Necromunda Vehicles

Following on from my Admech ruleset, I’ve written a pretty comprehensive, though still very-much work in progress Vehicle Plugin for Necromunda

The concept is pretty simple:

It’s all about interaction.

In 40k, a vehicle is a unit in its own right, big, durable, packing powerful weapons and requiring a lot of force to destroy, but ultimately it’s a very shallow experience, you whittle down its hitpoints and destroy it.
It was a little more complex in 7th edition when you could inflict Immobilise and Weapon Destroyed results, but they happened at random and they were never something you relied on tactically.

In necromunda, it’s all about the gang. So a gang vehicle needs to keep that focus.

With that in mind, I wrote my rules around the idea of Crew and Components. When a vehicle activates, all its crew and passengers activate with it, meaning that there are a lot of different things going on. most importantly, the driver controls the movement of the vehicle, fires its hull-mounted weapons and generally acts to direct it.
Gunners operate specific weapons, and have to be seated on the appropriate weapon to use each. So an under-crewed vehicle may not be able to be used to its fullest extent.
Passengers are along for the ride, but since they’re not operating anything, they get to use any weapons and wargear they personally have to fight from the passenger seats.

The Component system is a bit more complex, the idea is that a vehicle is comprised of a Hull, and a number of subsystems.

Those subsystems may be targeted specifically and produce different effects as they are damaged and destroyed. For example:
* Wheels reduce the Movement stat of the vehicle for every wound they take.
* The Engine outright immobilises the vehicle if destroyed
* Weapons may be shot off to reduce its firepower
* Other more esoteric subsystems have their own effects like a Comm relay, which allows the Leader or champion who’s using the vehicle to activate gang members in a much wider than usual bubble.

So the Vehicles in this ruleset are quite direct in implementation, but have a lot of potential tactics and strategies to make them useful and manipulate the flow of the game. Both the controlling player and any foes have plenty to think about, and it should never devolve into a game of “whittle the hitpoints”

In my first test-game, a Sentinel Scout-walker belonging to House Escher was outright hijacked by the Goliath leader and turned against us!

For the purposes of testing, I’ve been building a variety of vehicles.

The two complete ones are the Sentinel mentioned already, and a Bounty hunter on a bike.

 

Necromunda Adeptus Mechanicus Gang

It’s been a long time! and a busy time at that.

I quit my job, got a new and better job, that job imploded as Indie studios are wont to do, so I got an even better job with a bigger and more stable company (one you’ve probably heard of!)

So now I’m on awesome money and getting my hobby on in a big way.

The biggest thing going on with me is that I got into Necromunda in a big way, I have a group of half a dozen friends who come around to my flat on a Wednesday night and play, each week, every week for the past two or three months.

I started with Escher, but quickly reverted to form and started writing my own rules. A complete ruleset for an Adeptus Mechanicus gang!

Necromunda Mechanicus Rules

The guys and gals report that it’s neither overpowered nor unpleasant to play against, and with the more recent updates to the base-game, the bigger, nastier weapons I’ve added are actually quite tame.

The main thing is that I’m not fielding a single model that isn’t customised specifically for the games we’re running, so it’s been a bit of an adventure!

 

The first model I built was this guy, going by the name of Aleph-0, he’s a Praetorian Gun Servitor, armed with a Servo Arm and Heavy Bolter.

I built him using a Slaughterpriest as the base model, it took me a couple hours to build and a couple more to paint. I then immediately bought another slaughterpriest and pumped out a second one!

Then after a few weeks where I fielded Horus Heresy models to stand in for an Adept and Tech-thrall/gun-servitors, I finally built a model for my Adept.

 

Adept Kovarian is made using a Primaris Psyker and parts from the standard plastic Tech Priest, plus a little brass-etch and a few spare parts I had lying around.

In ruleset, he’s a fairly capable combatant, so far he’s consistently beaten the snot out of anyone who dared enter melee with him (power axes in necromunda are horribly dangerous!)

