the Azure Shroud is your run of the mill bunch of fanatics who don't see sunlight very often, and just watch The Mummy and the first half of The Ten Commandments in their basements non-stop. I imagined climbing the hierarchy in the cult meant wearing more blue as you went on, and picking up more things like gold masks and shrouds. In more practical terms, this meant introducing variation so I didn't get bored. 

These guys turned out to be a treat, particularly the chief cultist with his flaming head. Tzeentch is pretty much the king of dubious boons. Hey! Your head's a plume of blue fire now! Here's a kickin' rad hat! Thanks for worshipping!

I feel I didn't do the crow guys proper justice. I wish I'd been able to find some kind of wide-brimmed hats to make them look more plague doctor-ish, but oh well. I did try to make the one on the far left look more chaos-y by giving him a glowy mutant eye under that mask. 

I wish they had conical cultist hoods like the Mordheim ones. These hooded guys are actually kinda boring. 

And, of course the gimps. Under those masks are three perfectly normal guys who thought this was a cosplay club, and now they just want to go home because there are no girls. 

Happy Friday, gang. 

Assassin's Creed: 40k ed., Part 1

So there's a new combi-pack of a score or so 40k miniatures that happens to include a simple-to-play side game. It costs too much, the art direction is excellent, and at the end of the day you get a bunch of decent minis, two of which can't get the life-saving cover saves they need to... save their lives. But that's okay, because you also get a really beautiful non-modular board you can use to play one mission. 

Anyway, the miniatures. 

I don't know why I like this banana hatted bag of hammers so much, I just do. Maybe it's that confusion of tubes that sits so improbably atop his neck, maybe it's that you can surround him with a bunch of Librarians and inflate his head-gun's assault value through the roof.

The problem with assassins is that once they appear, everyone wants to shoot them to the exclusion of all else, and rightly so. The further problem with the minis in this set is that the ones that really need to get cover saves are meticulously designed so as not to get said saves. "But", you say, "They get a 4+ invulnerable save!" 

Bollocks. 4+ never saves the common Guardsman, and it won't save these chaps either. 

I do like the way they give him a bit to leap off of, though, and it's such a good idea that I went against common sense and used this instead of mounting him straight to a base. 

I wish Vindicare had been aiming instead of skulking, but it's still decent, solid figure, and unlike the stupidity of the Eversor and Callidus' designs, didn't have any fiddly bits that connected at the wrist, or lower torso that separated at the ass. That little shrine in the ruin is a nice touch. 

This thing is a straight-up nightmare of a design. The contact point for the foot is insanely small. The long braid is separate from the head, the ass is inexplicably in two pieces, the boobs separate from the chest, the hands a separate at the wrists... it's as though they expected you to store it on the shelf, never transport it, and never even use it except occasionally as a conversation piece. In short, it's the most fragile, badly designed thing ever. To boot, they give you a high thin plinth to secure her to, apparently with equal parts luck and prayer. At least the neck isn't a separate microscopic piece as with the Necron ark driver, but I'm sure they fully tried to make it be. 

So, I took my smallest drill, and put in paper clips to reinforce what I could. Also, I mounted her to a spare resin base that would potentially give her a cover save if I chanced to move behind something shorter than, say, an Imperial Knight. If ever there was a reason to march into GW HQ and ask them what the shit they were thinking, it's this thing. Yes, it's probably their best female mini to date (in that it actually looks vaguely feminine) but good God is it ever built not to stay in one piece. One of the precariously small fiddly plastic cables leading from her neural shredder to her backpack even snapped as I was painting her. As you can see, we did not replace that unnecessary bit; they could've run power contacts along the lines of her suit as they did the other three models, but noooOOooo. 

Now the paint. You'll notice they look a bit splotchy. They didn't before I spray-finished them. Prior to that they were lovely, with meticulously applied directional highlights. 

The horror came when I set them to dry near an air purifier, which sucked every dust mote in the house past them into itself. The result was that they (as well as 3 Thousand Sons Chaos Marines)  dried, matte-clear, with a zillion dust particles stuck to them. 

I know. I was utterly devastated. 

First, I lightly brushed them with a dry brush. 

Nothing. 

Then a wet one. 

Still nothing.

Then I got out the lacquer thinner, sighed heavily, and wet a brush to dilute it further. 

The particles came away. 

The paint..... well, you can see what happened. Fine detail=ruined. They are good from afar, but far from good. My only consolation is that the CYA wasn't dissolved, causing them to fall to pieces. Nonetheless, we shan't be doing that again. 

Next time, the bad guys. 

Happy Wednesday, people. 

Bang Bang.....

Just some gun servitors today, courtesy of the Raging Heroes Toughest Girls of the Galaxy Kickstarter. The only real mod to these was to the one in the center, who was wearing a fright mask that made her look more Chaos-y than I would've liked. So, I added a respirator tube to her mask. The TGG minis are very nice and highly detailed (almost too highly for my old eyes). I really do recommend them. They even have an amazing female Magos scheduled, and she can't get to my door soon enough.

You never read about female servitors in any of the 40k books, and for their part, these look almost a bit too ghoulish. I wonder if their were convicts, or if some tech priest just couldn't let go of his exes...

Magos Dominus/Cybernetica

The Mechanicum-related releases of the last few weeks have been satisfying and frustrating, particularly the "one codex, two books" approach they took to the army. While some of my favorite models finally have rules, the makeup of the list is... well, but then I'm not here for list analysis. If you want, I'll pontificate on it at a later date, but it's really not my forte' to begin with. 

So, this fellow. 

It's quite a little boat of equipment he's carrying, and he's absolutely packed with detail. if it's one thing the folks at FW and GW are doing right, it's making the AdMech characters suitably weird and nigh-on alien looking, down to their bizarre conveyances and equally odd weapons. They're absolutely covered in gorgeous detail, right down to all the little sub arms and control panels. 

