WIP: Tyracron Hive/Tyrant Guard and future project thoughts....

Just a quick post today, since Saturdays are for Dark Heresy. These two little monsters flew together last night in a burst of creativity. Since they'll pull double-duty as both Hive and Tyrant guard models, I've magnetized the right shoulder, and am currently figuring out some kind of fiddler-crab style shield arm. Maybe I'll use the arm/shoulder bits from this ungainly monster. Being Hive Guard though, that right arm gun had better be more substantial than a mere Necron Gauss Cannon, so stay tuned. Over all, these guys will make better companions for my forthcoming artillery Hive Tyrant than for Grievous, though.


Grievous had a person bodyguard composed of these fellows, if you'll recall. Hmm.... I wonder how tall these things stand? Time for a trip to the hobby store. 


The Warmachine range tends to be larger and smaller than you'd think it would be, which is a pretty effective optical illusion on their part. From a design standpoint, it makes their mecha seem rather topheavy and slow, and you'd think with that much weight on their tiny little legs, they'd all sink in the mud. Maybe combat in their universe happens on solid rock. I dunno. 


Happy Saturday, people. 

Tyracron Update: The Cyclopean Annihilator, Tyrannofex

I struggled with this one. I really did. 


If you recall, my Tyrannos were originally going to be an attempt to resurrect the "Death Barge" concept from the old GW sketches. That idea got scuttled when the only dino ribs I could find at local hobby shops were either enormous or far too small (I still want to build a Death Barge though; maybe I'll just make a superheavy one)  Thus, I fell back on the tried and true (not to mention readily available and cheap) Carnifex chassis. Now, when you use the same parts, you risk things coming out the same, a trap I definitely didn't want to settle into. The other problem was the enormous gun, which had to be Necron-flavored.  The prototype had two double-thick legs, a big double-barrelled cannon, and looked like a cross between Metal Gear Ray and a turkey that really, really had to take a shit. 

What came out looks like it should have been chasing down Gelflings in The Dark Crystal and blasting them to atoms. I had already built three head/gun combinations with the guns side-by-side, like enormous tusks. I wouldn't have been able to put green rods on the inner bits before painting, and from the side they only looked like one Heavy Gauss cannon; pretty underwhelming on such a big model. After a lot of hemming and hawwing I ripped one apart and put it in a derringer-style over-under config that looked so imposing I remade the other two the same night. I had to bore into the Carnifex torso to set them in, but once I did, they were solid, and, as is the case with other models, this one started to build itself after that. 

The head is from a plastic Cryx kit secured with some Dragonforge white metal power cabling. As for the secondary guns Gauss flayers were way too small (see the Tomb Stalker) and I had these Eldar bits lying around for what seemed like forever from a bits lot. The clawed missile launcher meshed with the "salvo" part of "stinger salvo, for me, and the other gun is my stab at a Necron template weapon. Those gimbals are the little mounting points from Tau drones, reinforced with some metal rod. They fit right into the notches on a Carnifex carapace with no trouble at all. 

If you click and zoom in you can tell just how far back the gun mechanism goes. Originally the legs were all going to have curved carapace armor on them, but my mock-up simply didn't look heavily armored enough, so I settled on the huge i-beam shields instead. After all,  as with the Tervigons and their armored gate generators, once these monsters get to be a certain size, they start  picking up the slab-sided aspects of the Monolith. I had also wanted the middle legs to be swung out to the side more, as on insects they're responsible for shifting the creature's weight. The reason they're mounted forward is simply to make the monster look more imposing, not to mention shield the body from incoming fire as it blasts away. 

I noticed a number of things after the frenzy of building/painting was over. One of them is the huge block of nothing in the middle of the back of the big middle legs. I should've stuck some more power cabling in there. Likewise the eyelet in the mounting point on the stinger salvo launcher. What I am enormously happy with is the triple row of exhausts down the back of the monster. I thought about carrying down another stabilizer strut from the nub left by the tail, but my early mock-up looked like it was connected to the ground, so I left it off. 

I also only had two plain carapaces, and rather than leave it with holes or green-stuff ridges, I decided to make one of the Tyrannos a "command tank" type with extra optics above his little head. If you zoom in and look at the carapace and the side of the i-beam, you'll notice a kind of stippled bubbling. That happened as a result of the primer, and although it's usually something you don't want (and should sand out), here it made the bits look like extra-heavy, rough-surfaced metal, so I welcomed it and drew out the detail with some careful drybrushing. 

Yeah, there's some envy in the ranks now. Sorry little fella. The middle legs on a couple of models were even wider than the already-wide oval base, so I had to stick some flooring on there in order to base them properly. I ran out of forlorn looking skeletons, though. Maybe one of these days I'll find some terrified Imperial citizens to base with. 

It's too bad you can't buy them in squadrons, like Carnifexes or Leman Russes; Grievous could join a brace of them and stomp around the battlefield killing things. Oh well. He'll have to settle for terrifying people by himself. I really should make him some Tyrant Guard flunkies, though. 

Codex: Royal Necrons

Because I usually take long daily hikes that last an hour or so, I have a lot of time to ruminate on things and stave off crippling suicidal bouts of depression. Today I started thinking, as Necron players do, of how to make the old war-horse better and more fun to play. In terms of what it offers in terms of sheer gameplay, Codex: Necrons is dry, simplistic, boring, and easily misunderstood by the thick and unwary. You have a couple of good builds, but are hamstrung from using many of the things in the book by sheer cost and practicality, not to mention the appalling lack of variety for all the cool-ass fluff they wrote. An enormous, star-spanning (and devouring) empire built on.... a bunch of skeletons and some spiders? Meh. 


So, as you do when you trudge for miles surrounded by nature, I started to think aloud. What follows is a listing of my vocal notes, with more things added later as I thought of them:



Necrons: are Relentless and have FnP
Gauss Weapons: are Lance weapons autowound on a 6, ignoring invulnerable saves; vs vehicles they ignore cover/obscurement saves and autoglance on a 6.


Gauss weapons are a tough nut because they need to be effective against vehicles without mowing down troops and such willy-nilly. I thought about giving them the Melta ability but then no Necron packing one could successfully wound an Eldar Avatar, and the Eldar are really who they were made to give fits to. Plus, they're supposed to be the army that inspired the creation of the rest of the other races in the galaxy so the list, as a whole, should be hard.



HQ
C’tan: Nightbringer, Deciever, Outsider. 
Wraith Lord- Wraiths may be bought as troops; +1 to FNP for
             Wraiths and Ghasts
Destroyer Lord: Destroyers maybe be bought as troops; Heavy 
            Destroyers get twin-linking; both types get +1 to FNP
Flayed Lord: may buy a retinue of Pariahs that can deploy with it;
             Flayed ones have +1 to FnP

Std Lord: may buy a retinue of Immortals that don’t count on ToE;

          Necron Warriors +1 to FnP

There. Now you have an additional C'Tan, plus a variety of Lord choices that empower different selection of other things. They're expensive, so you really shouldn't buy more than 1 or 2 Lords for the entire army, and certainly not more than one C'tan. 

Elites
Pariahs: for 36pts, they are now T5, have 2 wounds, Fleet,
         Move thru Cover, Stealth and the Necron Stat
Immortals: are T5 and 2W, but otherwise unchanged
Poltergeists: expensive shooty creatures armed with a 
              Gauss Destroyer, are ethereal (3++ and MtC) like
              Wraiths (but have normal mvt), have Etheric Tempest 
              ability as per Nightbringer. 
Gate Spiders; a big tough MC that allows other Necrons to be
              reserved and DS as per Monoliths

Now we're seeing more constructs (with decent WS/BS), not to mention carrying forward the "undead army" theme that was half-assed by the 1st book. Also, finally, some anti-tank in the Elite slot.

Troops
Necron Warriors; are T5, and have Immortals as sergeants for
                 upgrade cost, Tomb Spiders are cheaper, and now 
                 bought as upgrades, are treated as part of the
                 squad, and allow a reroll of FnP within 12”
Flayed Ones; Pariahs as sergeants; have fleet, stealth, and MtC;
             may assault after DS
Ghosts: assault troops that are T3, ethereal/move/save as per Wraiths

We don't entirely suck in assault anymore, and get a little more bang for our 18pts/model cost. Spiders no longer generate Scarabs, but who cares? Now they make Necron Warriors much, much tougher. Flayed ones are now worth playing with.

War Barque: Dedicated transport; cheap with tiny anti-infantry guns.

You didn't think this army was just going to walk or plod around in Monoliths, did you?

Fast Attack
Banshee: tough shooty MC that moves like a jetbike
Destroyers: squad max size of 8, are 2 wound models; for every 5,
            1 destroyer may be upgraded to a Heavy
Wraiths: are still Ethereal, but now 2 wounds, T5 and bought in 
         squads of 6. +D6 attacks on charge. 
Scarabs: May be upgraded to include Scarab Queen (1 higher S/T/WS,
         W, generates scarabs as TS used to)

Now Wraiths are tougher and worth buying (as they should be) and Destroyers reward you for buying 5 of them without punishing you for not saving points for heavies. Yes, you can still put all of your points into scarabs, but honestly, they're there so you can buy them as a screen for your legions of other guys.

Heavy Support
Monolith: as per codex
Tomb Stalker: is really fighty, but has disappointing guns
Cyclopean Annhilator: a shooty monster that has a big gun or three

               and some minor melee ability, should it get rushed. 
Heavy Destroyers: as per codex

Though the Heavy Destroyer listing is unchanged, buying a Destroyer Lord gives your snipers twin-linking, which is huge for the Necrons. The other creatures are there as big tough distractions to draw fire alternatives to boring old Monoliths.

Lastly, if this list looks a little Tyranid-y  at first glance, that's because it is. I wanted a Necron list that used my Tyracron models, so there. No, it's not balanced. These are just notes, not something you should bring to a table as of yet. I have a few too many side projects to go writing rules and codexes, but if I did, this is a nice jumping off point.

Thoughts? Criticisms? 

Tyracron?

Son of a BITCH!


It seems the monster glimpsed in a fuzzy photo wasn't a hoax after all. The Necrons got an old-school D&D Carrion Crawler, and at first glance, it's really rather brutal.  


In contrast to the awful that was the Caestus, this mecha-centipede is actually a pretty well-designed monster (well, as good as mecha-bugs get; those antennae are a bit of a stretch), and would fit in the Tyracron Trygon/Mawloc slot rather nicely (adding a pair or two of scything talons). Not only that,  but unlike the rather underwhelming Scarab and Tomb Spyder bots, this thing can actually hit what it fires at (BS4) and is somewhat of a juggernaut in combat (WS4). Six S6 attacks on the charge from a T7, five-wound creature? That's also fleet, fearless, impervious to sniper weapons and poison, and happens to have hit & run and deep strike? Yes PLEASE.


Now the down side: cost. 195 points is a mighty chunk of change; you can get a trio of Heavy Destroyers for that much (or for 40 points more, a Monolith) and this monster is sure to draw a lot of enemy fire. What's worse is that it's only equipped with Gauss Flayers, which are only good in torrents of, say, twelve, not in pairs. Sure you can rapid-fire them, but they're still just Flayers, not even Blasters. Talk about half-assing it for a monster. For the points, I want something I can smash a tank with, not a pair of popguns to annoy infantry. Oh, and a high strength-thwarting Necrodermis might be nice. 


Come to think of it , if this thing is going to take up a Heavy Support choice, where's the tank-busting Fast Attack gribbly to pick up the slack?

Ooooooh right. 


Anyway, it's a step in the right direction, at least. Hopefully they've abandoned the stupid idea that Necrons rely on giant, slow-moving architecture, and they'll turn out more gribblies along the lines of Mr. Carrion Crawler. Perhaps another mechanized D&D monster? A Beholder? Good ole' Tiamat, maybe?

Tyracron Update: Mycetic Tombs

These sort of got lost in the shuffle during the whole Highwind commission thing. In truth I'd had them near-done for a while and only just needed to add the final glowy bits, but never really had the time to sit down and do so.


The irregular cathedral door-like pattern picked out on the sprue was sort of a happy accident. I'm a bit of a pack rat, and so I  hold on to sprues forever. When I was searching through my bits box for detailing ideas, I hit on the patterns instantly, rorschach like. Cutting and fitting them to roughly hexagonal facings took some doing, but was by far easier than the initial measuring/cutting/gluing of the plasticard boxes that lie beneath. 

They got the standard "oily metal" treatment Tin Bitz drybrushed with Boltgun Metal, darkened with multiple of black paint washes. I've come to prefer the actual black paint to the packaged ink washes; it comes off grainier and sticks to recesses better. I decided to further highlight their weird geometry by placing the glowy bits in places where the needly sprue nubs create frames, rather than paying attention to the hard outlines themselves.