On one notable occasion he blew himself up with the plasma pistol though. so there’s that 😛

I’m also using a couple custom models for my Servo-Skulls, though no pictures of those specifically (see the last picture where I show the whole gang together for those!)

I followed Kovarian with a bit of a boondoggle project, A Cataphract battle automata, based off the old Rogue Trader robots in concept.

It’s built using a Primaris Aggressor as a base model, with the body of a Horus Heresy Servo-Automata I had lying around, plus some parts of Kataphron Breachers for the backpack.

All the weapons are magnetised so I can swap between loadouts, In game it usually wields the melta gun and a bolt-pistol, the fists also count as power-fists, meaning it’s a brutally dangerous close-ranged opponent.

I dispensed with the idea of a carapace weapon after deciding the model was too small to mount a Lightning Gun without looking silly.

The final shift towards using entirely custom models was to make Tech-Thrall equivelants.

I wrestled with the idea a lot before settling on the solution.

Electro Priests with Kataphron parts made a surprisingly effective combination! The guns were an interesting part to figure out, they’re actually the Kataphron’s Arc rifles without the giant capacitor block on the top. I figure they resemble the original Tech Thrall Las-locks quite well!

Just in the past couple days, I’ve been expanding my gang further with a Tunnel Stalker (Rust-stalker variant for necromunda, armed with dual auto-pistols and a sword)

And a third Praetorian, this one based on Guilliman for reasons of ribbing the many many ultramarines players I hang out with! I take a perverse pleasure in reducing Roboute Guilliman: Primarch of the Ultramarines, Lord of Macragge etc etc down to a mere weapons servitor..

 

 

All in all, it’s been a very very fun project. The gang has been reasonably competitive without being overpowered and I’ve gotten a lot of good feedback on the models!

The Big Wheel of Warhammer is spinning again, I’ve got plans for Seraphon and an Aquatic Ork army for 40k in the works.

 

Hopefully it won’t be two years before I post again!

The Saga of Magos Yaena.

There are a few pictures here and there of my custom character model for my Mechanicum Magos
She’s gone through a few iterations. the broad strokes are all based on her character story.

Magos Yaena is an Adeptus Mechanicus diplomat, of sorts. Her role is to interact with the more snobby high society types, the sort who would find the pungent incence, greasy robes and stink of burnt flesh that the average tech priest inflicts on those around them to be horrifying and revolting and refuse to allow them an audience.
To that end, her cybernetics are concealed, and of the highest quality available, artfully made and decorated.
Her robes of office are crafted to fit in (at least a little) with the gowns and function-robes of imperial courts.
She is expected to be the face of the Mechanicum to these people.

So, her model depicts skirts and corsets. Her combat cybernetics resemble medieval armour plates rather than the power-armor of most tech priests.
Her face is concealed behind a protective mask to prevent scars from debris and to protect against gases and toxins in the air. as part of her duties, she doesn’t wear (or have an implanted version for) the respirator that is common to most in her order.

In her story, the forces of Chaos have come to her world, compelling her to take up arms and fight. In the midst of battle, she confronts a chaos sorcerer of Tzeentch who she manages to best in single combat.
As a parting Gift/Curse the sorcerer imbues her with a measure of his power.

Quickly realising the nature of this power and the inevitable consequences of it, she takes ship and flees the planet. Her substantial personal army travels with her.
The battles I play with my Mechanicum army chronicle her unwilling descent into becoming a member of the Dark Mechanicum (or an agent of the Inquisition, depending on the path I feel like telling the story of at any given time)

This story lets me craft dark mechanicum monstrosities as can be seen elsewhere on this blog as well as having a nominally loyalist army when I choose.
In my 30k era battles the Tahgmata Yaena fights for both factions roughly equally though I lean towards loyalist wherever possible.

Her chosen armament in story is between two and four custom crafted plasma pistols, on tabletop I typically choose to have her carry a plasma fusil or two. either way she’s a close-ranged and extremely shooty character with little melee capability.