What I didn't appreciate was that his enormous battle arm was so damn delicate that it required me to give it its own internal skeleton of paper clip, and a pewter pipe besides to stabilize it (and to cover the broken hydraulic piston stub, thanks FW). Really, this part was terribly designed and, while I understand what they were trying to do in terms of asymmetry, they needed to think this out more. But oh well. 

There really is a veritable hive of servo skulls in there; a total of 9 nestled under that great hood, plus one in the little shrine on his back. 

Add to that the two loose ones they give you, and he's his own little squad by himself. I wish it were somehow possible to add lighting, but I settle for making the eyes sufficiently glowy to the naked eye. 

Yes, these detail shots were taken later, so yes, they look different. To be honest, that grey background bugs me, and I need to get a white cloth one. I've just been too lazy to order one. 

The tines were half broken on his weapon, so rather than go through the hassle of requesting others (I bought him off an eBay listing, so it would've meant messaging the seller, etc. etc.) I trimmed them entirely. The thing still looks sufficiently arcane to me. That screen directly in front of him was an absolute pain to paint; I'm amazed it came out as well as it did. 

Now there's rebasing, and more photos, and eventually I'll try to cook up a table worthy list. I see people are coupling the skitarii with Blood Angels so they can use the free drop pods, so maybe some of those Ramshackle Drill pods are in order for the army? I'd really rather have Triaros transports, but oh well. 

Happy Sunday, people. 

After a Short Hiatus....

Yes, I've been silent for....hrm, I s'pose it's been months, and outside, the world has kept turning despite me.  

THE NECRON CODEX IS DIFFERENT NOW.

"We cost.... how much now?"

You can't find Tomb Blade models anywhere, because they're are now AMAZING, but not to worry, no one in the right mind is using or will ever use Lychguard and Triarch Praetorians. Destroyers are now Jet Pack Infantry, because why the fuck not? Oh, and their great transport planes and HS gun batteries now cost too much ("Oi, we're selling too much of these 'ere crescents, mate! Better make 'em overpriced, wot?"). But hey, on the bright side you can get 4+WBB saves for the low, low price of building a formation cookie-cutter army (or, at least including the we-know-they-suck-now-so-here's-a-reason-to-take-some Crypteks), so that's something. Oh, and most of the great playable Character Necrons... aren't all that good anymore, so you might as well buy other things on the  list.

"What do you mean "throw it down a hole"? We like our technicolor wargear!"

As you can no doubt tell, what I'm most pissed about, besides the fact that planes and barges got a cost/equipment nerf, is that colorful Crypteks have forgotten how to use other things but their bog-standard Staff of Shame and other pathetic gear. 

Maybe mine will go back to being Tyranids. I dunno. 

Just in time for Magos Karamazov and the Throne of Friendly Fire to be finished....

THERE IS A MECHANICUM CODEX NOW. 

Well, there was one, a 30K one, and it's.... interesting, being almost entirely Legio Cybernetica. Interesting enough for me to have bought into them (more on that in future, I swear) But now there are actual Skitarii (thanks GW, I already several squads of them) complete with a crab tank:

Image copyright Games Workshop, used without permission

Hey, wait a MINUTE! 

"Hello. Been here forever, and now, apparently, I'm official!"

That's right, it's Mr. Crabby, right down to his little googly crab eyes. Turn to pages 34-35 of Codex Skitarii, and you'll see their is painted in grey as well. Jerks. 

Though, to be fair, I did base him on this thing.

Image copyright Lucasfilm, used without permission

But I painted cogs on mine first. Included him as a counts-as Leman Russ first, too, so there. Now I only need two more stock ones to have a Crawler battery that gets a 4+ force field save. And, they're a mere 90 points a pop, same a the old Annihilation Barge--HEY WAIT A MINUTE!!

"Remember me? I'm a monstrous creature! Now I'm a skimmer! Soon.... who knows?"

It is interesting that I made these at the time when in a Necron list as barges they were 90 points a pop, and now the AdMech crab tanks are also 90pts (don't get to used to that). 

Oh, and P.S. they also have cavalry with taser lances, spider-ninjas and other things, because why the hell not.

The codex isn't a complete one, though; there are four infantry units, two of those Sentinel looking things, a crab tank and and no HQ, so really Codex Skitarii needs to be combined with, say, the 30k stuff from the HH books to make an actual, usable, Mechanicum army. 

Dear God, with the HH-era HQ's,robots, transports, knights, and tanks, you've got yourselves one hell of a fighting force now, don't you? Huh. Sun sets but it also rises, eh Games Workshop? Speaking of sunsetting things.....

FANTASY IS GONE.

"Hold me, Thorbjorn."

"Hmmmm..... still no."

(Is it ironic that those are Rackham dwarves, and the Frenchies went tits-up long ago?) 

GW said "HAHAHA Fuck you!" to its smaller swords-'n-sorcery audience and blew up the background universe it didn't know what to do with, along with the game they didn't know how to save. All they had to do was advance things a little, maybe a timeskip to the 18th century or something, but oh no, now it's all Chaos wins, game's over, blank slate. With all their fluff, they wrote themselves into a corner, and the only way out they saw was to knock all down.There are hints all over the new 40k books of this same thing on the horizon, campers. Just you wait and see.

So, I have a samurai dwarf army for sale. Maybe some undead and skaven to follow. Let me know if you're at all interested. There are all sorts of Rat Ogres and things. Pics to come. 

THINGS TO COME

Lots of Legio Cybernetica.

Lots of other things. 

Maybe I'll travel somewhere and shoot pictures of castles. I dunno. 

Happy Saturday, people.