Warhammer 40K

Deliverance Lost explores the actions of Corax, primarch of the Raven Guard Legion after the dropsite massacre. While I enjoyed the book, it left me feeling a bit let down. Most of the other Legion specific books go into great detail about the practices and culture of the Legion. This book focused almost solely on Corax's single minded quest to rebuild his legion to get back into the fight.

While it was nice to have the two paragraphs from the Raven Guard Index Astrates covered in more detail, I still feel like the story falls into the trap of these are the sneaky marines that do hit and run, they don't talk about what goes on.

In my mind the the real stars of the show are the Alpha Legion, the villians of this tale. We get to see more of their inner working in this book and see what drives them. I don't want to go into to much detail to spoil the surprises and plot twists. 

Know No Fear details the attack on Cath by the Word Bearers Legion. This is my favorite book in the series so far. Dan Abnett does a great job refecting the confusion caused by the attack with his writing style. The snippets of information remind me of the news casts during the 9/11 attacks and make the book very hard to put down.

Rather then focusing on one character throughout as most of the other books have done, Know No Fear jumps around telling the tale from multiple viewpoints and focuing on the scale of the conflict. 

This book filled in the gaps for me on why GW's poster boy marines weren't directly involved in most of the Heresy background material. From what I can remember there was a small blurb or two about the Ultramarines being sent to the far reaches of the galaxy and unable to reach Terra. This book explains exactly why they couldn't make it, and hints at the beginings of the Codex Astrates.

Rogue Trader

Opening them up the models had a fair amount of flash and getting the arms to fit was tricky. However getting things from a small boutique shop it's to be expected to have some extra clean up. On the tracked model which was resin there are a few minor bubbles that I should be able to fill of minimize their appearance. The metal models are pretty crisp with good detail. The remind me of better quality early Citadel minis. Minor gripe about the arms on the models with rifles, the ball joints don't line up and require a bit of bending to get a solid join. 

Not content with the look of most of the minis straight of of the box I'm doing some conversion work to make them fit with the look I'm trying to achieve. I'm most exciting about the tracked unit as I have been meaning to create a heavy weapons trooper for my team of adventurers. Going through my bitz box I was able to find some Tau gattling guns which I mounted to either arm. I added some pieces from the Cities of Death models to build a generator unit on the back and will add some cabling to tie it into the guns. I figure creating a generic looking gun mount will allow it to be flexible and count as whatever the team decides it needs at the moment.

The basic troopers with rifles are great out of the box. Aside from the minor issue with the arms I just had to pin them to the base and clean some minor mold lines. I think these will count as Tech Guard or generic Explorators. 

The other models came with some oddly shaped mechanical arms. I'm not really feeling them and am in search of some bitz to give each of these models more character. I feel one of them at least needs a servo arm and or Mechandrites. 

Malifaux

Over the weekend I cranked through and built a bunch of Western Style buildings and will be painting them tonight. 

Essentially the conference was set up to showcase a variety of print vendors as well as provide some interesting keynote speaches revolving around branding.

The coolest part of the conference was the Mardi Gras parade to wrap up. We basically shut down the downtown area during rush hour to treck from the Hyat Regency to the House of Blues in a caravan of 19 floats with 3 marching bands. I doubt I'll ever have an experieince like that again.

Rogue Trader

First up is the rival rouge trader. This is based off a Reaper model with some minimal weapon swaps. I think the modified plasma pistol/gun comes off as pretty lethal. I armed him with a Xenos blade which to me screams bad guy or at the very least morally flexible. To accompany this villain I created twin combat servitors each wielding a plasma pistol and chain blade. If you had vast sums of money and resources at your expense would you really have a walking corpse that looks the part as a body guard? I think not which is why these servitors are modeled after some favorite servants/mistresses that wronged the trader in some way.

The next model can double as a house agent or another trader if need be. I really like the model as it came stock and didn't do any modifications. The watch/compass fots so well with the naval feel I wanted.

I found the Chronoscope Crime boss to be a great fit as well with minor weapon swaps he can play a variety of potential "boss" characters or a brawny member of the crew.

