Genestealer Cultists

So, let’s try to get this year off to a better start...  Not paperhammer, but here’s a money-saving tip—one we’ve probably all tried at one point or another.

One of the wonderful-yet-frustrating things about GW sets these days is options.  So many of these kits are just packed with options.  Phenomenal-looking options (even if some of them are a bit silly).  And we end up with lots of leftovers.

I had some extra neophyte weapons for my genestealer cult, and I wanted to use them all up. My lovely lady had gotten me the Armored Claw for Christmas, so I figured I could put them on the Cadian bodies.  Extra weapons, plus the change of arms and shoulders helps to move them a bit further away from Guardsmen and closer to mine-workers, visually.

However... the Cadian torsos have really narrow shoulders. I tried a few different ways of putting the weapon-arms on them, but no matter how I angled it I ended up with a sizeable gap.  Then I tried a couple of spare Catachan torsos I had—not much better.  They were wider, but that gap was still pretty big.

You can spot potential genestealer cultists by shoulder width. It’s a fact. Who know?

I played with a few different ideas of bulking out shoulders with plasticard and putty, but then I had a thought that tied back to one of my (very few) posts from last year. Maybe I had some older figures I could repurpose with a bit of cutting and scraping...

Meet some of my old, scratchbuilt genestealer cultists.  They’re built from the original plastic guardsmen, circa 1994 (I think).  I found a couple of them floating in the bitz bin way back when and used them to bulk out my (at the time) all-metal Genestealer Cult army.  Which, believe it or not, also came from the bitz bins...

A few quick slices and those old cultists had all new arms on them. Heads were a bit trickier—I needed to make some neck sockets. I used the thinnest drill bit I had for my pin vise, found the center, and gave myself a pilot hole (maybe just 1/8” deep) on each model.  Then I swapped out bits to my largest, which gave me a nice, centered socket.

Helpful Hint—when you need to center something like this, take your time.  Check and double-check.  Heads are always going to be a focus point for a model.  We all know how bodies go together, so even on this scale we’ll pick up on things that don’t line up.

After that, it was just gluing heads on and... done.  Some heavy weapons guys who will blend in nicely with the rest of the cult.  And all it cost me was some older models I wasn’t going to use anymore.

You may notice (like I mentioned above) that the new limbs are slightly out of proportion on the older body.  The arms, notably, are a bit long.  There’s a few ways to adjust for this, but I’m not going to worry about it much in this particular case.  Genestealer cultists have a lot of distorted body parts, so these won’t stand out much.

Next time—swear to Tzeentch—I’m going to finish up that Destroyer.

A Brief Interlude... for War

I’ve gotten very little done the past two weekends, and probably won’t for the next three or four, either.  As I mentioned last time, I’ve had folks in town, book signings, and a birthday.  Plus I went down to San Diego for our annual Carnage Asada/ Memorial Day cookout game.  If you’ve ever wondered what a 20,000 point Apocalypse game looks like (lots of Tyranids versus Imperial Guard with Space Wolf allies and a Warhound Titan), well...it looks something like this.

This was also the first time I got to take my modified Hive Tyrant out on the field.  I’d originally called him Gigan, but as I was writing up my Carnage Asada list I realized, wait a minute, he’s the Tyrant—the king—so from here on he’ll be referred to as Ghidra.

Alas, the game was so huge and sprawling, Ghidra barely had a chance to do anything.  It was epic and fun, but with the socializing and drinking, we just made it into turn three before we decided to call it done.  There’s a lot more details and pictures over at the Atomic Warlords page, if you want to check them out.

As I mentioned above, it might be a week or three before I get to do anything more on the Imperial Knight.  I’m now in the last four weeks before the new book is due, so that needs to be the focus of my attention for now.  The good news is, once it’s done I should be ready for a burst of geekery and model work.

So please bear with me—legs and weapons coming soon.

Hive Tyrant Reboot

Work has sucked up a lot of my time lately, and so The Grim Cheapness of the Future has suffered (as has most of my 40K construction in general).  I haven’t given up on the Silver Towers—they will get finished--but I wanted to put up something to keep the dust off the blog.

One thing that’s bugged me a lot in recent Codexes is the lack of support given to older models.  I know, from a business point of view, that Games Workshop wants people to buy all new stuff with every codex release.  Back in the olden times, though, they’d still acknowledge that people might have older models they don’t want to get rid of, and a given Codex would point out it’s still fine to use to use your old Tomb Spiders, Dark Eldar warriors, or whatever happens to be in your army already.

