Dornian Heresy: Salamanders (Malalamanders)

Aurelius Rex has started a serialization for the Dornian Heresy Salamanders Legion over at Bolter and Chainsword.

Although its early days in terms of writing up the Malalamanders, I wanted to give this one a plug as a chaos legion devoted to Malal has so much promise and excitement surrounding it!

Indeed, the premise for this entire Dornian Heresy series is very intoxicating: it is to invert the good guys and bad guys from the Horus Heresy.  i.e. What would happen if the Emperor had helped out Angron instead of snatched him away?  What would have happened if there were an alternate solution to the council of Nikea?  What if Horus resisted temptation and the powers of chaos were forced to turn to an alternative?  An alternative like Dorn of the Imperial Fists?  That's the broad overview of the idea behind the Dornian Heresy, and I've been following it for a while (going so far as to have a go at building and painting some alternate universe Blood Angels and Iron Hands).  

For the Salamanders, the idea is that Vulcan got horrendously burnt as a child and this started a cascade of events to turn him in to a bitter individual.  This will eventually lead to him devoting the legion to the chaos power of Malal.  I'm really interested in this option -- its a great way to launch a chaos marine force devoted to this old chaos power.  The serialization also provides opportunity for a bit of feedback if folks are interested.

Sons of Malice Flamer Marine

Against a background of imperial ruins, a lone Sons of Malice marine armed with a flamer cautiously scouts.I'll confess that this is my first attempt at an artistically posed shot in a long while. I'm pleased how it turned out! The ruins blend in nicely with the playing board, without detracting from the black, white and red of the chaos marine.

Sons of Malice Hunter

The Sons of Malice horde grows! A while ago, I explored a few conversions to try to get some more dynamism in to otherwise semi-static looking chaos space marines. One of the results was the "hunter" model - a marine with a long hunting spear taken from the warhammer fantasy battle zombie boxed set (and a bionic thigh).

The marine has been painted in the colours of the sons of malice. There are two hard parts about this: firstly remembering which quarter should be black and which should be white; and secondly, actually painting in black and white - both of which are non-trivial colours to work with. My previous sons of malice test model helped me think through the complexities of these colours somewhat and I've tried to replicate the process here.

To solve the first issue, I always start a Sons of Malice model on the left leg. I know that has to be white in colour. The problem with painting black and white basically boils down to how to shade and highlight the colours. Grey is your friend with black, and white can also be toned down a few shades with (yet again) grey (although a pale, pastel blue may also work).
The silver trim on the model has been highlighted with white (using a steady hand and a 000 paint brush) and the eyes of the marine painted in a menacing red colour. The final steps included adding some brown dirt and grime on to the lower legs of the model to suggest recent action.

You'll notice that I've also used some boltgun silver to drybrush around the metallic joints of the marine and complete his weaponry. Overall, I'm pleased with the model and will be painting up more sons of Malice as time permits.

Sons of Malice: A Test Model

The Sons of Malice are an unusual space marine chapter with very little cannon history associated with them. They're rumoured to be the followers of the Chaos god Malal -- the Chaos power who wants to destroy the others. From time to time in various White Dwarf magazine articles and Chaos Marine codex, they've been pictured and spoken about in light terms; presumably so as not to tread on the feet of the people who own the intellectual property rights to Malal (which is not Games Workshop from what I hear). But I digress.

The paint scheme for the Sons of Malice (I almost wrote Sons of Malal there) is always depicted as black and white. Although I've sometimes seen in halved, the most common form is a quartered black and white painting scheme -- very heraldic and obvious to those that know who the Sons of Malice actually are. I decided that I wanted to paint a few of these up, primarily as I got very bored with the Night Lords colour scheme that I was planning to use on my chaos chosen load-out. Moreover, I'm also wanting to create a kill team for the new Battle Missions and wanted a unique colour scheme: I think the Sons of Malice fit the bill very well.

Hence, I decided to try out painting a single chaos space marine in the quartered black and white colour scheme. Now let me tell you, black and white are two of the top three colours (along with yellow) in the category of "hardest to paint and get looking right", as can be seen from the From the Warp archive. There are a number of good tutorials out there for painting both black and white. I tried to digest them before I set about painting this model. Sadly for me, I'd already undercoated the model in black. In hind sight, grey would have been a superior colour to use.
I first decided to work on the white portions of the armour. To begin with, I basecoated these regions in dheneb stone. I was careful with this layer to leave a little bit of the black undercoat showing through around the edges. I then gave it a wash of diluted black and allowed it to dry off. The next stage was to apply a thin (i.e. diluted) wolf grey. I then blended this colour with skull white and progressively added diluted layers over smaller and smaller portions of the white armour-work. A couple of pure skull white highlights were added as a final step. The black portions meanwhile got a small coat of grey (=black plus white) in selected areas (the back pack, portions of the legs and arms). This was washed as above and then highlighted to a lighter grey colour around the edges of the armour.