I have written full rules to represent her story capabilities, however it’s a bit out of date.
The broad strokes are that in her Loyalist pre-renegade status she’s more focused on boosting the coordination and accuracy of her forces.
Post-Renegade, she gains a form of unstable psychic powers (easier to cancel out than normal) and her rules are much more focused on her personal capabilities.

So far I’ve made four versions of her model, The first is based on a Sisters of Battle Hospitalier. with a few bits and bobs (notably a plasma pistol) and some green-stuff.
This fairly adequately represents her non-combat pre-renegade status. it’s a butt-ugly sculpting of green-stuff, not that my later work is substantially better! I’m practicing, but ah well.

The second is based around a Dark Eldar Lhamaean character with a lot of conversion.
I use Dark eldar parts for a lot of my conversions. lots of poses and lots of nice clean lined parts.
I like the idea that this is Yaena in her battlefield pre-renegade role. This is also my tabletop model at the moment, though that’s set to change when Mk4 is finished and painted.

Third is an effort to use the New Neferata model as a basis. I got a pretty satisfactory build out of it, but I haven’t been able to decide what she should be sitting on. the Magos Prime rules say she can have an Abeyant to ride on, but that seems too small for her. I’d like maybe to build some sort of Admech Skimmer.
This build represents her as the mistress of her forces either before or after her turning renegade.

Build 4 represents her post-renegade status, she’s carrying a corposant stave, two plasma pistols (or a single plasma fusil if I want to follow the actual ruleset) and a rad grenade.
Her backpack (and Mk3’s backpack) are intended to be teleport/jet packs.
Her custom ruleset mimics the Magos in the Horus Heresy books whose rule allow him to negate victory points for killing him, he is considered to have teleported to his ship in orbit at the last moment.
I’m rather pleased with the result of this sculpt, I’m using parts from a second Neferata kit (traded from a friend) and the lower half of Isabella Von Carstein. Plus parts from a Dark Eldar Scourge kit, some 40k Cult Mechanicus/Skitarii kits and the backpack of a Grey Knights Interceptor. (interestingly, also a teleport pack, so that fits in)

On her base is her Cyber Familiar. made using a few clipped parts from the guns and backpack, as well as a couple Ruststalker hands.
I’m quite happy with how gribbly it turned out!

As to her green-stuff, I’ll be smoothing it out a bit and generally improving the sculpt later. but these are the WIP pictures.

Finally, I’ve also bought a Solar Auxilia Command squad. Just finished assembling them this evening and looking forward to painting them. Lovely models with an amazing level of detail.

Interesting tidbit. the Lord Marshal’s cloak is actually provided in two parts. but because of the clever way it’s designed it doesn’t require any green-stuff to blend it together and hide seamlines.
The collar of the cloak is part of the body and overhangs the area where the top of the cloak meets the model, so that seam is hidden, and the center-line seam down the middle of the cloak is a) very closely fitted and b) made into a feature with a lot of detail mouldings there.
I was delighted by this little bit of clever design work, whoever sculpted these guys knew what he or she was doing!

Maybe I’ll get a chance to find out, I’m going down to Nottingham on Wednesday for my Birthday! Planning to bring back a few new projects..maybe even the rest of the Warlord Titan!

Myrmidon Destructors with Graviton Imploders

Ah Forgeworld.
I love your stuff, but you’ve really REALLY gotta get a handle on the idea of Weapon Options.
Give me the ability to buy weapons seperately or give them all to me at once. The Myrmidons are the biggest pain in the ass, the secutors come with six guns, three pairs of them. comprising three of the five or six options that kind of unit can take.

Why would you leave out the Rad cleansers? you know we’ll want a fleshbane flamer over the Maxima Bolters.
And why the heck would you be so sadistic as to give enough options for every model to have different guns? nobody does that.
Units always have the same weapon on every model by preference, with the odd special weapon thrown in for good measure.
There is no circumstance I’d want to field a unit of myrmidons with two volkite chargers, two maxim bolters and two plasma fusils.