As I’ve mentioned once or twice before, Tyranids were my first army. I’ve only played them five times in the fourteen or so years I’ve been playing Warhammer 40,000—and that’s using three different codexes.  Most of that’s been recent use in the non-power armor league my friend Marcus has been running.

I’ve got one of the old metal Hive Tyrant models—the one that has a very Aliens feel to it.  I like the new one a lot, but it was tough justifying fifty-odd bucks for a Headquarters unit I essentially already had.  So I dug through my bitz bins and tried to come up with a way to update my old Tyrant a bit for the league.

Also, for the record, most of the monstrous creatures in my Tyranid army are nicknamed after Japanese movie monsters.  My super-expensive Carnifex is Megalon, and my Hive Tyrant is known as Gigan.

I broke the model apart and started going over the individual elements.  The first thing, and one of the biggest, was the legs.  The old Tyrant has small, skinny legs that aren’t much bigger than the ones on a Tyranid Warrior.  He needed to be taller and he needed some bulk.

Taller was easy.  I just glued some plasticard on to the bottom of his feet, then clipped and filed it until it matched his toe-hooves.  This makes the feet look bigger and more solid.  It’s only a hair over 1/16” taller, but on this scale that’s sizeable, and it’s a subtle increase people will register but have trouble picking out.

Then I looked at making the legs a bit bulkier.  Like most Tyranid players, I had tons of large and small armor plates.  I took six of them and filed them down a bit on the inside so they’d overlap well.  Then I put a thread of green stuff over Gigan’s lower legs and put three plates on each one.  I layered them to match the thighs up above, and I think the results were pretty nice.  For the record, I had to do the right leg twice to make the plates look right.

Looking at the new Tyrant, and the excellent picture/ diagram from the last codex, I noticed that the new model has a set of small talons flanking each foot.  They’re like toes or something.  I had a bunch of tiny claws left from the Trygon model Marc and Gillian got me for my birthday last year, so I glued two on each leg (superglue on the ankle, plastic glue on the base).  The ones on the new plastic model go up and forward, but I angled mine back so they added to the sense of a broader foot that covered more area.  For the record, I needed tweezers to get the inside ones in place.

Once I had this (and it was all drying) I looked at the torso.  The big thing for all the monstrous Tyranids these days is the back chimneys/ vents.  Lucky for me, a few years back (in the glory days when GW let you buy individual metal bits from mail order)  I’d bought a few sets of the vents that normally go on the Zoanthrope model.  A little bit of filing, some more green stuff to smooth the edges, and these blended pretty darn well into the back of the old Tyrant.

I also wanted him to look a little more armored in the front.  I ended up doing the same green stuff and plates trick right down the sternum (if that’s the right term for a huge alien dino-insect).  It looks, if I may be so bold, fantastic.

Helpful Hint--If you’ve got one of the old big bugs, I highly recommend playing around with these small armor plates.  The results are amazing and they add a nice amount of life and detail to these older models without being too distracting.  I also ended up doing this same chest-line on a pair of second-generation Carnifexes I’d set up as basic hunter-screamers and it looks great.

Alas, it was about this point that our league began.  I didn’t want to be the guy putting a headless, armless, unpainted model on the board (we’ve all seen it happen), so I rewrote my army list around a Tyranid Prime, which worked better for the endless swarm theme I was doing.  Anyway, Gigan was still sitting on the project board, so I kept working on him when I had a few free moments.  Everything else here took about a month as I got to step away from work now and then.

I put the torso on the legs and used a little roll of green stuff to straighten it out and fill in some gaps.  This also added another few milimeters to Gigan’s height.  As I mentioned before, on this scale every little bit helps.

I had leftover arms from my Carnifex, and this let me add some new elements to the old model.  I decided to go with a pair of scything talons and the twin-linked deathspitters.  If anyone’s interested why I can give you my reasoning, but for now just accept that’s how Gigan is armed.  I also added a few of the large armor plates here to make him a look a little heavier (if I decide to go for the armored shell biomorph).

Then came the head.  I had one of those nose-blades leftover from the Carnifex.  A tiny bit of superglue and a hair of green stuff for blending made it look great.  This was probably the most “take your time” part of the whole project because it’s such a thin piece and it needs to sit perfectly.  It’s Gigan’s face, which means a mistake here will be very, very visible and will gnaw at me every time I look at the model.

I attached the head with a line of green stuff that I flattened out to cover the neck.  It gave me a much more solid join than superglue (more contact area), and it also added another fraction of an inch to the height.  For the record, all these fractions have really started to add up at this point.  Gigan’s almost a quarter-inch taller than the original, unmodified model and a bit heftier, too.

