Inquisitor Kill Team (Counts as Brood Brothers)

 The Van Sternbach siblings, Celia and Solomon, was on a meteoric rise as Inquisitors in their own right, in the Holy Order, each being a powerful psyker in their own right, but also gaining influence, power and personal retinues. 

Disaster struck, however, as Celia was accused of being a radical and heretic, on grounds of careless use of her psychic abilities. She was brought to trial and a torturous evaluation of her purity was deigned necessary, no matter the protests of her brother Solomon.
She endured many nights and days of physical and mental torture and cleansing, and finally judged as pure. However, she was but a shadow of her former self; her body was broken, several organs was beginning to fail, and her legs was so damaged that amputation was the only option. . Her mind was in shatters, and while she no longer was the pragmatic and razor sharp Inquisitor she used to be, she was still a very powerful psyker, and she had become even more zealous and ravenous in her desire to purge the God-Emperors foes, as a result of her purgatory ordeal.

Solomon had an enormous mechanical suit made for her, that could grant her her legs back, give support to her broken organs, as well as give her the strength to smite the heretics she desperately wanted to bring judgement to. She now lives only to destroy those that shy from the Emperors holy light, while Solomon still searches for a way to heal his beloved sister, if not in body, at least in mind. 

Inquisitor Celia Van Sternbach in her suit (Patriarch), Inquisitor Solomon Van Sternbach (Magos or Primus, depending on my mood)
… Centered by a Servo skull (psychic familiar, I need to make on more)

Death Cult Assassin (Knife Fighter), Preacher (Iconward), Interrogator (Commander), Astropath Acolyte (Comms), Zealot (Agitator)

Stormtrooper Bombardier (Sapper), Solomons Bodyguard (Veteran), Servitor Gunner (Melta), Stormtrooper Gunner (Plasma), Henchman Gunner (Grenade Launcher) 

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I… Can’t… Stop… Building… Kill Teams!

I would like to have a Brood Brothers KT to play with, since their playstyle seems fun, and I haven’t really got any “chaff” teams, but Genestealer Cults aren’t really my thing - they’re cool and all, but don’t really speak to me. Then it dawned on me that pretty much all of them are perfect stand ins for a Inquisitorial retinue - which IS my thing!

The only model that caused me some pause, was the Patriarch, but I think I found a good solution with the female inquisitor-psyker, interred in a massive combat suit.

I hope you enjoy them. :) 

Queen of the Malstrain Hive

 ... And here I was, making such good progress on painting my Iron Warriors... And then an idea pops up, that I just HAD to do, getting me sidetracked. Oh well. :) 

The story of Heretek Magos Biologis Illiex Delta-84 - infamously known as Queen of the Malstrain Hive - began as a higher ranking Magos Biologis. Her work led her to research of the Tyranid genomes, and she became fascinated by the species, the multitude of individual creatures, and specifically the genestealers - in particular, the easiness of which Genestealer and human DNA could mesh.
Very aware of the heresies she would be comitting, she began to aquire DNA samples of various tyranid creatures, in order to clone her own. However, her research quickly ground to a halt, when she realised the danger of the cloned creatures potentially being able to send a psychic signal to a Hive Fleet, thereby dooming the Forge World her laboratory was located on. However, further research led to her discovery of the Malstrain Genestealers, located on Necromunda - a certain mutated strand of Genestealer, unable to call upon a Hive Fleet, due to their twisted physiology. Decades of pulling strings, calling upon shady favours and working strictly under cover, led her to finally aquiring some usable DNA samples of the Malstrain Genestealers.

Illiex quickly went to work and went on to clone a handful of Malstrain specimens, in the secret vaults beneath her lab. She quickly realised that the specimens were close to uncontrollable and figured that their primitive intellects could be controlled by a leader. Thus, she excavated DNA strands from them, to clone a Malstrain Alpha brain, which she succesfully integrated into her own cognitive stacks. A milestone was reached - she could now walk freely among the Malstrain specimens, and they could be somewhat controlled by her thoughts. 

Catastrophy struck, in the middle of her groundbreaking research with integrating Malstrain DNA into human test subjects, her Skitarii guards being “volunteers”, as word of her work had somehow reached the higher echelons of the Biologis Prime. She was forced to flee, being declared Heretek ,under penalty of obliteration, and managed to secure a few of her Malstrain subjects, as well as a handful of her enhanced Skitarii.