And the same problem goes for the Myrmidon Destructors. 3 out of 5 of the available weapon options and every gun provided is different…

Oh, and you left out probably the best single weapon they could take.
Graviton Imploders. The only grav weapon in the mechanicum that actually behaves like its 40k contemporaries.
Allow me to paint my dear readers a picture.
Picture a gun, it’s big, it’s chunky and very very sciency.
Now imagine that it wounds its target using the target’s armour save.
Now notice that its AP value is 2. meaning its target doesn’t get that armour save afterwards.
Notice that it’s a Heavy weapon…on a relentless Myrmidon, so it might as well be assault.
Except it’s a Salvo weapon, Salvo 4. You can safely ignore the first value because relentless means it just fires at the best profile.
And since we’re mechanicum..The Myrmidon carrying it is BS5 and it hits on 2s.
the Myrmidon prefers to fight…everything. so if you miss, or  you fail to wound (at least against terminator equivelants) you simply reroll 1s.

Now pan your minds eye back and witness that there are three of them…

It should look something like this.

Yep, I bought some Myrmidon Destructors and decided that they needed to have Graviton Imploders rather than the rather boring loadouts they came with. So I pulled some spare parts off my Kataphron Destroyers. I figure the clampy claws from the Breachers will work nicely as alternatives to the industrial clamps the Myrmidons came with, rather dull parts those.
Exception to the Irradiation Engine, but I want two of those for my upcoming Macrocarid Explorator (read: Land Raider Proteus with radioactive-deathrays)
My Friday Horus Heresy battles are gonna get a bit tougher for my terminator-bringing opponents!

Dark Mechanicum Warpstrider

After my last post, some may be curious how my last project went…

Well, I’m pleased to show off the completed Warp-Strider Daemon Engine.

On tabletop it’s either a Hellbrute (twin linked lascannon + Heavy Flamer) or my own ruleset.

WS3, BS3, S6, F12, S12, R11, I3, A2, HP3
Unit-Type: Walker
Unit Composition: 1 – 3 Warpstriders

Weapons: Twin linked Lascannon, Two Heavy Flamers
Special Rules: Daemon, DaemonForge, Move Through Cover, It Will Not Die, Warpstrider, Soul Fire

Warpstrider – Arcane coils translate the clanking monstrosities through the warp in a flare of actinic light, etching the retinas of all who behold their movements

During the shooting phase, the Warpstrider may opt instead to Run up to 18″.
Any intervening units between its start and end positions must take a Blind Test

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Reaver Laser Blaster

My experiences with my Reaver Titan so far have been…great fun, but I’ve been pretty unreliable on actual combat-effectiveness.
My Reaver has been destroyed in every battle and its most effective weapon was the one I originally tacked on as an afterthought, namely the Apocalypse Missile Launcher.

With the new additional rules in HH5: Tempest, the Reaver is now effectively immune to melee, so now my only real concern is being outgunned by another titan, or being cherrytapped by lascannons or meltaguns.

So, durability is not a problem, my weapons however are wildly sub-par

Here’s a Weapon Breakdown:
Power Fist – So far, it hasn’t killed anything with this weapon, I’m definitely still hoping to get some use out of it, it’s visually the coolest weapon the reaver carries and it’d be a pity to replace it.

Apocalypse Missile Launcher – So far my most effective choice, a barrage of AP3 large blasts across an enemy gunline is very reliable for killing pretty much any non-terminator enemies.

Melta Cannon – I think my target-priority skills need work, I keep targeting things that the melta cannon isn’t built for, like superheavy tanks. Maybe it’d be more effective against regular armor like Leman Russes.

Laser Blaster – I’ve finally finished assembling mine, but my experiences with a double-barrelled turbolaser have been pretty intimidating, I figure an extra shot of the same profile can’t go amiss!

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After the realisation that I now have five daemon engines of various kinds and no actual army to put them in, I’ve bought some chaos raptors/warp talons to convert into Dark Mechanicum themed infantry

I’m especially pleased with the one on the left, I put a spare set of toes from a warp-talon under a shoulder-plate, the result reminds me of a leech.