I built this on one of the big 60mm bases, so there’s a lot of space to fill up.  If I don’t, his feet are just going to look tiny on this big, open area.  As a final bit of detail, I added a Hive node.   Between the old Battle for Macragge set and a few from the bitz bins, I’ve got a bunch of these. 

I also made a few extra-long tentacles from green stuff to spread across the base.  I just took little balls of green stuff smaller than a Space Marine’s helmet and rolled them between my fingers.  Once I had them, I gave them little curves and twists and let them dry.  I figured out which way they'd sit best and then cut the tips off one end so they'd be flush against the node.  A drop of superglue held each one in place

           

And there you have it.  A revamped Hive Tyrant using the existing model and some leftover bitz.  Definitely cheaper than dropping fifty bucks for a brand new one.

Although the winged version does look reaaaallly cool...

Speaking of which, if you want to see a really cool retrospective on the Hive Tyrant through Warhammer 40K history, go check out the post Marcus just put up over at Atomic Warlords.

Starting Out

I got into Warhammer 40,000 a little over ten years ago, in kind of an ass-backwards kind of way. My best friend, his wife-to-be, and a few other mutual friends all played, and I knew it as "the sci-fi toy soldier game." I thought a lot of the models were really gorgeous, but the game... well, the game was a bit ridiculous.

Y'see, because they were deep in the Armageddon world-wide campaign when I first tried learning about the game, I was suffering from a grave misconception. As I understood it, you painted up your little guys, battled, and when someone died you put them up on the shelf and never used that model again. You even emailed your results to England, so everyone would know you could never use that model again.

What kind of a stupid, money-sucking game was this? I mean, it explained why Marcus needed so many of the little soldiers, and always seemed to be painting new ones. But still... all that work on a model and then you never use it again?

Anyway, about the time I started to figure out my mistake, Games Workshop decided to sell off a bunch of their older, snap-together plastic models in cheap little packs (very similar to the ones they're marketing again these days). One was the "alien attack" box which came with four old-style genestealers and four of the smaller, old termagants. I thought a few of the 'stealers would look cool around my computer. Than I bought another box. And a third. Soon I had about thirty-odd genestealers and a pile of termagants, too. So I started learning the rules, and... hooked.

The Tyranids fell aside. To be honest, I have still never fielded my Tyranid army, which continues to get more than a few laughs from my friends. Looking at the early Chaos Marine codex, the Alpha Legion soon became my true love (years before the rest of you hopped on the bandwagon because of Dawn of War or Dan Abnett's Legion), and remains my largest army to this day. Like most people's first Chaos army, it split off and I ended up with a usable army for all four of the major cults as well, including a Thousand Sons force I still use and a Death Guard army I'm quite proud of. Then there was an all-bike White Scars army. A good-sized Ork Waaagh with a faint Star Trek theme called Da TekBoyz. A White Dwarf article convinced me to start a Kroot Mercenary army. When Codex:Daemonhunters came out it not only gave me a nice little radical force, but also spawned my new loyalist army, the Relictors, who now stand as my second favorite-army behind the Alpha Legion.

What can I say? I like the gray areas.

Alas, it wasn't all that long after this point in my career as a 40K general (and warboss and hive mind and shaper...) that I decided to give up my day job and become a full-time writer. And unless your name is Stephen King, J.K. Rowling, or Richard Castle, being a full time writer doesn't pay as well as most people think. It wasn't a completely ridiculous decision--I had been making a fair degree of money at it--but it still meant about a 70% pay cut, so a lot of my disposable income was... well, disposed of. Warhammer 40,000 went from being the thing I could drop a sixty or seventy bucks a month on to the thing I might get to drop sixty bucks a year on. In all of last year, I bought the new Imperial Guard codex. That's it.

So I started getting good at customizing. I couldn't afford new Terminators for the Relictors, but a bit of plasticard, a sharp knife, and a spare assault cannon from a plastic dreadnaught still gave me a bigger, bulkier Terminator. Daemonhosts? Scratch-built those, too. It made sense that the cult legions would till have older Rhinos, so those got shifted around and converted as well.

Also in 2009, however, I stumbled across an article at The Golden Bolter about Paperhammer. It included links to about a hundred templates for vehicles and scenery, ranging from simple cardstock Rhinos to elaborate Titans of all classes.

And y'know what? I'm still having fun with Warhammer 40,000, even on a tight budget. So here's a random record of all the stuff I've been building on the cheap, along with a few helpful tips on stuff I wish I'd known from the start. Like instructions for some of these templates...

If I can save someone else a few bucks along the way, and get them a kick-ass new Warhound Titan... my work here is done.