Illiex now roams the galaxy, still continuing her research and leading missions with her “children” as she refers to, to uncover archeotech and DNA to help her work.

The Malstrain Prime brain, integrated into her cognitive system, has made her utterly insane, and while she is convinced her work will better humanity, she is nought but a vessel for spreading the Malstrain genes.


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I loved the Malstrain genestealers from the moment I saw them. Utterly twisted and horrifying. I just didn’t know what to use them for. Inspiration struck in the early hours of December morning, when I was washing the 4th set of bedsheets my 5 year old son had thrown up in that night (yay, stomach virus…), and I got the idea to use them as ruststalkers for a Hunter Clade team. They were almost the exact same size, and my weird imagination started coming up for a way to fill out the rest of the team.

The Queen is an Infiltrator Princeps, the Malstrain are Ruststalkers, the “Siamese” is an Infiltrator and the Tech Thralls counts a Skitarii - two of them armed with a Plasma Caliver and Arc Rifle. (I still need to come up with a way to make two of them look like Diktat and Surveyor, respectively.)

Word Bearers - old hate for the Imperium never dies

"Excuse me, good sir, do you have a moment to speak about our lord and savior, Lorgar?"

Since spending all my pocket money on a Night Lords army in 2nd edition, I've always loved Chaos Space Marines. I never saw the reason why anyone liked the Word Bearers though. Since reading Anthony Reynolds' Word Bearer trilogy about ten years ago, they've been my favourite legion. No other legion are as evil, fanatic, religiously devout and well... Chaotic as the Word Bearers. They have preachers, possessed, grisly trophies, they use torture, build gigantic shrines using ground up mortals as mortar... What more could you want from a traitor legion? 

 
I built a Word Bearers team at the launch of Kill Team '21. They were fine, but I find that in order to really get bitten by a project, I have to LOVE the miniatures. So, since getting quite a few cool teams done this year, I thought it was time to reboot them and make an AWESOME Word Bearers team, to be my go-to team.

 
I think I've accomplished that - at least in my own opinion. I can't wait to start painting them, and I really like the look of every single model.

From left to right: 
First Acolyte Ereshkigal, Icon Bearer Garash, Plasma Gunner Eshkar, Coryphaeus Kor Gahal, Possessed Torek Rak'Shal, Shrivetalon Tilhar and Heavy Gunner Serakh.

  
(They should be pretty self explanatory, except the guy with lightning claws - he counts as a Shrivetalon. The Icon Bearer is holding a "Heavy Bolter Lite" (Bolter with Tainted Rounds)

Horses for courses - and spawns for Harbingers.

Hi guys, a bit of a progress update.

I've been using a Harbinger of Decay for many a game, using my old rotfly riding champion conversion - but since the debut of the Lord of Afflictions, it seems confusing to have two very different characters both riding flys.

While the original model is probably considered a modern classic:

... I have some issues with it; first of all, it's small. Way to small. It originates from the old Warhammer Fantasy, and doesn't scale well at all with the new and bigger scale of AoS. Secondly, it is finecast. I hate finecast. Thirdly, horses seem exceptionally boring to me, in a setting of high fantasy, such as AoS. Therefore, I wanted to make my own, new and improved, Harbinger of Decay. 

A bit of a forestory; some years ago, I stumbled upon an amazingly talented sculptor, namely Jason Hendricks; he has sculpted some insanely cool models, even some of the prototypes for the Warjacks from Warmachine. Especially one miniature enamoured me; The Nightmare Thing: 

http://monster-zer0.blogspot.com/2016/06/massive-darkness-nightmare-thing-aka-bob.html

I stumbled upon someone selling it on a facebook about a year ago, and I promptly bought it, without knowing what to use it for. Upon receiving it, I found it really cool, but also too big to be used as a regular spawn, and some of the details got a bit lost in the casting material (I call it restic - used for lots of board games - apparently cheap, and also quite horrible to work with - cut, scrape, sand - it's equally bad for everything). 

