Monday, August 5, 2019

I always come back to the Guard in some form or fashion...

o/

Come on, you know you want some...

With my battletech commission finally finished, I can now get back to my toys without distraction! My current projects that I'm already working on are my Eldar corsairs, and my baby squiggoth (though the latter has been temporarily sidelined until I get some greenstuff to fill in a few atrocious gaps). As such, for those of you who know me, it only makes sense for me to add more to my already considerable to-do list by starting yet another project: 

The Dark Mechanicus (v.2). 

Well sort of...I did say the 'Guard' in this blog's title right? Right. Yes the good ol' IG have been calling to me yet again. They're just about as bad as space marines when it comes to restarting new armies. The IG was my first army, going way back to the generic, 'black codex' imperial army minis, supported by my old Predator as the Leman Russ tank wasn't out yet!

Previously I've fielded (and each one of these will be whole armies): The generic Imperial Army, Mordians, Valhallans, not quite IG but...the Adeptus Arbites (yes an army of them, god that was a lot of blue paint...), Armageddon Steel Legions (fully mechanized), an armored company, Cadians, Beastmen (the only IG army I wish I'd kept), and finally Renegade Guard (the 728th Sabbat Irregulars that Neverness is so fond of). 

Lately, the loyalists have been calling to me, all 4-5 of them that i have left. However the cost to build an army of...well, anything in this day and age that isn't the cheap as chips (relatively speaking) Spess Mahreens is just mind-boggling! Seriously, how do people do it?

Yeah, this is the only realistic option I could think of too...

Not wanting to embark on a life of crime, I instead perused my collections to see what I had in the 'unused' category and I found: 20+ Chaos cultists, and a slightly converted Magos who was originally intended to lead said cultists in 30k anyways. So forget the skittari legions, this bunch will be a bottom rung, cannon-fodder army of  Dark Mechanicus menials, using IG rules! 

My favorite two IG special characters happen to be Colonel Iron Hand Straken, and Vet. Sgt. Harker, so...my cultists will use the Catachan regimental doctrine. The Magos-turned-Straken, whilst visually might be a stretch, stats wise won't be. Here look:

Magos Dominus:  M:6"  WS:3+  BS:2+ S:4  T:4  W:5  A:3  LD:8  SV:2+

           Straken:  M:6"  WS:2+  BS:3+ S:6  T:4  W:5  A:4  LD:9  SV:3+

All I really need do is swap out it's funky pistol for a plasma pistol and it'll be ready for paint. Then there's Harker:

Yeah that was easy. Moving on...

Lastly, I have my 20 cultists, of which 8 are complete. So, its a start, albeit a small one as these in total add up to little more than 200 points!?! Vehicles will boost that number up quickly (I hope). For a starting point, I'm aiming for about 500pts. for now. My next post will likely be for this little bunch's 1st vehicle, the currently WIP Little Daemon Engine that Could Sentinel. 

4 comments:

Blazmo said...

Man, I've had 3 different guard armies myself - and the second was dark mechanicus inspired. I think there's even a few pictures of them on the blog. I'm on Steel Legion at the moment though. I need to upload a bunch of photos though as I made it to 50 painted infantry a few weeks ago.

The heavy bolter conversion looks cool too!

Da Masta Cheef said...

50?!? (gulp). I can only aspire to match your painting skills, though I doubt I'll ever achieve them myself. I ordered another (fairly) cheap squad of cultists with autoguns this morning which brings me up to 30. I'll probably hold there for now as that's quite a bit to paint already.

And thank you sir! The chaos Harker was a fairly simple arm swap using the heavy bolter from a space marine scout.

WestRider said...

I've got a couple of those Culties who came without arms in a trade that I've been idly trying to figure out what to do with. Something like that Harker conversion should do pretty nicely for them.

I've only (only!) done two Guard Armies, one plastic Cadian, and the other a mix, so I got to use most of the range. Metal Cadian line troopers, Mordian officers/command squads, Valhallan Armoured Fist squads, Catachan conscripts, and a Veteran squad of Tallarn painted up to look like they're the remnants of another company from my buddy's Tallarn Army. Sold most of them off ages ago, tho.

Da Masta Cheef said...

I have another Heavy Stubber gunner that I'm going to try and convert into a grenade launcher gunner instead, I still need to get the GL bits though.

My Valhallan army was a bit of an amalgamation, though the the others were pretty much purely made of up of their specific minis. I always wanted to do Tallarns, never got around to it though.