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Arvus Lighter

I don’t actually have any photos of this in progress, but I’ll post up some photos of the whole thing next post.

WIP Conversion: Combat Walker

Vaguely inspired by that quadrupedal robot from opening sequence of the new Terminator..

Still going to add some optics under the chin, lots of green-stuff cabling and ducting particularly around the flamers and the central body works.

Parts used: Two Sentinels, a Tau Pirahna and the hip section of an Onager Dunecrawler

Warhammer World!

It’s been a pretty eventful week or two!

I and a friend travelled down to Nottingham to see Warhammer World for the first time.

I’m totally blown away by the experience, it was utterly fantastic.
We did everything but play a game while we were there, I’ve literally got the T-shirt (the burgundy Mechanicum logo one)
Brought back a bunch of “souvenirs” too.
Not started working on them yet but in the bags are:
A pack of Thallaxii with a Photon Thruster to round out my existing squads
A pack of Myrmidon Secutors to expand my existing squad
And a pack of a Solar Auxilia Veletaris Storm Section. I love the look of them and decided I really wanted a squad of them!

They’ll have to wait though, because I’m working my way through a pack of Vorax Battle Automata and Kataphron Destroyers.

I have one of each done!

Amazingly, I was able to paint the Kataphron in only 25 minutes! This bodes well for getting a whole unit of them together for my Cult Mechanicus forces…

I was also able to get around to painting my Hellbrute conversion shown in my last post.
Thoroughly pleased with the results

With all the stuff on my plate, you’d think that’d be enough, but after seeing the Warlords that they have at Warhammer World, I’ve also ordered the Head of one to start me off. it should be here Today! (omg, totally forgot it was coming in all the chaos. now I’m gonna have to reorganise my plans for the weekend again :P)
I’m expecting to get the keys to my new flat in the next week or two as well as the Manchester public transport being heavily disrupted for a few months. so my hobby may be likewise disrupted. I do my best work in the store where there’s fewer distractions…

Ah well. it should all work out.
But in any case, after I’m settled into my new place, I intend to order the rest of the Warlord, I’m hoping the specific weapons I want to fit it with will have been released by the time I’m ready for them, I’m planning on the Apocalypse Missiles (confirmed as the next release for it), a volcano cannon, and the Saturnine Claw. (A hellstorm template attack with a powerful melee that re-rolls armour penetration too! picture a blowtorch for a fist, the size of a tank.)

Dark Mechanicum – ‘Uni-nought’

I’ve been wanting to do something like this for a while.
The basic premise is in the vein of a dreadnought with a single wheel rather than two legs.

I have an alternate plan in mind later to make a “Treadnought” using the Forgeworld Rapier battery and an ironclad dreadnought.

So, for this project, it’s a simple conversion, I take a Hellbrute, and I take the front wheel off of a Blood Throne of Khorne. and I mash them together…

Pretty pleased with the results 🙂
Tomorrow I’m going to paint it up! should only take a few hours

Dark Mechanicum Daemon Prince Conversion

Browsing the internet (as one does) for ideas, I ran across some particularly inspiring examples…After a few moments I realised I had nearly all the parts needed in my bitz collection and immediately picked up the last few things needed and cranked out this conversion in two evenings, painted it in an afternoon.

Behold! My Dark Mechanicum Daemon Prince counts-as conversion!

Icarus Dunecrawler + first of the Electro Priests

After returning from a family reunion, I’ve taken the time to spray up and paint my next Onager Dunecrawler. I had finished its assembly on thursday, sprayed it today and painted it this afternoon!

I’m missing a few details, unit markings and lights for the most part. and a few bits could do with cleaning up. but I’m happy with today’s progress!

Also on Thursday, I painted one of my Electro-Priests. I believe these are the Corpuscarii type, they shoot lighting from their hands and probably make horribly bad puns every time.

Photos To follow!

I’m also really happy with a tiny little bit of conversion, I drilled out the hatch’s hinge, pinned it and it now opens and closes. I can then put the pintle gunner in if I want to field it that way.