Anyway, it sat in a box, until two nights ago, when I was pondering what to do with my Harbinger, and a light went off; I hurried to my desk, got out the nightmare thing, and started messing around with parts:

I've replaced the head with to heads (one an upside down pink horror mouth, the other an upside down Blight King fly head, with the lower jaw from a pink horror added), and a Stone Troll arm, because I felt it was missing a bit of ye old GW aesthetic. The saddle is from the Maggoth lord (which oddly basically popped into place, as if made for it), and the torso is from the Pusgoyle Blightlords.

I'm really liking it, although I'm still on the fence about the scythe; one, it just seems like such an obvious choice, and two, the 1" range of it really doesn't suggest scythe to me - any suggestions?

*Update*

I've gotten a bit further, and I'm almost done with the sculpting on the Harbinger:

I particularly like the gross spine sticking out of his back:

I've also decided against using the necromancer model for the sorcerer on top of my Glottkin - it needed to much work and was a bit too weedy for a Rotbringer Sorcerer, so I chopped up the Ethrac model and gave him a new arm and head - I'm pretty happy with this version:

I've also gotten some work done on the Daemon Prince, and he's really starting to come together:

On that note, I'd like to elaborate a bit on conversions. I call this (cue fanfare...): 

Conversion Composition

First of all, I really dislike the word kitbashing; I feel like it belittles the skill and vision required for a cool conversion. A simple weapon swap may be a kitbash, but as soon as you go a bit beyond that, you are basically taking a miniature and converting it into something else, something that better suits your vision of the universe it is being part of. I don't mean to sound snooty or anything, and I'm not suggesting it should be called art, but take some credit in your skill and vision, and stop calling it kitbashing. 

There. I got that off my chest. :) 

I feel like the most important part of any miniature is its composition. Let me elaborate; the composition is a combination of the pose of the miniature and shape of it. Things like details and texture are very important as well, but you can easily find a miniature where these things are there in spades, but it just doesn't work as a miniature - why? Because the composition is bad. 

Let me demonstrate: 

The Skaven Grey Seer model is an example of great composition:

The model, seen as a silhouette, has a nice flow to it (shown by the green line), clearly defined form and the details don't mess up the shape or pose. I would even argue that seeing it only as a silhouette, you would still be able to guess that it's a skaven based on the pole, the iconic way skaven cloth is modelled and the hunched pose - non warhammer players could probably guess that it is a wizard, based on the stretched out hand.

Wulfrik the Wanderer, on the other hand, is a walking composition disaster:

Based on the silhouette, you would probably guess that it is some sort of christmas tree with a scarecrow added and a sword sticking out. There is no flow, no shape, no pose - it just doesn't work. The fact that the sculptor seemingly dipped it in glue and rolled it in his box of skulls only seems to make the issue worse.

My Daemon Prince has (at least I think) a pretty good composition:

You can clearly see the fly wings, the fly legs, and it has some nasty claws and spikes sticking out, adding to the creepiness and wrongness of the thing. It has a good flow and the body parts don't mess up the composition.


The cure for bad conversion composition: 

My advice to any converter is: Get the basic composition in place before you do anything else. The best tool for any converter is holding a miniature up against a lamp to backlit it. You will immediately see the silhouette of the conversion and thereby the composition (again, shape and pose) will jump out.

Don't be afraid to tweak the posing just tiny bits - sometimes moving an arm a few degrees will change to composition completely. Using bluetac or brass pinning wire is great for this - you can change it be moving the part attached with bluetac or bending the brass wire.

Another trick, in lieu of having a backlit setup (and which I use most of the time) is to just squint your eyes - it works almost as good. Again the silhoutte will jump out. Another good tip is to use your camera phone to take some quick pics of the pose, once you find one that works - even if you're tweaking it more, to see if it can get even better, you now have some pics to return it to it's original state.

Once the basic composition is good, you can start adding details and textures, but ONLY if they add to the conversion. Remember to check the silhouette regularly to see if it is starting to get cluttered, and be willing to remove parts again, even if you think a particular part is really cool. Don't be afraid to "kill your darlings" or rip something apart and start over. It is bit like cooking - you're free to use spices, but even the best spices won't make up for a dish that is basically lacking. Many conversions I see on my google search journeys are using way too many bits and lacking basic composition - try googling "obliterator conversion" for example; I've lost track of the times I've seen a plastic chaos terminator that looks like it's been dipped in glue and rolled in a guns bits box. Get the basic pose right, even if it takes some tries - walk away from it, sleep on it, get back to it, and make it the best you can. Good luck! :)