For the Rogue Trader I chose a Privateer Press model and made a weapon swap. The look an feel of these fit really well with the piratey/naval look portrayed in the Rogue Trader books.

The mechanic doesn't really fit in with the established Mechanicus fluff and I see her more as a technosavant maybe a psyker with and affinity for machines. Or a random rouge fixer. In some of the Necromunda fluff there's reference to all types of individuals in the underhive so it makes sense that real mechanics might exist.

I really need to track down some guitar wire to finish these off, unfortunately all the music stores conviently near me have closed up shop. 

Malifaux

After I assembled and primed them (she's 12 and slightly accident prone so x-acto blades are out of the question right now), she set to work picking out a color pallet for her crew. This time around she really wanted my opinion and suggestions on technique, which was a proud moment for me to be able to share the secrets of a washing and highlighting with her. 

So far I think the crew is looking really good and I'm impressed with the color choices she made, as I never would have thought to go in that direction.

Incursion

Hans was probably the most difficult of the models. The pipes require some bending to get them to fit properly, and a rather delicate. Also the ball joint on his harpoon arm didn't really have an obvious attachment point so it took a bit of trial and error to get the arm properly mounted. 

Both Greta and Ilsa have extremely delicate legs so removing the tabs from them took some time and patience. I was impressed with the join for Ilsa's arm as it fit perfectly in the hole and required no additional drilling. 

I'm looking forward to painting these models up. I need to prime them and the weather has been uncooporative as of late. usually I'd just go to the garage to prime them but with a baby in the house I'm concerned about the fumes wafting in. 

Digging through my bits box I was able to find some suitable bits and pieces to make some characters. I've found the Empire Range from GW has plenty to work with for the base of these types of characters. I also have a hefty collection of Necromunda models that I could draw from to build what I need.

First up is the Navigator, I used the Empire Battle wizard as a base and added a different head and some other techy bits. I'm happy with the results so far and need to do quite a bit more work on the paint job. Blue is the color typically associate with psykers in the 40K universe so I stuck with the traditional scheme.

Next is the Void Master, this was just a simple weapon swap with the Underhive Scum model. I've always liked the character of the model, just looking at him you can easily imagine how his life took a downward turn. He seems to have just enough of a mean streak to make an effective Voidmaster.

The Arch-Militant was also a simple head and weapon swap. I used the old model of Iron Hand Straken and snipped off the head and plasma pistol. The replacement head is from the Empire Flagellates set. The player who created the character insists on playing an insane raging psychopath, so I figured given him an iron mask made sense. That way he can bite anybody.

For the Seneschal I used the old Imperial Missionary Body and swapped out the arms and backpack. For this character I see him as running errands for the captain and keeping track of the shipping dockets. Rather than doing a data slate I thought a book was more characterful. I positioned the arm so It looks like he's running and firing behind him.

The fiery Missionary was interesting to build. I used the Flagellate body as a base and added a flamer and the book I snipped off another model. I like how creepy the final model looks, definitely not someone you want to get in discussion about the merits of Xenos tech with.

I also made a generic Voidfarer model. I imagine this will be an NPC that sets the seeds of each adventure in motion. I used a Tau body for the suit and added a grizzled head with an ancient looking gun. Holding a map seems to be the best way to start a quest so that's what he's holding.

I still have to find some models for the Rogue Trader, Explorator and some rivals but I might find more inspiration in my bitz box. 

Rogue Trader

The other night I got the group together to build their characters. I really like the origin path system as it easily gives the characters a backstory. I had the players start with their career and work backwards. Most of the players just did what sounded cool without reading the stat modifiers. It was easy to do as a group because I could just read off the modifiers after everyone drew their path.

After everyone was done with the basic character stats we have: Rogue Trader, noble born from a failing Dynasty; an Explorator on the run form the law; a trigger happy Navigator; a Seneshal manservant; an angry imperial guard deserter as the Voidmaster; a xenophobic Missionary; and a bat-shit crazy Ex-Militant. 

This should be fun. If you want to learn more about the system check out this link.