One of things that makes a Mycetic Tomb better than the standard drop pod is that it seats twenty little buggers or one big monster, and so by necessity it has to be a bigger model. Initially I fretted over making something so much larger, reasoning that people would cry foul, but honestly, you have to be realistic about scale with regards to transport capacity and internal machine workings, even with a the race can bend time and space like Time Lords. 

I tried to suggest this by making them taller and broader, yet thinner. They still look heavy and industrial as hell though; you get the feeling that the Tyracrons colonize worlds by simply dropping buildings on them (sadly, Mycetics are rather flimsy, stat-wise). I had initially planned to use those rib-like Monolith bits for the Tyrannofex/gun barge, but oh well. 

Yes, Grievous looks pissed after his express elevator ride. You would too if you had to fold up to fit in a box that you then ride through the hell of re-entry. Of course, it would have been a bigger stretch if the rules allowed multiple monstrous creatures or something like that. Rules-wise, it would have been nice to have to an initial turn of assault once you bounced out of the thing. As it is, they're only really good for dropping shooty elements like Pyrovores, Zoans, and template-spewing Tyrannofexes.


 Of course, as large as they are, I could use them as Monoliths in a regular Necron army in a pinch, but the real strength of the current codex is in Destroyers, anyway. 

Forge World Rumors: Are Tyracrons catching on?

This mystery bug showed up in a post on Heresy Online.  BoLS picked up the rumor and is running with it, and it makes me wonder if the Necrons are FINALLY getting some attention from FW. For that matter, it makes me wonder if FW are fans of the Tyracrons. Maybe I should've gone to Games Day in Baltimore, even if the army was only half-finished?

As it seems they've turned from their All-IG/Ork-All-the-Time agenda, maybe there's hope? It does have a nice mecha-bug look to it. On the other hand, people are now saying it's a hoax, which would be sad if it was true. 

Still, I like what's going on with that head/carapace thing. Those dumb-looking antennae have to go, but otherwise? Hmmmm.....

Hey Otto! Do Berserker! Girls think is big sexy!

I've been playing Final Fantasy XII on the PS3, and it's so visually gorgeous I'm willing to forgive the woefully neglectful lack of gameplay. Anyhoo, as my team of emo teenagers were beating the bejeezus out of these giant centaur automatons, the design struck me as something the Necrons would leave lying around. As if its size and enormous amount of HP weren't enough, when the thing is sick of dealing with you, it summons an enormous fucking sword. 


So I'm thinking it's a good jumping-off point for the second Hive Tyrant? Maybe a Tyrannofex?


In other news, I've started on an Emperor's Tarot deck for my DH group. We also play poker the same evening, so I thought it'd be cool to have a deck you could also use for that (less the 24 Major Arcana and 4 Trump cards, of course) . Here's my proof-of-concept prototype, the Ace of Thrones:

From my research, the suits are Thrones, Bolters (or Bolts), Shields, and Novas, and the four Trump cards are something you don't even see in regular Tarot decks. The other major difference is that these will be playing card size to facilitate Texas Hold 'Em as well as divination. The Minor arcana will be easy enough, but it still leaves me with 40 or so small illos of varying complexity to do. It'll be a nice long-term project. 


No, I will not, as others have, be stealing Jon Blanche artwork from the rulebooks. Others have done that, and that's cheating.


Next time we'll wrap up the Witch Hunters series with something interesting to look at. 


Happy Saturday, people. 

Tyracron Update: The Wrathful Poltergeist, Zoanthrope

This one was a bit of a pain. 


For some reason whilst in the early stages of building them out I was fighting with what they were becoming, and trying to go in a different direction with the designs. At one point they resembled a cross between a Moai and Slave I, and at another flying squids. All the while I think I was consciously avoiding the "floating cranium" design and going for more of the "flying head cannon" idea. Anyway, as usual, once I got over that it was all downhill. 

There are only four for now, although I anticipate getting a lot of mileage out of their warp-blasting abilities and add more over time. For now, these is all I had parts for, so these are all there are. Two squads of two and either a Doom of Malantai or Deathleaper should fill out those Elites slots nicely, don't you think? Until 40k follows Fantasy down the "25% of this/15% of that" hole, which strikes me as being a stupid way to do things. Who computes out the percentages of their lists? Well, Fantasy players do, now. 

Thank goodness for the fantastic (and cheap) sampler pack of power cables from Dragon Forge. They make lovely tendrils among other things, and are easily bent and twisted, something metal will always have over plastic as a medium. Unfortunately, they also break, so after twisting them together, I had to glue them at certain points to keep the tentacle cluster structural. The Necron torso front clicks right into the Destroyer hull bottom (with some trimming on the hull). The spinal cord is a bit brittle, so I had to drill all the way up to the main section to insert the rod. He's not coming off there. 

The whole thing went together rather tenuously, but once glued became like a rock. I liked the use of glowy nubs on the Tervigon so much I used them again here on the Zoan's huge cerebellum. Their massive craniums are white, of course, because they're synapse creatures. I bent the tentacle masses back to give a sense of motion, and would have put a similar mass on the bottom of the spine if there was room. I toyed with the idea of putting the rod between the back and the particle collection vents so I could do just that, butit did bad things to the silhouette, so I didn't. What? Oh, you thought they were hover-engines, didn't you? Well, no, sorry. Just like Harpy, Zoanthrope needs to constantly suck up subatomic particles to power up his brain-gun and other power-hungry systems. 

Luckily I had the undercarriages of more Destroyer hulls, thanks to the Harpies, so I could give the Zoans the extra-long brains they deserved. This does make any future mass-production more complicated, however, but I don't foresee needing that many more. Nine Zoans would just be too overkill, wouldn't it? I ordered a small pack of scenic bases along with the power cords, and this was my chance to use them. If only Dragonforge cranked out 60mm ones for IG gunnery teams. What? They do? Well, then...

Not much to look at from the rear. If you're seeing this view, either you're very sneaky or he's done blasting the shit out of you with his giant turbocharged brain. The vents in back link visually to the original Zoan model quite well. I was thinking of going with the wings/spine route, but found this fit the Necron aesthetic better instead. 


Now if only someone would buy some stuff from my ebay auctions so I could build Tyrannofexes.... or Trygons. I still haven't decided. 

Tyracron Update: General Grievous

Before finalizing and mass-producing the Zoans, I decided to finish of Grievous, so here he is in all his glory . For all the time I took hemming and hawwing about his weapons, once the decision was made it was all downhill from there. Now that I look at him, four matched sabers would really have been pretty dull. Anyway, let's begin the walkaround....

This is another model that's pinned all to hell and back. There's a rod that runs through that right leg all the way up to the knee, and those plastic Cryx shoulders have three rods running through them each at odd angles. He almost had a sweeping loincloth to cover up the HT tail nub, but some diligent sawing got rid of it handily enough.

Really, if the Jedi he took those sabers from was in scale, they'd be... well, they'd be Hive Tyrant sized Jedi, I guess. Using Sentinel legs was a no-brainer with this one, really; the Tyrant legs with their little hoofs and such will go somewhere else; probably as armored forelegs for the Tyrannos. You can see where the right leg lost its gap, but honestly, if I hadn't put a rod in there the thing would have snapped like a twig. He has a little pinion on the back of his foot, but it's hidden under the basing rubble.

I almost buried a rod in his left leg, too but it's so far back it would've shown right away, so I have to rely on that right and be careful with the model. It was more worth it to have him really stalking forward. That said, he's tremendously top-heavy, and even with extra lead bits weighing down the base, will tip right over at the wrong angle. 

His big round beetle-back makes him considerably burlier than the original Grievous ever was. On the other hand, the profile's more in synch with the Necron's trademarked hunched over posture. I purposely kept his metal bits dark so the bone-colored armor would stand out more. 

Comingtagetcha! He's also considerably larger than the Grievous model I built to use as a foot Necron Lord. That one will have to wait for a Necron Lord posting later. 


Since the last FAQ sort of nerfed a lot of what made the 'Nid codex good, here's a seriously overbalanced rules set based on his movie antics. He's as expensive as a Swarmlord, but not as... well, he was really the wrong choice for to be a general, wasn't he? Sidious should've just hired him as some kind of specialist Jedi hunter or something. Anyway, this is in no way meant to be balanced or fair in any way, nor do I ever expect anyone to actually let me use the below profile in a 40k game. 



General Grievous

WS 9 BS 3 S 6 T 6 W5 I6 A4 LD 10 SV 3+ (inv)

Points Cost: 280

Unit Type: Monstrous Creature

Weapons and Biomorphs: Bonded Necrodermis

Lightsabers: Grievous wields four of these arcane weapons, trophies of from his undending persecution of the Jedi. General Grievous's attack inflict Instant Death regardless of toughness, and any successful invulnerable saves made against his attacks must be re-rolled. Against vehicles, roll an additional 2D6+2 for armor penetration.

Special Rules: (Tyracron) Synapse Creature, Shadow in the Warp, (Tyracron and Necron) Hit & Run, Eternal Warrior, Fleet

Four Armed Whirling Death: After rolling to wound for Grievous’ attacks, roll an additional attack for any unsaved wound. Continue rolling in this way until  you fail to wound or Grievous runs out of opponents.

Blade Parry: Grievous is a master swordsman, and can instantly parry with his double-articulated limbs. His armor saves are invulnerable. In addition, during any melee phase, the first melee attack made by an opponent always misses.

Your mind tricks don’t work on me, Jedi! General Grievous is immune to all psychic powers.

Out of my way! Grievous is exceptionally lithe and flexible, bounding from place to place like a spider monkey. He ignores difficult and dangerous terrain. He also has the Fleet and Hit & Run abilities.

Get them, you fools! General Grievous thinks nothing of throwing minions or equipment into harm’s way to save himself. At the beginning of any melee phase, Grievous may switch places on the battlefield with any friendly unit within 12”. He may do this even if engaged in combat.

Make yourself useful, idiot! If Grievous has joined a unit and suffers a wound in any phase, he may instead allocate the wound to a member of the unit he has joined instead.

Gah! Grievous carries a hidden Gauss pistol, and spitefully fires it at his opponent when the fool least suspects. At the end of any melee phase, an enemy model in base-to-base contact takes a singe S4 AP3 attack.

Grievous always escapes! Having long cultivated his instinct for self preservation, General Grievous is a master of saving his own ass. When he loses his last wound, allocate the wound(s) instead to the nearest unit, friend or foe, and remove Grievous from the battlefield. Grievous is always worth zero kill points. 

Happy Fourth of July! (also a WIP Zoan....)

No money to buy new parts for Tyrannos, so I'm building Zoans out of spare bits today. In addition to their fashionable blast-a-matic hats, I was thinking they should have vestigial arms, if not tentacles. 


You eldritch horror fans out there.... any thoughts?

Tyracon Retakes...

Ooooh, the OCD part of my brain is acting up again. It's making me retake pictures after looking at old posts here that were dark as fuck, so here we go, in more or less chrono order:

Tyracron mk 1. Hmm, still a little yellow (damn tungsten filter...) and, shame on me for not photoshopping out some warps in the paper. Still, hmm...

Doomy. Brighter, but still looks like I've been taking pictures through popcorn butter. I still have a bunch of those heads... maybe I'll use them on my Zoans.

Deathleaper. I gotta say, I'm tempted to chuck the lights at this point and move to a room with more direct sunlight+mirrors. In its defense, Deathleaper's silver bits were dark-washed way down, since I wanted more muted stealth metal. I also color-dodged the hell out of and spent half an hour color-balancing out all the bits of yellow tungsten flare that the filters missed. I have GOT to get some yellow-blocker bulbs for these lights. 

Harpy. Man, I've forgotten A) how much I liked the model and B) how fucking GOLD it got, against my meaning it too. I'm still verrrrrry tempted to just strip it and start over, or at least add some mottling to the thorax and wings. 

Tervi. Painting-wise, I kept him dark, as I meant to, including the carapace, which is why he isn't shiny as hell like some of the others. By the way, before sticking the Tervi models to the bases, they STOOD UP BY THEMSELVES, BALANCING PERFECTLY. Seriously, it's fucking creepy when that happens. I mean, it's good, because I don't have to search for lead scraps to weight the base, but man. Creepy. 

Overall, I think I'm doing a pretty good job at sticking to the whole "eldritch robots who want to eat your soul" theme, but my lighting system (such as it is) is going to need  a lot of work. I thought it was a matter of photoshop skills, but you can only do so much with what you have, so obviously, there are going to be a lot more experiments where these came from. 

Lastly, the goddamn Inquisition codexes. I expected some kind of neutering rewrite, but what we got was shoddy editing consisting of someone basically deleting pages (oh look, they nuked a 2-page illustration!) and leaving things like points costs, glaring errors, and so on alone. GW didn't like the IG armies having anti-pysker and invulnerability save-defeating gear, so they screwed the players on that. 