Only with that all done did I start on the trim. The trim is picked out carefully in boltgun metal and highlighted in off-white. The eyes and horns were painted with a wet blending of reds and oranges. Whilst the feet were given a dusting of brown colours to simulate them having trodden through mud and general debris. The bolter on the other hand was basecoated in bolt gun metal, washed in black, highlighted and given gold accents on the arrows.

Overall, I'm very happy with the outcome of this model and am now thinking about making a kill team of Sons of Malice.

A Small Discourse about the Mark of Malal

A long time ago, I got thinking about designing some "generic daemons" for lesser powers and, more specifically, Malal. Although I didn't quite turn that series in to a mini-dex (perhaps I will one day), I did gather all the articles together and got thinking about what the Mark of Malal might possibly be.

Independently of other players, I figured that the special rule "preferred enemy" would be a good fit. Having since read some historic forum entries about the same thing, I discovered that my opinion was not a new one -- other players had thought of this one before.

Additionally, others had suggested other ideas such as an increase in the number of attacks for a follower of Malal; perhaps specific bonuses versus daemons and / or mortals with the mark of another chaos power; and so forth.

It seems that the preferred enemy special rule is a good fit to the (sparse and finite) background material available about Malal. Briefly, Malal encompasses the emotion of vengeance and self-destruction -- with a distinctly anti-chaos bent. So how would the preferred enemy rule work? Which enemies are we talking about here?

I personally see the answer to that question as having multiple answers. Firstly (and perhaps obviously) it would be against models that have the mark of another chaos deity - but would that include those with the Mark of Malal itself as well? Probably, under certain circumstances. And what about those who serve chaos in a general manner? Would Malal followers have any beef with the Word Bearers legion for instance?

Personally, I think that they would. The Word Bearers worship chaos in all of its forms. Ironically, that would include Malal as well. Malal would certainly be happy to help out against such a legion. Hence, I believe that the preferred enemy rule needs to be expanded beyond other models with marks.

Would it be preferred enemy against "chaos" in general? This seems more plausible, but it would need further definition. Does it include possessed rhinos? Yes, probably. What about obliterators? Again, probably yes. And everything from the daemons codex? Yes. But what about chaos furies? They're kind of independent (representing un-named fear). Again, though, they're certainly chaotic enough for Malal to be active against them. How about chaos spawn? Many of them probably once served chaos and subsequently became spawn through too many mutations. But on the other hand, given the psychic power available through both the chaos space marines and daemons codex, it might not be the spawn's fault that they're highly mutated. But here, I think the answer is still yes as they've been highly affected by the powers of chaos (arguably).

Okay, I'm happy with that then (i.e.: preferred enemy: chaos, with a very broad definition of chaos). But here's a puzzle for you. Would the Mark of Malal enable a bonus against Sanguinius? After all, he's certainly been "mutated" by the powers of the Warp. Well, that's enough rambling from me for now. I hope I haven't caused a riot.

Addendum (March 14th 2010): I've become pretty convinced by the comments I've received that the Mark of Malal should be = preferred enemy (chaos and anti-chaos). As such, I think the easiest / simplest way forward is to have preferred enemy (everyone).

Apocalypse Datasheet: Host of Malal

To add to the growing collection of rules and articles about generic daemons on Warpstone Flux, today is presented an experimental apocalypse datasheet for a host of Malal. For those of you blessed with a younger age than myself, Malal is a chaos power that fights to overthrow all of the other chaos powers. As such, it hates them! Therefore the "preferred enemy" universal rule is going to be applied to these daemons of Malal - they hate all other daemons.

As with other apocalypse datasheets, it is appropriate to give a bonus for this formation chosen from the available strategic assets. I considered inventing my own based on Malal's hatred for the other chaos powers, but couldn't come up with anything that was highly workable. Then I reminded myself of the extra assets presented in Apocalypse: Reload. The obvious one is "Trophy Kill". But how much does that cost? Certainly creating a new objective could be a game-changing stratagem for the Host of Malal. But it is not as easy to cost as something like a barrage weapons or orbital strike. I eventually decided on a modest 50 points which is about the same as four generic lesser daemons. Moreover, the trophy kill must be the most expensive opposing daemon. If there are no daemons to select from, then the trophy kill is assigned in the normal manner.

Here's the final version: