Shadow Throne

 The invasion has already begun....

After a few years of not playing any of Games Workshop's 'core' games my buddy Ash has decided to pull me back in.  It's been a while since I collected anything new for 40K but as staunchly Imperial player for my 30ish years in the game I figured a new collection of the Imperium's finest citizens on Earth was the perfect place to start.  What's great is (based on my understanding) the figures on the new Shadow Throne box set will also make an excellent starting force if I want to play Necromunda or Kill Team as well.  Such is the glory of humanity's great Four-Armed Emperor!  Praise be to him!

I started off by painting the 10 loyal Imperial citizens working in the mines.

These brave souls have picked up their mining implements as well as some light weapons left behind by the local PDF to arm themselves to see off any threats to the great Emperor.  Praise be to him!

Next is a leader.  We call him the foreman but for some reason we have heard the forces of the oppressor refer to him as a Primus.

If you can't already tell we are truly blessed in the holy light of The Emperor.  Many non-believers suffer from pale pallid flesh but those of us who reside in the graces of the one true Emperor of mankind maintain our healthy pink skin even after generations working underground in the hive mines.

The Four-Armed Emperor has also seen fit to send up a true prophet, one who can work great miracles in the Emperor's name.  Behold the glory of our good and fair Magus.

The Magus shares his many gifts with us.  And as he is truly touched and blessed by the Emperor he has gifts so share with even non-believers.

To aid in our clearing of the mines a new friend has joined our ranks.  Her job is to reduce the rocks and debris that stand between us and the Emperor's bounty, though the oppressors call her Reductus Saboteur.

Her third arm must truly be a sign that she is growing closer to our great Four-Armed Emperor.  Oh praise be to him!

And finally unlike the forces of the false Emperor who claim to worship a desiccated husk on a golden throne our TRUE Four-Armed Emperor appears before us and joins us when we face troubles.

BASK IN HIS MAGNIFICENT BEAUTY!

We have already begun spreading the joy and love of our Emperor throughout the homeworld.  We look forward to welcoming all of you into the flock soon.

To join our flock please contact your FLGS where Shadow Throne will be available for sale this coming Saturday.

-Neophyte Brother Jay

 

Four more members for Kilo Squad

In advance of my first game of Shadow War Armageddon tomorrow I have (I think) completed my initial force of Arbites.  I actually need to math it up and make sure I'm done but I feel good about what I have so far.

My basic troopers will be armed with shotguns but if I try different rules down the road a bit I may swap out a couple for bolters.

I've also decided that the basing you see here will be how I base the new models I paint for my 40K sized Arbites army....nothing says 8th edition like 1st edition figures :)

-Jay

The start of my kill-team for Shadow War Armageddon

I'm still a bit behind on my goal of getting a squad done today (got 3 of 7 models finished) but atleast I'm making progress.

Today I started my Kill-Team for Shadow War Armageddon.  I'll be playing Adeptus Arbites and using some Necromunda Enforcer models from the old Necromunda range.

Today I got my team leader and two specialists done, there are still four shotgun armed troopers sitting on my desk looking for paint.

The plan is to use the Imperial Guard rules and give everybody carapace armour.  If that doesn't work out I might try swapping my specialists and switching over to the Space Marine Scout rules but I want to give this a go first.  The other great thing about this is that it gives me an opportunity to experiment with how I'm going to base my Arbites army going forward as I'm still trying to get at least four more squads done for them.

-Jay

Not all animals I paint for the post-apocalypse are my warband members

I took a break from Ravenloft/Zombicide today to go back to work on some figures for This Is Not A Test.

This year I'm planning on doing 3 separate projects for This Is Not A Test.  I'm going to do a new Gamma Worldish warband of cat-people to scrap with some Alfs at some point this year.  I'm also planning on doing an actual gritty looking 'normal' warband.  And I'd like to get a bunch of the wasteland creatures done for use in scenarios as I go.

I backed the Kickstarter for This Is Not A Test (the first Kickstarter I actually backed!) and as part of their successful funding each contributor above a certain basic level got 3 free giant rats.  I already have quite a lot of giant rats from D&D and some from Malifaux but it was nice to get some that are mutated and fit more with a sci-fi feel.

At this point I don't have any specific plans to use these figures for any games outside of This Is Not A Test but could easily see them on the table for Necromunda or any of the assortment of post-apoc RPGs I keep meaning to get around to.

The goal was to get a fourth figure done today but I came up a bit short.  Hopefully tomorrow my Road Marshal will also make it to the finish line and I'll have the start of my first non-mutant warband done.

-Jay

You know those projects that just linger?

Lately there have been a few larger scale games I have been wanting to play but I keep failing to launch on getting larger projects done.  Inspiration hit me tonight and while digging out figure cases I caught a lucky break on another larger project I want to do.

First up: Adeptus Arbites
I've been a huge fan of the Arbites for pretty much as long as they've existed.  Over the years I had collected a decent sized force but always felt like they weren't quite right.  Then earlier this year Games Workshop released their awesome Sector Imperialis bases and I got excited about updating the look of my existing models.  I will be re-basing my entire Arbites collection but it was also a reminder that 5 of my squads need new Proctors to lead them, so before I start re-basing these 5 models are going to see some paint.

I can't wait to get this done as I think once I start re-basing it will make my mid-80s collection looks very millennial.

Next: Konflikt 47 by way of Secrets Of The Third Reich
I assembled my first squad of Weird War Brit troopers awhile back but never got very enthusiastic about them.  No real reason why, just couldn't get energised to apply some paint.  While digging out my Arbites I came across 20 troopers I had started painting years ago (around 8 years ago I think) that captured the right flavour and were already started.

This should make my entry point into Konflikt 47 a little bit easier if I can just find a few more figures.  The big challenge in using theses figures for Konflikt is that the squad structure in Secrets Of The Third Reich is ridiculously Bren-gun heavy so as it stands I will need to replace about 4 of my Bren armed troopers with Sten guns or Enfield rifles.  Hopefully I've got at least one pack of what I need hiding in the depths of my basement.

Let's see where these new projects take me.

-Jay

The Kill-Joys

Last night I finished the 6 "Old School Mutants" figures for This Is Not A Test in preparation for playing through the demo rules against a Peacekeeper force.

I've got to say I really enjoyed painting these figures as the mutants themselves have tons on neat little bits and pieces you may not notice at first (it looks like Snake-Eyes has a partially formed conjoined twin growing out of his side!).  I decided to go for a slightly jaundiced skin-tone with the idea that these guys should match any Fallout -style super-mutants I'm able to lay my hands on in the future.

                                            (Left to right)  Davey - Kill Roy - The Twins

                                                 (Left to right)  ? - Snake Eyes - Pokey

Although I painted these guys for This Is Not A Test I could also see them making it to the tabletop as mutants in Judge Dredd or Necromunda as well.

More from the wasteland coming tomorrow!

-Jay

The long cyber-arm of the law

Work continues on my new Enforcer team for Necromunda.  Kind of a strange outcome to my painting for that today though.   I had planned on giving all of my troopers the white helmets I typically reserve for the riot squads in my Arbites army just to brighten up the overall look of the figures and provide more contrast but the figure I painted today is the cyber-mastiff handler and he doesn't wear a helmet, so he looks much darker than I had planned.

The cyber-mastiff handler is a nice addition to the Enforcer/Arbite range because it gives them their first genuinely new looking model in decades.  That being said I have built 3 of these previously and was never happy with how they turned out.  I always found that the weapon hands that were available always ended up making the figure look like a Proctor who had left his coat at home.  This time rather than going for the min-max weapon hand choices I simply gave him a bolt pistol in one hand and a cyber hand snipped from an older heroclix model on his other hand.  Obviously a second weapon or a riot shield would have been far more advantageous but I think this looks alot better and more natural.

-Jay

Have you seen my dog?

 

This time a blast from the blast gets new life.

A few months ago I was playing an Arbites officer in a 40K rpg game and decided that even though I had a pretty decent sized collection of Arbites and Enforcer models already painted I would paint up a new figure and put a little extra effort into him.  For the same game I painted up a Cyber-Mastiff that sadly ended up never getting used but was fun to do anyway.

Fast forward to this morning when I somehow talked my way into playing in a Necromunda game I wasn't actually invited to (sorry Chris, in hindsight that seems a bit rude on my part) and again I decided that rather than putting together a selection of my painted models I would use these 2 figures as a jumping-off point to paint up a new Enforcer team for Necromunda.

In addition when I pulled out the figure case I have my Arbites in I also found my Judge model in there which I thought would be cool to showcase because everytime I see Arbites being discussed on various forums people always seem to be looking for good ideas for Judge models.

-Jay

Proctor & Cyber-mastiff

 

The Judge