Without fixing anything. 

Well, screw 'em. Now the Inquistion models are only good for Dark Heresy, and you'll NEVER run into/use Grey Knights/Battle Sisters in there unless the shit has really hit the fan. If there's a monster that you need a Grey Knight Terminator squad to handle in DH, then your little group of acolytes is truly fucked, and you need to roll up new characters. 

Ah well. 

Tyracron Update: Tyrannofexes?

Been going through different ideas to make a Tyrannofex; the walking cannon, some kind of tank crab, etc, and found this old thing in my Necrons file:

That's right, it's old concept art from the previous GW website.  Back when GW was slowly but surely losingits imagination, it seems the Necrons would've had some decent armor choice like any other army, like  a floating SPG (dare I dream it might've been Destroyer-fast, too?) I lifted bunch of it before they changed the site over to their new version. Anyhoo, it's got a big gun and a Necron steersman. Not crazy about those wing things, but I definitely like the ribcage treatment, if not the taste. There's also this:

Another tanker contraption with the ribcage build, but this time more of a vehicle-thing than a self-propelled gun. While not as monstrous as the first one, I definitely like the prow. Question is, of course, where do you get that bloody big set of ribs from? Near as I can figure, you'd have to cobble them together out of plasticard, b/c even the largest Nid torso wouldn't fit. I wonder if even a dark Eldar Ravager would work as a base?


I'm leaning towards the first one, but the rib cage thing is still vexing. After surmounting that little question, everything else would be cake. 


Don't say "'ow 'bout those monolith spine thingies?" because they're waaaay too tall. Also I'm already using them on the Mycetic Crypt prototype. (Which is larger than a drop pod because it somehow has to fit 20 infantry models or 1 monstrous creature, plus the guts necessary to run the thing.)


Happy Thursday, people. 

Tyracron Update: The Gate Spider, Tervigon!

As promised, a new set of Tyracrons! Tervigons (or Tervicrons, if you will) are probably one of the most useful monsters in the new codex, what with their ability to spawn troops units, their psychic powers, and the fact that you can buy them AS troops, which is  pretty huge considering what they are and do. The brainstorm came after staring at Carnifex torsos for a an hour or two and finally figuring out that A) I could use the Sentinel crotches to mount the heads and B) not using metal tomb spider bits is a crime. After that, they rather flew together, from the immense gate generators on their back to those wicked-looking composite legs. Did I mention how much I love the Sentinel kit? 

Yes, I have scads of leftover paint pots. Lord knows I go through paint fast enough.  

So now a bit about design. Those big things on their thoraxes are gatefold generators, which warp time and space and allow hordes of Necron warriors to literally walk through the thinned (courtesy of its energy field)  fabric of reality from one place to another. The thick clamshell shields are there to protect the generator, when the gate field isn't active. What, you thought Tyracrons laid eggs, like bugs? Well, I toyed with the idea of a "troop carrier" insect, but to pop out hordes of Necron warriors turn after turn it would have had to be immense, so thanks, no. Besides, this fit the whole Void Dragon theme better. Go read Graham McNeil's Mechanicum and you'll see what I mean. Also, they have six legs (not eight) because Tyranids are hexapods, and it's a theme, so there.

The distorted time/space field has a sort of inverse effect on the Tervicron's local gravity, and as such the Tervi moves along like he's dragging an immense kite full of wind. The motion is rather like a hermit crab pulling itself along the sea floor, which is the reason all of the legs are pitched forwards in a sort of "pulling" pose (as opposed to a more insectile one with the rear legs pushing and the center set carrying the weight). Also, his beady little head is white, because he's a synapse organism. 

Man, that poor skeleton has it bad. First the guy gets crushed under a manhole/wheel/whatever and now a big fat Tervi is standing on him. What a life. Oh yeah, and since I spent (or mispent) my youth on Gundam models, I happened to have some bits lying around:

They're just so perfect I may forego the whole "hybrid" idea and just give Grievous straight lightsabers -- or would that be too derivative? If only I had four factory boneswords instead of two (yes, I've seen the recasts by a certain resin caster, and sorry, $12/pair is too pricey for what they are). Anyway, this way Grievous will be living up to his trophy lightsaber habit, and has apparently killed two Jedi, a Sith, and Mace Windu. 

Now we can finally move forward with the Grievous project....