Saturday, July 10, 2010

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 6 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. 


12 comments:

Heavy D6 said...

Dude I like! Keep up the good work :)

Chumbalaya said...

Love that model. Grievous rules.

BLACKHAND said...

Your Tyracrons are truly brilliant work and Greivous will be an awesome centrepeice, keep it up!

Mordian7th said...

Awesome, awesome work! Love the rules as well, very funny - Keep up the great work!

Raptor1313 said...

Sweet, sweet work, pure and simple. I have to say that when I first looked at any of the stuff, I worried about how the bits would fit together.

After some paint and the work you've done? Makes me wish I'd done some heavier modding on my bugs.

The rules are also nicely done and fit what Grievous SHOULD have been. I love how Star Wars gives us these awesome-looking villains, then punks them real hard in no time with no development...

Mark said...

Yeah, that's George Lucas for you: neat characters, but shit writing pretty much all the way. Writing up the gonzo rules for Grievous was a lot of fun. I wonder if I should continue and make an entirely unusable codex for the Tyrcraons, too?

No WAY would it be balanced, though. That said, you know you'd try to use it in at least one game ;)

Gospog said...

That is so cool my monitor just frosted over.

Thank you for posting all this cool stuff. You are inspiring me to get back to my own stuff.

Thanks.

L Witha Z said...

Looks good! I'm curious if anything in 40k could beat him in hand-to-hand combat.

Mark said...

@ Lantz: 40k Pre-Heresy Ben Kenobi, with his WS9 I10 and psyker abilities. Probably also Pre-Heresy Yoda...

Joyous_Oblivion said...

The model looks awesome dude, but no way the rules even come close to being fair!

He is a god in CC, and can really never die when he is in a unit, hell, people can't even hurt him at all, as all his wounds can be reallocated to other people in the squad.

Again, wicked cool model, but the rules were written to pwn face, not be balanced :) Maybe around 450-600 points he would be close to balanced.

Unknown said...

If you've never played necrons there's an old joke that Varguard Obyron is General Grievous. He's about the only melee specialized unit in the necron codex but arguably the best melee unit in the whole game around his point cost. This would make an excellent proxy, and likewise I think Obyron's stats could be used for General Grievous if ever need be. Really cool. Might try making something similar.

Mark said...

If I've never.... I've always played Necrons, dude!

LOL Hell, i've even built thee (two big and one small) Grievous. TBH, he's too much of a scoundrel to just be a second fiddle to Zahndrekh, though. Also, too many arms.....